Although spring has come, it seems that the Korean MMO
industry is still suffering from the winter cold. Since several new
policies about video games were announced by South Korean government,
they have thrown great pain to those online game-related companies. From
Feb. to March, several MMOs have been shut down in Korea. It is not
only a pity, but also shows the tough situation the Korean MMO industry
is faced with.


According to the Korean Media, five MMOs covering Black Shot, O2Jam, Katamari Damacy Online, Lime Odyssey and Requiem Online
were announced to shut down just in Feb. Black Shot, Lime Odyssey and
Requiem Online may survive overseas, but the other two had officially
come to the end.

Gravity's Requiem Online was the first MMO announced to
shut down in Feb. Following the announcement release on Feb. 2, all of
its Korean servers had been closed on 7, this month. Luckily, the
American server is not affected and all the original data of Korean
players will be transferred to the American server as well. So the
Korean players can pick up their game overseas.


Following Requiem Online, Vertigo Games' FPS title Black
Shoot will also shut down its Korean sever on March 30. Since Black
Shoot kicked its first CBT in March 2007, it has been aiming at
competing with Sudden Attack Online. According to Vertigo Games, Black
Shoot's Singaporean sever which was launched last year will be kept.

The shutdown of Lime Odyssey
is a real surprise. Regarded as the 3D version of Ragnarok Online ,
Lime Odyssey just kicked off its open beta test on Nov. 15, 2011 which
is only three month before now. Lime Odyssey will be officially closed
on March 30, but like the above two games, its abroad server in Hong
Kong, Macao, Taiwan, Japan and North America will keep running. The
future update won't be affected either.

Between the rest two,
Katamari Damacy Online is not that well known in South Korea and it had
been shut down on Feb. 22. However, the other one O2Jam which was
regarded as the ancestor of South Korean Music-genre MMO had been
running for 10 years. Unfortunately, it also failed to defend itself
from the winter cold and finally came to its end.


In addition to the above five games, gPotato also just announced lately that Prius Online and Luna Plus,
two South Korean MMOs published by them, would stop their service in
North American. As in South Korea, Luna Plus had been shut down as early
as June 1, 2011 with another MMO Iris Online.


With new games emerging and western blockbusters
invading, some South Korean MMO titles are faced with the risk of being
shut down home or abroad. Moreover, the rising of browser games which
requires less investment but can produce huge profit also made some
publishers shift their attention from domestic market to the global
market. It may be a way out, but these publishers also have to bear the
risk of what just happened to Prius Online. As for you, what is your
opinion about the winter cold and which Korean online game do you think
will be the next one to close?

not a suprice rely like i said bevore there are wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to many mmorpg out now and stil more comming with so many mmorpg pll dont no anymore what to play they jump from 1 to a orther

with that some companies lose alot of players and shuting down
when GW2 comes out alot of players jump to that game leaving the mmorpg they play now
death like a ghost town and this wil keep on going

its beter to shut down 50 % of all mmorpg and that companies work together so we get a much beter service what i stil see is very very bad with alot of mmorpg

stil to many hackers spammers no GM and so on they beter can focus on that then making a orther mmorpg but thats how i think XD