Legend of Mushroom’s massive Japanese release makes $8.5 million in one week 

The idle mobile game Legend of Mushroom: The Hero and the Magic Lamp by Joy Net Games released on Japanese app stores on February 23 and became a massive hit, accumulating over $8.5 million dollars in revenue in just a week. This was reported by Sensor Tower in an analysis published on March 19. 

Legend of Mushroom is a social idle RPG in which you play as a hero from the Mushroom Clan who aims to seal away the Demon King using the power of a magic lamp. According to Sensor Tower, the game’s cumulative global revenue exceeds $100 million, and when it released in Japan last month, it quickly rose to No. #4 on the App Store’s ranking and remained at the top for the next 10 days. 

Legend of Mushroom was first released in Taiwan and Hong Kong in November 2023, followed by a South Korean release in December 2023, which achieved similarly high rankings in popularity and downloads. Within just one week, the game’s Japanese release came to make up 8% of its total revenue and 25% of total downloads. 

Sensor Tower suggests that the Legend of Mushroom’s strong start in Japan was the result of extensive promotion, including a PR collaboration with gravure idol/cosplayer Umi Shinonome, a TikTok campaign, free gacha plans, and a catchy original theme song, which has been viewed over 1.5 million times on YouTube. 

As the Japanese market has a remarkably high revenue per download value compared to other markets, this might be what motivated the developers to invest in an extensive marketing campaign.  Sensor Tower suggest that Japan may become the game’s largest market going forward.