이 기사는 2022년 03월 16일 07:38 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

South Korea’s online game developer Wemade is gearing up for its entry into the global market. It has newly established the global investment and Chinese business divisions and hired outside experts.

Wemade has established the global investment division and Chinese business division earlier this month and scouted Charles Huh and Chien Tunghai to spearhead each division, according to industry sources.

The latest appointment is seen as a move to fully prepare for its planned global entry. Wemade launched its own blockchain platform Wemix and has led domestic game publishers to join the ecosystem. It is on track to on board 100 games on the Wemix platform by the end of 2022.

While the game developer has normally carried out its global onboarding campaign through agreements, it sometimes made equity investments and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for stronger partnerships. It made a strategic investment in Action Square and Thumbage and acquired SundayToz. These investments have been made under the direction of CEO Chang Hyun-guk. Wemade is in need of experts with background knowledge in both blockchain and investment for its global push. The firm was attracted to Charles Huh’s solid global networks. Huh majored in economics at Brown University and spent nine years at Standard Chartered Private Equity before joining CVC Capital Partners as a senior managing director responsible for South Korea. He was a managing director at private equity firm L Catterton and joined SK Telecom as executive vice president in 2018.

Chinese game veteran Chien Tunghai will help Wemix platform expand its presence in the Chinese market. Chien has built his career at diverse game companies. He was chief marketing officer at T2CN in 2007 and moved to Shanda Games in 2009. He was CEO of Shanda Games and its subsidiary Actoz Soft and joined Netmarble in 2017 where he took charge of Chinese and Asian operations. He moved to Chinese game company Bilibili in 2019.

Chinese gaming companies are showing stronger interest in blockchain-based games. Chang said at a press conference last month that 10 of 100 games to be on board on the Wemix platform this year will likely be the ones developed by Chinese firms.

Chang said that the company will convince foreign game developers to develop blockchain games by participating in every global gaming conference this year. He aims to expand the blockchain-based game business worldwide and introduce Wemix platform to developers around the world.

As part of its plan, Wemade announced the start of the 2022 global roadshow, WIN2022 (Wemix in NFT). Wemade will participate in the world’s largest developers conference Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, as a Diamond partner along with Meta, AWS, Intel, Microsoft and Unity Technologies. Developers will get a chance to have various business meetings about play and earn games and the onboarding process. (Reporting by Won-ji Hwang)