Toshihiro Nagoshi, the creator of the Yakuza series, spent over thirty years working at Sega, but in October 2021, he decided to officially part ways with the gaming giant. Together with his long-time collaborator Daisuke Sato, he founded a new studio in early 2022 after Chinese giant NetEase Games placed its trust in him and decided to finance the new IP they were developing.
At the end of 2025, Nagoshi Studio officially unveiled its project titled Gang of Dragon, which was intended to be a humorous yet significantly more mature continuation of the signature style that defined his previous work. However, just a few months after the announcement, the Chinese publisher announced it would withdraw funding from the project, which, quite logically, led to the studio shutting down.
A Bloomberg report states that NetEase decided to leave the game's rights to the developers themselves and pull out of financing once they realized that completing the project would require "at least 7 billion yen," which amounts to roughly 44 million dollars. The studio subsequently spent several months attempting to secure a new investor, but to no avail.
You can watch the December trailer for Gang of Dragon at the link above, and it looks like watching the trailer will remain the only way to ever see the game, as it evidently won't be seeing the light of day.
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