The publishing rights for Riders of Icarus will be taken over by VALOFE Global at the end of August 2019 according to a news posting on NEXON’s Rider of Icarus site.
NEXON America’s publishing contract is expiring (and they seem to have chosen not to renew it). Part of that may have been related to when the founder was looking to sell his stake in the parent holding company earlier this year. Several potential buyers ended up putting in bids over the course of the first half of 2019 but last month, the founder was looking at reversing the decision to sell due to disagreements over the amount.
Riders of Icarus publishing contract may have been a casualty since it isn’t a huge revenue stream for NEXON. Both they and the developer (WeMade Entertainment) did try to “re-energize” interest in the game in 2018 after nearly an year of silence (dating back to 2017) but that probably did not really create that much of a blip.
For myself, it’s a game that I haven’t uninstalled as I find myself occasionally returning to it (though it’s also one of those I haven’t gotten to max level; something I normally try to do for titles that I don’t outright stop playing/remove in order to get a feel for how things are at end game).
VALOFE is a Hong Kong based publisher of mostly lesser known PC and mobile games. All three of the PC games (Atlantica Online, Luminary Online, and Combat Arms) are developed by NEXON (the latter) or one of its development studios; in the case of the first two, NDOORS Corp which is a subsidiary of NEXON. Thus the two companies have a fairly long working relationship which will help with the user account transfers to happen much more smoothly.
