Korean game revenue rises 19.3% as venture investment falls 76.3%

South Korea's game industry posted about 13.3427 trillion won in revenue in the first half of 2026, up 19.3% year over year, according to a Korea Creative Content Agency report cited by digitaltoday.co.kr. Over the same period, venture investment in the game sector fell 76.3% to 424 billion won.

Exports reached about 4.1855 billion dollars in the first half, up 18.3% year over year. Total new venture investment across industries tracked by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups came to 8.8676 trillion won, up 54.3% — with games the only sector to record a decline.

Games' share of total new venture investment dropped from about 3.1% in the first half of 2025 to 0.5% in the first half of 2026. In March 2026, NCSOFT named IP enhancement, new IP acquisition and mobile casual business as its three growth pillars, targeting 5 trillion won in revenue by 2030, after two years of reorganising its business portfolio to improve management efficiency.

Funding named top difficulty

Of 120 game companies surveyed by the agency, 60% cited funding and fund management as a major management difficulty, and 43.3% reported trouble securing and retaining staff. Nearly all — 99.2% — said they would keep their main business scale unchanged over the next six months, while 0.8% planned to expand.

On strategy, 69.2% chose strengthening core business capabilities among their top two priorities, 30.0% chose improving and diversifying operating capital procurement, and 26.7% chose expanding new business. NCSOFT's mobile casual business brought in 169.7 billion won in the second quarter of 2026, about 22% of its 770.5 billion won total revenue.