Korean game publishers offer services in China as market opens

Nexon Corp. headquarters [Photo by Han Joo-hyung]

South Korea’s major game publishers are speeding up their entry into China after the Chinese government started to grant service licenses from late last year.

According to sources from the game industry on Friday, Nexon Corp., Netmarble Corp., Devsisters Corp., Smilegate, and other Korean game companies have begun pre-booking and beta testing in collaboration with local Chinese publishers ahead of their game service launches.

Smilegate is at the forefront. The company released “Epic Seven” in China on June 20, which is currently in the top 10 sales ranking by app market.

The company’s popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) “Lost Ark” will also be available to all users on July 20.

Published by Tencent Games, a video game publisher, Lost Ark has been undergoing a small-scale test called “pioneering experience” since April for those that submitted applications in advance.

Nexon’s subculture anime-style role-playing shooting game, “Blue Archive,” also began a closed beta test (CBT) in China on Thursday.

Blue Archive is a popular game that was released in Japan in February 2021 and in Korea, North America, and the rest of the world excluding China in November of the same year.

Industry insiders expect that Blue Archive will be well received in China as it has gained popularity in Japan, the home of subculture games.

The number of pre-bookings for the Blue Archive Chinese server reached approximately 2.9 million as of Friday.

Devsisters’ flagship game “Cookie Run: Kingdom” also started pre-booking in April and conducted the first pre-test in mid- last month.

Netmarble also announced during its first quarter earnings call that a total of five games, including “Second Country: Cross Worlds” and “A3: Still Alive” will be released in China this year.

Second Country: Cross Worlds began its first pre-test in China on June 6.

Korean brokerages are raising their target prices for the stocks of local game companies licensed in China on expectations for improved performance.

The Chinese government had rarely granted service licenses to Korean games following a ban on Korean content in 2017 in response to the Korean government’s decision to deploy the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system in the country.

Many Korean games, however, have been approved in China in December last year and March, signaling a change in its policy by the Chinese government.