8 mobile games cross $1 billion player spending in 2021, including PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, and Genshin Impact

With the year 2021 drawing to a close, mobile gaming has built upon the immense success of 2020, achieving further increases in revenue. Prominent data analysis website Sensor Tower predicts that mobile gaming will generate close to $90 billion in revenue this year, representing a growth of 12% year on year.

The article below will discuss the top eight mobile games that have received more than a billion dollars in player spending in the year of 2021.

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PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings among top eight mobile games with $1 billion in player spending this year

PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings generated more than $2 billion in 2021 (Image via Sensor Tower)

PUBG Mobile and Honor of Kings, both titles from Chinese giant Tencent, are the top two games that have crossed the $2 billion mark in revenue.

PUBG Mobile and its localized versions, i.e. Game for Peace in China and BGMI in India, crossed $2.8 billion in revenue, which is an increase of 9% from the previous year. Released early in 2018, the game recently crossed the $7 billion mark in player spending, of which approximately 57% came from China.

On the other hand, the MOBA game Honor of Kings saw an approximate 15% increase and raked in $2.8 billion in revenue. Honor of Kings recently became the first ever mobile title to hit $10 billion of lifetime player spending and took a little over five years to achieve this incredible feat.

Genshin Impact, the popular action RPG game by miHoYo, was released in the third quarter of 2020 and has made some great inroads in the world of mobile gaming. The game is quite popular in China, the USA, and Japan, accumulating $1.8 billion in player spending.

At number four and five are Roblox and Coin Master, both of which have crossed a billion dollars in revenue for the second consecutive year. While Roblox saw a 20% increase in revenue and picked up $1.3 billion, Coin Master saw a rise of 13.8% to reach the same amount.

As revenue remained relatively the same at $1.2 billion, the popular game Pokémon Go, celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, moved down three spots to sixth place.

Garena's Free Fire, another vastly popular battle royale game, also crossed the 1 billion-dollar mark. On September 28, Garena even launched a new and improved version of the game called Free Fire Max.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby, which was released in February this year exclusively in Japan, also put up a spectacular show and achieved close to $965 million in player spending.