War Robots Returns to China

A hit mobile shooter is now available at one of the world’s biggest mobile markets

MY.GAMES, European publisher and game developer, announces that War Robots, the flagship mobile shooter created by MY.GAMES’ in-house development team Pixonic, is launching in China with the help of third-party publishing partner iDreamSky. The game is available on the Apple App Store and across multiple Android app stores.

“Сhina is one of the biggest game markets in the world. Furthermore, the return of our key project to China was always in MY.GAMES’ sights,” said Elena Grigorian, CEO of MY.GAMES. “Genre-wise, shooter games are among the most downloaded genres in the country, which opens up new possibilities for War Robots to grow even further.”

The Asia-Pacific region accounts for more than half of players worldwide in 2023, with around 40% of players in the region being from China. China is a mobile-first games market: 727 million people in the country play games, out of which 680 million play on mobile devices. Overall, Chinese mobile players constitute approximately 24% of the total mobile players worldwide. Mobile games in this region contribute to about 30% of the global revenue in the mobile games market.

Since its release in 2014, War Robots has been steadily growing and now boasts more than 250 million registered players on all platforms and more than $750 million in lifetime gross revenue. Prior to the requirement of an ISBN publishing license in China, the game was already highly popular among Chinese players. Around 20% of the game's total downloads on iOS up until 2021 were from China. This resulted in China becoming one of the top-3 markets for War Robots in the App Store at the time.

In March 2023, thanks to the efforts of the developers and partners from China, the game was granted an ISBN license from China's State Administration of Press and Publication (SAPP). In 2023, only 27 foreign games were granted such a license in China. Now War Robots is ready for a comeback after a hiatus. For all these years, the dev team actively developed and supported War Robots. The game received a full graphics remaster, different features, including leaderboards system, events, new game modes and lots of new mechs and weapons and features. Now Chinese players have a lot of great content to jump into.

“We were delighted to receive the approval of ISBN by the State Administration of Press and Publication. The War Robots team is exceptionally talented, they created a distinctive and captivating third-person PVP experience. It is with great anticipation that we in iDreamSky welcome this collaboration; our experienced publishing team is excited to introduce War Robots to Mainland China. Given the immense popularity of shooters and competitive games among Chinese players, we eagerly anticipate the launch of this localized version, which will further expand the War Robots franchise in China," stated Alex Sorbac, Business Development Director at iDreamSky.