Royal Match surpasses Candy Crush Saga in revenue and downloads for the first time

Key takeaways:

• Royal Match's ascent is powered by an aggressive paid user acquisition strategy, with 61.5% of its downloads originating from paid channels, contrasting starkly with Candy Crush's more conservative approach.

• The continuous addition of captivating features, including the "Summer Pass" and the intriguing "Hidden Temple" mini-game, has fueled Royal Match's growth, boosting its overall player engagement.

• Although Candy Crush maintains a lead in daily active users (DAU), Royal Match's strong trajectory suggests a potential future shift in this metric, hinting at the possibility of further overturning the established gaming hierarchy.

Candy Crush Saga Dethroned

In July, for the first time ever, Royal Match has exceeded Candy Crush Saga in both downloads and revenue. With 14.6M downloads vs Candy Crush’s 14.4M, it has achieved a major milestone in beating the number one puzzle game by revenue. In the same month, Royal Match generated $112M in gross revenue, exceeding that of Candy Crush’s $104M. Given Candy Crush’s dominant role, this is a stunning accomplishment less than two and a half years after Royal Match’s worldwide release in early 2021. 

Paid UA 

How did Royal Match manage to reach this rarified air in mobile gaming? Using Sensor Tower’s Downloads by Source, we can see that Royal Match is running an aggressive paid UA strategy, with a staggering 61.5% of all downloads coming through paid channels. In other words, well over half of all downloads of their game are arriving by users clicking ads and then installing the game on their phone. This is considerably higher than Candy Crush Saga, which has ranged from 15.4% to a peak of 25% of all downloads being through paid sources. Looking at Sensor Tower’s Ad Intelligence, we can see that Royal Match has had roughly double the share of voice, compared to Candy Crush, on the Admob, Digital Turbine, Mintegral, Ironsource, and Unity ad networks. 

High Cadence Live Ops 

Royal Match has coupled this strong long term paid UA strategy with a particularly aggressive live ops cadence.

Beginning in September 2022, they have added over a hundred levels to the game every month, accelerating their rise considerably, and putting them on track to dethrone the king of puzzle games, Candy Crush Saga, as they have today.

Since its February 2021 launch, the game has implemented a two week live ops cadence, with the first updates adding 50 new levels per update, scaling up to 100 new levels per update beginning in July 2021. Maintaining a release volume and cadence of 200 levels per month has accelerated their rise considerably, putting them on track to dethrone the king of puzzle games, Candy Crush Saga, as they have today. 

This steady output of features has culminated in Royal Match’s “Summer Pass” in app purchase, the July iteration of the “Royal Pass”, a “Battle Pass” implementation. Royal Match’s Hidden Temple mini-game was released at the end of June, challenging players to uncover hidden objects on a board. The combination of these new features has pushed the game over the line as they surpass the top puzzle game and establish their new position at the top of the charts in this area of mobile gaming. 

The Road to the DAU Crown

Having “crushed” the competition, there is still ground to be gained for Royal Match. For one, there is still a meaningful gap in daily active users (DAU) between the two games. Looking at Sensor Tower’s Usage Intelligence, we can see that Candy Crush Saga boasts a solid 18M daily active users compared to Royal Match’s 15M. Given its current, strong user acquisition trajectory, however, it is quite likely that Royal Match will exceed the DAU of Candy Crush Saga by the end of October, another incredible milestone in and of itself. With its strong paid UA strategy and aggressive content addition cadence, Royal Match is on its way to becoming the crowning glory of the puzzle genre.