66% of F2P mobile game players quit after just one day

Re/code has shared the results from app testing firm Swrve’s “April 2014 New Player Report” that tracks the tendencies of 10 million players over the course of 90 days. With more than 30 titles being monitored, including titles from Activision, Epic Games and Gameloft, Swrve found that 66% of new players abandoned games with microtransactions almost immediately, spending an average of 45 cents over the course of the three month study.

The audience for mobile free-to-play games is cheaper and more transient than previously thought, according to a new report out today from app testing firm Swrve. The report tracked the behavior of more than 10 million players for 90 days, starting in November of last year. All the players were new to the games being played, covering more than 30 titles in Swrve’s network. 19 percent of those new players opened the games only once, and 66 percent had stopped playing after the first 24 hours. On average, players spent about 45 cents over the course of those 90 days. In line with Swrve’s head-turning monetization report from February, only 2.2 percent of players spent any money at all, and 46 percent of the revenue came from the top 10 percent of those spenders. Intriguingly, 53 percent of the spending in the games surveyed happened within the first seven days after users started playing. So two-thirds of players leave after day one, and half of their value as paying customers evaporates after week one. Yikes!