Last December during the 2025 Game Awards, Toshihiro Nagoshi unveiled Gang of Dragon. His first game since leaving Sega for NetEase, Dragon strongly resembled Yakuza, the series that made Nagoshi a star, but with an even more brutal and violent atmosphere. Only a few months later, the new crime epic, and possibly Nagoshi’s entire studio, is in immediate danger after Chinese backer NetEase reportedly prepares to cut off funding.
This morning, Bloomberg reports that NetEase is planning to stop giving Nagoshi Studio more money starting in May, writing that Gang of Dragon was seeking an additional $44.4 million in funding in order to reach the finish line and actually ship the open world action game. Despite its success with Marvel Rivals (which almost had the door shut on it as well), the Chinese publisher has been rapidly abandoning its gaming investments after a considerable shopping spree just a few years ago.
Boosted by successful co-publishing contracts with Blizzard, NetEase has thrown a lot of its money around the gaming world, rapidly consolidating many industry veterans into new startup studios in the late 2010s. This has included BioWare’s Casey Hudson and Square Enix’s Ryosuke Yoshida and City of Heroes’ Jack Emmert, each of whom were allowed to form new studios under the NetEase umbrella, both of whom have since left following cut funding. NetEase also purchased a stake in Devolver Digital and purchased Goichi Suda’s Grasshopper Manufacture outright, who released Romeo is a Dead Man just last month.
Nagoshi, whose successful run with Yakuza launched him all the way to chief creative officer at Sega, joined NetEase in 2021. Gang of Dragon bears obvious resemblances to his work with Sega, though seemingly paring down the goofiness of recent sequels and casting Korean superstar Ma Dong-seok as the lead. It was one of the bigger reveals at the 2025 Game Awards, though as we’ve recently seen such prestige is hardly protection from book balancing.
It may not mean the end for Gang of Dragon outright. According to Bloomberg, while NetEase may cut Nagoshi and his team loose, they will be free to negotiate keeping their work on Gang of Dragon assuming they can cover “corresponding costs,” on top of the new budgetary demands. This would certainly require a third party to save it, which Nagoshi is on the hunt for, though those are getting harder to come by these days. Back at Sega, the Yakuza series shows zero signs of slowing down, with Kiwami 3 in February and a “goes Hawaii” spin-off before that.
