NC, 'Hoyeon' Development Team Over 100 Members Laid Off... Accelerating Workforce Reduction

Proceeding with the Application Process for the Voluntary Retirement Program

As part of its management reform, NCSoft, which is undergoing restructuring, has decided to lay off more than half of the development team for the collection-type role-playing game (RPG) 'Hoyeon' that remains at its headquarters.

According to industry sources on the 5th, NCSoft recently announced plans to reduce about 100 of the approximately 170 members of the 'Hoyeon' development team (BSS Seed) and has guided them through the voluntary retirement program application process.

The Hoyeon development team remained at the headquarters after being moved under Chief Business Management Officer (CBMO) Im Woon-gi during the organizational restructuring announced at the end of last month.

Hoyeon, released at the end of August, is a collection-type RPG based on NCSoft's popular intellectual property (IP) 'Blade & Soul.' It was launched not only in Korea but also in the Japanese and Taiwanese markets, but it failed to achieve commercial success. During the organizational restructuring, early service termination was also considered along with 'Battlecrush.'

The Battlecrush development team, which ended its service five months after early access, is currently undergoing disbandment procedures.

In the case of Hoyeon, it is interpreted that the decision was made to downsize rather than disband, considering the possibility of entering global markets such as China, North America, and Europe.

In fact, although Throne and Liberty (TL) was evaluated as a failure in the domestic market, after the global version was released, it succeeded commercially by recording 360,000 concurrent users on the PC version.

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