In The Free Zone today, we take a look at the recent stock offering by Asian MMO powerhouse, Nexon. Leave us your thoughts in the comments when finished reading.

When companies go public, they are required to release information that usually wasn't available before, at least not easily. Sometimes, they put out even more. Accordingly, I've had an eye on Nexon during the run-up to its IPO last week. It was reportedly the largest this year on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, raising a very tidy sum, $1.17 billion. This apparently represents a total market value in the range between $7.7 and $9 billion.

Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: Nexon's IPO Signals Growth.

I knew F2P were doing alot of money but not that much!! 0_o

Could it be that a part of their success is with the selling of karma koin cards? Not everyone wants to use a CC on the internet.

Same could be said with P2P games i guess. Like WOW, they have time cards. That way you can get a wider audience to play your games.

incoming more "F2P" titles hehehe

Great titles, regular updates and purchasable content that is tailored specficially to the interests and playstyles of each game. Nexon really has a great stable of games and great extras for each game's avid fans.

Pure. Win.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Great titles, regular updates and purchasable content that is tailored specficially to the interests and playstyles of each game. Nexon really has a great stable of games and great extras for each game's avid fans.

Pure. Win.

 

 Nexon has great games but they are a horrible company. Their customer service is TERRIBLE in NA. I've had 1 ticket that stil has not been answered in over a year and other one that hasn't been answered since the summer. Their updates of some of their games are horrid too and can take days. Some of their games are horridly bugged and server crashes are common. They actually had to have a weeks' worth of rollbacks for Mabinogi because so many hackers were duping gold like crazy. I just find it amazing that such a company that makes so much money has such horrid secuirty for their games and that they somehow can't afford to employ more people to answer tickets...

The Nexon IPO immediate slipped and faltered.  If anything I'd say this shows that investors do not have a ton of confidence in the company.  If they don't drop a big bomb AAA title that can actually compete, I don't think you will see them getting continued support. 

In other words, they have one shot and that shot needs to be the next big title.

Originally posted by Jooknow

The Nexon IPO immediate slipped and faltered.  If anything I'd say this shows that investors do not have a ton of confidence in the company.  If they don't drop a big bomb AAA title that can actually compete, I don't think you will see them getting continued support. 

In other words, they have one shot and that shot needs to be the next big title.

 

 Their next huge tittle is going to be Mabinogi II, which is a sequel to Mabinogi (Vindictus is also the prequel to Mabinogi).

Originally posted by Razeekster

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Great titles, regular updates and purchasable content that is tailored specficially to the interests and playstyles of each game. Nexon really has a great stable of games and great extras for each game's avid fans.

Pure. Win.

 

 Nexon has great games but they are a horrible company. Their customer service is TERRIBLE in NA. I've had 1 ticket that stil has not been answered in over a year and other one that hasn't been answered since the summer. Their updates of some of their games are horrid too and can take days. Some of their games are horridly bugged and server crashes are common. They actually had to have a weeks' worth of rollbacks for Mabinogi because so many hackers were duping gold like crazy. I just find it amazing that such a company that makes so much money has such horrid secuirty for their games and that they somehow can't afford to employ more people to answer tickets...

Although I agree that they should hire more employees for their Customer Support service, I have to disagree with the rest.

Concerning the rollbacks in Mabinogi, they don't have much choice but to, and any company will, if needed, rollback their servers to reduce the damage. Duping is rarely done through hacking however, but often normal players who came across an exploit, decided that today was their birthday and they could do whatever they wanted and "shared the wealth" to unknowing players. It would be completly ridiculous to punish (bans) innocent players for having gold that was duped, and removing something that was already spent is more complicated. A rollbacks + refunds of some sorts (extended cash shop items duration, additional bonuses as apologies) is pretty much the only thing a company can do at this point. And of course they will ban the players caught exploiting.

As far as taking days to fix an issue, anyone that has delved into programming will understand why. Having to run through tens of thousands of lines of code to figure out what in hell might cause a bug, often to fix it and discover a new one, is an extremely long and  tedious process of testing, fixing and testing in a loop until they can conclude that it has been fixed. 

