By Yoon Sung-won
NCSOFT’s new mobile game “Lineage M” made an impressive debut in Korea, both in the number of users and sales performance. But it is expected to meet a bumpy road.
The company said “Lineage M” posted 10.7 billion won ($9.38 million) in sales and drew 2.1 million users on the first day of its release, Wednesday.
According to mobile market tracker WiseApp, the game also took the No.1 spot on the top grossing chart at Apple’s Appstore within seven hours after its release. It came in second on Google Play’s chart as of Thursday, following Netmarble Games’ “Lineage 2: Revolution.”
The mobile game is based on the namesake computer online game “Lineage.” Launched in 1998, “Lineage” still is one of the most popular online games here, drawing over 3 trillion won in cumulative sales so far.
NCSOFT said it has prepared for 130 server computers, which can accommodate up to 800,000 users at the same time. It is the largest number of servers to be set up for a mobile game in Korea, the company said.
But the servers suffered connection errors as an estimated 2 million users accessed the game just after the launch. The game has drawn over 5.5 million preorders.
Besides the server problems, “Lineage M” is also receiving heavy criticism from adult users for the delayed launch of player-to-player trading and trading market, which NCSOFT has hyped as key features brought from the original “Lineage.”
The company is agonizing over how to introduce the trading feature as Korea’s Game Rating and Administration Office classifies a game that allows trading through money or in-game currency with actual value as adult-only content.
Netmarble’s “Lineage 2: Revolution,” which logged over 200 billion won in the first month of sales, used to have the trading market when it was released last December. But it stopped the trading market after the game rating office said it will reclassify the game as adult-only content if it continues to allow trading.
“Trading is one of the key features that have helped the original ‘Lineage’ retain its popularity for almost two decades,” a game industry source said. “NCSOFT has also promoted that the mobile version will have this feature. But now that the game was released without the trading, many users are likely to feel disappointment about it.
“In terms of sales performance, ‘Lineage M’ will need the trading market to challenge the record made by ‘Lineage 2: Revolution’ in terms of profitability.”
NCSOFT said it plans to introduce trading market in early July and player-to-player trading afterwards.
The delayed release of trading market has also raised an insider trading suspicion involving NCSOFT Vice President Bae Jae-hyun.
On Tuesday, the day before the launch of “Lineage M,” NCSOFT said Bae sold 8,000 shares of the company on June 13 and 15. On the same day, NCSOFT’s stock price plunged 11.41 percent on the news over the trading feature so that the firm lost 1.18 trillion won in market capitalization.
Suspicions surfaced that the vice president allegedly sold his shares because he could expect the stock price fall based on his access to internal information.
“Bae sold his shares to exercise his stock options. He will have far more shares than those he sold before,” an NCSOFT spokesman said. “The vice president plans to own the shares he will acquire for a long time.”
The Financial Services Committee and Korea Exchange launched a probe over the alleged insider trading and short selling of NCSOFT shares, Wednesday. More than 196,000 NCSOFT shares, worth 76.2 billion won, were short-sold on Tuesday.