Kim Chang-han was the brainchild behind PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds, or PUBG, in 2017.
Kim Chang-han, a former children’s computer prodigy who won national coding contests in South Korea in the 1980s, had hit rock bottom. It was 2014 and he had just laid off a third of the employees at his gaming startup. Since 2000, he had made three online multiplayer games at three startups that all went flat.
“That was the darkest time in my life,” Kim, 46, recalls. The following year, he sold his company to the company now known as Krafton Inc., where he joined as an executive producer.
Then his fortunes began to change. As a last-ditch effort to succeed in the business, he decided to create what is known as a Battle Royale game, an online game in which players compete against each other on an ever-shrinking battlefield to be the last person standing. “Every fiber in my being told me to make this game,” he said.
Kim persuaded Irishman Brendan Greene to join the company and move to South Korea as the game’s creative director.
Bluehole Inc., as Krafton was called at the time, released PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds of PUBG in 2017. It became one of the most successful games of all time, with the PC and console versions selling over 70 million copies and the mobile version being downloaded about 600 million times, according to Krafton.
Now, the company is planning a mid to late 2021 initial public offering (IPO), which could be South Korea’s largest in years. The sale of stock could net billions of dollars, Kim, who became Krafton’s Chief Executive Officer last year, said in an interview in Seoul and declined to provide further details.
According to a Jan. 5 report from Eugene Investment & Securities Co. the IPO could value the startup at a whopping 30 trillion won ($ 27.2 billion).
South Korea will raise a whopping $ 10.9 billion this year, a record, through more than 120 IPOs, according to the brokerage. According to the report, KakaoBank Corp., the largest lender on the Internet, and LG Chem Ltd.’s battery unit will operate. sell their first shares in 2021. The surge in IPOs comes after South Korea’s benchmark stock index gained 34 percent in the past 12 months, one of the best in the world.
The country’s largest ever IPO was the $ 4.3 billion offering by Samsung Life Insurance Co. in 2010. That was followed by the listing of $ 2.4 billion from Seoul-based gaming company Netmarble Corp. in 2017.
Krafton, whose name stands for a dedication to craftsmanship, manages four game studios, but PUBG is responsible for the vast majority of his sales and profits, according to Kim. According to a filing from the company, the company had sales of more than $ 1.1 billion in the nine months ending September.
Some people worry whether the company is a “one-hit wonder,” said Han Kim, general partner and co-founder of Altos Ventures Management Inc., which holds shares in Krafton. “I think the most important thing is how the company can use PUBG’s intellectual property and make it an even bigger franchise.”
Krafton’s Kim said the company is creating an animated show that will be uploaded on streaming services and a web cartoon. It will eventually turn into movies and dramas, he said. The company is open to acquisitions in these areas, Kim said.
Krafton founder Chang Byung-gyu is the largest shareholder with a 17 percent stake as of September 30, followed by Tencent Holdings Ltd., which, according to a request from Krafton, owns 16 percent through a subsidiary. Kim has 1.5 percent.
Kim won a PC competition hosted by South Korea’s Ministry of Science in 1985 when he was 10, and went on to claim several other national coding awards. He co-founded Ginno Games in 2009 after being involved with two other startups, and was “very frustrated” when the game failed.
But that’s all now behind Kim as Krafton prepares to go public. He said he is committed to expanding the company’s games repertoire beyond its initial success. The company plans to release a new Battle Royale mobile title this year that will be based on PUBG, another PUBG-related PC and console game by next year and a survival horror game in 2022 that will set the PUBG universe for three centuries. will imagine the future.
“We will not continue as a one-hit wonder,” Kim said.
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