Major Korean game distributors, including Necon and NCSoft, are actively expanding their operations in South-East Asia through the establishment of subsidiaries or joint ventures in key markets such as Viet Nam. In 2024, NCSoft established a joint venture company called NCV Games with VNG, a subsidiary of the Vietnamese technology giant VNG.
Through this collaboration, NCSoft plans to push its explosive game ” Heaven 2M ” to six South-East Asian countries on 20 May: Viet Nam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. The company had sold mobile phone games in South-East Asia, but the latest initiative marked the first time that NCSoft had established a joint venture in the region to provide localized services.
Viet Nam’s leading game company, VNG, is rapidly expanding to South-East Asian and Chinese markets and has been selected as a distribution and distribution partner by several Korean game companies. Meanwhile, Nexon is actively recruiting top-level game development talent in Viet Nam through its professional game service subsidiary, Nexon Networks.
In 2022, Nexon Networks established Nexon Dev Vina (NDVN) in Viet Nam, whose total number has increased to 90. The company is strengthening its cooperation with local development teams.
Since the end of 2024, the Korean Play Culture Consortium, in cooperation with the Korean Embassy in Viet Nam, has been organizing Korean Games Week to promote industrial and cultural exchanges between the two countries.
Korea’s leading game companies, including NCSoft, Nexon Korea, NHN and Pearl Abyss, were among the sponsors at the second event this year. The growing interest of Korean Games in Viet Nam is largely due to the country ‘ s huge market potential and low labour costs.
According to the 2022 report of the Global Markets Research Corporation Newzoo, Viet Nam has about 54.6 million game players, more than half of its 100 million people. In addition, game companies are particularly attracted to the competitive labour costs of Viet Nam. The annual salary of a junior game developer in Viet Nam is between 7 and 12 million won (approximately 3,63-622,000 yuan RMB), well below the Korean level.
According to Job Planet 2023, the average annual salary of Korean game developers is about 36 million won (approximately 186.5 million won). In large game companies, primary developers earn about 50 million won a year (approximately 259,000 won).
The representative of a Korean game company noted that Viet Nam ‘ s overall development capacity was strong, which had prompted not only large companies but also small and medium-sized players to increasingly outsource talent from Viet Nam.