Nexon, the South Korean developer of Maplestory 2, Mabogini, and other free-to-play MMO’s is worth a lot more than you thought. In fact, it’s supposedly worth around $9 billion (10 trillion won.) The founder of the company, NXC Corp, is putting it up for sale reports the Korea Economic Daily newspaper and revealed by Reuters. Nexon listings are on the Tokyo stock market.
After this news went live, affiliated Nexon GT Co Ltd and Nat Games Co Ltd rose up to thirty percent.
Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank are maintaining this sale. It is a result of NXC owner Kim Jung-ju putting up his and his wife’s controlling stake. Supposedly, the man holds 98.64 of the company’s stock. He holds 61.49%, his wife holds 29.43%, with his company Wise Kids maintaining 1.72%. Otherwise, a few other groups hold the rest.
Not many companies can afford the multiple billion dollar sale. Some potential buyers include Kakao Corp, Netmarble Corp, and Tencent Holdings. EA is also a potential buyer according to anonymous industry sources.
An analyst at Samsung Securities, Oh Dong-hwan commented on the statement:
“As the value of the company’s stake will be enormous, there will be very limited buyers with the ability to purchase Nexon.”As revealed by Gamesindustry.biz, Korean website Gamemeca claims that they are still “checking facts” around this news. They will announce their findings as soon as they can. The group also notes that despite what we may hear, Kim’s stake going up for sale has nothing to do with “regulation fatigue” - a side-effect of Korea’s limiting game regulation policies.
If you haven’t played any of their MMO’s, you may remember Nexon as the publisher of Cliffy Bleszinski’s Lawbreakers. Despite it reviewing alright, the former Gears of War developer and his team couldn’t find success in the project. Nexon had written it off as a complete loss.
