Hangame

Hangame () (also known as Hange () and formerly known as NHN Hangame () in Japan) is a popular South Korean online game portal operated by NHN Corporation. Launched in December 1999, Hangame offers casual, first-person shooter, MMORPGs, sports, and other genres. With over 20 million members and a peak concurrent user base of 290,000 in South Korea, it is the country's largest game portal. Hangame also has affiliates in Japan (NHN PlayArt). It also offers channeling and publishing services for many popular online games.

==History== Hangame was launched in December 1999 as the online game service of Hangame Communications, which changed its name to NHN in September 2001. In 2000, Hangame entered the Japanese online market with Hangame, Japan. The following year, Hangame became an online game publisher. In 2003, mobile games were also started to be offered by Hangame. In 2004, it moved into the Chinese market with Ourgame, a joint venture company with Sea Rainbow Holdings Corp., but discontinued the service in October 2010. In 2007, it entered the U.S. market with the launch of the English service ijji.com but sold the stake of ijji.com in December 2011. In June 2012 NHN created a strategic partnership with InnoSpark for global publishing of smartphone games. In August 2013 NHN was re-split into NHN Entertainment Corporation and Naver Corporation for strategic reasons and Hangame is currently serviced by NHN Entertainment.