Latest News
Fan Index Reveals: The MOST Popular Gaming Character of ALL TIME
The most popular gaming character is Mario, receiving a whopping 451 points from the fan index
In second place is Sonic the Hedgehog with 394 points, receiving a staggering 59,700,700 Google searches in the last year
Legend of Zelda’s Link lands third place with 377 points, holding the largest number of Reddit mentions
The least popular gaming character is Jack from BioShock with just 48 points!
We’ve spent a lot of time at home, getting to know our favourite video games more than ever before, falling even more in love with a whole range of gaming characters. However, there is plenty of debate about which characters are the nations’ favourite!
With this in mind, experts at Stashbird.com wanted to discover the most popular gaming characters of all time from the best-selling video game franchises*. To thoroughly investigate, Stashbird.com created a gaming fans’ index by analysing the following factors:
Sales of the franchise
Average worldwide searches over the past year
Number of hashtags on Instagram
Number of Reddit mentions
Gamers’ popularity score (survey)
The top 10 most popular characters
Stashbird.com can reveal that in first place, and crowned the most popular gaming character, is Mario with a massive 451 fan index points!
Mario ranked first for franchise sales with a staggering 653,000,000 worldwide copies of Mario games sold, bagging him an easy 100 points. The fun-loving character also ranked sixth for average worldwide searches with 4,606,547 (86 points) in the past year alone! Despite these results, Mario only ranked 10th for popularity, with 45% of gamers choosing him as their ultimate favourite.
Not far behind in second place is Sonic the Hedgehog with 394 points. The extraterrestrial hedgehog ranked second for worldwide searches (59,700,000), giving him 97 points! He was voted the favourite by only 21% of gamers surveyed, however bagged himself 91 points for his 94,300 Reddit mentions.
Link from The Legend of Zelda places third, accumulating 377 points! It is no surprise as the star of the Nintendo series to have ranked top for Reddit mentions (3,920,000) and popularity score (74%), receiving 100 points for both! Interestingly, he ranked lower down for search volumes, with 1,196,200 average searches over the past year.
At number four is Donkey Kong with 354 points, scoring high with 3,930,000 yearly average searches (83 points), 570,000 Instagram hashtags (77 points) and 26,400 Reddit mentions (80 points).
To complete the 10 most popular gaming characters, the results are as follows:
5. Master Chief (Halo) 323 points, Crash (Crash Bandicoot) 323 points, Sora (Kingdom Hearts) 323 points
6. Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy) 314 points
7. Pac-Man (Pac-Man) 308 points
8. Kirby (Kirby) 306 points
9. Geralt of Rivia (The Witcher) 294 points
Closing the top 10 is Ezio Auditore Da Firenze, star of four of the Assassin’s Creed games, with 291 points!
Just making the bottom 10 is Joel Miller, ranking 25th out of a possible 34 places, from the Last of Us. This is not surprising as the franchise only scored 14 points for its 24 million sales. He also scored low on Reddit searches, receiving just 29 points for his 1,670 mentions.
John Marston from Red Dead Redemption and Simon Belmont from Castlevania were both among the least popular with 94 and 74 points, respectively.
Bioshock’s Jack rounds off the bottom 10 list with measly 48 points – a staggering 403 points less than first place contender Mario.
Methodology
1. *Stashbird.com analysed the list of best-selling video game franchises that have sold at least 20 million copies and pulled the most popular/recognised character from each to compile the list of 36 most popular gaming characters of all time.
2. The team then created an index looking at several factors, including sales of the franchise, search volumes using SemRush, the number of Instagram hashtags per character and the number of mentions on Reddit.
3. Finally, to complete the index Stashbird.com surveyed 4,567 gamers worldwide to ask them to vote for their favourite from the list to give each character a popularity score.
4. Games where there is no playable main character were excluded from the list.
5. Stashbird normalised the data by using the PERCENTRANK.INC function in Excel. This function returns the rank of a value in a data set as a percentage of the data set between 0 and 1. These values were then multiplied by 100 to make the range between 0 and 100. The maximum score a character could receive was 500.This enabled the team to rank the 36 characters from most to least popular based on their total points. The data was collected on 29/02/2021 and is correct as of then.
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Latest News
Game On N1 Sport Promo Is Live
N1 Partners is launching N1 Sport Promo, a promo campaign for affiliates driving Sports Betting and Prediction Markets traffic.
The promotion covers the biggest sporting and esports events of the season, including the FIFA World Cup 2026, Wimbledon, Formula 1, UFC Freedom 250, and many other major events. The promo runs from June 10 to July 20, 2026.
During the campaign, affiliates can increase their CPA payouts based on the volume of qualified FTDs they deliver. The more quality players a partner brings, the higher his rate and total earnings become.
Why join N1 Sport Promo?
Every major sporting event attracts new audiences to the betting vertical, and summer 2026 offers multiple powerful growth drivers for affiliates.
- Peak sports season.
The biggest sporting events of the year are perfect for scaling traffic and testing new funnels. - Growing payouts.
The more FTDs you generate, the higher your active CPA rate becomes. - Tier-1 GEOs.
The promo is available across Tier-1 markets with high potential and quality sports traffic.
