{"id":115138,"date":"2026-08-11T04:15:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T04:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/115138\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T04:15:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T04:15:11","slug":"webtoon-entertainment-the-headquarters-of-naver-webtoon-is-expanding-webtoon-ip-intellectual-prop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/115138\/","title":{"rendered":"Webtoon Entertainment, the headquarters of Naver Webtoon, is expanding Webtoon IP (Intellectual Prop.."},"content":{"rendered":"

Invest $100 million in ALI Games to secure 60% stake
Fund co-created with Naver…Investing in IP Recreation
Due to Exchange Rate Impact, Q2 Revenue Down 2.8% Y\/Y
“IP Expansion, Switching from Licensing-Focused to Direct Commercialization” <\/p>\n

\"Webtoon \uc0ac\uc9c4 \ud655\ub300 Webtoon Entertainment CI <\/p>\n

Webtoon Entertainment, the headquarters of Naver Webtoon, is expanding Webtoon IP (Intellectual Property Rights) into games. Like existing animations and movies, the goal is to grow games as one of the pillars of IP re-creation to grow webtoon IP business and increase sales.<\/p>\n

Webtoon Entertainment also announced that it will be more active in securing and expanding IP rights, saying, “There was a limit to the recovery of value with the licensing-oriented IP business.”<\/p>\n

Webtoon Entertainment (Webtoon Entertainment) announced on the 10th (local time) that it will make a strategic investment of $100 million (about 142 billion won) in game company Alai Games Holdings and secure a 60% stake in the second quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n

“Over the next four years, we will develop and release proven IP-based games with global fandom with ALI Games Holdings,” Webtoon Entertainment CEO Kim Jun-koo said in a shareholder letter.<\/p>\n

Algi Games Holdings was founded in 2022 by Han Tae-il, founder of Red Ice Studio, which produced “Only I Level Up” and “Omniscient Reader’s View,” which are considered representative works in the webtoon industry.<\/p>\n

The game lineup that Aliyi Games Holdings will produce based on Naver Webtoon IP has also been unveiled. The launch line-up included games based on “Tem-red,” “Fight-to-Fast Life,” and “Omniscient Reader’s View,” and the first work was heralded as a “Tem-red” based multi-access role-playing game (MMORPG) with 1.3 billion global views.<\/p>\n

The game will be developed by Gray Games, a development studio under ALI Games Holdings, and Nexon will be in charge of publishing.<\/p>\n

Gamification of webtoon IP is considered an attractive option, as success stories such as “Only I Level Up” proved earlier. This is because it contributes to securing new readers by targeting the game user base along with strengthening the loyalty of existing webtoon fandom.<\/p>\n

\"Webtoon \uc0ac\uc9c4 \ud655\ub300 Webtoon Entertainment’s IP Expansion Flywheel [Photo = Webtoon Entertainment] <\/p>\n

Webtoon Entertainment also predicted changes in the direction of IP business development in the future along with the expansion of its IP business to games.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Webtoon Entertainment provided IP licenses and collaborated with external partners in investment and production, but in the future, Webtoon Entertainment aims to increase profits that can be recovered when investing by strengthening its rights to IP. Investing in a game company is also in this context.<\/p>\n

CEO Kim Jun-gu said, “As we continue our existing licensing business, Webtoon Entertainment is seeking opportunities to directly promote commercialization under strategic judgment.”<\/p>\n

To take the lead in IP expansion, Webtoon Entertainment will jointly create an IP fund worth $100 million with Naver. The two companies plan to secure IP rights through the fund and invest in IP secondary creative projects such as animation and games.<\/p>\n

CEO Kim Joon-gu said, “As we have relied heavily on a license-oriented approach, there has been a limit to recovering value even if a global box office hit comes out,” adding, “The fund will be able to secure a much greater financial boost in successful franchise works in the future.”<\/p>\n

International user identification…”Double digit growth will recover”<\/p>\n

Webtoon Entertainment announced on the same day that it recorded 338.5 million dollars in sales in the second quarter. The figure is down 2.8% year-on-year.<\/p>\n

The company explained that the high exchange rate affected the decline in sales and rose 5.2% when the fixed exchange rate was applied.<\/p>\n

Paid content sales fell 4.0% year-on-year to $263.9 million, and IP sales fell 2.6% to $27.4 million. However, ad sales grew 4.2% to $47.1 million.<\/p>\n

According to regional performance, sales in the Korean market grew 10.1% in the second quarter, supporting overall sales. In Korea, the number of monthly paid users reached 3.8 million, up 10.4% year-on-year.<\/p>\n

However, sales fell 15.4% in Japan, the main market, and the number of paid users decreased 9.5% year-on-year to 2.1 million. In other countries, sales increased 11.1%, but the number of paid users decreased 0.6% to 1.7 million, showing a decreasing trend in the overall market except Korea.<\/p>\n

Net loss in the second quarter was $14.6 million, a larger loss compared to the same period last year ($3.9 million).<\/p>\n

Webtoon Entertainment is planning to launch its artificial intelligence (AI) storychat service “Bias,” which was first introduced in Korea, in Japan within this year to strengthen its platform competitiveness.<\/p>\n

In addition, it is focusing on increasing platform user involvement by introducing AI short-form animation production tool “Cuts Make” and AI automatic translation function on a trial basis.<\/p>\n

“We are expanding our off-platform IP business to increase franchise IP value along with AI initiatives to strengthen and expand our on-platform business,” CEO Kim Jun-gu said, “We expect to record double-digit growth again by the end of this year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Invest $100 million in ALI Games to secure 60% stakeFund co-created with Naver…Investing in IP RecreationDue to Exchange…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[623],"tags":[14173,78,59371,59370,59369,6153,5360,657,6496,10607],"class_list":["post-115138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-naver","tag-animation","tag-business","tag-flywheel","tag-franchise","tag-games-holdings","tag-intellectual-property","tag-licensing","tag-naver","tag-naver-webtoon","tag-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}