AppMagic

Midcore Insights Q2 2026: Market Leaders, Breakout Launches, LiveOps and UA Trends Midcore generated roughly $16B in H1 2026. But behind that huge number are dozens of success stories, declines, and emerging trends shaping the market. To capture what’s changing right now, we zoomed in on Q2 and the latest shifts across the genre. Our new report breaks down both the broader market shifts and the key trends across major Midcore genres, from Strategy and RPG to Shooters and Simulation: • Which subgenres grew several times over, but still don’t signal a real market opportunity 🚀 • How Sort Puzzle mechanics made their way into 4X Strategies through LiveOps 🧩 • How AI and “tycoonization” are reshaping UA creative trends 🪵 Read our neat 20-slide report for a quick snapshot of what’s happening across the Midcore market today: Download Report

Sensor Tower Tracker: Your Best Way to Track GTA VI Sales in Real Time Save it and watch the numbers grow as they happen! 🤩 The market is getting ready for the next chapter of the legendary Grand Theft Auto franchise, with GTA VI set to launch this November and pre-orders already open since June 25. We know you’ve already set up your PS5 or Xbox, pre-ordered GTA VI, and maybe even got a Netflix subscription just to catch every new trailer. So, what’s left? Monitoring the sales in real time with a free Sensor Tower' tracker, of course! We checked it today, and GTA VI has already generated $421M in revenue from 4.3M copies sold since pre-orders started 🔥 GTA V gives us a glimpse of what might be coming. The 2013 release saw 7M pre-orders, followed by 11M units sold globally on launch day and 16M in its first week. If you also can’t wait for the release and want to see how quickly GTA VI can catch up with its predecessor, make sure to save Sensor Tower’s GTA VI Sales Tracker.

Top 10 Steam Simulation Releases in 2025-2026 Looking at the ranking, we found that the most successful Steam Simulator releases from the past year fall into three main categories: 💰 Business Sims 🤝 Co-op Sims 🫧 Clean up Sims Business Sims continue to build on the familiar buy, sell, and restock formula. Supermarket Simulator generated over $46M in revenue from 3.4M copies sold at a $19.99 base price. Meanwhile, Retro Rewind: Video Store Simulator added a dose of ’80s nostalgia, earning $8M+ from 480K+ copies at a $19.90 base price. For Co-op Sims, the business concept mattered less than the fun of playing together with friends. And that’s exactly where most of the “friendslop” hits fit in 🤪 Schedule | quickly climbed the rankings with the weed empire business offering players familiar tasks and adding chaotic fun from the co-op layer. Altogether, resulting in $190M revenue and 10M copies sold all at a $19.99 base price.  Roadside Research looks like a typical Business Sim where you run a gas station, except the employees happen to be aliens secretly studying humans. The concept landed, earning over $8M in revenue and 788M copies at a base price of $12.99 👽 What about Clean up Sims? Find out in our latest article where we breakdown new Steam Simulation releases.

Top 10 Hybridcasual Puzzles in H1 2026 In H1 2026, the Hybridcasual Puzzle market was dominated by three key genres: Sort, Screw, and Block 💪 The chart leader was Pixel Flow, which generated 23% of total Hybridcasual Puzzle revenue and 30% of Sort Puzzle revenue despite launching only in August 2025. The top also includes three more Sort titles: Yarn Loop, Marble Sort!, and Knit Out, all three, however, more than 2x behind Pixel Flow in terms of monthly IAP revenue. The second-largest title in H1 2026 was Screwdom, accounting for 10% of Hybridcasual Puzzle revenue and 40% of Screw Puzzle revenue. The game maintains a steady IAP revenue level, followed by two other Screw titles in the top 10 — Happy Screw Trip 3D and Yarn Fever! — though both remain more than 3x behind Screwdom. The third top-grossing title was Color Block Jam, which contributed 9% of Hybridcasual Puzzle revenue and 30% of Block Puzzle revenue. Its monthly revenue has also stabilized, with other leading Block Puzzles — Gecko Out and Hexa Away — still trailing by more than 3x. Learn more about the Puzzle market and its growing Hybridcasual subgenres in our Casual Games Report H1 2026 ✨

Moon Active and Supersonic Chasing Homa's $130M Success Back in 2024, Homa redefined the Eat & Grow genre with All in Hole — swapping sharks and bloody hunts for a colorful world where a growing hole devours fruits and cakes. The formula paid off, allowing the game surpass $130M in lifetime revenue. Hundreds of similar games followed, but none came close... Until Supersonic launched Hole It 3D in January 2025! The game doubled down on Hybridacsual monetisation and reached $10M in IAP revenue already 🔥 Moon Active entered the race in July 2025 with Hole Stars, which expanded the Coin Master IP introducing familiar characters and visuals. The game already surpassed $8M in revenue and the number keeps growing as you read it! 🚀 Yes, both games are still far behind All in Hole in monthly revenue: $1.9M for Hole It 3D and $1M for Hole Stars, compared to $8.8M for Homa’s hit. Still, for the first time, Homa is facing two real competitors that could challenge its lead. And even if they never catch up, both publishers are already pushing the genre forward and building well grossing games of their own! Learn more about particularities of 3 leading Eat & Grow games’s strategies and genre’s dynamic in our latest article.

