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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 plays 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, it also owns the team: the studio is a wholly internal unit, not an external partner. The Overview article covers how the title is framed in the company's announcements.

A Strategic Pivot

NetEase's catalog has historically leaned 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. The choice of a linear, cinematic action-adventure for that first major step is itself a statement of intent. The pivot is an addition to the existing slate rather than a replacement; the broader catalog continues alongside it.

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, the publisher's larger internal development group. Lead production is 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 live-service and competitive multiplayer. The two 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 greenlit inside the company in 2018, with full production beginning in 2021. Those dates have not been formally confirmed and should be treated as informed estimates. What the publisher has been more direct about is the team: 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 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.

• Studio location specifics: while Lin'an is the historical name for Hangzhou, 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.

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

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