Major game companies in Korea are accelerating efforts to brand popular game intellectual property (IP). The strategy is to extend the universe of hit titles with solid fan bases into content beyond games—such as animation, films, performances, music videos, and merchandise—to lengthen the lifespan of their IP. As the odds of success for new titles have fallen in a market where tens of thousands of new games are released every year, analysts say companies are shifting to building long-running IP into franchises, as in Japan and the United States.
G-Star (G-STAR) 2025, the country's largest game show held in Busan on the 19th, was a venue where that change was plain to see. Of the 34 new titles exhibited by eight Korean game companies, 19—more than half—were based on existing IP. The trend of showcasing already proven IP across a variety of platforms and genres, including mobile, consoles, and PC, stood out. Booth layouts and promotions also centered on new titles based on existing IP rather than new IP.
NCSOFT, the main sponsor of this G-Star, set up a massive exhibition space with 300 booths to heavily promote its new large-scale massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Aion 2. Aion 2 was unveiled on the 19th, with a final promotional push at G-Star ahead of release. Rather than a new IP, Aion 2 is the first sequel in 17 years to NCSOFT's flagship IP Aion, which, after its 2008 launch, ranked No. 1 for 160 weeks in PC rooms. At G-Star, NCSOFT showcased five new titles including Aion 2, and the much-anticipated unannounced title Horizon Steel Frontiers also uses a hit IP from Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE). The original was focused on single-player, but the new game is being developed as an MMORPG that multiple players can play together, and the platform has expanded beyond PC to mobile.
NCSOFT CEO Kim Taek-jin made a surprise appearance at the G-Star 2025 opening session and said, "We will shine a new light on the essence of MMORPGs and make games with our own color across various genres." The industry interpreted the remark to mean that NCSOFT will step up efforts to brand its IP.
Although it did not participate in G-Star this year, Nexon's Mabinogi Mobile, which won the President's Award at the Korea Game Awards held on the 12th, the day before G-Star opened, is the mobile version of Mabinogi, released in 2004. Not only did the long-running IP cultivated for more than 20 years sweep awards, but it also directly contributed to Nexon's earnings growth this year, surpassing 300 billion won in revenue seven months after its March launch.
Of the five new titles Netmarble exhibited at this G-Star, four are also based on existing IP. Project Evilbane leverages the Raven IP, and Solo Leveling: KARMA is part of the hit Solo Leveling series, the IP that put Netmarble back among the elite game makers. The new title Palworld Mobile, which KRAFTON unveiled with a target of launching next year, is a mobile game that uses the Palworld IP from Japan's Pocketpair.
As competition intensifies in the global game market, Korea's major game companies are expected to accelerate strategies to turn large IP into franchises. In its report published in Aug. 2025, Game Report 2025: Winning Beyond the Game, consulting firm Bain & Company said, "Game companies that own popular game IP must establish long-term strategies to expand beyond games to secure a competitive edge in the future market," assessing that IP expansion has become a necessity rather than a choice.
This shift stems from the recent content market landscape and the characteristics of game fans. According to the report, the number of new games released each year more than doubled over the past five years, reaching about 19,000 last year. That figure is for PC games, and the number would be even higher when mobile and console games are included. The number of newly uploaded YouTube videos online nearly quadrupled over the same period to approach 15 billion. Bain said, "In the daily deluge of content, it has become harder than ever for new games to attract attention." As the likelihood that new game IP will become a hit has steadily declined relative to the expense and time invested, game companies have come to prefer maximizing the use of hits whose success is more or less assured.
In fact, branding IP has been found to be effective in extending the lifespan of existing games. A Bain survey showed that gamers spend about a quarter of the time they devote to non-game content on game-related IP. They tend to spend time watching animations based on their favorite game IP, producing content such as fan art, and watching live streams. When TV series or films based on game IP receive favorable reviews, the average concurrent users of the games with the same title increased by up to 69%.
The report said, "Game fans feel attached to a game's universe, story, and characters, so successful IP expansion strategies spark interest and engagement in the game and help the IP survive longer," adding, "This effect is particularly strong in franchises that have released multiple games over a long period, such as the Fallout series." Indeed, after the Fallout drama aired on Amazon Prime last year, the number of players across more than 10 Fallout games in the franchise rose across the board.
CEO Kim Taek-jin said, "Players no longer consume content passively," adding, "They move fluidly among playing, watching, sharing, and creating, turning their experiences into new content."
Buoyed by the performance of the hit game IP Battlegrounds, which helped it post record quarterly results in the third quarter of this year, KRAFTON said it will accelerate growth of the Battlegrounds franchise. In its five-year mid-to-long-term plan, the company cited securing "big franchise IP" and said it will pursue this by using PUBG as that IP. KRAFTON Chairperson Jang Byung-gyu cited IP expansion as one reason KRAFTON acquired BCJ-31, the parent company of Japanese full-service advertising company ADK Group, for 75 billion yen (about 710 billion won) in July this year. In a media interview, Jang said, "IP must be reinterpreted in various ways—through games, animation, and films—to extend its lifespan."
Major game companies in the United States and Japan have long led the branding of game IP loved for more than a decade. Nintendo's Super Mario, marking its 40th anniversary this year, and Blizzard's Warcraft are representative success stories of branding long-running IP to build solid fandoms. Riot Games also showcased its IP expansion power by releasing Arcane, a Netflix animated series based on League of Legends (LOL), while simultaneously launching related pop-up stores, music videos, and merchandise.