News came out last week that LE SSERAFIM is having a big collaboration with Overwatch 2, including things like a performance at BlizzCon 2023 and LE SSERAFIM-themed items in the game. This news is on top of another major announcement where NewJeans was revealed to be the singers of the song "GODS" for Worlds 2023, the annual championship tournament for League of Legends. These are significant collabs because both games are big names in their industry, but they're not the only video games that Kpop idols have been involved with.

Kpop-specific games

One type of game that alot of idols are featured in is rhythm games, specifically from the SuperStar series (ex. SuperStar SMTOWN). In this genre, players are required to match button presses against Kpop songs in order to score points. The more points you have, the better you're doing on the leaderboard, which in some cases may result in being rewarded with real world items such as photocards.

And while the rhythm games aren't exactly huge compared to the likes of Overwatch/LoL, they do get regular updates that add the newest idol songs to the games, thereby creating new content for the players. An example of this is SuperStar STARSHIP's "Baddie" update for IVE's "IVE MINE" album.

Outside of the music industry

Another game that many idols get involved with is Sudden Attack, a Korean first person shooter similar to Counter-Strike. Players end up on one of two teams, with each trying to defeat the other. In working with Sudden Attack, the idols allow their likeness and voice recordings to be used to create in-game models of themselves, which are then worn by players in lieu of the standard character models. Eunbi's behind-the-scenes video gives an idea of what it looks like.

Some other collabs are:

• Epic Seven (aespa) - A mobile gacha/RPG (and the one game listed in this article that I've actually tried besides League of Legends). aespa's virtual members (æ) are playable characters.
• DX: War of the New Century (TWICE) - A now defunct MMORPG. As far as I can tell, TWICE aren't in DX at all but were instead doing standard fare CFs to promote it.
• ZEPETO (ITZY, NMIXX, TWICE) - A virtual world/platform for people to play in. Idols have lent their likeness for promotions.

There are more examples out there but the point is that idols have been doing collabs with video games for a long time so we're likely to see more of them in the future as the Kpop industry continues to grow in size and popularity.