The Era of AI Agent
2025년 03월 13일From the launch of the game to its distribution
The gaming industry is often similar to the blockbuster movie business: games developed with large investments have a solid storyline, high-quality graphics, sound, and protagonists.
Therefore, the game industry also determines the rise and fall of games based on capital power. Still, unless you are a large game company or unicorn company in Vietnam, it is not easy to succeed by purchasing good games from overseas, such as movie imports and distribution, and localizing and marketing them in Vietnam. (Of course, this does not mean that expensive games will always succeed locally.)
Publishing business for localization of overseas games
Game publishing, as I mentioned, has similarities to the film industry. In the case of overseas films, once they are officially imported through Hollywood-centered production companies, they are localized. We create subtitles, promote them online and offline, select theaters to show them, and move them to IPTV or online OTT when the theaters are finished. Of course, it's not a long tail, but you need to pay for it and make a profit as soon as possible before the popularity of the movie cools down.
In the case of the game industry, there is a series of processes from localization (adjustment of language, images, and game logic) to licensing, marketing, payment, continuous product monitoring, testing, gamer community management, and customer management.
Funtap's Game Localization (Source: Funtap internal)
According to Forbes in Vietnam, the size of the Vietnamese game publishing market is estimated to be around $750 million (including mobile and PC games).
Major Vietnamese publishing companies include VNG, Funtap, VTC Online, etc., and some overseas publishers also occupy the Vietnamese market.
Major game publishers in Vietnam (Source: Produced by TechValley)
The characteristics of major publishers in Vietnam are that most of them have investors, and they prioritize the distribution of games from these investors.
For example, VNG Gaming Company in Vietnam will exclusively release games from Tencent in China, which is its largest shareholder, and will have priority rights in publishing.
In fact, the competitiveness of games released in Vietnam is still weak, so about 85% of the games we publish are imported from overseas, and Chinese games account for more than 70% of them.
The reason why Vietnam likes Chinese games is that licensing fees are relatively low and they work well on low-end mobiles, but war games based on game culture, action, and history similar to China are still popular.
How much money goes into publishing?
Funtap typically takes 3~6 months of localization preparation before launching a game on the market.
After that, when the game is released, full-fledged marketing activities will begin online and through social media for about 2 months.
The game's launch event is similar to the premiere before the movie screening (Source: Funtap internal)
According to Funtap, a Vietnamese game publishing company, publishing costs are generally more than 100 million ~ 500 million won per game.
While the lifecycle of a game is usually at least one year, it is said that to reach the BEP (Break Even Point) break-even point, you need to be more active in advertising and community activities.
Is Vietnam's game revenue doing well?
So far, the revenue of Vietnamese game publishers is not very high.
ARPU for gamers is around $4.7 per month, and most of the revenue comes from in-game advertising (IAA) and in-app payments (IAP).
The profit margin of a major publisher is around 5~10%, and it can go up to 15% depending on the hit.
According to Sensor Tower, Vietnam ranks 8th in the world in terms of mobile game downloads (more than 1.2 billion) in 2022, but it ranks 30th in the world in terms of game item purchase (IAP) revenue, with about $147.4 million.
How long is the preparation period for publishing?
Funtap typically takes about 3~6 months of localization preparation to prepare pre-production work before launching the game to the market.
During this period, we need to obtain a game license from the Vietnamese government, and we invest in marketing in the first two months before and after the official release of the game, such as localization (language, local VND payment, etc.), additional game development, payment partnership, testing, etc.
Publishers then need to pay attention to a number of important metrics, such as churn rate, how much money gets players to download and play the game, the number of players per day/month, and the average amount of money players spend over 30~60~90 days.
Efforts to improve gaming profitability
Even if games are published and distributed in Vietnam, it is expected that it will still take time to monetize Vietnamese games due to the high licensing costs of overseas games and the corresponding publishing costs.
Therefore, Vietnamese publishers produce their own original games through studios through their own investment or external investment and try to distribute games through their own publishing networks. It's similar to how Netflix delivers its own content to viewers using its platform.
This part can be burdensome for game publishers, but for small casual games, it has the advantage of reducing the cycle of game production and distribution.
Vietnamese publisher FunTap currently has six studios in Vietnam (both internal, invested, and donated capital) and plans to further invest in external studios to develop game productions, looking forward to serving the global gaming community.
Funtab's main studio (source: Funtap own material)
Conclusion
Vietnam has 74 million internet users, 73 million novel network users, and 42 million game users out of a population of 100 million.(42% of the population is a gamer)
Vietnam's game industry is not just targeting game users, but also has a variety of influences including digital content, media, payment, AI, and the metaverse industry.
It is worth paying attention to how Vietnamese game companies will overcome the big challenges of creativity, monetization, and globalization of Vietnamese games in the future.
In Vietnam , there are no regulations on game use like in Korea and China, so the game industry is expected to develop gradually. On the other hand, the majority of games are dependent on Chinese game companies for acquisition, and the problem of game copyright still exists.
In addition, due to frequent lines and internet speed problems in Vietnam, poor infrastructure is expected to be improved through Game Platform, Cloud, and CDN in the future.
TechValley Vietnam has been providing cloud environment construction, design, and operation services for publishing MMORPG games such as ITOXI, INFLINKER, and SuperGirls in Korea in Vietnam since July 2024.
For those who are considering cloud migration in games, media, and general corporate IT environments, we provide free experience, construction, and design consulting for AWS, Microsoft, and Vietnam Local Cloud services.
