Record Revenue with Mobile Games in Germany

The use of the smartphone and tablet for playing video games reached new heights in Germany in 2024. Sales revenue generated with mobile games reached the 3-billion-euro mark for the first time, up from around 2.9 billion euros in 2023. Mobile games thus continued their success story: their revenue has grown 63% since 2019 in Germany. These are the figures released by game – The German Games Industry Association, based on data collected by the market research company data.ai. A total of 24.3 million people in Germany play mobile games. Although this represents a slight drop of 300,000 from the previous year, mobile games enjoy unabated popularity. Accordingly, the smartphone has been the most used gaming platform in Germany for years now.

“Through their accessibility and variety, games for the smartphone and tablet inspire millions of people to play video games – young and old, men and women. This has not only resulted in a strong increase in revenue with mobile games in just a few years but also made the smartphone the most used gaming platform,” said Felix Falk, Managing Director of game – The German Games Industry Association.

In Germany, nearly all sales revenue generated with mobile games, or 98%, comes through in-app purchases. Most games for smartphones und tablets are offered on a free-to-play basis. Players may then opt to pay for additional content, such as levels or cosmetic features, in the form of in-app purchases. Around 57 million euros in sales is generated with online gaming services on smartphones and tablets. This includes subscription services like Apple Arcade and Google Play Pass, which for a fixed monthly rate give players access to a wide selection of mobile games that they would otherwise have to buy separately. Individual game app purchases resulted in just 4 million euros in revenue in 2024. Since 2019, revenue from game app purchases has seen a sharp decline of 69%, which can be attributed to the growing popularity of free-to-play mobile games.

After attaining unprecedented heights in recent years, the German games market saw a dip in its growth trajectory in 2024. Last year, sales revenue from games, gaming hardware and online gaming services in Germany totalled 9.4 billion euros – a 6% drop from the year before. This downturn was especially pronounced in purchases of games for PCs, consoles and smartphones (−17%, to 921 million euros), as well as in hardware purchases (−10%, to 2.9 billion euros). Running counter to the overall market trend, revenue from online gaming services saw a double-digit increase, rising 12% from the level of 2023, to 965 million euros. Players who use the smartphone and tablet are 39.2 years old on average – closely corresponding to the average age of 39.5 years among all video game players in the country. And mobile games are equally popular with young and old: while 10- to 19-year-olds comprise the largest share of game app users (22%), about every seventh mobile game player (15%) is over 60 years old. At 53%, a majority of mobile players are female; 47% are male.