It has only been four months since the world premier of Gang of Dragon by Nagoshi Studio, which was revealed in 2025 at the Game Awards. Despite that, the game and the entire studios future is now up in the air, with a lot of fans who were once super excited now feeling like the game will never release due to the bleak timeline of events.
Nagoshi Studio was founded by the creator behind Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza, Toshihiro Nagoshi, in 2021. Nobody is really sure exactly why he had left Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku after being with the company for 32 years, but in an interview with Famitsu, Nagoshi stated that “I can’t give away the details of the plan, but the game’s sense of scale is set to grow.” Hinting at Gang of Dragon having a bigger scale than that of Yakuza, it really seemed like Nagoshi had a goal and really wanted to make his own spiritual successor on his terms instead of that of Segas terms. A few years later and our first trailer officially arrived, not really revealing much other than Ma Dong-seok, a Korean-American actor based in South Korea, was going to be our main protagonist while fighting his way through a variety of unknown guys.
Despite this, we actually did get a glimpse into Gang of Dragon once the Steam page for the game launched, but the UI honestly looked a little stiff to put it lightly. The description on Steam describes the game as an action-adventure set in Kabukicho, the iconic nightlife district of Shinjuku, Tokyo. You play as Shin Ji-seong who is a high-ranking member of a Korean crime syndicate while exploring Shinjuku and accidentally entangling yourself in underworld conflicts. Despite being very vague, a lot of Yakuza fans were excited and hopeful, as the game was being announced during a time when Ryu Ga Gotoku was having a lot of controversy regarding casting options in Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties. Before we talk about specifically the recent events that unfolded, let’s talk about the games UI.
I don’t mean to make fun of the images too harshly, as this game was still unfinished and more changes could come before release, but something about the UI just doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe I’m more used to the detail a polished UI like the Yakuza games has but it almost feels like this would be a mod you would find for Grand Theft Auto V. The health being right next to your quick slot in the bottom left, a random activatable bar which I assume would have been a heat bar, and more just made it feel like it was ready for a trailer but not ready for in-game screenshots yet.
Constant Studio Stumbles
Reported by Bloomberg only a month ago on March 7th, NetEase Inc. has made the choice to cut off funding to Nagoshi Studio. This decision comes after NetEase had stated it was planning on cutting back in funding other projects that were based outside of China, wanting to instead focus on putting Chinese studios first as they’ve “lost the will to develop games with overseas employees” according to 80lv. After this tumble it hurt to see for long time Yakuza fans but it was a panic for Nagoshi, as they requested an additional $44.5 Million USD to complete development on Gang of Dragon. Obviously this fund would be spent on more than just the game itself, being spent on employees and any other expenses that would help bring not only the game closer to the finish line but the studio closer to a future of being more than just a one and done team.
After all of this was said however, and with faith in the studio already becoming a rocky low, adidaskote on X (Formally Twitter) had spotted that the Nagoshi Studio YouTube Channel was deleted out of nowhere.
With panic going on for the fandom, and those who want the game clinging onto any hope they can get, it was a sudden change that made everyone feel like all hope was lost and that Nagoshi Studio would be shuttering the doors for good. In the modern era of gaming this wouldn’t even be that uncommon, as other studios such as Deviation Games were shut down, revived as Dark Outlaw Games, shut down, and revived once again as Magic Fractal Studios, but the Nagoshi situation might be more confusing then originally anticipated. Almost an entire day after being deleted, it would appear the official YouTube channel was revived but with all of the videos on the channel delisted. If you had a direct link to a video such as a MAKE/HUMAN song they had released, you could still view it today, and that same video can be seen below assuming it’s not taken down in the future.
Some comments stated that another video was taken down from the channel which featured the Gang of Dragon game trailer, but from what we have been able to look up it appears that the channel never actually uploaded the trailer at all, instead just being posted by third parties like the Game Awards, IGN, etc. Some community theories for why the channel was temporarily deactivated are relating to the old videos and account potentially being tied to the previous publisher (NetEase), and Nagoshi managing to acquire funding to buy his title back from NetEase and finish development on it.
What Could This Mean?
The channel revival theory is honestly the most hopeful read on all of this, and it’s one that some fans seem to be holding onto right now while others are making Yakuza-embedded jokes into the studio, calling Nagoshi the “Man Who Erased His Game”. The idea that Nagoshi found a new investor, negotiated his IP back from NetEase, and scrubbed the channel sever any association with the old publisher is a clean narrative that would explain the deletion, return, and why the videos are gone.
Despite this, it’s worth being fully transparent here that this is probably just wishful thinking. Nagoshi Studio has already been burnt by a publisher once that pulled funding mid-development, and finding a replacement that is just willing to inject $44.5 Million USD into a project already showing signs of struggle and negative press is not any small ask. Studios that have been in far better positions than Nagoshi’s have gone under chasing similar lifelines before.
The most frustrating part about the past few months is following the Gang of Dragon reveal, Nagoshi Studio has given fans almost nothing to hold onto. No statements, no social media posts, no interviews, not even any acknowledgment from Nagoshi himself, who last posted January 11th, 2026 telling the world he was going to the gym. This could mean that there’s nothing left to announce because there’s nothing left to save and nothing coming, but even a farewell message would feel nicer then a few radio silent accounts.
If the game does still release, I still feel like I would end up buying into it and playing it to completion, but it’s getting harder to hold onto that hope without squinting as the days go on. We’ll be watching closely. Whether there’s anything left to watch remains to be seen.
