• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2005.09a
• /
• pp.729-729
• /
• 2005

• Information Systems Review
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.159-176
• /
• 2021

Obviating user churn is a prominent strategy to capitalize on online games, eluding the initial investments required for the development of another. Extant literature has examined factors that may induce user churn, mainly from perspectives of motives to play and game as a virtual society. However, such works largely dismiss the service aspects of online games. Dissatisfaction of user needs constitutes a crucial aspect for user churn, especially with online services where users expect a continuous improvement in service quality via software updates. Hence, we examine the relationship between a game's quality management and its user base. With text mining and survival analysis, we identify complaint factors that act as key predictors of user churn. Additionally, we find that enjoyment-related factors are greater threats to user base than usability-related ones. Furthermore, subsequent quasi-experiment shows that improvements in the complaint factors (i.e., via game patches) curb churn and foster user retention. Our results shed light on the responsive role of developers in retaining the user base of online games. Moreover, we provide practical insights for game operators, i.e., to identify and prioritize more perilous complaint factors in planning successive game patches.