Mid-Core Games: Rising Trends and Key Metrics in 2025

With so much oversaturation in the mobile game market, how do you make your title stand out from others? Mid-core is just one of many genres fighting for players’ attention.

But even with a dedicated fan base, mid-core games can struggle to keep up with the shrinking UA share and rising acquisition costs. Developers need to adapt, or risk falling down the charts.

Some trends are cause for concern. But others are encouraging and show glimmers of light for 2025 and beyond.

What Are Mid-Core Games?

Essentially, mid-core games are more complex than casual or hyper-casual ones. These games require more time, skill, strategy, and investment from players.

Mid-core games usually include game mechanics such as:

• Side quests
• Resource management
• Multiplayer experiences.

These games have the potential to attract players who usually prefer other genres. These include:

• Casual gamers looking for more of a challenge.
• Hardcore gamers who want a relaxed escape from playing games on, let’s say, PC and console.

Classic mid-core games include Slay the Spire, Inside, Plants vs. Zombies, and Bastion.

Mid-Core Games: Benchmarks

Here are some benchmarks to highlight mid-core games’ current positioning in the market.

User Acquisition

In terms of User Acquisition spending, mobile games saw significant growth in 2024, reaching $65 billion with a 5% year-on-year (YoY) increase.

This demonstrates how competitive the market currently is, with developers having to invest more than ever to attract players.

CPI in Mid-core

Here’s a breakdown of mid-core games CPI (both overall and by platform):

• Overall CPI (Cost Per Install): $2.03 per install
• iOS CPI: $3.86
• Android CPI: $0.73

So acquiring players for mid-core games is pretty expensive. And the higher iOS CPI may be due to the platform’s user spending potential.

Amazingly, mid-core games can range anywhere in price from under a dollar to a whopping $30.

But in 2025, it seems that game developers are working hard to address this metric. According to Jakub Remiar, “Mid-core is rapidly adapting hyper casual mechanics in its onboarding to drive down CPI costs.”

D7 ROAS in Mid-core

Day-7 ROAS (Return on ad spend) is a crucial metric to determine the success of mid-core games. Most recent figures show that compared to overall D7 ROAS (7%), mid-core falls short at 4.3%.

By platform:

• iOS D7 ROAS: 3.4%
• Android D7 ROAS: 6.1%

This difference implies that Android mid-core users provide better early returns.

Here are some more recent figures:

	CPI	D7 ROAS
By Region
North America	$5.45	4.5%
EMEA	$0.80	4.4%
LATAM	$0.27	1.5%
By Genre
RPGs	$0.60	1.7%
Strategy	$2.77	5.4%
Shooter	$7.47	6%

More on Mid-core UA

In UA spending, casual and hyper-casual games have been on the rise (from 61% in 2023 to 64% in 2024).

On the other hand, mid-core games have been on the decline, dropping from 21% in 2023 to 18% in 2024. 5G connectivity and cloud gaming are the main factors keeping its audience alive. However, competition from casual games could explain its decline.

With that said, mid-core games have risen by 6% YoY in paid installs, showing a long-lasting appeal.

Also, different genres enhance the success of others, especially in acquisition. For example, in 2023, 74% of mid-core installs came from ads that players saw in casual games.

Global Mobile Game Revenue

In 2025, mobile games are projected to generate more than half of global gaming revenue (dwarfing both console and PC).

This growth is driven by:

• Affordable internet
• The rise in popularity of F2P games with in-app purchases
• A rise in smartphone adoption rates.

IAP Revenue

Despite growth slowing overall, the best mid-core games still generate high IAP revenue. The following mid-core games made more than $500 million in IAP revenue in 2024:

Midcore Game	IAP Revenue
Honor of Kings (Tencent)	> $1 billion
Roblox	> $1 billion
PUBG MOBILE (Tencent)	> $1 billion
Last War: Survival (FunFly)	> $1 billion
Whiteout Survival (Century Games)	> $500 million
Dungeon Fighter: Origins (Tencent)	> $500 million
Brawl Stars (Supercell)	> $500 million
Honkai: Star Rail (Cognosphere)	> $500 million
Pokemon GO (Niantic)	> $500 million
Genshin Impact (Cognosphere)	> $500 million

With that said, IAP growth has stagnated a little in recent years for mid-core gamers. As a result, developers are being forced to diversify their revenue sources.

In 2024, mid-core adoption rates of hybrid revenue models rose across genres:

• RPG: 41% to 51%
• Strategy: 59% to 66%
• Shooter: 66% to 73%.

App Downloads

Across mobile game genres, there have generally been rises in the number of downloads. For mid-core games, there was a 5% increase, which was more than casual games (4%). So players are still interested in mid-core, despite competition from other genres.

In 2024, mid-core games with the most downloads included:

• Roblox: > 200 million downloads
• Free Fire x NARUTO SHIPPUDEN (Garena International): > 100 million
• Free Fire MAX (Garena International): > 100 million
• PUBG Mobile (Tencent): > 100 million

And another 16 titles were downloaded at least 50 million times.

Mid-core genres struggled on iOS. RPGs and Strategy games are down by 36% and 15% in downloads, respectively.

However, they performed better on Android. Casino, Simulation, and Shooting game downloads rose by 64%, 9%, and 27%, respectively.

What Does 2025 Hold for Mid-Core Games?

Game developers are leveraging new technologies in AI, AR/VR, and cloud gaming to enhance the mid-core gaming experience.

But AI analytics tools like Keewano are a must if developers want to gain deeper insights into player behavior, optimize acquisition costs, and improve retention in mid-core games.