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Feb. 12 (Asia Today) — South Korea’s major game developers reported sharply mixed 2025 results, with companies backed by strong intellectual property and hit new titles posting record earnings while others struggled amid delays in releases.

Nexon said annual revenue rose 6% to 475.1 billion yen (about 4.51 trillion won, or roughly $3.13 billion), marking a record high. Operating profit reached 124 billion yen (about 1.18 trillion won, or $819 million).

The company attributed growth to the success of new title “Arc Raiders,” which has sold more than 14 million copies, and global expansion of the MapleStory franchise. Franchise revenue for MapleStory rose 43%, while Dungeon & Fighter posted double-digit growth in South Korea and China.

Krafton joined the so-called “3 trillion won club,” reporting annual revenue of 3.33 trillion won (about $2.31 billion) and operating profit of 1.05 trillion won (about $729 million), both record highs. Revenue from the PUBG: Battlegrounds IP increased 16% from a year earlier, supported by global collaborations and new game modes.

Netmarble posted revenue of 2.84 trillion won (about $1.97 billion) and operating profit of 352.5 billion won (about $244 million), helped by new titles based on in-house IP such as Seven Knights Reverse and RF Online Next.

NCSoft saw revenue fall 5% to 1.51 trillion won (about $1.05 billion) but returned to profitability with operating profit of 16.1 billion won (about $11 million), aided by cost-cutting and the November launch of Aion 2.

In contrast, Kakao Games reported a 26% drop in revenue to 465 billion won (about $322 million) and an operating loss of 39.6 billion won (about $27 million), citing a gap in new releases and restructuring costs.

Pearl Abyss posted revenue of 365.6 billion won (about $253 million) and an operating loss of 14.8 billion won (about $10 million), extending losses for a third consecutive year. The company said its upcoming title Red Desert, scheduled for release in March, will be key to a turnaround.

Industry analysts said the results underscore the importance of long-running hit franchises and well-timed new launches.

“Companies that steadily operated successful IP while expanding revenue through updates and collaborations were able to limit volatility,” one industry official said. “Those with prolonged gaps in new releases inevitably faced short-term revenue declines.”

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260213010004838

As the high school boys’ basketball playoffs begin this week, these are the players who have reached or exceeded expectations to be at the top of their game during the regular season.

Let’s offer a salute for rising up:

Jason Crowe Jr., Inglewood: In each of his four seasons, Crowe has gotten better. Already the state’s all-time scoring leader with more than 4,000 points, he’s learned to draw fouls with his aggressiveness and increased strength instead of relying on three-point shooting. He leads the state, averaging 43.8 points.

Christian Collins, St. John Bosco: The best uncommitted player in California has been a model of consistency. The 6-foot-9 senior remains focused and hungry with each game, raising his skills and intensity to be a prime MVP candidate.

Kaiden Bailey, Santa Margarita: The Georgia Tech commit has truly become an outstanding point guard, ready to score if needed and pass if needed. When he went scoreless against St. John Bosco, he found another way to contribute with eight assists. The ability to recognize what is required will be key to his future success.

Joe Sterling, Harvard-Westlake: His three-point shooting skills are fantastic. The Texas commit is also learning to use his strength inside when needed. He faced adversity at the end of the regular season when his team lost three out of four games, so let’s see how he responds in the Open Division playoffs.

Brandon McCoy, Sierra Canyon: Give McCoy credit. He’s gotten better in his senior year even though he was already a top college prospect. Maybe it’s because he’s healthy. He’s jumping better and has become more explosive and versatile for the No. 1 team in California.

Cherif Millogo, St. Francis: Few knew what kind of influence the 7-4 center would have after transferring from Boston and missing a year because of a knee injury. He’s been a breath of fresh air. His skills are tremendous, along with his smiles and friendliness to fans and teammates alike.

Kevin Keshishyan, Los Altos: A 6-7 junior, Keshishyan entered this week averaging 20.4 points and 8.2 rebounds, proving his summer development was no fluke.

Eli Garner, Damien: It’s his fourth year playing on varsity and his best. He’s a scorer, rebounder and defender. Whatever coach Mike LeDuc asks of him, he delivers.

Devin Wright, Redondo Union: The son of former 12-year NBA player Dorell Wright has come on strong with big games against quality opponents, signaling the Sea Hawks have a fourth option to join SJ Madison, Chris Sanders and Chace Holley.

Gene Roebuck, La Mirada: The junior guard is averaging 22.4 points and kept his team competitive against one of the toughest schedules this season.

