Krafton, Naver eye Overdare as S.Korea's answer to Roblox

South Korea's game company Krafton Inc. and Naver Z, a metaverse unit of the country’s portal giant Naver Corp. on Thursday said they will unveil the metaverse platform Overdare in December. 

The new company was also named Overdare to match the service's name.

The term "overdare" means "reckless and bold" and its pronunciation is similar to "over there." "It contains the meaning of a company moving forward with bold courage to build a mobile interactive production platform never before seen," a Krafton source said.

Investment in the joint venture is 48 billion won ($36.1 million), with Krafton owning 85% and Naver Z 15%. As a sub-subsidiary of the domestic web giant Naver, Naver Z runs the metaverse platform Zepeto.

Overdare is a mobile-based user-generated content (UGC) platform that allows user creation of games such as those of action role playing, sports and shooting. Generative artificial intelligence and the 3D computer graphics game engine Unreal Engine 5 allows easy creation of high-quality content.

In addition to game creation, Overdare offers social media activities such as avatar customization and chatting like those of the global metaverse service Roblox.

The joint venture also adopted in the metaverse space the create-to-earn system, which allows content creators to produce works and users to purchase and own them. Transactions of copyrighted works are done through non-fungible tokens and blockchain and profits can be calculated with USD Coin, a digital stablecoin pegged to the US dollar.

Overdare's soft launch starts in December and its official version on the global market is slated to debut in the first half of next year.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com