Couldn't include China (biggest mobile and android market in the world), due to the absence of Google Playstore in China where all the data used in the results come from. It's a shame as the list would look very different with games like Arena of Valor which reportedly has 80 million Daily Active Users (DAU), most of which is in China.
Researching every country is not feasible, so I selected 20 countries with the highest number of Android smartphone users I could get data for; Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam.
Notable exclusions other than China due to no data are South Korea, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan.
Similarly looking at every possible game is impossible due to sheer amount. So I used mostly common sense to decide which games to look at. I researched many games, and it was becoming clear that for a game to get over 2 million DAU was becoming exceedingly rare, so I decided to make the cut off at the top 30 games, as I am fairly confident I found all games with over 2 million DAU. I wouldn't be entirely shocked if there are other games out there with over 2 or even over 3 million DAU, but over 4 million DAU and beyond would be far less likely. At any rate, I challenge the readers to suggest games which could make it onto the list.
On Fortnite - Fortnite is not avaliable to download on the Google Playstore, which is where this data comes from. So unfortunately there is no data for it.
So below I present my findings on the top 30 most played games by DAU across the 20 mentioned countries. All numbers are displayed in millions (m)
Candy Crush Saga - 17.41m
Clash of Clans - 12.32m
PUBG Mobile - 11.45m
Garena Free Fire - 11.23m
Clash Royale - 9.01m
Helix Jump - 8.61m
Mobile Legends: Bang Bang - 8.09m
Candy Crush Soda Saga - 7.02m
Subway Surfers - 6.39m
Ludo King - 5.11m
Pokemon GO - 4.40m
Minecraft - 4.39m
Arena of Valor - 4.38m
8 Ball Pool - 4.37m
Roblox - 4.08m
Farm Heroes Saga - 3.62
Homescapes - 3.42m
My Talking Tom - 3.19m
Dream League Soccer 2018 - 3.12m
Gardenscapes - 2.90m
Toon Blast - 2.83m
Hay Day - 2.76m
Candy Crush Jelly Saga - 2.67m
Temple Run 2 - 2.69m
Pou - 2.44m
Happy Glass - 2.34m
My Talking Angela - 2.28m
Toy Blast - 2.22m
Granny - 1.98m
slither.io - 1.96m
Observations and Thoughts:
The most played game Candy Crush Saga is in a league of its own with a huge 17.41m DAU. Even it's follow-ups Candy Crush Soda Saga and Candy Crush Jelly Saga aswell as Farm Heroes Saga also make the list with respectable DAU figures. On the surface, this looks like King is the clear winner here as the most successful company with a total DAU of 30.72m across 4 games.
However, Tencent would beg to differ. On the surface, they have PUBG Mobile and Arena of Valor. But Tencent are also the majority shareholders of both Supercell and Miniclip, bringing in Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Hay Day and 8 Ball Pool into their collection. This puts Tencent's total DAU at 44.1m in the list.
Looking at the top 30 in general, roughly two-thirds of the game here would be counted as either Casual or Hyper Casual, with the rest being midcore or even hardcore depending on your interpretation of the terms. Whats interesting is that 4 out of the top 5 games could all be counted as being at least midcore, and most the midcore/hardcore games are in the top 15 games. This might suggest that creating a good midcore game breeds a healthier long-term playerbase on average when compared to casual games. But then you look at Candy Crush and realize that all bullshit :)
Candy Crush Saga's biggest direct competition is from its own sequel, Candy Crush Soda Saga. Even the next biggest competition in match 3 and puzzle, in general, is another King game, Farm Heroes Saga. It's not until you get to the 16th place with Gardenscapes do you find another match 3 game that isn't made by King. Seems like King's strategy is to cannibalize its own games to keep their users from playing the games from their competitors.
Clash of Clans and it's spin-off Clash Royale are the only 2 strategy games to make the top 30, and both are in the top 5, 2nd and 5th respectively. The funny thing here is that Clash Royale mostly has roughly equal or higher DAUs than Clash of Clans in most countries. The biggest reason why Clash of Clans has a total higher DAU is due to the game's popularity in India with over 3.3m DAU, roughly the same difference between the 2 games total DAU's.
PUBG Mobile and Garena Free Fire are the only 2 Shooters and Battle Royale games to make the top 30. Free Fire is a more casual alternative to PUBG, with a simpler game design and mechanics with shorter matches geared for more low spec devices. Free Fire is generally more popular than PUBG in Central/South America and South East Asia. Once again it's India to the rescue with its huge 6.1m DAU along with slightly more popularity in Western Countries (USA/Europe) to give it the edge. PUBG Mobile has soft-launched a lite version of the game in some countries which has shown some good numbers so far. For example, more people play the Lite version than the proper version in Brazil, a Free Fire dominated country.
Helix Jump, the highest ranked Hyper Casual game on the list, showing good all-round popularity in all countries surveyed. While the Hyper Casual craze has really kicked off over the past year, no other game has come close to Voodoo's biggest hit. Almost as many people play it as people play Clash Royale, just think about that for a second. Other Hyper Casual Games don't start showing up until you get near the bottom of the list with games like Pou and Happy Glass.
Mobile Legends is the biggest Moba on the list, beating out its competition, Arena of Valor in territories outside of China. This is mainly due to the games insane popularity in Indonesia with a whopping 4.42m DAU. 1.51m and 0.84m in Philippines and Malaysia make up the majority of the rest of its users. Arena of Valor the only other moba in the top 30 lags behind without its Chinese player numbers, although it still enjoys nearly 4 million DAU from just Vietnam and Thailand.
