VietNamNet Bridge – Why can Chinese game firms distribute unlicensed games in Vietnam and how can they get payment from Vietnamese gamers?

The “special support”

The payment methods for Lemon Game’s “Rong Tam Quoc”.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) once asked ISPs to block the domain names of the games distributed by Koramgame. However, the webgames still have been surprisingly operational. This has raised the doubts that Chinese game firms receive the assistance from domestic firms to do this.

When analyzing the operation of Chinese games, inspectors found that “Hoa Son Luan Kiem”, “Tieu Ngao Tay Du”, “Demonslayer”, “Vung Dat Thu Linh Rong” were running on the IP address 123.30.235.161, while Hiep Khach Tam Quoc on 123.30.208.76, which both showed the relations with VDC Company in Vietnam as the IP owner.

While checking the IP addresses on VNNIC’s website (Vietnam Internet Network Information Center), the inspectors found that the addresses belong to 123.30.0.0 - 123.30.255.255 /16, the address area granted to the Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT).

With the same method, the inspectors found that Lemon Game’s “Rong Tam Quoc” and “Tram Tien” were running on 118.69.172.116, the IP address relating to FPT Telecom. VNNIC showed that the address belongs to 118.69.168.0 - 118.69.175.255 /21, the area allocated to FPT Telecom JSC.

As such, experts believed that Chinese game firms like KoramGame or Lemon Game set up their servers to distribute games right in Vietnam. Prior to that, some analysts guessed that the servers were set up in Hong Kong or China.

The special payment method

Analysts affirmed that Chinese game firms surely receive the “support” from Vietnamese payment service companies in collecting fees from gamers.

In principle, Vietnamese gamers can pay directly to the distributors with their credit cards. However, the number of such gamers is still very modest in Vietnam. Therefore, Chinese firms need the Vietnamese payment companies to act as the intermediary party.

The representatives of Vietnamese game firms have confirmed with Buu Dien’s reporters that KoramGame or Lemon Game have been supported by some Vietnamese big companies.

Lemon Game, for example, offers a lot of payment methods for its “Rong Tam Quoc” game, including the ones via Nganluong.vn, GATE card of FPT, Megacard of VNPT, Baokim.vn.

Buu Dien’s reporters, who tried to make payment via Nganluong.vn for “Rong Tam Quoc”, confirmed that the payment procedure was very simple.

How will the payment companies transfer money to KoramGame and Lemon Game? A businessman said that the money would follow different ways to reach the accounts of the game distributors. For example, the money would be remitted through the “gold trading floors”, or payment companies set up “bogus” business contracts.

“In general, this is a kind of money laundry,” he commented.

In 2013, the state management agencies carried out a lot of inspection tours to eliminate Chinese unlicensed games from the market. They forced a company to shut down and stop distributing games in the domestic game, while asking KoramGame to close myw.vn, gaubay.com game portals and “Phi Tien” and “Tien Canh” games.

However, these seem to be not enough to stop the “Chinese game wave.”

Buu Dien