Mobile games on display at the ChinaJoy 2014 event.
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Swrve finds that only 1.35% of players spend money in mobile games

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 2 min

The number of players who pay for virtual goods in mobile games declined from 1.5 percent in January to 1.35 percent in July, according to a study of millions of gamers by mobile-marketing-automation firm Swrve.

In an exclusive interview with GamesBeat, Swrve chief strategy officer Hugh Reynolds and Swrve CEO Christopher Dean said they found that 62 percent of all mobile-game revenues come from 0.13 percent of all players. Those are scary and depressing numbers for developers and publishers, as they rely on virtual-goods purchases for most of their revenue in free-to-play mobile titles.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.