Throne & Liberty dev NCSoft reportedly plans layoffs as earnings tank

Its MMOs lose popularity in South Korea

NCSoft

South Korean developer and publisher NCSoft is set to execute a large wave of layoffs following another disappointing earnings report for the company, according to Yonhap News Agency. The studio’s operating profit fell by 75% in the second quarter of 2024 when compared to the same period in the previous year. Revenue from mobile games, which make up roughly two thirds of the company’s total revenue, sank by 38% under the same variables, resulting in NCSoft barely breaking even at the moment.

This continues a trend already visible last year, when the numbers plummeted compared to 2022.

One of the main reasons for the free fall is the continued decline of revenue from the Lineage series, NCSoft’s traditional workhorse and historically one of the most popular MMOs in South Korea. Throne & Liberty, the company’s latest MMO, did not have a great launch at home and quickly lost players.

In contrast, the game seems to be doing quite well globally, reaching over 336,000 concurrent players on Steam at launch and still having a peak of over 200,000 concurrent users every day on the platform.  However, revenues from the global version are expected to be significantly smaller due to the weaker monetization mechanics in the Steam version and its income having to be shared with publisher Amazon Games.

Yonhap wrote that NCSoft has already laid off some workers in the first half of the year, mainly from supporting departments. The upcoming wave of layoffs is said to affect development and operations teams as well.

NCSoft signed a partnership with Sony last year to work together more closely and showed off several upcoming projects at G-Star 2023.

One classic NCSoft MMO, City of Heroes, returned from the dead in 2024 after the developer signed a licensing agreement with a fan server provider.