Billion-dollar gaming firm Krafton pens business deal with Solana Labs

Metaverse & NFT • March 23, 2022, 3:07PM EDT
The Block

Krafton, a South Korean firm that specializes in developing and distributing video games, announced Wednesday that it signed a business deal with Solana Labs, the team building the Solana blockchain. 

Krafton and Solana Labs will collaborate on building games based on blockchain technology such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), in addition to jointly marketing, designing and investing in projects. 

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“Through this cooperation, Krafton will acquire the insight needed to accelerate its investment in and output of blockchain-based experiences,” the firm’s head of web3 roundtable Hyungchul Park said in a statement.

Krafton earned over $1.57 billion in revenue in 2021, the firm self-reported in February of this year. Of that total, a game distributed by Krafton called Player Unknown Battle Ground (PUBG) Mobile — a free-to-play battle royale-style game — earned the firm $1.18 billion in revenue.

Krafton joins other game developers such as Square Enix and Ubisoft to eye blockchain-based gaming opportunities, despite opposition from traditional gaming channels like Steam.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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