KOG Co. was founded on May 1, 2000. Their first game,
Grand Chase, an action
side-scrolling MMORPG, launched in August 2003. After being a large success in South Korea, the game expanded to mainland
China and
Japan, as well as the
Americas in 2006. It was notable for reaching mass popularity in
South America, breaking the record of most played online game in
Brazil.
Ntreev Soft began publishing
Grand Chase for North America in early 2008. KOG ceased support for the game in 2015, 12 years after its initial release. In 2010, KOG Studios partnered with Philippine company
Level Up! Games, the publisher of
Grand Chase in South America, to found
Kill3r Combo, a subsidiary company headquartered in
Irvine, California, with the objective of bringing KOG's games to North America. Their first game was
Elsword, which began open beta testing in North America on April 27, 2011, and released on July 2, 2014. In June 2012, KOG Studios purchased LevelUp!’s interest in Kill3rCombo to become the sole owner, and officially changed the company's name to KOG Games Inc. Since then, KOG Games has been responsible for publishing their games in the
Americas. Although
Elsword received some criticism for
pay to win systems, the game was generally well-received, and peaked with 2,500 active players on Steam in August 2013.
KurtzPel Bringer of Chaos was first announced in the South Korean game exhibition
G-Star 2017. It entered worldwide
Steam early access on April 30, 2019.
KOG Games KOG Games (previously as Kill3r Combo from 2010 to 2012) is a
subsidiary company of KOG Co., and since 2012, publishes games from KOG in the
Americas. It is headquartered in
Irvine, California and currently publishes
Elsword and
KurtzPel on the
Steam store. KOG Games also briefly published
HeroWarz, a
MMORPG developed by
A.Storm, in July 2016, but the servers were closed a few months later. == Games ==