On July 9, 2025, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (“MCST”) announced the revised draft amendment (“Revised Draft Amendment”) to the Enforcement Decree of the Game Industry Promotion Act (“GIPA”). The Revised Draft Amendment addresses the obligation to designate a domestic agent under the GIPA, which is scheduled to take effect on October 23, 2025. The Revised Draft Amendment would expand the scope of foreign game service providers subject to the domestic agent designation requirement compared to the previous draft amendment announced on April 24, 2025 (the “Draft Amendment” K&C Newsletter: Link).

Specifically, the Draft Amendment set forth the obligation to designate a domestic agent for a foreign game service provider that services a game “with at least 100,000 Korean users during the three months immediately preceding the end of the previous year.” However, the MCST removed this criterion and replaced it with “any game with an average daily number of installations of at least 1,000 on mobile devices used by Korean users during the previous year” criterion.

The MCST stated that it considered the fact that the app market operators, such as Google and Apple, publish lists of the 200 most popular games and that the number of average daily downloads for games ranked 200th is approximately 800 downloads. The MCST anticipates that approximately 90 foreign game service providers will be required to designate domestic agents under the Revised Draft Amendment.

The criterion of “average daily downloads of each app” does not exist in other laws and regulations, such as the Personal Information Protection Act and the Telecommunications Business Act, that also have the domestic agent designation requirement. This criterion appears to have been established for the following reasons: (i) while it is difficult for the MCST to obtain objective data on the actual number of game users, it is easy to confirm the number of downloads through app market operators and (ii) the Korean trade associations requested for an expansion of the scope of foreign game service providers subject to the domestic agent designation requirement due to the possibility of reverse discrimination of the GIPA enforcement against Korean game developers.

Interested parties can submit an opinion on the Revised Draft Amendment by August 18, 2025. However, since the MCST has already received a considerable number of opinions to incorporate into this Revised Draft Amendment, it appears likely that the Revised Draft Amendment would be finalized without any major further revisions. It would be advisable for foreign game service providers to review whether they will be required to designate domestic agents under the new criterion.