News: Gravity sold to Softbank

September 08, 2005, 12:54 PM

by brandon, via Gravity -
[permalink]

Gravity Corp, which made Ragnarok Online, among other things, has been sold by its founder (Kim Jung-ryool) to Softbank in Japan. He started Gravity with just 500,000 dollars five years ago, and sold his 52.4% stock in the company for almost $360 million. That's a deal, there. This means that Softbank (curiously, let by korean-japanese business men according to one source) will be at the helm of the studio for RO 2, past the beta phase. What's next for mister Kim? He'll be investing in mobile and PDA-based games. He feels as though the mobile game industry will overtake the mmo business in the near future. I'm skeptical, but you certainly can't argue with his past choices.