South Korea’s game developers aimed to improve earnings with the release of new titles in the second half after reporting disappointing quarterly profits as COVID-19 became an endemic, hurting demand for games, and labor costs surged.
Com2uS Corp. the developer of the beloved baseball mobile game MLB Perfect Inning, is scheduled to launch Summoners War: Chronicles on Aug. 16 in South Korea. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game will hit the global market in November.
Major domestic game makers such as Krafton Inc., Neowiz, Netmarble, Com2uS and PearlAbyss Corp. logged disappointing earnings on Thursday. They came under pressure from not only surging labor costs and weaker demand but also a lack of new titles that could allure players.
Krafton’s operating profit fell 6.8% to 162.3 billion won ($124.7 million) in the second quarter from a year earlier, missing analysts’ profit forecast of 166.9 billion won. Neowiz reported an operating profit of 5.9 billion won, up 13% from a year ago, but failed to meet a 6.9 billion won profit forecast.
Com2uS said its operating profit tumbled 65.6% to 3.8 billion won, far lower than a consensus forecast of 6.9 billion won. The profit declined despite a record quarterly sales of 193.4 billion won as labor costs jumped 50.5%.
PearlAbyss logged an operating loss of 4.2 billion won as bonuses for employees including stock grants surged.