Everything Is a Simulator: Steam's Hottest 2026 Trend Drive a truck, run a farm, fly a plane—Simulators never felt short on Steam. But while the trend continues, developers are pushing the boundaries with increasingly niche concepts that attract new audiences. Alongside the classics, you can now build a drug empire in Schedule I, which sold over 9M copies and generated more than $172M in 2025, climbing to the top of Steam Simulators 🤯 Or take the recent breakout Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, where you screen survivors during a zombie outbreak. The game sold over 1.1M copies and generated $18.5M in Q1 2026 alone. In our latest article, we answer the question: How weird and niche a simulator could be in 2026? Along the way, we explore: 🚀 Standout releases of 2025–26 and what they reveal about the genre's future 💡Why niche concepts are turning into million-selling games ✍️ What developers can learn from the trends shaping the market Find all the key insights into Steam's Simulator market via the link.

Hay Day Hits a New $1M Daily Revenue High Thanks to Smart LiveOps In H1 2026, the Farming subgenre grew 15% YoY in IAP revenue to $576M, which is quite remarkable considering how mature the market is! Hay Day was the second top-grossing game in the market, accounting for 13% of Farming revenue in H1 2026. The game was released back in 2013, and guess what? After more than a decade of stable performance, it managed to hit a new daily IAP revenue high 13 (!) years later, reaching $1M on May 1, 2026 😱 One of the key drivers behind Supercell’s new milestone was its LiveOps execution. On that single day, Hay Day launched a whole lineup of events: two collection events with farm decorations, event tasks, a related exchange shop, and refreshed regular features. To convert that engagement into revenue, more than six special offers also went live, including holiday-themed chain offers 💰 Learn more about the Farming genre's top performers and the key dynamics across other Casual genres in our Casual Games Report H1 2026.

Top 10 Grossing Casual Games H1 2026: Match-3 Domination As you probably guessed from the title, the Casual market is still ruled by Match-3, accounting for 22% of total revenue. Have a look at the top 10 grossing Casual games — five of them are Match-3 titles. Royal Match's leading position confirms it, despite the game's 18% YoY decline. Dream Games' second hit, Royal Kingdom, grew 188%, boosting the publisher’s portfolio revenue. What's more, Royal Kingdom has already outpaced its predecessor over the same period after each game’s global launch, generating $553M compared with Royal Match’s $507M back in the day 🤯 Candy Crush Saga remained remarkably stable, but still slipped one position to make room for Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story. The game grew 157% YoY, becoming one of the key drivers behind the Merge-2 market, which nearly doubled to $1.2B in H1 2026. Gossip Harbor also crossed the $100M monthly revenue milestone for the first time this quarter 🚀 Playrix continues to hold two spots in the top 10, with Gardenscapes remaining flat and Homescapes growing 8% YoY. Fishdom came close to securing a third spot, finishing just outside the ranking in 11th place. The two Coin Looter representatives followed the genre’s 11% YoY decline. Monopoly GO! was down 20% YoY, while Coin Master declined 12%. However, there’s a catch: the revenue didn’t disappear — it just moved outside the stores. Looking at IAP and D2C combined, their performance was much more stable! Learn more about leading Casual titles and genre dynamics in our Casual Games Report H1 2026.

Casual Games Report H1 2026: Growth Beneath the Still Surface The Casual Games market generated $11B in revenue in H1 2026, staying almost unchanged year over year. Everything seems quiet and stable on the surface. But once you dig deeper, that's where you discover that some genres are actually blowing up 🚀 In our latest Casual Games Report, we uncover exactly that: ✨ Which Match-3 games are growing despite the segment's overall stagnation ✨ Why major publishers like Century Games and Moon Active are doubling down on Merge-2 ✨ How mature Farming titles are still setting new revenue records ...and, of course, we also cover the key Hybridcasual and Coin Looter trends. It'd be a crime not to! The key insights are already waiting to help you make stronger decisions in H2 2026.

