South Korean mobile gaming giant moving to 600 Wilshire

Following a bidding war among landlords in Downtown LA, a major South Korean gaming company is coming to Onni Group’s 600 Wilshire Blvd.

Netmarble Games Corp. signed a 14,000-square-foot lease at the recently renovated office tower, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Seoul-based company is moving from Buena Park in Orange County. The move will put them closer to clients, which include Walt Disney, Marvel Entertainment, and Lucasfilm.

“We want to be in the center of the action because Western expansion is a key driver of us expanding our business, Simon Sim, Netmarble’s chief of U.S. operations, told the paper. “It makes a lot more sense to be downtown than stay in Orange County.”

Vancouver-based Onni Group bought the 16-floor tower in 2014 from Beacon Capital Partners and completed a renovation of the 300,000-square-foot property last year. Netmarble will move in this June.

Netmarble makes mostly mobile games, including the smash hit Lineage 2: Revolution, which the company said has 5 million users. It raised $2.3 billion in an initial public offering last year in South Korea’s biggest IPO in seven years, bringing its total valuation to $12.2 billion, according to Bloomberg.

DTLA has seen some major leasing deals over the past two years, as The Real Deal explored in its September 2016 cover story. [LAT] – Dennis Lynch