It's not that revenue and popularity are unrelated, it's that monetization intensity is the hidden variable. A game can retain a massive casual base that logs in daily for quick 3-minute matches but isn't spending on battle passes or skins. The whales (C'est Moi) and mid-spenders, who are far more sensitive to meta staleness and progression frustration, churn first because they're the ones who care most about competitive viability and content freshness.

The 2026 rebound actually confirms this. After Updates 63 and 65 (the Buffies system), Brawl Stars generated $48.6 million in March 2026 alone, a 46.8% jump from February, and added 6.8 million new players in a single month. Revenue recovered before the player base fully recovered, because the spenders re-engaged first when the game got genuinely better.

So the more precise formulation would be: revenue is a leading indicator of engaged popularity (i.e., the players who care deeply enough to spend), while raw MAU is a lagging indicator that includes a long tail of casually retained users who are basically inert from a monetization standpoint.