Neptune said on Thursday it has been selected as a company to carry out the Korea Creative Content Agency's "K-Culture Global Startup Fostering Technology Development" project.

The government project was planned as part of the "2026 Culture, Sports and Tourism R&D programme" promoted by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and KOCCA. Neptune will form a consortium with Super Planet, Content First and the Intelligent Image Processing Lab of the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Korea University, and will receive research and development support worth 7.7 billion won over about 2 years and 9 months.

The consortium's key task is to develop a "webtoon intellectual property (IP) mid-core game automatic generation (W2G: Webtoon-to-Game) pipeline and global service proof-of-concept platform based on large language model (LLM) autonomous agents".

To that end, it will build a technology platform in which generative AI uses webtoon IP as a source to automatically convert key assets such as in-game stories, quests and dialogue. The consortium presented a goal of cutting the mid-core game development period, which previously took an average of 12 months or more, to within 4 months through the automated pipeline, reducing the overall process time by about 66.7 percent.

In the project, Neptune will lead platform engine design and the build-out of infrastructure for global commercialisation. It will be responsible for AI engine design, including non-player character interaction and real-time conversations with IP characters in games. It also plans to develop a software development kit and a W2G platform that provide integrated support for authentication, payments, analytics and advertising monetisation based on an HTML5 format that runs instantly in a web browser without installing a separate application.

Neptune has previously converted mobile game IP, including flagship titles "Infinite Stairs" and "Cat Snack Bar", into HTML5 formats and successfully published them on Toss's "App in Toss". It plans to combine that with operating know-how from its in-house chat solution "Klat" and its advertising revenue maximisation platform "AdX" to achieve both global expansion and monetisation of webtoon IP games.

Neptune CEO Kang Yul-bin (강율빈) said the goal is not only to automate the game development process, but also to build a platform that allows webtoon IP to be served more quickly in global markets and generate revenue on an ongoing basis. He said Neptune will build a new business model and platform that naturally connects webtoon readers to game users and supports the global expansion and monetisation of webtoon IP, based on its accumulated HTML5 game service experience and ad-tech capabilities.