South Korea is at war with money making games. Country asks Apple and Google to remove them from their store
Since the advent of computing, developers have always found ways to generate income. Today the video game market is tough, very tough. The one-time model of buying a game and never checking it out again is a very viable model, but the fact that developers don’t make any money after purchase means they have to regularly offer new games to save money, which isn’t always easy.
South Korea at war with money making games
It is for this reason that many studios have adopted the free-to-play model in recent years. The game is free to download and install, but developers can earn money through subscriptions or in-app purchases, which can be very profitable in the long run. Recently, we have also witnessed the emergence of a new “play to earn” model in which players buy or earn NFTs and in turn receive various rewards with the ability to resell these NFTs to earn “real” money.
She asks Apple and Google to remove them from her store.
If this model is now quite viable, then in South Korea the regulators do not particularly like this model. It’s the least we can say. Indeed, today the country forced Apple and Google to remove these games from their app stores. Obviously, these titles will violate local laws governing the amounts that can be earned in video games. According to the laws in force in the country, the maximum that a player can win at one time in the game is limited to approximately 8.42 US dollars.
It’s hard to say if other regulators in the world will decide to take on similar games, but it’s pretty easy to see why such a model could be problematic, especially among young people who would then be “encouraged”to spend more than they should.