Well, folks, it was nice while it lasted.
Shift Up, the Korean developers behind the immensely popular mobile gacha game Goddess of Victory: NIKKE and the upcoming Stellar Blade, have officially gone public. The company completed South Korea’s second-largest IPO of the year, selling 7.25 million shares at ₩60,000 KRW each ($43.63 USD). This successful move netted them over $316 million on the first day of trading.
As of now, Shift Up Corp is valued at ₩70,100 KRW, with a total market capitalization of 4.07 trillion KRW ($3.129 billion USD). The Seoul-based company has had a successful stock market debut, with current stock values nearly 17% higher than the initial public offering price.
The company’s success is largely attributed to the successful release of Stellar Blade, which has sold over a million copies and is rumored to have a PC port in development despite being a third-party Sony “exclusive” title.
Stellar Blade faced heavy criticism from Western gaming journalists for featuring an attractive female protagonist. Journalists from outlets like The Gamer and Kotaku argued for months that the game was sexist and demeaning toward women, claiming it extensively pandered to the “male gaze.”
There is some truth to these accusations. While the game is relatively enjoyable to play, it falls short of the hack-and-slash action seen in older Devil May Cry titles. The main allure of Stellar Blade was undoubtedly Shift Up’s inclusion of sex appeal, something that has been arbitrarily lacking in games over the last several years. Despite being a limited-time exclusive on the Sony PlayStation 5, the game sold well enough.
This success aligns with Capcom’s survey results showing that the vast majority of gamers are male and prefer attractive character designs. Despite the concerted efforts of “games journalists” to criticize the game for being “sexist,” it achieved considerable success.
Unfortunately, to release Stellar Blade, Shift Up had to compromise by partnering with Sony. The company, once proudly Japanese, has been pressuring Japanese developers since 2018 to conform to its globalized policy standards after the company had relocated its Sony Interactive Entertainment HQ to America.
This has led to demands that “anime games” and those featuring attractive women and fanservice be toned down or removed entirely. Sony still enforces these censorship policies today, even as it permits Western-made games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and The Last of Us Part 2, which include explicit 3D sex scenes, on its systems.
Stellar Blade had been surrounded by controversy for months prior to its release. Upon its launch, Sony added to the drama by introducing a day-one patch that censored various aspects of the game.
This included toning down the blood and gore and censoring two in-game outfits, despite developers Shift Up’s earlier promises to release the game uncensored in all regions.
The censorship sparked widespread backlash and led to a campaign demanding the uncensored outfits be reintroduced. A social media campaign and a petition, which garnered over 80,000 signatures, eventually pressured Shift Up to reimplement the original outfits.
However, these were added as separate entities, requiring players to earn them in-game, while the modified outfits remained. Shift Up has yet to explain why they decided to censor the game, and their silence has led to a loss of trust and patronage from some fans.
Shift Up partnered with Sony for exclusive publishing rights to Stellar Blade, their first major game, despite the financial success of their mobile gacha game, Goddess of Victory: NIKKE.
It’s likely that without Sony’s financial aid, Stellar Blade, originally known as Project Eve, might not have been completed. However, it’s apparent that Sony intervened at the last minute to make changes to reduce the game’s sexual content.
Thanks to their successful IPO, Shift Up is now Korea’s fourth-largest game development company. However, the future may be challenging, as going public often leads companies to prioritize maximizing profits. For Shift Up, this could mean making future products more inclusive and appealing to a broader range of consumers.
The Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which also owns Riot Games, is a significant investor in Shift Up. Since December 2022, when Tencent acquired a 20% stake in the company, its subsidiary Aceville purchased an additional two million shares the following year.
Today, Tencent holds approximately 35% of Shift Up’s shares. Meanwhile, Shift Up’s founder, Hyung-Tae Kim, retains $1.2 billion worth of stock in his company, now effectively making him a billionaire and he got there entirely by selling gamers tits and ass.
At first glance, this appears to be positive news. However, the reality is more complex. Like other publicly traded companies in the gaming industry, Shift Up may need to prioritize profit above all else.
This could mean producing sensational products, generating absurd amounts of money from microtransactions (as seen with Electronic Arts’ annual sports games), or securing a cheap income stream by adhering to global ESG agendas and policies.
ESG stands for Environment, Social, and Governance, a global initiative pushed by asset management firms like BlackRock, Vanguard, and Blackstone. ESG aims to reshape corporate operations, influencing everything from hiring practices to product design.
Many gaming companies comply with ESG policies to attract investment from various ESG-focused hedge funds.
However, a report in the Harvard Business Review indicated that these funds have not performed well. In 2023, Japanese investors withdrew $4.5 billion from ESG funds, and many ESG funds closed. As more corporations join the ESG bandwagon, the pool of available resources seems to dwindle.
ESG has significantly impacted the video game industry, with companies in both the West and Asia adopting policies that diminish traditional game elements. This includes eradicating femininity, self-censoring “offensive” dialogue, and prioritizing inclusivity and diversity in character designs, resulting in games with batshit ugly characters written by retards.
ESG, DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), and similar initiatives influence hiring practices, favoring diversity over merit. Many game developers today are activists, and the products they create often reflect a disdain for their core audience, specifically White heterosexual men. Journalists advocate for consultation firms like Sweet Baby Inc, which charge companies to sanitize narratives and enforce progressive changes to character designs.
Now that Shift Up is publicly traded, they must prioritize profits to satisfy investors. Ironically, the perceived way to increase profits is by appealing to “modern audiences” who may not exist.
After going public, a job posting on Shift Up’s website, discovered by Twitter user Pandacasual, advertised for an IR Representative or Manager. One of the responsibilities for this role is leading a team to publish ESG reports.
Shift Up will now be required to file ESG reports. Whether this will significantly impact the company as they start adhering to these policies remains to be seen, though it may take some time for such effects to be reflected in their products.
Given the company’s reputation for producing sensual, stimulating game products featuring attractive characters, their ESG scores are likely to be low. This could result in ESG hedge fund investment firms being reluctant to invest in them.
Despite developers adhering to ESG policies with censorship and altering the portrayal of female characters, it doesn’t matter how much money investors throw at companies like Bandai Namco and Square Enix if gamers aren’t interested in buying or liking the content the developers themselves will bleed money.
The failures of Final Fantasy XVI and VII Rebirth are well-known, and Square Enix’s use of retroactive censorship has only worsened their situation. Both Square Enix and Bandai Namco are losing money, with several other developers being shut down due to commercial failures brought on by adhering to ESG policies and receiving consultation services from Sweet Baby Inc.
It will be a few years before Shift Up releases their next full-scale game. Whether they choose to adhere to ESG policies by toning down their content to attract ESG-backed finances remains to be seen. The fact that they censored Stellar Blade at launch without providing any explanations is certainly a red flag.
Video game companies often break their promises, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see the Tencent-backed studio start adhering to globalized corporatism in pursuit of “easy finances.” This could result in ostracizing devoted fans as Shift Up may very well become another sanitized development studio producing safe and socially acceptable games with unappealing characters, killing themselves in the process as their whole outfit is centered around selling sexy characters for profit.
Just because the company is now required to file ESG report forms doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll start adhering to such agendas. Only time will tell, unfortunately.
