Everyone has already gotten used to the fact that the gaming industry has been going through hard times in the last few years. However, the South Korean gaming giant Krafton, known for the global hit PUBG: Battlegrounds, is planning significant investments in 2025. The company intends to spend more than 200 billion won ($136 million) to support more than a dozen promising game studios around the world, Bloomberg reports.
The company's strategy, according to CEO Kim Changhan, will also focus on expanding its portfolio of original content and utilizing advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Kim said that Krafton has already built a team of 80 engineers specializing in deep learning and plans to hire another 35 specialists this year to further strengthen its capabilities.
“We have ambitious plans to scale our business,” said Kim, an experienced engineer who took over the company in 2020. Over the past two years, Krafton has invested approximately $680 million in acquisitions and minority stakes in game studios around the world, from Texas to Tokyo, as part of its growth strategy.
Krafton's efforts are paying off. The company's shares have risen by more than 70% since the beginning of 2024 thanks to record revenues in the first three quarters. Almost all of Krafton's revenue comes from outside South Korea, and its operating margin in the third quarter was 45%. The company remains a close partner of Chinese tech giant Tencent and operates one of the most popular gaming franchises in the world.
Last week at CES in Las Vegas, Krafton joined forces with NVIDIA to demonstrate new artificial intelligence technologies that aim to improve the behavior of non-player characters (NPCs) in video games. Thanks to an AI technology called "cooperative characters," NPCs will be able to demonstrate dynamic behavior depending on the characteristics and game situations chosen by the player. The new feature, based on NVIDIA's AI model, will make its debut in Krafton's Inzoi simulator, which will be released in early access on PC in March.
Krafton is also planning to add similar AI features to the PUBG franchise, although their implementation will depend on optimizing the technology for players who do not have high-performance graphics cards with AI support. "We are working to ensure that these features work seamlessly across devices," Kim said.
Over the past two years, Krafton has reviewed more than 1,000 game studios for potential investment, an extremely high rate for the industry. The company's latest acquisitions include Madrid-based EF Games and Japan's Tango Gameworks. Krafton has also acquired stakes in Texas-based Ruckus Games, Montreal-based Wolf Haus Games, and American Day 4 Night Studios.