How Survivor.io continues to pull in $5 million a month three years later
By Mariam Ahmad 10 September 2025
When Habby released Survivor.io on July 21, 2022, few outside of mobile gaming’s inner circle were paying attention. Another free-to-play zombie survival game in an oversaturated market hardly seemed like the next billion-dollar franchise. But just three weeks later, by August 12, it had made its way to the very top of both iOS and Android charts in the U.S. - a feat many better-known publishers spend years and millions trying to achieve.
We track the history of the popular game and how it manages to maintain staying power in 2025.
TikTok made me do it
Habby’s advertising blitz wasn’t just aggressive - it was algorithmically perfect.
In what could be seen as an unusual move at the time, Habby poured 50% of its entire UA budget into TikTok ads, tapping micro-influencers to make gameplay clips that looked like native content. These went viral: several cracked the top 10 highest-performing ads on TikTok in launch week.
The results were staggering: installs jumped from 11K per day to 100K, then 400K daily within a few days. Habby was so aggressive it reinvested up to 80% of daily revenue back into UA. Risky? Sure. But with CPIs pushed down by viral buzz, the math worked. In its first two months, the game earned $75M on 37M downloads - a healthy ROI by any measure.
Game mechanics that worked
Virality gets you downloads. But downloads don’t guarantee revenue longevity. Many mobile hits, think Flappy Bird or Among Us, skyrocket, then collapse under the weight of novelty fatigue. Habby avoided that fate by designing Survivor.io as more than a one-trick zombie grinder. Looking at retention specifically, by the end of its first year, the game had amassed nearly 69 million downloads worldwide. In 2023 alone, it added another 20 million installs, cementing its place as one of the year’s most downloaded action titles on mobile. At launch, Survivor.io was pulling in around 843,000 new downloads per day. Things eventually cooled, but even into late 2023 it could still pull a cheeky 80,000 installs in the U.S. during the holiday season. By mid-2025, total installs had crossed the 80 million mark.
Its systems combined:
Roguelike replayability: Each run feels different thanks to randomised upgrades and enemy patterns.
Progression loops: Players unlock weapons, characters, and abilities over time, ensuring steady motivation.
Liveops discipline: Frequent limited-time events kept players logging in daily.
Monetization lessons
This hybrid approach to monetization - anchored in in-app purchases - allowed Habby to keep both whales and casual players engaged. By mid-2024, industry trackers reported that Survivor.io had crossed $500 million in lifetime IAP revenue, while continuing to generate $5–6 million per month.
The top spenders came from Asia: China (24.2% of revenue), South Korea (21.2%), and then the U.S. (21.2%). South Korean players, in particular, have an ARPU to make CFOs salivate - averaging $15.50 per download, compared to ~$9 in China and ~$4.90 in the U.S.
All time RpD from Tier-1 East countries ($8.23) far outdoes Tier-1 West ($3.98). Source: AppMagic
Mechanics that work
Single-stick movement + (auto-attack) simplicity — “Clear the map with one-hand controls” is a featured promise on both stores; reporting on the game explicitly calls out auto-attacking swarms.
Roguelite runs with random level-up choices — The App Store highlights a “roguelite skill experience,” and guides detail the per-level, randomized offers that shape each run.
Active vs. passive skills + evolutions (EVO) — Official guides explain that pairing specific passives with weapons unlocks evolved forms; e.g., Type-A + Type-B drones → Destroyer.
Meta progression outside runs — Naavik’s teardown documents the metagame: heroes, gear/merging, stat upgrades, and chapter progression that underpin retention/monetization.
Still climbing in 2025
What makes Survivor.io exceptional is that, three years later, it is still generating a significant amount of money - around $5 million a month. The game also continues to attract hundreds of thousands of new monthly downloads - 655,627 in the last 30 days to be exact. A rarity for a title outside its launch window.
In comparison, most viral mobile hits see install velocity drop by 80–90% within the first 12 months. Survivor.io’s ability to buck this trend suggests not just strong user acquisition but effective long-tail monetization and community retention.
Survivor.io far outdoes its competitors in both revenue pulled and downloads. Source: AppMagic
On Reddit, players still share daily build guides, tier lists, and event strategies - evidence of a living, breathing community long after most viral hits have gone silent.
Lessons for the industry
TikTok is the new App Store front page. Traditional user acquisition campaigns can’t match the viral multiplier of short-form video. Habby’s marketing strategy proved TikTok can drive scale and quality users, not just hype.
Virality must be paired with depth. A TikTok hit without replayability is just a fad. Habby’s roguelike design, progression systems, and endless hordes ensured players stayed beyond week one.
Live-ops are non-negotiable. Sustained revenue depends on feeding players new content, events, and hooks. Habby treated Survivor.io less like a one-off product launch and more like a live service.
Evergreen hits are possible. With the right design, a TikTok-born game can evolve into a long-term revenue engine, rivaling traditional franchises. Survivor.io shows that viral hype doesn’t have to fade; with smart monetization and community support, it can be the foundation of a franchise.
Survivor.io’s Journey From Fundamentals to Phenomenon
More Like Thriver.io
Survivor.io, despite releasing in 2022 and being nearly 3 years old now, is still a game with plenty left in terms of its lifecycle, so much so in fact that we foresee this game going strong well into the following years (just like how the first Archero is still doing great today).
Even though we’re not putting our foot on the proverbial ‘UA Gas Pedal’ for Survivor.io like we did last year or further back, the amount of daily new users is still great, but for now it’s more about making sure our existing userbase is continuously receiving new content and better experiences.
We’ve got something very special in-store for the game’s 3rd Year Anniversary, so we hope all our old players get ready while new ones who haven’t joined the fun will give the game a shot around when it’s live.
Success Built A Posteriori
Before there was Survivor.io, there was Archero (the first one). Survivor.io was designed & made with intent on improving upon what was done with the first Archero, and because of this, the character progression meta (equipment, character leveling, etc.) and LiveOps events were much more fleshed out in Survivior.io. Is that to say Archero didn’t do things “right”? Not at all, but rather the team was able to make bigger bets on systems that were already validated in the first Archero and improve them for Survivor.io.
Taking The Plunge with TikTok
I don’t mean to speak for our UA team here, but I don’t think we were big on TikTok as a UA channel before Survivor.io. Of course, we see how things turned out, but in hindsight, there’s so many factors which impact a campaign’s success on any UA channel. In my own experience as a former publishing manager, sometimes even a crack team of creatives personnel and campaign managers isn’t enough to save a not-so-fun game’s performance marketing results.
Fun in Fundamentals
One thing our C-level will talk about is how important it is for any development team to grasp the fundamentals. What they’re talking about isn’t necessarily making sure UX is so incredibly well-oiled that you’re essentially delivering an [ideally] AAA-level experience, rather you’re making sure a fundamental aspect of your game’s core loop is mastered to an outstanding degree. I like how Mariam mentioned Survivor.io’s “single-stick” or “one-thumb” approach to gameplay, because that’s something the development team worked tirelessly on perfecting in terms of feedback & responsiveness. You’d be surprised how “easy” it is to underdeliver for something as straight-forward as this, but it happens, and when it does, players will feel it.
- David Pan, Director of Business Devlopment, Habby
