Devsisters
| Public | |
| Traded as | KOSDAQ: 194480 |
| Industry |
Interactive entertainment Video game industry |
| Founded | 2007/2009 |
| Headquarters | Seoul, Republic of Korea |
|
Area served
|
Worldwide |
|
Key people
|
Ji-hoon Lee (Co-CEO) Jong-heun Kim (Co-CEO) |
| Owner | Ji-Hoon Lee (27.4%) |
|
Number of employees
|
107 |
| Website | www |
Devsisters Corp is a South Korean video game developer based in Seoul. From 2009 onwards, the company has created a variety of games for smartphones and tablets. Its most successful titles are the running game series OvenBreak and Cookie Run.
Devsisters co-founder and co-CEO Ji-hoon Lee founded the companx Extra Standard together with others in 2007 with the goal to develop edutainment software. However, due to the lack of capital the company found itself doing mostly contract work for big businesses, and Lee decided to abandon that line of business. Up until 2013, Devsisters was described as a start-up founded in 2009, but starting with the company's preparation of going public on the KOSDAQ index, it was established that Extra Standard had been renamed to Moblier and later to Devsisters.
Operation under the name Moblier began on January 2, 2009 and was led by Ji-hoon Lee (CEO), Se-joong Kim (COO) and Min-woo Ryu (CSO). The name Dev Sisters (as two words) was initially used as a brand name on the company's mobile apps, until it was officially renamed to Devsisters in April 2010.
Moblier was one of the earliest companies in Korea to approach the new iPhone App Store platform after its introduction in July 2008. Because the iPhone wasn't available in Korea at the time of the company's inception and a game category wasn't introduced to the Korean App Store until 2011, the company initially targeted an international audience.
In its early days, the company also developed utility and entertainment apps before shifting its focus to the creation of video games due to the success of the early title OvenBreak, which was downloaded more than 10 million times and became ranked as the most popular free app on the App Store in 20 different countries by 2011.
Co-founder and COO Sejoong Kim left the company in January 2010 to found Jellybus. Minwoo Ryu likewise left the company in May 2012. In March 2011, Jongheun Kim joined the company as Co-CEO.
In 2010, Devsisters received its first investment of 1 billion Korean won from Com2Us. Another investment of 4 billion won by Soft Bank Ventures and MVP Capital followed in June 2011. The company started to grow rapidly, from 10 employees to 52 within one year, and by June 2012, the company had 64 employees. Despite the investments and increased staff, Devsisters could not repeat the success of OvenBreak between 2010 and 2012. The Bell named Devsisters as an example of a mobile game developer where investments hadn't paid off. By 2013, the company was described as a team of merely 12 members.
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Wikipedia