Smilegate Signs MOU with Vietnam’s VTCO to Bring STOVE to the Local Ma… 2025-11-18

■ In a Market Without Steam, STOVE Poised to Become Vietnam’s Only Legal Open Platform by 2026

■ Smilegate and VTCO Have Maintained Over a Decade of Partnership, Driving the Success of “CrossFire (CFVN)”

Paek, Young Hoon, Smilegate Holdings Megaport Division CEO (left), and Le Viet Hoa, CEO of VTCO (right), pose for a commemorative photo after signing the agreement on the 18th at Orange Planet in Gangnam-gu, Seoul.

Smilegate announced on the 18th that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with VTC Online (VTCO), a subsidiary of Vietnam’s state-owned media group VTC, to the local rollout of its game platform STOVE in Vietnam. Together, the companies will build the country’s only open game platform that fully complies with local laws and regulatory review procedures.

The signing ceremony was attended by Paek, Young Hoon, Smilegate Holdings Megaport Division CEO; Yang Sung-Yul, Head of the Platform Division; VTCO CEO Le Viet Hoa; Vice President Lee Yong-deuk; and Le Quang Tu Do, Director General at Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Through this agreement, Smilegate and VTCO will collaborate to:

• Launch STOVE in the Vietnamese market

• Establish Vietnam’s only official and legal game-distribution framework

• Build a distribution pipeline for domestic and global content providers seeking to enter Vietnam

• Identify and develop promising local game studios

VTCO is a major game publisher under Vietnam’s state-owned media group VTC. In addition to game publishing, the company operates payment services, esports businesses, and a national media network infrastructure, positioning it as a highly public-oriented enterprise. VTCO has long managed the Vietnamese service of Smilegate’s “CROSSFIRE(CFVN),” accumulating strong performance and operational expertise over many years.

The two companies will jointly establish a legal open-game distribution framework tailored to Vietnam’s regulatory environment and activate a phased roadmap with the goal of launching the “STOVE Vietnam” beta service in the second quarter of 2026. Smilegate will provide the platform, technology, and operational support, while VTCO will handle regulatory processes, oversight, and local business execution based on the capabilities of its state-owned group network.

Vietnamese authorities are currently strengthening regulatory oversight of open platforms and restricting Electronic Software Distribution (ESD) services that target global markets.

Given this context, the partners aim to establish STOVE as Vietnam’s only open game platform and develop it into a key gateway for domestic and global content providers entering the Vietnamese market.

Paek, Young Hoon, Smilegate Holdings Megaport Division CEO, said, “By combining Smilegate’s platform capabilities with VTCO’s local network and regulatory expertise, we expect to provide users with a trusted distribution environment and developers and publishers with stable service infrastructure,” adding, “STOVE will continue to expand aggressively to become a competitive game platform in the global market.”