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- The video studio behind ‘PUBG’ is planning an initial public offering in 2021, reports Bloomberg.
- Bloomberg noted in a recent estimate that a stock exchange the South Korean company Krafton Inc. up to $ 27 billion.
- The company’s CEO plans to release three more games based on or related to ‘PUBG’ by 2022.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The South Korean video game studio that created the hit “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” or “PUBG” is planning an initial public offering in the second half of 2021, according to the Bloomberg report.
Kim Chang-han, who started young in the gambling industry as a coding bike, was one of the 30 people who worked on the creation of the multiplayer battle royal game.
Kim is now the CEO of Krafton Inc., the company that launched ‘PUBG’ in December 2017. The game attracted players around the world and earned $ 100 million in revenue within 13 weeks of its global release.
According to statistics released by Statista, ‘PUBG’ reached a peak of around 438,000 people simultaneously in November last year. The highest number of people playing simultaneously – about 3 million – was recorded in January 2018.
Before Krafton, Kim had his own play studio. But he fired a third of his employees in 2014, Bloomberg said. Then he created three video games for multiple players that could not take off.
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“It was the darkest time of my life,” the now 46-year-old told Bloomberg. He sold his startup to Krafton in 2015, leading to a series of events that changed his outlook on the game world.
He joined the company as an executive producer, only to serve as CEO last year. Krafton now plans to name a public offering that could be one of the largest in South Korea in years. A share could yield billions of dollars for the company, Kim told Bloomberg.
Bloomberg quoted a recent report by Eugene Investment & Securities as estimating that a stock exchange could value $ 30.2 billion, or $ 27.2 billion. It predicted that by 2021, South Korea could raise nearly $ 11 billion through 120 IPOs.
Krafton plans to release three more games by 2022, all of which will be based on or related to ‘PUBG’. One of them is expected to be a survival horror game depicting the ‘PUBG’ universe in the distant future.
“We will not remain a wonder of one hit,” Kim said in the Bloomberg interview.
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