Some Facts on Korean RMT Transaction

January 30th, 2007 Jun Sok Huhh Posted in news |

It's been so long! Anyway, we are back now. Some interesting facts on Korean RMT transactions are come by. Let me share these with you, old-time visitors.

1. The Volume of Transactions 

* The volume of transaction is measured by 1M Korean Won (KRW), 1M KRW = 1,000 USD

Last year, Korean Game Developing and Promoting Institution(KGDI) announced an official estimation on the volume of the RMT transaction. AS expected, mediation took the largest part of it. Korean mediators have got nearly perfect safety measures for item trading in line with clearing institutions such as banks, mobile service providers. Although Their status has not been clearly legal, they organized a lot of things for safe transactions.

Also, I've got some survey results on RMT experiences of players. Personally, I don't think that it is well organized survey in some respects, but something is much better than nothing. I'll report two major ones, but if you are interested in some other results, consult me via e-mail or comment. A caution might be given that casual/action category is somewhat different from Western 'casual'. As "casual" games in Korea is actually close to arcade style action games, Poker or other many types of puzzles are not included. The "Go-Stop", Extremely popular traditional card game, is categorized into "Poker/Puzzle".

2. Composition of RMT Transactions

 
* The number of total respondents is 438.

As expected, transactions by game money took large parts for MMORPG. It tells that RMT economy in MMORPG takes more general forms of monetary circulation. Usually, casual games in Korea  are based on the micro-payment model, so players depend less on RMT transactions outside game itself.

3. Motives for RMT

A - For more quality game play
B - For faster power levelling
C - For re-sale(leverage)
D - For decoration of my characters
E - For compensating insufficient play time
F - For breeding another characters
G - For making money
H - There is no other way but RMT to keep on playing

*  respondents answered for above each 8 motives with 5 points scale.
** a.p. means average points.

It seems that A, B, E motives are not to be separated, for all of three share a general power-levelling intention. These three got relatively more high points than others. Interestingly, judging from results C and G, pure business-end RMT motives for player side is not so large yet.