KakaoTalk has been the talking pointfor Korean game developers in 2013.

From a mobile messaging service, it's become the country's key gaming platform, at least for a certain type of high score-focused social gaming experience.

But even as some talk about the platform's waning power to break new titles, it remains the case that 6 of the top 10 top grossing iPhone games in Korea are dedicated 'For Kakao' releases, albeit this list includes titles such as Candy Crush Saga.

Yet, as Gameloft has demonstrated, 'For Kakao' is not a silver bullet, even when it comes to a high profile western success such as Despicable Me: Minion Rush.

Worldwide smash

The animated movie tie-in has been the French publisher's first big free-to-play hit.

And as we considered in an earlier Charticle, it's monetised pretty well too, going top 100 top grossing in 126 countries on iPhone and top 10 in 102 countries.

Despicable Me performed well on the US top grossing chart - via App Annie

With a US top grossing peak position of #9 that gives it a Success score of 0.09 using our Monetizer ranking, which is good (if not a triple-A financial success).

However, when we consider the version Gameloft launched specifically for Kakao in Korea, it didn't catch fire in the same way.

Market saturation

When it comes to downloads, the game performed well, going top 5 on the Korean App Store for iPhone for over 2 weeks before dropping down into the top 30.

Despicable Me for Kakao got a lot of downloads in Korea...

This wasn't reflected in its top grossing position, though.

It only entered the top reaches of the top 100 top grossing chart, before falling away.

The download performance wasn't reflected in revenue, however

It's this type of performance that suggests Kakao is becoming less important - at least in terms of providing individual companies with a strong revenue opportunity.

In part, this is a product of its success. So many developers now want to support Kakao, it's simplifying its approval process, launching up to six titles weekly, whereas it used to be one per week.

This is massively increasing player churn, and reducing the ability for the vast majority of games to build up the kind of viral mindshare that's required to be a commercial success.