The 2025 mobile MOBA market is a war of regional trenches. While our latest data (via AppMagic) shows a massive $1.6B revenue peak for Honor of Kings (HoK), the numbers represent a genre that is no longer growing as a single global entity, but rather fragmenting into localized strongholds. It also reveals a staggering disparity between global reach and financial dominance.
In 2025, we are seeing a complete decoupling of popularity and profit. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) remains the undisputed “people’s champion” with a massive 95.5M downloads just in 2025.
By masterfully optimizing for entry-level and legacy hardware across Southeast Asia and Latin America, MOONTON has built a global kingdom where others struggled to scale. While its revenue ($158M) trails the top, its cultural footprint is unmatched with more markets on the way (Thailand? India? Europe? We are looking at you!).
Global vs. Domestic Split of Honor of Kings
While the total revenue figure for Honor of Kings is a massive $1.6B, it is important to distinguish where that money is coming from.
The vast majority of this total is generated within China’s domestic iOS market, which operates on a scale unlike any other region. Outside of China, the global version of HoK is still in its early growth phase, contributing roughly $30M to the total, a figure that places it in a much more competitive ‘mid-lane’ struggle with the other global titles on this list.
In 2025, China accounted for roughly 98% of the game’s revenue, as you can see in the image above.
Strategic Gatekeeping and the “Prestige” Play
On the other side of the spectrum sits League of Legends: Wild Rift. With $67.4M in revenue, it occupies a comfortable but isolated niche. Riot Games has maintained a strict policy of “gatekeeping,” intentionally keeping the game out of massive markets like India (not to mention Riot Games has a regional office in India, and Valorant is quite popular).
This is a deliberate “Prestige” strategy. Unlike MLBB, which tries to reach everyone, Riot is possibly waiting for global hardware to catch up to their high-fidelity standards. They are betting that the long-term value of a “premium” mobile experience is worth more than immediate mass-market saturation.
The Pokémon UNITE Struggle: Aggressive Tactics vs. Legal Walls
Despite the world’s most powerful IP, Pokémon UNITE ($14.1M) is struggling to convert its 29.1M downloads into sustainable profit. In 2025, we’ve seen the monetization shift from “optional cosmetics” to much more aggressive tactics.
UNITE has been officially removed from the Netherlands and Belgium stores in late 2024 because its monetization mechanics could not abide by strict local loot box laws. By refusing to adapt its gambling-adjacent features, TiMi Studio and The Pokémon Company have been forced to abandon these high-ARPU European markets entirely.
The “gem-locking” of new Pokémon and overpriced holowear has created a friction point that is keeping casual fans from spending at all, while not providing enough depth for whales to carry the revenue.
The End of the “Clone” Era
2025 marks the official end of the era where developers felt they had to change their games for different audiences. The pivot from Arena of Valor, which replaced Chinese heroes with Western fantasy and DC characters, to the Honor of Kings Global version is the final word on localization.
Once the global face of the genre, AoV is now being managed as a legacy project.
Players across the globe are no longer asking for a “Westernized” version; they want the authentic, high-polish experience that defined the genre in the East.
The Bottom Line
In 2025, the winner isn’t necessarily the game with the best mechanics, but the one with the most efficient regional infrastructure. Honor of Kings wins on domestic depth; Mobile Legends wins on global accessibility. Meanwhile, Wild Rift sits in a high-quality “waiting room,” proving that even the biggest IP in the world can’t conquer a market it refuses to enter.
Loved reading this piece? Read more mobile games industry article: