Visions of Mana was just released yesterday (August 29), but according to the latest reports, the plan of layoffs and eventual closure of Ouka Studios, the developer of this Japanese role-playing game, has been brewing for some time. The current situation is that NetEase has “cut all jobs except for a few.”
This is the news released by Bloomberg, which has been investigating NetEase and Tencent and the moves of these two large Chinese companies to reduce their investments in Japan.
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Ouka opened in 2020 and has hired veteran developers from the likes of Capcom and Bandai Namco. Visions of Mana, published by Square Enix, was unveiled at last year’s Game Awards and confirmed for a summer release in January through a game showcase at an Xbox Developer Direct conference.
The report states that since most of Ouka’s staff have been laid off, the remaining staff will be responsible for overseeing the release of the remaining games before the studio closes. The author of the report, Takashi Mochizuki, added on Twitter: “NetEase has been laying off Ouka’s staff since at least this spring.”
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So it looks like the decision to shut down the studio (assuming that’s what was going to happen) wasn’t a reaction to the release, and to be fair, if that was the case it seems NetEase had little time to analyse how well the game was actually doing in terms of achieving any of its goals.
When asked about the possibility of shutting down Ouka, NetEase told Bloomberg that the company had “nothing to announce,” and a spokesperson for the company said: “In supporting studios outside of China, our strategy is based on the goal of providing better gaming experiences for local and global players.” NetEase also added that NetEase “has been making necessary adjustments based on market conditions.”
Tencent, another company discussed in the report, said it remains committed to operating in Japan. Back in 2023, it had a deal to create a mobile version of Bandai Namco’s MMORPG Blue Protocol, only to announce this week that the game will be shut down in January 2025 and Amazon Games will not publish the game globally.
