3 months after revealing his debut project at The Game Awards, Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi loses NetEase funding for his studio

Just three months after the world premier trailer for Nagoshi Studio's upcoming Gang of Dragon was revealed at the 2025 Game Awards, a Bloomberg report (via GamesIndustry) says NetEase has decided to end funding for the studio in May.

Nagoshi Studio was founded by Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi in 2021, after a 32-year run at Sega. He said in 2022 that his new studio's first game would be "bigger" than those of the Yakuza series, although he dialed that back a bit in 2024, saying at the time that the studio was reining in the scope. It took until The Game Awards in 2025 before we actually got a look at the game, though, and even that really wasn't anything to go on: Basically just a brief CGI clip of Ma Dong-Seok beating the snot out of some guys.

Gang of Dragon World Premiere Trailer from The Game Awards 2025 - YouTube

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For comparison purposes, here's a clip of Ma talking on the phone and beating ass in the Korean film The Outlaws—he's even wearing the same outfit:

Don't waste Ma Dong-Seok's time -- or his fists | Korean Movie | The Outlaws - YouTube

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The Steam page is equally vague on the game, saying only that the actor plays a high-ranking member of a Korean crime syndicate who "becomes entangled in underworld conflicts and forges intense, human connections that push him to confront his own sense of purpose." Combat plays out in third-person, with "brutal hand-to-hand strikes, precise blade attacks, gunplay, and high-impact vehicle action across the city."

That dearth of detail may be at the heart of the problem, as the Bloomberg report says NetEase decided to pull the plug after finding the project would require at least $44.4 million more in funding before crossing the finish line. Nagoshi Studio has been trying to find someone to fill the gap, but hasn't had success thus far, according to the report, which also says NetEase is willing to allow the studio to continue working on the game but will require it to buy out the assets or brand if it wants to keep them.

NetEase has ended funding to more than a half-dozen game studios over the past several months, after a multi-year spree of spinning them up, although as far as I know previous cuts have focused on US-based operations: Nagoshi's studio is based in Japan.