Maxwell Scott, Corona del Mar: A junior guard, Scott is close to automatic from three-point range when left open. He’s helped the Sea Kings reach the Open Division playoffs for the first time in school history.

NaVorro Bowman Jr., Sherman Oaks Notre Dame: He’s stamped as the best guard from the class of 2027. His shooting and scoring skills are elite. His strength keeps growing.

Will Conroy Jr., Village Christian: As a freshman, Conroy leads his team in scoring at 27.5 points a game and leads his team when games are close, showing poise beyond his age at 15 years old.

Jaden Bailes, JSerra: The transfer from San Diego St. Augustine keeps performing big in big games by making clutch shots.

Dylan McCord of Thousand Oaks has been one of the top three-point shooters this season.

(McCord family)

Dylan McCord, Thousand Oaks: The senior guard has made 113 threes while averaging 22.5 points. He set a school record with 10 threes in a single game.

Kamrynn Nathan, Elsinore: The junior guard is averaging nearly 25.2 points a game for the only unbeaten team left in the Southern Section.

Ethan Hill, Brentwood: Only a sophomore, he looks like a 6-7 football player yet can throw around his body in basketball. Once he gets the ball inside, the options are either watch him score or foul him.

Phillip Reed, Palisades: The freshman guard will be the player to watch as the Dolphins go for a City Section Open Division championship. His scoring skills and ability to find open teammates will be key to the Dolphins’ development.

Richie Ramirez, Mater Dei: He’s been an important addition as a junior guard, averaging 22.5 points a game.

Cayman Martin, Crespi: He played junior varsity last season as a sophomore after moving from Japan and has been a revelation with each game.

MILAN — Maxim Naumov typically trembles as he waits in his opening position before the music begins. But on Tuesday, the 24-year-old U.S. figure skater stood firm at center ice with the Olympic rings beneath his feet and his right fist raised. A white gold ring with a single diamond on his ring finger glittered in the light.

It was his father’s ring.

A year after his parents, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, were among 67 people killed in a Washingon, D.C. plane crash, Naumov carried their strength during his Olympic debut and delivered an emotional season’s best 85.65 in the men’s short program that qualified him for the free skate.

U.S. teammate Andrew Torgashev also scored a season’s best in his Olympic debut, qualifying for Thursday’s free skate with an 89.94. His coaching team, which includes Irvine-based Rafael Arutyunyan, fist-bumped after Torgashev hit the final combination jump of his program. Skating to “Maybe I Maybe You” by the Scorpions, Torgashev flashed the rock-and-roll symbol to the crowd as he saluted.

Instead of the raw emotion Naumov released after the U.S. championship that clinched his Olympic spot last month, he smiled purely and breathed deeply while the crowd at Milano Ice Skating Arena showered him with applause. He looked toward the rafters and spoke to his parents.

“Look what we just did,” Naumov said. “We did it.”

Maxim Naumov holds a photo of his parents after competing during the men’s free skate at the U.S. championships.

(Stephanie Scarbrough / Associated Press)

The elder Naumov and Shishkova were three-time world pairs skating medalists and two-time Olympians. The 1994 world champions coached at the Skating Club of Boston and remained at the 2025 U.S. championships in Wichita, Kan., after the competition to coach a development camp.

Maxim Naumov, who had finished fourth at the U.S. championships for the third time in a row, returned home immediately after the competition. In one of their last discussions as a family, Naumov’s father laid out the plan to ensure they could reach the Olympics in one year. The talk lasted about 45 minutes. After the first 30 minutes, Naumov said he was rolling his eyes the way children often do, but he understood the message: They were going to work together and revamp everything they do.

After the crash on Jan. 29, 2025, Naumov struggled to leave the house. He couldn’t bear to tie his skates. Going to the rink felt unimaginable.

At every moment, Naumov wanted to lay in bed and rot. He instead chose to find the thing that felt like the most difficult task and attack it. At first it was simply waking up. Then it was getting out of bed. Then it was going to work and coaching his parents’ former students. Now they’re his students.

“The only way out is through,” Naumov said. “Everyone has the ability to do that: to remain strong in your mind, have willpower and do things out of love instead of fear. I think if you’re able to do that, whatever it is that you’re going through, however big or small, you can have small wins every single day, and you can do things that you never thought that you could.”

Naumov earned his Olympic spot by finishing third at last month’s U.S. championships. The emotions of the national competition that would decide the family’s dream were so heavy that after he finished his free program, he found a secluded corner in the tunnel and sobbed.

Finally on the Olympic stage, Naumov felt nothing but stillness. Naumov said he felt his parents’ presence and the support of the entire figure skating community “like a hand on my back pushing me forward.”

