The Yakuza Creator’s Studio Died in a Government Gazette

Nagoshi Studio did not get a farewell post. It got a line in Kanpo, the Japanese government’s official gazette, in the November 2 list of company dissolutions: dissolved by shareholder resolution as of October 31, 2026. That is how the world learned that Toshihiro Nagoshi’s first venture after thirty years at Sega was over, five years after it was founded and eleven months after it showed its only game to a packed theater at The Game Awards. Gang of Dragon never shipped. Its Steam page still says “coming soon.”

The reveal

In December 2025, Nagoshi walked out of four years of silence with a trailer. Gang of Dragon starred Korean actor Ma Dong-seok, the man from Train to Busan and Eternals, as Shin Ji-seong, a senior figure in a Korean crime syndicate operating out of Kabukicho. Geoff Keighley confirmed the trailer was captured in-engine. The pitch was unmistakable: a leaner, more cinematic take on the streets Nagoshi had fictionalized as Kamurocho for two decades, stripped of the Yakuza series’ minigames and comic excess. Fans of Like a Dragon, who had followed Nagoshi since he left Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and his post as Sega’s chief creative officer in 2021, finally had something to wait for. Nagoshi had promised in a 2023 interview that his studio’s first game would satisfy longtime fans. “I will not betray my fans,” he said.

The number

Three months later the money stopped. On March 6, 2026, employees were told that NetEase, the Chinese publisher that had funded Nagoshi Studio since its incorporation in late 2021, would cut off financing from May. Bloomberg reported the reason: finishing Gang of Dragon and bringing it to market would take at least another ¥7 billion, roughly $44 million, and NetEase decided the game was not worth it.

The terms of the breakup, as reported, were the kind that sound like an exit and work like a lock. NetEase told the studio it was free to continue on its own, but if it wanted to keep the game’s assets and the brand, it would have to pay for them. Nagoshi went looking for new sponsors to buy the studio out. Nobody came.

The slow fade

What followed was not a closure announcement. It was a disappearance in stages. The studio’s social media accounts went quiet in February, before the funding decision was even known. In May the official website stopped resolving and the YouTube channel was deleted, taking the reveal trailer with it. Over the summer the channel came back, with every video set to private. On June 17, co-founder and director Daisuke Sato changed his public bio to “ex-Nagoshi Studio, Inc.” The same day, Nagoshi appeared in Famitsu’s 40th anniversary feature as the only creator in the issue listed without a company. The Google listing for the studio’s Ebisu office flipped to “Permanently closed.” Automaton reports that several senior staff announced moves to Capcom and Lightspeed Japan over the following months.

By the time the shareholders met on October 31, there was little left to dissolve. Neither NetEase nor Nagoshi has issued a statement. Nagoshi has not spoken publicly since the December reveal. NetEase has not formally cancelled Gang of Dragon, and no source we checked can say who holds the rights to it now.

The pattern

Nagoshi Studio is not an outlier. It is the most famous entry on a long list. NetEase spent 2019 to 2023 buying and founding studios across Japan, Europe and North America, then spent 2024 to 2026 unwinding them. Ouka Studios, the Tokyo team behind Visions of Mana, shut in August 2024. Worlds Untold, Mac Walters’ studio, was paused that November. Jar of Sparks, founded by Halo veteran Jerry Hook, closed in January 2025. T-Minus Zero, Fantastic Pixel Castle, Bad Brain Game Studios and Casey Hudson’s Humanoid Origin were closed or dismantled by late 2025. Tech Times counts more than a dozen international studios NetEase has withdrawn from since 2024, in the same period the company said publicly that it “has not wavered in its global expansion plans.”

A few teams got out alive. Grasshopper Manufacture and Anchor Point Studios split from NetEase and kept going. David Vonderhaar’s BulletFarm found independent backing. Nagoshi Studio, with the most expensive unfinished game of the lot, did not.

What is left

A Steam page under Nagoshi Studio Inc. A trailer on The Game Awards channel. A liquidation process to settle assets and debts. And a 61-year-old designer who built Daytona USA, Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza, and who now has no studio and no announced project. Whether Gang of Dragon ever resurfaces depends on NetEase’s appetite for a game it already declined to fund, and on whether anyone else wants to pay for the right to finish it.

Sources: Automaton West, Push Square, Game Developer, Tech Times, IGN via AOL, GamingBolt, TheGamer