6 tips for starting a game on KakaoTalk

The mobile games market in South Korea is considered very attractive (and this is not surprising, given that Korean Google Play is the third most profitable in the world – after Japanese and American – approx.editorial offices). The most influential platform here is KakaoTalk.

Launching your product on Kakao is a difficult, but achievable task, the main thing is to know its inherent features and nuances, which, often, can delay the development process for several weeks, or even months.

A little bit about the platform itself. At the moment, Kakaotalk is the most popular messenger in Korea: the application is installed on more than 90% of all smartphones in the country. At the same time, the messenger is popular not only in South Korea, so potentially more than 120 million people can see your application.

Let’s look at the main points that can help you in the startup process.

1. Starter pack

So, you wanted to go to KakaoTalk, but where to start?

To begin with, you should fill out a simple form, thereby submitting a request for a review of your application. The answer to our request for the Shadow Fight 2 project came instantly, and… it was completely in Korean. Later it turned out that this is the standard form of the answer.

The response from a living person came only 2 weeks later: “We are glad that you chose us – we will evaluate your application.” It was a feedback directly from a KakaoTalk representative.

And after another month of waiting, a refusal came with the following wording: “Your game is really high-quality, but it may not interest our players – the selected art and setting are not close to our users.”

Refusal, of course, is not a reason to give up everything, and after a few months and a lot of updates, we sent the request again. This time we have already attracted the Korean manager, and therefore “all Korean gamers”.

It is difficult to say what influenced the change in the store’s position towards the project. Perhaps it was because the decision was made by another manager? Perhaps in the new content in our game: new zones, the introduction of magic and throwing weapons, changes in the plot.

Anyway, we were glad.

The response also contained:

• The minimum required list of documents (non-disclosure agreement, business agreement, etc.);
• Guide “what you need to do to get the Kakao SDK and start porting”. By the way, the requirements of this document were reduced to filling out the admin panel: the name of the game, the name of the company, and so on.

Tip: Having received all the necessary accesses to get started, I advise you to definitely visit this section to facilitate your subsequent development. Here you will find complete (sometimes redundant) information on how best to get involved on KakaoTalk.

2. Checklist

Immediately after filling out the necessary documents, you will have to face a checklist. Kakao managers pay great attention to him. In terms of content, this is quite an ordinary checklist that is used in most companies – a standard table with the fields pass, failed, etc.

But there are also features, for example, the must and selective fields. “Master”-om marked items necessary for execution, and “Selective”-om – additional, which, if desired, you can close your eyes.

In other cases, you can use:

• N/A – if it can’t be checked, or just another platform;
• Not tested – not tested;
• Failed – I think it’s not worth adding a fail to your own checklist.

The checklist is being checked and if any of the items are NOT filled in, you will be denied testing the build.

3. Test Requests

Having prepared the checklist, you can proceed to the next stage – sending the build by KakaoTalk employees for verification. The following form is used for this:

You have the right to request verification, for example, only by the checklist or just by the finished build, but it is worth considering that during the working week you can request only 2 checks of the test build.

However, for example, I was lucky: after making 4 requests, I safely received feedback on each of them. Despite this, I would not hope for luck, so try to put the maximum into the request.

3.1. A little bit about checkboxes

Do you see the checkboxes that you need to select when requesting testing?

Let’s talk about them:

• Security inspection – checking for the storage of user’s personal information (name, mail, age, KakaoID – whether it is encrypted or not);
• Policy inspection is a check of the build itself and the checklist;
• Sales log verification is not critical for testing test builds, but the build will not go to the release check without this item.

In a document called SalesLog_VerificationRequest, which you receive at the same time as the SDK for development, you must display a list of in-app’s of your application and make payments, i.e. essentially a payment report.

Perhaps the only non-obvious field is Service_user_Id, which is KakaoUserID.

KakaoUsedID, in turn, is a unique ID that will be assigned in your application to each player entering through KakaoTalk.

From my experience, I will say that when we first checked the document, we were refused because of the dissimilarity of the data (i.e. some values were recorded, and the server sent slightly different ones). We prepared better for the next review and indicated in LARGE LETTERS that the prices on Google Play vary according to the exchange rate, so there may well be small discrepancies here. Only then the check went successfully.

Tip: So that your application can be sent for release verification…

…all 3 of the above checkboxes must be checked in the Inspection reguest.

4. Feedback

It is worth paying tribute to the KakaoTalk team: feedback for any request comes quickly enough. At least if you get into working hours. Support will not only quickly and promptly tell you what is wrong – but also help with testing, removing logs and other small things.

Communication takes place through tickets.

Tickets are a forum by their specifics: there you will receive either positive or negative feedback on your verification requests.

To create a ticket, you need to go to the Ask section and select your application.

5. “Admin panel”

In the Kakao admin panel, any sneeze requires an apruva. It doesn’t matter if we are talking about adding a screenshot or replacing the name of the contact person.

After adding any changes, the “admin panel” will safely save everything and send it for verification. And here it is worth considering the following: if at least one comma, for whatever reason, Koreans do not like it, your request will be rejected, and ALL your changes made in this request will not be saved.

I would advise you to fill in all the fields in which you are sure and only then move on to the doubtful ones to save time.

Advice! The admin doesn’t get along well with the brain, it’s better to choose another browser right away in order to avoid a nervous breakdown.

6. Internal functionality

There are some points that you will have to face when porting anyway, I would like to briefly talk about them

6.1. Login and Guest Login

In KakaoTalk games, there are two ways to start the game: by logging in under your personal account or by logging in as a “guest”.

Guest login to the game should NOT save any user’s progress, i.e. if your game meant constant saving of progress, or, for example, can restore lost progress, then you will have to partially modify these things for guest login. Keep that in mind.

6.2 Income

KakaoTalk does not have its own payment system, however, all information about the income that you receive (whether it’s in-apps or advertising) must necessarily be transmitted to the platform.

This moment is stipulated in the SDK and is done fairly quickly. If the payment is successful and the log is sent, you will see “status: 0” in your log, which indicates that KakaoTalk will receive your payment log.

6.3 Korean

It’s simple: your localization should be perfect. Yes, testing is unlikely to go beyond the first 10-15 minutes of gameplay, but if you make a mistake in a phrase that was entered, for example, in the checklist, then you will get a refusal, even because of one word. Don’t take any chances.

conclusion

If you just want to pass the apruv, while minimally modifying the game, then you just need to configure:

1. Login to KakaoTalk;
2. Sending payment statistics.

And that’s it, your application will be accepted.

At the same time, if the moderators like it, it will get into the top of new products. If you want to establish permanent features and support for the platform, then, at least, you should make another in-game chat and add the ability to invite friends.