Nexon's fortunes rise on the back of a 10-year-old F2P game

Korean free-to-play game publisher Nexon seems to be having a good year, as the company reported earnings for the second quarter of its 2015 fiscal year that were on the high end of its expectations.

For the three months ending June 30th, the company (which is headquartered in Japan) saw its profits rise 14 percent year-over-year to 11.3 billion yen (~$90.8 million USD) , while revenues rose 16 percent in the same period to hit 42.7 billion yen ($343.16 million USD.) 

Nexon laid blame for its good fortune at the feet of a number of games, the most interesting of which is Dungeon&Fighter, a free-to-play PC action MMORPG that was originally released in 2005 as Dungeon Fighter Online. Now, ten years later, its doing the business for Nexon thanks to strong performance in China.

“Our solid second quarter results were driven by strong performance in both new and existing games,” Nexon chief Owen Mahoney stated in a press release highlighting the company's financials. “We saw impressive results from key existing titles in Korea, Dungeon&Fighter in China and our new title DomiNations in the U.S. and Europe."

DomiNations is, of course, the debut free-to-play strategy game from the recently reborn Big Huge Games, which veteran game designer Brian Reynolds resurrected last year as a mobile-focused studio. While the game seems to have done well for Nexon, it's likely overshadowed by Dungeon&Fighter; Nexon reported that its revenues from PC online games during the quarter were roughly triple those it saw from its mobile games.

Looking ahead, the company seems upbeat, forecasting profits of 14.3 to 17.3 billion yen ($114.9 million to $139 million USD) for its third fiscal quarter of 2015.