(Yicai Global) Sept. 23 -- MiHoYo’s Genshin Impact was the Chinese mobile game that raked in the most revenue overseas in August and which had the most downloads, as foreign sales become an increasingly important source of income for Chinese publishers, according to the latest data.

Tencent Holdings’ multiplayer battle royale game PUBG Mobile ranked second, according to a report released by mobile app marketing intelligence data provider Sensor Tower recently.

Japanese players were the biggest fans of Shanghai-based MiHoYo’s action role-playing game, contributing 23.7 percent of global revenue, behind China, while the US came third with 19.7 percent.

Tower of Fantasy, which was only released by Beijing-based Perfect World last month, made the top five with overseas revenue of USD44 million, the report said. About 42 percent of this came from Japan.

Chinese game publishers’ revenue abroad has been growing steadily in recent years, accounting for 21 percent of total earnings last year, up from 17 percent in 2019, according to data science analyst data.ai.

As a result, going global has become a must for Chinese game developers. China revenue dipped 1.8 percent in the first half from the same period last year to CNY147.8 billion (USD20.8 billion), while overseas revenue jumped 6.1 percent to USD9 billion, nearly half that of the domestic market, according to media research institute Gamma Data.

The US and Japan are the biggest foreign markets for Chinese games, together accounting for just under half of all overseas revenue at 31.7 percent and 17.5 percent respectively, according to Gamma Data. They are followed by South Korea, Germany and the UK, but which make up a much smaller share of the market.

The European, US, Japanese and South Korean markets are must go destinations for Chinese game vendors, Deng Hui, vice president of big customers department of US tech giant Google’s gaming industry in China, told Yicai Global. The growth and market share in Latin America and the Middle East markets are also excellent for them.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Kim Taylor