SEOUL, Oct. 10 (Korea Bizwire) — After decades as a gatekeeper of content, South Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Committee (GRAC) is undergoing a transformation — from a censorship-era pre-screening body into a modern agency focused on post-release oversight and player protection. Under the reforms, GRAC will delegate most general game ratings to private organizations while [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — A group of South Korean media scholars has called for the abandonment of the medical classification of gaming disorder, arguing that framing play as a disease reflects a long history of cultural repression cloaked in health concerns. In a report commissioned by the Korea Creative Content Agency and the [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — NCSOFT Corp., a leading South Korean game developer, said Friday it has signed a content distribution collaboration deal with local animation streaming platform Laftel. Under the agreement, Laftel will distribute 3,800 titles of animation content to NCSOFT’s NC Family Zone (NCFZ) PC cafes, starting Sept. 18. NCSOFT plans to [...]
SEOUL, Aug. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s leading game studios lavished record pay packages on star developers in the first half of 2025, with several earning more than their own chief executives and even controlling shareholders. According to semiannual filings released August 14, Krafton’s PUBG: Battlegrounds executive producer Jang Tae-seok topped the list, taking [...]
SEOUL, July 18 (Korea Bizwire) — In a direct response to South Korea’s strengthened gaming regulations, U.S. game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has disabled microtransaction features for Korean users of its upcoming soccer title, “FC 26,” making it one of only two countries—alongside Russia—facing such restrictions. According to industry sources on Thursday, EA has blocked [...]
SEOUL, July 17 (Korea Bizwire) — When Krafton Inc. acquired Unknown Worlds in 2021, the move was widely seen as a bold pivot—a chance for the South Korean gaming giant to break away from its PUBG legacy and tap into the thriving community around Subnautica, a beloved underwater survival franchise. But just three years later, that [...]
SEOUL, July 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s major game developers are ramping up efforts to expand their global reach, unveiling their latest titles at Gamescom 2025, one of the world’s largest video game trade fairs, set to take place in Cologne, Germany, from August 20 to 24. According to industry sources on Tuesday, Krafton, [...]
SEOUL, July 9 (Korea Bizwire) – Mobile game sales generated from South Korean companies fell 13 percent from a year earlier in the first half of 2025, industry data showed Wednesday. Combined sales of local gaming companies from January to June totaled 3.3 trillion won (USD$2.4 billion), down from 3.8 trillion won a year earlier, [...]
SEOUL, June 23 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean football star Son Heung-min has appeared in the popular online shooting game Fortnite as an in-game character, the title’s publisher Epic Games said Monday. Fortnite players can purchase the limited-time Son character within Fortnite’s item shop from Monday through Saturday. The character comes with the uniform themed [...]
SEOUL, June 17 (Korea Bizwire) — The Korea Game Society issued a strongly worded statement on Monday, condemning reports of a potential takeover bid by Chinese tech giant Tencent for South Korean gaming powerhouse Nexon, framing the move as a threat to national industrial sovereignty rather than a routine business transaction. Describing the reported acquisition [...]