Ares-Rise of Guardians, a popular MMORPG released by Kakao Games on July 25, 2023
No South Korean game titles developed by domestic game developers are included in the country’s top five mobile games, industry data showed on Friday.
According to mobile game market research firm IGAWorks, there were no Korean games among the top 5 mobile games in terms of monthly active users (MAU) in August.
Brawl Stars, a multiplayer online battle arena and third-person hero shooter video game developed and published by Finnish video game company Supercell, topped the list with 2.07 million MAUs.
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Supercell is a Finnish subsidiary of Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd.
Roblox, an online game platform and game creation system developed by Roblox Corp., came in second with 1.8 million MAUs, followed by Royal Match, developed by Turkish company Dream Games, with 1.54 million; Teamfight Tactics, an auto battler game developed and published by Riot Games, with 1.4 million MAUs; and Minecraft, a game developed and published by Mojang Studios, with 970,000.
The highest-ranking Korean game was Lucky Defense, developed by 111Percent Inc., with 960,000 MAUs, placing 6th.
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CHINESE FIRMS ALSO PERFORM WELL IN SALES REVENUE
Chinese mobile game developers also performed strongly in terms of sales revenue.
The highest-grossing mobile game was Korean game developer NCSOFT Corp.’s Lineage M, which posted 43 billion won ($32 million) in sales last month.
Road Nine, released by Korean game company Smilegate in July, ranked third with 22.6 billion won.
The 2nd, 4th and 5th spots were occupied by Chinese games: Last War earned 38.2 billion won, followed by WOS with 20.7 billion won and AFK Journey with 20.3 billion won.
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The three Chinese games outperformed Korean game maker Kakao Games Corp.’s Odin, which earned 17.2 billion won, and NCSOFT’s Lineage W with 9 billion won.
“Chinese companies have diversified game genres and launched aggressive marketing, which led to an increased user base and revenue growth,” said an industry official.
OVERSEAS MARKETS
Chinese games are also performing better than Korean rivals in overseas markets.
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At Gamescom 2024, Europe’s largest gaming exhibition held in Cologne, Germany from Aug. 21-25, the Chinese game Genshin Impact, an action role-playing game developed and published by miHoYo, won the “Best Mobile Game Award.”
Only three Korean games made it to the nomination list.
Black Myth: Wukong, an action role-playing console and PC game developed and published by Game Science on Aug. 20, saw a peak of around 2.42 million concurrent users on the PC game platform Steam.
This is the second-highest on record, following Korean game company Krafton’s PUBG: Battlegrounds, which set the top record with 3.25 million concurrent users in 2018.
By Ju-Hyun Lee
2juhyun@hankyung.com
In-Soo Nam edited this article.
