Park Gwan-ho, CEO of Wemade, said the company will break away from relying on a single genre of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and make market diversification and global expansion its core strategy.
Park delivered this New Year's message to employees on Jan. 2, saying, "2026 is not a year to prepare for a rebound but the harshest crossroads of survival since Wemade's founding," adding, "We can no longer guarantee the future with past formulas for success and inertia alone."
He went on, "Now we must build games designed from the start for the global market, centered on major platforms that draw users worldwide, beyond specific regions," emphasizing, "What matters to us is not a debate over direction but the rigor and speed of execution."
Park also called for a tough overhaul of the corporate culture. He said, "Departments exist to divide work efficiently, not to divide responsibility," and added, "Behaviors that prioritize guarding one's job boundaries and shifting accountability to other departments over the success of the business can no longer be tolerated."
He also signaled a revamp of performance reviews. Park said, "Starting in 2026, we will fundamentally improve work processes and evaluation methods, led by the human resources division," adding, "Future evaluations will be based not on whether individuals or departments carried out their roles, but on how their results actually contributed to the success of the business."
Park also defined a shift to AI-centered ways of working as "a condition for survival, not a choice." He emphasized, "It is time for each organization and individual to prove for themselves not the simple adoption of AI, but concrete answers to 'how to connect it to results.'"