Google Suspected of Being Involved in Kakao’s Mobile Game Publishing Business

The ONE for Kakao, which is the first game that is published by Kakao, is failing to hold the attention of users. The game developed by Core Creative was released on the Google Play on June 3 but it has never joined the top 30 in the Google Play game app sales chart.

In fact, the game attracted no less than 1.1 million users during its advance reservation period before the official release. Industry experts point out that its recent poor performance is because of the tyranny of Google, which is dominating domestic game platforms. The game was first released on the Kakao Game Shop, not the Google Play. According to them, Google is purposely preventing the game from being searched in order to block the emergence of new game publishers.

According to mobile app market research firm App Annie, the One for Kakao ranked 38th in the game category of the Google Play on June 12. In general, a mobile game ranking 30th or higher in sales during its first three to five days is considered as a success. Kakao is claiming that the game was not searched well on the Google Play from June 3 to the morning of June 7. Kakao made an inquiry to Google but has received no satisfactory answer. 

Kakao is also asserting that its paid keyword search ad for the game on Google was abruptly interrupted on June 4 and on June 7 without any particular notice. The interruption was because the ad failed to follow Google’s guideline not allowing successive special characters, but Kakao is saying it cannot understand why the same advertisement containing the same successive special characters has to be interrupted all of a sudden. According to Kakao, the number of the game’s ad exposures was merely 700 from June 4 to 11:00 am, June 7, the moment of the interruption, whereas the number reached no less than 7,000 in just two hours from the subsequent resumption of the advertisement. It is said that this was for Google to get even with Kakao after Kakao did not choose the Google Play starting its game publishing business.

Kakao released the game on its own Kakao Game Shop on June 1 and the One Store on the following day. The One Store is a mobile app market run jointly by Naver, SK Telecom, KT and LG U+. On these platforms, game developers have to pay nothing to Google. According to the Korea Mobile Internet Business Association, in the meantime, the Google Play accounted for 51.4% of the South Korean app market last year, when the size of the market totaled 6.2056 trillion won.