Royal Match is Crushing the Candy!

Royal Match has just leap-frogged Candy Crush Saga as the top mobile game in both revenue and downloads for the first time in history!

First released in July 2020, Royal Match boasts earnings of $112 million and with 14.6 million downloads, while Candy Crush Saga earned $104 million with 14.4 million in July 2023.

To contextualise this feat, it has taken less than 3 years for Royal Match to achieve these results against a mobile gaming giant, Candy Crush Saga, which was first released in April 2012 and now boasts three related titles; Candy Crush Soda Saga, Candy Crush Jelly Saga and Candy Crush Friends Saga.

Both titles leverage off of the freemium model; where the game can be played completely without spending money, however players can buy special actions to either ‘refill lives’ or ‘pay-to-continue’ a failing level. The biggest difference between the two titles is that while Candy Crush Saga essentially established the ‘match-3’ puzzle format, Royal Match has not only optimised the traditional ‘match-3’ puzzle format but has also incorporated reoccurring live events as an effective retention hook to minimise player churn.  

Looking at Daily Active Users, the Candy Crush Saga still “crushes” all competition with more than 18 million users against the 15 million users of Royal Match. Don’t be surprised to see Royal Match exceed these numbers in the coming months especially as they continue to aggressively promote the game.