As 2022 draws to a close, Kwalee has tallied it’s download figures for the year, coming out of another year of award-winning highlights. Let’s take a look back at the tremendous progress that leading UK-headquartered game publisher Kwalee has made this year and its ambitious plans for 2023.
Hyper-casual Mobile Games
Kwalee has increased revenue year-on-year by 12 per cent. The company has created and tested 258 new concepts of hyper-casual games and launched 12 new games.
Airport Security has been a global hit, recently appearing in the list of the UK Top Free Games of 2022. First published in January, this hypersim about maintaining and regulating the security of an airport allows players to put down travellers, arrest suspicious individuals, confiscate contraband, and enforce the law in the airport. Its early success was apparent when the game became one of the top 10 most installed games on Google Play in February. Today, the game has attracted over 59 million installs on both the Apple App store and Google Play store.
With the release of other hit games like Hunt & Seek and Monster City Merge, the combined install numbers the company has achieved in 2022 comes to over 200 million, which places Kwalee’s all-time install number at well over 969 million since its inception in 2011.
Meanwhile, Kwalee’s famous hypersim game Teacher Simulator has contributed 37 per cent of the total revenue in 2022, making it the most valued game the company has made besides their Crown Jewels, Draw it and Object Hunt, which have received 112 million+ installs and 54 million+ installs respectively. Around 90 per cent of Kwalee’s revenue is generated through advertising. In terms of platform preference, about 52 per cent of Kwalee’s total revenue came from iOS players, and 48 per cent was from Android players this year.
Casual Mobile Games
As part of its expansion into hybrid-casual and casual mobile games verticals, Kwalee kicked the year off with its first-ever acquisition, buying the French narrative mobile games studio Tictales in February.
The studio is known for its immersive choose-your-own-adventure visual novels, including fan favourites like Perfume of Love and Love & Diaries.
PC and Console Games
Kwalee also launched PC and Console game Scathe in August this year, in partnership with game development studio Damage State, which was formed by three ex-triple-A studio developers with a strong interest in refreshing the first-person shooter genre.
In addition to the reveal and final release of the game, Kwalee also unveiled the announcement trailers for three new games to launch in 2023: Robobeat with solo developer Simon Fredholm, Wildmender with Muse Games, and Space Chef with BlueGoo Games.
It displays the company’s serious intentions to grow in influence in the PC and console market, which will undoubtedly head in the right direction thanks to the joint efforts of outstanding leaders such as the company’s COO Jason Falcus (formerly Hippo Entt, Iguana Entt, Codemasters operations manager) and Kwalee founder and CEO David Darling (co-founder and formerly CEO of Codemasters).
Darling said of Kwalee’s success in 2022, “It’s a privilege to reach this point where Kwalee is getting recognition for the hard work we’ve done, quickly becoming the games publisher that developers want to be affiliated with. I’m incredibly proud of our teams, who have helped us get to this point. We have only positive expectations and strategies lined up in the coming months, and we can’t wait to unveil them as time unfolds.”
Recently, David Darling was honoured with a fellowship at Warwickshire College University Group in Royal Leamington Spa (colloquially known as ‘Silicon Spa’), one of the biggest gaming hubs in the UK.
The company closes another year with successes and a significant creative contribution to the mobile games market. This is confirmed by the awards that the company has added to its achievements this year:
- Pocket Gamer’s Best Publisher Award
- Publisher of the Year 2022 TIGA Award
The year 2023 looks bright for the company. Kwalee is preparing to expand its portfolio of mobile hyper-casual, casual and PC and Console games with the goal of entertaining players. It also plans to widen opportunities for developers to achieve business success by partnering and publishing their games.
