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Netmarble
South Korean mobile game developer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Netmarble Corp. (Korean: 넷마블 주식회사) is a South Korean game developer and publisher, which was founded in 2000 by Bang Jun-hyuk.[4]
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Netmarble has its origins in the video game developer Ipopsoft (아이팝소프트). Around the late 1990s, that company was in crisis. As an outsider, Bang Jun-hyuk helped locate investors to support the company. After the company again went into crisis, Bang took over the company as CEO and reorganized it into Netmarble.[5][6]
The company saw initial early successes. These caught the attention of CJ Group, which agreed to acquire it in 2004.[7][8] Bang stepped down for health concerns in 2006, but rejoined the company after five years after it went into crisis. He then focused the company on the mobile gaming market.[8]
Netmarble developed Lineage 2: Revolution in 2015 and released to the public that same year. As of 2019 L2R became one of the highest-grossing mobiles in the market; exceeding 924 million dollars in 11 months since its release. Currently, Netmarble continues to update and bring new content to L2R.
Netmarble produces role-playing mobile games. As of 2015, it had more than 3,000 employees and served over 120 countries worldwide. In May 2017, Bang took the company public, raising $2.4 billion.[4]
Netmarble has developed mobile games including Seven Knights, Raven (Evilbane in the U.S.) and Everybody's Marble. It also claims a large shareholder stake in SGN, a casual game developer, and has a strategic partnership with CJ ENM.[9]
Since 2015, the company has licensed Disney-owned properties to produce games such as Marvel: Future Fight (2015),[10] Disney Magical Dice (2016),[11] and Star Wars: Force Arena (2017).[12][13][14][15]
In 2017, Netmarble acquired North American interactive entertainment company Kabam.[16]
In 2018, Netmarble named Park Sean as its new CEO. Park, the former chief strategy officer of the operator of KakaoTalk, co-headed Netmarble with incumbent chief Kwon Young-sik.[1]
In April 2018, Netmarble acquired 25.71% in Big Hit Entertainment, the agency of Korean boy group BTS and TXT, becoming its second largest shareholder.[17] As of 2021, Netmarble owns 19.31% of the Big Hit Entertainment after it changed its name to HYBE Corporation[18]
Netmarble and Disney's partnership significantly deteriorated near the end of 2018 when the former announced that it can no longer support Disney Magical Dice and Star Wars: Force Arena, and eventually shut down both games,[citation needed] leaving Future Fight as the only Disney-based game it supported.
In February 2021, the company acquired Los Angeles based developer Kung Fu Factory.[19]
On August 20, 2021, the company established a subsidiary label known as Metaverse Entertainment which partnered up with Kakao Entertainment to manage musical artists.[20] Five days later, Kabam released a sequel to Future Fight, titled Marvel Future Revolution, which was an ambitious online open-world superhero action RPG that ran on Unreal Engine 4, employed several notable voice actors and offered a more cinematic presentation. On January 25, 2023, the label debuted a virtual girl-group known as Mave:.[21]
As of 2021, Netmarble shareholders consisted of Bang Jun-hyuk (24.12%), CJ ENM (21.78%), Tencent (Han River Investment Pte. Ltd.) (17.52%), NCsoft Corp. (6.8%) and Others (29.78%).[22]
Following the poor performance of Marvel Future Revolution, Netmarble announced in June 2023 that the game would shut down on August 25, 2023.[23] On January 19, 2024, Netmarble shut down its metaverse subsidiary, laying off 70 employees.[24]
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