AppMagic

AppMagic x AppFollow Webinar: “Are You Analysing The Right Competitiors?” On July 1

How do you analyze your competitors? If your first thought was: “Track growth, check rankings, and monitor new features,” then this webinar is for you 😉

That’s a good start, but it often misses key signals. Join our Head of Inbound Sales, Kirill Vaganov, and AppFollow’s Senior Customer Success Manager, Veronica Bocharova, as they introduce the Market-to-Customer Strategy Loop—a framework for closing those gaps.

What you’ll learn:
🔹 A framework for identifying meaningful competitor signals using revenue, downloads, rankings, category movements and more
🔹 Best practices for analyzing customer feedback behind competitors’ performance: from bugs to pricing
🔹 Ways to turn both market and customer signals into a powerful strategy

Save the date:
🗓️ July 1, 2026
🕙 4pm CET
📍 Online

Register via the link 🔗

New era of VOODOO: from Hypercasual to Midcore and Hybridcasual

VOODOO has long been known for its Hypercasual hits and strong expertise in IAA monetization. Later, it shifted closer toward Hybridcasual with games like Mob Control and Block Jam. Recently, the change has become even more visible.

With three new hits — Castle Busters, Marble Sort!, and Sand Loop — the company generated nearly $18M in IAP revenue in May alone. So, are we witnessing the beginning of VOODOO’s new era? 🌅

In our latest article, we break down:

— How Castle Busters broke into the Midcore charts
— VOODOO’s breakthrough in the Sort Puzzle genre with Marble Sort!
— How hybridcasual Sand Loop became one of VOODOO’s strongest hits in terms of RpD

A deep dive into these three titles — until VOODOO drops the next one 😉

All details are already available via the link ✨

Destiny 2 Daily Revenue on Steam Hits Record $3.7M Amid Final Update

We’re not crying, you’re crying! 🤧

On June 9, Destiny 2 released its final content update, “Monument of Triumph”, as fans gathered to either say goodbye to a 7-year journey or nudge Bungie toward giving the series another life with Destiny 3.

This strongly boosted daily revenue, jumping from $290K on June 8 to $3.7M on June 9, bringing lifetime game’s revenue to $900+M on Steam 🚀

If that’s not an ending for the history books, we don’t know what is. This spike is, by far, the largest in the game’s timeline!

For comparison, the second-largest spike happened on May 6, 2025, when Bungie announced The Year of Prophecy and launched its first expansion, The Edge of Fate. Even then, daily revenue was 1.6x lower at $2.3M 🤯

While Bungie has said it plans to incubate new games (which we’re eagerly waiting for), we’re also keeping a close eye on its newest title Marathon. The game has generated $36M in total revenue on Steam since its March 2026 release, which is notably smaller than Destiny 2 generated in first 3 months after its launch. Marathon’s daily revenue peak of $263k on June 2 is also still far from Destiny 2’s highest numbers.

Learn more about Bungie’s portfolio performance via the link 🔗

We Asked Investors: Why Türkiye?

The answer was surprisingly consistent: top-tier talent, deep mobile gaming expertise, strong government support, and a growing list of success stories. What was once an early-stage hotspot is quickly becoming a full-scale gaming hub.

The numbers speak for themselves:

🚀 Turkish developers' IAP revenue grew 450% in just 6 years, reaching $2.76B in 2025 — and still managed to grow 3% YoY despite broader market stagnation.

📈 The number of Turkish game developers increased 3.1x since 2020.

💰 Market leaders continue to scale. Dream Games generated $1.7B in 2025 (+15% YoY), Peak Games reached $620M (+18%), and Rollic Games hit $207M (+138%).

🤯 A new generation is rising even faster. Grand Games grew 1932% YoY, Good Job Games 7585%, Paxie Games 113%, and Panteon 95%.

🎮 Rollic remains the download king with 172M downloads in 2025 (+39% YoY), while its game concepts continue to inspire copycats worldwide.

To top all that, in the first 5 months of 2026, 71% of all startup investment in Türkiye went to gaming ventures!

Want to learn why Türkiye has become one of the hottest gaming markets for investors and developers? Check out our latest report 💡

Top 10 Premium Games on Steam by Copies Sold: May 2026

Now that we're a few days into June, it's time to see what Steam players were spending money on in May. And if you were hoping to spot a dominant genre, good luck 😏

According to Steam's worldwide rankings, players were in the mood for a little bit of everything.

🌊 Subnautica 2 became the month's best-selling game with around 4.3M copies sold. The sequel to the famous survival game is still in early access, so this number is likely just the beginning! The hype around the release also brought the first Sabnautica back into the charts with 1.1M copies and #4 in the ranking.

🏎️ Second comes Forza Horizon 6 with 3.2M of sold copies, showing that racing games can still top the charts if the franchise meets excellent execution!

🎲 Gamble With Your Friends reached #3 by copies sold with 2.2M units, proving that “friendslops” are still in their prime. Not coincidentally, we explored this trend in our recent article.

🕶️ Another standout is 007 First Light, which reached #6 by copies sold despite launching on May 26 and having only five days to climb the charts.

Congrats to all the studios with the great performance of their titles! What a month to be a gamer 🤩

Explore the full rankings and discover what Steam players were really into in May via the link.

