Creator Of Blockbuster Game ‘Goddess Of Victory: Nikke' Joins Ranks Of Korea's 50 Richest
Kim Hyung-tae (center), attends the company's listing ceremony at the Korea Exchange (KRX) in Seoul on July 11, 2024.
This story is part of Forbes' coverage of Korea's Richest 2025. See the full list here.
The $320 million IPO last July of online games developer Shift Up, Korea's second-largest listing of 2024, made its founder and chairman Kim Hyung-tae a billionaire.
Though Tencent-backed Shift Up's shares have fallen more than a third since and Kim's net worth has shrunk to $725 million, that still earns him a debut spot in the ranks of the country's wealthiest.
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A former video game artist, Kim designed Blade & Soul, a top-selling game of fellow listee Kim Taek-jin's NCSoft, where he worked for eight years. He started Shift Up in 2013 and nine years later launched his own blockbuster title, Goddess of Victory: Nikke, a third-person shooter and role-playing game with anime-style graphics.
Another global hit was Stellar Blade. Launched last year, it achieved the highest user score (9.2) for a Sony PlayStation 5 game on review aggregator Metacritic.
In 2024, Shift Up's revenue rose by a third to 224 billion won ($152 million), while net income increased 39% to 148 billion won. Next up is a Chinese version of Goddess of Victory: Nikke, which has already garnered 5 million preregistrations.
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