Looking at old videos can still be painful for Naumov. But he mustered the strength to look through the family’s large photo album ahead of the U.S. championships and pick out several photos he brought to the competition. His parents had always been in the kiss-and-cry with him. With his spot on the Olympic team at stake, he wanted them there again.

Waiting for his score in Milan, Naumov flashed a photo he picked. He is flanked by his parents standing on the ice for the first time at about 3 years old.

Two decades later, he was stepping off Olympic ice.

“To be able to just have 2 minutes and 50 seconds to show what you’ve been working on for 19 years, and to be able to make it happen when it matters and when it counts, there’s no feeling like it at all ever,” Naumov said, still breathless from the emotional performance more than 30 minutes after he nailed the final note. “I just hope that I made everyone proud.”

U.S. flags waved on every side of the rink as he saluted the crowd. He knows his mother would have not been there watching in person because she was too nervous to attend. Refreshing the online score tracker to keep up with Naumov’s program, she would always find a way to send a message of support to her son.

Before his program, Naumov sent a message of his own.

“Mom and dad,” the videoboard in the arena read, “this is for you.”

MILAN — One short week after Lindsey Vonn crashed in Crans-Montana, Switzerland, and tore her left anterior cruciate ligament, she was tearing down the hill in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, a light knee brace warping the fabric of her racing suit the only obvious sign of anything amiss. When she finished the training run Friday, clocking the third-fastest time for a U.S. woman on the day, she casually fist bumped an American teammate at the finish line.

She made the feat look effortless. Sports medicine experts can say it’s anything but.

“It’s atypical to be able to compete without an ACL, at anything, but especially at a high level like Lindsey Vonn’s going to compete at,” said Clint Soppe, a board certified orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai. “So this is very surprising news to me as well.”

The ACL, which connects the shin bone to the femur, is a main stabilizing force in the knee and protects the lower leg from sliding forward. Straight-line movement doesn’t stress the major knee ligament and some day-to-day tasks such as walking are easily accomplished without an ACL. But what Vonn is doing is far from normal.

“If you add cutting, pivoting, changing directions, in 95% of humans, you need an ACL to do that,” said Kevin Farmer, an orthopedic surgeon and professor at the University of Florida’s department of orthopedics and sports medicine. “She’s obviously fallen into that 5%.”

Farmer calls the rare group “copers.” They overcome the lack of an ACL by strengthening and engaging other muscles. It’s primarily the hamstrings and quadriceps, but everything, including the glutes, calves, hips and core, counts.

Vonn will have had just nine days between the Olympic downhill race and her injury when she stands at the start gate Sunday. But the 41-year-old has had her whole career to develop the type of strength and control necessary to carry her through the Games without an ACL. She’s already done it before.

Lindsey Vonn concentrates ahead of a downhill training run in Cortina d’Ampezzo on Friday.

(Marco Trovati / Associated Press)

Vonn skied on a torn right ACL for more than a month until withdrawing just before the 2014 Sochi Olympics. In 2019, she won a bronze medal at world championships without a lateral collateral ligament and three tibial fractures in her left knee. She said this week that the same knee feels better than it did during that bronze medal run.

“She’s dealt with knee injuries in this knee before, so she’s been able to develop mechanisms and strategies,” Farmer said. “She probably doesn’t even realize that, but just from years of practicing with a knee that’s not normal, her body has developed mechanisms of firing patterns that allow her knee to have some inherent stability that most people don’t have.”

For athletes who suffer major injuries for the first time, pain often prevents them from firing their muscles, said Jason Zaremski, a nonoperative musculoskeletal and sports medicine physician and clinical professor at the University of Florida’s department of physical medicine and rehabilitation. But Vonn, whose injury history is almost as long as her resume, looked calm during training, her coach Aksel Lund Svindal told reporters in Cortina on Saturday.

So even if she’s one ACL short, Vonn’s team knows she has more than enough of the intangibles to get her not only down the mountain, but into medal contention.

“Her mental strength,” Svindal told reporters in Cortina on Saturday. “I think that’s why she has won as much as she has.”

Vonn completed her second training run Saturday with the third-fastest time before training was suspended after 21 athletes. She was 0.37 second behind compatriot Breezy Johnson, who is intimately familiar with what Vonn is attempting.

Johnson, a medal contender for the United States who led the second training run at 1 minute and 37.91 seconds, attempted to ski in Cortina without an ACL in 2022. She had one successful training run, but crashed on the second one, sustaining further injuries that forced her to withdraw from the Beijing Olympics.

