S.Korea's gaming industry reaches $15.7 billion in scale

South Korea's game industry in 2021 saw sales of over 20 billion won ($15.7 billion), ranking the country fourth on the global market. 

The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) on Monday said this in its 2022 white paper on the domestic game sector based on 2021 data like statistics from the domestic and foreign game industries and trends in the field. Korea's game sector in 2021 earned 20.9 billion won in sales, up 11.2% from the year before and the first time that it broke the 20 billion won mark.

Growing every year since 2014, the Korean game industry was forecast to reach 22.7 trillion won in value last year according to KOCCA.

Smartphone-based mobile games led all game types in sales with 57.9% or 12.1 billion won.

PC games took up 26.8% of revenue with 5.6 trillion won, console games 5% with 1.5 trillion won and arcade games 1.3% with 273.3 billion won. Game platforms all saw sales growth except consoles, which saw a year-on-year decline of 3.7%.

In 2021, Korea's game exports rose 5.8% from the year before to $8.6 million or 11.2 trillion won.

Write to Han-Gyeol Seon at always@hankyung.com