The Chinese company Bilibili has canceled an unannounced AAA game under the codename Codename: UE after two years of development, reports GameLook. Now, the project team faces mass layoffs.
According to GameLook, the Codename: UE team currently has about 200 people. It's expected that Bilibili will lay off if not all, then most of them.
Why Bilibili made this decision is unknown. In GameLook's view, the company could have been driven by the ambiguous situation in the Chinese AAA gaming market.
As GameLook explains, recently, many studios from China have started working on large-budget, open-world titles inspired by Chinese folklore. This trend especially emerged after the success of Black Myth: Wukong, whose sales were estimated to have exceeded 25 million copies in January. However, creating such projects comes at a significant cost, leading some developers to make commercial compromises. Uncertain whether the game would generate sufficient revenue on PC and consoles, they began working on mobile versions, sacrificing the quality of their projects. Further complicating matters is that not all developers fully understand the target audience for their AAA games and how to engage with them.
Several failures have already occurred in China. For instance, in 2024, NetEase released Condor Heroes (射雕) in the country—a project with high expectations that started poorly compared to predictions. A similar story can be told by the creators of Sword and Fairy: Far Beyond Time (仙剑世界), which had its Chinese release last month.
GameLook believes that Bilibili took these failures into account and doubted Codename: UE’s chances of success. As a result, the company decided to shut down the costly project and disband its team before it incurred significant losses.
Bilibili itself has not commented on the game's cancellation or the layoffs.