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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.

History

Netmarble has its origins in the video game developer Ipopsoft (). 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.

The company saw initial early successes. These caught the attention of CJ Group, which agreed to acquire it in 2004. 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.

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.

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.

Since 2015, the company has licensed Disney-owned properties to produce games such as '' Marvel: Future Fight'' (2015), ''Disney Magical Dice'' (2016), and '' Star Wars: Force Arena'' (2017).

In 2017, Netmarble acquired North American interactive entertainment company Kabam.

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.

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. As of 2021, Netmarble owns 19.31% of the Big Hit Entertainment after it changed its name to HYBE Corporation

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, leaving ''Future Fight'' as the only Disney-based game it supported.

In February 2021, the company acquired Los Angeles based developer Kung Fu Factory.

On August 20, 2021, the company established a subsidiary label known as Metaverse Entertainment which partnered up with Kakao Entertainment to manage musical artists. 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:.

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%).

Following the poor performance of ''Marvel Future Revolution'', Netmarble announced in June 2023 that the game would shut down on August 25, 2023. On January 19, 2024, Netmarble shut down its metaverse subsidiary, laying off 70 employees.

Games

References

External links

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South Korean companies established in 2000
Netmarble
NCSoft
Tencent
Mobile game companies
Video game companies established in 2000
Video game companies of South Korea
Video game development companies
Video game publishers
Companies based in Seoul
Companies in the KOSPI 200