Just as a side note here, I'm not trying to strictly defend Nexon, but game companies and programmers alike. I've experienced my fair share of programming/bug hunting frustration so I tend to give more ropes to developers to fix their games. Unless...they simply don't bother to fix something (I'm looking at you StarVault and Aventurine!). With that being said, I'm way off topic.

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Concerning Nexon's growth, I'm actually not surprised at all. The staffs at Nexon have been doing a really great job at picking the right games to bring to NA, and especially over the last 2 years have learned quite a bit more about the NA market and succesfully adapted to it. By this I'm referring for example to the whole debacle with VIndictus when it first launched, and the major outrage from the players who felt extremely restricted by the Token System (which was only refilled twice per week). Now none of their games have any sort of direct "cap" on how long you can play and run dungeons, and they've continued to learn and adapt to the NA market, which I think is one of the main reason that can explain this growth. Of course I'm speaking strictly of Nexon NA as I'm not very familiar with how Nexon works in Asia.

i have only dabbled in two nexon published games but i really enjoyed both atlantica and dragon nest and i could see mytself loggin into them more in the future.

I tried mabinogi but i don't think i got it.  funy because i love sandbox games normally.

i haven't had any real problems with their customer service or wit their item malls, though i think atlantica's item mall should have more "assured" items and less gambling on boxes.

if nexon continues to succeed that's great; i'd rather see a game company succeed, and possibly give me my next love of a game, than fail.

Like most f2p companies they have little or no support mechanisms.  Have a problem with their games, good luck.  

None of their games are better than the rest of the pack, I would think investing in this company is a very bad idea.

Originally posted by MadnessRealm

Originally posted by Razeekster

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Great titles, regular updates and purchasable content that is tailored specficially to the interests and playstyles of each game. Nexon really has a great stable of games and great extras for each game's avid fans.

Pure. Win.

 

 Nexon has great games but they are a horrible company. Their customer service is TERRIBLE in NA. I've had 1 ticket that stil has not been answered in over a year and other one that hasn't been answered since the summer. Their updates of some of their games are horrid too and can take days. Some of their games are horridly bugged and server crashes are common. They actually had to have a weeks' worth of rollbacks for Mabinogi because so many hackers were duping gold like crazy. I just find it amazing that such a company that makes so much money has such horrid secuirty for their games and that they somehow can't afford to employ more people to answer tickets...

Although I agree that they should hire more employees for their Customer Support service, I have to disagree with the rest.

Concerning the rollbacks in Mabinogi, they don't have much choice but to, and any company will, if needed, rollback their servers to reduce the damage. Duping is rarely done through hacking however, but often normal players who came across an exploit, decided that today was their birthday and they could do whatever they wanted and "shared the wealth" to unknowing players. It would be completly ridiculous to punish (bans) innocent players for having gold that was duped, and removing something that was already spent is more complicated. A rollbacks + refunds of some sorts (extended cash shop items duration, additional bonuses as apologies) is pretty much the only thing a company can do at this point. And of course they will ban the players caught exploiting.

As far as taking days to fix an issue, anyone that has delved into programming will understand why. Having to run through tens of thousands of lines of code to figure out what in hell might cause a bug, often to fix it and discover a new one, is an extremely long and  tedious process of testing, fixing and testing in a loop until they can conclude that it has been fixed. 

Just as a side note here, I'm not trying to strictly defend Nexon, but game companies and programmers alike. I've experienced my fair share of programming/bug hunting frustration so I tend to give more ropes to developers to fix their games. Unless...they simply don't bother to fix something (I'm looking at you StarVault and Aventurine!). With that being said, I'm way off topic.

 

-----

 

Concerning Nexon's growth, I'm actually not surprised at all. The staffs at Nexon have been doing a really great job at picking the right games to bring to NA, and especially over the last 2 years have learned quite a bit more about the NA market and succesfully adapted to it. By this I'm referring for example to the whole debacle with VIndictus when it first launched, and the major outrage from the players who felt extremely restricted by the Token System (which was only refilled twice per week). Now none of their games have any sort of direct "cap" on how long you can play and run dungeons, and they've continued to learn and adapt to the NA market, which I think is one of the main reason that can explain this growth. Of course I'm speaking strictly of Nexon NA as I'm not very familiar with how Nexon works in Asia.

