Mobile games are big business—very big. In 2024, global mobile-gaming revenue hit somewhere around $90–95 billion, nearly half of the entire games industry. And the curve keeps bending upward. Analysts expect the market to pass $120 billion in 2025, and possibly reach $160 billion by 2030. But growth doesn’t mean “easy mode.” The mobile landscape is shifting fast, shaped by snack-sized play sessions, mixed monetization models, and rising user-acquisition complexity. For mid-sized developers, the pressure is heavy.
This is the world that Top Games Inc. (TGI) operates in—a world where attention is short, loyalty is rare, and competition hits harder than a boss fight gone wrong. Yet under CEO David Guo (also known as Yaoqi Guo), the company has carved out a surprisingly durable position. According to Guo, the goal is simple: build games people actually want to return to, not just click through.
To understand how a studio achieves that in 2025, we need to look at TGI’s philosophy, pipeline, and the global phenomenon at the center of its empire: Evony: The King’s Return.
A Vision Built Around Players, Not Hype
TGI launched in 2015, and within a few years had become one of the most recognizable names in online and mobile gaming. The company’s mission—“to create engaging games for players worldwide”—sounds like marketing boilerplate at first glance. But the output tells a different story. Today, TGI’s portfolio spans strategy, RPG, action, idle, and even hybrid runner-style games, including Evony: The King’s Return, Run! Goddess, Aquarium Crush, Kingdom of Gods, and Salon Superstars.
The studio now serves over 250 million players, with localization reaching 25+ languages. And yet, its strategy hasn’t been “make one hit, repeat until it stops working.” Instead, TGI experiments across genres, much like a chef trying new recipes instead of cooking the same dish forever. This willingness to stretch, remix, and hybridize is becoming essential in a market that rewards novelty as much as familiarity.
To move deeper into the details, the shift in player preference is a critical factor. Modern players want high-engagement, short-session experiences—games they can boot up while waiting for a bus or standing in a queue. Monetization reflects this shift, too. Subscriptions, season passes, and event-driven content have become standard tools to stabilize revenue and extend lifetime value. Meanwhile, limited-time events and themed rewards now act like mini-holidays inside games, giving players reasons to check in regularly.
Smarter Growth, Not Louder Advertising
TGI’s operational core leans heavily toward data. The team prioritizes performance-driven UA strategies where success isn’t measured by downloads alone but by retention, engagement, and ROAS. As acquisition costs rise, this approach becomes more crucial than ever.
Evony: The King’s Return is the clearest example. The long-running war-strategy title didn’t survive by accident. It survived because TGI kept expanding the “Evony universe,” updating core systems, and building features that encourage community and cooperation.
For instance, the 2025 updates introduced:
-
Family Group feature to strengthen cross-account strategy
-
Alliance Boss Optimizations to speed up group progress
-
Wisdom Dome enhancements, raising minimum attribute values when merging advanced books, making high-quality outcomes more achievable
These tweaks seem small individually, but together they keep the ecosystem moving—like tuning an engine so it runs smoother and faster over time.
More importantly, Evony’s long-term strength comes from its community. One player, Richard Smith, described it this way:
“I have three castles now—all from past Dwarf events. What I enjoy most is the friendships. We fight together, talk for hours on voice chat, and grow as a team. It’s not just about power. It’s about the people you meet along the way.”
That sentiment is common in Evony circles. For many players, the game isn’t just a strategy app—it’s a digital neighborhood.
David Guo’s Core Belief: Players First, Always
David Guo recognized early on where many game companies stumble: they chase short-term revenue and forget the human beings behind the metrics. TGI was built specifically to avoid that trap.
His philosophy is straightforward:
“Create the best experience possible, and build communities that get better over time.”
This ethos shows up in TGI’s structure as well. The company maintains a flat, fast-moving organization, emphasizing ownership, practical decision-making, and talent development. One example is its Exploration Bootcamp, designed to grow rising designers and engineers into creative problem-solvers.
As a result, TGI can iterate quickly and push meaningful updates instead of cosmetic ones—an advantage many larger studios struggle to match.
Marketing That Doesn’t Pretend to Be Something Else
TGI isn’t shy about partnerships. Past collaborations with Kong: Skull Island and Godzilla helped expand Evony’s reach and added cinematic flair to its universe. But more importantly, TGI believes in honest advertising, especially in an era where flashy but misleading ads have turned many players cynical.
In Guo’s view, a good game doesn’t need smoke and mirrors:
-
Clear expectations lead to better retention
-
Real gameplay prevents churn
-
Community recommendations beat paid impressions
With UA costs climbing, more developers are discovering this the hard way. A misleading ad can bring in millions of installs—but those players disappear faster than free snacks at a school party. As the saying goes, “You can’t polish a bad apple.”
TGI, on the other hand, treats advertising like decoration—not the foundation. A strong game, paired with satisfied players, becomes its own marketing engine.
Challenges in the Market… and the Opportunities That Hide Behind Them
The mobile gaming field isn’t all sunshine. Rising UA prices, genre saturation, and shifting preferences keep developers on edge. But TGI sees opportunity where others see pressure.
First, mid-sized studios can outmaneuver giants by using:
-
Precise audience segmentation
-
Behavioral analytics
-
Real-time operations (events, personalization, progression tuning)
Second, emerging markets—especially Southeast Asia and parts of Africa—represent the next wave of growth. Smartphone adoption continues to rise, and downloads have ample room to grow.
To put it another way, the global mobile market is like a crowded highway: yes, it’s packed, but new lanes are opening all the time. Studios that move early get the fast lanes.
TGI continues to maintain strong execution depth
In a sea of mobile studios chasing fast profits, Top Games Inc. stands out for taking a slower, more deliberate route—one built on community, constant iteration, and user-first design. And at the center of that strategy is David Guo, who continues to steer TGI with a clear, disciplined vision: make games that matter to players, not just markets.
Evony: The King’s Return remains proof that this formula works. After years on the charts, the game continues to evolve, attract new players, and inspire long-term loyalty—something rare in mobile gaming. The studio’s experiments across genres, from strategy to RPGs to hybrid action-runners like Run! Goddess, show an understanding that success comes not from sticking to a single lane, but from adapting to whatever players want next.
All things considered, Top Games Inc. isn’t just surviving the turbulence of the mobile-gaming economy—it’s using that turbulence as fuel. And if the industry keeps moving toward short-session play, hybrid monetization, and socially connected design, TGI’s approach may end up being the blueprint others follow.
