36Kr learned that South Korean game development startup NPIXEL (co-founders Bae Bong-jian and Jung Hyun-ho) has recently completed a Series B financing of 100 billion won (about 560 million yuan) after winning 75 billion won last year, with saehan Venture Capital.
After this round of financing, NPIXEL has been valued at 1.1 trillion won (about 620 million yuan), becoming a unicorn game maker in less than 4 years.
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Saehan Venture Capital, the lead investor in this round of financing, has discovered the "Krafton" blue hole (the producer of PUBG), "Coupang" Korea's first e-commerce company, and the "Viva Republica" of mobile financial services "Toss".
NPIXEL is a game startup founded in September 2017 by co-founders Bae Fung Kin and Jung Hyun Ho with game industry veterans, the founders of Nexus Games, netmarble's largest subsidiary, who developed the mobile game card RPG game "Seven Horsemen", and its core personnel are also the developers of "Seven Horsemen". "NPIXEL's first game" "Gran Saga", which was launched in South Korea on January 26 this year, ranked first in popularity and best-selling at Google and Apple, and ranked third in App Annie's quarterly outstanding game list.
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"Gran Saga" is an MMORPG game that supports both mobile and PC. The game tells the story of the Knights and the adventures they embark on to save the world, supported by a huge worldview and charismatic game characters, with the collection and cultivation of "GRAN Weapon" attributes as the core content, and the exquisite game graphics and battle mods created using the Unreal 4 engine, coupled with a rich game story, which increases the playability. At the same time, Japanese video game composer Yoko Shimomura and well-known voice actors in South Korea participate in music and dubbing, providing players with a stronger sense of substitution.
Screenshot of the game "Gran Saga"
CEO Leo Kim told 36Kr that NPIXEL completed the "Gran Saga" Japan showcase on August 19 and expects to launch the Japanese market within the year. It is worth mentioning that the new game logo of "Gran Saga" is designed by Kiyotaka Amano (representative work: character design of the first six games of Final Fantasy), which shows that the Japanese game industry has high expectations for the launch of "Gran Saga".
The new Gran Saga logo
In addition, NPIXEL's second 3D magic MMORPG "Chrono Odyssey" is also being developed in parallel. It is understood that the trailer of "Chrono Odyssey" uploaded in December last year has been played two million times on Youtube, which is highly anticipated by a wide range of game fans.
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"NPIXEL" co-founders Pei Fengjian and Zheng Hyun-ho said: "Through financing, we will accelerate the improvement of NPIXEL's self-developed and spontaneous strength, and show the best side of its games such as Gran Saga and Chrono Odyssey to players around the world." “
36Kr has reported that the company received a cumulative Series A financing of about 362 million yuan in December last year.
Editor: Liu Shiwu