Gaming Giant Nexon Taps Polygon for NFT Game MapleStory Universe

Nexon, one of the largest game publishers across Asia, is creating a new Web3 game based on its popular pixelated 2D role-playing franchise, called MapleStory Universe—and it’s launching a private Supernet on Polygon for the new game, Nexon announced Tuesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

MapleStory, launched in 2003, is a long-running success story for Nexon. The game has generated more than $4 billion in revenue to date, the company announced earlier this year, and amassed more than 180 million registered users to date. The game's Steam page lists an even larger tally of over 260 million total players.

“We are looking forward to expanding the NFT ecosystem envisioned by MapleStory Universe by building on Polygon,” MapleStory Universe Group Leader Hwang Sun-young said in a statement. “We will work closely with the team at Polygon Labs to develop and market the game.”

Polygon is an Ethereum scaling network that enables faster and cheaper transactions than Ethereum’s own mainnet. The upcoming PC game’s Polygon Supernet will allow Nexon to have its own “dedicated app chain,” Polygon Labs VP, Global Games and Platform Business Development Urvit Goel told Decrypt in an interview.

“They have the ability to scale in a way that you can't scale on a shared blockchain,” Goel said of Nexon and its planned Supernet. “They have a very broad vision of how many transactions they think they'll do daily, because the game and the IP is so large.”

Polygon, Immutable Partner for New zkEVM Ethereum Gaming Network

Polygon’s Supernets are similar in approach to Avalanche’s Subnets, for example, providing a dedicated sub-network for individual projects to utilize. They provide some customization options for creators while also insulating decentralized apps (dapps) and games from potential performance issues on the broader public network.