Carriage driven by horse appears in Pangyo by angry game users

At 10 a.m. on Monday near Pangyo station in the city of Seongnam, a white carriage driven by a black horse was on a six-lane road with cars. It was a demonstration of users of a mobile game titled Uma Musume Pretty Derby against Kakao Games. The carriage circled the station for about six hours with the banners saying ‘stop discriminating Korean and Japanese users’ and ‘continued user deceit’.

Uma Musume Pretty Derby is a mobile game developed by Japan’s Cygames and published by Kakao Games in Korea at the end of June. It is about raising horse girls who were modeled after racehorses. The game ranked first in Google Play and Apple Store sales only a month after the release at the end of July.

Users took to the streets because of Kakao Games’ poor operation of the game. For example, key items were deployed for a year in Japan but only for a month in Korea; main events were announced three weeks before in Japan but only three days before in Korea.

Game users have been raising their voices actively by holding a truck protest and boycotting the game. Observers say this kind of situation happened because it has become easier for users to come together thanks to the rise of online communities as well as the nature of millennials and generation MZ who are very sensitive about fairness.


beepark@donga.com