Krafton Achieves Record-High First-Half Sales of KRW 1.5362 Trillion

Growth Driven by PC 'Battlegrounds' IP Continues
Mobile Growth-Oriented Skins Gain User Response, Contributing to Sales
Investments in New IP Discovery and Advanced Publishing Strategy
Second Quarter Operating Profit at KRW 246 Billion, Down 25.9% Year-on-Year

Krafton achieved its highest-ever performance in the first half of this year, driven by growth centered on the 'Battlegrounds' intellectual property (IP).

Krafton Pangyo Headquarters. Photo by Krafton

On July 29, Krafton announced in a public disclosure that, based on its consolidated financial statements, its provisional sales for the first half of this year reached KRW 1.5362 trillion, with operating profit at KRW 703.3 billion. These figures represent year-on-year increases of 11.9% and 9.5%, respectively.

However, when looking at the second quarter alone, sales amounted to KRW 662 billion, a 6.4% decrease compared to the same period last year. Operating profit also declined by 25.9% to KRW 246 billion.

By platform, second-quarter sales amounted to KRW 219.7 billion for PC, KRW 427.6 billion for mobile, and KRW 9.8 billion for console. For the entire first half, sales were KRW 543.2 billion for PC, KRW 960 billion for mobile, and KRW 33 billion for console.

Krafton explained that growth centered on the 'Battlegrounds' IP continued on the PC platform, while in the mobile sector, growth-oriented skins received strong user response and contributed to sales. The Indian version (mobile), BGMI, is expanding its brand presence both online and offline by collaborating with prominent local companies and preparing user-customized marketing content, thereby broadening its base through locally optimized strategies.

In the second half of the year, Krafton will strengthen its influence by collaborating with France’s top luxury car brand Bugatti and popular artist Aespa. Expansion of the Battlegrounds IP across platforms and genres will also accelerate. The new top-down tactical shooter 'PUBG: Blindspot' will be unveiled to global users next month at Gamescom in Germany. The extraction shooter 'Project Black Budget' is scheduled for a closed alpha test in the second half of the year.

Krafton emphasized that it is actively investing in discovering new franchise IPs. In line with its five-year mid-to-long-term plan to secure a 'major franchise IP' as announced at the beginning of the year, the company is operating a new pipeline that includes a total of 13 games.

The company is also accelerating IP growth by advancing its publishing strategy, particularly by establishing a flexible and highly scalable '2PP' system. Krafton is pursuing several 2PP projects, including EF Games’ vehicle-based arena battle game 'Rivals Hover League,' which recently released a demo version. Through this, Krafton aims to create a structure that encompasses both internal development and collaboration with external partners.

Krafton is also strengthening its publishing competitiveness, such as establishing the life simulation game 'Injoy,' which launched in early access in March, as a long-term global service. The company’s core strategy is to spread user feedback and build trust through regionally tailored publishing and a global player community focus. According to Krafton, the regional sales distribution for Injoy is 29% in North America, 28% in Europe, and 25% in Asia, with Western regions accounting for more than half. Krafton will showcase 'Injoy' at this year’s Gamescom and release its first downloadable content (DLC).

In addition, Krafton is continuing innovation to present the future of the gaming industry by securing original artificial intelligence (AI) technology and applying it to game services. Krafton unveiled 'Orak,' a benchmark for evaluating the gameplay capabilities of AI agents based on large language models (LLMs). The company plans to enhance its LLM agent design capabilities based on this. Krafton also disclosed a post-training technique co-developed with SK Telecom and demonstrated its application to three open-source inference-specialized language models with 7 billion parameters each. Going forward, Krafton plans to apply proprietary training techniques to secure inference accuracy and efficiency, and to utilize these advancements to expand into games requiring high-level inference, thereby further advancing its game AI technology.

Furthermore, as part of its ongoing growth strategy, Krafton acquired Neptune in April this year and, last month, made a strategic investment in the ADK Group, one of Japan’s three largest comprehensive advertising firms, which has participated in the production committees of over 300 animations. Krafton also acquired the US-based studio Eleventh Hour Games. The company plans to further strengthen its global influence by securing 'Last Epoch,' one of the leading IPs in the action role-playing game (RPG) genre.

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