Subway Surfers and Temple Run 2 both make the list proving that Endless Runners that task the player with staying alive as long as possible are not dead in a world where casual games have moved to short levels to increase the number of ads they can show you. These are both older titles that have maintained their global appeal ever since they were first released.
Ludo King is the most polarizing game on this list. 90% of it's DAU comes from just India alone, with another 8% from Indonesia. Outside of those countries, it's basically nonexistant by comparison. Its popularity is probably due to LUdo being a very popular pastime in India, much in the same way as something like Monopoly or Scrabble is in other countries. For example Wors with Friends 2 is one of the most played games in the USA on Android.
Pokemon GO is the only AR game to make the top 30. Other AR games are still pretty new atm, and the jury is still out on whether AR will be the next big thing or if Pokemon GO was just a one-off. Pokemon unsurprisingly has it's strongest numbers coming from primarily the USA and Japan, along with decent showings in Western Europe and South America. Something to bear in mind here is that some of these countries have much higher IOS market share than the norm. IOS in Japan has about 70% of the market, and IOS is on much more even terms in countries like the USA and UK. If this was an IOS and Android list, I would expect to see Pokemon rise in a few places.
Minecraft is the only premium game to the make the list, a huge achievement in it's right. But while PUBG Mobile and Fortnite get all the praise for bringing authentic versions to mobile devices, Minecraft has been quietly doing it for a number of years now. Maybe surprisingly, the countries with its highest DAUs are Brazil, Russia, and Indonesia, all with over half of million players each.
Roblox being in the list is just as interesting as Minecraft making the list, but for very different reasons. Utilizing graphics that appeal to a younger demographic, it is the only game that is based around user-created content. People can make all types of games which others can play in a social environment. It's also one of the most played games on Android in the USA with over 1 million DAU.
8 Pool Ball is actually a clever multiplayer physics puzzler masquerading as a "sports" title. Another game a little bit too reliant on India with over 40% of DAU coming from there alone. The only other sports game to make the list is Dream League Soccer. Football (Soccer) is the world's game after all, not surprising though that 3rd of its DAU is from Brazil, Mexico and Argentina combined.
Only 2 Companies in Playrix Games and Peak Games have really given any kind of challenge to King and their casual puzzle games monopoly. Playrix with Homescapes and Gardenscapes, and, Peak Games with their Toon Blast and Toy Blast games. While Playrix has a more global appeal, more people play Gardenscapes in Germany than the USA for example, Peak Games are more dominated by USA players. Twice as many people play Toon Blast in the USA than Germany by comparison.
2 Pet Simulators make the list from Outfit7, My Talking Tom and My Talking Angela. Looks like they capitalized on an untapped market. Reminds me of Tamagochi's from way-way back. Anyone else remembers those, or am I that old now?
Hay Day, Supercells first big hit, proves that dedicated farming sims are still a thing. Maintaining a strong global appeal, although Germany is it's strongest country.
Granny is a first-person survival horror making it one of the more unique entries to make the list, even if it only just sneaked in.
Slither.io holds up the rest of the list and is the only .io game to the make the list. A reimaging of the classic snake games of the past with a multiplayer twist.
While India may have the biggest number of DAUs from all games combined across all the countries, the country with the highest engagement for Android gaming was Vietnam. Approximately 34.5% of Android users play at least 1 of these games every day in Vietnam, while conversely, India had the 2nd lowest engagement at 9.5%. The lowest overall was Poland at just 6.3%, I found this peculiar since Android is strong in the country with more total Android users there than a lot of other countries, and it fell way below of the norm of other European Countries
Overall South East Asia and South America, along with Mexico and Turkey showed higher engagement than North America and Europe. This confirms that mobile gaming is not only more popular in those parts of the world but it's more common for mobile gaming to be the main way people game. The types of games people play are different too. While games like Candy Crush and Clash of Clans have strong global appeal, the midcore games like Battle Royale and mobas tend to do better in the high engagement countries, while the more casual games tend to do slightly better in less engaged countries. This confirms that in less Android engaged countries many people still majorly use other platforms (console/pc) for their more serious gaming needs. Android gaming is more for noncore gamers or supplementary for core gamers in those parts of the world.
I think if I was to make a list again in the future I might remove India from the equation. This top 30 has a total DAU of 158.6million, of which India make up 34.5 million( with half of that just for 3 games, Candy Crush Saga, PUBG Mobile and Ludo King), that 21% of the total DAU, having a very big effect on the placements on the list. Here is the Top 10 without India.
Candy Crush Saga - 10.98m
Garena Free Fire - 10.33m
Clash of Clans - 8.99m
Clash Royale - 8.28m
Helix Jump - 8.27m
Mobile Legends Bang Bang - 7.62m
Candy Crush Soda Saga - 5.61m
PUBG Mobile - 5.35m
Arena of Valor - 4.36m
Minecraft and Pokemon Go - 4.30m
Candy Crush doesn't look quite so dominant without India backing it up, and PUBG falls all the way down to 8th. Subway Surfers falls outs of the top 10 and Ludo King falls off so much it's probably not even in the top 100 anymore.
There is probably plenty more to be said about the list, but that's all I can handle right now. So thanks for Reading if you got this far. I can't wait to read your thoughts about the list. Did anything surprise or shock you?
Finally, I challenge you all to name a game which could make this list. While I checked as many popular games I could, it was impossible to check everything, so it's entirely possible I missed some.
Games requested by readers that didn't make the list, aka LOSERS:
Hill Climb Racing 1 - 1.89m
Lords Mobile - 1.14m
Summoners Wars - 0.81m.
Marvel Future Fight - 0.53m
Fire Emblem Heroes - 0.41m
Rules of Survival - 0.33m
Marvel Strike Force - 0.28m
Final Fantasy XV - New Empire - 0.19m