It was announced a few days ago on June 8th that Nexon had purchased $688 million worth of shares in NCSoft, an online game publisher responsible for MMORPGs like Aion, Guild Wars 2, Lineage II, and Wildstar, making Nexon the largest shareholder. According to reports by venturebeat.com, Nexon has said the deal is part of a long-term partnership between the two companies.

NCSoft booth at Comic-Con 2011 in San Diego

This investment comes after news broke in November that NCSoft had laid off numerous employees at its Austin, Brighton, and Seattle offices.

“In an effort to put a greater focus on the success of the Western-developed games from NCsoft, and the long-term services MMOs require, we announced a global restructuring to our Western publishing team. To optimize the streamlining efforts, limited functionality is moving to our headquarters in Seoul, and some publishing support has been reduced. As a result, there has been a reduction in force that has impacted less than 2 percent of our global workforce. We remain committed to fully support the development of games from ArenaNet, Carbine Studios and Paragon Studios.”

Let us know what you think this means for MapleStory and other Nexon games as well as NCSoft’s catalog in the future in the comments below.