Temple Run was released on iOS on August 4, 2011 by Imangi Studios, a three person company, and it never shut down. Imangi’s own website, read on September 8, 2026, still lists Temple Run and Temple Run 2 and states that the two games have been downloaded over 2.5 billion times combined. What actually happened is not a death. The endless runner stopped being a genre that dozens of studios competed in and consolidated into a handful of permanent fixtures, of which Temple Run is one and Subway Surfers is the larger. If Temple Run vanished from your life, it is because you stopped playing it, not because it stopped existing.
The Company Was Three People
Imangi Studios was Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova, a married couple, plus artist Kiril Tchangov. That is the entire team that made the defining mobile game of 2012.
Temple Run arrived on the App Store on August 4, 2011 at 99 cents. It did modestly. In September 2011 Imangi made the decision that actually built the game: it dropped the price to free and moved to in app purchases and advertising. Downloads went vertical, and the Android version followed on March 27, 2012.
That sequence is the most instructive thing about the game and the part almost every retelling skips. Temple Run was not an overnight hit. It was a paid game that became a phenomenon the moment its price came off, which is the clearest single demonstration anyone has of what free to play did to mobile in 2011 and 2012.
Then Came the Fastest Launch Anyone Had Seen
Temple Run 2 launched on the App Store on January 17, 2013. It went to number one in free apps and took more than six million downloads in under 24 hours.
Thirteen days later, Imangi announced it had passed 50 million downloads across iOS, Android and Kindle, which made it the fastest growing mobile game to that point. The previous holder was Angry Birds Space, which had needed 35 days. GameSpot’s report from January 31, 2013 was read September 8, 2026.
By June 2014 the franchise had crossed a billion downloads, reported by TIME and read September 8, 2026.
The company that did this had a handful of employees and no publisher.
What Happened to Temple Run: Why It Felt Like It Disappeared
Nothing shut down. Four things happened at once, and together they made the game invisible rather than dead.
The genre saturated in about eighteen months. Once free to play proved a runner could reach a hundred million people, every studio on both stores shipped one. The shelf filled with near identical products, and a category that is full of near identical products stops producing news.
The one hit developers left, and the survivors did not. Imangi kept shipping. So did SYBO and Kiloo with Subway Surfers, which launched in May 2012 and has since passed four billion lifetime downloads. Almost everyone else moved on. What looks like a genre dying is usually a genre concentrating.
The audience did not renew. An endless runner is a high score game. High score games have a ceiling of interest per person, and there was no live service layer in 2013 to manufacture a reason to return. Temple Run 2 later added events and seasons, but by then the moment had passed.
Phones outgrew the design. Temple Run was built for a screen you held in one hand on a bus for ninety seconds. As phones got bigger, batteries got better and mobile games got deeper, the two minute swipe game stopped being the natural shape of mobile play.
That last point is worth sitting with, because the same shift explains why so many products of that era feel dated in a way that has nothing to do with quality. The device changed underneath them. It is the same reason a dedicated pocket device for one job stopped making sense at all, which is the thread running through why the iPod was discontinued and through the wider shelf of dead gadgets of the 2000s and 2010s.
The Movie Tie-In Era, Which Was Very Short
Two Temple Run games were built around films: Temple Run: Brave, tied to the Pixar film in 2012, and Temple Run: Oz, tied to Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful in 2013.
This was a brief, intense fashion. For about two years, a licensed endless runner was the default way a studio turned a film into a mobile app, because the genre was cheap to reskin and required no tutorial. It ended for the same reason the genre consolidated: once every film had one, none of them stood out.
Compare the alternative path taken by the other defining mobile franchise of the period. Rovio pushed its characters outward into film, merchandising and brand licensing rather than pushing other people’s films into its game, which is set out in what happened to Angry Birds. Imangi did the reverse, briefly, and then went back to making its own games.
Temple Run and the App Gap
There is a piece of platform history buried in Temple Run’s release schedule that is easy to miss.