AppMagic Newsletter: Discover Industry Insights Ahead of the Crowd 18 editions later, and you're still not subscribed? We definitely need to fix that 🚨 From our previous editions, readers discovered: 💡 How Sort, Block, and Screw subgenres are shaping the Hybridcasual Puzzle market in 2026 💡Whether porting a game from PC to mobile is worth it and which studio sizes benefit the most 💡 Moon Active and Supersonic’s strategies to chase Homa’s $120M success story Every other Wednesday, we break down the fastest-growing genres, discuss notable market trends, and cover major milestones across Steam, mobile games, and apps ⭐️ Don’t miss our next edition 🔗

400+ Feature References From Top Mobile Games In collaboration with our good friend, Anton Slachcev, we've compiled 400+ live feature references from top-grossing games, complete with in-game screenshots of every feature in action. What’s inside: 🏆 Tournaments: Classic, Weekly, Hourly/Daily, Team, PvP, Race, Duel 📊 Competitive leaderboards with multiplayer 🤝 Co-op: Goal the Chest, Partnership, team progression 📈 Passes: Season Pass, Non-Standard Pass 🎯 Progress: Milestone, Simple, Win Streaks 🎉 Live-ops: Holiday Events, Expeditions, Daily Unlock Tasker ⚡ Temporary Boosters 🧩 Collection: Album, Pick-a-Box, Digging Treasures 🎨 Item & Liquid Color Matching 🛒 Shop: Event Shop, Discounts, Mini-Games The list is available via the link 🔗

Zeta AI Reached a New Weekly High of $2M, Surpassing Perplexity Released back in 2022, Zeta AI has entered a phase of explosive growth from December 2025. In May 2026, it had already become the 5th highest-grossing AI chatbot app, and over the past few weeks it has even surpassed Perplexity in weekly IAP revenue. The app is built around interactive stories and romance. Users chat with AI characters, shape the course of each relationship, create their own characters, and explore community-created worlds 💌 Looking at its oldest and most well-known competitor, Replika, we can see a very different trajectory. Over the past year, the app has faced a significant downturn, declining to $232k in monthly revenue compared to its peak of $3M in December 2022. However, for other players in the segment, including Zeta AI, recent months have become a period of active growth. Several apps reached their all-time monthly IAP revenue highs this June: Zeta AI hit $6.8M, Chai: Chat AI Platform reached $3.3M, PolyBuzz $3.2M, and Character AI $933k! As AI chatbots become an increasingly common part of everyday life, they are raising the ceiling for the AI companion market. Thus, the numbers we see today might only be the beginning 🌱 Learn more about Zeta AI on its AppMagic public page.

Learnings from Learnings: From Hypercasual Hits to $25M Merge  This June, Learnings’ titles occupied the top of downloads: Block Puzzle Amaze Go! ranked #2, Logic Puzzle Meowdoku #10, and Mahjong Solitaire Vita Mahjong #11, together generating over 40M installs in just one month! With all these Hybridcasual success stories, no one expected Learning to create one of the recent hits in the Merge-2 market, excelling in IAP monetization as well. By Q2 2025, its Mystery Town: Merge Games had climbed to #8 in the Merge-2 revenue rankings, generating $25M during the quarter and nearly overtaking one of the genre's defining titles, Merge Mansion 💪 In our latest article, we break down: 1️⃣ What makes the mechanics of Amaze Go!, Meowdoku, and Vita Mahjong stand out 2️⃣ How Mystery Town: Merge Games broke into the top 10 highest-grossing Merge-2 games in just a year 3️⃣ How Hypercasual publishers are shifting from IAA to IAP monetization The full article is available via the link.

Marble Sort! Crosses the $5M Monthly IAP Revenue Milestone Released less than a year ago, Marble Sort! is already ranked #7 by lifetime IAP revenue in VOODOO's massive portfolio. Since May, it's been VOODOO's second-strongest earner behind only Castle Busters, with one of the highest RpDs in the portfolio. And in June 2026, Marble Sort! became the 4th top-grossing game in the Sort Puzzle genre! So how did VOODOO turn this Sort Puzzle into a hit? 🎮 A fresh take on gameplay. VOODOO built on a trending loop mechanic but changed how the marbles are sorted: they're thrown and bounce, letting players tap several colors and place them on the belt in random, creating a satisfying effect. 💰 Well-crafted monetization built on Hybridcasual best practices. Bundles of coins, lives, and boosters are available for purchase, paired with rewarded ads. 📱 A top-notch UA strategy from one of the world’s most experienced Hypercasual publishers. Learn more about Marble Sort! and two other VOODOO hits, Castle Busters and Sand Loop, in our article.

