NetEase’s Latest Game Casualty, The Midnight Riders, May Still Live
- Bad Brain Game Studio shut down just two years after launching under NetEase.
- Its project, The Midnight Riders, is still up for acquisition or partnership.
- Fantastic Pixel Castle, another NetEase studio, will also close on Nov. 17.
- This news follows wider gaming industry cuts.
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Sizzle Reel
NetEase, the China-based game studio and publisher behind the likes of Once Human, FragPunk, and Where Winds Meet, has been busy this year laying-off staff and closing down associated game studios. Its latest casualty is Canada-based Bad Brain Game Studio, which only launched two years ago.
Sean Crooks, Studio Head, posted on LinkedIn last week the bad news for Bad Brain, but also shared that there’s a chance the game they were working on (The Midnight Riders, a Stranger Things-like action game) might still survive the death of the studio.
“It’s with a heavy heart that we share that Bad Brain Game Studios will be closing its doors. Our last official day of operation will be on November 17th,” he said.
“As we close this chapter, the game and its underlying IP is still available for acquisition or partnership, and we/NetEase are open to discussions with publishers or studios who see potential in continuing its development. We believe strongly in what was created, and would love to see this world find its way to players.”
Crooks also shared a sizzle reel with his announcement, so people could at least see what Bad Brain had managed to make in the last two years.
Strangerer Things
Although the sizzle reel gives a decent glimpse of Midnight Riders, gamers (and possible investors in the now-available IP) have been given a better idea of the vibe thanks to artwork shared by Thomas Rollus, the Senior Art Director.
Rollus is one of 26 staff listed as working for Bad Brain Game Studio, and like a good chunk of the team has experience working for Ubisoft. This includes Art Director, Manuel Vallelunga, who commented on LinkedIn about the closure.
“Midnight Riders was shaping up to be that dream ’80s kids-on-bikes game everyone is dreaming of playing these days,” he said. “While this chapter is ending, the creativity, weird ideas, and bold energy that defined Bad Brain will live on through the incredible team who brought it to life as they carry that same creative spark into everything they do next.”
While Midnight Riders owes a clear debt of inspiration to Stranger Things, Bad Brain’s virtually-desolate X account also referenced Stephen King’s The Mist and other 1980s pop culture like Die Hard and Aliens. While there’s hope for Midnight Riders’ retro nostalgia to live on through another studio/publisher, other NetEase games and studios have been taken off life support.
Not so Fantastic News
On the same day that Bad Brain is set to officially close, so too will another NetEase studio: Fantastic Pixel Castle. Founded by Greg Street, a former League of Legends and Warcraft dev, the studio is also being cut down in its prime as it only launched in 2023. Street and his team were working on a “modernized fantasy MMORPG” with the working title “Ghost.”
Street posted the bad news on LinkedIn and, from the sounds of it, is seeking independent funding to complete the project – but with the caveat that he still has enough people to work on it.
“Fantastic Pixel Castle will close its doors on Nov 17. While there is still a chance we can secure funding after that date, it will depend on how much of the team remains. While we’d love to make our game, our first priority is to help our developers find employment, whether that’s at indie studio Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0, or at many of the other fine (and hopefully stable) game and tech companies out there.”
This year has also seen NetEase close another MMO-focused studio, T-Minus Zero Entertainment; a new studio formed by a lead Mass Effect writer, Worlds Untold; and Jar of Sparks, headed by Xbox veteran Jerry Hook. It wasn’t just American and Canadian studios that got the chop though: Tokyo-based Ouka Studio (Visions of Mana) was shut down late last year.
NetEase has denied that its cuts are due to a broad scaling back of its international game development, but it’s difficult to see what else it could be due to. The company is set to release its latest financial report on Nov. 20, though, which may well shed some light on the subject.
Ready Player None
NetEase is also the publisher of Marvel Rivals, but despite the hero shooter having 40 million players worldwide at the start of 2025, the majority of its developers were laid-off, showing that not even game success, nor being internationally-known pop culture, is a safety net. This has also proven true for other big companies, with Amazon being the most recent to announce 14,000 impending job losses. These include its game studios, with reports that a Lord of The Rings title is being shut down.
Other major studios that have been closed this year include Monolith, Player First Games, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego, Cliffhanger Games, and Hypixel Studios. However, in the case of the latter, the studio’s original owner has been in talks since August to re-acquire it from Riot Games.
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