Over the last couple of years, NetEase has been pumping money into a long list of western developers with big names attached to them, including Worlds Untold, BulletFarm, Second Dinner (Marvel Snap), Craig Morrison’s cozy crime MMO, Greg Street’s Ghost, Rich Vogel’s T-Minus Zero, and Jack Emmert’s Warhammer MMO. Well, that list is one shorter this week, as Worlds Untold announced last night that it’s at least temporarily giving up.
A year ago, NetEase funded former Mass Effect boss Mac Walters’ team at Worlds Untold to build a “future, action adventure game in a breathtaking world filled with mystery and exploration.” But Walters posted to Linkedin last night to (rather euphemistically) say that the company had laid everyone off after execs “made the very difficult decision to pause operations at Worlds Untold while [they] search for a new partner to help bring [the studio’s] vision to life.” He does not state outright that NetEase is the partner it lost, but given that it was NetEase that originally announced the formation of the studio under its portfolio, it seems a safe assumption.
NetEase, we note, has not had a great couple of months; at the end of summer, its stock took a dive after its quarterly financials missed expectations and speculators pointed to broader industry pullouts in Japan and elsewhere. And earlier this month, it stock dropped again after Korean regulators announced they were investigating and charging multiple NetEase execs for fraud and corruption.
However, NetEase’s Q3 report last week showed a nearly 4% revenue drop and a 13% net profit drop, and yet investors rewarded it by raising its stock 13% (though it’s still down over 3% for the year) – that’s apparently owing to faith in NetEase’s upcoming releases and prospects in 2025.
