On the 17th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Creative Content Agency announced that they published the '2024 Korea Game White Paper,' which summarizes the status of the domestic and international game industry in 2023 on the 14th.
According to the report, the growth rate of the domestic game market in 2023 slowed down, but the size of the game industry continued to grow steadily. The revenue of the domestic game industry in 2023 was approximately 22.9642 trillion won, an increase of 3.4% from the previous year. However, exports totaled $8.394 billion (about 10.9785 trillion won), which is a decrease of 6.5% from the previous year (applying the average exchange rate of 1,307.90 won in 2023).
The number of people employed in the domestic game industry in 2023 was 84,970, up 0.7% from the previous year. The number of individuals in game production and distribution was 51,783 (60.9%), while the number in game distribution was 33,187 (39.1%). Following 2022, the number of employees in game production and distribution was greater than that in distribution.
The Korea Creative Content Agency projected that the size of the domestic game market would reach approximately 25.1899 trillion won in 2024. Additionally, it noted that the game industry would continue to grow through ongoing efforts in intellectual property (IP) diversification and genre expansion.
In 2023, mobile game revenue reached 13.6118 trillion won, accounting for 59.3% of the overall game industry revenue. Following that, PC games recorded 5.8888 trillion won (25.6% market share), console games 1.1291 trillion won (4.9% market share), and arcade games 285.2 billion won (1.2% market share).
The global game market size in 2023 is estimated to have increased by 2% year-on-year to $205.189 billion. South Korea's market share ranking in the global market remains 4th (7.8%), showing no change from the previous year, and the global rankings also remain unchanged in the order of the United States, China, and Japan.
Looking at the share of the domestic game market in the global game market, the shares by platform were PC games at 13.2% and mobile games at 11.6%. Although the market size of PC games shrank from $4.6 billion in 2022 to $4.5 billion in 2023, mobile games achieved a 0.2 percentage point increase to take the 3rd place globally at 11.6%.
In 2023, South Korea's game industry exported $8.394 billion (approximately 10.9576 trillion won), a decrease of 6.5% from the previous year. By export country, the shares were China (25.5%), Southeast Asia (19.2%), North America (14.8%), Japan (13.6%), Taiwan (10.4%), and Europe (6.7%). Compared to the results in 2022, Southeast Asia increased by 5.0 percentage points, while China recorded a decrease of 4.6 percentage points. The import amount was estimated to be $253.76 million (about 331.3 billion won), a 2.5% decrease.