AION 2 is made by South Korea’s NCSOFT, the same company that once released Lineage, the original AION and Throne and Liberty. But “the same company” and “the same people” are not the same thing. Throne and Liberty is now developed by a separate studio, FirstSpark Games, while AION 2 stayed inside NCSOFT and is led by a different team. Below we look at who these people are and what it means for players in Europe.
This article is about AION 2, not the original AION from 2009. When it comes to the development team, that goes double, because the people behind the franchise have changed almost completely over sixteen years.
The key facts in five points
- AION 2 is developed in-house at NCSOFT. It is not an external studio or a subsidiary; the game stayed in the parent company.
- Development is led by Kim Nam-joon as PD (producer and game director), with Baek Seung-uk above him as head of the whole project.
- Throne and Liberty is no longer made by NCSOFT directly. In February 2025, its development team was spun off into the studio FirstSpark Games, led by Choi Moon-young.
- There is a personal link between the two games, but it is an old one: Kim Nam-joon worked on Lineage Eternal, the project that became Throne and Liberty after a reboot. He left it long before it got its current name.
- In Europe, NCSOFT publishes AION 2 itself, without a local partner. Throne and Liberty, on the other hand, was published globally by Amazon Games, and even that is set to change by the end of 2026.
Who NCSOFT is and why it now goes by “NC”
NCSOFT is a South Korean game developer and publisher headquartered in Pangyo near Seoul. The company was founded in March 1997 by Kim Taek-jin, who still serves as co-CEO. The other co-CEO, since 2024, is Park Byung-moo, who came to the games company from private equity.
Its first big title was Lineage in 1998, followed by Guild Wars, Blade & Soul, the original AION in 2008 and Throne and Liberty. So AION 2 is not made by a newcomer. It is made by a company that built its entire existence on the MMORPG genre.
In recent years, the company has been communicating under the shortened name NC. You will find both versions in official AION 2 materials, and they mean the same thing. In this article and in the rest of our AION 2 guide, we stick with the longer form NCSOFT, because players know it better.
Who actually runs AION 2
Unlike Western studios, Korean companies rarely put developers in the credits, so only a handful of names are publicly known. The key ones look like this:
| Name | Role | Responsibilities |
|---|---|---|
| Kim Nam-joon | PD (producer and game director) | Day-to-day development lead, public face of the game in Korean developer streams |
| Baek Seung-uk | CBO, head of AION 2 development | Overall project leadership across development and business |
| So In-seop | Head of business and global publishing | Release outside Korea, monetization, regional differences |
| Merv Lee Kwai | Executive Publishing Producer | Global version, communication with Western audiences |
| Daniel LaFuente | Director of Operations | Running the global version after launch |
The most interesting person in this lineup is Kim Nam-joon. He joined NCSOFT in 2007, and his very first project was the original AION. He then led two titles that never came out, became PD of Lineage 2M in 2017, and has been leading AION 2 since 2021. The fact that the sequel is made by someone who worked on the first game is one of the few verifiable signs of continuity between the two. Everything else, including the engine, is new. How much the two games differ is covered in our comparison of AION Classic and AION 2.
After the game launched in Korea and Taiwan, NCSOFT promoted all three Korean project leads at once. For players, this is more than a staffing footnote: it means AION 2 is seen as a success inside the company, and projects with that status get a bigger budget for new content. What is planned is summarized in the AION 2 roadmap.
NCSOFT no longer makes Throne and Liberty
This is the part most comparisons miss. Throne and Liberty was created inside NCSOFT, but since February 2025 it has been developed by a separate company, FirstSpark Games.
The timeline is fairly wild. The project started in 2011 as Lineage Eternal, moved to Unreal Engine 4 in 2017 after several reboots, and was renamed Throne and Liberty in March 2022. It launched in Korea in December 2023 and globally on 1 October 2024 under Amazon Games. After the successful global launch, NCSOFT announced in October 2024 that it would spin the development team off into its own studio, working name Studio X. In February 2025, that became FirstSpark Games, with roughly 250 people.
It is headed by Choi Moon-young, who led Throne and Liberty at NCSOFT with the title “Captain” and is now CEO of the independent company. The other long-standing faces of the team are Ahn Jong-ok as PD and Lee Moon-seop as design director. For years, this trio presented the game in Korean developer broadcasts.
FirstSpark Games was not the only one. In November 2024, NCSOFT approved four separate companies at once: besides FirstSpark, there were BigFire Games (the shooter LLL), Ludius Games (the strategy game TACTAN) and NC AI. AION 2 is not among them. It stayed in the parent company.
So do AION 2 and Throne and Liberty share people?
