Welcome back to another quick roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news.
Star Stable: I’m frankly just as surprised as anyone to be starting this roundup with a dive into the financials of Star Stable Entertainment – you know it as the company that runs kid-friendly horse MMORPG Star Stable, which is actually pretty dang cute. The company did very well in 2020, no doubt thanks to COVID lockdowns; it reported annual revenue of $44M and a huge playerbase increase that brings the game to half a million active players every month, which lends weight to its claim that it’s “the world’s biggest horse and adventure game.”
Roblox: Roblox, however, has a much messier quarterly report this round. As readers will recall, the company went public earlier this year, so this is its first earnings report to shareholders as a publicly traded company, and it remains… unprofitable. Revenues were once again up for the quarter, ending at $387M, but the company also managed net losses of $134.2M, which as GIbiz notes is almost twice the quarterly net losses from a year ago. One good metric in the bunch: Average daily active users are up 79% YOY.
Nexon: The Korean MMO company saw its Q1 2021 revenues climb 7% year over year to ¥88.3B ($806M US). The downside of the report is that MapleStory and KartRider Rush+ underperformed in South Korea, though PC and mobile revenues for the company overall were strong. And as for the West? “Revenues from North America and Europe increased by 16% primarily driven by MapleStory and MapleStory M, which grew by 136% and 78% year-over-year, respectively,” the company says.
Digital conventions: Finally, we’ll end with two events to put on your calendar. Bethesda’s QuakeCon 2021 is set for August 19th through 21st, once again a digital event; we keep eyeballs on this one largely because of Elder Scrolls Online’s announcements. EA Play Live, on the other hand, is slated for July 22nd.
