According to Pearl Research's findings, the Taiwanese online games market, which predominately centers around massively multiplayer games and other hardcore genres such as shooters and real-time strategy but also includes a growing casual games subset, has seen a resurgence since 2004 due to the widespread adoption of a free-to-play business model. Rather than charging players a fixed monthly access fee, some game operators allow unlimited free play but charge between $0.25 and $10 for additional in-game items and services. Many publishers indicate that this model in fact results in higher overall revenues, and likely also allows for a much broader spread of monthly investment across the overall player base.

Pearl ranks the ten most popular online games in Taiwan, with the top slot belonging to Neowiz's FPS Special Force. Blizzard Entertainment holds the distinction of maintaining three slots on the list: #2 for StarCraft, #6 for World of Warcraft, and #8 for WarCraft III. NCsoft's Lineage and Lineage II are #4 and #5 respectively.

In a recent Shacknews interview, Mark Kern, CEO of new MMO developer Red 5, spoke on the increasing importance of addressing the Asian market from day one in development of online games. "Well, you know, you've got about half of WoW subscribers in China," he pointed out. "I think that's very telling. Can you ignore that?"