Meowdoku hit #3 on the overall free chart as sort-puzzle games took 3 of the top 6 slots

Oakever's cat-Sudoku puzzle Meowdoku reached #3 on the combined US free chart with two other sort-puzzle games in the top 6, Netflix Game Controller held #1 a second day as ChatGPT slid to #3 and the top spot settled into a three-app rotation, hololive Dreams claimed #1 on both Japan App Store and Google Play grossing while staying gone from the US free chart, the microdrama cohort rose again with six apps climbing together, and Paramount+ climbed to #22 leading a streaming pack that held its weekend gains into Monday.

Meowdoku climbed to #3 overall as sort-puzzle games crowded the top of the combined chart

On the combined US free chart that mixes apps and games, Meowdoku! sat at #3 this morning (Jul 27, 03:01 UTC), behind only Netflix Game Controller and ChatGPT. Two more sort-puzzle games flanked it: Block Out at #4 and Smash Fest at #6, with Roblox at #5 making it four games in the top six. A fourth sort-puzzle title, Magic Sort, held #22. Apple's separate Games chart has had Block Out #1 and Meowdoku #2 frozen at the top for a week (AppStoreStatistics, Jul 27 06:00 UTC); the combined view shows how completely that wave now dominates download velocity overall.

• The mechanic behind Meowdoku is pure ad revenue, no in-app purchases. Oakever Games, the Singapore-registered studio that AppMagic and Mobilegamer.biz identify as the Chinese outfit Learnings (Beijing Lexing), wrapped Sudoku-plus-Minesweeper logic in cats and pointed roughly 10,000 AI-generated ad creatives at it. The result: about 2 million daily active users in under 60 days, around 400,000 downloads a day, and an estimated $200,000 a day in ad revenue against roughly $500,000 a day in user-acquisition spend (Sett, Jul 23; Felix Braberg, Jul 21). Sensor Tower called Meowdoku June's fastest-growing game with 8.9 million installs (Mobilegamer.biz, Jul 22).
• The company is fully bootstrapped, with about 70 million monthly active users across its portfolio, north of 85 percent net margins, and five straight years of 100 percent-plus revenue growth, per mobile analyst Matej Lancaric. The Meowdoku concept sat unused on Kwalee's portfolio for 18 months before Oakever executed on it.
• Two Istanbul playbooks now share the top of the chart. Grand Games' Block Out (#1 free game, held since Jul 21) brute-forces with paid user acquisition at an estimated $300,000 a day and over 1,000 launch creatives, on the back of a $70 million Series B and a roughly $500 million run rate. Meowdoku runs the opposite bet: ad-monetized, no IAP, leaning on AI creative volume and a $200K-a-day ad-revenue flywheel. Both are winning, which is the point. The sort-puzzle genre has become the default chart surface in the post-World-Cup lull.

Netflix Game Controller held #1 a second day as the top spot became a three-app rotation

Netflix Game Controller held #1 on Apple's US free apps chart for a second straight morning (Jul 26-27), per anerg's Jul 27 06:13 UTC snapshot, climbing two slots as ChatGPT fell two to #3. TikTok Pro - Events held #2 between them. The top spot has now rotated through three apps since the World Cup final: ChatGPT (Jul 21-24), TikTok Pro (Jul 25), and Netflix Game Controller (Jul 26-27). No single app has held #1 for more than four days this month.

• The controller app is a free accessory for Netflix's living-room party games (Overcooked, Pictionary, LEGO Party, Boggle Party), bundled in the Netflix subscription with no separate fee. It first hit #1 on Apr 5 with no paid marketing detected by Sensor Tower, did 4.22 million April downloads, and has parked near that April peak for a fifth straight week. The QR-code-on-TV mechanic is the whole growth engine.
• The AI cohort held its floor but lost the top. Claude climbed two to #8, Gemini slipped one to #9, and three AI assistants still sit in the top 10, yet none owns #1 for the first time since Jul 21. Grok sat at #41, still 16 spots below the top 25 despite the Grok 4.5 consumer rollout on Jul 22; Meta AI slid five to #38. The post-iOS-27 algorithm that weights retention over download velocity continues to block a flagship-model bump from moving Grok into the charted cohort.
• The "AI floor equals chart surface" equilibrium that held from Jul 21, once the World Cup drained, has cracked. A TV accessory app and a microdrama app now sit above every AI assistant, which means the chart's center of gravity has shifted from seasonal events back to engagement-weighted habit apps.

hololive Dreams hit #1 on both Japan stores' grossing while the US free chart still buries it

hololive Dreams, the first official hololive mobile game from Cover Corp and CyberAgent's QualiArts, claimed #1 on both the Japan App Store and Google Play grossing charts this morning (Jul 27, 09:30 JST), the first time it topped both stores simultaneously. It had held #1 on Google Play since Jul 25 and #2 on iOS; today it overtook eFootball for the App Store crown. Cover Corp (<5253>) and CyberAgent (<4751>) both rose on the Tokyo market on the dual #1. Cover marked the milestone by gifting players 2,500 red diamonds.

