Korean game publisher NCSoft has reported bad news for the company, that is impacting the rest of the world as well.
As reported by IGN, the company is set to undergo a large scale restructuring. They will have a large number of layoffs. They will also spin off several games in active development. These games will each have their own independent studios, subsidiaries of NCSoft.
Gematsu also reported that they have decided to cancel two games, the multiplayer action game Battle Crush, and their interactive movie game, Project M. Throne & Liberty, an MMO published by Amazon Games, and the upcoming MMO shooter Project LLL, are becoming independent games and NCSoft subsidiaries.
NCSoft is also retaining Project G, the upcoming tactical game now known as TACTAN, and a still unannounced project using model AI tech, with the codename NC AI.
NCSoft co-CEOs Taek-Jin Kim and Byung-Moo Park have an explanation for why the company. In their words, this is a result of the company:
“operating in a way that most of the manpower and functions are concentrated at the headquarters, financial performance has continued to deteriorate and we are at risk of becoming a chronically loss-making company.”
The CEOs’ statements also shares that the current situation “is seriously damaging the creativity and challenging spirit that NCSoft originally possessed.”
These announcements have also come out ahead of NCSoft’s Q3 2024 financial report. So we don’t quite know how much financials affected this decision. We did find this report from Korean outlet One Report. In this report, financial analyst Lee Ji-eun projects that NCSoft’s revenue dropped 6 % year on year, and their operating profit dropped a staggering 85 %.
This report also puts forward that NCSoft’s financial issues are mostly domestic, with games underperforming in Korea. But as we see, this Korean publishers’ woes are already far reaching enough to affect the global games industry.
As we had reported on before, the trend of Korean game companies going global reflects problems with the domestic market. Korea’s game industry is deep, matured, and worth millions. But saturation and insularity have ultimately harmed Korean game developers, and this is why they are now seeking their own proverbial blue ocean in the global video game market.
Krafton is perhaps the most successful of these, thanks to PUBG. We have also seen other Korean developers and publishers, like Shift Up, Nexon, and Round 8, emerge with their own global successes.
NCSoft had seen international success in earlier generations, with MMOs like Lineage 2. Today, their ongoing games and future endeavors are in serious peril. It doesn’t seem that this reflects bigger issues in the Korean game industry, at least for now. We also don’t have enough information to assess if it’s related to the wave of layofffs ongoing in the US and European video game industries.
We wish the best for the employees of NCSoft, and hope those who leave will find placement back in the games industry.
