Hyung-tae Kim, CEO of Korean game studio Shift Up and director of 2025 gooner game of the year Stellar Blade, has received a Presidential Commendation for his contributions to the development of South Korea's videogame industry. A Daum report (via Automaton) says the prize honors Kim's work on both Stellar Blade and the game that preceded it, the 2022 action RPG Goddess of Victory: Nikke.
"This Presidential Citation is thanks to the developers and fans who believed in and supported Shift Up, Kim said. "We will continue to do our best to further promote the competitiveness of Korean games on the global stage."
Goddess of Victory: Nikke was originally released as a mobile game—it made its way to PC in 2023 but remains available exclusively through a standalone launcher. Stellar Blade was Shift Up's debut release on Steam, which naturally exposed it to a much wider Western audience. Of course it was a different sort of exposure that put Stellar Blade over the top with a certain portion of gamers, but beneath all the silly T&A was a reasonably solid action game that put up more than three million copies sold across PC and PS5 as of July 2025.
The president of South Korea isn't the only one who thinks Shift Up is doing big things for the hometown: In November, former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida credited Stellar Blade for helping drive "the growing confidence among Korean creators."
Shift Up is currently working on a sequel to Stellar Blade, which Kim said in June will address the shortcomings of the original, particularly in regards to its "lacking" narrative. The Daum report says the studio is also working on something new, currently known as Project Spirit, which will be published by Tencent.
