Data digest: Circle’s $25m raise, August’s biggest earners, Japan’s top titles, webgame stats, more

Every Wednesday we break down the latest data, research and financial results into digestible chunks.

Read on for the numbers you need to know about without the fluff.

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Circle Games has raised a $25m Series A led by Tencent, with participation from e2vc, Bitkraft Ventures, APY Ventures and a16z Speedrun.

AppMagic estimates suggest that Circle Games’ top title Sort Express has made around $5.8m in IAP revenue since it launched in early 2025.

Gossip Harbor held the number one spot for App Store revenue in August, with Roblox topping Google Play revenue, according to SocialPeta data. Fate/Grand Order was the standout riser: its 11th-anniversary campaign drove revenue up 548.9% month-on-month to around $19.4m on the App Store, pushing it back into the global top 20 revenue ranking.

On downloads, Block Out topped the App Store chart and Roblox led Google Play. Tencent’s Gangstar Mirage City was the fastest riser, climbing to number eight on the global download chart with around 11.7m Google Play downloads.

Vita Mahjong topped both iOS and Android ad charts. Plants on Fire, from Nuverse, ran around 7,700 de-duplicated iOS creatives, and Last Light, from Dinosaur-Games, ran around 17,000 de-duplicated Android creatives.

Japan’s mobile games market generated over $10bn (¥1.56 trillion) in IAP revenue in 2026, down 5.1% year-on-year, with downloads falling 5.4% to 585 million, according to a new Sensor Tower report.

eFootball topped the grossing chart, followed by Monster Strike and Last War: Survival, while puzzle games led downloads, with Puzzle Sort up 45.8%, and 4X strategy games led revenue.

A new Newzoo and Google whitepaper finds that 46% of online consumers aged 13-55 play H5 (browser-based HTML5) games monthly, rising to around 60% among 13-30 year-olds. 83% of H5 gamers play on smartphone, and 75% of those also play app-based mobile games.

Only around 23% of H5 gamers go directly to a portal site to find games, with 45% instead starting with a web search. Over half said they’d switch to a different site entirely if their favourite game were removed from a portal. The report also found H5 games lift site engagement, with visit times running roughly 40% longer when H5 games are present.

YouTube’s tentative move into webgaming has continued with the expanded rollout of its Playables games across the EU and Nordics.

Supercell and Duolingo’s 12-day crossover, launched September 19, saw Duolingo reach 711,000 installs worldwide on launch day and Brawl Stars record close to 160,000, in line with previous weekend performance for both apps, according to Appmagic estimates.

Colony Flow, released by ABI Games in mid-June, has generated $11m in lifetime IAP revenue and 7.6m installs, according to AppMagic estimates.

The game reached fourth place in last week’s top grossing hybridcasual puzzles chart with $1.65m, behind genre leader Pixel Flow on $2.4m. Colony Flow applies Pixel Flow’s dismantle-the-image mechanic but swaps its conveyor belts for ants.

Brocker Bus Studio’s Mystery Dumpling: Unbox ASMR, built around the squishy collectible toys popular in TikTok unboxing videos, recorded 9m downloads in its August launch month, landing in that month’s top five hypercasual titles by downloads, according to AppMagic estimates. It has since passed 13m installs total. AppMagic’s Advanced Search found more than 10 other dumpling-themed games released in August alone.

My.Games says its mobile hunting sim Hunting Rivals has generated over $3m in revenue, surpassed 3m installs and reached 1m monthly active users since its May 2026 launch.

Bandai Namco’s Bleach Mirrors High has passed 400,000 pre-registrations, a month after registration opened. Hitting 500,000 will unlock free copies of Ichigo Kurosaki and Rukia Kuchiki, plus up to 6,000 Mirror Stones, for all players at release. The game is due out later in 2026.

Topdog has raised $2.5m in seed funding for its portfolio of real-money skill games, including Basketball Hustle, 21 Hustle, Tilt and Pinfall. Unlike most real-money skill games, where players compete asynchronously and compare scores afterwards, Topdog’s titles run as synchronous, turn-by-turn matches against live opponents.

Jest, the RCS text-message-based app store for mobile games, hit a $1m gross billings run rate within three months of turning on in-app purchases. The platform reports a 15% payer conversion rate among active US users, nearly five times the standard mobile benchmark, and 400% usage growth since Q2. It’s now opening a second developer fund, offering up to $1m across three tiers, with Jest covering messaging fees so developers keep up to 90% of net revenue.