If less than 30% of players come back to your game on Day 2, fix it or kill it

A new report has revealed that if a mobile game does not retain 30 per cent or more of its players beyond their first day, it may not be financially viable.

'A Global Analysis of Mobile Gaming Benchmarks', published by GameAnalytics, studied over 60,000 titles across more than three billion devices and 850 million monthly active players over the course of 13 months (July 1st 2017 to June 30th 2018).

And the report shows that if you don't have a retention rate of 30% or higher for day 1 players, it might be time to scrap it.

Games with 35 per cent or higher day 1 retention were considered to be performing well compared to the average mobile game, with anything around 40 per cent or over placing it in the top 15 per cent of highest performing titles.

Meanwhile the bottom 15 per cent only retained a tenth of players beyond the first day.

"If a game has low day 1 retention, then it's probably going to need a massive overhaul," GameAnalytics wrote. "Many studios drop under-performing titles (sometimes killing games with anything less than 35 per cent).

"Although this can be a hard decision to make, it's sometimes better to cut losses and move on to the next project."

Elsewhere the firm wrote: "Anything below 30 per cent retention isn't considered good and may not be financially viable in the long term."

Interestingly, kids titles were found to have the lowest day 1 retention, with 15 per cent considered to be above average in this genre. Meanwhile, trivia and word games have the best day 1 retention, around the 50 per cent mark.

When expanded to day 7 retention, games with 15 to 30 per cent of their players returned are considered to be performing well.

By day 28, the best performing games have retained only six per cent of their players, indicating how difficult it can be to engage new players for a full month.