The Russian market of mobile games after the introduction of sanctions decreased by 84%
How much the earnings of top mobile games in Russia have decreased and how significantly the volumes of the domestic mobile entertainment market have fallen since the end of February — I was looking at the AppMagic database App2Top.ru .
Initially, the idea of the material was as follows: to talk to four leading analytical services, to find out how much mobile sales in Russia have fallen after the introduction of sanctions.
Recall that one of their consequences was that Apple and Google payment services stopped conducting operations on the territory of the country. As a result, users lost the ability to pay for their purchases in mobile stores.
The outages took place in March. Accordingly, we have a hypothesis that by April the first figures could appear, indicating the scale of the disaster in the Russian mobile gaming market.
Unfortunately, most of the services were not ready to share information. They either did not respond at all, or disappeared as a result of the correspondence. The exception was AppMagic, which provided a number of figures that interested us.
But before moving on to them, let’s take a look at how much sales of mobile titles that occupy leading positions in the Russian market have sunk. We compared the first full week of February and the first full week of April.
Earnings of games in Russia (AppMagic)
As can be seen from the table, the cumulative weekly earnings of top titles sank by 60-90%. At the same time, revenue from Google Play for all participants fell by 100%. As for the cash register with iOS, here the drop rate for the tops varies from 40 to 80%.
Payments from iOS are still going on, since various ways of replenishing the wallet have been preserved within the system. For example, you can use the services of the QIWI platform. You can also deposit funds to the account through a mobile operator.
By the way, according to the representative of AppMagic, some publishers are now actively encouraging users to use this type of payment. Considering that at least some revenue is still coming, they are doing it more or less successfully.
As for monthly indicators, the figures presented below are still preliminary. However, as with the games data, they show that the sanctions have hit the Russian mobile games market the hardest.
So, from February to March, Google Play’s gaming revenue fell by 64%, and the App Store by 41%. In April, Google Play stopped making money at all, and the App Store lost another 30%.
When comparing the aggregate data for February, when the sanctions have not yet begun, with April, when the bulk of them have already entered into force, the Russian mobile games market sank from $87 million to $14 million (by 84%) on a monthly basis.
Recall, according to MY.GAMES, mobile is responsible for 41% of the Russian video game market. In other words, already now we can safely talk about at least a 50-60% reduction in the domestic video game market, given, in addition to mobile, the cessation of digital sales of console games and problems with Steam.
As for the entire Russian mobile software market, it fell by 79% — from February’s $146 million to April’s $30 million. In detail, in the context of each of the platforms, its dynamics can be viewed just below.
Note that April is not over yet, so the data is only preliminary (we are talking about extrapolation from the existing period to the whole) and, most likely, will be adjusted by the end of the month. However, a significant increase in indicators is not expected.
