Shift Up made $19 million from Stellar Blade in Q2, with its total revenue up 65% to record $48 million

Shift Up has released its first financial report since going public. Let’s take a closer look at the South Korean developer’s quarterly revenue and other business metrics.

Stellar Blade

• According to its new earnings release (in Korean), Shift Up reached ₩65.2 billion ($48 million) in revenue in the second quarter ended June 30, 2024 — up 65.4% year-over-year. This is a record three-month period for the company.
• Operating profit was ₩45.1 billion ($33.1 million), up 49% year-over-year, while net profit grew 5.1% to ₩40.3 billion ($29.7 billion)
• Goddess of Victory: Nikke accounted for 58.9% of the company’s total revenue, or ₩38.4 billion ($28.3 million). These are royalties received from Tencent’s subsidiary Level Infinite. Shift Up’s revenue from Nikke grew 3.5% year-over-year.
• Royalties from Stellar Blade amounted to ₩25.8 billion ($19 million). It is unclear what Sony’s share of the revenue was and what the terms of the deal between the companies were.
• Stellar Blade sold 1 million copies in the first two months of its PS5 launch. While sales have slowed, they are still “steady,” with Shift Up adding that the game “has established itself as a large global IP.”
• The developer plans to further support the game with new patches and content updates. The PC version is still under development.

Shift Up’s quarterly revenue by games

• Shift Up is also working on a new AAA action RPG codenamed Project Witches. Unlike Goddess of Victory: Nikke and Stellar Blade, it will be a cross-platform project, with studio planning to share more details in 2025.
• As of June 30, Shift Up employed 309 people. The company plans hire about 70 devs for Project Witches, expanding its total headcount to 420 employees by the end of 2025.