[NEWS] BIGBANG EARNS 3.6 BILLION WON FROM GAME CHARACTER SALES

In July 2009, the Big Bang members were released as characters in an online game called "Sudden Attack". In the game, players are able to control the characters that are similar to the idols and listen to roughly 80 sound effects that the stars recorded themselves.



The developers of "Sudden Attack" stated that Big Bang sold 1.03 million characters between July and December 2009. Each character costs between 1,300 won (about 1.17 USD) and 18,900 won (about 17 USD).

A factor affecting the sales was the characters' increased strength in the event that all Big Bang characters were collected. When all of the Big Bang members were gathered, players had the opportunity to obtain a special primary weapon as well as receive unlimited grenades. This proved to be an enticing incentive to buy the characters.

Character sales went as follows: TOP - 38%, Daesung - 27%, Taeyang - 22%, and Seungri - 13%.
As G-Dragon's character was not sold as a single item, he was not listed on the rankings.

According to Game High, selling the Big Bang characters garnered a monthly average of 300 million won. Representatives of the company explained that their star marketing began with the singer Rain in 2008 and then spread to Big Bang and 2NE1; they pointed out that, in the first two weeks, Big Bang generated more revenue than did 2NE1 or Rain.

So how much did Big Bang earn from selling their characters in the game? In just one year, Big Bang has been estimated to have earned a whopping 3.6 billion won--about 3.25 million USD--from "Sudden Attack". However, the capital partitioning from game characters based on public stars is usually a 7:3 or 8:2 split between the game makers and the entertainment company. Therefore, YG Entertainment could only have earned a sum of roughly 1.1 billion won (about 1 million USD) from the game character sales, which is still a hefty amount considering the work the Big Bang members had to do after the characters' creation.

Considering that YG Entertainment made about 4.9 billion won (about 4.4 million USD) in 2009, the money generated from the games is a significant amount. According to game research company Game Tricks, over 10% of the time market share is held by "Sudden Attack", one of the top games played in Korea. Given these statistics, Big Bang is the most profitable of all of the celebrities selling game characters based off of them.

"Sudden Attack" has been a great opportunity for Big Bang to earn some well-deserved revenue, since many stars are paid about 200-300 million won (181 thousand to 271 thousand USD) for a six-month contract that includes modeling for games and shooting CFs. As a side note, T.O.P's strong charisma and intense eyes have managed to nab him a large sum of money as well as popularity in the game.

Source : MT via Flibbertigibbet (via koreaboo)