Tag: Korea

It Is Now Illegal To Make Game Cheats In Korea


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Making and distributing cheats for games is a great way to get sued, providing you poke big bears like Epic Games or Blizzard, but while developers have taken down cheat makers through injunctions and by playing the copyright laws to their advantage, there isn’t a law on the books that specifically states “thou shalt not make cheats,” and violating a company’s terms of service isn’t a criminal act. Until now, at least, but you knew that from the title of this article.

According to a report circulating from PvPLive, you can now be punished with a maximum of five years in jail or $43 thousand in fines if caught distributing cheats (aimbots, scripts, etc) for video games in violation of the company’s terms of service. Yes, making cheats is now a criminal offense.

The newly altered law raises a lot of interesting questions with regard to the burgeoning (and rather profitable) cheating scene, like how the courts will deal with cheat makers who live outside of the country, or how far reaching a developer can go in having conduct that they don’t approve of punishable by the court system.

Marvel Heroes Heading East To Asian Markets


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Step aside, Avengers, or actually just stay where you are. Gazillion Entertainment has announced a partnership with cloud computing company Ubitus Inc to bring Marvel Heroes to Asia this summer. Leveraging Ubitus’ market reach, the super hero MMO will be rolling out over the region beginning with Korea and heading China-bound with other countries to follow. In addition to being available on PC and Mac, gamers will also be able to enjoy Marvel Heroes on their tablets, Smart TVs, and IPTV set-top boxes.

“Marvel itself has done an excellent job of further popularizing its iconic characters in Asian territories, and now is the perfect time to bring the ultimate game set in the Marvel Universe to those regions,” said Dave Dohrmann, CEO of Gazillion. “Marvel Heroes 2016 has gotten a great reception from our fans, and by broadening the reach of this game to a global scale, we are thrilled to have our game enjoyed by millions of new players.”

More information on the Marvel Heroes launch as it appears. No word at the moment on whether the game’s mobile functionality will hit western markets.

(Source: Gazillion Press Release)

TERA Receiving New Class In 2014


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I feel bad for not noticing this sooner, but in my defense neither did any of the other major MMO news websites. On November 25th, Tera Today published an interview with Bluehole Studios on some upcoming updates in 2014 to the Korean service. Alongside a rookie server where players will be able to ease into the game as well as level up a bit faster, TERA will also be enjoying the release of a new class. The class is specific to the Elin race, a powerful mid-range damage dealer, although Bluehole is not saying that the class will never be available to othe races. According to the interview, developing new animations for each race takes approximately eight months.

You can check out the entire interview at the link below to read more about additional updates coming to KTera, and hopefully followed by other regions.

(Source: Tera Today)

Lessons From 2013 #6: A Rift Between Regions


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This year taught me that Trion Worlds isn’t all too enthusiastic about overseas endeavors. Over the course of 2013, Rift announced its impending shuttering in China, Korea, and Russia, but what caught my eye wasn’t that the game was shutting down, but why. In early October when Shanda Games announced that Rift would be shutting down in China, the publisher put the blame mostly on Trion Worlds. Xiangdong Zhang, CEO of Shanda Games, pointed to Trion and accused them of not responding to requests for localized content, leading to a lack of updates that harmed the game’s ability to keep customers. Later that month, Belver shut down the servers for Rift in China. In their announcement, Belver also noted that Trion Worlds refused to support the localized version.

The lesson here is not to localize Rift.

Ragnarok Online 2 Sunsetting In Korea


ss_b11c54b5aec674182049328756e8730d885caa82.1920x1080Ragnarok Online 2 is shutting down in Korea. As reported by MMO Culture, Gravity has announced that the Korean servers will come down on December 23rd, and that services in North America and Europe will not be affected by the change. The shutdown notice points to a lack of players as the reason for the service being sunsetted, although it does include the possibility that the game may be revived in the future.

(Source: MMO Culture)

 

RaiderZ Shutting Down In Korea


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It feels like just a month ago that were were discussing RaiderZ shutting down in Europe. Because it was. Just under a month, actually, since Gameforge announced that RaiderZ would be shutting down. Further to the east, Neowiz has announced rather unexpectedly that RaiderZ will also be shutting down its services in Korea. The servers will remain online until September 24th, when they will go offline for the final time. The company has revealed that there will be some form of reimbursement.

