Well, there goes the neighborhood… Kakao Games (publisher of Black Desert Online) has taken a majority stake in XLGAMES, developer of ArcheAge and Moonlight Sculptor (a mobile title). This is a follow on to their strategic investment back in 2018 of around 10 billion Korean won ($8.4 million US).
Source: http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/?news=233899&site=archeage
The majority stake now gives Kakao Games a design studio and all of XLGAMES intellectual property to draw upon for PC and mobile game development. Jake Song will continue to oversee XLGAMES where the studio will now focus more of the additional resources they will be receiving, into the development of PC and mobile games. Thus it is possible that ArcheAge Korea may eventually transition from being self-published to Kakao Games publishing arm in the future.
As I’ve mentioned often times, I am not a fan of Kakao Games monetization practices in their published games (like BDO) since there is deep embedding of cash shop mechanics involved (where functionality, quality of life, convenience, and RNG are all purposely designed where there is some cash shop item which can be purchased to regain this back in percentages or in full).
Free to play ArcheAge is already designed this way but it remains to be seen what impact this will have on Unchained (and the Korean premium server equivalent) in the future.
