The Mobile Gaming Awards 2023 — not to be confused with The Mobile Games Awards — took place on the 14th of July in sunny Los Angeles, California. The team behind the Esports Awards created the MOBIES to recognise excellence and reward hard workers in the mobile industry. The event saw developers, gamers, and all involved in the industry flock to California for a night of celebration.
Viewership of the Mobile Gaming Awards 2023
The one-night event saw thousands of enthusiasts watch the gala, with a total of just shy of 30K Hours Watched for the ceremony. The event drew in 14.7K viewers concurrently at its peak and was costreamed on various channels on both YouTube and Twitch. Here at Streams Charts, we will go through all the winners in the categories for the awards.
Overall, the event itself was rather confusing from a viewership data analysis perspective. The Esports Awards team handled this event, whose award show receives tens of thousands of viewers. However, this Mobile Gaming Awards was likely not as successful as the team would have hoped. Curiously, the event was primarily broadcasted on Twitch, which is not the go-to streaming platform for mobile content. Although the event reached 14.7K Peak Viewers, only up to 100 of these were authorised on the platform while watching the event throughout its entirety.
This could be due to the fact the event was promoted on various web pages, which inflates the viewer count as the stream is automatically opened as people visit a webpage. The event was also hosted late at night, and during the depths of the night for an Asian audience. The decision to have the event hosted at such an inopportune time for an Asian audience is a questionable decision, as this is likely the largest market for mobile gaming: as seen in how many Asian companies and teams were awarded at the event. Ironically, despite naming TikTok the Mobile App of the Year, the event reached a peak of two concurrent viewers on the platform.
Categories and winners
Mobile Game of the Year: Genshin Impact
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The action RPG developed by miHoYo in China took the prestigious prize of Mobile Game of the Year. The game has been released on both console, PC, but also mobile devices, with a Nintendo Switch release in the works. The name Genshin Impact has penetrated the market globally and every gamer knows the game.
Competitive Game of the Year: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
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Another Chinese game, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a classic MOBA game that has captured a huge audience, especially in Southeast Asia. Two teams of five fight against each other to control three lanes and take control of the enemy’s tower. The game has quickly become one of the biggest esports in Asia and without a doubt deserves the title of Competitive Game of the Year.
Mobile Content Creator of the Year: Judo Sloth
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Judo Sloth is an English YouTuber who focuses his content on Clash of Clans. His content teaches gamers the fine details of the famous mobile game and he has amassed 1.4M subscribers on the red platform. With over 1.6K videos in only seven years, the Englishman clearly has put in the work for his award
Mobile Team of the Year: ECHO
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ECHO is an esports team competing in Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. Originally starting to compete in 2020, the team has seen huge success, approximately garnering almost half a million USD in prize money. The Phillippines-based organisation has a huge national following and receives massive support from its loyal fans at every event.
Mobile Player of the Year: Frederic “Bennyqt” Gonzales
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ECHO on a roll, their player Bennyqt won Mobile Player of the Year. The 21-year-old from the Philippines plays the Gold Lane role for the ML:BB team and has been an integral part of their success. He won not only an MVP award at the MPL Philippines Season 11, but also MVP for the entire M4 World Championship event, which earned him a tasty $10,000 USD.
Global Impact on Mobile Gaming: S8ul Esports
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The Indian organisation S8ul Esports nabbed the award for Global Impact on Mobile Gaming. The organisation is everywhere in esports, featuring teams for PUBG Mobile, Clash of Clans, and Free Fire. The organisation is hugely popular, with their YouTube channel featuring 1.1M+ subscribers.
Mobile Esports Tournament of the Year: Mobile Legends: Bang Bang M4 World Championships
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The M4 World Championships is the official ML:BB esports tournament, organised by game-creators Moonton. The fourth iteration of the event was the first to be held in Indonesia, where a huge audience is building up for the game. The event saw teams from around the world compete for $800,000 USD and received over 80M Hours Watched for the entire event.
Mobile Indie Game of the Year: Playdead’s Limbo
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Limbo is a must-play Indie Game released originally on the Xbox 360 in 2010. The 2D side-scroller proves that you don’t need a budget to make an enthralling game, and the game’s releases on multiple platforms since its release over a decade ago prove that the game has aged perfectly fine. Even 13 years after its initial release, the game continues to win awards.
Mobile Developer of the Year: Lightspeed Studios
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Lightspeed Studios is a global game development team, with divisions worldwide. Their biggest hit is likely PUBG Mobile. The studio is a division of the Chinese Tencent Games publishing division.
Mobile Device of the Year: Redmagic 8 Pro
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Redmagic is a gaming sub-brand of Chinese smartphone manufacturer Nubia Technology. Redmagic were the first brand to use cooling fans inside of a smartphone. One of the only phone brands designed for gaming, Redmagic deserve all the attention they get.
Mobile App of the Year: TikTok
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TikTok, the short-form video platform app, was the mobile app of the year. Since 2020 the app has surpassed two billion mobile downloads and TikTok has quickly become one of the most-recognised names worldwide.
Coverage Platform of the Year: Liquipedia
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Liquipedia is the go-to home for all sorts of esports-based information. Originally starting with Starcraft: Brood War, the website now covers over 40 different titles and even has dipped its toes into sports outside the gaming sphere, like Formula 1. The platform has been a source of free information for so long that it deserves all the praise it gets.
Mobile Breakthrough Game of the Year: Marvel Snap
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Finally, Marvel Snap won the award for Mobile Breakthrough Game of the Year. The digital card game features collectable cards and a dynamic cast of loved Marvel characters. Second Dinner, the studio behind Marvel Snap, was founded by Ben Brode, who was the game director for Hearthstone up until 2018.
That wraps up our list of all winners and categories for the inaugural iteration of the Mobile Gaming Awards. With 14.7K Peak Viewers, the event was a moderate success for a new event and has good room to grow and evolve. Although it wouldn’t have ranked on our list of June Gaming events, the event did not have the hype of a new DLC release for a triple-A title behind it. The mobile gaming industry is estimated to be worth 100B+ USD and the developers and creators behind this deserve all the praise and recognition the Mobile Gaming Awards allows them. Stay up to date on all the industry events here with Streams Charts.