Kartrider Rush+, a new mobile racing game published by Nexon Co., became the most played mobile game in May in South Korea, beating mega-hit titles such as Lineage M and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Mobile.

According to data released by mobile big data platform IGAWorks on Friday, Kartrider Rush+ ranked top game by total time played from May 1 to 31 in the country, although it was released on May 12. It was played for 29,017,132 hours, accounting for 4.04 percent of all time spent gaming on Android-based mobile platforms last month.

The runner-up was Lineage M, the MMORPG of NCSoft’s best-selling medieval fantasy recording 25.23 million hours played. It was followed by Battlegrounds Mobile with 24.48 million hours, A3: Still Alive 23.92 million hours, Lineage 2M 21.26 million hours, Brawl Stars 16.05 million hours and Pimang New Matgo 15.57 million hours.

Kartrider Rush+ also ranked first by player count in May with 3,326,263 players, according to the data.

Brawl Stars with 2.15 million users came second, followed by Battlegrounds Mobile 1.81 million, Roblox 1.11 million, Pimang New Matco 1.08 million, Teamfight Tactics 1.07 million and Minecraft 990,000.

IGAWorks said it was the first time for a non-MMORPG, casual game like Kartrider to rank top by played hours.

The game had an advantage over others to get ahead in the ranking by player count due to the ‘new release effect’, said an official from a game company, but it is very unusual for a casual racing game to beat MMORPGs in terms of played hours.

By Pulse

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