According to a new report published today by Bloomberg, Chinese tech giant Tencent has approached NEXON about potentially acquiring the company.
NEXON was founded in South Korea in 1994, although the headquarters were moved to Tokyo in 2005. Historically, its most successful franchises have been Maple Story, Mabinogi, Vindictus, and, most importantly, Dungeon Fighter Online, one of the highest-grossing gaming IPs in the world, with over $22 billion earned as of 2023. Recently, the publisher has released many new projects, such as KartRider: Drift, Dave The Diver and The Finals in 2023, The First Descendant in 2024, The First Berserker: Khazan in 2025, and many more to come, such as the zombie stealth extraction game NAKWON: LAST PARADISE, the top-down online team action game Wakerunners, the third-person extraction shooter ARC Raiders (out on October 30), and Vindictus: Defying Fate, a co-op action RPG with a Closed Alpha available now to try on Steam.
NEXON is currently worth around $15 billion, but that shouldn’t be an issue for the much larger Tencent, presently estimated to be worth over $600 billion. Bloomberg says that Tencent contacted the family of the late NEXON founder, Kim Jung-ju (who passed away on 28 February 2022 at the age of 54), to discuss the possibility of acquiring the company. Kim’s family has been speaking to advisers and evaluating options. According to NEXON’s interim report, they hold their stake through the family investment firm NXC Corp., which, together with its subsidiary NXMH BV, owned 44.4% of Nexon as of 30 June. Kim’s wife and daughters control approximately 67.6% of NXC. There is, however, no certainty that a transaction will take place, and even the deal’s structure has yet to be finalized.
Tencent is no stranger to investments or acquisitions throughout the gaming industry. Just sticking to the latter, they fully own Riot Games, Grinding Gear Games, Sharkmob, Funcom, Sumo Group, and Leyou. Just a few days ago, we learned that the Chinese company had also acquired 15.75% of Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead Studios.
