Revision 1

24 Entertainment Lin'an Studio is the developer of Blood Message. It is an internal team within NetEase Games, organized around AAA single-player development, and the studio at the center of the publisher's declared push into premium single-player titles. The name "Lin'an" is the historical name for Hangzhou, where the team is based.

Quick Facts

Position Inside NetEase

The studio sits inside NetEase Games through a chain of organizational layers. 24 Entertainment is a NetEase subsidiary; Lin'an Studio is one team within 24 Entertainment; and 24 Entertainment itself sits inside the ThunderFire division, the publisher's larger internal development group. This structure separates the team behind Blood Message from the rest of 24 Entertainment's output without spinning them off as an external partner.

The lead producer on the project is Zhipeng Hu, an Executive Vice President at the publisher level. The choice signals how senior the project is treated within the company.

Distinct From The Naraka Team

24 Entertainment is best known outside this project as the parent of Naraka: Bladepoint, a competitive martial-arts brawler. The team building Blood Message is not the Naraka team. Lin'an Studio is a separate group inside 24 Entertainment, organized for AAA single-player development rather than live-service competitive multiplayer.

The two share a parent studio name and a corporate division but are different units with different leads and different scopes. Expectations rooted in Naraka, such as online play, ranked progression, or seasonal updates, do not carry over to this title. See Combat and Stealth for what the project actually ships.

Staffing

The publisher has described Lin'an as a team of veterans recruited from major international AAA studios, hired specifically for their experience on large-scale single-player projects. The full headcount has not been published, and individual roles outside the lead producer have not been disclosed.

Development History

The studio first surfaced publicly with the June 20, 2025 reveal of Blood Message. Leaked reporting in the months before that announcement placed the project's greenlight in 2018 and full production starting in 2021; those dates are unconfirmed and should be treated as informed estimates rather than official milestones.

A copyright registration linked to the project surfaced in 2022, which is consistent with the leaked production-start timing but does not by itself date the studio. The first official public confirmation of the studio's existence is the 2025 reveal materials.

Project Approach

The publisher's framing of the project emphasizes a deliberate move away from live-service and mobile work. Blood Message is positioned as the studio's first project and the publisher's first AAA single-player title: buy-to-play, story-driven, no microtransactions, no online layer. The project is built on Unreal Engine 5 with proprietary in-house tools developed by the team. The development pipeline includes the collaboration with the Gansu Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism on cultural research; see Cultural Authenticity for that work in detail.

What Has Not Been Disclosed

• Full team size: the headcount has not been published.

• Office layout: while Lin'an is the historical name for Hangzhou, the exact office addresses, satellite sites, and remote arrangements are not detailed publicly.

• Specific senior staff beyond the lead producer: art directors, narrative leads, combat designers, and other department heads have not been named in publisher materials.

• Future projects: only the current title has been confirmed. Whether the studio has a follow-up planned has not been described.

• Co-development partners: no external studios have been named as collaborators on the project itself.