Mini games: China made them an industry, Korea opened the door again
In China install-free mini games spread on ads and became an industry on payments; in Korea, where KakaoTalk's first try closed in 2023, Toss, KakaoTalk and One Store reopened the field from 2025; global platforms keep opening and closing theirs one by one.
China's mini games spread through license-free, ad-supported hits such as 2022's Sheep a Sheep, and as paying games grew they became an industry of RMB 31.657 billion in the first half of 2026, 16.8% of the game market. In Korea, after Kakao Games closed its Snack Games in KakaoTalk (37 titles, 2016 to December 2023), Apps in Toss (July 2025; about 4,000 mini apps, some 800 of them games, by May 2026), KakaoTalk's Game Chip (June 2026; 81 games on 30 September) and One Store's OnePlay with Tencent (July 2026) reopened the field. Toss is an open market where anyone can publish, Kakao picks which games go up, and the money still comes mostly from rewarded ads. Among global platforms, TikTok, YouTube and Discord are expanding mini games, while Snap closed its games in 2022, Facebook took games out of Messenger in 2019 and ends its Web Games on 30 September 2026, and Telegram's Hamster Kombat fell from 300 million players to 41 million. The fields that last are the ones where the platform earns money, or users' time, directly from mini games.
Mini games played inside apps, with nothing to install, are an industry in China, a sixth of its game market. In Korea, where the field closed once in 2023, Toss, KakaoTalk and One Store have been reopening it since 2025, while global platforms, each on its own, keep opening and closing theirs.
China: spread on ads, grown on payments
fact WeChat mini games started in 2017 (DoNews). What put the field on the map was an ad-supported game. In September 2022, 《羊了个羊》 (Sheep a Sheep) went up from a personal account with no game license, and after a failed round players had to watch an ad to try again. On 15 September alone it logged 81.9 million attempts, and its servers went down several times (Sina Finance, checked 30 September).
fact The license is where the road forks. A game that opens virtual payments needs a game publication number (版号, the banhao), while a game that earns only from ads can go up with a software copyright registration or an electronic copyright certificate plus a self-inspection report (Tencent Cloud developer community).
fact Paying games came next. 《无尽冬日》, the WeChat version of the strategy game sold abroad as Whiteout Survival, launched in April 2024 and reached No. 1 in revenue within 29 days (CNR); in the second quarter of 2025 the tower-defense game 《向僵尸开炮》 took over the top spot (Gamigion). In the first half of 2026, China's mini-program games earned RMB 31.657 billion, 16.8% of the game market, two-thirds of it from in-app purchases (Xinhua, checked 30 September). The numbers are laid out in ‘Install-free games are a sixth of China's game market’.
China's mini games gathered players with ads and became an industry with payments. License-free ad games widened the door; licensed paying games grew the revenue.
Korea: reopening a field it once closed
fact Korea had tried before. From 2016 Kakao Games ran HTML5 mini games called Snack Games in the game menu under the More tab of the messenger KakaoTalk, and on 20 December 2023 it closed all 37 of them, saying the service could no longer be sustained (Minju Shinmun, 21 November 2023). Some games passed a million daily players early on, but limits showed in widening the audience and in monetization (Insight Korea, checked 30 September).
fact The second wave started at Toss, the finance app. Toss opened Apps in Toss in July 2025 with about 100 mini apps, and 100 days later, on 15 October, it passed 200 mini apps and 2.6 million cumulative users and moved to open beta (THE ELEC). It passed 1,000 in February 2026 and 2,000 in April (ZDNet); as of 7 May it had about 4,000, some 800 of them games, and this year Toss added ‘game software production’ to its business purposes (Edaily).
fact How Toss makes money is changing too. It took no fees from early partners, but it announced that an in-app ad commission would apply from 1 May 2026 (first planned for 1 April; Apps in Toss developer community, 29 April). Wemade Play's web version of Anipang 2, launched on Toss in January, has about 50,000 daily players (DigitalToday, 22 September).
fact Kakao opened Game Chip, a game menu under KakaoTalk's More tab, on 19 June 2026. It is a shelf for many publishers' games, and it grew from 58 on 29 June (Byline Network) to 81 on 30 September (our own count in KakaoTalk's Game Chip). Kakao Games, a separate company from Kakao, launched 25 on opening day (ZDNet). Kakao said its goal is more content to enjoy inside KakaoTalk, and Insight Korea named ads, payments and platform fees from in-house and outside publishers as new sources of revenue (Insight Korea). Neptune's Infinite Stairs went from a 270 MB app to 33 MB of HTML5 with loading under 10 seconds, and reached No. 1 on Game Chip within a week (DigitalToday).
fact One Store, a Korean app market, ramped up OnePlay, install-free play inside its store, in July 2026. It said it would release mini games one after another in cooperation with Tencent, and led with the RPG 검투사 키우기 (literally ‘Raising a Gladiator’), a top earner among WeChat mini games. Login and payment are tied to One Store (Daum News, 20 July). Neptune joined as a partner with 18 HTML5 games (Kyunghyang Games, 14 September). Danggeun (Karrot), the neighborhood app, also tested four games in its community tab in early June (Supple).
