Almost 8 million people visit Neowiz’s online gaming portal Pmang Money each month, and the company generates more than $127 million in revenue annually. Its specialty is casual games, such as sports, board, card and “first-person shooter” games that attract heavy traffic because they don’t require a lot of bandwidth or time to play, and they transfer easily to mobile devices.
One way Pmang makes money is through virtual money it gives players 피망머니상org who play its games. Once a player runs out of the free daily allotment, however, they have to pay with real cash to continue playing if they want their characters to level up or upgrade their weapons.
Another way the game makes money is by letting users create multiple accounts for their characters and switch between them in mid-game. This allows them to earn more in-game currency, but also leads to a huge amount of drama and infighting among the game’s community, which is full of Korean players who lash out at non-Koreans in the English language, shouting phrases like “SPRAYER NOOB PIG AMERICAN” and “AMERICA IS MURDERER BAN!” and promptly get banned from the game.
ney is the virtual currency that gamers use to buy costumes, weapons and equip their characters. It’s not a requirement to play Neowiz games, but it helps keep the service free for everyone.
Unlike the big US gaming companies, Neowiz doesn’t charge subscription fees to play its games. Instead, the company turns its online traffic into revenue with two tricks. One is a virtual money system called Pmang that lets players trade real-world money for the virtual stuff. The other is to offer upgrades for the game that require players to pay with money.
For example, S4 League is a Korean-only title where speaking English in-game can get you a quick ban. Another example is the ridiculously draconian account registration process that PMang requires for non-Koreans. It includes things like a Korean social security number and phone number or three forms of state-issued ID from another country scanned and submitted to the company.
If you are having trouble getting your points, lives or levels to update, it could be due to too many users playing at the same time. This causes the server to process data slowly and sometimes it sends wrong level information.
