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NetEase Games is the publisher of Blood Message and the parent of the studio building it. Development sits inside the company through 24 Entertainment's Lin'an Studio, which operates under the ThunderFire division. NetEase has positioned the title as its first AAA single-player release, a deliberate departure from the mobile and live-service work the publisher has been most closely associated with.

Role on Blood Message

NetEase serves two roles on this project at once. As publisher, the company funds the work, owns the brand, and handles marketing, distribution, and platform relationships for the planned PC and console launches. As parent of the developer, NetEase also owns the team itself: the studio is not an external partner picking up a commission, it is a wholly internal unit. The Overview article covers how the title is being framed in the company's announcements.

A Strategic Pivot

NetEase's catalog has historically leaned heavily toward mobile and online live-service titles. Blood Message is the headline example of a stated push to broaden that mix. Reveal materials describe it as the publisher's first AAA single-player title: buy-to-play, story-driven, with no microtransactions and no online layer. Choosing a linear, cinematic action-adventure for that first major step is itself a statement about the direction NetEase wants to go in. The pivot is an addition to the existing slate rather than a replacement of it; mobile and live-service titles still account for the bulk of the catalog.

Who Built It

Day-to-day development is handled by 24 Entertainment's Lin'an Studio. 24 Entertainment is a NetEase subsidiary; Lin'an is the in-house name for the team building Blood Message. The studio sits inside the ThunderFire division, NetEase's larger internal development group. Lead production duties on the project are credited to Zhipeng Hu, an Executive Vice President at NetEase, which signals how senior the project is within the company.

Lin'an Versus the Naraka Team

24 Entertainment is best known outside of this project as the parent of Naraka: Bladepoint, the company's 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 around AAA single-player development rather than around the live-service and competitive multiplayer work Naraka represents. They share a parent studio name and a broader corporate division but are distinct units with different leads and different scopes. Expectations rooted in Naraka, such as online play, ranked progression, or seasonal content, do not carry over to the systems described in the Combat and Stealth article.

Project History

The public history of the project is short. Blood Message was revealed in June 2025. The earlier history is less firmly on the record. According to leaked reporting that circulated in the lead-up to the announcement, the project was originally greenlit inside the company in 2018, with full production beginning in 2021. Those dates have not been formally confirmed by the publisher and should be treated as informed estimates rather than official statements. What the publisher has been more direct about is the team itself: NetEase describes Lin'an as veterans pulled from major international AAA studios, hired specifically for their experience on large-scale single-player projects.

Wider Catalog Context

Blood Message is one entry in a much larger NetEase catalog that includes the multiplayer brawler Naraka: Bladepoint, the open-world action title Where Winds Meet, the survival shooter Once Human, the hero shooter Marvel Rivals, and Diablo Immortal, co-developed with Blizzard. None of those titles share a development team with Blood Message; they are noted only to place the new project on the map of the publisher's broader output.

Unconfirmed Details

• Full team size: the headcount of Lin'an Studio has not been published, and external estimates vary widely.

• Studio location specifics: while Lin'an is the historical name for Hangzhou, the exact office address, satellite sites, and remote arrangements have not been detailed publicly.

• Marketing budget: the publisher has not disclosed campaign spend or commercial targets attached to the project.

• Console pre-launch timing: PC and consoles are confirmed in general terms, but per-platform release timing, demos, and any pre-launch console events have not been laid out.

• Post-launch support: no statement on patches, expansions, or optional add-on content beyond the base campaign.

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