Nexon is one of the pioneers in the online free-to-play market and they’ve been having great success with their virtual items business too. The company has announced that MapleStory has crossed over one million paying players in North America via the game s virtual item shop. Overall, the title has seven million registered players.

“We would like to congratulate all of our players for paving the way for an entirely new way of playing games,” said Min Kim, Nexon America’s vice president of marketing. “When Nexon began servicing MapleStory in North America, we were told that only a few hardcore gamers would ever do microtransactions. This milestone proves that the potential of virtual goods was grossly underestimated. People have been doing microtransactions for years, whether it was popping quarters into arcade machines, trading baseball or Pokemon cards or buying music on online.MapleStory s million shopper milestone reinforces that playing online games and buying virtual items has become part of everyday life for players and is a proven, successful way of doing business.