Native game investment funds to be established in the New Year, will function as counter weapon against ‘China money’

New native game investment funds will be established and managed one after another as a weapon against the ‘China money’ in the New Year.

As not only venture capitals (VC), but also large-scale online game companies and new mobile game companies started investing in the game industry, they have emerged as a counter weapon against the Chinese capital that has increased rapidly in the last two years.

DEVSISTERS announced on the 1st that it would start managing an investment fund to a scale of KRW 10 billion targeting game business. For this, the company recently established an independent fund ‘DEVSISTERS Ventures.’ DEVSISTERS, which had developed a mobile game ‘Cookie Run,’ was listed in the KOSDAQ in October last year. .

DEVSISTERS Ventures was established to a scale of KRW 10 billion. It plans to invest in new business areas including games in the first half of the New Year. A DEVSISTERS source said, “In addition to new investments, we will carry out businesses that are helpful for the Korean game industry and its ecosystem.”

SundayToz and Smilegate also started managing the KRW 30 billion ‘ANi Pang’ fund last month. With this fund, the companies will invest extensively in digital contents development and platform-based technologies, such as for games and social network services (SNS).

SundayToz and Smilegate have achieved success with a mobile game ‘ANi Pang’ series and an online first person shooting (FPS) game ‘Cross Fire’ respectively. These companies are categorized as the rising power in the industry.

“These game companies record high operating income rates and have a large amount of cash. However, as they have not been able to find where to spend their money in, their investment potentials are higher than the existing companies,” said a game industry insider. “They need to establish diverse portfolios in order to continue on their successes. This is another reason for an increase in investment by the rising power in the industry.”

The existing large-scale game companies, such as Nexon, NCSoft and Netmarble Games, will also increase their domestic investments drastically. Netmarble Games incorporated a number of game developers as its subsidiary last year.

As for NCSoft, it is extending the scope of its business by recently investing in a new independent game developer ‘NOVN.’ Nexon has also invested in a number of mobile game companies including ‘Neptune’ last year.

Netmarble Games CEO Gwon Young-shik preannounced an aggressive investment following its physical spinoff from CJ Group last year, “We will use the investment fund acquired from Tencent on developing games and acquiring game developers.”

An increase in the capital market investment is also forecast. Korea Investment Partners has been managing a KRW 10 billion ‘Game in Fund’ centering on the first-generation game companies since July. It started the fund management operation full scale by selecting 9M Interactive as the first investment target last month.

Chinese companies are concentrating on securing game contents in the form of pre-harvest sale by investing around KRW 1 trillion in Korea’s game companies during the last couple of years.