HanbitSoft Founder Sells Out, Hellgate to Blame?
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The 47-year-old built his fortune from distributing ``StarCraft,'' a strategic computer game made by Blizzard Studio of the United States. He had said that he first encountered the game at the E3 gaming expo in California in 2007, when he was one of the managers at LG LCD's software publishing business unit.
Instinctually, he decided to import the game _ a decision that changed his life as well as the shape of the Korean game industry. More than 6 million copies of ``StarCraft'' were sold in South Korea alone via the company he founded with his colleague. Now there are some 400 professional gamers in 12 professional clubs competing against each other in televised tournaments. Such popularity has created the term ``e-sports'' in Korea.
The article then goes on to claim that the company suffered a huge loss due to Hellgate: London's lackluster sales, which may or may not have contributed to the shuffle:
As the next step, Kim decided to finance a massive game project called ``Hellgate: London,'' which was developed by the same team that created ``StarCraft.'' He expected it would be a new milestone of Korean game industry's history. But the new game didn't do very well, yet, and Hanbit recorded a 7.2 billion won loss last year.
