Despite its rocky start amid mixed reviews and complaints over costly items and inaccessibility of trading system to minors, Lineage M, the much-anticipated mobile version of Korea’s hitherto most popular online role-playing game made its publisher NCSOFT Corp. 50 billion won ($44 million) richer in its first week.

Regardless of server hiccup, first-day revenue on June 21 reached 10.7 billion won, and Kiwoom Securities Co. predict sales to hit 65 billion won by the end of this week.

Shares of NCSOFT closed Wednesday at 361,500 won, down 6.35 percent or 24,500 won from the previous session. The shares were weighed down by reports that financial regulators were moving onto a probe on possible insider trading due to massive short selling and concerns about a possible ban on the game’s key feature - item marketplace.

Daily visitors were reduced from early explosive number, but users are logged on longer to play the game.

According to an app analytics firm WiseApp Inc., the number of Lineage M users fell from 1.26 million on June 21, the first day of the release, to 790,000 on June 25, but the average time spent on the game increased from 168 minutes to 259 minutes per user over the same time.

Whether the number of Lineage M users would further increase partly depends on the rating decision on the game by the country’s Game Rating and Administration that is due to be made on Wednesday.

NCSOFT applied for an ‘adult only’ rating for the game on June 21 as it involves in game money transaction that can be purchsased. When the rating is confirmed, it would launch an updated version of Lineage M including item trading markets for adults.

Industry watchers expect NCSOFT to release two different versions of Lineage M for adolescents excluding item transaction markets and adults in order to retain both teen users and grown-ups. About 5.5 million people who have placed pre-orders for the game include some teen users, and the main user group of the game is 30 years or older, according to an analysis.

By Seo Dong-chul

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]