"Small" Year, Big Growth: The Changing and Constant Factors in the Gaming Industry in 2025

Compared to 2024, which saw the emergence of Black Monkey and a historic transformation in market development, 2025 was previously considered a year of slow growth.

On the one hand, regarding new releases, although dark horses like *Supernatural Action Team* and *My Garden World* emerged in the second half of the year, it was difficult for them to consistently maintain a top 10 position, and very few truly stood out. Meanwhile, the FPS market saw a surge of new releases last year, with tactical strategy games, tactical economics games, and hero shooters competing both domestically and internationally, with Tencent and NetEase holding their own. In the SLG (Strategy/Simulation) genre, the impact of games like *Three Kingdoms: Strategy* (reducing grind and workload) and *Endless Winter* (moving from mini-games to mobile games) ignited a renewed battle between *Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Strategy Edition* and *Land of Glory*.

On the other hand, if we look at the quarterly figures, the first half of the year saw a year-on-year decline, while the full-year growth was boosted only in the second half of the year, especially in Q4, with a significant year-on-year increase. It's worth noting that the second half of last year featured a blockbuster film like "Delta Force".

In addition, in terms of overall strategy, 2025 will continue the cross-platform publishing and mini-game growth path of last year's changes.

The "2025 China Game Industry Report," released on December 19th, provided some surprising data: In 2025, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market reached 350.789 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.68%; the user base reached 683 million, a year-on-year increase of 1.35%. Both figures represent record highs.

The long-term trend of large DAU products swallowing up other sectors

If revenue growth can be attributed to the strong performance of certain products, the fact that revenue and user growth rates in 2025 exceeded those of 2024 (last year's expansion effect of Black Monkey had already raised the base) points to a very crucial point: the cross-platform compatibility of products (PC/console-mobile-mini games) directly boosted the number of players that had previously stagnated, bringing in new users.

This can be verified in both client-side and host-related data.

In 2025, the domestic console game market's actual sales revenue reached 8.362 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 86.33%, compared to a growth rate of 44.88% last year.

The domestic PC game market generated RMB 78.16 billion in revenue, a significant year-on-year increase of 14.97% (compared to 2.56% last year). This growth was mainly attributed to the steady increase in revenue from top-selling and long-running PC games, as well as the simultaneous release of several popular new mobile games on PC.

Among these cross-platform products, the most typical example is the rapid growth of the FPS category this year.

At this year's Gamescom, Tencent Senior Vice President Ma Xiaoyi said in a media interview, "Shooting games currently account for about 20% of the market share in China. We've looked at the global picture, and shooting games account for about 35% of the overall market. Based on this comparison, the Chinese shooting market still has room to double."

We have indeed seen a series of new shooting games developed or distributed by Tencent, such as The Finals, Gray Walker, Crossfire: Rainbow, and ARC Raiders, being revealed one after another.

The Q3 earnings call also explicitly stated, "We expect almost all of our FPS games to grow in terms of users and revenue during 2025. FPS is the leading dominant genre in the rest of the world, but not in China. With the release of Delta Force, Peacekeeper Elite and Valorant, we are looking to bring this genre to that position."

While new product releases were fewer than last year, growth was higher. High-DAU games, particularly FPS titles, showed a clear lag (increasingly high DAU figures). With the long-term development of these products, growth exceeding incremental growth, and the cross-sector dominance effect will become a long-term trend. As Tencent's Chief Strategy Officer, James Mitchell, explained in the financial report regarding new products, "Every new game not only competes with other new games released at the same time, but also with the best games in the market that have evolved into evergreen titles."

In 2025, among the top 100 highest-grossing mobile games in China, shooting games will account for only 7% of the total number of games, but their revenue share will be 18.29%, very close to 19.45%. This is a significant improvement compared to last year, when shooting games accounted for only 5% of the total number of games but 13.89% of the revenue. While strategy games (including SLG) and card games have a high number of games, their revenue share is not particularly high.

According to the "2026 China Game Industry Trends and Potential Analysis Report" released by Gamma Data at the same industry conference, shooting games contributed over 10 billion yuan in incremental growth to the market in 2025, becoming a key driver of annual growth. In terms of gameplay, the "search, attack, and withdraw" mode became a key source of incremental growth, with products featuring this core gameplay exceeding 30 million daily active users. At the product level, several new games, including "Valorant: Energy Operation," "Victory Goddess: A New Hope," and "Thunder Fighter: Assemble," were launched, attracting users with different preferences through tags such as hero shooting, anime-style, and flight shooting, reducing internal competition and collectively expanding the category's upper limit.

In contrast, in 2024, the actual sales revenue of my country's ACG (Anime, Comics, and Games) mobile game market was 29.348 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 7.44%. The report mentioned that one of the main impacts was the intensified market competition, which required competing with other categories for a limited player market, while players' willingness to spend also weakened.

The flywheel effect of products with large DAU is more obvious. Although cross-platform integration has brought a new wave of growth, it still cannot satisfy the appetite after the positive cycle. Competing for users across different sectors is an inevitable process under the competition for existing users.

The Rise of Emotional Content

Although second-generation games did not perform well in 2025 (the big battles of many new open-world games were postponed to next year), the trend of shifting from content and gameplay to emotional design continues, which has led to a new wave of discussions among female users. This year's dark horses, "Supernatural Action Team" and "My Garden World", are typical examples.

