Dissolved before its debut
Nagoshi Studio never got to ship a game, and now it can’t. The Tokyo developer founded by Yakuza series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi was dissolved by a shareholders’ resolution on 31 October, and Japan’s official gazette, Kanpo, carried the notice on Monday 2 November, according to VGC.
Gematsu was first to report it, describing the Shinjuku, Tokyo-based studio as founded under NetEase Games in November 2021. That makes a life of just under five years, and none of it produced a finished game. Its debut, Gang of Dragon, is a Kabukicho-set action-adventure starring Ma Dong-seok, announced in December 2025 and shown in a trailer at The Game Awards, GameSpot notes. Steam’s store page still lists it as “Coming soon” for Windows.
The money ran out first
The closure didn’t come out of nowhere. In March, Bloomberg reported that NetEase planned to cut the studio’s funding in May, Gematsu says, and that the studio had the option to go independent if it could pay its way out. VGC, relaying Bloomberg, says NetEase allegedly made its decision after finding the project needed an additional ¥7 billion ($44.4 million) to reach completion. GameSpot puts the same ask at about $44 million.
Nothing public has since explained the shutdown in detail. GameSpot says exact reasons haven’t been revealed, and it also notes that the official Gang of Dragon YouTube channel went down briefly in April and the game’s website was taken down in May. The sources we read don’t say what becomes of Gang of Dragon or of the staff, so we won’t guess.
One more NetEase casualty
VGC calls Nagoshi Studio the latest casualty of NetEase’s decision to significantly scale back its international game development, after years of investing in new studios around the world. It lists T-Minus, FPC and Bad Brain among the initial closures, NetEase’s split from Vancouver-based Worlds Untold and Seattle-based Jar of Sparks, and the 2024 closure of Tokyo’s Ouka Studio, the developer behind Square Enix’s Visions of Mana.
The pattern isn’t unique to one publisher. We’ve covered Ubisoft proposing to close Trials studio RedLynx and Funcom cutting staff to focus on two games, and Xbox still hasn’t named buyers for Ninja Theory or Undead Labs. Money is tight, and unreleased projects are the easiest line to cross out.
We think the sharpest detail here is how little the public got to see: a Steam page, a teaser and a promise. In 2023 Nagoshi told VGC he would not let down fans of his previous games and would make sure they were happy with the studio’s debut. That promise now has no studio behind it. Meanwhile, GameSpot points out, his former home RGG Studio has kept releasing Yakuza and Like a Dragon games since he left, with Stranger Than Heaven due next year.
