By Sagar Mankar 
After the successful launch of Shift Up Corp’s initial public offering (IPO), 45-year-old CEO Hyung-Tae Kim has officially entered the billionaire club.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, his stake in the company is now valued at approximately $1.2 billion.
The IPO raised an impressive $320 million, with shares surging 18% on the company’s trading debut becoming the highest for a Korean gaming company in the past three years.
Despite initial hardships, Kim’s passion for illustration and video games has ultimately propelled him to this incredible success.
Kim’s Journey to the Top
Hyung-Tae Kim’s journey from a struggling artist to the CEO of Shift Up is nothing but remarkable.
Since childhood, Kim has loved drawing, laying the foundation for his future success in the gaming industry.
His distinctive style, characterized by highly stylized character designs with dynamic poses, quickly became his trademark, setting him apart in a competitive field.
Before founding Shift Up in 2013, he worked on popular titles such as “Blade & Soul” and “Magna Carta,” where his art style became a defining feature and got wide praise.
The success of these titles fueled his ambition to create something of his own, leading to the establishment of Shift Up.
Found His Own Company
In 2013 Kim took a leap of faith and founded Shift Up Corp. However, the early days of Shift Up were far from easy.
In a 2015 interview with the South Korean outlet Edaily, Kim described the hardship he faced,
“I myself struggle to take care of my own family. I don’t think I can be a good example for most ordinary people who want to be an illustrator.”
After 3 years of making the company launched its first project- the mobile gacha game Destiny Child, in 2016 on Android and iOS. However, the game received mixed reviews and responses.
His breakthrough came in 2022 when Shift Up’s next gacha mobile game “Goddess of Victory: Nikke,” became an instant hit on Android and iOS generating $70 million in revenue in its first month of release as per SensorTower Data.
It went on grossing $400 million in less than a year with over 25 million downloads. The developer released its PC port afterward on February 15, 2023, which also got a great response.
This success caught the attention of Chinese gaming giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., which invested heavily in the company and became the second-largest shareholder after Kim.
Stellar Blade: Game Changer for Shift Up
In 2019, Kim decided to venture into the console gaming market and hired many developers from his previous projects, such as Blade & Soul.
This AAA console game was Project Eve which now we know as Stellar Blade
The game’s character designs followed Hyung-Tae’s trademark style, featuring the female character Eve in very NSFW outfits with exaggerated body proportions.
In April 2024, the game was released on PlayStation 5 exclusively, and it became an instant hit.
While some praised the bold and beautiful designs, others criticized them as unrealistic (IGN France Controversy) and shallow.
Despite the controversy, or perhaps partly because of it, “Stellar Blade” sold more than a million copies within two months.
This commercial success further solidified Shift Up’s position in the gaming industry and set the stage for the company’s successful IPO.
The Seoul-based company posted a profit of 107 billion won ($78 million) last year, and intends to use the IPO proceeds to expand its workforce and develop new game titles.
This success led Kim to join South Korea’s gaming billionaire club, alongside Kwon Hyuk-Bin of Smilegate Holdings ($3.2 billion) and Chang Byung-Gyu of Krafton.
Shift Up’s success story is part of a larger trend in South Korea’s thriving gaming industry.
The company joins a prestigious list of publicly traded South Korean gaming developers, including Krafton Inc., NCSoft, Netmarble Corp., and Pearl Abyss Corp.
Collectively, these companies boast a market value of roughly $22 billion, highlighting the significant economic impact of the gaming sector in South Korea.
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