spacer
Global spacer

Published on February 1st, 2013 | by cinderboy

19

gPotato – North America and Europe portals sold to rival

  • Tweet

Announced just hours ago, North America and Europe MMO portal, gPotato, has been sold. The deal includes its parent company, Gala-Net, and its offices in the 2 locations. Gala-Net’s operations in Korea and Japan seems to remain intact as they were not mentioned. The buyer is none other than Webzen, which is expanding once again in 2013 after reviving a few years back

spacer

The deal, worth around 17.5 million USD according to Reuters, will give Webzen 100% control of Gala-Net and gPotato’s operations in North America and Europe. Webzen has already made its presence known on gPotato, with Continent of the Ninth Seal being published on the portal.

 

Update 1: As pointed out by Guzmán Díaz in the comments, the North America and Europe subsidiaries for Gala-Net have shrunk their revenues by over 40% year on year and have been registering losses during the first 9 months of 2012. The 17.5 million USD is hence an acceptable one, although the amount may look low from the outside.

Update 2: According to Japanese sources, Gala-Net Brazil is included in the deal as well.

Tags: Gala-Net, gPotato, Webzen


About the Author

spacer

cinderboy Your average online gamer who is bilingual in Chinese and English, although he does try to play Japanese and Korean games sometimes. Might be a hypocrite or has a short fuse, but like every gamer, he is just human and is soft on the inside. Really.


Related Posts

Archlord II – God of War music composer to grace OST"> spacer
Archlord II – God of War music composer to grace OST">Archlord II – God of War music composer to grace OST
Eternal Blade – Japan server scheduled for Spring 2013 service"> spacer
Eternal Blade – Japan server scheduled for Spring 2013 service">Eternal Blade – Japan server scheduled for Spring 2013 service
gPotato – Official notice claims no games will be affected"> spacer
gPotato – Official notice claims no games will be affected">gPotato – Official notice claims no games will be affected
spacer
Age of Wushu – Brief guide for 2 new ultimate skills


19 Responses to gPotato – North America and Europe portals sold to rival

  1. spacer Jose F. Cordeiro says:
    February 1, 2013 at 6:00 PM

    Lets hope that this goes for the better.

    Log in to Reply
  2. spacer Guzmán Díaz says:
    February 1, 2013 at 7:08 PM

    The actual value of the deal is KRW 19,115,697,625 which translates to around 17,500,000 USD.

    I doubt Reuters is wrong, but it seems a rather low valuation… Let’s hope for the best!

    Source: www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/069080.KQ/key-developments/article/2685209

    Log in to Reply
    • spacer cinderboy says:
      February 1, 2013 at 7:22 PM

      I was skeptical at the USD 17.5mil deal as well, hence I opted to bump it up to USD 175mil just in case the Korean reports got it wrong. If Reuters is reporting that, I think I should go with it.

      Log in to Reply
  3. spacer Guzmán Díaz says:
    February 1, 2013 at 8:06 PM

    It all makes sense if you take a look at Gala Inc.’s latest financial report: www.gala.jp/pdf/es20120810.pdf

    European and North American subsidiaries have shrunk their revenues by over 40% year on year and have been registering losses during the first 9 months of 2012.

    Log in to Reply
    • spacer cinderboy says:
      February 1, 2013 at 8:19 PM

      Ouch O_O

      Log in to Reply
  4. Pingback: GNE und Gala Net (USA) werden verkauft «

  5. spacer junavatar says:
    February 1, 2013 at 9:30 PM

    Recently, Rappelz and FlyFF were closed in Latin America. The GM-Producer that was taking charge of the operations (he was left alone after other employees lay off), explained that Gala-net was going to continue publishing FlyFF in LatAm.

    But there was clearly a lack of commitment and inversion from Gpotato to improve the service quality during 2012. In result, players saw lots of bugs and bots.

    Now, these news doesn’t seem unexpected.

    Log in to Reply
    • spacer cinderboy says:
      February 1, 2013 at 9:53 PM

      Thank you for the insight.

      Log in to Reply
  6. Pingback: » Webzen buys 100% of Gala-Net, gPotato » webaligns

  7. Pingback: RunicPortal » Webzen buys 100% of Gala-Net, gPotato

  8. spacer Truth says:
    February 1, 2013 at 10:08 PM

    Based on their financial we can also assume most of the other subsidiaries are in red ink and based on the Japanese version they really needed the cash.
    Their iOS game developed by someone else didn’t work well and they actually let people go in Japan saying they can’t pay them anymore (foreigners are the ones they let go, less impact on their brand image in Japan).
    For US and EU it might be a good move if Webzen put efforts and money in it while for Gala Group I don’t see any future with the current strategy. They have a huge studio in Korea that didn’t produce any hit in years with out-date technology, their market-share in Japan is 0 as well as on the mobile market. For your information they already sold a profitable Japanese subsidiary a year ago.

    Log in to Reply
  9. spacer solbalmung says:
    February 1, 2013 at 11:26 PM

    wait wut?
    The financial report of GP provided by Guzman stats that as future effort Dragona online (develloped by LivePlex, also published by it then closed) is gonna have an english CBT during the 2nd quarter of 2013.
    Thats quite some surprising news. Is Dragona gonna succed wherein it failed not that long ago?

    Log in to Reply
  10. Pingback: gPotato Sold To Webzen | MMO Fallout

  11. spacer Aznkhmerso says:
    February 2, 2013 at 6:00 AM

    Interesting news, that why I visit MMOCulture everyday…

    Log in to Reply
  12. Pingback: gPotato – North America and Europe portals sold to rival - MMOPOOL.COM

  13. Pingback: [Links] Gaming news: Sony due to reveal next gen playstation in Feb, Hartsmann leaves Trion, gPotato gets sold to company with less daft name | Welcome to Spinksville!

  14. spacer Hagyma says:
    February 5, 2013 at 6:35 PM

    What does it mean for Age of Wulin?

    Log in to Reply
  15. spacer Filipe Ribeiro says:
    February 28, 2013 at 11:37 AM

    Well, games on gPotato were dying one after another. Luna, Iris and Prius. And I’m sure Sevencore will die soon too. Rappelz is a mistery. It’s old, but it’s still alive after years. And it’s not that good. I just hope they still can bring Eternal Blade to light.

    Log in to Reply
  16. spacer Kao Saelor says:
    March 5, 2013 at 5:38 AM

    Funny thing is Gpotato screwed up 2012 itself, people got hacked each day (Gm’s sold flyff’s American Database) and allot people got no help ore had to wait 8 months + to get their stuff back and people still are waiting to get stuff back…. and now like 2 months ago all Gm’s left Flyff america and europe took over after that no more maintenance no events and no help again even WebZen is silence, so wow so good WebZen took over and leaves the playerbases in the Dark, good job WebZen yor compagny is worse than Gpotato, iff you would fix the tickets allot off people will start playing again, Flyff is an Unique game you not wonder why it still has a playerbase who still care for the game just do something.

    Log in to Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Back to Top ↑
  • Register now!

    spacer
    Ecol Tactics Online
    Ecol Tactics Online
    spacer
    spacer
    spacer
    Online Tennis Manager
    Online Tennis Manager
    spacer
    God of Axion
    God of Axion
    spacer
    spacer
    spacer
    spacer
    spacer
  • Social stats

    • 7142likes
    • 2863subscribers
    • 2489posts
    • 8965comments

    Facebook

    Log in with:

  • Click to support

gipoco.com is neither affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its contents. This is a safe-cache copy of the original web site.