• The US free chart tells the opposite story. hololive Dreams dropped out of the US free-games top 25 by Jul 26 and stayed out today, buried behind the sort-puzzle wall (Block Out, Meowdoku, Smash Fest, Magic Sort). The grossing-versus-free divergence is now extreme: Japan's grossing chart shows where the paying VTuber fanbase lives, while the US free chart rewards paid-acquisition puzzle velocity that a concentrated Asian fanbase cannot match. Cover logged over 1.6 million pre-registrations before launch.
• NIKKE, which had briefly retook #1 on Japan's Google Play grossing on Jul 24 with its PROJECT MATIS update, was overtaken again. The rhythm-RPG launched Jul 23 on iOS, Android, and Steam with cross-progression, 150-plus songs, and 50-plus hololive talents.

The microdrama cohort rose again: DramaBox held #4 while six rivals climbed together

DramaBox held #4 on Apple's US free chart (anerg Jul 27) for a second day, and the broader short-drama cohort climbed with it. PineDrama jumped 17 to #33, DramaWave rose 15 to #43, VibeShort climbed 5 to #29, ReelShort rose 4 to #53, StoryReel climbed 3 to #37, and NetShort rose 4 to #74. Six microdrama apps moving up together is the signature of a coordinated paid-acquisition burst, the same mechanic that pushed DramaBox 37 spots to #3 on Jul 25.

• The money behind the wave: overseas short-drama apps generated an estimated $229 million in in-app purchase revenue in May across both stores, up about 13 percent month-over-month, with the US alone accounting for over $76 million (36Kr). DramaBox, ReelShort, and NetShort held the top three revenue spots. DramaBox posted roughly $140 million in Q1 2026 IAP, tied with ReelShort, per Sensor Tower's State of Short Drama.
• The competitive balance inside the category keeps shifting. Apptopia's H1 read (Jul 1) had DramaBox's DAU share falling from 27 to 19 percent as Kunlun-backed DramaReels roughly quadrupled to lead downloads, even as DramaBox held its revenue lead. The late-July install push fits a category where 700-plus companies advertise monthly and creative volume is up 145 percent year-over-year.
• PineDrama is the outlier worth watching: it is published under TikTok Ltd., the only microdrama app in the cohort tied to a platform that also owns the distribution surface.

Paramount+ climbed to #22 and led a streaming pack that held its weekend gains into Monday

Paramount+ climbed 15 slots to #22 on Apple's US free chart (anerg Jul 27), extending the weekend streaming-app rise into Monday morning rather than reverting. The cluster moved together: HBO Max jumped 23 to #61, Tubi rose 14 to #56, Roku climbed 17 to #42, Prime Video rose 11 to #49, VIZIO rose 11 to #50, and Peacock rose 8 to #59. Seven TV apps climbing in lockstep through a weekend and holding into the start of the week is a seasonal pattern, not a single catalyst.

• No verified event drove the cluster. The read is a post-World-Cup weekend-TV seasonal rise, the kind of perennial drift that fills slots as the sports-broadcast cohort stays gone (Kalshi sat at #66, Peacock at #59). Paramount+ had collapsed out of the top 25 after its UFC 329 spike drained in mid-July; it re-entered over the weekend and climbed further into Monday, the test being whether a weekend rise reverts on a weekday. It did not.
• The pattern echoes the retail-vacuum-fill seen earlier this month, when perennial apps drifted into the slots the World Cup cohort vacated. Streaming is now doing the same on a weekend cadence.

Tracking

• Apple v. Epic: No ruling into a third week. Briefing completed Jul 14; the last filing was Apple's submission of Judge Noel Wise's parallel Coral Springs stay ruling on Jul 17/18 (9to5Mac). Judge Gonzalez Rogers is still reviewing the stay. Status quo holds: 0 percent commission on external-link purchases, Apple still forgoing the 27 percent. If denied, Apple must file a commission proposal within 24 hours and has asked her to pause anyway so it can go to the Ninth Circuit or SCOTUS. Fortnite, the test case for the external-payment thesis, held at #11 on the US free-games chart.
• ColdTrace collapsed out of the top 100. The indie detective game that debuted at #12 on Jul 22 and slid to #96 by Jul 26 is gone from anerg's Jul 27 top 100 entirely. The organic climb reversed without a new case update to sustain it.
• Warline: Sniper Strike climbed to #15 on the US free-games chart (AppStoreStatistics, Jul 27 06:00), up from its #18 debut on Jul 26. Powerfantasy's sniper-strategy game is the one new free-games entrant still climbing.
• Resale-fashion floor held a seventh straight day. Depop held #5 and Vinted held #7 (anerg Jul 27), keeping two resale apps in the top 10 since Jul 21. Back-to-school demand (Circana's midsummer-to-Labor-Day window) continues to underwrite the floor.
• Freecash climbed six to #16 (anerg Jul 27), bouncing back into the upper half on its rewarded-UA model. Grok sat at #41, still outside the top 25.