Fantastic Pixel Castle closure confirmed as NetEase ends support for “Ghost” MMO ahead of November 17 shutdown

Fantastic Pixel Castle announced less than a month ago that the studio would “likely close” if it couldn’t seek a new publisher for its MMO that is currently in development. Studio Head Greg Street has unfortunately confirmed that the worst has come to pass, as Fantastic Pixel Castle will close its doors on November 17, 2025.

Greg broke the news on LinkedIn, expressing his sadness, but remained hopeful that the studio could secure funding even after closure. In the post, he announced:

Fantastic Pixel Castle will close its doors on November 17. While there is still a chance we can secure funding after that date, it will depend on how many team members remain.

While we’d love to make our game, our priority is to help our developers find employment, whether that’s at indie studio Fantastic Castle 2.0 or at many of the other fine (and hopefully stable) game and tech companies out there.

To the literally dozens of people who reached out trying to help us raise capital, or through introductions to people who could, you humble me. There’s still a chance one of them works out, and it really only takes one. 

To our supporters at NetEase, thanks for taking a chance on us.

Fantastic Pixel Castle was founded by Greg Street in 2023 after he departed from Riot Games, where he spearheaded development on League of Legends. The studio was one of the veteran-led subsidiaries NetEase greenlit in 2022 and 2023 to expand its Western development efforts.

Fantastic Pixel Castle was in charge of creating a fantasy MMO codenamed Ghost. However, NetEase changed its strategy in late 2024, culminating to the closure of Fantastic Pixel Castle along with T-Minus Zero, Jar of Sparks, and Worlds Untold, all within the span of a year. To make matters worse, none of the studios were allowed to ship out a single game.

Greg Street, also known as Ghostcrawler, had a decade-long career at Blizzard, acting as the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. It was in early October that Street announced NetEase was cutting funding and first-party support for the studio's project.

Despite scrambling to look for new investors and publishers, no one showed up, resulting in another blow to an ambitious MMO project.