Netmarble Operating Profit Nearly Halved in 2018

Korea’s foremost mobile game publisher Netmarble experienced a 43.5% decrease in operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2018, a 59% drop year-over-year, the company announced in its financial report.

While Netmarble’s releases “Lineage 2 Revolution,” “Marvel Future Fight,” “Marvel Contest of Champions,” and “Cookie Jam” have steadily performed in North American and Japanese markets – overseas sales accounted for 68% of sales during this period – sales for 2018 decreased 7.4% to $443 billion. Netmarble achieved annual sales of $1.8 billion.

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“Most of the new games which have been being developed by Korean game studios were postponed to 2019, from their originally planned 2018 launch dates. This is due to changes in the Korean labor-related environment that began in 2018, and we view that the impact has been largely resolved recently. We strongly believe in the competitiveness of our new lineups this year and expect they will lead to the growth of the company again from Q2”, said Seungwon Lee, Chief Global Officer of Netmarble Corp.

Netmarble has several new games slated for 2019, including “Seven Knights 2,” “The King of Fighters All Star,” and “A3: Still Alive”. Additional games in the upcoming lineup for the global market include “BTS World,” “Rich Wars,” “Yokai Watch: Medal Wars” and unannounced projects code-named “Project M” and “Seven Deadly Sins RPG”.

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