The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA)'s supervised support program, '2026 Korea Indie Game Dev Camp', has been embroiled in a fairness controversy. While the original purpose was to discover promising projects in the planning stage, allegations have been raised that many games already in advanced stages of development were selected. Additionally, with over 1,400 applications reportedly reviewed in just two days, questions are being raised about both the program's intent and the credibility of the evaluation process.
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The 2026 Korea Indie Game Dev Camp is KOCCA's flagship support program, operating with a total budget of 6 billion won allocated by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. It provides scale-up support from the planning stage through initial builds, prototypes, and vertical slices (high-quality demo versions) for promising projects. Eligible applicants were limited to "corporations and individual business owners with creative ideas (plans) who have been in business for less than 7 years."
What drew attention to this program was its generous support policy. Upon final selection, companies receive up to 140 million won per project, while individuals receive up to 85 million won in development incentives. The funds can be used autonomously. Additionally, the program is linked to follow-up support from seven companies—Neowiz, Discord, Smilegate, Com2uS Holdings, Krafton, Toss (Viva Republica), and Pearl Abyss—attracting significant interest from indie game developers.
The controversy erupted during the selection process for the excellent planning stage. On April 20, KOCCA announced a total of 130 projects (70 corporate, 60 individual) for the first excellent planning stage. However, the selection results sparked backlash from the field, with complaints that it "doesn't align with the competition's intent."
According to KOCCA's support announcement, projects that have been released or are scheduled for release within three months (including early access) are ineligible to apply. However, some of the selected teams reportedly included games that had already opened Steam store pages or released near-launch demo versions. This raised criticism that it contradicts the program's original purpose of discovering new projects.
Criticism also emerged that the review process was rushed. A total of 1,461 applications were submitted, and 43 judges were appointed. The problem is that the judges conducted reviews for only two days, from April 8 to 9. Although divided into seven groups, each group had to review over 200 entries. Simple calculations show that each work received less than 10 minutes of review time, leading to assessments that proper verification was difficult.
Professor Kim Jung-tae of Dongyang University's Game Department stated, "There can be debate about evaluation criteria depending on which group with what tendencies one is assigned to," adding, "The biggest problem is the review period. With only two days, proper verification is physically difficult."
KOCCA announced it will cancel selections and reclaim funding from ineligible recipients. Gaps created by canceled projects will be filled with works from the reserve list. However, the list of reserve candidates has not been disclosed, adding to transparency concerns.
Kim Jung-seok, a manager at KOCCA's Game Strategy Office, said, "We plan to terminate support for projects that don't align with the original support intent, such as games in advanced stages of development," adding, "We will form an internal review committee on May 20 to decide on termination of support." He continued, "The review committee will consist of personnel who participated in the previous evaluation or game-related expert committee members selected according to internal principles."
Plans for process improvement were also announced. Manager Kim stated, "As the number of applications more than doubled from last year, we keenly felt the need for evaluation system improvements," adding, "In the future, we will improve processes to predict such demand in advance and reflect it in conditions and procedures."
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