Smilegate

Smilegate's yearly revenue in 2021 was 1.43 trillion KRW ($1.08 billion) with 593 billion won operating profit. It was estimated to be worth $7.55 billion in 2022. In 2018 it had about 2,200 employees.{{cite web |last1=Baek |first1=Byung-yeul |title=Game firm workers setting up labor unions |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2024/08/129_255165.html |website=The Korea Times |language=en |date=6 September 2018}} Smilegate subsidiary Stove is dedicated to indie game developers.{{Cite web |last=Sung-won |first=Yoon |date=4 June 2015 |title=Smilegate offers mobile game platform service |url=https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/tech/2024/02/419_180204.html |access-date=7 February 2024 |website=The Korea Times |language=en}}{{Cite web |date=2022-12-15 |title=Smilegate to support small companies with $10 million of funding |url=https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2022/12/15/business/tech/Korea-game-Smilegate/20221215160631273.html |access-date=2024-02-07 |website=Korea JoongAng Daily |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Jeong-yeo |first=Lim |date=2019-08-21 |title=Smilegate Stove brings VR games to Korean Army |url=https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20190821000645 |access-date=2024-02-07 |website=The Korea Herald |language=en}}

Crossfire is an FPS that has reached more than 8 million concurrent users around the world. Crossfire is being serviced in 80 countries worldwide including China, Brazil, Vietnam, Northern America, and Europe.

Every year, Smilegate organizes an international Crossfire tournament with a prize pool of approximately 1 billion KRW titled CFS (CrossFire Stars). CFS has the largest scale among all tournaments held by video game companies in South Korea.

Smilegate made a tremendous amount of revenue from Crossfire ever since its release. With the success of Crossfire, Smilegate was nominated as one of {{Cite book |last=UBM TechWeb |url=http://archive.org/details/GDM_JuneJuly_2012 |title=GDM JuneJuly 2012 |date=2012 |language=english}} by Game Developer.

According to a list{{Cite web |last=Tassi |first=Paul |title=CrossFire: Tencent's Top Earning Free-to-Play Game You've Never Heard Of |url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/20/crossfire-tencents-top-earning-free-to-play-game-youve-never-heard-of/ |access-date=2023-07-26 |website=Forbes |language=en}} made in 2014 by SuperData Research, Crossfire made the most amount of revenue among all F2P games worldwide.

Crossfire was the world’s most played game until League of Legends took the first place in 2017.

Lost Ark is a PC MMORPG developed by Smilegate RPG. Lost Ark was first released in South Korea in 2018 costing approximately 100 million KRW during the 7 years of development. It became increasingly popular in 2021 and became one of the top trending games in South Korea.

In February 2022, the game was launched in Northern America and Europe via Steam. Lost Ark reached more than 1.32 million concurrent users on Steam, becoming the most played game on the platform. The record of 1.32 million concurrent users is the second place in the entire history of Steam, the first place being 3.25 million concurrent users of PUBG: Battlegrounds. Considering that Lost Ark was only released in North America and Europe, some argue that Lost Ark was more impactful than PUBG: Battlegrounds, which was released in China as well.

Epic Seven is a mobile turn-based RPG game developed by subsidiary Super Creative and released in 2018.{{cite web |last1=Lee |first1=Ju-Hyun |title=Korea’s Smilegate unveils new RPG Chaos Zero Nightmare |url=https://www.kedglobal.com/korean-games/newsView/ked202404220015 |website=The Korea Economic Daily |language=en |date=Apr 22, 2024}}{{cite web |author1=이승희 |title=에픽세븐 글로벌 매출 6억 5천만 달러 돌파, 중국 모바일RPG 매출 TOP10 랭크 |url=https://m.betanews.net/article/1436704 |website=betanews.net |language=ko |date=24 August 2023}} It became Smilegate's first successful title in the West, with the United States at one point accounting more than half of its revenue. In June 2023, it released in China through Chinese publisher Zlong Games.{{cite web |author1=원동현 |title=스마일게이트 '에픽세븐', 중국 출시로 제2의 전성기 |url=https://m.gamevu.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=29386 |website=gamevu |date=2023-11-02}} By August 2023 it had reached $650 million in global sales. Epic Seven utilizes an in-house game engine designed to support older devices and improve loading times.{{cite web |last1=Byung-wook |first1=Kim |title=Why develop in-house game engines? |url=https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20210323000704 |website=The Korea Herald |language=en |date=23 March 2021}}

LORDNINE is a mobile MMORPG developed by NX3GAMES and published by Smilegate Megaport. It was released in July 2024. The game experienced emergency maintenance and client instability issues during its initial launch period. Within a week of release, it reached No.1 in revenue on both Google Play and the Apple App Store.{{Cite web |last=김태만 |date=25 July 2024 |title=SMILEGATE’s “LORDNINE” Makes a Successful Debut Despite Various Issues |url=https://m.gamevu.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=34301 |website=gamevu}}

These are the games developed or published by Smilegate. Publisher and release dates are for South Korea unless otherwise noted.

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{{cite web |last1=Sinclair |first1=Brendan |title=Smilegate at 20: Growing beyond Crossfire, reaching beyond games |url=https://www.gamesindustry.biz/smilegate-at-20-growing-beyond-crossfire-reaching-beyond-games |website=GamesIndustry.biz |language=en |date=27 September 2022}}

{{cite web |last1=관리자 |first1=스마일게이트 |title=Everything about the YUNA Engine, the Heart of Epic Seven! |url=https://newsroom.smilegate.com/eng/Epic_Seven_YUNA_Engine_EN |website=smilegate |language=en |date=October 11, 2018}}

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Category:Video game development companies

Category:Video game publishers

Category:Video game companies of South Korea

Category:Video game companies established in 2002

Category:South Korean companies established in 2002

Category:Bundang