It’s time for Solo Leveling fans to say goodbye to one of the series’ biggest digital platforms in the United States. Kakao Entertainment, which operates Solo Leveling’s original Korean serialization platform, KakaoPage, is shutting down its U.S. platform, Tapas. The company has confirmed to Korean media that Tapas will end service sometime in 2027, although an exact closure date has not been announced.
Tapas has been many webtoon and webnovel fans’ go-to platform for years, especially after the site was acquired by Kakao Entertainment in 2021. The platform remains home to over 100,000 series and 10 million registered users, according to Tapas’ own numbers. This comes amid a wider business restructure for Kakao, as the company is also merging its other major webtoon platform, Kakao Webtoon, into its larger KakaoPage service.
Tapas, the U.S. Home of the Solo Leveling Manhwa and Web Novel, Is Shutting Down
People who worked on Tapas titles have begun to speak out about the planned shutdown. Notable among them is U.S.-based webtoon translator and localizer Mina S, who began to share their story with Tapas on X (formerly Twitter) amid the drama. “There were rumors around April for the US localization team. We stopped getting titles,” Mina said. “Management wasn’t allowed to tell the rest of us that the [localization] department was shutting down, but we still all found out little by little. I found out in May.”
At first, the internal “narrative,” according to Mina, “was still that only the US localization department was shutting down, and that all production would be moved to the Indonesian team (KiwiVine).” However, things took a turn when even the Indonesian team stopped receiving new work, too. “We all believed this narrative until last month. The Indonesian team also suddenly stopped receiving any work and production was halted there as well. So we sort of knew from then on that things were rapidly collapsing.”
As expected, this news has hit not just the Solo Leveling fandom, but also the entire webtoon and manhwa community, extremely hard. That goes especially for fans in the U.S., where Tapas was founded. After acquiring the platform in 2021, Kakao positioned it as a major base for its North American expansion.
The burning question on every fan’s mind now is “what will happen to the content I’ve purchased on Tapas over the years?” Although Kakao has confirmed the planned closure to Korean media, neither Kakao nor Tapas has publicly detailed what will happen to purchased content, remaining coins, refunds or user data.
In fact, as recently as Sept. 20, Tapas’ social media page was continuing with business as usual as it announced its latest “fresh releases” for the week. Needless to say, that X post has since been flooded with fans questioning the platform with comments like “there better be a way to transfer series bought” and “please address the situation, what will happen to all the stories we have unlocked?”
Solo Leveling Will Be Fine, Indie Content Creators and Artists Might Not
It’s not just the readers who are concerned. It’s also Tapas’ base of over 75,000 creators, and many have now taken to social media to say that Tapas did not inform them before reports of the shutdown emerged.
“So basically I’m losing half of my salary to support my family, audience, engagement, stats, and a home for my books,” wrote Tapas-based author GiveMeThatBread, whose work focuses largely on dark fantasy and BL stories like their biggest hit The Vampire’s Last Omega, which has over 120k views on the platform. “I am devastated. I don’t know what to do or where to take my stories.”
Other creators have decided to take matters into their own hands to ensure this doesn’t happen again. “Tbh, I kind of needed the motivation to launch the site back up,” says Don Ellenate, author of Ellenate, a fantasy web comic with 132 chapters published on Tapas.
As dire as things look right now for both content consumers and creators alike, there’s a (very small) silver lining for fans of Solo Leveling and other webtoons like it, at least. The series, alongside many of its contemporaries, will still be available to read in English on other legal official platforms, including Tappytoon.
Still, that’s likely little solace for readers who gave their hard-earned money to Tapas to unlock episodes across its extensive Solo Leveling catalog, comprising 202 original Solo Leveling manhwa episodes, 270 Solo Leveling webnovel episodes, 376 Solo Leveling: Ragnarok webnovel episodes and 69 Solo Leveling: Ragnarok manhwa entries.
Ultimately, that uncertainty is nothing compared to the potential consequences for Tapas’ creators, many of whom relied on the platform to make a living. “We are losing our entire audience in one fell swoop,” says AK Giles, author of the popular webnovel I Didn’t Ask to Marry You, Male Lead, which was serialized on Tapas. “With the shutdown of Tapas by Kakao hitting the news, PLEASE, if your favorite authors from Tapas have social media, follow and support them there.”
- Author
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Chugong
- Artist
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Dubu
- Release Date
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March 4, 2018
- Chapters
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190
