Sharing Is Good: Korea Void of Game Retailers
There's more to Korean gaming than StarCraft. There's also World of Warcraft, for example. From a laundry list of popular games to a rundown of internet cafe culture, Korean-based writer Nick Rumas sheds light onto the Peninsula's current scene. He writes:
To give you an idea of what things are like, I'll use the area in which I live — Yangju, a northern suburb of Seoul well within reach of the massive Seoul Metro -- as an example. The population, mostly made up of overflow from Seoul proper, is nearly 200,000, but there isn't a single dedicated games store to be found in the entire city. The closest would be in the neighboring city of Uijeongbu (population of around 450,000), but even there, you'll only find one fledgling shop in the dark recesses of an underground mall.The shop owner is a friend of mine, and he'll be the first to tell you that selling PC games in Korea is a dead end; he makes his money by selling console games, the kind that aren't copied so easily.
Try introducing a pricey game console into a culture where P2P sharing thrives and see how far that gets you. And with consoles looking more and more PC-ish, fat chance Korean gamers will bite. Why would they?
State of Korea [Gamasutra]