NetEase doing NetEase things
The information comes from Bloomberg and its journalists Takashi Mochizuki and Zheping Huang, the Nagoshi studio, founded by former SEGA Toshihiro Nagoshi, finds itself in a bad position to complete Gang of Dragons. Their very first game recently announced at the Game Awards 2025 will indeed pay the price of a new withdrawal from NetEase regarding the financing of one of its featured studiosa few weeks after Anchor Point.
The development team was reportedly informed of the news on Friday, March 7, and a NetEase spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg that funding will stop from May. A real brake for Toshihiro Nagoshi who created his studio in 2021, and who wanted to make a sort of Yakuza in its sauce with a punchy announcement also revealing the presence of the charismatic Ma Dong-Seok as the main character.
The reason which motivated this withdrawal on the part of NetEase lies in the additional 7 billion yen (around 38 million euros) necessary to complete the project, according to an anonymous person close to the matter. Now, a race against time begins for Nagoshi Studio, knowing that the few funding requests apparently already executed would have proved in vain.
And the pressure is all the more real since NetEase demanded that the studio manage to complete its financing under penalty of recovering the rights to the brand. Possible negotiations would remain possible, but again, only if Nagoshi Studio manages to follow through.