Venture capital firm K Cube Ventures has announced an investment of 500 million won in game developer Neptune earlier this morning.
Neptune is a mobile game company that was founded by CEO Wook Jeong, former CEO of NHN’s Hangame, at the beginning of this year. He is joined by CTO and former NHN Japan employee Sang-hoon Kwon, as well as COO and former Hangame Operations Manager, Han-sang Cho.
Sports simulation game “Nexen Pro Baseball Master 2013” was launched in October and has been received well by users. Wook Jeong has the experience of successfully leading innovation in Korea’s gaming world at NHN, and recognizing the spread from PCs to mobile devices, he plans to search for successful opportunities in a new market.
CEO of K Cube Ventures Jimmy Rim said, “It is not common in the gaming industry to find someone with as much insight as CEO Wook Jeong. We’re sure that with a team which has such vast experience and know-how as Neptune, they will be successful in the mobile game market which they are now starting out in.”
CEO of Neptune Wook Jeong said, “We think that growing our company long-term by joining the K Cube family will help us a lot. Our maiden voyage of “Nexen Pro Baseball Master 2013″ is sailing smoothly and we plan rto release continual updates. Starting from here, we would like to be recognized as the best in the mobile game market in the future.”
Recently, the number of important figures from IT companies and talented developers looking to move to startups has been increasing. Interest is brewing over human resources in the market following voluntary resignations at NC Soft and hundreds of developers looking to find new jobs as Yahoo Korea pulls out of Korea. During the 90s, NC Soft and Yahoo Korea were successful and led strongly in the online game publishing and search engine areas respectively.
Like Wook Jeong of Neptune, the CEO of another recent K Cube family member “Fincon” also shares the history and experience of 10 years working with companies guiding platform change in the PC market, and the company is now moving into the mobile market.
Rim added, “It is difficult for startups to bring new value and succeed in the PC market where there are already winners. As you can tell from the speed of smartphone propagation, the young mobile market has a positive size and we’re still in an age where there is no dominant player. It’s now time for innovation to change platforms.”
View the other companies in the K Cube Family here.