Chang Byung-gyu, who started and leads the South Korean gaming company Krafton, is wealthy again. This happened after Krafton, famous for the game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), reported record sales in the second quarter. Following this news, the company’s stock rose by 13% on the Korean stock market, recovering from a drop in November 2022.
Chang holds 14.6% of Krafton. His wealth has now returned to $1 billion. He first reached this amount in 2021 but lost it during difficult times for the gaming industry. According to Forbes, Chang and his wife, Jung Seung-hye—who owns 0.6% of the company—now have a combined net worth of $1 billion as of Tuesday’s market close.
Krafton’s revenue increased by 83% compared to the previous year. This brought in 707 billion won, about $515 million, for the quarter ending June 30. This is Krafton’s highest revenue in nearly 20 years. The company’s operating profit more than doubled to 332 billion won during this time. This growth happened because more people played PUBG, thanks to new, limited-time game features and partnerships with celebrities like the popular K-pop group NewJeans. The PC and console versions of PUBG saw a 40% increase in active players each month during early 2024, while daily active users on the mobile version grew by 30%.
Since PUBG started in 2017, it has been Krafton’s main source of income. But the company has been trying to add more games to its lineup. Recently, Krafton bought Tokyo-based Tango Gameworks. This is one of the 27 companies Krafton has invested in since 2021 to add more gaming options.
Krafton also wants to attract more players in India, the world’s most populated country. The company is also looking at using artificial intelligence in new games, especially in areas like customizing game content and bettering in-game character interactions.
Chang, with a master’s degree in computer science from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, started Krafton in 2007, first naming it Bluehole. He took the company public in 2021, raising about 4.3 trillion won in South Korea’s third-largest initial public offering. Before his success with Krafton, Chang started and sold a search engine company called 1noon to NHN for $36.5 million in 2006.
Chang is one of many successful South Korean entrepreneurs in the online gaming industry. Others include Shift Up’s Kim Hyung-tae, Smilegate’s Kwon Hyuk-bin, NCSoft’s Kim Taek-jin, Lionheart Studio’s Kim Jae-young, and Netmarble’s Bang Jun-hyuk. South Korea, known for its fast internet, has led in creating large online games like NCSoft’s Lineage and Nexon’s MapleStory, which helped shape the global gaming market.
