Yakuza Creator's Next Game Will Be Sent to Die As NetEase Implodes

“Expansive reports from both Bloomberg and GameFile reveal that billionaire CEO Ding Lei is on a massive money saving spree, and its overseas teams will be taking the fall. We’ve already seen evidence of this following the redundancies around hit game Marvel Rivals’ support studio in Seattle.“

When your too rich to know what poor is🙄🙄🙄

Something about this sounds so fishy 🤔🐟👀

@get2sammyb
Thing that baffles me about acquisitions like this is that the companies who do it seem to lack any foresight whatsoever. They go "We're rich lets buy up all these companies, oh s--t we can't afford to keep them open now". Do they not have accountants who map out how much they can afford to spend well in advance? I know projects go overbudget and unforeseen things happen and all that but you can always account for this.

I wonder if Nagoshi will just retire after this game is released or if he will try to get back to Sega or try somewhere else. I don't think he would rejoin RGG as they seem to have moved on to the new leadership very smoothly and I doubt they want to rock the boat there too much.

Sad to see though. Him and his team certainly deserve better.

I think it’s just the state of play nowadays. At least Sony and Microsoft care about games and gaming in general. Embracer, Netease, Tencent, Amazon- don’t. They are just looking to cash in on what has become a lucrative business if the game catches on.

i commented about this happening when news broke about nagoshi leaving sega and partnering with netease a while back now... and what a grave mistake it was. writing was on the wall, wasn't it? can't say i flinched at this news but its sad nontheless. i'm more concerned about grasshopper being shut down completely... was there no other way for them to pivot or was it merely one final act of desperation to find funding when nobody else would oblige? grasshopper has been around a long time so you would expect another japanese publisher to step up...

Sounds like Quantic Dream Might be in trouble to

No doubt he'll get a fat bonus for making the "hard decisions"

That's tough. Left Sega to stretch his creative wings and make a new IP only to see it die.

This is just a shift in the Chinese companies approach. They don't want money to leave china. They want money to go into China only.
Tencent is doing the same, look at Sumo for example.
It's a rough time all around, hoping it gets somewhat better.

@get2sammyb I agree, Sammy, these acquisitions suck. It is frustrating that we as gamers are often so powerless to stop these bad moves.

I don’t think it is necessarily wrong that some cheer them on (although it is naive). I think it is okay for gamers to have hope that an IP they love could be revitalised or saved because of an acquisition. Or that a studio they admire is getting some much needed funding.

There are only a few who praise these acquisitions for the potential that they will damage their rivals in the console wars. And those people are just toxic and either don’t care about or don’t understand the industry outside of their narrow selfish desires.

The thing is, most gamers are not paying as much attention to the industry as people like yourself.

Not many can predict what the people at the top will do when they try to save themselves a few bucks, even if it comes at the expense of thousands of people losing their livelihoods and the expectations of millions of gamers being thrown down the pan. (Although, I think even the most naive are starting to understand the pattern…)

@get2sammyb nothing that can be done. In effect, it’s buying out the competition to eliminate the competition. Basically we are at that phase of gaming economics which will eventually lead to three big players surviving and the occasional new studio popping up. Right now it’s the buyout and destroy phase - which happened with IBM, Microsoft and others in the past. You have this massive bubble that then bursts, much like the internet boom of 2000s. AI is the next bubble to burst so wait to see for buyouts and layoffs there once people actually realise actual uses for AI. Sadly, it’s just how economics works and it ruins creativity. Imagine if art went through the same, with a mega conglomerate buying all new art and companies selling art, only for that type of art to not fall into demand resulting in layoffs and bankrupting a ton of local artists. It’s doesn’t quite work that way in art because there is only 1 copy of a painting and it’s heavily subjective but something with mass appeal and massive supply can only really generate cash, if managed right. It’s fear of competition and therefore greed that has brought us into this current mess, and the casualty will always be the artists that create these wonderful games.

No matter what country they operate out of...corpos gonna corpo.

NetEase sounds like a company that makes cheap obscure routers. And theyre acting like Embracer or EA at its peak.

@get2sammyb
Well, you have covered what I was going to say.

I would question is money really that 'tight' though, or are they just trying to fulfill ridiculous shareholder / investor expectations?

Sony should step in. They might have a hit on their hands if they do.

