Korea's 2021 Game Pay War: Nexon's Raise and the Aftermath

In February 2021, Nexon gave every employee an ₩8 million raise and set off a bidding war across Korean games. Krafton offered ₩20 million. NCSOFT paid interns a bonus. Five years later, the same companies are running voluntary retirement schemes. What happened?

On February 1, 2021, Nexon announced something no Korean game company had done before. Every employee would get an across-the-board raise of ₩8 million. New developers would start on ₩50 million a year, up from ₩42 million, and non-developers on ₩45 million, up from ₩38 million. At the time, the government's figure for the average starting salary at large Korean companies was ₩33.47 million.

Within six weeks, nearly every big name in Korean games had matched or beaten it. The 2021 pay war was the most dramatic moment in the industry's labour market, and its consequences are still being felt.

The race, week by week

The pandemic had been very good for games. Major Korean game companies' operating profits rose by roughly 18% to 42% in 2020, and developers were in short supply. Nexon's chief executive, Lee Jung-hun, framed the raise as a long-term investment in talent rather than a one-off reward, and the company said it would resume open recruitment, suspended since 2018.

The rest followed fast:

February 10: Netmarble gave ₩8 million to all staff at its headquarters and eight subsidiaries, about 3,000 people, and set starting pay at ₩50 million for developers.
February 22: Com2uS and Gamevil announced average raises above ₩8 million.
February 25: Krafton raised the bar to ₩20 million for developers and ₩15 million for others, with starting pay of ₩60 million for developers.
March 11: NCSOFT scrapped its fixed starting salary, set a minimum of ₩55 million for new developers, raised developers' base pay by at least ₩13 million and paid every employee, including interns and agency staff, a special ₩8 million incentive.

The backlash inside the boom

Not everyone was cheering. At smaller and mid-sized studios, the raises created a gap that was hard to close. At Webzen, a union formed in April 2021, partly over an opaque evaluation system. When the company advertised an average raise of ₩20 million, the union said the average hid wide differences and asked instead for a flat ₩10 million for everyone. Talks failed, and in April 2022 members voted on strike action with a turnout of 92.78%.

Other critics pointed out that big fixed raises lock in costs that do not fall when the hits stop. That warning turned out to be right.

The hangover

The boom ended with the pandemic. New releases disappointed, Chinese competitors grew stronger in Korea's mobile market, and labour costs stayed high.

NCSOFT felt it most. From October 28 to November 8, 2024, it ran its first voluntary retirement programme in 12 years. About 500 people applied and about 400 were approved, with severance of 20 to 30 months' salary depending on service. The company also spun off development teams into separate studios. Its headcount fell from 4,886 in 2024 to 3,170 at the end of 2025, a drop of 35.1%, and its research and development spending fell from ₩421.8 billion to ₩325.1 billion.

Others moved more quietly. Krafton offered voluntary resignation to about 200 employees from November 2025, even as it raised R&D spending to ₩612.2 billion. Nexon largely stopped new hiring and moved existing staff between projects.

Why it matters

The 2021 pay war changed what a Korean game job pays, and that change has largely stuck. But it also showed the limits of buying talent with fixed salary rises in a business where revenue swings with each launch. The companies that did best afterwards were the ones with a global hit, not the ones that paid most.

WGC's take: the lesson is not that developers were overpaid. It is that pay built on one boom year needs a shock absorber. That is why profit-sharing, the demand at the heart of the 2025 Neople strike, is now the next frontier. For current salary figures, see our 2026 pay round-up.