The publisher kept its seats, and one game quietly slipped out
Across five readings in Korea, Kingshot never once recovered a place, sliding from 7th to 14th. On September 19th it left the chart altogether. Whiteout Survival — same publisher, same genre — reached #1 in the same stretch.
Ranks are read directly from the Apple App Store grossing charts (games, top 15 per country), taken once a week from August 17th to September 14th — five readings. This piece uses chart positions only, with no rating or review estimates. It is a companion to our Whiteout Survival deep dive.
Games usually leave a chart quietly. Kingshot did not gain a place once across five readings. In the same weeks, another title from the same publisher took #1 in Korea.
Five readings, four steps down
| Kingshot | 08-17 | 08-24 | 08-31 | 09-07 | 09-14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇰🇷 Korea | 7 | 9 | 12 | 13 | 14 |
| 🇺🇸 US | 6 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 10 |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | outside 15 | outside 15 | outside 15 | outside 15 | outside 15 |
Korea starts at 7th and reads 9, 12, 13, 14 from there. Not one place recovered along the way. Japan never listed it at all in these five weeks, and the US wavered between 6th and 10th before ending four places below where it began.
Same publisher, same genre, different shape
Read on its own, that looks like a genre going cold. Put the same publisher's other survival title beside it and the reading gets harder to hold.
| Whiteout Survival | 08-17 | 08-24 | 08-31 | 09-07 | 09-14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇰🇷 Korea | 5 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 9 |
| 🇺🇸 US | 9 | 7 | 11 | 9 | 11 |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | 7 | 4 | 10 | 9 | 12 |
Whiteout also fell more often than it rose. It went from 5th to 9th, so the end points look similar. The difference is that it climbed all the way back to #1 in between. Counting direction changes in Korea separates the two.
| Game (🇰🇷) | Times it rose | Times it fell |
|---|---|---|
| Kingshot | 0 | 4 |
| Whiteout Survival | 1 | 3 |
Counting the four moves between five readings.
If the genre were cooling, both games would cool.
The publisher's seat count did not move
So we wondered whether the publisher was losing ground, and counted how many Century Games titles sat in each country's top 15: Whiteout, Kingshot and Tasty Travels.
| Country | 08-17 | 08-24 | 08-31 | 09-07 | 09-14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇰🇷 Korea | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 3 |
| 🇺🇸 the US | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
This counts titles on the chart, not rank, and it is not revenue share.
Korea reads 3, 3, 3, 2, 3. The US reads 3, 3, 3, 3, 2. Japan is 1 throughout. At the publisher level almost nothing happened, because the seat Kingshot vacated was taken by another title from the same company.
And this week, it left the chart
A weekly reading leaves the days between Mondays empty. We started taking the charts daily in mid-September, and Kingshot's exit happens to fall inside that stretch.
| Game | 09-17 | 09-18 | 09-19 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kingshot · Korea | 11 | 15 | outside 15 |
| Whiteout · Korea | 6 | 9 | 7 |
From the daily charts — a separate record on a different cadence, kept in its own table.
It went from 11th to 15th, and the next day it was outside 15. Over the same three days Whiteout sat at 6th, 9th and 7th. The two games come from the same publisher, belong to the same genre, and appear on the same country's chart.
- Source — Apple App Store official charts (games, top 15 per country), quoted as published.
- When — five readings: Aug 17, 24, 31, Sept 7 and 14. Gaps of 7.3, 6.5, 7.0 and 7.0 days.
- We left out the August 16th reading — it is fifteen hours from the August 17th one and cannot be counted as a separate week.
- “outside 15” — the title was not in the top 15 that day. We cannot say what rank it held, because the chart is only published to 15th place.
- Rank is not revenue — nothing here tells you the gap between #1 and #2.
- “Titles” — the number of games on the chart, not revenue share.
- We have not written why — an update, an event, a pullback in marketing: the chart cannot establish which.
- Daily ranks are a separate record on a different cadence, so they have their own table. Unlike our other deep dives, this one uses no rating or review estimates. Full method and limits are in our data methodology.