Johnson, like many, gasped when she saw Vonn’s knee buckle slightly on a jump during training Saturday. She said coming off jumps on this course are especially difficult.

“There are, I think, more athletes that ski without ACLs and with knee damage than maybe talk about it,” Johnson said at a news conference from Cortina. “… I think that people often are unwilling to talk about it because of judgment from the media and the outside.”

Critics say Vonn is taking a spot from a healthy teammate or that she simply refuses to give up the sport for good. But Vonn has already come to terms with the end of her career. She said she came out of retirement with a partially replaced right knee simply wanting an opportunity to put the perfect bow on her ski racing career at a course she especially loves.

The stage is different, but the sentiment is familiar to Zaremski. The doctor has worked with high school athletes who beg for a chance to play a final game after suffering a torn ACL. Through bracing, taping and treatment, sometimes there are temporary fixes for the biggest moments.

“If we’re trying to get a huge event like the Olympics, I would never put anything past [Vonn],” Zaremski said. “She’s an amazing, once-in-a-generation athlete.”

A college football recruiting dead period has begun, which means Servite will be a lot quieter after college recruiters visited during the past two weeks making sure they stop by to evaluate the team’s outstanding starting offensive tackles, Drew Fielder, a junior, and Elisha Mueller, a sophomore.

Let’s just say that Fielder, the 6-foot-6, 280-pound starting left tackle, has “blown up” as a college prospect as coaches recognize his growing size, strength and ability entering his senior year. Mueller, 6-foot-4 and 310 pounds, has been attracting big-time interest since his freshman season as a right tackle starter and was a sophomore All-American.

Together, they should form quite a duo in the Trinity League this fall.

“You feel real confident in your ability to win in the trenches,” coach Chris Reinert said.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.

The sight of Noni Madueke flying past defenders and putting dangerous crosses into the penalty area will have been a welcome sight for Mikel Arteta.

And Madueke’s performance in Arsenal‘s 4-0 hammering of Leeds will have been even more well received, given that he was drafted into the starting line-up minutes before kick-off after Bukayo Saka picked up a hip injury in the warm-up.

The 23-year-old created Martin Zubimendi’s opener, before seeing his corner punched into the Leeds net by goalkeeper Karl Darlow for the Gunners’ second, as Arteta’s men moved seven points clear at the Premier League summit.

Madueke was signed by Arsenal from Chelsea this summer – with some fans questioning the move – in a bid to strengthen their squad depth and provide cover should key man Saka pick up injuries.

And the England winger showed in his 60 minutes on the pitch just why the club made that decision.

Arteta said: “He was ready. Because you cannot do that in two minutes. The way he prepares, the way he’s waiting for opportunity, I think paid off today because he really impacted the team.”

While Arsenal are waiting for a diagnosis on the extent of Saka’s injury, Madueke will be hopeful he has earned another start for Tuesday’s EFL Cup semi-final second leg against former club Chelsea.

Saka and Madueke are also competing for a place for England as the summer’s World Cup approaches. So will the latter now get the chance to start staking his own claim?

“Noni Madueke was really good, especially when you come so late into the game,” former England midfielder Fara Williams told the BBC’s Final Score.

“It is an opportunity for him and he has performed well. When he went in at Arsenal and Saka got injured, he had an opportunity to get some games, then he got injured himself.

“When he has been playing for England, he has shown what he can do. He will be a headache for both managers, Mikel Arteta and Thomas Tuchel, in the summer.”

Ex-Manchester United striker Dion Dublin added on Final Score: “Bukayo Saka and Noni Madueke are both internationals, and both doing an incredible job.

“Saka will likely start [for Arsenal and England] because he is the better of the two, and he is more consistent. But it is a great headache to have.”

How good is senior Nathan Castrejon scoring goals for South East’s soccer team?

Coach Felipe Bernal said, “His strength and speed gets him through like Mbappe of Real Madrid. That’s the way I see him at this level.”

Castrejon, 5 feet 10, 160 pounds, entered this week with 38 of South East’s 90 goals. South East has its best chance to win a City Section title since it won in a big upset in 2022. This season would be no upset, since the Jaquars are 16-1-3.

Bernal has so many players with the first name of Nathan that he has to call them by their last name. Besides Castrejon, there’s Nathan Medina, who has eight goals, and Nathan Vargas, a backup goalie who has filled in well while the starter was sick.

“We’re a complete team this year,” Bernal said.

One of the most interesting players is 5-4 David Velasco. “The kid gets the job done,” Bernal said. “He’s amazing.”

Velasco has 11 assists.

South East is 6-0-1 in the competitive Eastern League that includes longtime power Bell.

This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.