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Former Riot Games vice chairman Greg Street, who left the corporate in 2023 and launched a brand new NetEase-backed studio referred to as Fantastic Pixel Castle, says the partnership with NetEase is coming to an finish, and that the studio will doubtless shut if a brand new writer cannot be discovered.
Street delivered the unhealthy information in a message posted to LinkedIn and social media, writing, “I wanted to share the news that Fantastic Pixel Castle’s time as a first party studio within NetEase Games is coming to an end. NetEase Games has been very gracious and supportive of looking for another publisher for our game. However, in the current market environment very few deals are getting made for any game, let alone something on the scale of an MMORPG.
“We’re doing every part we are able to to discover a writer or investor. At the identical time, we’re encouraging our crew members to discover future alternatives and supporting them by way of the uncertainty. If we’re unable to discover a writer quickly, the fact is that the studio would doubtless shut, and your complete crew, management included, can be affected.”
Street was heading up improvement of the still-in-development League of Legends MMO when he left Riot in March 2023, saying “it’s time for something new.” Not too new, though, because in November of that same year he unveiled Fantastic Pixel Castle and a new MMO, codenamed Ghost.
A message from our studio founder, @ghostcrawler.bsky.social – a thread:
I wanted to share the news that Fantastic Pixel Castle’s time as a first party studio within NetEase Games is coming to an end. (1/7)— @fpcstudio.bsky.social (@fpcstudio.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-10T15:47:21.572Z
Street mentioned he opted to companion with NetEase as a result of it “understands our vision, and gives us the creative autonomy, resources and support to be successful,” and, one would presume, additionally had the funds to assist the venture’s improvement.
But NetEase has dramatically modified course since then. In November 2024 it ended funding for Mac Walters’ Worlds Untold studio only a yr after it was based; in January 2025 it pulled the plug on Jerry Hook’s Jar of Sparks, based in 2022; and in August 2025 it shut down T-Minus Zero, launched by Rich Vogel in 2023.
NetEase pointed to a change in “business priorities” as the rationale for the T-Minus Zero closure, whereas the top of funding for Worlds Untold arose from “current market conditions [that] have required us to reassess and prioritise our opportunities.” Unsurprisingly, it is just about the identical story with Fantastic Pixel Castle.
“We are supporting Fantastic Pixel Castle in its efforts to find publishing and investment partners, as the studio shared earlier,” NetEase mentioned in a press release offered to PC Gamer. “We cherish and value the hard work, dedication, and creativity of every individual and team across all of our studios.
“Developing and investing in online game tasks is inherently a protracted and complicated course of that requires ongoing analysis and adaptation. We proceed to refine our strategy with diligence and self-discipline, fastidiously assessing each alternatives and dangers in content material improvement to information investments throughout our world portfolio.”
Street said the Fantastic Pixel Castle team is still trying to find funding, and expressed hope that Ghost will ultimately see the light of day. But he also described the current state of the videogame industry as “absurdly difficult,” and on that he’s not wrong. Tens of thousands of game industry workers have been laid off over the past few years, and it’s starting to seem like nothing can stop it: Microsoft laid off 9,000 people in July while Phil Spencer said its gaming business “by no means appeared stronger,” and Funcom made cuts—including the outright closure of The Outsiders—while trumpeting Dune:Awakening, which came out just a few months earlier, as “the largest launch we’ve had in our 32-year lengthy historical past of constructing nice video games.” There actually is not any profitable—except you are the man who will get employed for Netflix’s $840,000 per yr director of generative AI for video games gig. He’ll most likely be set.
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