Nexon sets off the Dirty Bomb open beta today

Nexon is releasing the open beta for its free-to-play first-person online shooter Dirty Bomb today as part of its big push into Western online gaming.

Online games are an $11 billion business worldwide, and the North American market accounted for $2.1 billion of that in 2014, according to market researcher SuperData Research. Tokyo-based Nexon is a big player in free-to-play online games, but it wants to become a global player.

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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.