According to the "Research Report on Games Targeting Women" jointly released by the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association and the Game Publishing Committee, the market size of games targeting women in China reached 8 billion yuan in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 124.1%, which is far higher than the industry average. Games targeting women have become one of the fastest growing segments in the domestic game market.

This is a major trend; both games targeted at women and products with a large female player base emphasize or are beginning to prioritize emotional experiences. According to CITIC Securities, *Supernatural Action* has entered a strong platform period, with a stable revenue of approximately 500 million yuan in September, a traditionally slow month, with female users accounting for 60%-70%. Among them, 45% are casual players experiencing the horror genre for the first time, not only reshaping the user structure of the micro-horror market but also successfully driving the expansion of the entire market. In addition, there has been a significant increase in female users in high-DAU games, some long-standing products with relatively casual gameplay, and casual mini-games.

Seeking emotional support, releasing stress, and achieving psychological healing through games demonstrates a distinct "emotionally driven" characteristic. This group consumes rationally, values emotional connections, and imbues games with a deeper emotional capacity.

The "2026 China Game Industry Trends and Potential Analysis Report" points out that nearly 60% of users seek a warm and comforting experience, while over 40% require a low-stress experience. Game functionality is shifting from simply fulfilling gameplay needs to providing emotional support and psychological compensation. Even in high-stress genres like shooting games, the user structure is diverging, with recreational players accounting for 48.6%, significantly higher than the 21.6% of competitive players.

Of course, emphasizing emotional design also brings about another situation: these products have taken over the chaotic state of second-generation games from previous ones. Female-oriented game communities typically possess high emotional intensity and deep participation, which has promoted player co-creation and a thriving content ecosystem, but has also occasionally led to overconsumption and online disputes. This is related to the high degree of emotional connection within the community and the "traffic-first" dissemination mechanism of social media, making it an aspect that must be examined.

Whether female-oriented games, which have been talked about for many years, will break through the ceiling (in terms of revenue and user scale) in the context of fierce competition for existing users, will be one of the key points to watch in 2026, led by the top players.

The shift in business models: UGC and mini-games

User-defined communities (UGCs) have become an ecosystem that large-scale daily active users (DAU) products must build.

Data shows that approximately 70% of users may pay for UGC skins, and the global representative UGC platform achieved a compound annual growth rate of 40.3% in revenue between 2020 and 2024, demonstrating the strong growth potential of this model.

Roblox paid out over billion to creators through its Developer Exchange (DevEx) program in the past year, setting a new annual record; the top 1,000 creators earned an average of approximately .1 million, a 40% year-over-year increase.

Peace Elite's "Oasis Origin" incentive program will accumulate over 100 million RMB in incentives this year, a 50% increase compared to 2024. It will also open in-game purchases to all teams, with a revenue share of up to 30%. Not to mention party games like "Dream Star" and "Egg Party," which focus on UGC, the program continues to deepen its presence in universities and attract professional teams, perfecting a mature ecosystem of creators for both the general public and professionals.

The advancement of these evergreen super platforms is helping UGC become a long-term endeavor in the gaming industry.

In 2025, the domestic mini-program game market revenue reached 53.535 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 34.39%. Among them, the actual sales revenue generated by in-app purchases was 36.464 billion yuan, accounting for 68.11% of the total revenue; and the advertising revenue was 17.071 billion yuan, accounting for 31.89% of the total revenue.

What's interesting about this year's data is that...Despite the rapid growth of in-app purchases, the proportion of advertising revenue has not declined.

According to the "2025 China Mobile Game Advertising and Marketing Report," in terms of the number of games advertising, IAA games account for 81.9% of all games advertising. Compared to App products,Users are more accepting of the advertising monetization business model for mini-program games, which is the core reason for supporting the production of such games.

In terms of advertising spending, IAP games and hybrid monetization games together account for over 80% of the market share. Deeper payment and content systems have significantly increased the revenue ceiling of these products, enabling them to bear larger user acquisition costs. As a result, with less than 20% of the games currently being advertised, they account for over 80% of the advertising spending.

Among them, elimination games are one of the most played mini-program game types, characterized by "wide audience and strong willingness to monetize through advertising": on the one hand, elimination games have a user penetration rate of 56.9% in IAA games, ranking first among all types; on the other hand, 76.4% of elimination game users are willing to accept in-game advertising, indicating that the category has monetization advantages.

On the other hand, the number of ads placed by App games in 2025 decreased significantly compared to 2024, but the amount spent on App game ads continued to grow, and the total number of ads placed on various traffic platforms also continued to grow.

It can be saidThe high acceptance of advertising among mini-game users, coupled with the objective demand for advertising revenue from game products, has led to a business model where mini-game advertising revenue has increased rather than decreased this year.This monetization characteristic will also stimulate a new wave of growth in IAA creative games next year.

It's worth noting that mini-games and cross-platform games are not entirely parallel but rather intertwined. Mini-games, with their low barrier to entry, have become an efficient testing ground for user retention and gameplay validation, with app-like gameplay accounting for 77% of top mini-games.

On July 24-25, advertising spending on WeChat Mini Games on PC increased by 3-4 times, ad inventory grew by nearly 100%, and 7-day ROI improved by 50%. This provides developers with more traffic opportunities and also gives platforms more opportunities to develop and monetize their advertising business. The launch of the WeChat PC version of "Game Center" at the beginning of the month also indicates that WeChat Mini Games' cross-platform PC integration has entered a new stage.

Despite what seemed like a slow year, the industry achieved growth exceeding that of a year of transformation. Maintaining change is the driving force for the industry's continued progress.