A pirated anime app moves house: AniPeak gets 270k installs in three weeks, almost all from old users who switched to a new package

AniPeak is a free Google Play app for Japanese and Chinese anime. It launched in Oct 16, got 270k installs in three weeks, and at one point reached #1 on Australia's Top New Free overall chart. It looks like a new app that blew up from zero. In fact, it's an old app from the same developer, with about 3M cumulative installs, that was delisted after a new package was pre-launched and users were moved over wholesale. Below: how the move happened, why users followed, where the money comes from, what you can take from it, and what to stay away from.

A three-star review

On Nov 4, a user named Bella left a 3-star review on AniPeak's Play store page: "Ever since I moved from the previous app to this one, it doesn't work anymore... I loved the old one, it had few ads, and they even extended the (ad-free) time." The same day, Danielle left a 5-star review: "I used AniVera until it switched over. Honestly this one is better... one ad for an hour free, I fully support that."

Both were describing the same thing: they didn't stumble on AniPeak in the store. They were brought over from "the previous app."

The previous app's package name was com.hianime.watchanimetv. Its developer is ezaowsla (AppGoblin, a third-party data site, lists them in Indonesia). It launched in June 2025, and was successively named HAnime, AniVera, and AnimePeak. By Nov 3 it had about 2.86M cumulative installs and 17.8k ratings. When I opened its store page again on Nov 6, it showed 404. The developer page now lists only three apps: AniPeak, AnimeNow, and Cinemix. The "hianime" in the package name borrows the name of HiAnime, the world's largest anime piracy site.

What it actually is

An English-language "anime tracker" app. The site says it has 13,600 Japanese and Chinese anime titles and 174k episodes, 3,000 of which have English dubs, updated daily. It has a daily airing schedule, watch history, bookmarks, and downloads. Every episode has a comment section where you can reply and post GIFs. You sign in with a Google account, and bookmarks and history follow the account.

The store listing is carefully written. The title is "Anime TV SUB & DUB," and the description says "Japanese anime and Chinese donghua in one place: browse, follow the airing schedule, save watchlists, and get notified when new episodes drop." It never mentions where the content comes from. The content is unlicensed. This is a pirate aggregator app, and that's why it can be delisted at any time.

What the curve looks like: a one-time migration, then decay

Google Play installs, logged daily from 10-29; earlier numbers come from AppBrain and AppstoreSpy estimates.

This isn't the shape of paid acquisition. Paid acquisition keeps daily installs fairly steady as long as the budget lasts. Here, it climbed for ten days and then daily installs fell from over 40k to 10k, with chart positions dropping across every country. Someone moved the users, and once they were moved, it was over.

Where the users came from: an old app renamed to pave the way, a new package taking them in

The sequence, pieced together, looks like this:

1. The old app gets renamed first. Before delisting, the old app's store name was changed to "AnimePeak - Anime TV SUB & DUB," which differs from the new package "AniPeak - Anime TV SUB & DUB" by just two letters, with a similar icon style. When old users search the store, both show up.
2. New package launched mid-October, and while the old app was still live, users were pushed toward the new one. AniPeak's home page has an "announcements" slot (the official site screenshot is labeled announcements). The migration notice most likely went out from that slot in the old app (inference; I did not get a screenshot of the announcement).
3. Concentrated downloads trigger store recommendations. Hundreds of thousands of old users installed the new app within days. Google Play treated it as a hit new app and put it on the new-app and Entertainment charts. AppWinners has a snapshot from one day showing it charted in 115 countries. That added a wave of organic store traffic, and the migration set off a chain reaction.
4. Accounts move with the people. Google sign-in carries over history and bookmarks, so switching packages costs almost nothing.

I checked other channels and found nothing: Meta's ad library has no ads pointing to this package name; searching "anipeak" on TikTok turns up only a few same-name clip accounts with a few hundred views; on X, "anipeak" and "AniVera" have 0 posts over the last two months; no media coverage. The only things I could find were pages auto-generated by app data sites and APK download sites, and a Reddit r/animeapp help post asking "why hasn't AniVera been updated?"

Why users came: two big sites shut down

The demand came from a major event outside the app. HiAnime was the world's most-visited anime piracy site. In February 2026 it had 154M visits in a month, more than Crunchyroll, and it shut down in Mar 13. Another major site, AnimeKai, also shut down in May 10. In July, Vietnam prosecuted HiAnime's operators (SimilarWeb data aggregated via vitrina.ai; Wikipedia; TorrentFreak). On Reddit r/PiracyArchive, someone asked: now that HiAnime is gone, where is everyone going to watch?

