Fantastic Pixel Castle, the MMO studio backed by NetEase and founded by former World of Warcraft lead system designer Greg Street, is set to close its doors on November 17th.
Greg Street, the studio’s founder, confirmed the closure via social media. He had previously disclosed that NetEase withdrew funding, giving the team a window to find a new publisher or secure fresh investments for their developing MMORPG, known as Project Ghost.
Unfortunately, these efforts proved unsuccessful. While Street mentioned a slim possibility of securing the necessary funding to continue, the studio’s future would also hinge on the willingness of its current team members to stay on board.
“Our primary goal, even more so than completing our game, is to assist our talented developers in finding new opportunities,” Street stated. “Whether that’s with a theoretical Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0 or with other promising game and tech companies, we are focused on their careers.”
Recently, Fantastic Pixel Castle had invited content creators to showcase an early public preview of Project Ghost’s gameplay. The studio maintained a high level of transparency throughout its development process for the game, which was still in its initial stages. A video detailing Project Ghost gameplay was also streamed to the public.
The studio’s vision for Project Ghost challenged the trend of solo-focused MMOs, aiming instead to foster community and collaborative play. This class-based MMORPG featured a unique “Red and Blue Shards” system. Blue Shard zones were designed for cooperative survival, allowing friends to gather resources, build bases, and explore together. Red Shards, conversely, offered a more traditional MMORPG experience, supporting large-scale group encounters against world bosses and featuring persistent world changes.
Before founding Fantastic Pixel Castle, Greg Street had an impressive career, spending nearly six years as a lead systems designer for World of Warcraft at Blizzard, then moving to Riot Games. At Riot, he held various positions, notably overseeing the development of their first MMO. He departed Riot in 2023, and roughly a year later, Riot revealed it was restarting development on its League of Legends MMO, effectively going back to square one after years of work.
The closure of Fantastic Pixel Castle adds to a growing list of layoffs and studio shutdowns plaguing the gaming industry in 2025, a year marked by significant job losses, including at major companies like Xbox. Earlier this year, NetEase itself drew attention for laying off its US-based development team for Marvel Rivals, even amidst the game’s considerable success. At the time, industry analysis suggested that the Chinese gaming giant was reassessing its global strategy and scaling back its international game operations, partly due to perceived “geopolitical risks.”