Source: Nexon

Nexon (co-CEOs Kang Dae-hyun and Kim Jung-wook) announced that the online preliminaries for the 'Nexon Young Programmers Cup' (NYPC) Master Track will begin on the 29th.

This year, the NYPC has been completely revamped from a traditional algorithm-solving competition into a strategic programming contest focused on AI proficiency. The event has been renamed from 'Nexon Youth Programming Challenge' to 'Nexon Young Programmers Cup,' and with the new official slogan "Break, Solve, Win," it aims to provide an intense, immersive competitive stage similar to esports.

The Master Track is a team-based competition for university students aged 19 and older, where teams compete by pitting their AI agents against one another to test their ability to predict and counter opponent strategies. The preliminaries will be held online from June 29 to July 8, and participants can join at any time during this period. The competition supports 12 programming languages, including C, C++, Python, and Java, and the use of generative AI is officially permitted.

Top performers in the preliminaries will advance to the finals and be eligible for special awards. At the offline finals on August 29, the winning team will be awarded the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Award and a prize of ₩10 million. Additionally, winning teams in the Master Track will be given the opportunity to apply for a hands-on internship at Nexon.

For the first time, the Master Track is expanding overseas. University students from Vietnam will join South Korean participants in the preliminaries, and those who qualify will compete in the offline finals scheduled for August 29. With Vietnam as its first international base, Nexon is exploring the potential for the global expansion of the NYPC.

Kim Jung-wook, Chairman of the Nexon Foundation, stated, "The fully revamped NYPC is an effort to discover talent equipped with practical and strategic thinking skills that go beyond simple coding, in line with the approaching AI era. We look forward to seeing bold challenges from aspiring programmers who are ready to break away from conventional molds and compete on the global stage."

Meanwhile, the Rookie Track preliminaries for youth (aged 14 to 18) will be held separately from July 10 to 19.