[서울=뉴스핌] Reporter Yang Tae-hoon = Dragonfly, which has suffered from losses for seven consecutive years, resumes stock trading after completing free capital reduction and begins to recover its performance in earnest. With ‘Special Force Remastered’ scheduled to be released in the second half of next year, attention is focused on whether the famous FPS company will be able to make a comeback.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service’s electronic disclosure system on the 27th, the Korea Exchange will lift the suspension of Dragonfly’s stock trading from the 29th. This is in accordance with Dragonfly’s recently completed listing of potato stock exchange.
On the 19th, Dragonfly carried out a free capital reduction by merging 5 shares of common stock with a face value of 500 won into 1 share in order to improve its financial structure by preserving losses. With this reduction, the number of issued shares decreased by 80% from 69,388,973 shares to 13,877,794 shares, and the capital decreased from 34.7 billion won to 6.9 billion won.
The free potatoes are interpreted as a decision to eliminate the accumulated deficit. Dragonfly has continued to experience poor performance due to the weakening competitiveness of its flagship game, ‘Special Force’. Special Force, launched in 2004, led the FPS genre by being serviced in over 90 countries around the world, but its position has since narrowed significantly due to the release of new games by large game companies such as ‘Overwatch’, ‘Battleground’, and ‘Valorant’. .
Accordingly, through genre diversification, Dragonfly released new games such as MMORPG ‘Call of Chaos: Assemble’, idle RPG ‘Adore: Guardian Goddess’, and action RPG ‘Abyss Mate’ last year, but profitability actually worsened. Operating loss, which was 3.8 billion won in 2021, increased to 13.3 billion won last year, and in the first half of this year, it recorded an operating loss of 4.8 billion won and a net loss of 8.1 billion won for the period. This is because the burden of fixed costs such as app market fees and external IP usage fees has increased due to the release of new mobile games.
Recently, Dragonfly revised its strategy to expand the proportion of PC games and self-developed works, such as introducing ‘Special Force Remastered’ at the international game exhibition ‘G-STAR 2024’. ‘Special Force Remastered’ is a game in which the original developer and founder, Managing Director Park Cheol-seung, served as general producer. It maintains the fast gameplay that was the strength of the original Special Force while greatly improving the graphics by applying the latest Unreal Engine. We also plan to develop a ‘global e-sports system’ that allows users to freely form teams, participate in ongoing online leagues, accumulate points, and advance to seasonal tournaments, and provide convenient functions for SNS linkage and personal broadcasting.
In addition, Dragonfly plans to release a beta version of Special Force Remastered in the second half of next year. In addition, to improve performance, we plan to launch ‘Abyss Mate’ in Taiwan and ‘Downtown’, which is being jointly developed with Funcrew Japan, in Korea and Japan. Funcrew Japan is a company invested by ‘Terage’, led by famous Japanese game developer Yoshiki Okamoto, who has produced representative games such as ‘Street Fighter 2’, ‘Resident Evil’, and ‘Monster Hunter’.
Meanwhile, in relation to ‘Special Force Remastered’, Managing Director Park Cheol-seung said, “The biggest reason why Special Force has been able to be serviced around the world for the past 20 years is the unrivaled gun recoil, movement method, map balance, and e-games where teamwork and tactical play are important. “This is because it has become popular with users around the world as a sports FPS game,” he said. “This remastered version not only implements realistic graphics and the latest weapons and equipment used in modern warfare, but also enhances e-sports content.” “We plan to focus on development,” he said.
