“NetEase opens new studio” might elicit a lot of different reactions depending on whom you ask, but around here it’s news that perks up our ears considering the megacorp’s reach across our genre. So it’s naturally our duty to inform readers that that’s precisely what has happened: NetEase has opened a new studio based in Los Angeles, California, known as BulletFarm.
This self-described “remote-first AAA game studio” is being headed by David Vonderhaar, a former developer at Treyarch who worked on the Call of Duty series including COD: Black Ops; Vonderhaar is joined by former Treyarch dev Chris Cowell and lead environment artist Eric Klokstad, whose credits include the original Guild Wars, LawBreakers, and Radical Heights.
As for BulletFarm’s first game, information is extremely limited beyond the promise of “a new and ambitious AAA game, built in Unreal Engine 5 and set in an original universe with an emphasis on co-operative gameplay,” while the studio site talks up its focus on releasing a complete game instead of games with battle passes or annualized releases. The studio is currently on a hiring spree for devs to craft this co-op title, so it’s clearly too early to hope for much in-depth news, but we now all know that this is a thing.
