Saudi sovereign wealth fund buys $700 mn stake in NCSoft

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) has increased its stake in South Korea's leading gaming company NCSoft Corp. to become its fourth-largest shareholder, according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday.

PIF currently owns a 6.69% stake in NCSoft, the publisher of the popular online role-playing game Lineage W, worth around 800 billion won ($670 million) based on the stock's closing price on Feb. 9.

The investment comes just after the sovereign wealth fund bought a 5% stake in the Japanese arm of another Korean game developer Nexon Co. for $883 million. It is now also the fourth-largest shareholder in Nexon's Japanese operations.

Both of the stake acquisitions were for simple investment, according to their announcements.

Back in 2020, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman acquired 240 billion won worth of shares in South Korean gaming company SNK Corp., well-known for King of Fighters. Currently, he is the top shareholder in the listed game developer with a 33.3% stake.

The deal marked the Saudi royal family’s first investment in a game company listed on the Seoul bourse.

PIF has been making big bets on global gaming companies, including Japanese game developer Capcom Co and Activision Blizzard Inc., the game developer of World of Warcraft.

With 1.8 trillion Saudi riyals ($480 billion) in assets, PIF launched its gaming company Savvy Gaming Group (SGG) last month.

In November of last year, NCSoft said it will release its first play-to-earn games based on non-fungible tokens this year to enter the blockchain-based gaming market.

Its founder and CEO Kim Taek-jin is the largest shareholder with an 11.9% stake, followed by another homegrown gaming company Netmarble Corp. with an 8.9% stake and the National Pension Service with an 8.4% stake.

PIF's bets on Korean gaming companies came after Chinese technology giant Tencent Holdings snapped up Korean gaming startups, a move seen aimed at securing their intellectual properties (IPs) to cement its No. 1 spot in the global game industry. 

Tencent is already a major shareholder of leading Korean game publishers such as Netmarble Corp., Krafton Inc. and Kakao Games Corp. 

(Updated on Feb. 11 to add the 240-billion-won investment in 2020 by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman in Korean game developer SNK Corp.)

Write to Ji-Hye Min at spop@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article