RF Online Next: A 2004 Sci-Fi War Game Finds a Second Life on Phones
Three races, one planet and a mine worth fighting over three times a day. Netmarble bought the rights in 2020 and turned CCR's cult MMORPG into one of Korea's top-grossing games of 2025.
Most Korean MMORPGs are fantasy: knights, elves, castles and dragons. In 2004, a studio called CCR tried something else. Its PC game RF Online, first named Rising Force, put players on a distant planet where magic and high technology lived side by side, and made them fight over a mine.
Twenty-one years later, that idea is back on phones. RF Online Next, published by Netmarble, launched on March 20, 2025, and by the end of June Sensor Tower ranked it No. 6 in revenue and No. 5 in downloads among all mobile games in Korea for the first half of the year.
The original war
The PC original, released in Korea in August 2004, is set in the Novus system and built around three races, each with a clear identity:
- The Bellato Union, who use technology to attack and magic to support
- The Holy Alliance Cora, masters of offensive magic
- The Accretian Empire, who use technology only and no magic at all
The heart of the game was the mine. Players mined minerals and processed them into items, and the races fought for control of the mines in the Chip War, a large battle held three times a day. The winning side controlled the Holystone Keeper, and each race's elected leader, the Archon, tried to break the enemy's control chip.
Netmarble steps in
In September 2020, Netmarble acquired the rights to the RF Online IP and announced that a mobile version was in development. That became RF Online Next. Its sci-fi heritage sets it apart from the many fantasy MMORPGs on Korean app stores, and it gives older players a familiar name from their PC bang days.
How it did
Sensor Tower's numbers for January to June 2025 tell the story:
- No. 6 in revenue in Korea, even though it only launched on March 20
- No. 5 in downloads, one of three Korean newcomers in the top five
- A key reason Netmarble jumped from 4th to 2nd among publishers in Korea, with its revenue growing about 1.5 times year on year
Only Lineage M among Korea's established MMORPGs ranked above it. The other games ahead were the Chinese strategy hits Whiteout Survival and Last War: Survival, plus Netmarble's own Seven Knights Re:BIRTH and Nexon's Mabinogi Mobile.
Why it matters
RF Online Next is part of a clear 2025 pattern: Korean publishers mining their back catalogues, or in Netmarble's case buying someone else's, for names that older players already love. The difference here is the setting. A sci-fi faction war is rare among Korean mobile MMORPGs, and that gave RF Online Next a reason to exist beyond nostalgia.
WGC's take: the question for RF Online Next, as for every Korean MMORPG, is the "three-month hurdle". Inven Global found that about half of the major mobile MMORPGs launched in Korea from 2024 to 2026 never even reached the Google Play top 10. RF Online Next already cleared that bar in its first three months; staying power through 2026 and beyond is the next test.