Bubble Witch Saga is both this week's gainer and loser among May's Top 25 games

The end of May is here, meaning it's time to look at highest-performing games from the Top 25 Facebook games in May. Just like last week, the games examined have immense traffic numbers, meaning there can be dramatic shifts of daily active users without affecting a game's placing on the list. Interestingly, King.com's Bubble Witch Saga had both the largest gain and the steepest loss this month, the game managed to climb to a new peak in the first week of May before stumbling. AppData also shows significant drops in traffic for the games on this week's list for both May 15 and May 28, though this isn't the case with titles we looked at earlier this month. We're currently investigating to see what may have caused this uniform dip. Here's what we've looked at so far in May: May 10, 2012: No. 25 (Candy Crush Saga) through No. 19 (Empires & Allies) May 17, 2012: No. 18 (Bubble Island) through No. 13 (The Sims Social) May 24, 2012: No. 11 (Bejeweled Blitz) through No. 6 (Hidden Chronicles) Today we'll examine No. 5 through No. 1. 5. CastleVille Zynga's CastleVille is starting to lose significant traffic, down from its early May high point of 5.6 million DAU to 4.7 million. Since it hit its peak in December 2011 with 8.4 million DAU (only about a month after it launched), CastleVille's DAU have gradually declined, but the losses seem to be accelerating now. Zynga recently revealed its branded pre-paid American Express card would eventually provide in-game rewards for CastleVille players. This might help staunch the flow of departing users, but it's impossible to tell until the system is in place. In spite of the drop, CastleVille's position isn't likely to change on June's list, since all the potential competition's traffic is also down. 4. Bubble Witch Saga King.com's bubble shooter Bubble Witch Saga started off strong this month, climbing from 6 million DAU to 6.6 million before falling to 5.5 million. This is the first time we've seen a noticeable traffic drop for this game, which reliably gained users as soon as it launched in October 2011. Part of this traffic drop may be due to fans going over to King.com's recent "Saga" games Candy Crush Saga and Pyramid Solitaire Saga, both of which have been gaining large amounts of DAU over the past month and a half. In spite of the loss, Bubble Witch Saga will move up a place to No. 3 on June's list now that CityVille has fallen to 5 million DAU. 3. CityVille Zynga's CityVille is once again significantly down from where it began the month, going from 6.2 million DAU to 5 million. The drop isn't quite as steep as seen in April (7.6 million DAU to 6.2 million), but only just. The 2010 game reached a peak of 21.5 million DAU in March 2011, but the numbers began to steadily fall afterwards and started to accelerate over the past few months. Since February, CityVille's lost 4 million DAU. Next month, the game will still be in the top five games on our Top 25 list, but will have fallen at least one place. 2. Texas HoldEm Poker Zynga's Texas HoldEm Poker continues to perform reliably, both starting and finishing the month at 6.9 million DAU. The game managed to reach a high point on May 17 with 7.2 million DAU, which it stayed close to for 10 days before falling back to 6.9 million DAU this week. Even though it's still sporting the same numbers it had at the beginning of the month, Texas HoldEm Poker looks poised to take the No. 1 spot on June's Top 25 list now that Words With Friends is sitting at a lower traffic point. 1. Words With Friends Zynga's Words With Friends is starting to gradually lose traffic, falling from 7 million DAU to 6.6 million, The game peaked in March with 8.9 million DAU and the numbers have slows started to fall off since then. Unless Words With Friends gets a last minute shot in the arm and gains approximately 400,000 DAU, it will lose the No. 1 spot to Texas HoldEm Poker. All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Come back tomorrow for out Top 25 Facebook games of June.

Social Pro Daily

Bubble Witch Saga is both this week's gainer and loser among May's Top 25 games

Mike Thompson

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Mike Thompson