The archive · Consumer Apps · Product decision · 2021–2026
Block Blast! tops world downloads 2024-25 on Hungry Studio's no-IAP bet
Beijing's Hungry Studio rebuilt block puzzle as a drag-and-place, ads-only game; Block Blast! ranked #2 global downloads in 2024 and 2025, then drew Tencent.
Hungry Studio (北京迦游网络 / Beijing Jiayou Network)
What the business is
An ad-monetized casual puzzle game: players drag Tetris-like blocks onto an 8x8 board and clear rows and columns with no falling pressure; modes are endless Classic and a 96-level Adventure, and the game sells no in-app purchases at all.
Starting capital：Lei Jun personally invested about ¥90,000 for 5.8% of Beijing Jiayou in 2020 and exited in 2023, before the breakout.
How it started
Founder Liu Xuezheng, a core member of Chinese web-game portal 7k7k, built Beijing Jiayou in 2018 around H5 mini-games. In 2021 the team created the Hungry Studio brand for global casual development, and in 2022 it launched Block Blast! — a deliberately simple block puzzle aimed at every device, language and age.
What happened
The studio ran the game like a lab: more than 3,000 A/B experiments (about 50 a week) plus an AI bot that mimics player behavior, all anchored to retention. Growth leaned heavily on paid UA — DataEye put Block Blast! first among overseas-bound Chinese games for ad-creative volume in H1 2024 — yet monetization stayed pure IAA, with 2024 daily ad revenue reported at $584K. Downloads went from 138M in 2023 to 216M in 2024, hit a record 35M+ in December 2024 alone, and reached 368M in 2025; by end-2025 the game claimed 300M+ MAU and 70M DAU. On 2026-02-26 Bloomberg reported that Tencent was in talks to buy a minority stake after months of closed-door negotiation.
How it ended up
Still scaling in 2026. Chinese media reported that Tencent planned to invest a minority stake in Hungry Studio (analyst valuation estimates above ¥10B), a capstone for a company that went from a small H5 workshop to about 1,000 staff and a 6,000-sqm Beijing headquarters by end-2025.
Background
Block Blast! is an ad-monetized casual puzzle game from Hungry Studio, the overseas brand of Beijing Jiayou Network (北京迦游网络). Players drag Tetris-like blocks onto an 8x8 board and clear rows or columns, but there is no gravity, no timer and no in-app purchase — the whole product is a frictionless toy funded entirely by ads.
The bet traces to founder Liu Xuezheng, a core member of Chinese web-game portal 7k7k who built Beijing Jiayou in 2018 on H5 mini-games. In 2021 the team created Hungry Studio for the global casual market and in 2022 launched Block Blast!, then treated it like a science lab: more than 3,000 A/B experiments, about 50 a week, plus an AI bot that mimics player behavior, all judged on retention. DataEye ranked the game first among overseas-bound Chinese games for ad-creative volume in H1 2024, and 2024 daily ad revenue was reported at $584K.
The chart run validated the model. Appmagic data cited by Mobilegamer.biz put Block Blast! at #1 in global mobile-game downloads for December 2024 with 35M+ installs, and #2 for the full year with 216M — after 138M in 2023. GamesIndustry data cited by Chinese gaming media put it #2 again in 2025 with 368M downloads. By end-2025 Hungry Studio claimed 300M+ MAU, 70M DAU and 500M+ lifetime downloads, and on 2026-02-26 Bloomberg reported Tencent in talks to buy a minority stake after months of negotiation.
What makes the case stand out is the refusal to hybridize: while the casual market rushed toward in-app purchases, Hungry Studio kept Block Blast! ads-only, reasoning that splitting players into payers and non-payers would corrupt the universal, low-friction experience — and the pure-IAA loop compounded into one of the most-downloaded games in the world.
What has to be true
- Liu Xuezheng came out of 7k7k, where the craft was squeezing fun out of tiny Flash games — the same discipline carried over to a deceptively simple mobile block puzzle.
- Block Blast! removed Tetris's pressure — no gravity, no timer — and cleared in both directions, turning a stress game into a zen toy anyone can start in seconds.
- Hungry Studio ran the game as a lab: 3,000+ A/B experiments and an AI bot that mimics player behavior, with retention as the only north-star metric.
- The studio rejected hybrid monetization, keeping the game ads-only with restrained formats; that restraint kept retention high enough for IAA revenue to compound to $584K a day by 2024.
- Tencent's reported minority-stake talks (Feb-Mar 2026) turned a 'boring' Chinese casual studio into proof that simple, global, ads-only games are assets giants will pay for.
What can be applied
Simplicity is a strategy, not an absence of features: a frictionless, ads-only puzzle won two straight years of global download races by making retention the only KPI and buying scale with ads.
Aftermath
As of 2026-03-03, Block Blast! is still running and scaling. Chinese gaming media reported that Tencent was negotiating to buy a minority stake in Hungry Studio after months of closed-door talks first reported by Bloomberg on 2026-02-26; no final deal had been announced by the asOf date. The company had grown to roughly 1,000 staff, moved into a 6,000-square-meter Beijing Chaoyang office, and launched follow-ups including Sudoku Master! and Mahjong Blast! in 2025, while analysts estimated Hungry Studio's valuation above ¥10 billion.
Sources
- The top mobile game downloads of 2024
- 腾讯正洽购游戏开发商Hungry Studio的一小部分股权
- 3亿人在玩的小游戏，被腾讯投了
- “爆发”4千万DAU的“小方块”，背后故事是什么？ | 对话一线
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