Chinese mobile games continue to set records in the South Korean market. The variety of genres and smooth graphics have captured the hearts of Korean gamers. Tencent, China’s largest gaming company, has been actively investing in Korean game companies, resulting in China’s growing influence in the Korean game market.
According to the game industry on Jan. 11, the mobile idle game “Mushroom, Hero” released by Chinese game company Joy Nice Games in Korea, ranked second in Google Play sales. In the Apple application store, the game took the top spot, beating NCSoft’s “Lineage M,” a staple of the Korean mobile game market
‘Mushroom Hero’ is an idle game that was released on Dec. 22. 2022. It has a setting where players grow a mushroom character and gradually create a human character. According to app market analytics firm IGAWorks, the game quickly climbed to No. 33 on its monthly popularity list last month.
It is becoming increasingly common for games made by Chinese companies to be successful in South Korea. Indigenous Chinese developers have become skilled enough to attract gamers in South Korea and the global market. Unlike Korea, which is heavily centered on MMORPGs, China has a wide variety of genres. This is differentiated from the past when Chinese companies heavily relied on game makers acquired from overseas.
Last year, Chinese game companies had several successful games in South Korea. Joy Nice Games, the makers of “Mushroom Hero,” released the idle game “Oh My Dog” in South Korea in July last year, and it became the No. 3 game on the App Store. Ujoy Games’ “Pixel Hero,” which was released in June last year, was the No. 5 game on Google Play and the No. 1 game on the App Store.
Chinese game companies have penetrated the Korean market with mobile games. According to the “2023 China Game Industry Report” released by the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, South Korea (8.18 percent) accounted for the third-largest share of overseas sales of Chinese-made games last year, after the United States (32.5 percent) and Japan (18.9 percent).
