Publisher NetEase is planning to shut down Fantastic Pixel Castle, a studio it founded in 2023 and led by Greg Street, formerly of Blizzard and Riot Games. The studio was developing a triple-A MMORPG codenamed Ghost.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Street announced the impending closure on LinkedIn yesterday. He states Fantastic Pixel Castle (FPC) will be shuttered on November 17, unless it’s able to secure funding to continue working on its MMO project independently.
“Fantastic Pixel Castle will close its doors on Nov 17,” reads Street’s statement. “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 news comes a few weeks after Fantastic Pixel Castle announced it was parting ways with NetEase. A community blog post published today on the studio’s website expresses cautious optimism for securing last-minute funding, saying “we still believe Ghost has a fighting chance.”
“We are still 100% focused on finding new funding to make our game,” reads the blog post. “Even if the state of the industry feels fairly dire we’re encouraged by the conversations we’ve been having and fortunate that we have a great playable demo already! So there is still some hope to be had – hold onto that hope because now we’re going to get kinda real.”
Fantastic Pixel Castle is the latest casualty of the China-based NetEase’s gradual shift away from funding international studios. This change in strategy has forced partnered developers such as the Vancouver-based Worlds Untold, the Austin-based T-Minus Zero, and the Seattle-based Jar of Sparks to either close or pause development in a scramble to secure new funding.
Concept art of “Ghost’
Though it never had a formal reveal, Fantastic Pixel Castle’s “Ghost” project was planned to be a fantasy MMORPG. Despite its genre, FPC’s website states Ghost would “avoid the tropes of fantasy that you’ve already seen hundreds of times,” and was centered on a setting called the Shardlands, with players alternating between realms known as Blue and Red Shards.
These functioned as player servers, with Blue Shards designed for private play with friends while Red Shards offered a more traditional, massively multiplayer experience. Ghost would feature a chapter-based narrative, character classes, and a more streamlined approach to make playing with friends easy, regardless of their character level and progress.
For more on NetEase, check out the June reveal of the publisher’s first triple-A single-player title, Blood Message.
