NCSoft, the South Korean MMO specialist behind the likes of Throne and Liberty, Guild Wars 2, and Lineage, has confirmed a significant restructure of the company amid a sweeping round of layoffs.
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported on comments from NCSoft co-CEOs Taek-Jin Kim and Byung-Moo Park, who blamed the incoming layoffs and reorganization on the company’s ongoing financial troubles. “We feel a deep sense of responsibility and offer an apology to all employees,” they said.
The co-CEOs added that "as a result of operating in a way that most of the manpower and functions are concentrated at the headquarters, financial performance has continued to deteriorate and we are at risk of becoming a chronically loss-making company," and that this situation "is seriously damaging the creativity and challenging spirit that NCSoft originally possessed."
NCSoft, established in 1997 and headquartered in Seoul, now plans to develop new video games in the form of independent studios, each with their own culture and process, it said. Throne and Liberty, recently published globally by Amazon Games to huge player numbers on Steam, is now its own game studio.
NCSoft is now split into four divisions: NCAI, Studio X, Studio Y, and Studio G. (Studio X is the studio behind Throne and Liberty.) It’s unclear at this stage what NCSoft’s troubles mean for ArenaNet, the Bellevue, Washington-based studio behind Guild Wars. Earlier this year, Guild Wars 3 was said to have been in development, although work continues on Guild Wars 2.
Some video games will be canceled, howoever, alongside layoffs via a voluntary retirement program, the co-CEOs confirmed. "Major changes are inevitable for the survival and future of the company, and we promise active support and compensation to those affected,” they said.
Earlier this month, Amazon Games announced that Throne and Liberty had seen more than three million players in just a week following its global launch. Originally billed as a Lineage sequel, Throne and Liberty is an MMO with PvE and PvP set in a dynamic and seamless world. It suffered numerous delays over the course of a development cycle spanning several years.
Throne and Liberty finally launched on October 1 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, and soon proved a hit on Steam with an impressive player concurrent peak of 336,300. Throne and Liberty remains one of the most-played games on Valve’s platform. Neither Sony nor Microsoft make player numbers public.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.