Tag Archives: NetEase

NetEase Cutting Jobs At Ouka Studios Ahead Of Potential Closure

Gaming, ,

Bloomberg is reporting that Visions of Mana developer Ouka Studios is about to the shuttered by parent company NetEase, GameDeveloper reported.

The Japanese studio opened in 2020 and hired veteran developers from Capcom and Bandai Namco. It was tapped to handle production on Visions of Mana, a new mainline entry in the popular series published by Square Enix.

The action-RPG garnered a positive reception when it launched earlier this week, but NetEase is reportedly looking to shutter the studio responsible for that critical success. 

NetEase rival Tencent — another sprawling Chinese business with a taste for massive investments — is also reportedly rethinking its approach in Japan. The company has seemingly pulled out of several funding commitments in the region that would have financed multiple new projects.

IGN reported Chinese video game company NetEase has reportedly laid off most staff at Visions of Mana developer Ouka Studios with plans to shut it down all together.

Anonymous sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg that the studio which only opened in 2020, will be kept afloat by the few remaining members until its final games have been released. Visions of Mana only launched yesterday, August 29, 2024, and earned high critical praise.

The closure of Ouka Studios is reportedly due to major Chinese companies like NetEase and its rival Tencent shifting away from a Japan-centric approach. 

Bloomberg reported that Tencent is also reconsidering how much it invests in Japanese video game developers and has already backed out of several funding commitments. It had secured the rights to develop and publish the mobile version of anime-inspired game Blue Protocol, for example, but on August 28, Bandai Namco announced Blue Protocol would be shut down altogether, and its worldwide release, set to be handled by Amazon Games, was cancelled.

NetEase told Bloomberg it had “nothing to announce” regarding the closure of Ouka Studios. Tencent said it is “always making necessary adjustments to reflect market conditions.

VideoGamesChronicle reported Ouka Studios, the developer behind Visions of Mana, is reportedly set to close as part of an overall scaling back of investment in Japanese studios NetEase and Tencent.

Both Chinese companies have invested heavily in Japanese game development in recent years, acquiring numerous development studios and opening new ones.

Now, however, a Bloomberg report claims both companies are starting to rethink their strategy because it’s yet to bear any significant fruit.

According to the report, NetEase has “cut all but a handful of jobs” at Shibuya-based Ouka Studios, whose Visions of Mana was only released on Thursday.

The company reportedly plans to close the studio, with the remaining staff overseeing the release of its final games first.

In my opinion, it seems strange to me that Ouka Studios is suddenly laying off workers and only keeping a few around to finish up with the company’s final games.

Diablo Immortal’s China Release Has Been Delayed

Gaming, ,

Diablo Immortal is the newest game in Activision Blizzard’s Diablo franchise. It was officially released on June 2 for not only mobile devices but also PCs. CNBC reported that shares of the game fell nearly 7% in Hong Kong on Monday after it announced plans to delay the release of Diablo Immortal in China. According to CNBC, the game did not announce a new launch date.

NetEase and Activision Blizzard worked together on Diablo Immortal. The game was set to release in China on June 23, but that has been delayed. The reason for the delay requires some explanation.

Financial Times reported that shares in NetEase dropped on Monday morning after the Chinese company fell foul of China’s censors over a social media post that was suspected of alluding to Winnie the Pooh, a popular way to derisively refer to President Xi Jinping.

According to The Financial Times, the delay came as a screenshot circulated online of a post published by the game’s official account on Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging site, dated May 22, that read: “Why hasn’t the bear stepped down.”

The remark was interpreted as a reference to China’s President Xi Jinping, who is often illustrated as Disney’s Winnie the Pooh. The cartoon bear has been blacklisted by censors in China for years.

This isn’t the first time that China has cracked down on gaming. In August of 2021, South China Morning Post reported that gamers in China who are under the age of 18 would have their playing time limited to one hour on regular days and two hours on public holidays. That same month, the BBC reported that Tencent announced it was rolling out facial recognition to stop children from playing video games between 10pm and 8am.

Kotaku reported that the postponement of Diablo Immortal in China comes three days before the game’s intended Chinese release and just a few days after the game’s official Weibo account was suspended from being allowed to post.

According to Kotaku, a contact translated what was written on Weibo as “What do you think about the bear?”, but says it was written to be idiomatic. Kotaku notes that either way, if real, it seems an extraordinary thing to have posted on an official account in China.

Kotaku also pointed out that there is a press release that was posted on Blizzard’s Chinese website, stating that the reason for this very last-minute delay is a need to make “a number of optimization adjustments to the game”. (Kotaku appears to have translated this via Google.) The press release also said that the adjustments included improving model rendering, support for a wider range of devices, and “network and performance optimizations”.