 

 You obviously don't know what's going on in Mabinogi... People are still duping and the people that got banned were only banned for one day so some of them came back and started duping again. Nexon hans't solved that problem or the problem that the client has an outdated Hackshield that doesn't protect the game at all from hackers. It's basically destroyed the economy in the servers. Also some players have been locked out of their characters since the G15 update came out which was October 29th, and it's now December... The people who run Nexon NA are extremely incompetent and easily mess up things when patching games and also they always seem to fail at translating items once they first come out.

It's nice to see some numbers put to these F2P games, even if they're buried in reports that are hundreds of pages long.

But it's also depressing to see these kind of numbers coming from a company that manages its games and infrastructure like Nexon does.

Thats how much they get and they still greedy and sucks. Nexon is a very bad company, their customer support is horrible. I have a ticket waiting for more than 4 months. Their in game items are very expensive and very necessary for normal gameplay.

As a avid gamer I'm happy to see these numbers being generated by the f2p industry, but Nexon is the wrong place for it to go.  I can't see this company going anywhere in NA with it's horrible security and it's complete dis-regard for customer service.   

All that money and Vindictus still doesn't have dedicated servers.

Yeah im shorting this IPO. Neither the Fundamentals or the Technicals are there to support the purchase of this equity.

Originally posted by Jooknow

The Nexon IPO immediate slipped and faltered.  If anything I'd say this shows that investors do not have a ton of confidence in the company.  If they don't drop a big bomb AAA title that can actually compete, I don't think you will see them getting continued support. 

In other words, they have one shot and that shot needs to be the next big title.

Nexon's first AAA title is going to be Mabinogi 2 which will feature Vindictus style Action on a larger persistant world.

Dupers, hackers, 0 customer service. I wonder how much of that money is put back into the game as opposed to shipped to Korea. I know that legal team that chases down all the private servers probably costs a lot but other than that who knows what gets spent. If anything this should get players more upset seeing the actual numbers and knowing that almost none of that will come back to them in the form of help. The one positive I can say is Nexon is pretty active with pushing out content but again that is kind of like putting curtains and nice dressings around a broken window.

It just shows Nexon is very good at seperating teens and young adults from their money and has been for years. You will probably love their games until you have a major problem and then have fun waiting 3+ months for any kind of answer.

Originally posted by Opinicus

I knew F2P were doing alot of money but not that much!! 0_o

Could it be that a part of their success is with the selling of karma koin cards? Not everyone wants to use a CC on the internet.

Same could be said with P2P games i guess. Like WOW, they have time cards. That way you can get a wider audience to play your games.

incoming more "F2P" titles hehehe

I think you are right, many people are careful with putting their cards on the net now and some people don't even own cards.

Prepaid cards also make nice gifts, more than one kid have gotten a Wow timecard at Xmas.

Payment on the internet is just so badly handled that you need some time of cards like this to sell as much as possible. I have friends who refuse playing MMOs without timecards since they are scared to get ripped off and I myself quit EQ2 for good after the hacking scandal.

Massive gold seller spam, I mean more than in any game, and nothing done about it. No customer support, had a ticket for the longest time still waiting for a reply. Their games have you pay for one of the most frustrating aspect, re-specs, and many things already mentionned.

They're one of the reason serious gamers totally loathe F2P tittles. I seriously  hope they dont become the model for good games going F2P.

Originally posted by Elbone

Massive gold seller spam, I mean more than in any game, and nothing done about it. No customer support, had a ticket for the longest time still waiting for a reply. Their games have you pay for one of the most frustrating aspect, re-specs, and many things already mentionned.

 

They're one of the reason serious gamers totally loathe F2P tittles. I seriously  hope they dont become the model for good games going F2P.

 

Sadly I remember years ago talking to an employee from Nexon and they were trumpting how they would host conferences where execultives of major comapnies would come and see how to implement the F2P system in their games. This was about 2007-2008 range so it could have been a precursor to what we have now. Wish during one of those conferences someone from one of the companies could have told Nexon about proper customer service and integrity of the game.