A scene in an advertisement for Krafton's mobile version of online shooting game, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," for the Indian market / Screenshot from Battlegrounds Mobile India
By Baek Byung-yeul
NCSOFT, Krafton and other Korean game companies are turning their eyes to India as the South Asian country is emerging as an alternative market to China, which has been prohibiting Korean games from entering, according to industry officials Monday.
They said India is now considered a new market for Korean companies that put more focus on mobile games rather than console games, as the former have been gaining huge popularity with the improvement of the internet environment and rapidly increasing smartphone usage.
"In recent years, few companies have received necessary licenses before launching new games in the Chinese market. The companies need to reduce their shares in the Chinese market ― which is blocked from launching new games ― as much as possible, and explore new markets. To that end, the Indian market, which has a large population and an increasing number of mobile game users, has become an alternative," an official at a local game company said on condition of anonymity.
China has the world's largest game market, but Korean game makers have been blocked from exporting their games since 2017 when the Chinese government stopped issuing licenses as part of a protest against Korea's deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system. Since that year, only three games made by the Korean game companies have been allowed to begin service in the Chinese market.
Among Korea's companies, Krafton, best known for its online shooting game, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," has shown significant interest in increasing its presence in India.
Since the company made its debut on the KOSPI in August 2021, Krafton has said that India will grow into one of its core revenue stream markets because the number of players of the mobile version of its shooting game is rapidly increasing. It is known that around 90 million people have enjoyed the mobile game.
Krafton is also increasing investments in Indian companies with high growth potential. To capitalize on India's fast-growing IT market, the company established an Indian subsidiary in November of 2020. The company said in March that it had jointly invested a total of $19.5 million in Indian audio content platform company KukuFM.
Not only did Krafton invest in the audio content company, but it also made a series of investments in Indian startups, including e-sports company NODWIN Gaming, game streaming platform company Loco and game developer Nautilus Mobile.
NCSOFT is also looking for business opportunities in India as the game company, best known for its "Lineage" role-playing game series, has joined as an investor in venture capital for investments in Indian companies.
"NCSOFT is steadily making strategic investments to secure future technologies and strengthen business competitiveness. As part of this, we are investing in global tech companies by participating as investors in several venture capital projects at home and abroad," a company spokeswoman said.
The game industry presumes that India could become an alternative to China. According to market tracker Niko Partners, India's game market was scaled at $534 million in 2021 and the number of gamers was presumed to be about 340 million. The market is expected to grow to $1 billion in 2022 with 400 million gamers, which will possibly account for more than one-fifth of all Asian gamers.