As MMO Culture points out, and I said in our review of RaiderZ, the game is something of a poor man’s TERA. With TERA going free to play, the odds are likely that the game just isn’t holding up in the market. The good news is that the game continues to run in North America under Perfect World Entertainment.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Rift Shutting Down In Korea


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Games developed in the west that are then brought over to the east have a tendency to not break into the market enough to sustain profitibility. Rift’s death in Korea has arguably been written on the walls ever since Trion announced that the game would still be operating with a subscription despite the market’s heavy focus on free to play games with cash shops. Even World of Warcraft operates on a pay by the hour model in Asia.

So it comes as not so much of a surprise that Rift didn’t catch on in Korea. MMO Culture is reporting that Rift is being shut down under CJ E&M on April 25th, and players will be refunded for any subscriptions charged past April 17th and that the web shop will be closed March 28th. Rift has just recently gone into open beta in preparation for release in China.

(Source: MMO Culture)

TERA Will Remain Subscription Based In US/EU


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Update: Gee that was fast. TERA’s European community manager has posted on the forums to confirm that more details will be released of the EU free to play transition in January.

Please understand that it is too early right now to talk about this but we will have more information for you about the EU version in January.

(Source: TERA Europe)

Original Story: Hold your horses, people. If you’ve been paying attention to TERA’s operations in Korea, you already know that NHN successfully launched a free to play server. Initially just a separate server and originally implemented as a temporary experiment, KTERA has announced that beginning in January, all servers will be converted to free to play:

Starting 2013 Jan 10th, TERA will go free-to-play, and with this start, new contents and changes will occur in political system, raid system, and massive pvp, with alliance and alliance training center?, 10man raid sorcerer’s fortress, and 20man raid kelsaik’s holyplace? and battleground of fire?.

What does this mean for the west, where En Masse Entertainment merged down to three servers? Nothing. TERA’s Community Manager, Minea, posted on the forums to state that TERA will remain subscription based in North America and Europe.

Regardless of the news from Korea, the good news is that TERA will continue to grow and improve with new game contents in North America, and all contents will be available for us should we decide to evaluate their use.

Korea isn’t the only country to be taking TERA free to play. TERA in Japan will also be heading free to play. The details of Japan’s transition are a little unclear, due to some poor translation, but the move appears to begin today (December 26th) with a single server and eventually open up the entire game in February 2013. There is little doubt that TERA will eventually go free to play in North America and Europe, despite EME’s insistence to the contrary.

(Source: TERA)

KTERA Free To Play Server A Success, Permanently Added


While we’re on the subject of TERA, let’s take a look back at its Korean counterpart. Earlier this year, I mentioned that the folks over at KTera were testing a free to play server. The server was originally set to remain active until August 9th, when the project would be pulled and Bluehole Studios would determine how viable TERA would be in the free to play market. Well, August 9th has come and gone (over a month ago) and I’ve received a few emails asking me to follow up on the previous article.

First of all, the server run was extended until August 30th, and according to mmosite.com, has been extended permanently. The free to play server, in addition, carries a permanent 2x experience buff as well as extra loot from quest rewards. Players are able to transfer their characters from the free to play servers to the subscription servers, although the article does not specify if the opposite is also true. It also notes that there is no cash shop on this server.

No word on free to play TERA in the western hemisphere, but given the apparent success of the server in Korea, an announcement seems just over the horizon.

(Source: mmosite)

NCSoft's Sales Per Region, Per Quarter, Mapped


Click on me to enlarge. I look much better zoomed in.

I’ve mapped out the sales per region over the entirety of NCSoft’s financial statements, dating back to the first quarter of 2005. You’ll see that Korea makes up more of NCsoft’s sales generally than every other region combined, and occasionally even doubled. Sales in North America and Europe peaked in 2009 and have been on a steady decline since, with European sales you will see becoming virtually nothing in Q2 2012 (less than 1% of total sales for the quarter). Japan has its ups and downs but is on a general incline, and Taiwan has been relatively stable since its tracking began in 2007. Royalty sales are on an incline, with a few stumbles along the way.

NCSoft may be banking on Guild Wars 2 to save its sales in North America and Europe. Guild Wars sold millions of copies and did quite well in the West. Shutting down City of Heroes will cut NCSoft’s income by a small amount, small beans compared to the sales of Guild Wars 2.

Just a few notes:

  • Units are KRW in Mn.
  • Up until Q3 2008, royalties were included in Korean sales.
  • Taiwan was not listed until Q1 2007.
  • Up until around 2006, NCSoft changed its label “US” to “North America.” For the sake of continuity, N. America has been used for the entire list.