Subway Surfers is already almost 11 years old, but enjoys unbroken popularity. Now the game reaches an impressive milestone
The boom of mobile gaming cannot be ignored: Both standalone mobile brands and mobile spin-offs of well-known titles (like Warzone Mobile) are often box office hits.
The jump & run Subway Surfers can now report a rather impressive success: It has already been downloaded over four billion times, as the colleagues at Venturebeat report.
And the success is also visible everywhere in this country: Especially in big cities, you can see people playing Subway Surfers in the underground, on buses and in trams all the time!
What is Subway Surfers?
In Subway Surfers, you run along an underground track, swiping to avoid obstacles while collecting as many coins as possible.
This goes on until you run into a wall and have to start all over again. So the motivation lies mainly in achieving high scores.
Why is it so successful?
Of course, the four billion downloads have been accumulated in the almost eleven years since release. That puts the gigantic number into perspective, but the success of Subway Surfers remains remarkable. Because in 2022 it was still the mobile game with the most downloads and it is still being installed every day (on about one million mobile phones).
But why is a fairly simple endless jump & run so popular? This question cannot be answered quite clearly, but three aspects of Subway Surfers stand out that probably contribute to its popularity:
- No intrusive advertising: Like many mobile games, Subway Surfers relies on ads and microtransactions for funding. However, the former are not simply pocketed, but can be voluntarily viewed for additional rewards.
- Regular updates: Even years after the release, the developers still provide variety with a World Tour, in which a new thematic map including a Season Pass full of rewards is released about every fortnight. Currently, this is an underwater map:
- Reference to Street Culture: The CEO of the developer studio sees (in an interview with Venturebeat) another reason for the success of his game. It was created at a time when street culture was becoming increasingly popular. In Subway Surfers you play a graffiti artist who is discovered at work and chased away.
What do you think of Subway Surfers? Have you played it before? Or do you prefer to stay away from colourful mobile games altogether? Post it in the comments!
