Who Made GunZ: The Duel? The Full History (2003 to the 2026 Remaster)

The Short Answer

GunZ: The Duel was created by MAIET Entertainment, a Korean studio, and first launched in Korea in 2003. The 2026 Steam remaster is developed and published by Masangsoft, the Korean company that later acquired the GunZ IP. The launch-day producer letter (signed “PD Max”) frames it exactly as fans hoped: “the official launch is not the end, but another beginning.”

The Timeline

• 2003 — Korea launch. MAIET’s stylish third-person shooter arrives with anime-inflected acrobatics: wall runs, dashes, sword-and-gun combat
• Mid-2000s — international era. Western players largely met GunZ through international publishers, most memorably the ijji portal years — the era most veterans are nostalgic for
• The community invents K-Style. Players discover that animation cancels turn the movement system into something the developers never designed: butterflies, slash shots, wall cancels. Instead of patching it out, the technique becomes the game’s identity
• 2013 — GunZ 2: The Second Duel. MAIET’s sequel simplifies movement; it never captures the original’s scene (see our comparison page)
• Official service winds down; private servers take over. For over a decade, communities like FGunZ and Freestyle GunZ keep the original playable and competitive — a rare case of a game surviving primarily through its fan infrastructure
• Masangsoft acquires the IP and, after public tests and a wishlist campaign that passed 200,000, ships the official Steam remaster on August 13, 2026 — free to play, with the classic movement system intact as the headline feature

Why the History Matters Now

The remaster’s launch events, its preserved K-Style, and even its trailer language are aimed squarely at the veterans this history produced. Twenty years of community-built technique documentation (StrategyWiki, forum guides, YouTube tutorials) still applies — which is exactly why a new player in 2026 can learn from material written a decade ago.