It has been confirmed that NCsoft, one of the big 3 game companies in the Korean game industry, has attracted consumers by advertising the accumulated number of subscribers. Besides, NCsoft had the largest number of cases in which game users were dissatisfied for the past five years and received relief from consumer organizations.

NCsoft announced on October 19 that its "Lineage M subscriber count exceeded 1000 million", according to data obtained from the National Assembly`s Chae Lee-bae, a member of the National Assembly`s Committee.

At the time, however, the number of subscribers did not exceed 10 million, and it was revealed that July 31 exceeded 10 million accounts, not subscribers. That is, they misled the number of subscription accounts into the number of subscribers, deceiving consumers, and noting that the actual number of accounts exceeded 10 million.

"The number of game subscribers and subscriber growth is one of the most important information about the game," stated Chae. "It is a typical consumer deceptive behavior that discloses false information by tricking the number of subscription accounts into the number of subscribers .

The Fair Trade Commission, on the other hand, also commented on the opinion of Chae`s lawyer, "If you think that you are attracting consumers and advertising facts and other information, you are likely to have violated the E-Commerce Act." However, FTC added that industry practices regarding the number of cumulative subscribers and the number of subscription accounts and actual consumer attractiveness should be further investigated.

On the other hand, NCsoft has been following the usual standards. Yun Jin-won, NCsoft`s chief global communications officer, stated, "We have followed the usual format of the content industry as we use the expression" 10,000,000 spectators in the movie industry. We are examining how to express the number of subscribers in the future."

Besides, NCsoft has left a stigma as the company that has received the most damages relief in the game. According to the Korea Consumer Agency, NCsoft had the largest number of game companies receiving 164 cases of damage relief over the past five years.

Among the victims, 147 cases (89.6%) of the total number of victims received refunds of game items, changes of some functions, and information about updates. Following NCsoft, Nexon had 130 games, Google Korea 102 games, and Netmarble Games 102 games. The total number of relief applications received by the top 10 game companies, which suffered the most from consumer damage, reached a total of 741 cases.

By Kwon Dae Gyung kwon213@


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