Krafton, the South Korea-based game developer and maker of PUBG, has forayed into the NFT space by investing $6.5 billion into several companies, it announced. The developer has invested $2.5 million into Seoul Auction Blue and $4.1 million into XBYBLUE. Also, it has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for its own NFT projects.
Seoul Auction Blue is an affiliate of Korea’s largest art auctioneer, Seoul Auction, while SOTWO. XBYBLUE is a subsidiary of Seoul Auction Blue and operates a service called XXBLUE, “which secures and curates the intellectual properties (IP) of various digital content to offer limited digital art content to users”, the game developer said.
As per Krafton, Bluehole Studio, one of its game development studios, will lead the company’s initial collaboration with Seoul Auction Blue and XBYBLUE. Both the companies will be responsible for “designing and promoting the NFT products and managing KRAFTON’s IP.”
The companies plan to leverage Krafton’s massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) server operation and next-generation graphics technologies to create and sell NFT avatars that can be used in the metaverse in the future, the company said in a press release.
CH Kim, CEO of KRAFTON, Inc., said, “KRAFTON has a rich history of developing proprietary technologies, which are part of the foundation of our NFT and metaverse development. Through partnerships with innovative companies like Seoul Action Blue, we’re confident we can combine our research and our partner’s expertise to offer new experiences that global users will find fun and engaging. This is just the beginning as KRAFTON will announce additional details related to its collaboration with Seoul Auction Blue and XBYBLUE, as well as additional global partnerships positioned to expand our business in the future.”
The company said that it will share additional details about its investments in Seoul Auction Blue and XBYBLUE in the future.