Buyers and marketers gather at the Com2us booth at a business-to-business event during the G-Star 2014 game show in BEXCO, Busan, Nov. 20. / Courtesy of Com2us By Yoon Sung-won BUSAN ― This year’s G-Star game show was exceptionally successful, drawing the largest number of audiences and buyers in its decade-long history. According to the Korea Internet and Digital Entertainment Association, the main organizer of the event, 1,656 people attended the business-to-business (B2B) event, up 18.5 percent from last year. The number of visitors to the business-to-customer event exceeded 200,000, up from last year’s 187,707, the association said. Mobile game companies dominated this year’s B2B event, which ran from Thursday through Saturday, an indication of their significant expansion in the game industry at home and abroad. The booth of local mobile game development and publishing company Gamevil was filled with foreign game marketers and developers. “We have received more than 100 business meeting requests this year from companies seeking to publish games through our global mobile game platform, Hive,” a Gamevil spokesman Kim Se-min said. The company said a greater number of marketers from game firms in China, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia and North America visited its booth this year compared with previous years. They discussed potential business partnerships and localization strategies for their regions, the spokesman said. A spokeswoman at Com2us, a mobile game affiliate of Gamevil, also said, “We have seen more than 100 consultation requests from overseas companies about game publishing for the global market through the Hive platform.” Both Com2us and Gamevil use the platform. Com2us and Gamevil have been two of the most successful game enterprises this year in Korea, having set new records in sales and profits in the third quarter. Com2us revealed that it recorded 86.8 billion won ($77.99 million) in sales and 46 billion won in operating profit in the quarter, a jump of 438 percent and 45,980 percent, respectively, from a year ago, thanks to the continued worldwide popularity of its mobile game, “Summoners War.” The company’s overseas sales, in particular, stood at 69.3 billion won during the cited period, about 80 percent of the firm’s total sales. Gamevil said it reached record sales and operating profit of 43.5 billion won and 3.4 billion won, up 102 percent and 78 percent, respectively, from a year ago. NHN Entertainment, one of the largest game firms in Korea, also attended the B2B event and said it received a total of 125 consultation requests, more than half of which were from overseas buyers. “We have seen more visitors who actually wanted to ink a contract with us, compared to previous years,” a company public relations representative said. Chinese game publishers such as Tencent, Beijing Kunlun Tech, Changyou and Chukong Technologies also participated in the B2B event to attract international game publishing service clients to China, the world’s largest game market. Organizations not directly related to the game industry also attended this year’s event. Foreign governments including Luxembourg, Canada, Britain, Germany and Sweden established booths at the event to attract promising yet heavily regulated Korean game firms with tax incentives and infrastructural support. Korea’s top law firm Kim & Chang also set up a booth at the event to offer legal consultations for those who want to start an international service. “A team of 10 Kim & Chang lawyers specialized in the game industry are here to provide legal advices to clients and buyers here to help them reach overseas markets,” Kim & Chang lawyer Lee Jung-un said.
