NetEase pledges to support 'master creators' and 'really high-quality studios'

Shortly after shutting down a studio, laying off workers across Western studios, and cancelling a handful of projects, billion-dollar games titan NetEase tells investors that it's committed to supporting "master creators" in its quest for overseas game releases.

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Little over a week ago, Bloomberg ran a story on NetEase that painted a turbulent picture at the Chinese firm. NetEase has reportedly cancelled a dozen or so games at the whims of its CEO, and there's been the layoffs at Western game dev units (including the Marvel Rivals team in the West). NetEase had also shut down Ouka Studios shortly after the team released the recent Visions of Mana remake.

Now we have more comments from management on this topic. In a Q4 2024 earnings call, company VP of corporate development Bill Pang says that support for overseas projects is important and something NetEase will continue to do.

"We actually pay a lot of attention to support our overseas studios. To support the creators in the overseas market to be creative -- to create content to meet the local demand in the overseas market. So as commitment to support the really high-quality studios and really master creators to create a very creative game for oversea market, that is our strategy. There's no change on that."

The report from Bloomberg's Cecilia D'Anastasio indicates that NetEase will allow some teams to finish games, namely Nagoshi Studio, the new dev team from Yakuza series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.

The news of the cuts has prompted studios like Quantic Dream to speak out and say they have been marked safe from the closures and cuts. NetEase has a minority stake in Rebel Wolves, a dev team made up of previous Witcher devs who are making a new game called Blood of Dawnwalker. Rebel Wolves also came out to clarifythat their game is fully funded and they're not affected by NetEase's cuts.

Elsewhere in the earnings call, Pang adds more color to NetEase's decision-making process regarding greenlights and the dreaded cancellations:

"When we allocate resources among different products across different studios, no matter domestically or including our overseas studios. We pay a lot of attention a lot of key attributes, for example, the quality of the work. And if it's work going to meet the future demand of players when the work is releasing market years later...as well as the production efficiency of the work, everything.

"So if some projects we can foresee that when the product faces the market years later, that if it's likely not to be [popular], we'll very firmly press the brakes.

"And if some products-- if they're really high quality, meeting the future market demand, actually, we're going to double down.

"So it's all about the product itself, the quality, the development efficiency, is it going to meet the ever-growing user expectation because game development is a long cycle, a 3-year, 4-year, 5-year cycle.

"When we charge a project, we have some assumptions. And doing that development process, we'll keep monitoring to see if the product is going to be able to meet the future demand and to do resource allocation adjustment. That's a normal course of game development elements. We have been doing that for a long time in that that way."

In regards to doubling-down, in the same call, Pang said that NetEase plans to support Marvel Rivals for the next 10 years and beyond.