Smilegate invests $3.5 million in 'Postcard Game Studio'

[Asia Economy Reporter Kang Nahum] Smilegate announced on the 8th that it has made a strategic investment of $3.5 million (approximately 4.2 billion KRW) in the North American emerging game developer 'Postcard Game Studio.'

Postcard is a newly established developer founded in January this year by veteran developers with years of experience at leading game companies such as Naughty Dog, Microsoft, Bungie, Square Enix, Blizzard, and Guerrilla Games. They are currently developing an open-world first-person shooter RPG. It is a sci-fi based hero-themed game.

Following last year's strategic investment of 120 billion KRW in That’s No Moon, founded by global star developers Taylor Kurosaki and Jacob Minkoff, Smilegate continues to discover and invest in promising global game companies, including this recent investment in Postcard Game Studio.

In addition to its in-house development capabilities, Smilegate plans to accelerate its challenge toward the global game market through active investments in overseas local developers. A Smilegate representative said, "We decided on this investment because we highly value the excellent development skills of Postcard's founding members and their potential to produce blockbuster titles," adding, "We will continue to discover and invest in outstanding domestic and international developers to develop intellectual properties (IP) that can be loved by game fans worldwide."

Meanwhile, the global user count of Smilegate's MMORPG 'Lost Ark' surpassed 20 million as of this day. It has been only three weeks since the official service started in over 160 countries including North America, Europe, South America, and Australia on the 11th of last month.

The peak concurrent users of Lost Ark reached 1.32 million, ranking second in the history of the global game platform Steam, which is an unprecedented achievement for a Korean MMORPG.

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