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Ding, 53, who founded the company and is chief executive officer, has cut hundreds of jobs, closed or idled game studios and pulled back on international investment as he refocuses on a smaller portfolio of titles. He reasserted his leadership with a series of dramatic decisions over the past year, according to people familiar with the company’s inner workings who asked to not be identified.
But before it (Marvel Rivals) was released, there were discussions about it being cancelled, one of the people said. Ding objected to paying Walt Disney Co. for the use of popular characters like Wolverine and Spider-Man, and at one point asked his artists to swap in their own hero designs. That ultimately aborted effort cost the company millions of dollars and was emblematic of the abrupt changes ushered in by the CEO. A NetEase spokesperson denied this account, saying the company has enjoyed a close partnership with Marvel since 2017.
This week, part of the Marvel Rivals creative team in the US was laid off.
Sales potential is a top priority, as he now deems any game unlikely to generate hundreds of millions of dollars per year unworthy of pursuing, the people said. NetEase doesn’t set “arbitrary blanket numbers for determining the viability of a new game,” according to the company spokesperson.
With the recent layoffs, remaining NetEase workers worry about Ding’s volatility, with some describing a CEO who changes his mind frequently, the people said. Although Ding doesn’t usually have time to play games himself, he has bragged that he can tell how a game works by watching it for a couple of seconds. Ding has asked staff in China to work until 9 p.m., including naps and meals, the people said. NetEase said there’s no mandatory time requirement and departments set their own pace.
Ding has curtailed support for about a dozen games and shut down so many projects that NetEase studios in China may not release any major titles next year. Xiaojun Hui, one of his longest-running lieutenants and president of NetEase Games, quit his management role over a year ago, the people said. He remains with the company after about 20 years of helping lay the foundation for the NetEase of today, overseeing development of its first few original gaming hits.
Among moves to shake up leadership at NetEase, Ding last year hired a small number of recent graduates from the finance sector to serve as his direct reports, the people said. Some of these 20-somethings have already been assigned key roles to lead or supervise gaming units, they added.
Outside China, NetEase has in recent months shut down or halted work at marquee studios that it opened just a few years ago, such as Japan’s Ouka, Canada’s Worlds Untold and Jar of Sparks in the US. The company is shrinking the team it has scouting overseas investment opportunities, the people said. NetEase said that fewer than 60 employees have left as a result of the shutdown of Worlds Untold and Jar of Sparks, and the adjustment at its investments team is not a “wide scale layoff.”
NetEase hasn’t made any new investments in studios or intellectual property since the start of last year. Seattle-based Simon Zhu, who has been with the company for more than a decade, remains in charge of NetEase Games investments. He declined an emailed request for comment.
Japan had been one of NetEase’s key outposts, with celebrated creator Toshihiro Nagoshi, responsible for the Yakuza franchise, a major hire to bolster the creative ranks. The decision to close Ouka was made in the midst of developing the studio’s first big game, Visions of Mana, for Square Enix Holdings Co. Ding overruled executives who had greenlit the project as he decided there’s no need for a team working for outside publishers, the people said.
Outside Ouka, NetEase-funded Japanese creators — Nagoshi among them — have been given time to wrap up ongoing projects. The message from headquarters in Hangzhou has been that there’ll be no additional funding or time, the people said. There’s no plan to spend on marketing or promoting the games currently in production in Japan.
NetEase’s Billionaire CEO Ding Slashes Jobs, Games in Profit Push - Bloomberg
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