Not directly, not today. They are two separate teams, and now they are even in two different companies. There is a shared past, though, and it is a concrete one.
Kim Nam-joon has Lineage Eternal on his résumé, which is exactly the project that became Throne and Liberty after a reboot and the move to Unreal Engine. He worked on it between the original AION and Lineage 2M, years before the game got its current name and form. Calling AION 2 a game “from the makers of Throne and Liberty” would therefore be misleading, even though that thread exists.
It is more useful to compare what the two games share at the institutional level:
| Parameter | AION 2 | Throne and Liberty |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | NCSOFT in-house | FirstSpark Games (since February 2025) |
| Development leads | Kim Nam-joon (PD), Baek Seung-uk | Choi Moon-young (CEO), Ahn Jong-ok (PD) |
| Project origin | new game set in the world of Atreia | reboot of the Lineage Eternal project from 2011 |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 5 | Unreal Engine 4 |
| Korean launch | 19 November 2025 | December 2023 |
| Global publisher | NCSOFT directly | Amazon Games; move to NCSOFT announced by the end of 2026 |
| Global launch | early access 30 September 2026, full launch 5 October 2026 | 1 October 2024 |
What this means for players in Europe
Three things you can work out directly from who publishes the game. Besides following the developers of AION 2, you can support the game by shopping too – the GamersTogether shop has AION 2 merch.
No middleman. NCSOFT publishes AION 2 itself, through Steam and its own PURPLE launcher. There is no European partner localizing and running the game its own way, unlike the original AION, whose European version was operated by another company for years. The practical impact on available platforms is covered in our platforms overview and the dates in our AION 2 release date article.
Decisions are made in Korea. Content, balance and monetization are decided by the Korean team, not a European branch. When something changes in Korea, it reaches Europe in a form Europe has no say in, and sometimes the same change never makes it into the global version at all. That is why, for many systems, what you see on the Taiwanese servers differs from what is confirmed for the global version. The difference is described in our guide to the Taiwanese server and first impressions of the Taiwanese version.
A proven monetization model. NCSOFT is not a studio that experiments with free-to-play games. AION 2 combines a free-to-play approach with an optional $15-a-month membership, which unlocks the Market, the currency exchange and a subscriber shop. It is covered in detail in our article on price and the cash shop, and the way to get in five days early is explained in Founder’s Packs.
What we don’t know about the team yet
NCSOFT says very little about its developers, and for several things there is simply no source:
- Team size. The company has never said how many people work on AION 2. The figure of around 250 people belongs to FirstSpark, not the AION 2 team, and applying it to the sequel is a mistake.
- Who made the world and the story. The names of the art director, lead designer and story writers are not public. What lore was carried over from the first game and what is new is summarized in AION 2 story and lore.
- How many people from the original AION are on the team. Only one is documented: Kim Nam-joon. The rest is community speculation.
- How responsibility for the global version is split. NCSOFT has not described where the Korean team ends and global publishing begins. You will only be able to tell by how quickly problems get fixed after launch.
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FAQ
Yes. AION 2 is made directly at NCSOFT, the parent company, and NCSOFT also publishes it itself. It is not an external studio or a subsidiary. The company did spin off four separate studios in 2024 and 2025, but AION 2 was not one of them.
No. They are two separate teams and now even two companies: since February 2025, Throne and Liberty has been developed by the independent studio FirstSpark Games. The only things they share are the parent company NCSOFT and one personal link: the PD of AION 2 once worked on the project that Throne and Liberty grew out of.
The PD, meaning producer and game director, of AION 2. He has been at NCSOFT since 2007, and his first project was the original AION. Before taking charge of the sequel in 2021, he worked on the Lineage Eternal project and led Lineage 2M. He is the main face of the game in Korean developer broadcasts.
An independent studio that has been developing Throne and Liberty since February 2025. It was created by spinning the development team off from NCSOFT, has roughly 250 people and is headed by Choi Moon-young, who already led the game inside the parent company. It has nothing to do with AION 2.
No. NCSOFT publishes AION 2 in Europe itself, through Steam and its own PURPLE launcher. Amazon Games published Throne and Liberty globally, and according to the announcement, even there publishing is set to move to NCSOFT by the end of 2026.
One person, verifiably: PD Kim Nam-joon, who started at NCSOFT on the first game. Nobody has officially confirmed it for any other team member. The continuity between the two games rests more on the world and the brand than on the development lineup.
We will revisit the team lineup after the global launch, since leadership on Korean titles tends to change fairly often in the first year of operation. You will find more articles about the game in our AION 2 guide, and an overview of the classes in the class overview and tier list. Information verified as of 16 August 2026.