A Cat With a Gun Made $260,000 in a Day

Featured photo: An orange tabby cat, much like the hero of Idle Cat Gunner. Photo: LauraDelga, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

“Idle Cat Gunner,” a mobile game Korean indie studio Yusu Games made with a small team using AI, passed about $14.9 million in total revenue four months after launch, and its daily revenue peaked at about $260,000 (publisher Neptune, October 12, 2026). But what grew a cat earning $5,200 a day by 50 times wasn’t a new cat or a new gun. It was ads.

A game where a cat shoots trees, and that’s it

The rules fit in one line. A cat with a gun shoots down the trees in its way and uses the resources to get stronger guns and cats. Merge two identical guns and you get one a level higher, and at a certain point you “rebirth,” starting over to boost your stats. There are more than 25 cats and more than 35 guns (App Store description). It’s an “idle” game, where your character keeps fighting and growing even when you’re not touching it, so you switch it on during your commute and check in at lunch.

This simple game worked worldwide. It has 6.5 million downloads and about $18.6 million in total revenue (Neptune, Byline Network, November 2). When I checked on November 3, it was rated 4.8 out of 5 on the U.S. App Store (5,976 ratings), and 4.8 on Google Play in Korea with more than 1 million downloads (about 65,000 ratings). Neptune describes it as “a game indie studio Yusu Games developed with a small team using AI” (ZDNet Korea, October 12). The team size and the AI tools used haven’t been made public.

Also read: Korean Developer Hiring Now Starts by Making You Take Off Your Glasses

From $5,200 a day to $260,000

The money took off precisely after the publisher came on board. Neptune took over distribution in June, added the late-game “Exploration” content, rebuilt the revenue model with its own ad-tech know-how and ran global marketing. Daily revenue, about $5,200 at signing, jumped to a peak of about $260,000 (ZDNet Korea, iNews24, October 12).

The metrics show ads paying off too. Half of the first month’s new players came back the next day (50 percent day-1 retention), and one in four was still there a week later (25 percent day-7). Every $1 spent on ads brought back $1.57 in revenue (a 157 percent ROAS, return on ad spend). In September, 75 percent of revenue came from overseas, and average daily revenue in the U.S. was 16 times what it was before the marketing push (same articles).

Neptune calls games like this “hybrid casual,” a genre that mixes the super-simple, ad-funded “hyper-casual” game with RPG-style progression and purchases, and made it one of its three new businesses this year. CEO Kang Yul-bin called the game “the first case to prove the potential in numbers” and said Neptune wants to be a “rich maker” that helps small studios succeed (ZDNet Korea). A small team builds a game fast with AI, and a bigger company grows it big with ads: that’s the division of labor.

In U.S. reviews, there’s more talk of ads than cats

The price of that division of labor is written right in the reviews. Among the latest U.S. App Store reviews in late October, a 2-star titled “Ad Slop” said, “I spend more time watching ads than playing,” and a 1-star calling it “the game with the most ads out of hundreds I’ve installed” starts, “If you installed this after seeing the ad of a cat shooting a gun…” (U.S. App Store reviews, October 27–31). A roughly $24 skin drew the words “viciously greedy.” In Korean reviews, one player complained, “First time I’ve seen a game where you have to visit a Coupang Partners affiliate site to get currency” (Korean App Store review, October 30).

The same review pages are also full of 5-stars saying “the cats are so cute” and “my favorite game within three days.” The rating is still 4.8. What brings people in is an ad of a cat shooting a gun, and what annoys them is ads too. The game is designed to run both at once, and the numbers say the design works.

Next stage: a messenger with no install button

The cat is now heading outside the app stores. On November 2, Neptune turned the game into an HTML5 version that runs without installing and put it on the mini game platform of Chinese messenger WeChat, where games run instantly inside the app (Korea Economic Daily, November 2). WeChat mini games had 654 million monthly users in May this year, up 32.7 percent in a year (QuestMobile, same article).

In the Korean game industry, apart from Nexon, which posted record revenue of about $3.4 billion last year, and Krafton at about $2.5 billion, mid-sized companies like Neowiz, Shift Up and Webzen saw operating profits fall again in the first quarter (Korea Economic Daily). While big-budget games made by hundreds of people over years hang on, a cat made by a few people with AI has started shooting trees again, inside a 650-million-user messenger that doesn’t even have an install button.

Sources

• ZDNet Korea, October 12, 2026, iNews24, October 12, 2026: Neptune’s announcement (total revenue of 20 billion won, daily revenue, retention, ROAS, overseas share)
• Byline Network, November 2, 2026, GameVu, November 2, 2026: 6.5 million downloads, 25 billion won total revenue, WeChat launch
• Korea Economic Daily, November 2, 2026: WeChat mini game MAU, Korean game company results
• U.S. App Store, Korean App Store, Google Play: ratings and reviews (checked November 3, 2026)
• Currency conversion: 1,341.0 won per dollar (Seoul FX market close, November 3, 2026).