Netmarble
Netmarble Corp. (Korean: 넷마블 주식회사) is a South Korean game developer and publisher, which was founded in 2000 by Bang Jun-hyuk.[4] OverviewNetmarble developed Lineage 2: Revolution in 2015 and released to the public that same year. As of 2019 L2R became one of the highest-grossing mobiles in the market; exceeding 924 million dollars in 11 months since its release. Currently, Netmarble continues to update and bring new content to L2R. Netmarble produces role-playing mobile games. As of 2015, it had more than 3,000 employees and served over 120 countries worldwide. In May 2017, Bang took the company public, raising $2.4 billion.[4] Netmarble has developed mobile games including Seven Knights, Raven (Evilbane in the U.S.) and Everybody's Marble. It also claims a large shareholder stake in SGN, a casual game developer, and has a strategic partnership with CJ ENM.[5] Since 2015, the company has licensed Disney-owned properties to produce games such as Marvel: Future Fight (2015),[6] Disney Magical Dice (2016),[7] and Star Wars: Force Arena (2017).[8][9][10][11] In 2017, Netmarble acquired North American interactive entertainment company Kabam.[12] In 2018, Netmarble named Park Sean as its new CEO. Park, the former chief strategy officer of the operator of KakaoTalk, co-headed Netmarble with incumbent chief Kwon Young-sik.[1] In April 2018, Netmarble acquired 25.71% in Big Hit Entertainment, the agency of Korean boy group BTS and TXT, becoming its second largest shareholder.[13] As of 2021, Netmarble owns 19.31% of the Big Hit Entertainment after it changed its name to HYBE Corporation[14] Netmarble and Disney's partnership significantly deteriorated near the end of 2018 when the former announced that it can no longer support Disney Magical Dice and Star Wars: Force Arena, and eventually shut down both games,[citation needed] leaving Future Fight as the only Disney-based game it supported. In February 2021, the company acquired Los Angeles based developer Kung Fu Factory.[15] On August 20, 2021, the company established a subsidiary label known as Metaverse Entertainment which partnered up with Kakao Entertainment to manage musical artists.[16] Five days later, Kabam released a sequel to Future Fight, titled Marvel Future Revolution, which was an ambitious online open-world superhero action RPG that ran on Unreal Engine 4, employed several notable voice actors and offered a more cinematic presentation. On January 25, 2023, the label debuted a virtual girl-group known as Mave:.[17] As of 2021, Netmarble shareholders consisted of Bang Jun-hyuk (24.12%), CJ ENM (21.78%), Tencent (Han River Investment Pte. Ltd.) (17.52%), NCsoft Corp. (6.8%) and Others (29.78%).[18] Following the poor performance of Marvel Future Revolution, Netmarble announced in June 2023 that the game would shut down on August 25, 2023.[19] On January 19, 2024, Netmarble shut down its metaverse subsidiary, laying off 70 employees.[20] Games
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