Riot Games’ Teamfight Tactics Surpasses 4.5 Million Downloads on Mobile

League of Legends developer Riot Games’ take on auto chess has delivered the burgeoning genre’s largest debut to date on mobile. Sensor Tower Store Intelligence data reveals the mobile version of Teamfight Tactics, a title originally released in summer 2019 for PC, was downloaded 3.6 million times across the App Store and Google Play in the seven days following its March 19 release, and has been installed by more than 4.5 million players globally to date.

As shown in the chart below, Teamfight Tactics saw 3.6x more installs in its first seven days than Dragonest’s Auto Chess: Origin—the official mobile version of the genre’s earliest title—and 5.3x more than Riot Games parent company Tencent’s Chess Rush did during the same amount of time following their respective launches.

In comparison, the mobile version of Dota Underlords—Valve’s standalone take on auto chess and one of the genre’s biggest titles on PC—was installed 105,000 times in its launch week following an early access period.

The United States was Teamfight Tactics’ largest market during its first week, accounting for about 17 percent of all downloads. The U.S. was followed closely by South Korea, which accounted for 13 percent.

South Korea took the lead in terms of consumer spending, generating 54.4 percent of the estimated $712,000 taken in by the title in its first week, with U.S. players contributing close to 24 percent of the total. Teamfight Tactics has grossed more than $1.2 million on mobile to date.

Across the (Chess) Board

Analysis of Sensor Tower data shows that mobile auto chess titles have traditionally seen their greatest amount of user spending originate from Asia. For example, Auto Chess: Origin’s October 2019 release in China was a particularly profitable move for publisher Tencent, as that market now accounts for 43.2 percent of the title’s revenue to date.

While Teamfight Tactics’ early performance suggests it may also be a bigger mobile earner in Asia, the relatively larger number of U.S. installs seen by the game in its first week suggests that it has a better chance of breaking into the North American market than its competitors. Given that Teamfight Tactics is already the second-best-performing auto chess title behind Auto Chess: Origin in terms of U.S. user spending, Riot Games is well poised for dominance in this lucrative market.