X-Legend: Seven Years of Losses and 400 Million NT Dollars, Then Selling Games to Fourteen Countries

The standard script for Taiwan's gaming industry is "license foreign games and bring them in." X-Legend (Chuanqi Net, 傳奇網路) took the reverse path: develop your own games, then sell them to Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, and the West. Before that happened, they first lost money for seven years, burned through 400 million NT dollars, and nearly replaced the entire development team. The 2009 launch of Grand Fantasia was licensed to fourteen countries, turning a company that almost collapsed into the king of OTC-listed new stocks. Fourteen years later, when their Western distributor went under, X-Legend took back the global publishing rights for their own titles and ran them in-house. This is a story about Taiwanese online games that run on servers around the world — and in the end, someone has to run them.

400 Million in Tuition

In 2002, Chang Feng-chi founded X-Legend Entertainment Co., Ltd. (傳奇網路遊戲股份有限公司) in Taipei. Chang's background was architecture, not games. He brought in Chou Chun-nan to head R&D and Chang Yi-hao to handle overseas operations — three people set out to make online games.¹

The following seven years, the company kept losing money.

Cumulative losses exceeded 400 million NT dollars. Early game releases failed to find a market; the team struggled to gel; products were built but no players showed up. Research VP Chou Chun-nan later recalled those years: "Because of that failure, we seriously regrouped and reorganized — almost the entire initial development team was replaced." (Quoted from BusinessToday interview)²

Entirely replaced. Nearly all the game developers swapped out. That decision was essentially an admission that seven years of investment had been lost, but it was also the starting point for everything that happened afterward.

📝 Curator's note
Taiwan's gaming industry has many companies that folded after one or two failures. X-Legend lost money for seven years and didn't give up. The 400 million NT dollars in sunk costs forced a complete rebirth — and the team that emerged after the rebirth made work of an entirely different caliber.

Grand Fantasia: The Miracle of Year Eight

On December 4, 2008, Grand Fantasia (精靈樂章), developed by X-Legend's subsidiary Yi Qi Digital (億啟數位), entered open beta in Taiwan.³

This game had one design element that set it apart from other MMOs of the period: every player had a "Sprite companion" that could gather resources, craft items, and fight — like a little sidekick who grows up alongside you. English-language gaming media MMOs.com specifically noted in their review: "The Sprite system is Grand Fantasia's most original feature; it transforms the tedious gathering and crafting of other MMOs into a warm, nurturing experience."⁴

On December 1, 2009, Grand Fantasia launched in the United States and Europe through US distributor Aeria Games. That same year it won Japan's 2009 Online Game Award and placed second at Japan Online Gamer's MMORPG awards; the following year it took the bronze Best MMORPG award, plus three consecutive years of Bahamut Best Domestic Online Game.⁵

Then the overseas licensing footprint expanded rapidly. Grand Fantasia was licensed to fourteen countries, with overseas revenue drawing level with domestic Taiwan earnings.⁶

In 2009, X-Legend posted full-year revenue of NT$113 million, with after-tax earnings per share of NT$6.44. It was the company's first profitable year in seven years of operation. 2010 revenue surged to NT$409 million, with overseas revenue accounting for 37 percent of the total. The company was listed on the OTC market in December of that year, with the stock price breaking NT$270 — becoming the new king of OTC-listed new stocks.⁷

From cumulative losses of 400 million to stock king. Only two years in between.

Eden Eternal: Knocking on Japan's Door

Grand Fantasia proved that Taiwanese games could sell overseas. The next step was a harder market: Japan.

Eden Eternal (聖境傳說) launched in Taiwan in December 2010. In January 2011, Japanese game distributor Vector announced it had acquired the exclusive distribution rights for Eden Eternal in Japan.⁸

Japan's game market is known for being closed, with domestic publishers dominating most market share. That a Taiwanese-made online game could enter Japan with a Japanese distributor actively signing the deal was, at the time, almost unprecedented. The standard business model for Taiwan's gaming industry for years had been to "license Japanese games into Taiwan" — X-Legend turned the arrow 180 degrees.

💡 Did you know?
Grand Fantasia's success directly catalyzed X-Legend's subsequent product line. Western gaming media Nostalgic.gg noted in a retrospective: "Grand Fantasia's success led X-Legend to develop a series of similar Japanese anime-style MMOs, including Eden Eternal, Aura Kingdom, and Twin Saga."⁹ One game defined a company's direction for a decade.

