The center of gravity for South Korea's major game companies is shifting rapidly toward global markets. Publishers are broadening business models once concentrated on mobile and massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs, into PC and console titles across a wider range of genres, and designing new releases for global players from the planning stage. Acquisitions of North American and European developers and the buildup of global intellectual property have pushed overseas revenue shares higher.
An analysis by The Seoul Economic Daily of earnings at five companies — Nexon, Krafton, Netmarble, NCSoft and Pearl Abyss — found their average share of overseas revenue topped 70% in the first half of this year for the first time. The figure had stayed in the mid- to high-60% range since 2021, but global releases and acquisitions of Western development studios beginning late last year fed through to results. Combined overseas revenue at the five companies reached 6.06 trillion won ($4.1 billion) in the first half, up nearly 60% from 3.80 trillion won a year earlier. That approaches the 6.24 trillion won recorded for all of 2023 and amounts to 80% of last year's full-year overseas revenue of 7.96 trillion won, reached in just six months.
Nexon, NCSoft and Pearl Abyss showed the clearest shift, each raising their overseas revenue share by roughly 10 percentage points from a year earlier. Nexon returned to an overseas share above 50% on the strength of "Arc Raiders" in North America and Europe. NCSoft saw Western results improve after consolidating Just Play, a European mobile casual game platform company, lifting its quarterly overseas share above 50% for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2012. Pearl Abyss joined Krafton above the 90% mark as its major title "Crimson Desert" passed 6 million cumulative units sold, led by Western markets.
Expanding overseas sales also improved reported results as the won stayed weak. Netmarble and Krafton, which booked foreign operations translation losses last year, recognized translation gains of 204.1 billion won and 81.9 billion won respectively in the first half.
Behind the stronger global push are growth in the world game market and a widening range of platforms. As Korean publishers moved beyond MMORPGs and mobile into PC and console, Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch opened direct paths to players in North America and Europe. Simultaneous worldwide launches have become standard, allowing companies to chase hits among hundreds of millions of players rather than being bound by the size of the domestic market.
"The domestic mobile MMORPG model built around probability-based items has hit its limits, with user fatigue and tighter regulation," said Kim Jung-tae, a professor in the game studies department at Dongyang University. "The revenue map is being redrawn around companies that have delivered results on diversified overseas platforms such as global Steam and console marketplaces, as PUBG did."
That has fed a push toward well-made AAA titles aimed at overseas markets from the outset, with heavy development budgets and long production cycles. Neowiz became the first Korean publisher to pass several million units in global cumulative sales with "Lies of P," released in 2023, and plans to expand the title into a long-term global franchise IP. Other large-scale projects built to global expectations are also in the pipeline, including Nexon's zombie apocalypse stealth survival game "Nakwon: Last Paradise" and Krafton's "Tarae: Unbound."
Genres are diversifying as well. Investment is moving away from MMORPGs, long the mainstay of the Korean game industry, toward shooters, extraction games and open-world action titles familiar to players in North America and Europe. NCSoft, once known as an MMORPG powerhouse, is putting effort into PC and console projects such as "Guild Wars 3" and "Cinder City" alongside its existing cash cows.
More recently, publishers have drawn on the rising profile of Korean content to build games around Korean history and culture. Console action titles set in the Joseon Dynasty, including Nexon Games' "Uchi the Wayfarer" and Studio EEGIMOB's "Musa: Dirty Fate," have gone through expert historical review from the production stage with global markets in mind. Pearl Abyss is developing "DokeV" as an open-world game rendering contemporary Korean cities and culture.
The venues where Korean publishers unveil new titles are also going global. In a 2024 survey of game developers and publishers on trade shows of interest, Tokyo Game Show drew 74.5%, overtaking Gstar at 68.1% for the first time. Korean companies are actively using Gamescom in Germany and Tokyo Game Show to test the overseas prospects of new titles and build local user bases. By contrast, no major game company has yet confirmed participation in this year's Gstar.
Slowing growth at home is another factor accelerating the shift abroad. According to the Korea Creative Content Agency, domestic game industry revenue rose from 22.21 trillion won in 2022 to 23.85 trillion won in 2024, but growth slowed to the 1% range last year at 24.12 trillion won. As content consumption spreads across short-form video, webtoons, over-the-top streaming and artificial intelligence services, publishers face growing pressure to defend the home market while securing new users and growth engines abroad.
"Across the industry, after watching the success of global mega-hit IP, the view has taken hold that overseas results are the only way forward," an industry official said. "Large publishers are pursuing global localization strategies from the earliest planning stages, while smaller and mid-sized companies are also pouring resources into overseas expansion as a bet on a new leap forward."
