Following a long slump and 2 years of large-scale updates to the game, Wiznet and Nexon’s long-running 2D side-scrolling MMORPG MapleStory has reached its “second heyday” in South Korea, showing remarkable popularity. This comes despite Nexon being accused of deceiving MapleStory players and violating local consumer laws.
For context, the biggest blow to MapleStory’s credibility came in 2021, when the publisher was accused of deceptive loot box practices by Korea’s Fair Trade Commission. It was reported that between 2010 and 2021, the company lowered the drop rates of popular pulls from loot boxes (called “Cubes” in-game) without notifying players. Among them, some probabilities were reduced to almost zero. In 2024, Nexon was fined 11.6 billion won (around $8.9 million) and agreed to pay 21.9 billion won ($16 million) in compensation to around 800,000 MapleStory players who were affected (source: KoreaJoongangDaily).
As players naturally grew distrustful of Nexon from this incident, MapleStory’s player count and revenue declined significantly in Korea, and the MMORPG became notorious as a “scam game” (source: KGnews). However, in 2025, MapleStory has made a tremendous recovery. An important metric for the performance of South Korean online/PC games is how much of total PC cafe playtime they occupy. This summer, MapleStory achieved a maximum share of 25%, coming second only to Riot Game’s Leage of Legends. This is a new record in the game’s 22-year history (source: Kultur Japan).
The biggest factors behind this sudden boost in performance seem to be MapleStory’s new-found popularity among streamers (inviting an influx of newcomers) and updates to the game itself. Taking over in 2023, the Korean version’s new director Chang-seop Kim implemented a series of QOL improvements players had been asking for for a while, and even abolished the controversial Cubes (source: KGnews). The new leadership has also started organizing monthly livestreams in order to directly address feedback, putting an emphasis on transparent communication with players.
