Riot Games’ investment into mobile games is paying off.
The company surpassed $100 million in revenue on the platform, according to estimates from data analytics platform Sensor Tower. Riot has three published mobile games currently, namely Teamfight Tactics, Legends of Runeterra, and League of Legends: Wild Rift.
Riot’s first mobile title, the auto-battler Teamfight Tactics was released in March 2020 and has reportedly achieved 15 million downloads and made about $27.5 million to date. The card game Legends of Runeterra, which was released in April 2020, has made $16.2 million and managed to cross 13 million installs worldwide.
Most of the revenue, though, has come from Riot’s new mobile MOBA, League of Legends: Wild Rift. The game is based on the immensely popular League of Legends on PC and has been built from the ground up for mobile devices. The map and champions are similar in the two games.
It was first released in October 2020 in Southeast Asia. The game was subsequently introduced in Oceania, Europe, and the Middle East in December 2020. Wild Rift made its way to North and South America a bit later, owing to delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on March 29, 2021. The game has still not been released in China and South Asia.
Despite this, it has solidified itself as the leading game in Riot’s mobile portfolio. Wild Rift has reportedly made over $64.7 million and surpassed 46.3 million downloads worldwide. This revenue accounts for 60 percent of Riot’s earnings from mobile games.
The game was released in late March in the USA, but the country has contributed the most to its revenue. Players in the USA have spent $28 million in Wild Rift to date, which represents 26 percent of the total.
Most of the revenue came from the Google Play Store with the Android application store accounting for 59.4 percent (about $63.4 million) of the total. Apple’s App Store, on the other hand, racked up $44 million (40.6 percent of the total).
The future for the mobile MOBA looks bright as Riot is releasing regular content updates. The company has also said that it intends to create a global esports scene for the game and has launched regional competitions in Southeast Asia, Europe, MENA, North America, South America, Oceania, Japan, and Korea. A world championship is also scheduled to be held towards the end of the year. Wild Rift is also expected to release in the mobile-hungry Chinese market later this year, after being approved last February by the country’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA).
With this success, Riot has also revealed that the company is bringing its popular FPS title, VALORANT to mobile platforms soon.
