If you’ve been watching all the Bluehole and Krafton and TERA and En Masse tomfoolery this past month, you’ve surely wondered what the heck is going on over there. And every day, it seems we get another piece of figuring out the puzzle. Today’s piece is Krafton’s announcement that it’s merging its substudio PUBG Corporation – yes, the one renamed to run PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds three years ago – back into the mothership.
“This newly integrated entity will give KRAFTON a greater ability to pursue its vision of an independent studio system that will empower development teams to produce premier gameplay experiences. The merger, which is expected to take place later this year, will allow KRAFTON to strengthen its internal support capabilities to service its multiple products worldwide. In turn, each of its development studios will be given the freedom to pursue their own creative visions. These studios include PUBG, which will live on as a development team, Bluehole, which is refocusing development efforts on upholding its founding principle of creating premier MMORPG experiences, and other studios focusing on game experiences for a variety of genres and audiences. […] Following this announcement, KRAFTON, as the parent company, will establish a collaborative system that will ensure synergy between itself and its independent studios.”
This announcement comes on the heels of Krafton’s announcement that it is turning Bluehole into its own separate subsidiary to govern its MMOs, with Elyon’s creative director as the big boss. In fact, Gibiz reminds us that Bluehole – then the core studio – had previously acquired En Masse, but it’s since flipped around, with Krafton as the corporate identity and Bluehole underneath, and En Masse closing altogether. So if you’re confused, it’s probably largely down to these name switcharoos.
TIL you can just switch positions on the company parental chain. Thanks for the summary, Bree! This seems more complicated than the Daybreak stuff…and they’re horrible about hiding things there with a much simpler chain (too simple?).
As a gamer, I’m always wary when there’s this much juggling on any game I play.
Putting this here because I’ve been confused as hell and I want to be able to find this again. I think this is the chronology:
•Started out as Bluehole in 2008
•Built TERA, published here through En Masse
•Acquired En Masse and some other corps
•Aquired Ginno Games and PUBG, renamed Ginno to PUBG Corp
•Created Krafton as umbrella group for all its acquisitions
•Swapped names: Krafton is the big corp, Bluehole now just one of many
•Krafton begins consolating, merges En Masse/PUBG Corp/etc back into itself
•TERA console PR begins coming directly from Krafton
•Bluehole now designated to hold MMOs (Elyon/TERA)
Edit: As of October, Krafton says it now owns PUBG Corp, Bluehole, Striking Distance Studios, PNIX and Delusion Studio.
FYI, I know some folks involved there, I’m confused too. :)
That’s some advance-level Dragons’ Den corporate activity haha.