Three idle games never leave Korea's chart — and never cross the border either
MapleStory Idle, CookieRun: Tower and Lucky Defense were inside Korea's top 15 at every one of five readings, without a single gap. The same three games do not appear on the American or Japanese charts even once. And inside Korea they do not move together.
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. “outside 15” means the game was not in the top 15 that week; the chart is published to 15th place only, so we cannot say what rank it held. This piece uses chart positions only, with no rating or review estimates.
At the very top of Korea's grossing chart, #1 changed hands three times in four weeks. Just below it, the story is the opposite. Three idle games did not leave a single cell empty across five readings.
Fifteen cells, all filled
| 🇰🇷 Korea | 08-17 | 08-24 | 08-31 | 09-07 | 09-14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MapleStory IdleNEXON | 1 | 2 | 7 | 2 | 3 |
| CookieRun: TowerDevsisters | 2 | 10 | 3 | 12 | 13 |
| Lucky Defense111% | 4 | 7 | 2 | 8 | 2 |
Three games across five readings makes fifteen cells. Not one of them says “outside 15.” And at every reading at least one of the three sat in the top 3 — MapleStory and CookieRun on August 17th, Lucky Defense and CookieRun on the 31st, Lucky Defense and MapleStory on September 14th.
Abroad, the same three never show up
This is where the piece began. We laid the American and Japanese charts over the same weeks.
| Country | cells in the top 15 |
|---|---|
| 🇰🇷 Korea | 15 / 15 |
| 🇺🇸 US | 0 / 15 |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | 0 / 15 |
Three games × five readings = 15 cells per country. The US and Japan account for 0 of 30.
A fixture in one country is invisible in another. But this data only takes us that far — we read three countries. What happens elsewhere we do not know, and we cannot say where below 15th place these games sit.
Fifteen cells in Korea. Zero out of thirty everywhere else we look.
Inside Korea they bounce rather than slide
Being a fixture does not mean holding still. Read the table across and all three swing hard.
| Game (🇰🇷) | Times it rose | Times it fell |
|---|---|---|
| MapleStory Idle | 1 | 3 |
| CookieRun: Tower | 1 | 3 |
| Lucky Defense | 2 | 2 |
Counting the four moves between five readings.
None of them moved in one direction only. CookieRun fell from 2nd to 10th and came back to 3rd; Lucky Defense climbed from 8th to 2nd. They swung that much and still none of them left the top 15. How far a game swings and whether it stays are separate questions.
And then one of them left
A weekly reading leaves the days between Mondays empty. We started taking the charts daily in mid-September, and in that gap the table changed.
| 🇰🇷 daily | 09-17 | 09-18 | 09-19 |
|---|---|---|---|
| MapleStory Idle | 5 | 5 | 6 |
| Lucky Defense | 8 | 7 | 9 |
| CookieRun: Tower | outside 15 | outside 15 | outside 15 |
From the daily charts — a separate record on a different cadence, kept in its own table.
MapleStory and Lucky Defense are still there. CookieRun is not. The game that read 3rd, 12th, 13th in the weekly record simply went. Idle games do keep a place on Korea's chart — but what keeps the place is the genre, not the game.
- 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 game was not in the top 15 that week, and we cannot say what rank it held.
- We read three countries — Korea, the US and Japan. So this is not “only in Korea” but “of the three countries we read, only Korea.”
- Genre labels are ours — Lucky Defense in particular sits close to random defence, so grouping it as idle is arguable. Our basis is that progress accrues while you are not playing.
- Rank is not revenue — nothing here tells you the gap between 1st and 3rd.
- We have not written why — an update, an event, a marketing push: 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. We do not reproduce game art or review text.