Visions of Mana only released yesterday, August 29, but according to a new report, plans to cut back at and eventually close the JRPG’s developer – Ouka Studios – have been in the works for a good while, with the current situation being that NetEase has cut “all but a handful of jobs”.
This comes from Bloomberg, which has been looking into NetEase and Tencent, and the scaling back of Japanese investments both big Chinese companies have been doing.
Ouka opened in 2020 and went on to hire veteran developers from the likes of Capcom and Bandai Namco. Visions of Mana, published by Square Enix was revealed at last year’s edition of The Game Awards, and locked in a summer release via a gameplay reveal at the Xbox Developer Direct this January.
With the majority of staff at Ouka laid off, those who remain are overseeing the releases of the studio’s remaining games prior to its closure, the report alleges. Its author, Takashi Mochizuki, added via tweet that “NetEase has been cutting staff at Ouka for a while, since this spring at least.”
So, it would seem that the decision to close the studio, assuming that is what’s coming, isn’t a reaction to the release, and to be fair, it looks like NetEase would barely have had time to analyse how well the game’s actually done in terms of meeting any goals if that were the case.
NetEase told Bloomberg it had “nothing to announce” when asked about a potential closure of Ouka, with a spokesperson for the company saying: “In supporting studios outside China, we craft our strategy based on our goal of providing better gaming experiences to local and global players.” It was added that NetEase is “always making necessary adjustments to reflect market conditions.”
Tencent, the other company discussed in the report, stated that it remains committed to its business efforts in Japan. Back in 2023, it secured a deal to create the mobile version of Bandai Namco MMORPG Blue Protocol, which was announced this week to be set for shutdown in January 2025, with a worldwide release of it from Amazon Games not going ahead.