Chang eventually gave the go-ahead, asking Brendan Greene from Ireland to be brought on as the game’s creative director. Greene moved to South Korea, helping develop PUBG in about a year.
The PC and console versions of the game have sold more than 75 million copies as of March, and the mobile version was the most-downloaded game in more than 150 countries, according to a company filing. About 94% of Krafton’s first-quarter revenue of 461 billion won came from overseas sales.
“I never expected this success,” Chang said in an interview with online media EO published in January 2018. “I first thought it’d be good to sell 400,000 titles to earn back the money we invested.”
In his interview in December, CEO Kim said he’s determined to make sure the company doesn’t “stay as a one-hit wonder.”
Krafton is going public months after Seoul-based e-commerce company Coupang Inc. raised $4.6 billion in an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, the most to date by a South Korean company.
Coupang’s IPO has helped amass a fortune of $6.9 billion for founder Bom Kim, a U.S. national born in South Korea, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Kim Jung-ju, who established game developer Nexon Co., has a net worth of $7.6 billion, while Brian Kim, who set up social-messaging app firm Kakao Corp., is worth $13.7 billion.
Chang, who’s poised to join them in the ranks of billionaires, pledged last month to donate stock worth as much as 100 billion won to Krafton employees to “deliver his appreciation to all members of the company who have contributed to Krafton’s growth,” according to a company statement.
He’s the latest in a line of self-made moguls in the country to give away part of their wealth. Kakao’s Kim and Kim Bong-jin, the founder of food-delivery app Woowa Brothers Corp., both signed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge initiative this year, promising to donate most of their fortunes.
“These entrepreneurs who have built their businesses from scratch tend to relate more to inequality issues,” said Leader Index’s Park. “They’ve also suffered to get where they are.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.