Grasshopper Manufacture leaves NetEase and goes independent again
Goichi Suda's studio will end five years under the Chinese publisher on 1 October, saying it wants to make a wider variety of games its own way.
Grasshopper Manufacture is going it alone again. Goichi Suda, the studio's founder and chief executive, announced on Wednesday that the maker of No More Heroes will end five years under NetEase Games on 1 October 2026.
What Suda told players
Suda said the decision followed Romeo Is a Dead Man, the studio's action adventure released in February 2026. Looking at what he called Grasshopper Manufacture's next stage, he wrote that the team wanted to “deliver titles in an even wider variety of styles to video game lovers everywhere”, adding: “As such, Grasshopper Manufacture has chosen to move forward as an independent developer.”
He said the split came after thorough discussions with NetEase Games and credited the publisher with significant support. The relationship stays friendly, according to both sides, with cooperation left open where opportunities arise.
A studio that keeps changing hands
Suda founded Grasshopper Manufacture in 1998, and the studio built its reputation on unusual, difficult-to-categorise games, from The Silver Case to killer7. It became a subsidiary of GungHo Group in 2013, then moved under NetEase Games in 2021 through a share transfer. Its NetEase years produced Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered in July 2024 and Romeo Is a Dead Man earlier this year.
What independence buys
Suda framed the move as a question of options. “Having improved our own self-publishing know-how, we now have a broad range of options available to us,” he wrote, promising titles that keep the studio's signature flavour and put quality first, whichever way they end up being published. He closed by asking players to watch over the studio as it heads towards its thirtieth anniversary.
Our opinion
Suda has now steered Grasshopper through three owners in twenty-eight years and come out independent at the end of each cycle, which says something about how badly the studio fits a corporate spreadsheet. The interesting detail is the timing: the split lands after a finished, well-received game rather than after a bad year, so this reads as ambition rather than escape. Self-publishing know-how and a thirty-year back catalogue are a real hand to play, and a Suda who can choose his own release strategy is a more dangerous Suda than one filing quarterly reports. The only thing the announcement does not answer is what the next game actually is, and that is now entirely his problem to enjoy.