Demand for Unity’s game engine soars as Korean game industry goes mobile

Unity, a licensed game engine, is in full throttle in South Korea as the domestic industry is seeking a major shift to the mobile sphere with the engine.

According to Unity Technologies Korea, eight mobile games that have been or will be launched in Korea this year are based on its game engine as increasingly more companies here are making mobile versions of their popular PC games.

“Unity’s game engine, optimized for mobile game development, is supporting legendary games that will be released again on the mobile platform,” a company official said.

As of the fourth quarter last year, about 50 percent of the top 1,000 mobile games worldwide were made using the Unity game engine. In the third quarter, 56 percent of 50 most profitable games on Korea’s Google Play Store were made by the Unity game engine, the company said.

Korean game company Nexon’s The Kingdom of the Winds: Yeon -- a mobile version of its popular PC game Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds that has been serviced since 1996 -- was released on Wednesday based on the engine.

Netmarble’s mobile baseball game Magumagu 2020 and dinosaur adventure game StoneAge World released on July 8 and June 18, respectively, also run on Unity game engine. The two games are based on original PC games Magumagu and StoneAge, respectively.

Riot Games’ League of Legends: Wild Rift -- a mobile version of its popular PC game League of Legends -- and Webzen’s R2M -- a mobile version of its 14-year-old MMORPG PC game R2 -- are also based on Unity game engine and are set to be released in the second half of this year.

By Kim Byung-wook (kbw@heraldcorp.com)