This group wants free, full English dubs, and no region locks. On a phone, the easiest thing to find is a row of "XXX - Anime TV SUB & DUB" in Google Play. ezaowsla's old app had the package name hianime, which put it right in the middle of the search traffic.

Why users stayed: the ads were generous

Reviews praised the ads more than the catalog. Watch a short ad, get about 1 hour(s) ad-free. For a full ad-free experience, you buy VIP in Google Play (in-app purchase $0.99–9.99). Danielle's line "for someone like me with no money, one ad for an hour is a great deal" is a typical user. The first point in the latest update notes is about this too: "Ad-free time is no longer lost when you close the app."

Compared with the interstitial ad bombardment common in similar pirate apps, this design earned it 4.4 stars. The complaints were about features: DragonFable6519 (11-01,17 people found it helpful) says downloaded episodes won't open offline, so downloads are pointless; you can't delete a single history entry.

The money is small. It only appeared in the Philippines' Entertainment top-grossing chart at #182–198. AppGoblin estimates monthly revenue under $10k, with in-app purchases at 79% (estimate, unverified). Ad revenue is not visible from outside.

Who it's competing with

The "XXX - Anime TV SUB & DUB" naming pattern is already used by a large number of shells. This category isn't short of players. What's scarce is anything that lasts.

ezaowsla's real skill is operations. One person runs 6 apps at once, including AniPeak, AnimeNow, WinAnime, QToon, and Cinemix, with about 3M cumulative installs (AppGoblin, chrome-stats). Before delisting, they pre-launch the new package, use the renamed old app to funnel users to it, write the store description around "anime companion," and get it through review. When one shell dies, the users stay.

If it were you

C: Worth learning from, not worth following. AniPeak's three-week growth came from users built up by an old app with 2.86M installs, which is exactly what latecomers don't have. The content is pirated. If you build the same thing, you start from zero in a category already crowded with copycat shells, and you have to be ready to be delisted at any time.

• Who it's for: anyone with an app that already has hundreds of thousands of active users (any category) who worries about package delisting, account bans, or rebranding, and wants to see how the move was done. Also anyone building a free-content app monetized with ads who wants to see how the rewarded-ad design works.
• Not for you if: you want to copy a pirate anime app. Without old users you miss the new-release chart; with users, you live only until the next takedown. Platforms and rights holders are tightening, and HiAnime's operators, July, have already been charged.
• How to do it: take two things. First, keep user assets in the account and in-app notification channel, not in the package name: Google sign-in to sync data, a home-screen announcement slot you can change at any time, and collect push permission while things are calm. When you need a new package, one announcement moves most users, and the mass download after the switch can earn another new-release chart run. Second, "watch one ad, get an ad-free window": more popular than interstitials, better ratings, and it gives people who hate ads a step toward VIP.
• How to get users: their own acquisition can't be copied. What you can borrow is timing demand: when a big site or app shuts down, search for related keywords in the store spikes for a few weeks. An app (legit, licensed) whose name, title and description catch that traffic gets a free wave of installs.
• Window closing when: there's no deadline. This isn't a window-type opportunity.
• Signs you're reading it wrong: (1) AniPeak's daily installs stop falling after mid-November and hold at a few thousand a day or more, meaning that apart from the migration it has its own organic traffic in the store, and the category is wider than it looks; (2) someone launches a licensed anime app with English dubs and equally generous ads that gets hundreds of thousands of Play installs within a few months, meaning the demand HiAnime left has a legal way to be served. That would be the opportunity worth building for.

Sources

Google Play store page com.ezaowsla.anipeak (reviews from Bella, Danielle 11-04, DragonFable6519 11-01; update notes; 11-06 view); Google Play installs and charts, 10-29 through 11-06 daily; old app com.hianime.watchanimetv store page 11-06 returns 404; developer and history pages on AppBrain, AppstoreSpy, AppWinners, AppGoblin, chrome-stats, review-my-app; official site anipeak.us (11-06); HiAnime / AnimeKai shutdowns: vitrina.ai, Wikipedia, TorrentFreak; Reddit r/animeapp and r/PiracyArchive thread titles. Where we wrote "inferred", "estimated" or "unverified", it is inference or estimation.