Conflict between industry vs. academia and politics over amendments to the game law
Some share price declines compared to the beginning of this month
[시사포커스 / 임솔 기자] The pros and cons of the game industry, academia, and politics over the regulation of game companies’ probability-type items are hot. When the National Assembly proposed a whole amendment to the game law, the game industry was voicing opposition because it was considered a trade secret, while the game society said that the legalization of item probability disclosure should be firmly implemented.
According to the industry on the 23rd, the sum of last year’s sales of so-called ‘3N’ such as Nexon, Netmarble, and NCsoft last year exceeded 8 trillion won. Domestic game companies that enjoy the specialty of the novel coronavirus infection (Corona 19) are expected to grow this year.
On the other hand, game companies sell characters or items at a fixed price, but it is a problem that there are many cases where they sell characters or items in the form of’drawings’. Large domestic game companies, including 3N, use probability-type items as their main source of sales.
However, the probability of obtaining the item that users want is extremely low, and the number is not clear, so the claims that “probability-type items are actually gambling” have been steadily raised around users, and the politics responded.
At the end of last year, the National Assembly’s Culture, Sports and Tourism Committee has proposed a whole amendment to the Game Industry Promotion Act. As the issue emerged, the stock prices of NCsoft and Netmarble fell by about 12% to 13% compared to earlier this month. This is because it is expected that restrictions on probability-type items will adversely affect game companies.
In contrast, it was predicted that the amendment to the probability-type item law may not have a significant effect on NCsoft’s sales.
Ahn Jae-min, a researcher at NH Investment & Securities, said, “In 2015, a lot of information on probability items was already disclosed due to self-regulation in the game industry. Gamers purchase items because the probability of items is subdivided and the probability is further disclosed The frequency of doing this will not decrease significantly.”
If the law is passed, it could have a negative impact on the stock price in that it could be regulated by law rather than self-regulation, but it would not have a big impact on actual sales. NCsoft currently discloses the item probability of all games.
Researcher Ahn said, “Users are still buying items even though they know that the probability is less than 0.001% to obtain high-grade items.” The sales are only around 100,000 won.”
He added, “NCsoft is preparing to release a number of new games after this year, and it will be able to release games not only in PC and mobile but also in console and cloud game markets.”
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