This July, Kakao celebrates the two-year anniversary of its mobile social gaming platform, KakaoGame. As the first mobile social gaming platform with roots in mobile messaging, KakaoGame has sparked the trend of integrating social gaming within mobile messengers. In the past two years, the unique KakaoGame platform has altered the perception of mobile gaming and its user demographic, and spearheaded the growth of the mobile gaming industry.When KakaoGame launched on July 30, 2012, mobile gaming was a pastime for teenagers and a smattering of people in their 20’s. Today, it's commonplace to spot parents and even grandparents playing mobile games, and even inviting their friends and families to play along with them. By weaving in KakaoTalk’s social network into mobile games, KakaoGame has attracted a wider mobile audience to gaming than any other mobile platform.
Currently, KakaoGame offers 520 games in partnership with more than 230 developers. More than 520 million accumulated subscriptions have been recorded for these games, and each month, more than 20 million users, or 40 percent of the entire Korean population, play games via Kakao. Moreover, an average player visits KakaoGame 5.2 times a week, signifying how mobile gaming has now become a deeply rooted part of Koreans’ everyday lives.
Based on this growth, accumulated sales of KakaoGame surpassed KRW 560 billion (~USD 560 million) in the first half of 2014, recording a 60 percent growth year-over-year. Naturally, this has also driven explosive growth for the entire mobile gaming industry in Korea.
We at Kakao look forward to joining with more collaborators from more countries, seeing new exciting titles on our platform and more and more users across the globe. Play on!