VietNamNet Bridge – President of VTC Online Phan Sao Nam said the 7,500 workers in the games industry have been waiting for a decree on online game management for 22,500 years.

FPT Online Managing Director Nguyen Van Khoa admitted at a recent workshop that his firm has been making games without licenses, though it knows this is a violation of the laws, because it has no other choice.

Khoa said that in the period from 2010 to June 2013, FPT Online fell into a crisis with minus growth year after year. Of the five licensed games, four have been shut down. The costs for games development are very big, while the company has suffered the “brain drain” in the market, where games firms have been mushrooming due to the lack of a legal framework on the game industry management.

In 2010-2013, the number of game firms soared from 12 to 40. The existence of unlicensed games, illegally imported games and foreign games, including the ones from China, have all put a hard pressure on domestic game firms.

Nam said that game firms have been awaiting a decree on game management since 2010, which they hope can drive the game market to the right track. There are 7,500 workers in the game industry, which means that the industry has been waiting for the decree for 22,500 years already.

A report showed that the revenue from games in 2012 was VND6 trillion, which made up 0.2 percent of GDP, a big bread earner. However, the tardiness of management agencies in setting up a legal framework to regulate the industry has put big difficulties for game firms.

According to Le Hong Minh, General Director of VNG, the game industry brings VND6 trillion in revenue directly collected from games. Besides, it’s necessary to count on the indirect earnings from other services, including café, computer trade, Internet and mobile services.

Minh said the industry has 20 million customers, employ 7,000 direct workers and 100,000 indirect workers.

Nguyen Van Hung, Chief Inspector of the Ministry of Information and Communication, also said that game firms have been put at a disadvantage when their game products cannot be licensed.

Duong Trung Quoc, a National Assembly’s Deputy has agreed to the proposal by game firms to remove the licensing scheme in order to facilitate the development of the game industry.

Quoc has noted that the game industry has fallen into a deadlock, warning that if management agencies do not change their management policies, they would hinder the development of an industry with great potentials.

Under the current regulations, every game must get the approval from the competent agencies which examine the content before they can be launched into the market.

Game firms said that Vietnam is the only country in the world which still maintains the policy on examining the content of every game before launching, which puts big barriers to firms’ business.

China is considered the country which also applies a strict management mechanism over games, but this aims to protect the local production. Meanwhile, the country does not license based on the games’ content.

Minh of VNG has noted that there exists a paradox in the game management. The currently applied management mechanism only makes firms’ wings clipped, while it does not help management agencies obtain their management goals.

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