Korea's G-STAR games conference ends with lowest-ever attendance

Over the weekend, G-STAR, South Korea’s biggest annual games conference, was held in Busan. But after the curtain fell this year, the final attendance tally for the public portion of the show was just 188,707. That might seem like a big number, but it’s actually the lowest attendance G-STAR has ever recorded.

The drop in the final tally is a bit of a surprise, although last Friday it was announced that the show had already experienced a 12 percent year-on-year attendance drop following its first public day. At the time, the conference organizers speculated that the show opening on a Thursday (rather than a Saturday as it had last year) was the cause of the drop. But now, it appears the G-STAR folks believe the drop was caused by the separation of the public and business aspects of the conference this year.

It also didn’t help that the first two days of the conference overlapped with some important work for Korean high school students, which prevented many from attending. And several high-profile domestic developers including NCsoft, Neowiz, and Gamevil opted not to participate in this year’s G-STAR as a form of protesting the proposed 1% tax on South Korea’s video game industry.

Even so, though, attendance at the business side of the conference apparently grew 66 percent this year, thanks in part to an influx of overseas exhibitors and participants.