Blade and Soul Neo has hit the ground running

Blade and Soul Neo has hit the ground running

When it was announced last year that Pearl Abyss America’s former CEO, Jeonghee “JJ” Jin was leaving the company she helped to build, I’ll admit I was pretty stunned. As the face of Pearl Abyss America, JJ made the BnS NEO Divine Gems company much more approachable, while also creating a culture that both celebrated its people as well as the players who make up the Adventurer’s in its flagship Black Desert Online.

So when the announcement came that she was moving from Pearl Abyss to rival NC America (the Western publishing arm of Korean MMO giant, NCSOFT), I had quite a few questions. One major question that lingered was just what exactly was NC America? We had heard of NC America for a while, always seemingly alongside NCSOFT West’s operations, but it was hard to pin down exactly what this offshoot of NCSOFT’s role was within the company.

“It was also kind of unexpected and a very difficult decision for me,” JJ said. She continued, “I did a lot of things at Pearl Abyss America, and [I’m] very proud of my team ex-team - there.” JJ says that while she wasn’t looking for something new, conversations kicked off with NCSOFT several months before the decision. NCSOFT, over the last few years, has gone through quite a bit of organizational and leadership changes, layoffs across the company as recently as last October, while in 2023, NCSOFT West was hit with layoffs that saw 20% of its total staff affected.

These changes were made with the idea of potentially strengthening its global publishing capabilities, though it has been far from destitute here in the West thanks to Seattle-based ArenaNet’s Guild Wars 2, which continues to release stellar expansions including our pick for Best Expansion in 2024, Janthir Wilds. However, NCSOFT’s own developed titles, especially its legacy brands such as Lineage, Blade and Soul and more have often struggled with a Western audience. This is what JJ was brought on to help bolster: reaching the broader market here in the West for some of the most popular games NCSOFT has developed.

The NCSOFT self-developed titles were not really doing as well as it hoped or not really meeting NCSOFT’s expectations. So basically, there were a lot of discussions about revamping the Western business and [restrategizing] the company’s Western publishing business. So I was brought [on] to lead those initiatives. And I actually thought it buy Blade and Soul NEO Classic Divine Gems was going to be a very good challenge for me, for my career, and also I thought it was going to be a very meaningful challenge to me, because NCSOFT is a very unique company.