Nexon, one of the largest game publishers in all of Asia, is creating a new one Web3 Game based on his popular pixelated 2D RPG called MapleStory Universe that launches a private supernet polygon Nexon announced this for the new game on Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Introduced in 2003, MapleStory is a long-standing success story for Nexon. The game has brought the company more than $4 billion in revenue to date announced earlier this year, and has amassed more than 180 million registered users to date. The game’s Steam page lists an even larger number totaling over 260 million players.
“We look forward to expanding NFT Ecosystem that MapleStory Universe envisioned by being built on top of Polygon,” said Hwang Sun-young, group leader of MapleStory Universe, in a statement. “We will be working closely with the Polygon Labs team to develop and commercialize the game.”
Polygon is an Ethereum scaling network that enables faster and cheaper transactions than Ethereum’s own mainnet. The upcoming PC game’s Polygon Supernet will allow Nexon to have its own “dedicated app chain,” said Urvit Goel, Polygon Labs vice president, global games and platform business development decrypt in an interview.
“You have the ability to scale in ways you can’t scale on a shared blockchain,” Goel said of Nexon and its proposed supernet. “They have a very broad idea of how many transactions they think they’re going to do on a daily basis because the game and the IP is so big.”
Polygon’s supernets take a similar approach to Avalanche’s subnets, such as providing a dedicated subnetwork for individual projects. They offer developers some customization options while isolating decentralized apps (dapps) and games from potential performance issues on the broader public network.
MapleStory Universe was announced last year and has no confirmed release date yet. But Goel said there will be no NFT pre-sales and players will be able to earn items as NFTs simply by playing the game.
“They don’t push for in-app purchases,” he added, referring to the microtransactions common in mobile games on iOS and Android.
MapleStory Universe is an NFT-centric game, meaning that tokenized assets play an important role in the game itself and can be traded or transferred through the game’s marketplace. said Nexon decrypt via email that MapleStory Universe will also eventually have its own crypto token, although the details on that are not yet finalized.
“We plan to issue our unique coin and specific details on that will be announced later with our tokenomics,” the game studio said.
Nexon is both a South Korean and Japanese company, but generates most of its sales in the South Korean market. And according to Polygon Labs’ Goel, it’s not the only South Korean studio leaning towards Web3.
“Korea was by far the leader from a developer perspective,” Goel said. “If you look at the top 10 gaming companies in Korea, eight out of ten have publicly stated that they are building something on the blockchain that is unique in the world.”
Other major South Korean game makers working on Web3 projects include NCSoft and Netmarble, both of which are built on the burgeoning blockchain network Sui. Meanwhile, Krafton — creator of the popular shooter series PUBG: Battlegrounds — is working on various blockchain initiatives, including in partnership with Solana Labs.
In a statement, President of Polygon Labs Ryan Wyatt reiterated that South Korea is “a crucial market” for Web3 games.
