6m Iranians Hooked to Clash of Clans

Some 5.9 million Iranians played Clash of Clans in the last Iranian year (ended March 19, 2016), a new survey published by Iran’s Digital Games Research Center, known as DIREC, showed.

Gaming in Iran has become a rage following the emergence of smartphones and radically transformed how people play games in the country.

The center, affiliated to the Iran Computer and Video Games Foundation, recently published a survey of 1,000 Iranian gamers and their playing habits.

According to the study, the largest segment of Clash of Clans players consists of young people between the ages 15 and 20, constituting 38% of the cohort.

The survey noted that 40% of users were still in high school and playing the game for at least six hours a day.

Previously, without access to Visa or MasterCard, users inside Iran were unable to buy “gems” for the game (an internal game currency).

These gems are what players use to speed up the game’s building process. To bypass this, players would buy credits from a third-party website for the in-app purchases.

In May, developer and publisher of the game, Supercell, joined the club of foreign game developers to accept the Iranian currency rial for Clash of Clans.

“The mobile gaming giant struck a deal on March 24 with the largest third-party app store in Iran, Cafe Bazaar, which plugs Clash of Clans into its local payment gateway,” Amir-Esmaeil Bozorgzadeh wrote for Venture Beat magazine at the time.

This enables Iranians to pay for in-app purchases using their debit card through an interbank system called Shetab.

Supercell is left with 61% of revenues after a 9% VAT is deducted and Cafe Bazaar claims 30%. The metrics on Cafe Bazaar site clock over 5 million purchases to date for Clash of Clans.

According to the recent stats, 30% of the Iranian Clash of Clans players have spent money on the game and the Supercell has made 1.29 trillion rials ($36 million) in Iran.

A majority of players are men with 73% of them single and 12% married.

Online gaming remains one of the best earning emerging markets for computer programmers and Iran’s connected baby boomers, many of whom are working with the Android operating system.

Historically, Iran has had a limited gaming market, with only a small percentage of the middle class owning traditional gaming consoles due to companies like Sony and Microsoft not officially supporting the gaming sector in Iran.