Sensor Tower: How the Season pass affected sales in Lords Mobile, Clash of Clans and Township

The mechanics of season passes have gained popularity due to the success of Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. But not only these games have made good money on it. Sensor Tower analysts told what other mobile projects managed to seriously increase revenue after the introduction of seasonal passes. There is a game from Playrix in the list.

Lords Mobile

The strategy of the Chinese studio IGG was released in 2016, but has recently experienced a sales boom.

In January 2021, the developers added a season pass to Lords Mobile, which they called Kingdom Labs. To join it, players had to buy a monthly “golden pass” or use a free “silver pass”. Kingdom Labs set weekly tasks for users, for which they received additional rewards.

This led to the fact that Lords Mobile’s January revenue reached $90.3 million — twice as much as it was a month before the introduction of the season pass.

The title’s revenue remained consistently high in the following months (IGG continued to use new season passes in them). According to Sensor Tower calculations, the average revenue of Lords Mobile from January to March 2021 was higher than ever before. For example, in 2020, the average monthly revenue of the project was only $42.5 million, and in 2021 it was already $83 million. Growth by 95.3%.

Also, after the addition of a season pass, the total expenses of players for the entire existence of Lords Mobile exceeded $ 2 billion.

Hay Day

Another example of the successful use of seasonal passes is Supercell‘s Hay Day, released in 2012.

In December last year, the authors of the title included Farm Pass in it, and their revenue immediately began to grow significantly. Hay Day’s earnings then jumped by 62% compared to November and amounted to approximately $14 million.

Also, if in the fall of 2020 the average revenue of the game per month was $ 9.7 million, then from December 2020 to February 2021 it reached $14.2 million. This is 46.4% more. And March became the most profitable month for Hay Day since July 2017, bringing $15.6 million in revenue.

Township

The release of the Township construction and farming simulator from Playrix took place in 2013. And in November 2019, the authors presented their version of the season pass in the game — Professor’s Experiments.

As in the previous examples, the experiment turned out to be successful. At that time, November 2019 was one of the most monetary months in the history of the project. Player spending increased by 22% to $29.8 million.

But if in the case of Lords Mobile and Hay Day, the level of player spending remained consistently high even after using a season pass, then everything was not so smooth for Township. The revenue of the game fell to the standard level and rose only after the launch of a new pass.

Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans is another game developed by Supercell and released, like Hay Day, in 2012.

Before the introduction of the Season Challenges season pass in April 2019 (like Lords Mobile, it was divided into paid “gold” and free “silver”), Clash of Clans revenue fell for several years in a row. The new mechanics managed to correct the situation. That month, the players left $66.8 million in the title, which was 58% more than in March.

The season pass helped Clash of Clans to increase its annual revenue in 2019 to $731 million. The growth was 25%. In 2020, player spending decreased slightly, but still exceeded the level of 2018.