Nexon Games will likely have a tough time in 2025. Nexon Games CEO Park Yong-Hyun expects this year’s performance to be lackluster due to a lack of new games. The issue is further worsened by the sharp decline of the growth of existing popular games, Blue Archive and The First Descendants. There is also the problem of increasing expenses because the company plans to expand its workforce.
According to Business Post, Nexon Games is currently developing four new games: an MMORPG Project DX, an open-world action RPG Dungeon & Fighter Arad, a Gacha game Project RX, and an action RPG Project 2XTF. Project DX entered development in August 2021, Dungeon & Fighter Arad in January 2023, and Project RX in April 2023. After releasing The First Descendant in July 2024, Samsung Securities Analyst Oh Dong-hwan predicts the next game will only arrive in 2026.
According to market research firm Sensor Tower, Blue Archive generated $100 million in global revenue in 2022 and grew to $220 million in 2023. Unfortunately, this upward trend has been on the decline since last year. According to U.S. market research firm AppMagic, Blue Archive‘s Japan-China revenue ranking dropped from 82nd in 2023 to 103rd in 2024, while its ranking fell from 234th to 299th in Korea-Global revenue ranking.
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The exodus of the original staff at MX Studios likely causes this drop in revenue—nearly 40 people left or moved departments, including seven directors. Nexon Games reacted to this by adding 46 new staff members, which increased the development team members from 136 to 144. However, this change in personnel still delayed updates to Blue Archive‘s main story and characters.
Despite boasting 264,860 peak concurrent players on Steam and generating $136 million in revenue from July to August 2024, The First Descendants has steadily lost players. Although the game is far from dead, Park Yong-Hyun believes they must address the current situation by hiring more people and reorganizing.
Besides establishing the IO Headquarters to oversee MX Studio and RX Studio, Park Yong-Hyun wants to add even more staff to these studios. He also plans to recruit more personnel for The First Descendant to improve the quality of game services. With their aim of hiring 85 more people, Nexon Games’ labor cost is expected to increase further.
In the second quarter of 2024, Nexon Games reported gaining around $30 million in revenue and suffering an operating loss of $5.7 million. The loss was attributed to a 20 percent year-on-year increase in operating costs and an increase in salary and welfare expenses due to the expansion of the workforce.
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