Nexon becomes 1st Korean game publisher with over 4 trillion won in sales

Nexon Co., the parent of Nexon Games Co., became the first Korean game developer to achieve the 4 trillion won ($2.8 billion) sales milestone in 2024, while its local peer Krafton Inc. posted its largest-ever operating profit.

Their efforts to maximize the intellectual property (IP) rights of their mega-hit titles paid off, highlighting that securing the IP of popular content such as web novels for game adaptations will be a key driver of their earnings growth.

Nexon’s revenue came in at 4.0 trillion won last year, driven by the strong performance of the mobile version and spin-offs of its long-time best-selling title Dungeon Fighter, along with robust sales of their merchandise.

Dungeon Fighter Mobile has led the domestic mobile gaming market, popular among players in their 20s and 30s.

KRAFTON, NETMARBLE

Krafton on Thursday reported an operating profit of 1.18 trillion won, up 54% compared with a year earlier. That marked its largest-ever profit for a single year. Sales spiked 41.8% to 2.71 trillion won.

CEO Kim Chang-han attributed the brisk earnings to the solid performance of the Indian version of its mega-hit title PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) after its 10-month ban by the Indian government was lifted in 2023. 

Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) debuted in India in 2021.

Netmarble Corp. also enjoyed the success of its mobile game Solo Leveling: ARISE. Launched in May last year, it is based on the fantasy Korean webtoon that has garnered over 15.2 billion views.

Thanks to the new game, Netmarble swung to an operating profit of 215.6 billion won in 2024, with revenue up 6.5% on-year to 2.66 trillion won.

Bucking the trend, however, NCSOFT Corp. turned to the red for the first time since 1998 with an operating loss of 109.2 billion won last year.

It dropped to fourth place among Korean game publishers in terms of earnings. Revenue contracted 11.3% on-year to 1.58 trillion won.

Gaming industry observers say NCSOFT's multi-title strategy with similar concepts was unsuccessful.

Its co-CEO Park Byung-moo acknowledged the view. During an earnings call this week, he said that gamers found Lineage Like, a spin-off of its flagship MMORPG Lineage, repetitive.

A gaming industry official said a growing number of Korean gaming companies will expand their lineup of titles based on webtoons and web novels in the face of the threat from cloud computing and streaming service companies.

CLOUD GAMES

Netflix Inc., the world’s largest video streaming platform, has been adapting its original drama series and entertainment shows into games.

In December, it launched a mobile game based on Squid Game, a Korean survival thriller series. Its user number topped 6 million in its first month of launch.

In 2023, Microsoft acquired gaming company Activision Blizzard for $75.4 billion, the biggest-ever acquisition in the gaming industry, in an effort to lead the cloud gaming market.

Cloud games allow users to stream and play video games over the internet without the need to download them on a PC or console.

“When the cloud gaming market fully takes off, game developers with a large portfolio of game IP will enjoy an unprecedented boom,” said a technology industry official.

Write to Hyeon-woo Oh at ohw@hankyung.com

Yeonhee Kim edited this article.