Fate/Grand Order: The Visual Novel That Became a $7 Billion Phone Game

By most modern standards, Fate/Grand Order should not work. Its battles are simple card draws, its menus have barely changed in a decade, and its rare characters are famously hard to summon. Yet by September 2023, analytics estimates said it had earned more than $7 billion worldwide, one of the highest totals any mobile game has ever reached.

The reason is the story. FGO, as fans call it, is less a battle game than a giant interactive novel, with millions of words of writing set in the Fate universe created by the Japanese studio Type-Moon. It launched in Japan in the summer of 2015 and, more than eleven years later, is still adding new chapters.

From visual novel to gacha giant

The Fate series began in 2004 with Fate/stay night, a PC visual novel by Type-Moon about mages who summon legendary heroes, called Servants, to fight for a wish-granting Holy Grail. Its writer, Kinoko Nasu, became one of Japan's most celebrated game authors, and the series grew into anime, fighting games and spin-offs.

Fate/Grand Order turned that premise into a collecting game. You play a young Master working for an organisation called Chaldea, travelling through Singularities, distorted moments in history, from medieval Orleans to ancient Babylonia, to save humanity's future. Along the way you summon Servants who are versions of real and mythical figures: King Arthur, Joan of Arc, Nikola Tesla, Gilgamesh and hundreds more.

A rough launch, a long life

The game was developed by Delightworks and published by Aniplex, part of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. It reached Android in Japan at the end of July 2015 and iOS on 12 August 2015. Early players remember long maintenance breaks and a bumpy first year.

Still, it grew. China followed in 2016, North America on 25 June 2017 through Aniplex of America, and South Korea on 21 November 2017. In December 2021, development moved to Lasengle, a company spun off from Delightworks, which Aniplex bought in February 2022.

Revenue climbed with each major story arc. Analytics firms estimated more than $3 billion by March 2019, $5.4 billion by July 2021 and that $7 billion mark by September 2023.

Why fans put up with the odds

FGO's gacha is notoriously stingy. Five-star Servants appear rarely, and getting extra copies to power one up can cost a small fortune. Critics have pointed to the expense for years.

So why do people pay? Mostly for story and character. Major chapters, such as the Camelot and Babylonia arcs, are long, emotional and often surprisingly funny, and players want the Servants they have grown attached to. FGO also runs regular events where weaker or free Servants are strong, so a patient, non-paying player can still finish the story.

The game's cross-media reach keeps it in the spotlight. The Babylonia arc became a full TV anime by CloverWorks in 2019 and 2020, Camelot became a two-part film, and the Solomon finale got its own movie in July 2021.

Why it matters

Fate/Grand Order is proof that, on phones, words can matter as much as graphics. It showed Japanese publishers that a visual-novel brand could become one of the biggest mobile games in the world, and it set the template for story-heavy gacha games, from Uma Musume to Blue Archive, that followed. For more on the studio that brought anime-style gacha to a global scale, see our Cygames profile.

Our take: if you love long stories and do not mind dated menus, FGO is still worth starting, even in 2026. Play for the writing, ignore the urge to chase every rare Servant, and read up on how gacha guarantees work in our pity explainer.