SHIFT UP, the South Korean game developer behind Goddess of Victory: Nikke, the recently closed Destiny Child, and the upcoming Stellar Blade – is becoming a publicly traded company!
IPO Application
Shift Up filed an application for IPO for the Korea Stock Exchange, Kosdaq on March 5, 2024. The number of shares scheduled for sale during the upcoming public offering is 7.25 million, with a par value of ₩200 ($0.15) per share.
Company Valuation
Shift Up’s valuation approached ₩2 trillion ($1.5 billion) in October 2023, and Korean analysts expect it to reach a valuation of ₩3 trillion ($2.3 billion) after going public. This is mostly thanks to the continued success of Nikke, surpassing around $600 million in player revenue on mobile only!
Stellar Blade
SHIFT UP is currently working on Stellar Blade, a third-person hack and slash game made in partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment, which is expected to be released for PlayStation 5 on April 26, 2024. A demo was released early inadvertently, but was quickly taken down again. However, some players were able to get a hold of the copy and enjoy the upcoming game and it looks quite amazing!
New Collaboration on the Horizon
With that happening in the background, a new collaboration has been announced, and if the NieR collab was anything to go by, this will be another huge boost for SHIFT UP’s valuation.
Will you be investing in SHIFT UP? Let us know in the comments below!
I saw some people talking about how they might start neglecting or messing up nikke after going public. Personally, I can’t see them fking over their biggest and possibly only real source of revenue. (If stellar blade flops)
This looks pretty bleak to me.
Of course it wont be intentional, no one sits in a board of director’s meeting and votes to deliberately make their game worse. Instead, once you go public managers hold a fiduciary responsibility, meaning they are responsible for making their investors stock price go up. The easiest way to do this is to charge more and produce less content. Lower cost, more value. It’ll be things like worse pull rates, fewer free gem, skin prices may go up, the introduction of Fomo mechanics etc. The writing may take a hit as well since the writers have to be sure they dont offend the public. It could even get censored or far more sfw. They’ll do whatever they can get away with to get an increase market value, because it wont be the game makers calling the shots any more, it’ll be the faceless shareholders who dont care about the game, they just want to see the number go up.
Frankly, I don’t find this game very appealing…
Why are you on this site tho?
I’m talking about stellar blades, remember?
“With that happening in the background, a new collaboration has been announced, and if the NieR collab was anything to go by, this will be another huge boost for SHIFT UP’s valuation.”
I dont think its gonna do well at all. I only hear how ppl are NOT going to summon for Re:zero
IPOs just benefit greedy executives and investors and always result in less innovation and lower quality, along with stagnant wages for developers. It’s fundamentally a short term personal gain decision.