Korea’s NEXON to buy Japanese games giant Gloops for $468.6 million

Online gaming giant NEXON, the company behind the popular 2D MMO MapleStory, has announced today that it has paid more than $468.6 million US dollars (36.5 billion in Japanese Yen)  to acquire all the common shares owned by Gloops.

The amount needed for the acquisition, announced today in a press release, might sound like a staggering amount of money but given Gloops’ reputation in Japan, there is actually a great sense to a large outlay on a company that’s relatively known outside of Asia.

Gloops is a massive developer of mobile video games based in Tokyo, giving rise to countless stand-out hits such as ‘Japan Pro Baseball Card Battle’ and ‘Three Kingdoms Guild Battle’ for DeNA’s Mobage gaming platform.

In fact, Gloops is thought to be the largest third-party provider for the Mobage platform, and it has quickly found success with a huge portfolio of titles. Many of its hits are high-quality card games which, popular in Japan and Korea, have been done better than any of its competitors.

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Commenting on the deal Seungwoo Choi, president and CEO of Nexon, said:

“Gloops has established itself as one of the premier mobile game developers in the world and a key player in one of our most important growth areas, with a robust portfolio of hit titles and a strong track record of driving market innovation.

We look forward to leveraging gloops’ outstanding capabilities and scale to expand the Nexon game experience to users on mobile platforms worldwide.”

The deal is said to have been approved unanimously by the board of directors from each company.

Japanese mobile gaming company DeNA would have no doubt been interested in buying Gloops, but it was likely put off by the hefty price tag.

The announcement today follows NEXON’s acquisiton of inBlue, another Japanese developer of social video games for smartphones.

NEXON, founded in Korea in 1994, also hit the headlines last year when a data breach exposed more than 13 million subscribers to its MapleStory MMO video game. The company had been tipped to head for IPO but now it seems clear why the company had refuted that speculation earlier this summer.

Image Source: MMOSITE