Krafton on Thursday announced its 2026 management strategy and mid- to long-term growth direction through its internal communications programme, “Krafton Live Talk”.

Krafton CEO Kim Changhan shared the company’s strategic direction under the theme “the essence of games, expanding value”. Krafton will continue this year the mid- to long-term “big franchise IP (intellectual property)” strategy it announced last year. The strategy focuses on securing distinctive and competitive franchise IP, with three core pillars: expanding in-house production investment, expanding publishing volume and improving the efficiency of resource allocation. A franchise IP is an IP that goes beyond a single game experience, expanding across genres, content and service formats and sustaining repeated growth over a long period.

Krafton said it spent the past year preparing to execute the strategy by strengthening production leadership and advancing its overall systems across production and publishing to develop franchise IP. This year, it will step up new title development to secure franchise IP while also accelerating the expansion of the PUBG IP franchise.

“Krafton is focused on the essence of the games business and has moved new title challenges into the execution phase,” Kim said. “We will expand the PUBG IP franchise into a content platform and create franchise IP based on our new title pipeline and production leadership,” he added.

◆ Finding franchise IP through “small, fast challenges” and “scale-up”

Krafton will further increase the pace of new game releases. To do that, it hired 15 key production leaders over the past year. This year, it expanded its production structure by small organisational units centred on that leadership. The strategy is to expand in-house production lines and increase the number of new titles released through small and fast methods.

Krafton is currently running 26 game projects as a new-title pipeline. Of those, 12 titles, including Subnautica 2, Palworld Mobile and NO LAW, are targeted for release within the next 2 years. Krafton plans to quickly verify the likelihood of success by launching these new titles in markets with clearly defined core fan bases, then scale up projects with confirmed results to identify them as franchise IP.

It is also pushing scale-up efforts for existing IP. Inzoi and Mimesis were released in early access last year and each recorded sales of more than 1 million copies, establishing an initial user base as global titles. Krafton selected them as strategic IP for this year and will develop them into franchise IP with a long-term product life cycle (PLC). For Inzoi, it will strengthen the IP’s sustainability by expanding user-generated content (UGC) based on AI simulation and reinforcing content. For Mimesis, it plans to pursue mid- to long-term growth by establishing it as a leading title in the cooperative horror genre.

◆ PUBG IP franchise to strengthen long-term growth structure through content platform expansion

Krafton said it has continued a steady rise in performance through its PUBG IP franchise strategy, including expanding joint collaborations centred on culture content and improving its structure for long-term service. This year, it will focus on broadening play styles through motion updates and the introduction of new modes to further develop PUBG’s growth momentum. It will also review the potential to expand into media content and develop the PUBG IP into a strong content platform beyond games.

It plans to expand sandbox-oriented UGC using PUBG’s gunplay, mechanics and physics engine, strengthening an ecosystem where users directly create and share content. It will also expand development of mobile and cross-platform new titles that can cover markets from global regions to emerging countries. Through new titles such as “Black Budget” and “Blindspot”, Krafton aims to verify genre expansion of the PUBG IP while also pursuing challenges in new platforms and genres to prepare for the next growth stage.

◆ Expanding Krafton’s future value through AI

Krafton is also exploring the potential use of new game-based AI businesses. Since 2021, it has applied AI technology to games to expand user enjoyment and play experiences, and last year it introduced new concepts such as CPC (Co-Playable Character) to the global market. In October that year, it declared a shift to an AI-first company and began full-scale changes across its organisation and work methods through AI-based work automation. It is reinvesting the time and resources secured through that process into new title development and innovation projects.

Starting this year, Krafton is viewing physical AI and robotics, from a mid- to long-term perspective, as one of the areas where it can expand and apply game technology. It judges that play and interaction data accumulated through games, as well as experience in implementing and operating virtual worlds, can be applied to those fields. In particular, data and simulation experience built in virtual worlds where real-world physical laws are implemented in detail, such as Battlegrounds, are serving as a basis for reviewing related new businesses.

Krafton plans to continue reviewing new businesses in ways that expand its core capabilities, based on the technology and research and development capabilities it has accumulated as a game company.