According to the latest research from mobile application revenue growth driving company SuperScale, 83% of launched mobile games will fail within 3 years, and 43% of mobile games will be canceled during the development process. The statistics were conducted by Atomik Research and released this week in SuperScale’s Good Games Don’t Die report. The statistics include a survey of 500 game developers in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The report shows that 76% of released mobile games reached their revenue peak in the first year of release, and only 4% continued to reach this peak in the second year.
The report also found that while more than half of developers have included real-time updates in their games, only 38% release new content or updates from time to time, and less than half of these developers release game updates monthly, resulting in only 5% of games continuing to be supported seven years after release.
Despite the high failure rate of new games, 78% of developers prefer to develop them. However, more than a third of respondents said that industry uncertainty "is preventing them from developing new games," and 30% of them believe that the current market is "too difficult to succeed."
According to the report, this is because two-thirds of studios have had to lay off staff, downsize or cut budgets, with 29% of developers cutting their UA (user acquisition, or marketing activity) budgets.
SuperScale CEO Ivan Trancik said in the report: "This is a turbulent period for the gaming industry. Faced with fierce competition in mature mobile markets and a high-inflation macro competitive environment, many mobile game developers are struggling to maintain profitability."