Netmarble's new RPG 'Solo Leveling' logs $70 mn sales in 1st month

South Korean game developer Netmarble Corp. is enjoying growing sales of its new action role-playing game (RPG) “Solo Leveling: Arise,” riding on the popularity of its original story from a global hit webtoon and digital novel.

Netmarble said on Tuesday that sales of the RPG are estimated to have reached $70 million since its May 8 launch.

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 from its launch. It also topped the free game charts on Google Play and the App Store in Korea in terms of both sales and downloads, 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 gamification of digital comics intellectual property (IP) is largely credited for the popularity of “Solo Leveling: Arise,” Sensor Tower reported.

The word “webtoon” was mentioned the most in the game app reviews, indicating that the game has strong appeal to fans of 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 game's players, followed by the users categorized as cartoon and animation enthusiasts, the firm added.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.