Aura Kingdom: From Licensing to Self-Publishing

Aura Kingdom (幻想神域) entered open beta on August 8, 2013. Japanese anime-style character design, sixteen playable classes, and an "Eidolon companion" system — X-Legend upgraded the core mechanics of Grand Fantasia and released a more ambitious title.¹⁰

Aura Kingdom's overseas expansion was faster than Grand Fantasia's, and the strategy was different. When it launched in Japan in October 2013, X-Legend established its own Japanese subsidiary (X-Legend Entertainment Japan) to self-publish directly — bypassing distributors.¹¹ This was still rare among Taiwanese gaming companies in 2013 — most companies were content to sell licenses; opening a self-operated overseas subsidiary was an entirely different level of resource commitment.

Subsequent expansion covered Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and Macau, mainland China (via Changyou), and the United States and Europe (via Aeria Games). The mobile version topped the download charts on both platforms in Taiwan and reached second on the revenue chart. In 2014 it won the GAME STAR Best Online Game Gold Award in Taiwan.¹²

Aura Kingdom officially launched in North America on January 2014 through distributor Aeria Games, supporting English, French, German, and Spanish. Asian gaming media Games in Asia gave it 6.1 out of 10, praising "a strong storyline, polished anime-style character designs, and excellent visuals," while also noting "insufficient dungeon content and repetitive gameplay."¹³

2022: Bringing the Children Back Home

The story could have ended there. But something happened in 2022.

X-Legend's Western distributor, Aeria Games (part of Germany's Gamigo Group), ran into trouble. Gamigo announced layoffs at the end of 2022, shut down the Aeria Games portal website, and transferred publishing rights for Aura Kingdom and Grand Fantasia out of Aeria.¹⁴

Transferred to whom? To X-Legend itself.

On February 15, 2023, X-Legend officially took over North American publishing for Aura Kingdom and Grand Fantasia, with player data migrated to new servers. Western gaming media Massively Overpowered covered the transfer and noted the process was not entirely smooth — "server errors, login problems, and website bugs made the first few days of the relaunch bumpy."¹⁵

But X-Legend stabilized quickly. Within a month of taking over, they announced expansion plans for both games: new maps, new classes, new dungeons. Massively Overpowered's subsequent coverage noted that X-Legend had pledged "a faster update cadence" and was "committed to improving the games in every respect."¹⁶

📝 Curator's note
This story's arc is unusual: Taiwanese original developer makes games → licenses them to Western distributors → distributor runs into trouble → original developer takes back global publishing rights and runs them in-house. This is rare in the gaming industry. Normally when a distributor collapses, the game goes with it. X-Legend's choice was: "My children — I'll raise them myself."

Import Model vs. Export Model

X-Legend's story is an outlier in Taiwan's gaming industry.

Most Taiwanese gaming companies operate on an import model: buy overseas games' Taiwan distribution rights and profit from localized operations. GameFlier (遊戲橘子) distributes Korea's Lineage and MapleStory; Soft-World distributes World of Warcraft. This route is mature, stable, and manageable in terms of risk.

X-Legend operates on an export model: develop in-house, then sell licenses out — and even self-operate overseas subsidiaries. Upfront investment is enormous (400 million NT dollars in losses over seven years), but once a product gains market acceptance, licensing fees and overseas revenue shares become recurring income.

Grand Fantasia licensed to fourteen countries, Aura Kingdom self-published in Japan, Eden Eternal cracked the Japanese distribution market, and in 2023 taking back global publishing rights from Western distributors — every step is a path rarely walked by Taiwanese gaming companies.

In 2024, X-Legend posted full-year revenue of approximately NT$1.58 billion, with a gross margin of 66 percent. In July 2025, they released the global version of Aura Kingdom: Origin of the Gods (幻想神域：源神啟動) on Steam, facing players around the world under their own name.¹⁷

Twenty-Three Years Later

That founder from architecture, the decision to keep going despite 400 million in losses, the painful "near-total replacement of the development team" — it all eventually grew into a company with annual revenue of 1.5 billion NT dollars and games running on servers around the world.

Chou Chun-nan said: "Making money is so hard, so you have to spend carefully — put what you earn back into employees and shareholders." (Quoted from BusinessToday interview)¹⁸

From someone who has lost 400 million dollars, every word carries weight.

Further Reading

• Taiwan's Gaming Industry and Digital Entertainment — The full panorama of Taiwan's gaming industry, from licensing to original development
• Softstar Twin Classics — The emotional awakening of Taiwan's single-player RPG era, the generation before X-Legend
• Into the Cellar, Can't Sleep — Thirty years of Taiwan's gaming communities

References