fact The way games get in differs as well. Apps in Toss is an open market: with no separate contract, even non-developers can open a console account and publish a mini app after review (Apps in Toss blog). On Game Chip, Kakao picks the games, weighing service quality and user experience (Byline Network), while One Store's OnePlay is being filled with WeChat games brought in with Tencent and games from its partner Neptune. Toss gathered 4,000 mini apps in ten months; Game Chip picked 81 in three. One side opens wide to grow the numbers; the other picks to keep a consistent feel.
fact Players find installing a burden. When Kakao Pay asked 46,224 people, about 70% said installing a new app for a single game felt like a burden (ZDNet). The money still comes mostly from ads: Game Chip uses rewarded ads rather than pop-ups (Byline Network), and players choose to watch a 15–30 second ad to refill energy (Asia Business Daily).
fact Mini games need a rating too. Toss points developers to two routes: apply directly to the Game Rating and Administration Committee (10–15 days of review), or enter the self-rating information they received from an app store (Apps in Toss blog).
Korea's second attempt comes with different conditions from the first. A shelf one publisher used to fill is now open to many; HTML5 games have become light and fast; and players are tired of installing new apps. What remains is the very thing that closed Snack Games: monetization.
Global platforms: some opened, some closed
fact Facebook opened Instant Games in Messenger and the News Feed on 29 November 2016, with 17 titles (Meta Newsroom). In 2019 it took games out of Messenger to make the app lighter (Pocket Gamer, 25 July 2019), and in August 2025 it announced that Facebook Web Games would end on 30 September 2026 and that Instant Games must move to ‘Zero Permissions’, which limits data sharing (PPC Land).
fact Snap opened Snap Games, played with friends from the chat, in April 2019 (TechCrunch), then in August 2022, cutting 20% of its staff, shut down its HTML5 Minis and Games, saying projects that do not directly contribute to community growth, revenue growth or AR would stop (The Register, 31 August 2022).
fact On Telegram, when the mini app store opened in August 2024, Pavel Durov said about 500 million people use mini apps every month (Cryptopolitan). Hamster Kombat, the tap-to-earn game that led that craze, launched in March 2024 and gathered 300 million players within months, but after a disappointing token airdrop in late September its monthly players fell 86% to 41 million by November (crypto.news).
fact Others are expanding. After piloting HTML5 mini games in July 2022 (TechCrunch), TikTok now runs them in ten markets including the US, Japan, Indonesia and Brazil, and sells in-game items through TikTok's own payments (TikTok for Developers). YouTube opened its free games, Playables, to all users in May 2024 (TechCrunch) and expanded to more than 50 markets on 28 September 2026, but there are no in-app purchases and developer access is still early access (PocketGamer.biz). Discord opened Activities to all developers in September 2024, with in-app purchases first for US, UK and EU developers on desktop (GIGAZINE).
On global platforms, mini games are a feature that serves the main business, and they get cut when they stop serving it. With no super app tying payments and games together, the paths to revenue are narrow and separate on each platform.
What differs
| China | Korea | Global platforms | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main venues | WeChat (500M+ monthly players) | Toss, KakaoTalk, One Store | TikTok, YouTube, Discord, Telegram |
| How games get in | Direct registration; paid games submit a license | Toss: anyone, after review; Kakao: picked; One Store: started with partners' games | Discord: anyone; YouTube: apply, then selected |
| Opened | 2017 | 2016 (Snack Games), again from 2025 | Each on its own, from 2016 |
| Scale | RMB 31.657 bn in H1 2026, 16.8% of the market | Apps in Toss: ~4,000 mini apps, ~800 games (May); Game Chip: 81 games (30 Sep) | Telegram mini apps 500M monthly (2024); YouTube in 50+ markets |
| Money | Purchases ~2/3, ads ~1/3 | Mostly rewarded ads; Toss ad commission from May 2026 | Mostly free and ad-supported; in-app purchases on TikTok and Discord |
| License and rating | A license if there are payments | GRAC rating | Varies by platform |
| Closed | — | Kakao Games' Snack Games (2023) | Snap Games (2022), Messenger games (2019), Facebook Web Games (2026) |
fact What separates those that last from those that fold is what the platform earns from mini games. In its second-quarter 2026 results, Tencent said its marketing services revenue rose 22%, noting that closed-loop marketing within WeChat helps mini games advertise more effectively on Tencent's ad properties (Tencent results release). WeChat earns both payment fees and ad spending from mini games. Snap, by contrast, closed them, judging that they did not serve its main business.
The fields that last are the ones where the platform earns money, or users' time, directly from mini games. What Korean platforms seek first from mini games is users' time, and Toss starting an ad commission reads as the next step.
fact The payment wall is coming down. On 13 November 2025 Apple's Mini Apps Partner Program set the in-app purchase commission for mini apps running inside another app at 15%, half the standard 30% (TechCrunch). The road for China's model, where payments are two-thirds of revenue, to cross into other countries has widened.
For a small studio making casual games, Korea today is a welcome starting line. A field that closed once has reopened on new terms, and the rules are still being written. Just as we looked into WeChat on its own, from the next post on we will research the platforms in this piece one at a time. Now is the time to find our place early and grow along with this field, at its pace.