John Schappert
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Ex-Zynga exec John Schappert starts new game startup with investment from Nexon

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 4 min

John Schappert, the former No. 2 executive at Zynga, has gone back to his roots as a game developer, creating a new game startup Shiver Entertainment with funding from Nexon.

The investment is the third major deal that Nexon has cut in a few months, where it has agreed to investment money in and publish titles from startups that have been created by some of the most well-known developers of video games. Besides Schappert’s new company, Nexon has also invested in Brian Reynold’s SecretNewCo and in Greg Richardson’s Rumble Entertainment. The move will take Nexon, which made its name with free-to-play games such as Maplestory, into Western game markets and, possibly, make it a player on the global stage for games.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.