• The Journal of Society for e-Business Studies
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.55-66
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• 2021

The mobile application (APP) market is growing at an unprecedented speed. Amid such growth, the global platform providers are mandating exclusive in-app payments and charging 30% for platform commission fees. A serious tension has arisen between mobile global platform providers and local content providers. The present study attempts to analyze the domestic mobile game market and in-app payment commission fees. This study estimates the size of the domestic mobile game market and platform commission fees by directly using publicly available financial statements and footnote information of some representative listed mobile game firms. Also, the study analyzes the cost structures of the same sample firms and attempts to draw some implications on sustainable growths of the mobile game ecosystem. We estimated that, in 2019, the domestic mobile game market is around 4.9 trillion Won and the ensuing in-app payment commission fees market was 1.5 trillion Won. High market share firms display a proportional increase in in-app payment commission fees in relation to sales growth. This, in turn, makes the in-app payment commission fees a primary cost item far exceeding employee salaries and R&D expenses. During the same period, low market share firms generated a mere profit or experienced net loss. Analysis of the cost structure reveals that these firms are even more liable to higher in-app payment commission fee cost structure than high market share. Most constituents of the mobile game ecosystem are small business entrepreneurs. By employing a micro-level analysis, the study estimates that, in 2019, a representative median firm generates 530 million Won in sales. At the same time, it spends 190 million Won in employee salaries, 50 Won million in R&D and 190 million Won in in-app payment commission fees, respectively. In the absence of other cost items, these three cost items alone account for 73.8% of sales revenue. The results imply that a sustainable growth of the local mobile game market heavily depends upon the cost structure of such representative median firm, the in-app payment commission fees being the primary cost item of such firm.

• Journal of Korea Entertainment Industry Association
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.163-171
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• 2020

Currently, most of the mobile game market releases games through Google play and App Store, which have a high share. Because it uses a third-party platform, only the payment API system provided must be used, and third-party platform pays the game company after excluding certain fees. Because game companies do not know whether or not to refund items and cannot get back items through third party transactions, users and professional websites are continuously appearing that exploit refunds. In this thesis, after analyzing problems of existing payment method and presenting a payment model using blockchain smart contract, we analyzed differences from existing model in terms of transparency, decentralization(fee), efficiency, and as a result, payment model using smart contract has low commission through P2P transaction without third parties and transparent transaction record, preventing item forgery and refund. Later, the proposed payment model would lead to the culling of companies acting on behalf of refunds for words that deviate from moral ethics such as "Refund OK even with items" and resolve the problem of unreasonable fees that arise through third-party platforms.