Blockchain games in South Korea: Players are not opposed to blockchain, but are concerned about the greed of publishers

author:1mpal

Compiled by: Xiaobai Navigation coderworld

It's hard to believe that Korean players are interested in "BlockchainThere is a certain resistance to the “game of elements”.

STEPN has approximately 30,000 users in KoreaCommunity, most of whom arecryptocurrencyAlmost nothing was known about it, and at the same time SuperWalk had over 100,000 downloads. Games like Idle Ninja Online and MudolBlockchainThe game once topped the App Store's revenue rankings.

However, this P2E narrative suddenly came to a halt after the LUNA collapse in May 2022. In South Korea, games must be "classified" by the Game Product Management Committee before they can go online, and public attitudes have changed after the courts repeatedly rejected P2E game classification applications.

That is, I don't think Koreans hate "Blockchaingames” themselves, but rather the negative associations they bring with them.This article will reveal the "resistance" and "challenges" of the Korean market.

1. TokenExistence

South Korean gamers have always had a negative view of game publishers. In the 2010s, the country's three largest game companies - NCSoft, Netmarble and Nexon - were collectively referred to as the "3Ns," and not in a positive sense.They are often blamed for holding back the growth of the South Korean gaming industry.

Because of this bad reputation,Token发行迅速被认为是剥削性行为。WeMade 在韩国引领了 P2E 叙事，出售了大量 WEMIX 以收购另一家公司。这一举动被普遍认为是贪婪的行为，该公司不仅从游戏本身获利，还从Token销售中获利。

So if you want to introduce Korean players to blockchain games without any negative reactions, you need to explain that your token “does not directly benefit the issuer or venture capital firm.”This is a hard sell, and the best statement is: “We don’t issue tokens.”

2. Alternative legal regulation

Korean players are very active in P2P trading or RMT (real money trading).The largest P2P platform in South Korea has an annual transaction volume of over $750 million. However, this is prohibited by game publishers.Games like MapleStory are relatively tolerant of RMT transactions and have even formed their own RMT CommunityIn Korean, this is called "쌀먹". (Note: "쌀먹" is a Korean term that is often used to describe the act of trading in games through informal channels, especially when using in-game resources for real money.)

Besides the debate on whether blockchain is suitable for RMT services, there are two options for the legal framework of South Korean games:

• If transactions are made using only premium currency, the rating is R18.

• If in-game currency is also used in transactions, this falls under the regulation of gambling. Legal issues arise when blockchain markets are involved, as the goods traded may not necessarily be marked as R18, but converting them into legal currency will be problematic. Similar to tokens, NFTs are subject to regulatory restrictions in South Korea because they are considered "fungible" if they have significant value on the external market.

The recent heated discussion about “revenue sharing” in some Web3 games is nothing new in South Korea.Back in 2009, RF Online paid monthly salaries to top guilds, which caused controversy, but it was not againstXiaobai NavigationThis is allowed because these payments are not related to in-game items.However, if in-game items can be directly converted into cash, this is prohibited in South Korea.

3. Player age

In Korea, there is a considerable number of young investors. They are responsive, smart, and well-informed. Knowing that P2E models tend to break down, they avoid falling into a death spiral. It would be a mistake to assume that targeting a young audience will be the key to winning over Korean gamers. When you look at the user demographics of successful blockchain games (or apps) in Korea, the results are quite interesting.The core user groups of MIR4, MUDOL, STEPN, and SuperWalk consist of men in their 30s and 40s.他们往往对Community噪音麻木，有趣的是，他们对区块链游戏的强烈反对意见较少。

I once wrote a blog guide for a Korean portal about the successor to MUDOL. Maybe young investors have stopped paying attention and think MUDOL is a failure, but to this day, more than 350 people have used my invitation code to register their first overseas centralized exchange.exchange(CEX), and these people are all in their 40s.

It’s not without reason that many gaming projects still see South Korea as an attractive market. Competition is fierce here, the ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User) of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) is high, the game quality is excellent, and it is also the fourth largest gaming market in the world. However, some of the claims about its potential are exaggerated. Many gamers I have talked to, although they may be skeptical about blockchain games themselves, they rarely hate the keyword "blockchain". What they worry about is the greed of game publishers and that ordinary players may be affected when the token price collapses.

Gamers don’t seem to be opposed to official support for RMT (real money trading), which is currently a legal grey area, or a pure revenue-sharing model.However, this may require giving up control of the “tokens” or waiting for the South Korean government to clarify regulations regarding in-game monetization.

The article comes from the Internet:Blockchain games in South Korea: Players are not opposed to blockchain, but are concerned about the greed of publishers

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