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List of Top 10 Korean Gaming Companies
Korean gaming infrastructure increases with high speed. This culture develops very fast and that’s good that more and more gaming companies take advantage of being in the global gaming market. We ranked the companies basically with the factors of funding, market opportunities, innovations, scalability.
1. Nexon Korea
The holding company of Nexon is NXC. The gaming company was founded in 1994, and it is considered to be the biggest company in Korea in that industry. They play the most important role in market development. For example, they invested $30 million into Wonder Holdings.
Also Nexon is the only gaming company that increased their employees’ wages and announced it for the public. The payments raised in 6.8% at the beginning of the year. Also they have a union which started its work in 2018. They took a huge step toward unionization of the whole industry, because they provided a successful negotiation with their union.
2. GRAVITY
It is the leader of the Korean gaming market, and it can be proved that this company is the only one from Korea to be listed on NASDAQ. GRAVITY is famous for MMORPG Ragnarok Online, which made it a player of the global market.
GRAVITY is a developer of such mobile games as Tower of Accession, Ragnarok Ash Vacuum, etc. Their newest mobile game is Ragnarok M: Eternal Love. Last year they had a huge profit – $41.5 million. This year the company is focused on launching the new game Ragnarok Origin.
3. Netmarble
Netmarble is known as a successful mobile gaming company. They released such games as Lineage 2, Marvel Future Fight, and Cooke Jam. Every year they earn at least $2 billion with their sales. The company is also represented as an owner of 5.6% stake in Kakao Games and a 3.9% stake in Kakao Bank.
In the beginning of 2020 it was announced the launch of a new CEO. It is Seungwon Lee. His stated aim is to make the company a member of the global market. So they started to cooperate with Disney (Star Wars) and Dragon Ball to expand their influence.
4. NCSoft
NCSoft is famous for the releases of games Lineage 2 interlude and Guild Wars 2. The company, however, is not stable. In 2108 they had a total flop and consequently they lost profit. They mostly take advantage of mobile gaming. Thanks for the most famous ones, Lineage 2 and Guild Wars 2, the company earned $600 million during the first quarter of 2020. Their expected profit with sales is supposed to be $2 trillion in 2020.
5. Smilegate
Smilegate RPG is part of the brand of Smilegate. The best game was launched in 2013 and it is called Lost Ark. The company got a lot of awards for it. World’s top online FPS Crossfire was also released by this company. For this game Smilegate got over $10 billion profit. For a version for the Xbox One the company is cooperating with Remedy Entertainment.
6. Pearl Abyss
Pearl Abyss launched world famous MMORPG Black Desert Online, for which the company earned more than $1 billion in gross sales in four years. The game is played by more than 10 million gamers in 12 languages. The next great hit was a launching of Black Desert Mobile
The best year in Pearl Abyss’s history is 2019. They profit was 259% higher than the year before. 74% of all sales were committed abroad. This year they are going to release Pearl Shadow Arena, Project K, Project V, and Project CD.
7. Krafton Game Union
Krafton Game Union is a huge brand that develops smaller companies. PUBG Corporation is their most popular “child”. Also the brand is a parent for Delusion Studio, En Masse Entertainment, Bluehole Squall, and Red Sahara.
The latest their game is Mini Life which is very different from the other games, because it’s not violent at all. Players can communicate with the others using the AR cameras; they can even take group photos. It is a very sweet feature which connects players from all over the globe.
8. Gamevil Com2us
Gamevil is a company that was founded 20 years ago. They are very successful in the mobile market and have over 500 million mobile downloads. The company is famous for its hit game Summoners War, which brought them over $1 Billion since 2014. The latest game Talion has very good prospects in 2020.
9. DoubleU Games
This company is focused on developing social casino games. Their software is very suitable for mobile-based games, as well as for online ones. The most popular game which was released by the company is DoubleU Casino which is played by users from 120 countries. Other popular games include Take5, DoubleDown Casino, and Ellen Slots.
10. NEOWIZ
Neowiz, founded in 2007, is known for partnership with EA and for operating the portal Pmang. A great variety of successful games, which are provided through Pmang, helps them to compete in the Japanese market. Talking about these games, I mean Tapsonic World Champion, Muse Maker, Jump Arena, and Larva Match. The most popular one, however, is the MMORPG game Bless. The PlayStation 4 version of the game is released in 2020.
