NetEase Wants Out of Quantic Dream as Eclipse Rots

In October 2025, Quantic Dream quietly launched a free-to-play 3v3 MOBA called Spellcasters Chronicles. Almost nobody noticed. The game was supposed to generate revenue to help fund the studio's real project, the one it announced to massive fanfare at The Game Awards in 2021: Star Wars Eclipse. According to new reporting, Spellcasters Chronicles has already been ceased, Eclipse is still nowhere near ready, and the studio's owner, NetEase, is actively looking for the exit.

The details come from the Insider Gaming Weekly podcast (Episode 64), where journalist Mike Straw laid it out bluntly: "NetEase, they want to divest from Quantic Dream. I'm not going to be surprised if Quantic Dream was sold by the end of the year or announced, like, hey, we're selling or whatever, by the end of the year or sometime in 2027. It's not going well. Like, it is not going well at all. And there's frustration. There's a lot of frustration about it."

Site co-founder Tom Henderson backed up the assessment, noting he'd reported on Eclipse's troubled development three or four years ago and that nothing has improved since. Henderson originally revealed back in 2022 that the game wouldn't ship before 2027 or 2028. Based on the current state of things, even 2028 sounds optimistic.

€100M and Nothing to Show

NetEase completed its acquisition of Quantic Dream in early 2023 for around €100 million. At the time, it looked like a bet on a studio with a Disney-backed Star Wars project in the pipeline. David Cage's team had built its reputation on narrative-driven games like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human. Eclipse was supposed to be their first action-adventure title, a branching narrative spanning multiple characters across the High Republic era.

Four and a half years after that reveal trailer, there's been almost nothing shown publicly. No gameplay. No release window anyone believes. And now the side project that was meant to keep the lights on while Eclipse limped toward completion has collapsed. Spellcasters Chronicles fizzled within months of its early access debut, and according to Straw, development on it has been ceased entirely.

I've watched a lot of troubled game development stories unfold over the years, and this one has a particular stench to it. When your backup plan to fund your main project fails this quickly, and your parent company starts shopping you around, you're not in a rough patch. You're in a death spiral. NetEase didn't spend €100 million to become a patient patron of the arts. They spent it expecting a return, and five years of development hell on a single unshipped game is the opposite of that.

NetEase has been pulling back from several of its gaming investments in recent years, so Quantic Dream isn't an isolated case. But the combination of a stalled marquee project, a dead secondary title, and an owner publicly signaling they want out paints an especially grim picture. The question isn't really whether Quantic Dream gets sold. It's whether anyone wants to buy a studio whose only active project is a Star Wars game that may never ship, attached to a license they'd need Disney's blessing to keep.

And makes this nother "studio in trouble" story. Star Wars Eclipse isn't some indie passion project that can quietly find a new home. It's a licensed game tied to one of the most carefully managed IPs on the planet. If NetEase sells Quantic Dream, whoever buys them inherits a relationship with Lucasfilm that may or may not survive the transition. Disney has shown zero hesitation in pulling licenses from studios and publishers that aren't delivering.

Meanwhile, the broader Star Wars gaming landscape is moving on without Eclipse. EA's Jedi series is reportedly gearing up for a third entry with an older Cal Kestis and a time jump. Star Wars: The Old Republic just shipped Game Update 7.9 today. Eclipse was announced as this ambitious, multi-character action-adventure set in the High Republic era, and it increasingly looks like a project that was too big for the studio attempting it. Quantic Dream had never made an action game before. Pivoting from interactive dramas to a full-scale Star Wars action-adventure was always a massive leap, and by all accounts, they haven't stuck the landing.

If Quantic Dream does get sold or shuttered by the end of 2027, Eclipse will join a long list of ambitious Star Wars games that never made it to players. The difference is that this one got a cinematic reveal trailer at The Game Awards, a €100 million acquisition, and nearly half a decade of development time. All of that money and time, and the most concrete thing the studio shipped was a MOBA nobody played.