Amazon, Comcast, Electronic Arts, and Tencent have all reportedly expressed their desire to purchase South Korean publishing giant, Nexon, but it looks like Disney will ultimately bag the deal.
Founded in Seoul and headquartered in Tokyo, the LawBreakers publisher has been looking for a potential buyer since January 2019. According to a new report by The Korea Herald, Chairman Kim Jung-ju has “personally” approached a “high-ranking” Disney executive to offer a $13.2 billion controlling stake that he and his wife currently hold.
Neither Disney nor Nexon have commented on The Korea Herald’s report but the newspaper published an interesting quote by Kim Jung-ju dating back to 2015, in which he mentioned his admiration of Disney.
“What I envy the most about Disney is that they do not force money out of kids … (consumers) gladly pay Disney,” he said with reference to microtransactions. “Nexon has a long way to go. Some people hate Nexon to death.”
Nexon was founded in 1994 and currently supports over 80 games across multiple platforms in 190 countries. Nexon’s American arm published LawBreakers, produced by Cliff Bleszinski’s now-defunct studio, Boss Key Productions.
Nexon America was forced to write off LawBreakers as a loss when the game failed to gain traction, resulting in its servers being shut down in 2017. The publisher subsequently suffered layoffs and Bleszinski left the industry.
Despite its troubles, Nexon is a successful publisher and reports of companies like Amazon and EA vying for the controlling stake come as no surprise.
We’ll update our readers when we have more information.
[Source: The Korea Herald via ResetEra]
