• 23 awards were handed out to winners across every games biz category
• HoYoverse won Best Developer thanks to three key titles…

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Last night at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, in celebration of mobile game makers everywhere, PocketGamer.biz played host to the great and the good from across the industry in a star-studded event, tailor-made to reward all the creators, makers, movers and shakers that make mobile happen.

You’ll find a full list of all the 23 winners from the awards here, but for now we’re focusing on the Best Developer Award, which went to…

HoYoverse!

Making an impact

Between the launch of Zenless Zone Zero and growing Honkai: Star Rail into a billion-dollar maker, the past year has been a busy and productive one for HoYoverse. The studio’s games frequently top RPG and gacha charts with Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail typically competing for first place; no matter which loses, HoYoverse wins.

And now with a trio of RPGs raking in the cash, HoYoverse is the gacha giant of the modern mobile landscape.

Genshin Impact is HoYoverse’s flagship and is the fastest game to ever hit $5 billion in consumer spending. It’s found a home on mobile, PC, PlayStation, and soon Xbox too. This open-world gacha game is an undisputed mega-hit on the global stage, and in only a few years has sailed HoYoverse up among the top contenders in the Chinese publishing space.

The game even propelled HoYoverse beyond EA, Activision and Embracer Group in sheer profit – and that was before Honkai: Star Rail joined the ranks. It was the go-to choice for Apple when advertising the iPhone 15 Pro’s capabilities and has had enough of a cultural impact to land an art exhibit in France.

Shining star

After the worldwide phenomenon that was and is Genshin Impact, many an industry eye watched and waited eagerly for Honkai: Star Rail to see if HoYoverse could repeat its past success. The studio ultimately proved to have the winning formula, with Star Rail racing to 20 million downloads on launch day and proceeding from strength to strength in the 16 months since.

Honkai: Star Rail has broken records, surpassed 100 million downloads, and accelerated well beyond its forebear in revenue this year – sometimes even doubling Genshin Impact’s consumer spending on mobile.

That’s surely enough to explain HoYoverse’s Best Developer Award, right?

But wait! There’s more…

Feeling zen

HoYoverse’s latest launch Zenless Zone Zero released this July and demonstrated player enthusiasm from the get-go, achieving pre-registration numbers that eclipsed Genshin Impact’s and Honkai: Star Rail’s combined.

This translated to 50 million downloads within 72 hours of release, encouraging the dev team like never before. Released just over one year on from Honkai: Star Rail, Zenless Zone Zero mixes up the formula with more action to its RPG, a stronger emphasis on narrative, and an urban setting differentiating it from its predecessors.

Having built two pillars of the RPG genre with a third on the rise, it should be clear to all why HoYoverse claims Best Developer of 2024.

One last thing…

Lilith Games and Supercell also deserve honourable mentions for their achievements in the mobile space, with respective releases AFK Journey and Squad Busters making waves and Supercell’s Brawl Stars making a sublime comeback this year.