NetEase is continuing to pare back its internal development teams, with studio head and game director Greg Street confirming the closure of Fantastic Pixel Castle. Founded in 2023, the studio was led by Street, a prominent designer best known for his work on World of Warcraft at Blizzard and League of Legends at Riot Games.
Fantastic Pixel Castle had been building an original fantasy MMO, developed under the codename Ghost.
The announcement follows Street’s recent LinkedIn post that his team’s run as a first-party studio within NetEase Games was drawing to a close and that the studio was actively pursuing alternative investors. The LinkedIn update emphasized the studio’s search for new capital. View the announcement.
Street indicated there remains a possibility of securing funding even after the planned shutdown on Nov. 17, though he warned that any chance to continue the project would hinge on how much of the team stays intact. He expanded on this on LinkedIn.
Rather than committing to the game’s completion immediately, Street said the studio’s priority is assisting employees in finding new roles—whether that means regrouping as an independent outfit or moving to other stable game and technology companies.
Street, who is widely known to the World of Warcraft community as Ghostcrawler, served as a lead systems designer at Blizzard from 2008 to 2013. He later joined Riot Games to work on League of Legends and an untitled League-based MMO before stepping down from his executive post at Riot in 2023.
Fantastic Pixel Castle’s closure is part of a broader pullback by NetEase from studios outside China, affecting teams such as Worlds Untold (the Vancouver developer led by former BioWare creative Mac Walters), Jar of Sparks (Seattle studio founded in 2022 by Xbox veteran Jerry Hook), and Tokyo-based Ouka Studio, developer of Visions of Mana for Square Enix.
Earlier this year, Street expressed optimism about the project’s prospects after NetEase’s internal review of its portfolio, but recent developments have since altered the studio’s trajectory.
On LinkedIn, Street thanked supporters at NetEase and the many people who reached out to help with fundraising. “There is still a chance one of them works out, and it really only takes one,” he wrote.
Source: Polygon
