Webzen announces an aggressive shareholder return policy despite poor results last year.

On Tuesday, Webzen disclosed 2025 full-year revenue of 174.4 billion won, operating profit of 29.7 billion won and net profit of 23.5 billion won. The figures are down 18.8 percent, 45.5 percent and 58.5 percent, respectively, from a year earlier.

Fourth-quarter revenue came to 49.9 billion won, with operating profit of 7.0 billion won and net profit of 6.7 billion won. That was down 10.9 percent, 53.6 percent and 44.1 percent, respectively, from the same period a year earlier.

The decline was largely driven by a slump in South Korea's game market. Overseas performance improved as the MU intellectual property (IP) and Metin IP performed well, rising about 27 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. Webzen's overseas revenue share last year expanded to 49 percent from 35 percent a year earlier.

Webzen is developing new titles and diversifying genres to return to growth. 'Dragon Sword', released in South Korea in January, is preparing for an overseas launch in the first half. It is also developing new titles across genres including strategy defence title 'Gate of Gates', 'Project D1' based on a Naver Webtoon IP, collection RPG 'Terbis' and indie game 'Memories: Forsaken by Light'.

Webzen also announced a tough shareholder return policy to boost shareholder value. It decided to cancel treasury shares equivalent to 10.5 percent of total shares outstanding and approved total dividends of 20.3 billion won, including 16.5 billion won in tax-free dividends with the character of a special dividend. It also plans to pay an additional 16.5 billion won in tax-free special dividends within the year.

Webzen CEO Kim Tae-young (김태영) said, "In a rapidly changing market, we can sustain growth only if we continue to deliver new games with higher completeness and differentiated gameplay." He added, "We will spare no effort to expand development and business capabilities through in-house development and externally invested development." Kim also said, "This year as well, we prepared various shareholder return measures including special dividends and treasury share cancellations." He added, "On the premise that financial stability comes first, we will continue policies to enhance shareholder value."