Solo Leveling: Arise, an action role-playing game launched on May 8, 2024 (Courtesy of Netmarble)
South Korean game developer Netmarble Corp. is enjoying growing sales of its new action role-playing game (RPG) “Solo Leveling: Arise,” backed by the popularity of the game’s original story in a global hit webtoon and digital novel.
Netmarble said on Tuesday that the sales of the RPG are estimated to be $70 million over the past month since it was launched on May 8.
The game is based on the original story of “Solo Leveling,” a digital novel and online comic that has attracted 14.3 billion views worldwide. The new RPG was developed by Netmarble’s subsidiary NetmarbleNeo, which produced “Lineage 2: Revolution,” a massively multiplayer online RPG in 2016.
“Solo Leveling: Arise” logged more than 15 million downloads worldwide in five days after it was launched. It also topped the free game charts in Google Play and App Store in Korea by sales and download, according to mobile data research firm Sensor Tower.
Sensor Tower found that some 39.4% of the sales of the new game came from Korea from May 8 to June 10. The US and Japan followed with 16.9% and 15.6% of the sales, respectively. Taiwan made up 4.8%, and France followed with 3.6%.
The popularity of “Solo Leveling: Arise” was led by the gamification of digital comics intellectual property (IP), Sensor Tower reported.
The word “webtoon” was mentioned the most in the game app reviews, indicating that the game has a strong appeal to the fans of the digital comics, said the California-based digital market research firm.
Core gamers, who have a wider range of interests than casual gamers, made up a large share of the players, followed by the users categorized as cartoon and animation enthusiasts, the firm added.
By Seung-Woo Lee
leeswoo@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.
