[Column] General: What's Up With Webzen West?

SBFord · December 2013

Our latest Free Zone column takes a look at new and assertive steps being made by Webzen to gain a foothold in North America and Europe. See what we discovered and then leave us your own thoughts in the comments.

Here in North America and also in western Europe, one of 2013's significant stories in the free to play space took place back in February when Webzen acquired sister companies Gala-Net and Gala Networks, now re-named Webzen West and Webzen Dublin respectively. The Korea-based publisher thereby substantially increased its presence in these two markets by gaining control of the gPotato portals. In doing so, it also became the regional operator of a mixed bag of titles, with Allods Online being arguably the most prominent.

Read more of Richard Aihoshi's The Free Zone: What's Up With Webzen West?

Razeekster · December 2013

Webzen's problem is that out of all companies that launch their games in multiple regions their company is the one that takes the longest to translate their games from Asia to the West.

C9 is a perfect example of that. It was out for years in Asia and Vindictus came out in the NA like a year before C9, and with Vindictus being a far better action MMO, game play wise and graphic wise, there wasn't really that much interest in C9.

They are the company I know as being "late to the party" for all their titles.

[Deleted User] · December 2013

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Ozmodan · December 2013

I think their problem is they bought the wrong companies. Toss around the gPotato name and you get bombarded with negative comments. It remains to be seen if they can fix this.