Revision 1

NetEase Games is the publisher of Blood Message and the parent of the studio building it. The project sits inside NetEase's internal development network through 24 Entertainment's Lin'an Studio, which operates under the company's 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, runs marketing and distribution, and handles platform relationships for the planned PC and console launches. As parent of the developer, NetEase also owns the team itself: the studio building Blood Message is not an external partner picking up a NetEase commission, it is a wholly internal team within the publisher's organization. That dual relationship is detailed across the Overview article, which covers how the game is being positioned in NetEase's own announcements.

A Strategic Pivot

The most cited fact about NetEase's relationship with Blood Message is what kind of game it is for the company. NetEase's catalog has historically leaned heavily toward mobile and online live-service titles, and the publisher has talked publicly about wanting to broaden that mix. Blood Message is the headline example. Reveal materials and follow-up press from the company describe it as NetEase's first AAA single-player title: buy-to-play, story-driven, no microtransactions, no online layer. That framing is part of the news. The choice of a linear, cinematic action-adventure for the company's first major push into the AAA single-player space is itself a statement about the direction NetEase wants to go in.

The pivot is not a wholesale exit from the publisher's other businesses. Mobile and live-service titles still account for the bulk of the catalog. Blood Message represents an addition to that mix rather than a replacement of it, and the rest of the company's slate continues alongside this project.

Who Built It

The 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 NetEase's ThunderFire division, the publisher'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. That fact has caused some confusion in coverage. 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 that Naraka represents. The two teams share a parent studio name and a broader corporate division, but they are distinct development units with different leads, different scopes, and different release rhythms.

That distinction matters when reading inherited assumptions about the project. Expectations that grow out of Naraka, such as a focus on online play, ranked progression, or seasonal content models, do not transfer to Blood Message. The Lin'an team's brief is a single-player, story-driven action-adventure on the lines described in the Combat and Stealth article.

Project History

The public history of the project is short. Blood Message was revealed to the world 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 who is building the game. NetEase has described the team as veterans pulled from major international AAA studios, hired specifically for their experience on large-scale single-player projects. The phrasing is consistent across the company's own materials: this is a team assembled with the explicit goal of competing on the global AAA stage rather than a domestic-only project repurposed for export.

Wider Catalog Context

Blood Message is one entry in a much larger NetEase catalog. The company's other notable releases include the multiplayer brawler Naraka: Bladepoint, the open-world action title Where Winds Meet, the survival shooter Once Human, the team-based hero shooter Marvel Rivals, and Diablo Immortal, co-developed with Blizzard. None of those titles share a development team with Blood Message. They are listed here only to place the new project on the map of the publisher's broader output, not to suggest mechanical or tonal overlap. The Lin'an team's mandate is distinct from each of them.

Unconfirmed Details

Several pieces of information that would normally be expected for a flagship AAA project have not been disclosed.

• 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 studio's exact office address, satellite sites, and remote arrangements have not been detailed publicly.

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

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

• Post-launch support model: there is no public statement on patches, expansions, or any optional add-on content beyond the base single-player campaign.

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