Krafton, the publisher of PUBG, experienced a highly successful year in 2023. They achieved record-breaking revenue, improved monetization from both in-game and out-game content, and significantly bolstered their net profits for the year, reaching ₩594 billion ($446 million).
Notably, growth on PC and console doubled since 2020, but mobile continued to lead in revenues by a wide margin.
Of Krafton’s record-breaking ₩1.9 trillion ($1.4 billion) in revenue last year, ₩1.25 trillion ($939 million) or 66% came from mobile alone. Revenue from PC was the second most impactful, bringing in ₩584 billion ($439 million), while console brought in ₩55.7 billion ($41.9 million).
It is important to note that although mobile clearly made up the bulk of Krafton’s 2023 revenue, the earnings from this platform actually decreased by 0.6%. Console gaming revenue saw a much more dramatic decline of 46.5%, while PC revenue increased by 25.6%.
However, this may not necessarily indicate a new trend or a sustained decline in mobile revenues for Krafton, as the fourth quarter of 2023 saw a positive turnaround for mobile with a 34.5% year-on-year revenue increase, while PC only grew by 20.1% in Q4. Revenue from Krafton’s console audience continued to decline at the end of the year, down by a massive 74.3%.
For the fourth quarter’s operating profit, Krafton experienced a 30.3% year-on-year growth to ₩164 billion ($123 million), but fell 13.2% quarter-on-quarter, attributed to increasing costs relating to “major games services”. For the full financial year, Krafton made ₩768 billion ($577 million) in operating profit, up from ₩752 billion ($565 million) in 2022.
Net profits were ₩594 billion ($446 million) in 2023 compared to ₩500 billion ($376 million) in 2022. Adjusted EBITDA was also up in 2023, at ₩903.7 billion ($679 million) versus ₩792.7 billion ($596 million) the year prior.
Krafton attributed its 2023 success to its strengthened Free-to-Play transition momentum, citing “solid growth in traffic and revenue”. The company also spent the year conducting research on AI, releasing the most research papers on the subject of any Korean games company in 2023, and the third-most worldwide.
In 2024, Krafton plans to scale up original creative projects as “1B IPs” while centralizing its organizations to headquarters. There are multiple new titles on the way, including SubNautica 2, Dinkum Mobile, and battle royale RPG Darker and Darker Mobile.
Fellow gaming giant Roblox also had a prosperous 2023, with revenues of $2.8 billion marking a 26% rise.
