MAIET Entertainment missed mobile gaming after GunZ

MAIET Entertainment was a South Korean video game developer founded in 1998 by a small group of five researchers. Its flagship title, GunZ: The Duel (2004), was a third-person shooter that became a global hit with dedicated servers in Korea, North America, and internationally. The game established MAIET as a promising studio in Korea's competitive PC online game market. The company also developed the multiplayer game RaiderZ and attempted the aerial strategy game AceSaga, which was terminated.

After GunZ's success, MAIET struggled to follow up. GunZ 2 launched in 2011 with an English adaptation in 2013 but failed to replicate the original's popularity. Meanwhile, the gaming industry shifted rapidly toward mobile — a segment MAIET never entered. The company continued developing PC online games in a shrinking market, with its revenues declining as players migrated to smartphones. MAIET also sold game rights to Masangsoft Inc. as a survival measure.

In 2013, Taiwanese company Cayenne Entertainment Technology Co purchased US$3 million in convertible bonds from MAIET, planning to convert them into a 20–30 percent stake in 2015. However, MAIET's business could not keep up with the fast-changing mobile gaming market and suffered heavy losses. By 2015, MAIET was dissolved, having sold all its game rights to Masangsoft. Cayenne's shares plunged 6.88% on the news, and the company hired a South Korean law firm to pursue the unrecoverable debt. Founder Venister later started a new studio called Onion Crew.