During the time of social distancing under the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, playing mobile games has attracted many new players and is becoming more and more popular. This has caused the game market to explode.

According to NewZoo's global game market report, the game industry revenue in 2020 reached 159.3 billion USD, up 9% compared to 2019. Half of this belonged to the mobile game segment. Accordingly, mobile games for tablets and smartphones reached a total revenue of 77.3 billion USD, and mobile games for smartphones alone grew by 15.8% year-on-year.

Asia was the largest game market in 2020 when it accounted for nearly half of total revenue and was in the fast-growing group.

Vietnam is considered one of the potential game markets in Asia. Recent figures show that the game market in Vietnam has great potential and has made many breakthroughs.

In 2019, Niko Partners, a market research firm specialized in the Asian market, estimated revenue of the PC game market at $477.6 million and the mobile game market at $263 million in Vietnam.

Another report by Adsota in 2020 showed that Vietnam was the 4th largest game market in Southeast Asia in terms of revenue and it ranked 27th in the world in 2019. The company also predicted that Vietnam would have about 40 million people playing mobile games by 2020.

According to the App Annie 2020 rankings, Vietnamese game companies ranked 7th in terms of game downloads in the world. For every 25 games downloaded, one game was produced by a Vietnamese company.

From the Flappy Bird game – a hit in 2015 - until now, the list of leading game companies in Southeast Asia and the Pacific in terms of game downloads in the world in 2021 announced by App Annie has five companies from Vietnam.

According to the App Annie 2020 rankings, Vietnamese game companies ranked 7th in terms of game downloads in the world. For every 25 games downloaded, one game was produced by a Vietnamese company.

Despite having a lot of potential, the development of the game industry in Vietnam has certain barriers. Nguyen Quang Dong, Director of the Institute for Policy Research and Media Development (IPS), said: “Despite being a business with potential, or actually the only industry that can export digital content products of Vietnam to the world, playing games, making games or doing business with online video games in Vietnam has not received a positive and sympathetic view from society.”

Hoang Le Vinh, Director of Game and Simulation Department at Amanotes, said what the game industry lacks is an environment where lessons are shared with each other, helping each other develop together.

To build a strong gaming community and ecosystem in Vietnam, Google recently organized a series of Think Games Vietnam online events where individuals and game companies could focus on upgrading their capacity, seek financial resources, and at the same time build a healthy and sustainable game industry ecosystem in Vietnam.

Duy Vu

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