Yakuza has been mid since Nagoshi stepped down

@JohntheRaptor NetEase are one of the biggest game companies in the world and are worth close to 70 billion

Sounds a lot like what happened to the Visions of Mana studio and that game came out polished/finished so not necessarily being sent out to die imo.

@AndyKazama Huh? LaD and RGG in general has been doing just fine since he left.

This is why making your company grow > making your company expand.

One is sustainable, the other isn't.

@JohntheRaptor You’re close… NetEase original and main business is E-commerce and internet technology services. They’re the largest free email provider in China… Them being this big and involved in gaming only start a year or two pre covid when they invested a ton of money into Bungie. Before that they dealt with licensing Blizzard game in china, and had a couple online games

Nagoshi deserves better than this.

Unfortunate situation Nagoshi and his team find themselves in thanks to unbridled capitalist greed.
However, the success of this game (if it turns out good) is not determined yet. If the gaming community puts in good word of mouth, paired with some viral marketing, this can be turned into a success story.
I don't believe good sales require a huge advertising budget anymore, these aren't the pre-internet days where ads would make it or break it. Look at all these oddities on steam, or success stories like balatro.
I wish them all the best and will stay updated on this game.

@get2sammyb business is business

When NetEase was on their buying spree, it never sat quite right with me. I had a feeling that it would come back to bite them and the dev teams would suffer. Looks like I was right.

It’s just vile. Playing with people’s livelihoods.

These things arent always the doom and gloom they're portrayed to be. Nothing stopping the people who sold the company in the first place to essentially recreate the company under a different name and re-employ all those let go. They could even potentially buy back IP if cost cutting measures are that extreme.

@get2sammyb You would think these developers would learn by now to stop allowing these conglomerates to purchase them with how many of them get the axe soon afterwards.

@Ken_Kaniff Usually the studio heads making these decisions get huge payouts. So it often behooves them to sell the company and walk away with upwards of millions, rather than go down with the ship when operational costs and lack of investors catch up with them.

The actual developers themselves rarely have much say in the matter, and are lucky if they get a nice severance pay once the layoffs hit.

@Bluemoon2008 Money is stopping them. It costs money to build a company, and it's usually in short supply if a studio is desperate enough for acquisition. Also, provided the circumstances of the shut down, half the team could be swallowed into other sister-teams, others might've signed a deal saying they can't work at another company for some time, and others might be too disillusioned with their direct leadership to follow them on such a risky venture.

It's definitely not impossible (Mad Men basically had this plotline), but it would require a lot of coordination, funding, likely personal sacrifices, and possibly some subterfuge (like in Mad Men). And could blow up in the faces of some or all involved (...Mad Men).

@Can-You-Believe-Sith more than that, it’s being so wealthy that you have no concept of money except if it’s more or less than you have. That’s the most corrupting aspect of wealth, losing sight of the ground.

@Infindox I wasn't a huge fan of Infinite Wealth. Gameplay wise, huge step forward. Story, worst one since 3.

Bet he wish he had stayed at SEGA

@gollumb82 I don't know have you seen the state of avowed? Who at Microsoft saw that and thought "good enough" that game needs five more years to cook.

@Coffeeglitch i could handle wealth 😎 i promise you guys games would be perfection under my watchful eye, todd, molyneux, yves they've all lost sight of what a good game is, i would not fail 😡 i would have monster hit after hit and learn from games that elevated the industry to such a height.

@JustinTimberlake
Yup. I played 5 hours of it on my XSX and uninstalled it. Gameplay-wise and in terms of bugs it’s a decent game, but it has little to no world interactivity, dumb companions (in combat especially), poor physics, image shimmering in balanced mode (quality/40 fps/vrr mode). I can see why some people might enjoy it still. I can’t, having played The Witcher 3, CP2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3.

@zhoont (comment €4) objective criticism is great, but why tf did you need to you racism to make a point?

@Keyblade-Dan (#35) this has nothing to do with the company being chinese, it's simply a regular capitalist business move. Don't make this about China, it'll leave you in bad repute.

@zhoont (#44) whatever, c-hoont, the mods will decide that. Also, nice try evasion in that last sentence. Classic.

@Blofse careful buddy, there's a very adamant crowd on here that will call you a capitalist shill for suggesting greed is a cause of this and not the fundamentally evil economic systems that are only there to oppress people.
Made a comment similar to yours on another post last week and it got out of hand lol glad to see there are some people on here with me that share a similar perspective.

NetEase, More like NetSleaze!