Temple Run came to iOS in August 2011 and to Android in March 2012, a gap of seven months on the two dominant platforms. It reached Windows Phone considerably later. In the early 2010s, whether and when a marquee mobile game arrived on your phone was one of the main things people used to judge a platform, and Temple Run was routinely cited in exactly those arguments. That dynamic is a large part of the story in what happened to Windows Phone: the hardware was not the problem, the release calendar was.
What Imangi Is Doing Now, Verified
Because this is the part where speculation usually creeps in, here is only what Imangi’s own website says.
Read on September 8, 2026, imangistudios.com lists four games: Temple Run, Temple Run 2, Temple Run: Puzzle Adventure and Temple Run: Legends. It states that Temple Run and Temple Run 2 combined have been downloaded over 2.5 billion times.
There is no Temple Run 3 on Imangi’s own site. Various third party pages assert a 2025 or 2026 release. We could not confirm any such title from the developer, so this page does not claim one exists. If Imangi ships it, Imangi will say so on that page.
The studio is still small, still independent, and still owns its franchise outright. In a category where nearly every 2012 era hit was bought, folded into a larger publisher or quietly shut down, that is genuinely unusual and it is the most underreported fact about Temple Run.
So Can You Still Play Temple Run?
Yes. Both games remain in Imangi’s published catalog as of September 8, 2026, and both are free to play titles rather than server dependent live services, so they do not carry the shutdown risk that ended so many games of the same period.
Two honest caveats. First, app store availability varies by country and by device, and an old game’s compatibility with a current phone operating system is a question that can only be answered on the device in front of you. Second, this page gives no download links, no third party sources and no workarounds of any kind.
The Genre Did Not Die, It Became Infrastructure
The most useful way to understand what happened to the endless runner is to stop asking whether it died and start counting where it went.
The mechanic did not disappear. It became a component. Swipe to dodge, collect coins, run until you fail is now a mode inside larger games, a mini game inside apps that are not games at all, and the underlying grammar of a great deal of short form mobile advertising. The reason you see endless runner footage constantly on social video is that it is the visual shorthand for “mobile game.”
And the two originals are still running. Subway Surfers is one of the most downloaded mobile games in history. Temple Run has 2.5 billion downloads behind it and a developer that never sold.
What ended was the gold rush, not the game.
FAQ
When did Temple Run come out?
Temple Run was released on iOS on August 4, 2011 by Imangi Studios. It launched as a 99 cent paid app and became free in September 2011, which is when its downloads accelerated. The Android version followed on March 27, 2012.
Is Temple Run still available?
Yes. Imangi Studios’ own website, read on September 8, 2026, lists Temple Run and Temple Run 2 among its four current games. Neither is a server dependent live service, so neither carries the kind of shutdown risk that ended many games of the same era.
Is there a Temple Run 3?
Imangi’s own site does not list one. Third party pages claim a 2025 or 2026 release, but we could not verify that against anything the developer has published, so this page makes no claim either way.
How many downloads does Temple Run have?
Imangi states on its website that Temple Run and Temple Run 2 combined have been downloaded over 2.5 billion times. The franchise passed one billion downloads in June 2014.
Why did endless runners stop being popular?
They did not stop, they consolidated. The category filled with near identical games within about eighteen months, most one hit studios left, and the survivors absorbed the audience. Subway Surfers, which launched in May 2012, has passed four billion lifetime downloads.
Who made Temple Run?
Imangi Studios, founded by Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckyanova, working with artist Kiril Tchangov. It is still independent and still owns the franchise.
The Short Version
- Released August 4, 2011 on iOS by a three person studio, at 99 cents.
- Going free in September 2011 is what made it a phenomenon, not the launch.
- Temple Run 2, January 17, 2013: 50 million downloads in 13 days, the fastest to that point.
- One billion franchise downloads by June 2014; Imangi now states over 2.5 billion for the two main games.
- Never shut down. Imangi still lists both games, checked September 8, 2026.
- No Temple Run 3 appears on the developer’s own site, whatever third party pages say.
