Smilegate is a South Korean video game company headquartered in Pangyo. It develops, publishes, and services online games on mobile and PC platforms. Established in South Korea in 2002,[2] it is the creator of Crossfire, an FPS game with over six million concurrent players across the globe,[3] and many more titles. Smilegate is a corporate group owned by Smilegate Holdings. As of 2022, it was the third largest game company in Korea, according to The Korea Economic Daily.[4]
History
Smilegate's yearly revenue in 2021 was 1.43 trillion KRW ($1.08 billion) with 593 billion won operating profit.[4] It was estimated to be worth $7.55 billion in 2022.[4] In 2018 it had about 2,200 employees.[5] Smilegate subsidiary Stove is dedicated to indie game developers.[6][7][8]
Crossfire
Crossfire is an FPS that has reached more than 8 million concurrent users around the world. Crossfire is being serviced in 80 countries worldwide including China, Brazil, Vietnam, Northern America, and Europe.
Every year, Smilegate organizes an international Crossfire tournament with a prize pool of approximately 1 billion KRW titled CFS (CrossFire Stars). CFS has the largest scale among all tournaments held by video game companies in South Korea.
Smilegate made a tremendous amount of revenue from Crossfire ever since its release. With the success of Crossfire, Smilegate was nominated as one of <THE TOP 30 DEVELOPERS>[9] by Game Developer.
According to a list[10] made in 2014 by SuperData Research, Crossfire made the most amount of revenue among all F2P games worldwide.
Crossfire was the world’s most played game until League of Legends took the first place in 2017.
Lost Ark
Lost Ark is a PC MMORPG developed by Smilegate RPG. Lost Ark was first released in South Korea in 2018 costing approximately 100 million KRW during the 7 years of development. It became increasingly popular in 2021 and became one of the top trending games in South Korea.
In February 2022, the game was launched in Northern America and Europe via Steam. Lost Ark reached more than 1.32 million concurrent users on Steam, becoming the most played game on the platform. The record of 1.32 million concurrent users is the second place in the entire history of Steam, the first place being 3.25 million concurrent users of PUBG: Battlegrounds. Considering that Lost Ark was only released in North America and Europe, some argue that Lost Ark was more impactful than PUBG: Battlegrounds, which was released in China as well.
Epic Seven
Epic Seven is a mobile turn-based RPG game developed by subsidiary Super Creative and released in 2018.[11][12][13] It became Smilegate's first successful title in the West, with the United States at one point accounting more than half of its revenue.[12] In June 2023, it released in China through Chinese publisher Zlong Games.[14] By August 2023 it had reached $650 million in global sales.[13]Epic Seven utilizes an in-house game engine designed to support older devices and improve loading times.[15][16]
Games
These are the games developed or published by Smilegate. Publisher and release dates are for South Korea unless otherwise noted.
