Wemade Co., Ltd (formerly Wemade Entertainment Co., Ltd) is a South Korean video game developer, based in

Seongnam Seongnam () is the fourth largest city in South Korea's Gyeonggi Province after Suwon and the 10th largest city in the country. Its population is approximately one million. Seongnam is a satellite city of Seoul. It is largely a residential cit ...

. They are the creators of the Legend of Mir series of

MMORPG A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a Player charac ...

s, the two most successful being '' The Legend of Mir 2'', and its sequel ''

The Legend of Mir 3 ''The Legend of Mir 3'' was a sprite based isometric 3-D massively multiplayer online role-playing game, developed by WeMade Entertainment. It is a sequel to '' The Legend of Mir 2''. The basic game mechanics remains largely unchanged from the ...

''. ''Legend of Mir'' has attracted over 120 million users in Asia, and generated over $65 million a month in revenue during its height. Even today, in its ninth year of operation, ''Legend of Mir 2'' still generates well over $20 million a month in China alone. According to

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

, Wemade's founder, Kwan Ho Park, has a net worth of $1.2 billion, as of October 19.

History

Wemade was founded on February 10, 2000, by the original ''Legend of Mir'' developers. They chose the name WeMade Entertainment to acknowledge a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by their South Korean publishing partner Actoz against the Chinese game operator

Shanda Shanda Group is a privately-owned multinational investment firm. With offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, New York and Redwood City, the firm invests in public markets, real estate and venture capital, focusing on companies in the field ...

. Shanda had copied ''Legend of Mir'' under the name ''The World of Legend'', prompting the lawsuit. In choosing their company name, the developers were making the point that “We made ''Legend of Mir''”. Shanda settled the lawsuit by acquiring Actoz and operating it as Shanda Korea. In 2007, WeMade Entertainment's CEO and founder Kwan-Ho Park hired Kevin “Sookiel” Seo as co-CEO to turn the development company into a publisher and operator of online games in South Korea. Mr. Seo was formerly the CEO of Actoz/Shanda Korea. The company grew from 300 to close to 600 employees as it expanded to provide full hosting services in South Korea. Today, WeMade Entertainment Co. Ltd. hosts and operates several games in South Korea. This includes games developed by Wemade such as ''Legend of Mir 2'', ''Legend of Mir 3'', ''Master of Fantasy'' and ''Chang Chun'' (aka ''Three Kingdom Chronicles''). In addition, Wemade also hosts games from other developers including Chaps Online, Tartaros and Avalon. Wemade continues to license these games to other operators in other global territories. Shanda operates ''Legend of Mir 2'' and ''Chang Chun'' in Greater China, while

Softworld Soft-World is a games distributor/developer in Taiwan, based in Taipei, Taiwan. Founded in 1983 and now public, Soft-World currently focuses on MMORPG operation in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Southeast Asia. It is the largest games software company ...

operates ''Mir 2'' in

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

. GameFactory operates Rumble Fighter in the US and Europe. In the summer of 2008, Wemade established its U.S. headquarters in the

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

area. WeMade Entertainment USA, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the South Korean entity. Headed up by CEO Kisung Kim, the US company is responsible for the Western Games market including Europe and the Americas. WeMade Entertainment USA, Inc. is currently hosting the North American servers of ''

Lost Saga ''Lost Saga'' was a free-to-play 3D fighting game developed by I.O. Entertainment. The game featured characters from science fiction, culture, and real-world history, and offered players the ability to switch characters on the fly to improve gam ...

'', a game developed by I.O. Entertainment. It initially planned to transfer accounts from

OGPlanet OGPlanet was a publisher of free-to-play, massively multiplayer online (MMO), downloadable PC games, based in Torrance, California, with offices in Vancouver, Berlin, London and Seoul. Although their games were free-to-play, OGPlanet offered "Astr ...

Lost Saga to the new servers (although the accounts were never made available to them to do so) and the game was fully released on May 2, 2013. On November 20, 2013, WeMade Entertainment USA announced from the North America Lost Saga homepage, that they will be ending Lost Saga's service in North America on December 8, 2013. No answer or reason was given as to why WeMade USA is ending its service of Lost Saga, though there have been rumors. Currently, the compan
Z8Games
will be resuming Lost Saga's services in the North America region on December 18, 2013. With the change of services, all of the content obtained while under WeMade USA's service will transfer over when Z8Games resumes when the Lost Saga servers come online, with the transfer period being from December 9 through December 17, 2013. Further information regarding how the transfer will work is currently unknown. In November 2020, Wemade released ''Mir 4'' in South Korea. The game was made available globally, across 170 countries in 12 languages, on August 26. In May 2022, Wemade made a strategic investment i
Froyo Games
- a Singapore-based GameFi platform that is co-developing play-to-earn titles with iCandy Interactive. In November 2022, Wemade has announced that its investment round raised $46 million from a number of companies, including

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

. Microsoft has invested $14.8 million in Wemade by purchasing convertible bonds.

WeMade FOX

From 2007 to 2011, WeMade Entertainment operated a professional gaming team called WeMade FOX that maintained high-ranking ''

Counter-Strike ''Counter-Strike'' (''CS'') is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination) while counter-terrorists try to preven ...

'', '' StarCraft: Brood War'' and ''

Warcraft III ''Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos'' is a high fantasy real-time strategy computer video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment released in July 2002. It is the second sequel to ''Warcraft: Orcs & Humans'', after ''Warcraft II: Tides ...

'' players. Sponsored by

Pepsi Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961. History Pepsi was ...

Skechers Skechers USA, Inc. is an American multinational footwear company. Headquartered in Manhattan Beach, California, it was founded in 1992 and is now the third largest footwear brand in the United States. History Skechers was founded in 1992 by Ro ...

GomTV GOM Player is a media player for Windows, developed by GOM & Company. With more than 100 million downloads, it is also known as the most used player in South Korea. Its main features include the ability to play some broken media files and find ...

and

Mizuno () is a Japanese sports equipment and sportswear company, founded in Osaka in 1906 by Rihachi Mizuno. Today, Mizuno is a global corporation which makes a wide variety of sports equipment and sportswear for badminton, baseball, boxing, cycling ...

, WeMade FOX possessed several high-earning players including

NaDa Nada may refer to: Culture * Nāda, a concept in ancient Indian metaphysics Places *Nada, Hainan, China *Nada, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States *Nada, Nepal, village in Achham District, Seti Zone * Nada, Texas, United S ...

and Jang Jae "Moon" Ho. On August 31, 2011, the team was officially shut down, with the former players placed in the care of

KeSPA The Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA) is a South Korean body established to manage esports in South Korea. It is a member of the Korean Olympic Committee and the International e-Sports Federation. , it was the managing body for 25 e-sports in ...

, until new sponsors were to be found.

References

External links

WeMade Official Site
{{Professional StarCraft competition Defunct and inactive Counter-Strike teams Defunct and inactive StarCraft II teams Esports teams based in South Korea Video game companies established in 2000 Video game companies of South Korea Video game development companies Video game publishers Esports teams established in 2000 South Korean companies established in 2000