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Corporate gaming giant NetEase are hunting for more jobs to slash among their overseas studios, according to insiders who spoke to Bloomberg and Game File last week. The parent company recently cut a bunch of US jobs among their Marvels Rivals developers despite the game raking in a big profit. And it now looks like that was just the start of a larger mauling which may hit up to 20 of the company’s non-Chinese studios.
“NetEase is actively shopping around more of its non-Chinese studios—many of the very same ones it announced over the last three years,” says Stephen Totilo in a report for Game File. “One of Game File’s sources says NetEase plans to divest itself of the majority of its overseas teams, leading to the potential closure of more than a dozen game studios, if they can’t secure new post-NetEase funding.”
Among the overseas studios owned by NetEase are French studio Quantic Dream, who were acquired in 2022, and Nagoshi Studio, a venture set-up by a former Yakuza director. The corporate behemoth also own several overseas studios that haven’t released a game yet, such as US studio Bulletfarm and Bad Brain Game Studios in Canada, among 16 other studios in various countries. It’s not clear which of these studios are on the chopping block.
“[All] studios and projects are in constant review and evaluation,” the company told Game File after a request for comment, “and NetEase will determine changes needed to be made throughout that process.”
NetEase are also partial owners of Polish studio Rebel Wolves, the developers of recently revealed RPG The Blood Of Dawnwalker. But they are minority shareholders, as clarified by co-owner Tomasz Tinc on LinkedIn, who said that Dawnwalker is “fully funded” and not in danger.
“The development of our game is progressing steadily, and we’re facing no financial issues,” he said.
A pattern of cuts to relatively new NetEase studios has already emerged. As noted by Edwin recently, NetEase have pulled funding for Worlds Untold, split with Jar Of Sparks, and laid people off at Liquid Swords. All these studios were recently set up by industry veterans who had worked on game series’ like Mass Effect, Halo, and Just Cause.
The move is a strategic set of cutbacks envisioned from on-high, according to Bloomberg, who report that NetEase CEO William Ding has “reasserted his leadership with a series of dramatic decisions over the past year”, including hiring a number of 20-something finance graduates to “lead or supervise gaming units”, according to the newspaper’s sources.
NetEase laid off almost 900 workers from various games subsidiaries over the course of 2023, Bloomberg also notes. But when asked about the status of overseas studios on a conference call last week, Ding responded via translator to say that the company will continue to support “high-quality studios and really master creators.”
“That is our strategy,” he said. “There’s no change on that.”
If you are one of the 448,000 players who played Marvel Rivals at the height of its popularity on Steam, you may be looking at those recently laid off and wondering what counts to Ding as “high-quality”.
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