Shift Up

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Shift Up is a South Korean video game developer and publisher founded on 2 December 2013 in Seoul by Kim Hyung-tae, following his departure from NCSoft where he served as art director on Blade & Soul. Kim built his reputation as one of South Korea's most distinctive character illustrators across early 2000s titles including the Magna Carta series and War of Genesis, and founded Shift Up with the explicit goal of gaining full creative control over the entire game development process. 

The studio is publicly listed on the Korea Exchange under the ticker KRX: 462870 following its IPO in July 2024, with Kim holding approximately 39% of shares and Tencent, which acquired a 20% stake in late 2022, holding 35%. Revenue for fiscal year 2025 reached approximately ₩294 billion, with the studio employing around 322 people.

Shift Up built its mobile foundation on Destiny Child (2016), a gacha RPG published by Line Games, before pivoting to its two major live franchises: Goddess of Victory: Nikke, a third-person shooter gacha game released in November 2022 and published globally by Level Infinite under Tencent, which generated over $100 million in its first month and has continued as one of South Korea's highest-grossing mobile titles; and Stellar Blade, a third-person action game developed under the codename Project Eve and released in April 2024 as a PlayStation 5 exclusive published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, which sold over three million copies by June 2025 and received a PC port the same month. A Nintendo Switch 2 version of Stellar Blade is also in development. Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, a self-published sequel announced at Summer Game Fest on 5 June 2026, marks the studio's transition to full multiplatform self-publishing.