The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2018–2025
She Diao: NetEase's ¥1B wuxia game shut down 606 days after launch
NetEase's ¥1B, six-year wuxia flagship fell from the iOS charts in a month, drew a 'not satisfied' from the CEO, and shut down after 606 days.
NetEase (网易) · 2025-11-24
What happened
She Diao (射雕) — NetEase's open-world wuxia game based on Jin Yong's classic novel — cost about ¥1 billion, employed a 600-person team and took six years to develop. It launched in March 2024 as the company's flagship bet on the wuxia genre, promising to operate for '150 years'.
The fall was immediate: its iOS bestseller ranking dropped sharply the day after launch and fell out of the top 100 within a month. In the Q1 2024 earnings call, CEO Ding Lei said he was 'not satisfied' with the game's performance, and NetEase replaced the project lead and core team — a rescue that did not work.
On September 2025 NetEase announced the shutdown, officially citing IP licensing expiry and strategy adjustment; the game ended all services on November 24, 2025 — 606 days after launch. Players read the real reason as revenue shortfall, and the failure became the industry's case study in how a big-budget IP adaptation can burn a franchise's goodwill.
Why it happened
- The ¥1B bet priced a niche genre like a mainstream blockbuster: wuxia's audience is a slice of China's MMO market, and a 600-person, six-year production needed hit-level revenue.
- The game failed on quality signals the market reads instantly: launch-day ranking collapse and a top-100 exit within a month meant the product itself was rejected.
- The '150 years' promise made the failure worse: the marketing committed to an eternal operation that the economics never supported.
The lesson
A '150-year' promise cannot survive a one-month collapse: She Diao's ¥1B budget and six-year schedule priced a hit the wuxia genre had never delivered.
Sources
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