In one of the most highly anticipated IPOs in South Korea this year, shares of online game developer Shift Up soared in their trading debut Thursday, making its founder and CEO, Kim Hyung-tae, a billionaire.
The company’s shares closed at 71,000 won on their first day of trading on the Korea Exchange, up 18% from the offering price. That gives Shift Up a valuation of around 4.1 trillion won (about $3 billion), making it the fourth-biggest online gaming company listed in South Korea by market capitalization after Krafton, Netmarble and NCSoft.
Kim, 45, is the largest shareholder of Shift Up, with a 39% stake in his own name. His wife, Chae Ji-yoon, holds a nearly 0.5% stake in the company. Forbes estimates Kim and his wife’s net worth at $1 billion.
Shift Up raised 435 billion won (about $320 million) in an initial public offering of 7.25 million shares at 60,000 won apiece—the top of its indicative range. Shift Up will use the proceeds of the IPO to develop new games and expand popular titles such as Goddess of Victory: Nikke and Stellar Blade.
The Shift Up IPO is the second-biggest in South Korea this year—following KKR-backed HD Hyundai Marine Solution’s 742 billion won offering in May—and the country’s largest gaming IPO since Krafton’s 4.3 trillion won float in 2021.
Investors that backed Shift Up before its IPO include Tencent; online game mogul Park Kwan-ho’s Wemade; Kakao Ventures, the venture capital arm of Korean billionaire Kim Beom-su’s internet giant Kakao; Korean energy conglomerate Daesung Group’s private equity arm (whose portfolio includes Korean online game developers Krafton and Pearl Abyss); Smilegate Investment, the venture capital arm of game giant Smilegate; and IMM Investment, which also backed Krafton.
Tencent, the world’s largest game publisher by revenue, is the second-biggest shareholder in Shift Up, after Kim. The Chinese company owns a 35% stake through Aceville, a Singapore-based subsidiary of Tencent’s cloud arm. Tencent is the distributor of Shift Up’s Goddess of Victory: Nikke.
Shift Up, based in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam neighborhood, was founded by Kim in 2013. Kim was previously a video game artist at NCSoft, where he oversaw the design of the company’s flagship online game Blade & Soul.
Shift Up reported that revenue rose 155% year-over-year to 169 billion won ($122 million) in calendar year 2023, while net income was 107 billion won, up from a loss of 7 billion won in the previous year period. Almost all—97%—of its revenue came from its flagship game, Goddess of Victory: Nikke. The game has more than 5 million downloads in the Google Play store and has a current rating of 4.8 (out of 5) stars based on 489,000 reviews. It is currently the No. 5 top-grossing mobile role-playing game in the U.S., according to research firm Sensor Tower.
Goddess of Victory: Nikke is a third-person shooter and role-playing game with anime-style graphics. Like many other free-to-play games, Goddess of Victory: Nikke makes money through in-game purchases. Specifically, the game charges players for the chance to win rare characters—a technique called “gacha,” the Japanese word for vending machines that dispense toy capsules without showing the contents prior to purchase. It’s a proven recipe for success: Chinese developer Mihoyo’s Genshin Impact, one of the world’s hottest mobile games and the first global hit made in China, uses anime-style graphics and employs the “gacha” technique to make money and keep players hooked.
Shift Up is trying to lessen its dependence on Goddess of Victory: Nikke. In April this year, Shift Up released Stellar Blade, which is a Sony PlayStation video game. The game costs about $73 and has a current rating of 4.82 (out of 5) stars on the PlayStation Store based on 47,000 reviews.
“Both games [Goddess of Victory: Nikke and Stellar Blade] are successful in the global market. Shift Up developed two globally successful games in a short period of time,” Daishin Securities analyst Lee Jee-eun said in a research note last month. “Starting in 2025, Shift Up plans to develop new games and release sequels using existing intellectual property,” said Lee, who has a “buy” rating and 80,000 won target.
Shift Up’s Kim is the latest Korean billionaire to make a fortune from the online gaming sector. Others in the video game-obsessed country include Smilegate’s Kwon Hyuk-bin, NCSoft’s Kim Taek-jin, Lionheart Studio’s Kim Jae-young and Netmarble’s Bang Jun-hyuk. The late Kim Jung-ju, founder of Nexon, was the wealthiest Korean gaming entrepreneur until his sudden death in 2022 at the age of 54. His wife Yoo Jung-hyun, who helped start Nexon in 1994, and their daughters Kim Jung-min and Jung-youn are all billionaires.
South Korea, home to the world’s fastest internet speeds, was one of the earliest developers of popular multiplayer online games. NCSoft, for example, released in 1998 a multiplayer online game called Lineage. A mobile version of the game, Lineage M, is one of the top-grossing games in the world. And in 2003, Nexon launched MapleStory, a multiplayer online game with over 250 million registered users worldwide, which helped pioneer the free-to-play model where users play games for free but pay for virtual items and accessories.
