The Rise of In-App Mini Games

A brief overview of the social chat gaming phenomenon. Sometimes refereed to as Social-Fi.

How Did it Happen?

Mobile gaming is moving from the app store in favour of the bot. It allows Apps essentially to become their own App Store as we have seen with Telegram Stars. Apps are no longer restricted to being one thing or providing one service they have advanced to become their own ecosystems and host a world within a world.

Who Leads the Market?

The Chinese super app WeChat plays a vital role in mobile game traffic in China. In February 2024, gaming mini-programs on WeChat accounted for 80.3 percent of the total user traffic in the Chinese mobile gaming industry. The future of Telegram is set to take the same trajectory. Telegram user growth has seen a massive increase with founder Durov attributing Catizen and Hamster Kombat to the hug surge in user growth of 150 million additional users.

With the ongoing expansion of China's WeChat mini-games market, 37 Interactive Entertainment and other prominent game developers joined the fray. In February 2024, Xundao Daqian owned by 37 Interactive Entertainment led with 162.41 million monthly active users, while Tencent claimed two spots in the top ten most-used WeChat mini-games. The overall number for Monthly Active Users on WeChat games is 600 million.

Competitor Table

Platform	Mini Game MAU (Monthly Active Users)	Mini Game Penetration Rate (%)
WeChat	600 million	45%
Facebook	400 million	12%
Telegram	40 million	4%

What the Future Holds

Telegram is in its infancy compared to the other two social giants of the app world. There is an upward trend for Telegram to capture a large chunk of this market. Telegram in its early stages by integrating TON is at a superior advantage to its competitors in its web3 application. The TON network allows gaming activity to be tracked on-chain and allows gaming communities to create rewards systems with NFT and Token integration.