Chinese game companies are eager to enter the Korean market because of increasingly strict regulations in the mainland.
On July 20, Korean game companies heard that Tencent had joined as a board member of the Korea Game Industry Association.
This is because the issue of the version number (license for game services in China) is still unresolved due to the Chinese government’s Hanhan decree in 2017. China is allowing services by how to release “internal versions” of games from game companies that have gone through product review.
Korea released 48 games to China between 2014 and 2016. However, as of March 2017, only a handful of Korean game companies have released foreign versions and directly served them. game.
In December 2020, Summoners War: Arena in the Sky by Com2u is a Korean game company that distributed games to pandas after 4 years and then a product of Pearl Abyss, Black Desert Mobile.
However, Summoners War and Black Desert Mobile are older games that were first released in 2014 and 2018. In the industry, there are many criticisms that the Chinese government has only authorized a few foreign games. difficult to compete with domestic games when they are released here.
Earlier this month, the mobile game by Nimble Neuron, a subsidiary of Kakao Games, was released in the domestic version, but a Chinese game company was responsible for development and service, and Nimble Neuron takes royalties by contract.
Chinese game companies that have grown in size on their own playground created by the Chinese government are recently expanding their business in Korea. The Chinese government is pointing out the problem of teenagers indulging in excessive gaming every day and is putting strict regulations on the game industry.
Tencent is also keen to invest in domestic game companies. According to the FSS announcement, Tencent holds as the second largest shareholder (13.53% of shares) of Krafton and the third largest shareholder (17.52% of shares) of Netmarble through an investment subsidiary. separate private. In addition, it continues to invest in Korean small and medium game companies and startups.
Because Tencent’s influence in the Korean market is so great, many people think that existing member companies also accept Tencent because they see their own advantages.