New Puzzle Order: The Rise of Sort, Block, and Screw For what feels like an eternity, Match-3, Merge, and Blast have been the three pillars of the Puzzle market, accounting for 80% of its total revenue. But their market share is being challenged as new subgenres are gaining momentum 🤯 Downloads make the shift even clearer: their combined share of installs has dropped from 75% a decade ago to 25% today! The next generation of Puzzle leaders is already waiting in the wings: Sort, Block, and Screw. This Hybridcasual trio is showing a lot of potential 💪 In this article, written in collaboration with Ahmetcan Demirel, we explore: 1️⃣ How Sort continues to grow thanks to constantly evolving game design 2️⃣ How a healthy mix of IAP- and IAA-heavy Block games is driving strong monetization 3️⃣ What developers of Screw games need to do to succeed in this Hybridcasual Puzzle rush All the insights are already avaliable via the link.

Top 10 Publishers by Gaming Revenue in Q2 2026 We’re continuing our Q2 2026 recap, and today we’re taking a look at how the world’s leading gaming publishers performed. Tencent once again secured the top spot, with Century Games remaining its closest competitor, though still 55% behind in IAP revenue. That said, Century Games posted one of the strongest year-over-year IAP revenue growth rates at 39%, fueled primarily by the growth of its 4X strategy Kingshot and the success of Merge-2 Tasty Travels. However, the fastest growth of all demonstrated Microfun, boosting its IAP revenue by 100% YoY driven by its hit Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story 🚀 Last but not least, Playrix posted 8% YoY revenue growth driven by the improved performance of Township and Gardenscapes. Learn more about the metrics of the leading publishers using AppMagic’s Top Publishers tool via the link

Top 10 Games by IAP Revenue in Q2 2026 June is over, which means it's time to see how the mobile games market changed in Q2 🤩 This quarter brought a few notable shifts in the leaderboard. While Honor of Kings held onto the top spot, Whiteout Survival and Royal Match replaced Last War: Survival and PUBG Mobile in the top three. They didn't surge—they just held steady, while Last War: Survival declined 30% quarter-over-quarter and PUBG Mobile dropped 31%, marking the biggest revenue declines of the quarter. Meanwhile, Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story and Kingshot strengthened their positions. Their IAP revenue grew 5% and 8% QoQ, respectively, while also posting notable year-over-year gains of 135% and 256% 🚀 On the downloads side, Honor of Kings stood out with 12% QoQ and 63% YoY growth. Most other top games either declined or remained flat, with Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story being the only other title to achieve YoY download growth (+58%), despite a 10% QoQ decrease. Learn more about the leading games of Q2 2026 with AppMagic Top Apps ✨

2 Days Until AppMagic x AppFollow Webinar: “Are You Analyzing the Right Competitors?” On July 1st, our Head of Inbound Sales, Kirill Vaganov, and AppFollow’s Senior Customer Success Manager, Veronica Bocharova, will discuss how to: ✔️ Spot meaningful competitor signals ✔️ Analyze customer feedback behind competitors ✔️ Combine both insights and apply them to your product, ASO, marketing, CX, and growth strategy Save the details: 🗓️ July 1, 2026 🕙 4pm CET 📍 Online And don’t forget to register if you haven’t already.

DTC is Already a $17B Market For Mobile Games Before our eyes Direct-to-Consumer went from a nice-to-have feature to one of the biggest opportunities in the industry 💪 Now GDC and AppCharge have put a number on it: $17B! In their report, they explore: — What the fee changes set in motion — The business and player benefits early adopters are seeing — How DTC helps build a competitive moat Our Head of Market Insights, Alina Zlotnik, shares that DTC revenue in the US grew 26% year-over-year based on AppMagic data 🚀 These days we can see how leading players like Monopoly GO! and Last War: Survival are actively investing in DTC. However, interestingly, many games aren’t aggressively pushing DTC purchases, allowing players to choose their preferred payment method freely instead. Learn more about the state of the DTC market via the link.

FIFA World Cup Drives Sport App Downloads by Almost 300% With the 2026 FIFA World Cup in full swing, we explored how it and four other major tournaments impact Sport apps and games market 💪 Looking at the FIFA World Cup, UEFA EURO, FIFA Club World Cup, Copa América, and the NFL, here's what we found: ⚽️ The FIFA World Cup delivers the strongest download growth, boosting installs by 297% for Sport apps and 71% for Sport games on average. ⚽️ UEFA EURO drives the highest revenue uplift for Sport apps (+66%), while the FIFA Club World Cup has the biggest impact on Sport game revenue (+33%). ⚽️ Sport apps typically see spikes in both downloads and revenue during the event, while Sport games often experience a longer-lasting effect that continues after the tournament ends. Find out more insights about each football event’s impact on the Sport apps and games via the link 🥅