Seems like Tencent and NetEase are both pulling back investment in North America and Japan, the Japan part was already reported on a few weeks back but recently Humanoid Origin had to close due to investment drying up (NetEase was funding them) and then another ex-Bioware veterans studio (Worlds Untold) had to cease operations this week as NetEase has pulled funding from them as well, Shinobi is also hinting that we should keep an eye out on Jar of Sparks as potentially the next casualty.

It stings because they both were working on AAA Sci-Fi, an RPG for Humanoid and Action-Adventure for World's Untold...When Sci-Fi is done right, it beats any Fantasy Imho...We have far too much "Fantasy RPG" and barely any "Sci-Fi RPG" so it sucks to see even new possibilities fall flat before even given a chance, I think sadly Sci-Fi RPGs are more expensive and more risky than Fantasy RPGs though.

Anyway this is what I said a year or so ago, so many of the COVID-era studios will close before even releasing a videogame and it's not just independent AAA studios, the investor money is drying up everywhere and investors also don't want to invest in anything but AAA so it's hard for even the smaller indie studios to get funding lately, I've seen multiple reports on this issue, it just sucks all round.

Bunch of stupid investors and executives throwing cash around during COVID when gaming was exploding and thinking it would carry on post-pandemic but now the industry has stagnated they're all panicking and pulling investment before even giving their investments a chance to release anything, AAAs can't be released in 3 fucking years under a brand new studio but they also refuse to invest in anything which isn't a big project, it's ridiculous, Lol. I expect more than half of these "new studios" I was tracking will end up closing Tbh.

I hope I am still getting good SUDA51 games in the west.

4 days before release. Launch trailer releases on Monday.