A game category has finally been added to Korea’s App Store this morning. For nearly two years the game category had been blocked due to concerns from the Game Ratings Board about the content rating of games. To get around this, many users simply used a U.S or other international iTunes account to download games from the that country’s App Store. Nevertheless there were not many games made in Korean for the domestic market apart from a few in the ‘entertainment’ section of the App Store.
The block was an obstacle for many game developers and some even claimed that the government was holding back the game industry in a nation of gamers. Now that the category is open, competition is expected to heat up between mobile game developers, some who had already started preparing their products for the new market on news of the upcoming change.
The news also comes at a significant time for Apple as the iPhone 4S is due to be released on November 11th in South Korea.