Top grossing mobile games in China 2025
China's mobile game market is vibrant. In March 2025, Tencent's flagship title Honor of Kings was the highest-grossing game app in the country, earning more than 116 million U.S. dollars in revenue. PUBG Mobile remained second with nearly 98 million U.S. dollars. The much anticipated Dungeon & Fighter: Origins, released in May 2024, stood at the forth position with about 36 million U.S. dollars.
The long-term winners: Tencent and NetEase
For many years, Tencent and NetEase have been the most successful Chinese game developers, holding the lion’s share of mobile gaming traffic. The former owns the super app WeChat and an extensive network of entertainment offerings. The mobile gaming business has been one of Tencent's profit pillars, contributing nearly 30 percent of its annual revenue (555 billion yuan) in 2022. In comparison, NetEase was half the size of Tencent—82 billion yuan in online game revenue in 2023.
The industry challenger: miHoYo
Having arrived at the gaming scene relatively late in 2011, the Chinese studio miHoYo took eight years to catch global attention. In September 2020, the company grabbed the right timing to launch Genshin Impact during the pandemic. The role-playing game achieved two billion U.S. dollars of revenue within a year of release and continues to be a lucrative title in various markets. The company later released two more blockbuster games, Honkai: Star Rail in 2023 and Zenless Zone Zero in 2024.
