Free Fire became the most downloaded mobile battle royale for the first half of 2021, beating PUBG and Call of Duty
Free Fire continues to set records. The analytical company App Annie estimated that in January-June, the total mobile downloads of Free Fire amounted to 104.5 million. This is the best result among mobile battle royales.
The game also became the second most downloaded mobile game in general, losing first place to the hyper-casual hit Join Clash from Supersonic and the Belarusian FreePlay.
For comparison, the main competitors of Free Fire have much fewer downloads. According to AppMagic, PUBG Mobile was downloaded 71.6 million times from January to June, and Call of Duty: Mobile — 38.3 million times.
Nevertheless, Free Fire could not beat PUBG Mobile by the number of active users. In the first half of the year, PUBG Mobile had more of them than any other mobile game in the world, while Free Fire became the sixth largest active audience (and Call of Duty: Mobile — the tenth). However, the audience of Free Fire turned out to be more involved. She had 35% more gaming sessions than PUBG Mobile users.
Separately, App Annie looked at the number of downloads from the leading battle royales for 40 months since their release (Call of Duty: Mobile — for 25 months). Free Fire once again proved to be the leader, having collected a billion instals. PUBG Mobile has a little less — 974 million. Call of Duty: Mobile has the least of all instals so far — 409 million.
Recall that Free Fire was released in August 2017, PUBG Mobile — in March 2018, and Call of Duty: Mobile in October 2019.
How Free Fire was able to achieve this
According to Harold Teo, head of Garena and producer of Free Fire, four main factors contribute to the success of the game as a whole: focus on mobile, hyperlocalization, thoughtful collaborations and close work with the community.
For example, one of the most effective methods of promotion was cooperation with Cristiano Ronaldo in December 2020. As App Annie calculated, as a result, Free Fire has grown in popularity in regions that are interested in football. In Latin America, after that, the title’s revenue became twice the revenue of Call of Duty: Mobile.
Later, Garena organized “football collaborations” for Latin America more than once. This could affect the current popularity of the title. In the first half of 2021, Free Fire was the most downloaded and highest-grossing battle royale in Brazil and Mexico.
Also, Free Fire in the first half of the year surpassed the rest of the battle royales in the United States in terms of revenue. You can read about the strategy of promoting Free Fire in the States here.
