Owen Mahoney, CEO of game company Nexon.
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Nexon’s Owen Mahoney sees salvation through original hardcore games, not Flappy Bird copycats (interview)

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 11 min

Since he was named chief executive-elect of Asian online game publisher Nexon in February, Owen Mahoney is trying to make his company into a global gaming giant.

Expanding into Western markets will be critical to that strategy, and that’s why Mahoney has cut deals with high-profile Western game makers such as John Schappert, former No. 2 exec at Zynga and Brian Reynolds, a strategy gaming expert and maker of Rise of Nations.

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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.