Implausible Pixel Fort, the NetEase-owned MMO studio based by former World of Warcraft lead system designer Greg Road, will shut down November 17.
Road introduced the studio’s closure date in a put up on LinkedIn. In weeks prior, Road said NetEase had pulled funding from the studio however had allowed it time to hunt out a brand new writer or increase funding for his or her fledgling MMORPG, mission Ghost.
These efforts haven’t panned out. Road mentioned “there’s nonetheless an opportunity” the studio may safe wanted funding and stay on, however that it’s going to additionally rely on how a lot of the present workforce will select to stay ought to that occur.
“Whereas we would like to make our sport, our first precedence is to assist our builders discover employment, whether or not that is at indie studio Implausible Pixel Fort 2.0, or at lots of the different superb (and hopefully steady) sport and tech firms on the market,” Road mentioned.
Implausible Pixel Fort had lately hosted quite a lot of content material creators to stream a primary public take a look at mission Ghost gameplay. The sport was nonetheless in its early phases, with Implausible Pixel Fort having been pretty clear about its improvement course of.
The studio believed latest MMOs have put an excessive amount of of a give attention to solo adventuring and sought to emphasise enjoying with mates and constructing a web-based neighborhood, based on the studio’s website. As for the way Ghost would have performed, it was a class-based MMORPG that was divided into two totally different experiences known as Crimson and Blue Shards. Blue Shard areas would have performed extra like a survival sport, the place mates may get together as much as collect assets, construct bases, and journey collectively. Crimson Shards featured extra basic MMORPG experiences, the place giant teams of gamers may workforce collectively to combat world bosses or affect the sport’s world in everlasting methods.
Earlier than forming Implausible Pixel Fort, Road served at Blizzard as a lead programs designer on WoW for almost six years, later becoming a member of Riot Video games. There he held quite a lot of totally different roles, the final of which was overseeing Riot’s first MMO. He left Riot in 2023, and a couple of 12 months later Riot introduced it was hitting reset on its League of Legends MMO, going again to the drafting board after a number of years of improvement.
Implausible Pixel Fort’s closure is simply the most recent in a protracted line of layoffs and studio shutterings in 2025, together with main layoffs at Xbox. Early this 12 months, NetEase made headlines when it laid off Marvel Rivals US-based improvement workforce regardless of the sport’s large success. A report on the time indicated the Chinese language-gaming big was seeking to reduce its abroad sport enterprise as a result of “geopolitical dangers” and a “recalibration of its world technique.”