South Korea’s Bluehole has been busy as the rise of PUBG has filled its coffers. It partnered with Tencent. It’s been hiring for TERA’s mobile port and even snapping up execs from Riot. It fended off rumors of a Microsoft buyout. It teamed up with Kakao for Project W. It built subsidiary PUBG Corp offices in four corners of the globe. And now, it’s picked up two more studios.
GIbiz reports that Bluehole and PUBG Corp have bought up MadGlory. We don’t know how much money changed hands, but we do know that the company is primarily focused on “custom matchmaking engines” and other multiplayer tools. The publication suggests that the newly dubbed PUBG MadGlory will be working on the PUBG Developer Portal coming out in April, which will basically allow community modders access to the API.
And MMO Culture has a brief piece out on Bluehole’s acqusition of Red Sahara Studio, a mobile studio that will be working on another TERA spinoff.
MMO players will recall that Bluehole is also testing a potential blockbuster core MMORPG in the form of Ascent: Infinite Realm, which is basically being built for western sensibilities. “At this time, there aren’t many companies making MMORPGs, and the games that are running right now have often been running for a few years,” Bluehole CEO Hyo-Seob Kim says. “A lot of users are exhausted with the older content, and while users have a lot of options in other genres, there aren’t a lot of MMORPGs on the market. If something new comes out, it will get higher interest.”
The company has other MMO interests as well: It still maintains its original MMORPG TERA (published by En Masse here in the west), though it effectively abandoned support for Devilian and turned studio Bluehole Ginno into PUBG Corp, ultimately leading Trion Worlds to sunset the western port earlier this month.
