Nexon

The Nexon Co., Ltd. is a South Korean video game publisher that specializes in online games for PC and mobile. It maintains over 80 titles.[5] Nexon's parent company is NXC, a South Korean company. NXC has holding company with located in Jeju Island, South Korea. Nexon was founded in Seoul, South Korea in 1994 by Kim Jung-ju and Jake Song. In 2005, the company moved its headquarters to Tokyo, Japan. As of March 2022, it is the second largest game company in South Korea after Krafton and the fourth-largest game company in Asia outside Japan in terms of revenue and market capitalization, after Tencent, NetEase and Krafton, ahead of Netmarble, 37 Entertainment, and NCSoft.

History

Bandai Namco Holdings and Nexon signed a 10-year contract for Japanese–South Korean video gaming partnership through 2032.

Nexon Group was established in Seoul, South Korea on December 26, 1994, and is currently based in Japan. It also has offices located in South Korea, the United States, Taiwan and Thailand.Nexon developed and published its first title, Nexus: The Kingdom of the Winds, in 1996, which the company continues to service.Many title releases followed such as Dark Ages: Online Roleplaying, Elemental Saga, QuizQuiz, KartRider, Elancia, and Shattered Galaxy; some of which are maintained by a company spun off of Nexon, Kru Interactive. In 2003, Wizet developed MapleStory in Korea, which later became one of their most successful titles and has been serviced for more than a decade. The game was localized in many locations such as Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, North America, Europe, Brazil, and Vietnam. Nexon is also the developer of Dungeon & Fighter, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Neople. Dungeon & Fighter is one of the most popular free-to-play online PC games in China.

In April 2013, the programmer "DrUnKeN ChEeTaH" was sued by Nexon America for operating GameAnarchy, a popular subscription based cheat provider for Combat Arms. Nexon was awarded $1.4M in damages.

Nexon went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on December 14, 2011, in an initial public offering, the largest in Japan for 2011 and the second largest by a technological company for 2011 worldwide.

On March 9, 2016, Nexon acquired Big Huge Games, a mobile game developer in Maryland.

On January 3, 2019, the Korea Economic Daily reported Nexon founder Kim Jung-ju and associates have put their 98.64-percent stake up for sale. However on July 8, 2019, Reuters reported the plan was abandoned.

On November 25, 2019, The Lego Group announced the acquisition of Bricklink, the world's largest Lego fan community from Nexon, for an unknown price, which is expected to finish before the end of 2019.

On June 2, 2020, Nexon announced plans to invest $1.5 billion in listed entertainment companies. By March 2021, Nexon had deployed $874 million of that amount on investments into Hasbro, Bandai Namco Holdings, Konami, and Sega Sammy Holdings. Nexon stated that they have no interest in outright acquiring or taking activist investor positions in these companies.

Japanese video game publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment and Nexon Korea signed a 10-year strategic alliance for the South Korean versions of Blue Archive and Closers.[citation needed]

Nexon, which was known to be the largest video game company in South Korea, was overtaken by Krafton in July 2021.

In January 2022, Russo brothers-owned film production company AGBO sold a $400 million minority stake to Nexon, which is valued at $1.1 billion as Nexon takes a 38% stake.

In February 2022, it was reported by Bloomberg that Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund had purchased just over a 5% stake in Nexon, reportedly worth $883 USD million.

Organization

Nexon maintains various offices around the world that engage in the publishing and/or development of Nexon's games. Each region's local consolidated subsidiaries are independently managed and are responsible for developing their own strategy for their products and services. The subsidiary that publishes a game does not necessarily indicate the region(s) that a game is available in. For example, some of Nexon Korea's games are published directly by Nexon Korea yet are available worldwide with no separate service published under the local consolidated company's portfolio.