Ouka Studios, the Tokyo-based team that just brought us Visions of Mana, is reportedly on the brink of being closed down. To be clear, the new Mana title is published by Square Enix, but Ouka Studios — the game's primary developer — is a subsidiary of Chinese colossus NetEase. The outfit was first established in 2020.
According to Bloomberg, NetEase has already cut most jobs at the company, with only a handful of employees left on for the sake of upcoming releases. It's an undeniable hammer blow for the studio, which, again, has only just launched Visions of Mana on the 29th August.
Reportedly, these cuts are down to a change in perspective at NetEase. The tech giant is apparently "rethinking" its strategy when it comes to investing in Japanese game development — a sector that isn't paying out like NetEase had previously hoped it would. Supposedly, fellow Chinese conglomerate Tencent is having similar doubts.
We don't know whether there were any post-launch plans for Visions of Mana in the pipeline, but it's fair to assume that beyond basic updates, the RPG won't be getting any notable support.