Mobile live events are converging on one playbook

EmergingMoney & business modelH2 · Prolongs H1Updated Sep 2026

Live ops means the events, offers and updates that keep a game earning after launch. Naavik's Harshal Karvande argues that in mobile puzzle games this work now matters more than the game underneath. The top games run the same few events.

What is live ops?

Live ops, short for 'live operations,' is the everyday work of running a game after it launches. That includes seasonal events, special offers, testing what players respond to, and keeping new content on a regular schedule. Studios increasingly treat it as a permanent team with a set way of working, not something they handle one update at a time.

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Where it stands

Naavik's Harshal Karvande finds that the three main kinds of mobile puzzle game now run the same events: daily jackpots, contests against other players and endless sticker albums. AppMagic counted events launched by top games in 2025, and the monthly average rose from 73 to 89. Royal Match, a leading puzzle game, runs 14 recurring events a week. In 2026 the developer of Last War, a top strategy game, said the pace of spending had started to feel overwhelming.

Timeline

2019

  1. A fifth of the top US mobile games have a battle pass

    A battle pass is a paid track of rewards that a player unlocks by playing through a season. GameRefinery finds one in 21% of the 100 top-earning iPhone games in the US at the end of 2019, up from a couple of percent at the start of the year.

    GameRefinery, Erno Kiiski (17 December 2019)

2021

  1. Seven in ten updates to top strategy games are events or new content

    GameRefinery tracks three top-earning strategy games for a year. Of their 240 updates, 167 were events and new content. Only eight added a new feature.

    GameRefinery, Veikko Piirainen (10 June 2021)

2022

  1. Most top-earning games now have a battle pass

    GameRefinery finds a battle pass in 60% of the top-earning fifth of iPhone games in the US. The base differs from its 2019 count, so the two figures are not one series.

    GameDev Reports, Dmitriy Byshonkov, on GameRefinery (10 June 2022)

2023

  1. Two thirds have one

    GameRefinery puts the share of the top-earning fifth of mobile games with a battle pass at 66%.

    GameRefinery, Wilhelm Voutilainen and Jenna Jokela (26 October 2023)

2024

  1. Live ops gets its own handbook

    A book on running live games defines live ops as delivering frequent, data-driven events to players without involving the team that develops the game.

    Game Developer, Volodymyr Dubrovskyi and Sergei Vasiuk (17 December 2024)

2025

  1. One game runs nine linked Halloween events at once

    Whiteout Survival, one of the top-earning strategy games, runs nine interconnected Halloween events in a single October campaign.

    Sensor Tower, Rui Ma (March 2026)

  2. The top puzzle games settle on the same set of events

    Naavik finds the three main kinds of mobile puzzle game running the same events: a short daily challenge with a large shared prize, events that mix competing with other players and completing goals, and sticker albums that restart when finished rather than ending after two months. On US iPhones their players also behave alike. About a quarter of those who play on the first day are still playing after three months, for about 38 minutes a day.

    Naavik, Harshal Karvande (16 November 2025)

  3. The average game goes from 73 events a month to 89

    AppMagic's first report on live ops counts the events that top mobile games launched between December 2024 and November 2025. The average per game rises from 73 a month to 89. Collection events run in about 80% of the games. One game, Gossip Harbor, runs nearly 100 events a month.

    AppMagic, LiveOps Report 2025 (15 January 2026)

2026

  1. A top strategy game says the pace of spending is too much

    Last War: Survival eases its monetization in April 2026 and appears to stop paying for advertising from May. Its developer says the constant pace of spending has started to feel overwhelming for players.

    Naavik, Max Abrahamsen (15 August 2026)

  2. Royal Match runs fourteen recurring events a week

    Naavik counts 14 recurring events a week in Royal Match, a leading puzzle game, eight of them competitive. Casual puzzle games now earn 2.4 times as much from each download as they did before Royal Match arrived in 2021.

    Naavik, Jordan Phang (23 August 2026)

Consequences

  1. 012025

    A good game is no longer enough

    Harshal Karvande of Naavik concludes that 'having great core gameplay isn't enough to be a top-grossing hit', meaning one of the highest earners. What separates the winners is the layer of events on top, and the team that runs it.

    Naavik, Harshal Karvande (16 November 2025)

  2. 022026

    The leaders get harder to dislodge

    Michail Katkoff of Deconstructor of Fun argues that in a mature market the advantage goes to companies with established players and the systems to keep serving them, not to new ideas. In 2025, he notes, the 50 biggest mobile games took 80% of the market's growth.

    Deconstructor of Fun, Michail Katkoff (17 March 2026)

  3. 032026

    Most events are built for the players who pay

    AppMagic's analysts judge that around 70% of the events in casual games are clearly aimed at paying players, though anyone can take part. More events means more reasons to spend, offered more often.

    GameDev Reports, Dmitriy Byshonkov, on AppMagic (20 May 2026)

  4. 042026

    Genres are blurring into each other

    Jordan Phang of Naavik argues that casual games now borrow from games for committed players, adding competition, team play and collections, while the simplest free games add random prize draws and player-against-player modes. 'You cannot live in a genre silo,' he writes.

    Naavik, Jordan Phang (23 August 2026)

Objections

  • Counterpoint2026

    A note on scope: outside mobile, hits have skipped the playbook

    Tim Shepherd of Naavik points to the cheap co-op PC games that players call friendslop, such as Peak and R.E.P.O. They shipped rough, with no events calendar, and are beating expensive games built around keeping players. 'Fun isn't necessarily an output of high budgets,' he writes. These are paid PC games, not free mobile ones, so they limit how far the argument reaches more than they contradict it.

    Naavik, Tim Shepherd (9 August 2026)

  • Counterpoint2026

    The count covers one year, one country and players who do not pay

    AppMagic's figures come from what non-paying Android users in the United States were shown, over a single twelve months. Events shown only to paying players, and every other market, are outside the sample. It is the first edition, so there is no earlier year to compare. Nobody publishes a yearly measure of how many events games run, or of how alike they have become.

    AppMagic, LiveOps Report 2025 (15 January 2026)

  • Counterpoint2026

    The model everyone copies keeps changing

    Everyone copying a new leader is still copying, but what gets copied does not hold still. AppMagic reports that within two years the games everyone copied stopped being Royal Match and Monopoly Go and became Gossip Harbor. Naavik's own author adds a caveat: the newest kinds of puzzle game are yet to be proven at scale.

    AppMagic, LiveOps Report 2025 (15 January 2026)

What to watch

  • 2027

    AppMagic's second count

    January 2027, if AppMagic repeats the timing of its first report. A second edition would give the first true comparison of one year with the next.

    AppMagic, LiveOps Report 2025 (15 January 2026)

  • 2027

    The Game Developers Conference

    1 to 5 March 2027 in San Francisco, where studios present how they run live games. It is the best public view of how far the methods have spread.

    Game Developers Conference

Further reading

Where to follow it Naavik, Deconstructor of Fun, PocketGamer.biz, GDC live ops talks, Game Developer's production desk

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