4 Major Hurdles Facing the Webtoon Industry
Time for some hard truths.
I had the amazing opportunity to attend Anime Expo with an Industry Pass two weeks ago and the experience has left me enlightened. The opportunity to meet with multiple webtoon and anime industry folks from all over the world (but most the western market) expanded my horizons.
And it caused me to ask myself a question that I’ve been avoiding for a while now: what’s next to go wrong with the webtoon industry?
More is better, until it’s not. And now, it’s definitely not.
One of the biggest advances in the Korean webtoon industry was scaling and speedrunning translation/typesetting for the hundreds of titles month into a variety of languages. This means it’s cheaper and easier than ever for webtoon studios to have their titles translated into English, Spanish, French, Thai, German, Japanese, Chinese and more.
But that also means we’re getting HUNDREDS of webtoons pushed into each foreign market. The English market went from ~60 new titles split between Tapas, WEBTOON, Lezhin and Tappytoon a month to 40 new launches on each platform.
Previously, it was possible for audiences and fandoms to focus on specific genres or titles without resorting to piracy . But now, with 30 new BLs and 20 new action fantasies being launched each month all at top-tier art, any past concerns of content cannibalization have become a reality.
Not to mention the piracy problem…
It’s time to stop pretending piracy is solely a criminal issue.
Hard truths, folks.
The same users who are pirating webtoons are likely the ones using the official apps. Some might even be paying for some titles or using the “free Coins” offers to unlock paid episodes.
And, yes, there are bad actors who are screwing up the calculus for publishers, platforms and creatives. But launching thousands of new titles a year, increasing the hurdles required to read content (upping prices), and sticking ads everywhere except login pages isn’t helping.
Does Piracy Hurt the Webtoon Industry?
The webtoon, anime, and manga industries have been having a banner year when it comes to the fight against piracy. The biggest news item was the shutdown of HiAnime which was the site of choice for a massive number of content consumers on the internet (
Pre-COVID, the argument that piracy was soley a criminal issue was a feasible one. Especially in foreign markets where the bulk of pirated titles were scanlated. But it’s 2026 and most pirate sites are hosting official JPEGS, just screenshotted from official platforms.
The webtoon industry has tried to surpass every obstacle and overcome every hurdle with one key strategy: growth.
But piracy is the one hurdle that’ll only get worse with growth and it’s time to face the issue head on. We all know that knocking down pirate sites and prosecuting bad actors is a whack-a-mole game. So it’s time to find another solution.
“Korea-First” Strategies are Done
I feel like it’s an obvious one, but considering the historic repeats of this same problem, it’s worth repeating.
Let me be perfectly clear: many of the successes borne by the webtoon industry result from the use of Korean content publishing, marketing, and platform strategies in a western market where the competition was years behind.
Weekly publishing? Yes. Millions of dollar poured into online marketing channels? Of course. Massive discounts and the publishing of free episodes to lure in an unsuspecting audience of content-hungry tweens? Bread and butter.
But for every success, there have been massive failures. Toptoon is publishing AI-videos to empty chairs (TOPCO Media Jumps into Adult AI Animation), Toomics’ big AI webtoon push led nowhere (Soosung Webtoons: Betting Big on AI), and everyone ruined the French webtoon market for years to come (Is the Webtoon Market Shrinking?).
It’s happened enough that the failures of the industry outside of Asia outnumber the successes. And now it’s time to face a simple truth, pretending that a Korea-first strategy is still viable is like believing in Santa.
Adapting to foreign markets and local conditions is going to be necessary to build user loyalty and transform that into retention.
The Manga Problem (aka the Manga Solution)
Now to talk about Japan or, more appropriately, the international juggernaut of manga and anime being distributed international through local agencies, publishers, and platforms after decades of service. A lot of Korean companies like to compare themselves to Japan publishers and, while it wasn’t farfetched about six years ago, there’s a massive difference.
The international market for manga and anime is still growing. The same can’t be said for webtoons.
My biggest takeaway from Anime Expo was that no matter the digital dominance of webtoons, the manga/anime fandom isn’t just bigger, it’s loyal. Yes, manga is still consumed in droves by piracy enthusiasts and, yes, publishers are still attempting battle piracy alongside webtoon publishers.
But the manga enthusiasts have had their loyalty tested through decades of video games, artist alley fan artists, TCG games, manga apps (that open and close only to open again) and so much more.
The idea that the webtoon industry could duplicate that in months or years with a handful of cash-grabs and decent tie-ins was (and is) a pipedream. Instead of looking back five years from now and wishing that the webtoon industry had laid the foundation for future opportunities, it’s time to buckle down and put in the hard work.
That means licensing, merchandising, and multi-media projects that put content in front of people’s faces and leave lasting memories (the good kind, of course). That means putting out one-shot animated episodes that serve as proof of concept. Maybe pixel art video games that draw in dedicated fans. Or just put together enough creatives to put together a pop-up package that you can tour around the US.
Or we could just keep on pumping out episodes and hope that things just work themselves out.
While it’s easy to heap loads of the blame on one or two of the biggest platforms and publishers in Korea, these problems are found throughout the industry. Not the least in the Korean government’s own initiatives to stimulate the webtoon economy.
Whether or not the industry will implement fixes to address these issues (and others) remains to be seen. But the market will react swiftly, whether it’s to action or inaction.
Webtoons were at the forefront of the digital content wave during COVID, but they are by no means the entirety of the wave. We’ll have to see if the industry can ride out the flood or if more companies and offices will drawn in the turbulence.