Circle Games raises $25m as Fate/Grand Order soars 548% in August revenue

Circle Games has closed a $25m Series A funding round led by Tencent, with participation from e2vc, Bitkraft Ventures, APY Ventures and a16z Speedrun. The studio's top title Sort Express has generated approximately $5.8m in in-app purchase revenue since launching in early 2025, according to AppMagic estimates.

Fate/Grand Order dominated August revenue charts after its 11th-anniversary campaign drove in-app purchase revenue up 548.9% month-on-month to around $19.4m on the App Store. The spike pushed the title back into the global top 20 revenue ranking. Gossip Harbor held the number one spot for App Store revenue in August overall, while Roblox topped Google Play revenue, according to SocialPeta data.

On the download side, Block Out led the App Store chart and Roblox topped Google Play. Tencent's Gangstar Mirage City emerged as the fastest riser, climbing to number eight on the global download chart with approximately 11.7m Google Play downloads.

Japan's mobile games market generated over $10bn in in-app purchase revenue in 2026, down 5.1% year-on-year, with downloads falling 5.4% to 585 million, according to Sensor Tower. eFootball topped the grossing chart, followed by Monster Strike and Last War: Survival. Puzzle games led by download volume, with Puzzle Sort up 45.8% month-on-month, while 4X strategy games led revenue.

Browser-based HTML5 games reached 46% of online consumers aged 13-55 monthly, rising to around 60% among 13-30 year-olds, according to new Newzoo and Google research. Smartphone play accounts for 83% of H5 gaming activity. Visit times on sites hosting H5 games ran roughly 40% longer than sites without them.

In mobile crossovers, Supercell and Duolingo's 12-day Brawl Stars collaboration launched September 19 and saw Duolingo reach 711,000 installs on launch day, with Brawl Stars recording close to 160,000 installs, in line with previous weekend performance for both titles.

Colony Flow, a puzzle game released by ABI Games in mid-June, has generated $11m in lifetime in-app purchase revenue and 7.6m installs. The game applies Pixel Flow's dismantle-the-image mechanic but uses ants instead of conveyor belts.

Brocker Bus Studio's Mystery Dumpling: Unbox ASMR, built around squishy collectible toy aesthetics, recorded 9m downloads in its August launch month and has since passed 13m installs total. My.Games' mobile hunting simulator Hunting Rivals generated over $3m in revenue and surpassed 3m installs and 1m monthly active users since its May 2026 launch.

Bandai Namco's Bleach Mirrors High has passed 400,000 pre-registrations one month after registration opened. Reaching 500,000 will unlock free copies of Ichigo Kurosaki and Rukia Kuchiki, plus up to 6,000 Mirror Stones for all players at release.

Jest, an RCS text-message-based app store for mobile games, hit a $1m gross billings run rate within three months of turning on in-app purchases. The platform reported a 15% payer conversion rate among active US users, nearly five times the mobile industry standard, and 400% usage growth since Q2.