Spotlight on desi games, Ludo King dethrones PUBG

Chennai: With the entire country locked-in and craving indoor entertainment, India has not just emerged as the world’s largest downloader of gaming apps, but users have sided with desi games. In April-June, there were 15.1 billion game downloads globally and India topped generating 2.7 billion downloads- almost 18%- of all downloads, as per app intelligence firm Sensor Tower.
The most-loved gaming app in India during the quarter was Ludo King, which, as per Sensor Tower, generated around 48.3 million downloads in the period, beating gaming giant PUBG Mobile that ranked number three with 30.8 million new installs.

Ludo King, developed by Vikash Jaiswal and his company Gametion Tech, has been steadily climbing the charts for a few quarters now and the pandemic accelerated its growth. It was the second most downloaded game in India in January-March at 29.5 million downloads, again beating PUBG Mobile which came in third.

“Ludo King has fared particularly well during the Covid-19 pandemic, with downloads increasing dramatically,” Craig Chapple, Mobile Insights Strategist, Sensor Tower told TOI. “In February, the title generated 10.8 million downloads, while in April it accumulated 26 million downloads, an increase of 140.7%.”

Chapple added that anti-China sentiment had little role to play in the gaming category, and the boost for local gaming apps was likely due to its connect with the local audience. “Ludo is a game we all played in our childhood and the app brought in a much-needed social connection during the lockdown with a simple interface and ability to play in groups of four,” Vikash Jaiswal, creator of Ludo King and founder, Gametion Technologies, said.

While Ludo King’s daily active users (DAU) was around 25 million last year, the app’s current DAU (at its peak) is approx 43 million. The company had to migrate from 25 servers to 200 servers to meet its peak daily traffic during the lockdown with users spending an average 50-55 minutes on the app, Jaiswal added.

Though global titles such as PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty, and others enjoy huge popularity in India, industry trackers say that as more local success stories emerge more homegrown studios will gain. Manish Agarwal, CEO of game developer Nazara Technologies believes India now has enough mobile game players making it a large consumption market not just for downloads but also monetization. “The green shoots started pre-Covid and Covid accelerated the growth,” he said.

The cricket game World Cricket Championship from Nazara-owned Nextwave Multimedia, helped fill the cricket void during the pandemic, and reported a 25% surge in DAUs. The app welcomed 25% new users to the game at the initial stage of lockdown and has seen in-app purchase growth of almost 100%.