Türkiye’s Mobile Gaming Landscape 2026

Yes, we know you’ve already seen plenty of yearly reports on Türkiye. That’s why we decided to save you time and put together the ULTIMATE one 🤌

And honestly, how could we not? Over the past 6 years Turkish developers revenue increased 450%, global market share grew from 1% to 5%, and, despite the mobile market stagnation, Türkiye has actually achieved 6% YoY growth in 2025 🤩

To deliver the best in class insights we partnered with a leading mobile gaming content platform Gamigion ⭐️

Here’s what we covered:

1️⃣ Global yearly trends: revenue and download growth, market share, top genres, games, and publishers in Türkiye.

2️⃣ Investments & M&A: funding activity, key investors and acquirers.

3️⃣ Key regional traits: LiveOps, standout launches, and Turkish development trends.

You totally wouldn’t want to miss it! All the insights are available via the link 🔗

Casual Puzzle: Has It Reached Its Ceiling, and Which Subgenre Still Has Room to Grow?

Casual Puzzle sits at the top of the mobile market with $8.7B in IAP revenue and 7.3B downloads in 2025, making it a natural target for developers searching for the next big opportunity 👀

However, looking at its major contributor, Match-3, which accounts for 58% of the market, we can see that its IAP revenue has hit a ceiling, with no meaningful ad revenue to cushion it. Monthly downloads have declined by more than 20%, and the subgenre remains dominated by a handful of long-time leaders such as Candy Crush Saga and Royal Match.

Blast, which accounts for less than 1% of the 2025 IAP market revenue, took a steep nosedive in 2023. Most of its former contenders never regained momentum with only Toon Blast continuing to grow solo.

But what about the evergreen Merge subgenre? Does it still hold promise for new entrants, or is it better to quit before starting? 🤔

Find out in our latest article, written in collaboration with Ahmetcan Demirel, CPO at Rotatelab and Product Advisor to Puzzle Teams ✨

Casual Puzzles in 2026: The Past, The Present, and The Future

There are three pillars of the Casual Puzzle market: Blast, Match-3, and Merge-2.

And despite having a lot in common, they now face very different fates:

— Merge-2 is showing solid growth year after year, and 2026 is no exception

— Match-3 has been stagnating after the explosive success of Royal Match

— Blast has been declining and is way behind the two leaders

Together with Ahmetcan Demirel, we took a closer look at how these three major Puzzle genres performed over the last three years and where the opportunities are in 2026.

Read via the link.

5 Gacha Events That Helped Love and Deepspace Reach $1B in User Spend

Gacha LiveOps is one of the most popular mechanics in Midcore, now used in 80% of top-grossing titles, with its presence up 60% since 2024.

One of the strongest recent examples is Love and Deepspace. Since its 2024 launch, the game generated $750M in IAP revenue, 31M downloads, and crossed $1B in user spend 🔥

So, which gacha events helped drive its success?

1️⃣ All-character events that deliver high level of diversity and cover different player motivations, helping drive revenue spikes of up to +154%.

2️⃣ Battle skin releases where players unlock limited skins by pulling new character cards through gacha, combining progression impact, rarity, and community hype, boosting revenue up to +130%.

3️⃣ Character birthday events that recreate real-life celebrations through narrative, DIY gifts, and immersive interactions, increasing revenue up to +50%.

We left 2 more events for you to learn about in our latest article 😉

Don’t miss it out!

Castle Busters: A New Game-Changer in the Artillery Shooter Market

Castle Busters by Voodoo started showing the first signs of future success back in February and, through continuous growth, reached $4M in monthly revenue in April 2026.

As its name suggests, the game truly busted the Artillery Shooter market, growing the subgenre 4.6x year-over-year and accounting for 72% of its revenue in April 2026 🤩

The last time the market saw similar growth was back in 2022 with the release of DDTank Adventure (弹弹堂大冒险), which peaked at $14M in monthly revenue before quickly declining afterwards.

Voodoo previously experimented with Artillery Shooter titles, with Archery Clash! reaching $4.9M in lifetime revenue since 2023. This time, however, the company shifted from Hypercasual to a more Midcore gameplay approach.

Today, we continue watching Castle Busters climb the Midcore weekly grossing chart, reaching №66 last week.

Would it be able to sustain its growth? Let’s keep an eye on it 😉

Love and Deepspace: Pulling $1B User Spend On Gacha Events

A relatively young title released in January 2024, Love and Deepspace by Paper Games was just one step away from entering the top 10 grossing Midcore titles of 2025. In China, it climbed to №9 by IAP revenue in 2025, right alongside titles from multi-billion-dollar players like Tencent, NetEase, and Century Games.

So, how did they do it? The answer lies in its gacha events ✨

In our latest article, we break down:
— How the core gameplay design supports gacha monetization
— A breakdown of the all 5 types of gacha events in the game
— Love and Deepspace’s top-performing offers and how they form the overall revenue mix

Get your notebooks ready: there’s a lot Midcore teams can learn from Love and Deepspace’s success. And a lot of beautiful screenshots to check out! 🤭

Here goes the link.

AppMagic Is Acquired by Sensor Tower, Becoming Its Dedicated SMB Market Intelligence Solution

Since its inception, AppMagic’s goal has been to help studios just starting their path in mobile app development scale faster while avoiding costly mistakes.

Staying true to this vision, we eventually managed to gain the trust of numerous companies across the globe, expand our capabilities, and grow beyond mobile.

With the acquisition by Sensor Tower, this goal doesn’t change. In fact, we see this as an opportunity to double-down on our mission to best serve small and midsize studios. But now, we can do it with new resources and expanded data capabilities.

It’s a new chapter in AppMagic’s journey and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for all of us together!

Yours truly,
AppMagic team 💛