Global Mobile Games in November: Turkish Match-3 Game Secures $60 Million Funding and Leverages Snake Game-Style UA Campaigns

SocialPeta sorted out the top 20 global mobile games by advertising, revenue, and downloads in November 2025, aiming to help professionals in the mobile app industry understand changing trends across the global mobile game market.

The overall performance of global mobile games in November included several notable developments:

• MapleStory: Idle RPG, Nexon's classic IP reimagined with idle gameplay, topped charts across South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
• Match Villains, a Turkish match-3 newcomer backed by more than $60 million in funding, made a strong debut in the advertising rankings.
• Last War: Survival, one of the leading titles in the strategy genre, continued to attract global attention with its strong commercial performance.
• Jigsolitaire, a rising solitaire-puzzle title, surpassed 3 million estimated downloads and helped drive renewed interest in hybrid puzzle-solitaire mechanics.

SocialPeta's November advertising ranking shows the leading mobile games by deduplicated creatives across iOS and Android. Puzzle, mahjong, word, strategy, and casual titles occupied many of the highest positions, while MapleStory: Idle RPG emerged as one of the most notable new entrants.

More Than 20 Years of MapleStory Brand Equity

For more than 20 years, MapleStory has been one of Nexon's most important franchises. In its Q3 2025 reporting, Nexon continued to emphasize the future roadmap of the MapleStory franchise, with the Korean market representing a major part of the business.

MapleStory Worlds experienced rapid growth, while the PC version of MapleStory recorded substantial revenue growth. Although Global MapleStory showed some weakness, Nexon continued revitalizing the franchise through operating strategies including classic-server launches.

Nexon's ambitions extended beyond MapleStory's traditional MMO audience. Alongside nostalgia-driven experiences aimed at long-time users, Nexon partnered with Able Games to launch MapleStory: Idle RPG globally on November 6, 2025, introducing lighter idle-RPG mechanics to broaden the franchise's audience.

According to SocialPeta, MapleStory: Idle RPG climbed rapidly across regional charts shortly after launch.

MapleStory: Idle RPG Advertising Strategy

MapleStory: Idle RPG began its pre-launch advertising campaign as early as May 2025. By November, around 15,000 deduplicated creatives had been deployed across iOS and Android. SocialPeta's iOS observations included:

• The campaign began on May 14, 2025, reaching a cumulative campaign duration of around 210 days.
• During the latest 30-day period, daily creative volume reached a peak of 3,120 creatives on November 23.
• Video represented approximately 81.97% of creatives, with square 720 × 720 videos among the most frequently used formats.
• Ad-copy distribution was relatively balanced across English, Korean, and Traditional Chinese, with each language accounting for roughly one-third.
• Singapore recorded the largest number of creatives, followed by Taiwan. Traditional Chinese creative share also increased across Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Most promotional videos were shorter than 30 seconds and focused on recognizable gameplay loops such as fighting monsters, leveling up, and collecting AFK rewards. The pixel-art presentation reinforced the visual identity of the original MapleStory and appealed directly to nostalgic franchise players.

Chased by Snakes, Crushed by Rocks

Despite the growing popularity of 2-in-1 mobile game designs, match-3 remained one of the strongest revenue-generating categories in casual gaming. Turkish titles such as Royal Match and Royal Kingdom continued to lead the category, while another Turkish match-3 title, Match Villains, became a notable newcomer in November.

Good Job Games, the developer behind Match Villains, attracted significant investment attention during 2025. The company secured a $23 million seed round in March and subsequently raised a $60 million Series A round.

Match Villains uses a familiar match-3 user-acquisition structure: survival crises, simple puzzle challenges, and deliberately failed outcomes are combined to create tension and encourage viewers to imagine solving the situation themselves.

Its highly saturated and exaggerated cartoon style also makes animated short-form video a natural fit for creative production. Unlike many match-3 ads centered on traditionally heroic characters, Match Villains builds its identity around a playful protagonist-villain dynamic.

According to SocialPeta, Match Villains deployed approximately 3,100 deduplicated iOS creatives in November. The source article reported the following campaign observations:

• The game's advertising history was reported as reaching 541 days, although the dates in the legacy article require manual verification.
• Daily ad volume reached a peak of approximately 1,500 ads on November 14.
• Video represented approximately 78% of creatives during the latest 30-day period.
• Vertical 720 × 1280 video was the most common creative format.
• The five leading regions by creative deployment were Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Spain.

Survival-Crisis Creative Variations

Common survival challenges in these ads include poisonous snakes, lava, floods, spikes, and falling boulders. These danger scenarios give advertisers a reusable structure that can be rapidly adapted into new creatives.

Using the same crisis-based formula, Match Villains can produce many variations by changing the snake's color, position, texture, environment, and the arrangement of the match-3 puzzle.

App Store Revenue Highlights

Surpassing Royal Match, Last War: Survival reached the top of both store rankings. The legacy SocialPeta article estimated approximately $84 million in revenue across both platforms in November, representing a 19.3% month-over-month increase.

Pokémon TCG Pocket returned to the top 20 revenue ranking and recorded the fastest growth among the highlighted titles. Revenue across both platforms exceeded $36 million, up 97.3% month-over-month.

Google Play Revenue Highlights

Heavy advertising and strong download volume supported revenue growth for Roblox. SocialPeta estimated approximately $65 million in November revenue per platform, representing growth of around 5.1% month-over-month.

Gossip Harbor, a leading title in the female-oriented 2D/3D market, reached approximately $34 million in revenue per platform, up approximately 14.9% month-over-month.

App Store Download Highlights

• Puzzle title Jigsolitaire entered the App Store's top five download ranking, with estimated downloads exceeding 3 million. By combining classic solitaire with puzzle mechanics, the game reached the top of free-game charts in more than 30 countries and regions, including the United States.
• Classic water-sorting puzzle title Magic Sort! entered the top 10, with estimated downloads approaching 3 million, nearly 50% higher than the previous period.

Google Play Download Highlights

• Casual simulation title Pizza Ready!, published by Korean developer Supercent, reached No. 3 in the Google Play download ranking, with estimated downloads exceeding 13 million.
• Free Fire MAX entered the Google Play top 10, with estimated downloads exceeding 10 million. Its estimated total was within roughly one million downloads of the original Free Fire.

1. Established IP can expand into more casual gameplay models. MapleStory: Idle RPG demonstrates how a long-running MMO franchise can use familiar visual identity and lighter idle mechanics to reach additional mobile audiences.
2. Match-3 UA continues to rely on highly reusable emotional hooks. Survival crises, deliberate failure, danger, and short puzzle sequences allow Match Villains to generate many creative variations while maintaining a recognizable advertising formula.
3. Revenue and download leadership remain distributed across different genres. Strategy, UGC platforms, match-3, puzzle, simulation, and battle royale titles all appeared among November's notable movers.
4. Creative scale remains an important competitive signal. Both MapleStory: Idle RPG and Match Villains supported growth with substantial volumes of short-form video advertising adapted for different markets and formats.

These November 2025 rankings provide a snapshot of how mobile game advertising, monetization, and download momentum interacted across the App Store and Google Play. For growth teams, the results also illustrate why creative strategy should be evaluated alongside market performance rather than in isolation.