VietNamNet Bridge – Distributing unlicensed games, using obscene images to advertise the games and evading tax, the game firms from China have been damaging the Vietnamese game market.

Unlicensed games challenging watchdog agencies

KoramGame has been well known as the most “bold-faced” Chinese firm with the highest number of unlicensed games distributed so far in Vietnam. The inspectors from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism once released the documents, requesting ISPs to block the firm’s games.

The state management agencies reportedly many times inspected myw.vn, gaubay.com, the game portals provided by the firm. However, its games still have been distributed in the open air in Vietnam.

The game with the Vietnamese name “Hiep Khach Tam Quoc”, for example, still has been available at hiepkhachtamquoc.com, while “Tieu Ngao Tay Du” at hoasonluankiem.com, while “Vung Dat Thu Linh Rong” at vdtlr.com. Especially, “Demonslayer” has been running on a website with the domain name “.vn”.

The Chinese firm not only distributes webgames, but mobile games as well, including “Mong Hiep Khach”.

Buu Dien newspaper has quoted its sources as saying that after being inspected by the watchdog agency, KoramGame has temporarily shut down myw.vn and gaubay.com portals.

However, the firm still has been advertising the game on Facebook’s Fanpage. KoramGame has also told its workers to work from home instead of its office.

Lemon Game is another Chinese well-known game distributor in Vietnam. Besides “Wartune” at wartunevn.com, “Tram Tien” at tramtien.com, or “Rong Tam Quoc” at rongtamquoc.com, it has launched two mobile games in Vietnam - Qtien and Pocket Empire.

Lemon Game has been present in Vietnam through AFOO, a company based in Tan Binh district in HCM City. The legal entity registered its operation as a computing company, but in fact, it has been carrying out the activities of advertising Lemon’s games in the domestic market.

Serious consequences anticipated

Chinese game firms have been found as playing dirty tricks in their unhealthy competition with Vietnamese firms.

The Chinese companies buy the Vietnamese games’ keywords on Google, because of which searchers would find their games instead of Vietnamese games when googling.

Especially, in most of cases, the Chinese companies use obscene images to lure gamers. The images have even been posted on some Vietnamese websites.

By distributing unlicensed games and not setting up official representative offices in Vietnam, Chinese enterprises have caused big losses to the State, which cannot collect tax from their business activities.

The most dangerous thing latent in Chinese games, according to the experts, is that the games’ contents cannot be censored. This gives great opportunities to Chinese to integrate political issues into the games to carry out political propaganda campaigns illegally in Vietnam with wicked intentions.

Some months ago, a domestic company was forced to stop distributing a game which showed the image of the U-shaped line.

State management agencies have been urged to keep stricter control over the domestic game market to find out the illegally operational Chinese game firms. Experts have also warned about the immeasurable consequences Chinese may cause to Vietnam, not only economically, but also politically.

Buu Dien