(Photo : NetEase Games / Screenshot taken from official website)
NetEase Games announced that it has fired nine senior executives after the individuals were arrested over charges of money laundering and bribery.
The people who were arrested included Xiang Liang and Jin Yuchen. The Chinese publisher and developer is popular for various collaborations with Blizzard and Bungie. It has dipped into titles such as Diablo Immortal and Destiny: Rising for mobile devices.
NetEase Games Fires Senior Executives
Some of the studio's more recent projects include hero shooter Marvel Rivals and survival Once Human. Ding Lei first founded NetEase Games in 1997 as a technology company that later expanded to establish a video game division.
Since its inception, it has acquired various developers such as Grasshopper Manufacture, and hired several video game industry veterans. The latter include former Sega staff Toshihiro Nagoshi and Daisuke Sato.
Other studios, such as Spliced, were also established in 2023, founded by former Marvelous vice president Toshinori Aoki and the creator of BlazBlue Toshimichi Mori. Some of NetEase Games' employees have become part of a recent investigation, according to Game Rant.
The company then released an internal memo to its staff where it announced that it had dismissed a total of nine employees due to facing charges of bribery. The names of the individuals in question have reportedly been removed from NetEase Games' internal systems.
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Liang is the company's general manager and Yuchen is the studio's former esports lead on games such as the upcoming Marvel Rivals. Despite the arrests, the internal investigation within NetEase Games is still ongoing.
While no actual details were given about the case, it is believed that it overall affects 28 suppliers to the Chinese megacorp. The entire case is supposedly worth roughly $140 million, Eurogamer said.
Alleged Money Laundering and Bribery
Shortly after the arrests of the individuals that are supposedly connected to the case, staff who were still employed at NetEase Games reported that their usual computer screensavers were replaced. They instead showed reminders of the company's compliance protocols.
The latest investigation is reportedly the second internal anti-corruption investigation that the company has conducted since September 2023. A spokesperson for the company said that law enforcement personnel were also looking into the issue.
Members of Liang's team were also allegedly suspected by the company to have been responsible for buying traffic for the studio's various games. These efforts may have resulted in the skewing of performance metrics.
The issue has already caused NetEase Games' stock (NTES) to drop in price by 5% since trading opened today, according to The Gamer.
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