Despite India ban, Free Fire emerges most downloaded mobile game in February 

Garena's popular battle royale game Free Fire maintained its top ranking in February 2022 with 21.8 million downloads - an increase of 22.7 percent over last year, according to a Sensor Tower report. The game was also ranked number one last month, with 24 million downloads.

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India ranked first with around 9 million Free Fire downloads in February

Around 41 percent of all game downloads came from India, followed by Brazil with 9.7 percent. The fact that the game was banned from India in mid-February and still topped the list speaks for its popularity in the country. India was one of the biggest markets for Free Fire.

Top 10 mobile games by downloads for February 2022 (Image via Sensor Tower)

With 19.5 million installs worldwide in February, Subway Surfers was the second most installed mobile game in the world. It represents a 45.3 percent increase from February 2021 but also, a dip of around 17 percent from last month. India once again dominated with 18.8 percent of all total installations, followed by Brazil with roughly 7.8 percent. Tencent's PUBG Mobile, which made a reappearance on the top 10 list last month, climbed one spot to sixth place this month.

Wordle, launched in 2016 by Goldfinch Studios (unrelated to the similarly-named hit web title that The New York Times bought recently), accumulated 6.7 million downloads. The title had only generated 31,800 installs for the interval between 2016 and 2021 while it crossed nine million downloads during the last two months after a viral Wordle web game was acquired by The New York Times.

February was the best month for Clash of Clans in the last three years, with about six million installs - an increase of around 48 percent year-over-year. This boost has been attributed to the new update, which allows players to return Heroes to battle without waiting for them to heal.

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Top 10 downloaded mobile games of February 2022

1. Free Fire by Garena

2. Subway Surfers by Sybo

3. Merge Master by Homa Games

4. Candy Crush Saga by King

5. Roblox by Roblox

6. PUBG Mobile by Tencent

7. Twerk Race 3D by Tap2Play

8. Ludo King by Gametion

9. Fishdom by Playrix

10. Find the Alien by Monee

The global mobile games market saw 4.4 billion downloads, up 0.7 percent year-over-year, on both the App Store and Google Play. With 670 million game downloads, India was the most popular country in the world, which accounts for 15 percent of overall downloads. With 8.7% of downloads, the U.S. finished second while Brazil came in third with 7.8%.