N1 Partners team has compiled a guide covering key sporting events, June promotions, and expert recommendations for monetising Tier-1 sports traffic to help affiliates prepare for the upcoming sports season.
How does N1 Sport Promo work?
The mechanics are simple: the more quality FTDs an affiliate generates, the higher their CPA rate becomes.
SEO and PPC
Affiliates working with SEO and PPC traffic can increase their CPA rate with no limits.
Every 10 FTDs add an extra €50 to your current rate. There is no cap on CPA growth.
Example:
| FTD | Rate | Revenue |
| 1–10 | €300 | €3 000 |
| 11–20 | €350 | €3 500 |
| 21–30 | €400 | €4 000 |
| 31–40 | €450 | €4 500 |
FB, In-App, UAC, ASO, Email and SMS
A separate payout structure applies to affiliates working with Facebook, In-App, UAC, ASO, Email, and SMS traffic.
Every 30 FTDs increase your current CPA rate by €10. The maximum increase is €100 on top of the base rate.
Accordingly, the more successfully a campaign scales, the higher the final payout becomes.
Example:
| FTD | Rate | Revenue |
| 1–30 | €100 | €3 000 |
| 31–60 | €110 | €3 300 |
| 61–90 | €120 | €3 600 |
| 91–120 | €130 | €3 900 |
N1 Sport Promo terms
Registered N1 Partners affiliates are eligible to participate in N1 Sport Promo. Please contact your affiliate manager to join the promotion.
Not working with N1 Partners yet? Get in touch with the LeadGen team and join the promotion during the biggest sports period of the summer.
Main terms:
- Sports betting and Prediction Markets traffic is allowed.
- GEOs: Tier-1 (the list of available countries is provided by your manager).
- CAP: 50 FTDs at campaign launch.
- At least 60% of acquired players must place sports bets.
- Traffic to crash games must not exceed 30% of total volume.
- Incentivised traffic, fraud, and non-target GEOs are not eligible for the promotion.
- N1 Partners reserves the right to recalculate or cancel FTDs in cases of fraudulent activity or violations of the promotion terms.
- Payouts are processed according to the company’s standard payment schedule.
Detailed participation terms are available via the link.
Join N1 Sport Promo and turn the 2026 sports season into record-breaking results!
Join N1 Partners:
- 14+ casino and sportsbook brands with high Reg2Dep
- 10+ Tier-1 GEOs
- CPA up to €700 and RevShare up to 55% + NNCO for top partners
Be number one with N1!
The post Game On N1 Sport Promo Is Live appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
Latest News
Novusbet and TeApuesto scale omnichannel betting in Peru with 1,300-shop network
Novusbet and Peruvian operator TeApuesto are expanding a large-scale omnichannel betting operation in Peru, Novusbet said on 11 June 2026 in a release from Nicosia, Cyprus. The supplier said the deployment links a retail network of more than 1,300 shops—each with at least two terminals—to online, mobile, self-service terminals and back-office operations.
Novusbet said the TeApuesto operation processes more than 3 million sports and virtual tickets every month. The company positioned the project as an example of growing convergence between retail and digital betting in Peru, where shops remain central but customer expectations are shifting toward faster access, mobile use and digital payment options.
According to Novusbet, the focus is “not only about allowing players to access the same brand through different channels” but “creating continuity across the full player journey: from registration and betting activity to payments, ticket management, account interaction, information access and customer support.”
The company also pointed to local payment habits as a driver for product development, citing mobile money transfer services Yape and Plin as widely used in Peru. Novusbet said it has enhanced self-service and “omniconnected solutions” with payment options aligned with local usage patterns.
Novusbet said it will exhibit at Peru Gaming Show 2026 on June 17–18 at the Centro de Exposiciones Jockey in Lima.
The post Novusbet and TeApuesto scale omnichannel betting in Peru with 1,300-shop network appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
Game Development
ICONIC21 releases Soccer World Championship slot built around penalty shootouts
ICONIC21 has released Soccer World Championship, a new multiplayer-driven slot themed around penalty shootouts. The game runs on a 5×5 grid with 15 paylines.
The title’s core mechanic is a Penalty symbol that becomes an Expanding Wild and triggers a duel between a Striker and a Goalkeeper. Each carries a multiplier between 2x and 100x, with the duel outcome determining which remains on the reel. ICONIC21 said multiple Expanding Wilds on the same payline combine their multipliers into a single win.
The game includes two bonus modes. Three Goalkeeper Bonus symbols trigger a Bonus Game featuring frequent Penalty symbols, where multipliers from Expanding WILDs build a global multiplier applied to all wins. Three Striker Bonus symbols instead activate a Bonus Game where Expanding WILDs lock as Sticky WILDs until the end of the feature.
Edvardas Sadovskis, Chief Product Officer at ICONIC21, said: “Football is the one sport where a single moment can decide everything, and that is exactly the feeling we set out to build a slot around.
“The penalty duel puts that tension at the heart of the base game, and the two bonus modes give players genuinely different ways for the match to play out. It’s a title with an instantly recognisable hook, strong seasonal reference and the kind of standout mechanic that earns its place in any operator’s lobby.”
The post ICONIC21 releases Soccer World Championship slot built around penalty shootouts appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
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