Global Top Mobile Game in May 2025: Classic Korean IP Dragon Nest Returns with a Remake and Rapper Collaboration for Promotion

SocialPeta sorted out the top 20 global mobile games by advertising, revenue, and downloads in May 2025, with the aim of helping mobile app industry professionals better understand changes in the global mobile game market.

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

• Wuthering Waves by Kuro Games celebrated its first anniversary on May 22, showing a month-over-month revenue increase and entering the advertising chart.
• Two different RPG games from FUNFORGE TECHNOLOGY simultaneously entered the App Store and Google Play advertising rankings with strong positions.
• The classic Korean game IP Dragon Nest: Rebirth of Legend returned with a remastered version and entered the iOS advertising chart in its launch month.
• Southeast Asian shooter Free Fire celebrated its eighth anniversary while recording increases in both downloads and revenue.

SocialPeta's May advertising ranking shows the leading mobile games by ad activity across iOS and Android. Several RPG titles entered the chart during the month, including two detailed cases examined below.

Developed by Korea's Eyedentity Games, Dragon Nest: Rebirth of Legend launched in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan on May 29. As a long-standing MMO IP, the official remake appealed to fans of the original title while adapting its combat experience for mobile.

The game retained its 3D non-lock combat system and fluid combo mechanics, preserving the more hardcore battle experience associated with the PC version while bringing the experience to mobile platforms.

For promotion, the game invited rapper MC HotDog to serve as its ambassador. He also created the game's theme song, Dragon Valley OG. The campaign was accompanied by streamer collaborations featuring live gameplay and a 7-ELEVEN partnership offering joint top-up promotions.

According to SocialPeta, more than 7,000 de-duplicated creatives for Dragon Nest: Rebirth of Legend were captured across the App Store and Google Play in May.

The iOS advertising data showed several characteristics:

• Approximately 67% of creatives during the previous 30 days were videos, and more than 65% of those videos were shorter than 30 seconds.
• The primary video dimensions were square 720×720, landscape 1280×720, and portrait 720×1280. Together, those formats accounted for more than 95% of creatives.
• Creative placements began during the launch month, peaked before launch, and then gradually declined before stabilizing.
• More than 98% of the ads were in Traditional Chinese.

Popular Dragon Nest: Rebirth of Legend video creatives included gameplay introductions, clips from female streamer live streams, and combat footage. Some creatives also incorporated promotional imagery of MC HotDog to increase campaign visibility and engagement.

Live-action creatives primarily featured female streamers showing their "lucky" item drops, with meme-style edits such as "NICE" used to emphasize the game's high loot rate.

FUNFORGE TECHNOLOGY released two different MMORPGs across multiple regions in May: the post-apocalyptic fantasy RPG The Seventh Disaster and the anime-style cultivation RPG 패스 오브 라이징.

Of the two titles, The Seventh Disaster received greater user acquisition investment, particularly across Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia, and performed significantly better in the May advertising rankings.

The Seventh Disaster is set in a world affected by catastrophic disasters, with players taking the role of saviors fighting against monstrous calamities. Despite the game's name, the story features eight disaster monsters.

According to SocialPeta, The Seventh Disaster launched more than 12,000 duplicated ad creatives across the App Store and Google Play during May. Its Android advertising data showed:

• Approximately 72.08% of creatives in the previous 30 days were videos, with more than half exceeding 30 seconds.
• Portrait 720×1280 was the most frequently used video format, accounting for about 38% of placements.
• Taiwan was the main campaign market, accounting for 85.98% of placements.
• Advertising creatives began running on May 3, approached an early peak around May 5, peaked again approximately 10 days after launch, and remained steady through the end of the month.
• More than 99% of advertising creatives were in Traditional Chinese.
• Major creative themes included iPhone 16 giveaways, high item-drop rates, and post-apocalyptic combat.

Popular creatives for The Seventh Disaster included the game's theme song, in-game combat footage, and AI-generated visuals of apocalyptic monsters. The original article noted that some of these AI-generated monster scenes produced a surprisingly comedic effect, helping the creatives stand out from conventional fantasy advertising.

Games with Surging Revenue on the App Store

• Match-3 leader Royal Match returned to the top of the App Store revenue chart with approximately $71 million in May, representing a 4.4% month-over-month increase.
• Multiplayer real-time battle game Brawl Stars recorded a strong revenue increase following the launch of its 2025 Global Miner Festival on May 17. The nearly seven-year-old title earned more than $27 million, up around 50% month over month.
• Pokémon-themed card game Pokémon TCG Pocket rebounded to more than $50 million in revenue during May, a 13.3% month-over-month increase.

Games with Surging Revenue on Google Play

• Century Games' SLG title Whiteout Survival recorded another increase, reaching approximately $35 million in May, up about 9.4% from the previous month.
• Post-apocalyptic zombie strategy title Dark War Survival continued to grow, reaching $11 million in May, an increase of approximately 10% month over month.

Games with Surging Downloads on the App Store

• Casual merge-and-match puzzle game Fruit Merge: Match Game saw rapid growth with around 2 million App Store downloads in May, up 100% month over month. Users in India contributed approximately 21.8% of downloads.
• Tencent's tactical shooter Delta Force was another breakout title, with approximately 2 million downloads in May. U.S. users accounted for 34.7% of downloads.

Games with Surging Downloads on Google Play

• Mobile board game Ludo King® recorded around 19 million downloads in May, with users in India contributing more than 65% of the total.
• Free Fire saw download growth during its eighth-anniversary celebrations, recording more than 11 million downloads in May. Brazilian users accounted for 17.6% of the total.
• Rhythm title Music Piano 7: Rush Song Games also experienced a download surge, reaching around 9 million downloads across the App Store and Google Play in May. Brazilian users contributed the largest individual country share at 10.7%.

These rankings summarize the global mobile game launches, advertising activity, revenue performance, and download trends observed by SocialPeta in May 2025 across the App Store and Google Play.