Look, let's be honest: the absolute winner of the 2026 North and Central America World Cup, which kicked off on the 12th, is undoubtedly 'FC Online'. It has climbed two spots to sit at second place, breathing down the neck of League of Legends.

The World Cup, arriving once every four years, is the big payday for FC Online. During the Q4 2022 World Cup, the game hit record-breaking quarterly revenue thanks to aggressive promotions, pushing Nexon to its own all-time high annual sales. To Nexon, this tournament is a golden goose they simply cannot ignore; they even signaled their intention to capture new users during their Q1 earnings call earlier this year.

The content strategy is robust. Nexon introduced 'PTG (Path to Glory)' cards with stat boosts tied to real-world performance, alongside the 'TK (Team Korea)' class featuring players from 1998 to 2026. It’s working, too. Nexon notes that the TK class has seen a surge in search volume, with South Korea becoming the most popular team choice in the game.

They haven't stopped there. Events linked to the match schedule are in full swing, and they’ve even partnered with the streaming platform Chzzk to let viewers play mini-games based on FC Online directly from the broadcast screen. It’s a clever way to tether football fever to the game, and with the tournament just getting started, there is plenty of room for more surprises.

Perhaps the most poignant entry in the charts is Crazy Arcade (hereinafter referred to as Crazy Arcade). It jumped 10 spots to 25th, driven by a massive spike in search volume—mostly because everyone is mourning its announced closure on the 11th. When a staple of Nexon’s history decides to shut its doors, players take notice, and the resulting wave of searches has clearly pushed it up the rankings.

Since CEO Patrick Soderlund took the helm in February, Nexon has been aggressively pruning its lineup. Bubble Fighter, those iconic characters Dao and Bazzi, were the first to go, and now Crazy Arcade follows. At NDC 26 on the 16th, Nexon CEO Kang Dae-hyun hinted that they are looking for ways to keep the IP alive, perhaps through a system similar to MapleStory Worlds. Whether that actually happens, though, remains to be seen.

In the mid-tier, 'Wuthering Waves' climbed six spots to 17th. With a Cyberpunk 2077 collaboration and the release of 'Lucilla', the game has been firing on all cylinders. They even dropped a bunch of new, eye-catching characters on the 15th, keeping momentum going for two weeks straight. The player base is already whispering that the developers are 'desperate to cash in,' given the sheer pace of their recent updates.

At the bottom, 'Sheng Shi Tian Xia: Birth of the Empress 2' jumped 11 spots to 39th. Search volume and streaming views are up, likely because the first game was well-regarded for its deep dive into the life of Empress Wu Zetian. However, the sequel is hitting some snags; players are reporting a weaker story and some questionable localization issues in the latter half, leading to a more lukewarm reception than its predecessor.