'Surprise Performance' Webzen Achieves Record High Sales Last Year... Operating Profit Up 109% YoY

[Asia Economy Reporter Buaeri] Webzen's annual sales and operating profit last year reached record highs.

On the 3rd, Webzen announced that its sales last year were 294 billion KRW and operating profit was 108.2 billion KRW. These figures represent increases of 67% and 109% respectively compared to the previous year.

In the fourth quarter of last year, sales reached 92.5 billion KRW, up 111.1% year-on-year, and operating profit expanded by 163.2% to 38.7 billion KRW.

Webzen's strong performance was driven by the mobile games 'MU Archangel' and 'R2M'. These two games, based on Webzen's flagship game intellectual properties (IP) ? the PC MMORPGs 'MU' and 'R2' ? have maintained a position within the top 20 in Google Play sales, serving as cash cows.

Thanks to the success of these two games, domestic sales grew by 128% compared to the previous year, while overseas sales increased by 3%.

Webzen explained, "With the success of 'R2M', which we developed and serviced directly, we have not only proven our game development and publishing capabilities in the market but also secured additional hit game IPs, thereby broadening the strategic options available for development and business."

The revenue share of the 'R2' IP, which accounted for only 6% of total sales in 2019, increased by 21% last year.

Webzen plans to increase the number of development subsidiaries for game development and expand investment in game development this year. They intend to guarantee high-level incentives based on the business performance of subsidiaries to provide employees with opportunities and motivation to participate in new projects, as well as to enhance development capabilities.

Webzen is accelerating new project planning and development by each subsidiary and game studio. Once the development schedules of subsidiaries and studios are coordinated, they plan to sequentially release new games starting as early as this year.

The service regions and business areas of existing released games are steadily expanding. 'R2M' has begun localization work for overseas service versions targeting markets including Southeast Asia in the first half of the year, and the number of domestic and international releases of 'MU' IP games will also increase according to IP partnership business plans.

Kim Tae-young, CEO of Webzen, stated, "I always emphasize to our employees the importance of securing technology and development capabilities for future growth, encouraging new game planning and idea proposals. In the business division, we are focusing on concretizing the overseas businesses we have been preparing and plan to expand the proportion of overseas sales this year."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.