Starting with <Legend of Mir 2> there are many Korean online games hit Chinese gaming market successfully with millions of concurrent users(CCU) such as <Dungeon and Fighters> and <Crossfire>. Yet there are many failed ones too.
First of all, ESTsoft’s <Cabal Online> closes its Chinese service by next January.
<Cabal Online>’s Chinese publisher Moliyo(摩力遊) has continued to publish it although its publishing contract had expired two years ago, insisting they had one more year to provide the service. <Cabal Online> in China is still available in 2011.
While Moliyo has been developing <Cabal Online 2> secretly, ESTsoft has sued it for its illegal service of <Cabal Online>. Moliyo has been ruled to quit publishing the game and pay about US$473,000 to ESTsoft as compensation. You can read more about the controversial <Cabal Online 2> here.
Gravity’s MMORPG <Ragnarok Online> also ends by December 30, 2011.
It has been published in China since 2003 and had recorded 500,000 CCU in 2003, but its current publisher Shanda Games decided to end it because of surge of private servers, causing collapse in CCU and revenue. The publisher announced its closure last November 1 to the players.
EA-Neowiz Games’ online soccer game <FIFA Online 2> will withdraw from the China on its third year to the market.
The Chinese publisher The9 announced its withdrawal last November. In December 2010, it has agreed with EA about early termination of their publishing contract, notifying no minimum guarantee since the game had not really worked out well.
For <AIKA Online>, it actually had gained favorable feedback from the players but has closed its service as its local publisher has closed down due to difficulties in dealing with localization and auto-play programs.
Therefore Hanbit Soft re-signed the publishing contract with Wonder Games last September and announced its reopen would go within this year.
NCsoft’s <Lineage> and <Lineage 2> have changed their publisher to Tencents while nothing has been heard from Nexon’s <Planet Nexon> since its last CBT taken place last August.
