▲ This photo, provided by Kakao Games, shows MMORPG "OdinL Valhalla Rising." (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

 

 

▲ This photo, provided by Seoul IR, shows Kakao Games CEO Nam Goong-hoon. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap)

 

SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Yonhap) -- Kakao Games, a South Korean video game publisher, saw its business profits plummet with the increase of marketing costs ahead of the release of its new game in the second quarter of this year.

The company announced Tuesday that it has raised sales of 129.5 billion won and 8.1 billion won in business profits during the second quarter of this year.

While Kakao Games' sales increased by 21.5 percent compared to last year, the company experienced a decrease of 49.5 percent in its profits.

Ahead of the "Odin: Valhalla Rising" launch in late June, the operating costs for Kakao Games increased by 34 percent from last year due to the large sum of money spent on marketing the newly released game.

However, there is hope for Kakao Games to improve its operating performance as "Odin: Valhalla Rising" ranked No.1 in sales of South Korea's major app markets right after its release.

"Odin has secured 100 billion won in accumulated sales after 19 days since its release. The number of concurrent users is also on the rise, and both sales and users are maintained stably," said Cho Kye-hyun, Co-CEO at Kakao Games Corp. during a conference call held after announcing the company's performance.

Kakao Games plans to release its mobile games “Friends Shot” and “World Flipper” in both local and overseas markets in the third quarter of 2021.

The video game developer is also currently in the process of developing more games in order to release more than 10 games, including unreleased ones, to release next year in South Korean and foreign markets.

"There's one game that I'm looking forward to opening next year," Cho said. "We'll be able to reveal what kind of game it is during the fourth quarter."

In addition to existing games, Kakao Games is planning to expand its contents such as sports.

Sales in other sectors, including screen golf, reached 26.4 billion won in the second quarter, which is 65.7 percent higher than last year.

"Since the original source of games stems from sports, the fact game contents are expanding to sports show games have come full circle to its original form," Nam Goong-hoon, Co-CEO of Kakao Games, said.

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