Aion 2 is the latest triple-A game to include creator monetization through user-generated content.
Aion 2, the sequel to the popular Korean MMORPG Aion, is slated for a global release in September 2026, following a regional release in Korea in November 2025. At Summer Game Fest Play Days in Los Angeles on June 7, GamesBeat sat down with members of the game’s development team at NC for a demonstration and interview about their plans for Aion 2’s impending global release.
The original Aion featured a detailed character customization tool, but with no way for character makers to share their creations. Creators who wanted to share their unique characters with other players could only do so by sharing lists of parameters, which other users could painstakingly follow to recreate character creations. In Aion 2, character creators will be able to directly share their creations with other players — and monetize their sales through an in-game marketplace.
“We feel that MMOs cover a wide demographic of players that like to do many different things within the game, but still be part of the same community,” said NC director of operations Daniel LaFuente in an interview with GamesBeat during the presentation. “One of those, we expect, is customization — that there will be players who get really good at this and make some really beautiful designs, and they’re going to want to be able to share that with other players. So, we’ve built that into the game.”
Although Aion 2’s custom character creators will be able to sell their creations to other players in-game, Aion 2’s character creation marketplace does not represent a new revenue stream for NC, per the company’s chief business officer Seung-Uk Baek, who explained that NC is not taking a fee or cut of proceeds from creators’ in-game sales.
“We don’t want to take credit for it,” Baek said through a translator during the Aion 2 demonstration. “We want to give the credit back to the user who created the content.”
The development team at NC built Aion 2 using a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 5, and the game’s character creator provides an almost limitless amount of customization options. Andrew, an NC employee who helped pilot the demonstration, said during the presentation that he had used the tool to create and share an ogre-like creature that appeared remarkably similar to the character Fiona from the Shrek franchise. Other creators have already taken to social platforms to share custom creations that evoke characters like Thanos and the Joker.
In addition to its creator-made character marketplace, Aion 2 will feature an in-game marketplace for cosmetic items — another feature new to the sequel that will act as a direct revenue stream for NC. The original Aion, which came out in 2008, primarily monetized through a subscription model.
“The game market has shifted from subscription-based to the free-to-play model in general, and the team also wanted to get the opportunity for many, many users to try and experience our game,” Baek said. “It’s kind of hard to do it on a subscription model, because you have to pay up-front first — so having it as free-to-play breaks that limit.”