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Grasshopper Manufacture is independent again as of October 1, 2026, having split from NetEase Games. The announcement landed on September 30. Goichi Suda stays on as president and CEO; it’s only the ownership that’s changed hands.
This wasn’t a sell-off. The studio walked. That’s the most important thing to understand here. Suda explains the move as the product of a growing urge “to deliver titles in an even wider range of styles to everyone who loves video games.” He says the two sides talked it through thoroughly, and that NetEase extended a great deal of support on the way to this decision.
Grasshopper was founded on March 30, 1998, is headquartered in Koraku, Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, and employs 40 people. killer7. The Silver Case. No More Heroes. And ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN, which shipped on February 11, 2026. A studio that has spent its entire life doing the things nobody else will do just got lighter on its feet. This isn’t news to brace yourself for. It’s news to be fairly excited about.
Corporate ownership shuffles at game companies are usually the kind of story you scroll past. This one actually feels good. Let’s take it in order.
When did Grasshopper Manufacture go independent, and why?
Grasshopper Manufacture separated from NetEase Games effective October 1, 2026, returning to life as an independent developer. The announcement itself went out the day before, on September 30.
The reason is simple: the studio wants to widen the range of what it makes. Suda says that after seeing an all-hands studio project through to completion, he chose to go independent as a developer once more. He also framed it as delivering “unprecedented game experiences with the same unchanging taste and even higher quality,” which reads less like a pivot and more like a promise to turn up the concentration.
When a parent company exits, the usual reaction is to ask whether the studio is going to be okay. With Grasshopper it’s the opposite. During its time under an owner, it banked self-publishing know-how and built out a setup with multiple paths forward. Then it decided to stand on its own feet. The sequence is a healthy one.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Independence date | Effective October 1, 2026 (announced September 30) |
| Head of company | Goichi Suda (president and CEO, continuing) |
| Location | 1-4-14 Koraku, Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo |
| Founded | March 30, 1998 |
| Employees | 40 |
| Relationship with NetEase | Amicable separation; both sides open to working together again |
Procedural steps like board changes were still in progress as of the announcement. So: same company name, same president, same office, with only the shareholder structure changing. Nobody has said a word about games in development getting canceled or teams being dissolved. You can relax on that front.
What changed during roughly five years under NetEase
Grasshopper left the GungHo group in 2021 to join NetEase Games, and spent about five years there before this split.
Looking back from the finish line, those five years were a stretch of making exactly what the studio wanted on a big company’s dime. From the moment it joined NetEase, the plan was to work on three new titles, and a brand-new original IP did in fact get made. The worst-case scenario — a Japanese studio gets absorbed by Chinese capital, its IP gets drained, the end — simply didn’t happen.
The exit is clean, too. Both sides have said they will “continue to value a good relationship and spare no effort in cooperating with each other should the opportunity arise.” This wasn’t a contract lapsing and someone getting shown the door. They talked, and Grasshopper left. It is genuinely rare for a story like this to end on such a good note.
Speaking as a former otaku shop clerk who spent years staring at those shelves: I have watched a lot of studios whose series just quietly stopped the moment the publisher changed. Which is why the word “amicable” carries real weight here.
Why ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN was the turning point
The trigger for the split was finishing ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN, which launched on February 11, 2026.
It was the studio’s first new IP in about five years, an ultraviolent action game released on PC (Steam), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. Protagonist Romeo is an FBI special space-time investigator chasing wanted criminals across the multiverse. Plenty of people hit the trailer scored with a Scha Dara Parr track and thought, “Yep, that’s Grasshopper, all right.”
The moment right after shipping an all-hands project is also the only window in which a studio can really choose its next structure. Move the ownership mid-development and the game takes the hit; do it right after launch and nobody gets hurt. Suda has also set a goal of making three more powerful games over the next decade, and it’s natural to read the timing of this split as working backward from that.
Worth saying: Suda games are not for everyone. If they’re not your thing, they are really not your thing. I’m a person who likes DIO and Yoshikage Kira, so I’m fully on board with that kind of bad-taste aesthetic. But it’s better to be upfront that this isn’t mass-market work.
What happens next? Self-publishing as an option
Post-split, Grasshopper has two roads open: publish its games itself, or hand them to someone else.
That’s the most practically meaningful change here. With a parent company, whatever you make basically comes out through that parent. One option, no choices. Independent, with self-publishing experience in hand, the studio can decide title by title: this one we put out ourselves, this one reaches more people with a partner. When Suda talks about “titles in an even wider range of styles,” he’s probably talking about the number of options on the table.
Let me be just as clear about the concerns. A 40-person studio taking on publishing duties is, flatly, a heavy load. Marketing, sales, support — do all of that yourself and the headcount available for development shrinks. This isn’t a company sized to crank out blockbuster after blockbuster, so the likely shape of the future is mid-size titles made carefully. Expecting an all-hands project on the scale of ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN every year would be unkind.
Even so, there’s value in Grasshopper simply being a company that gets to choose what it makes again. The dullest thing in games is watching a studio sand down its edges because the weird pitch keeps getting killed.
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The bottom line: Grasshopper’s independence is good news, not scary news
Here’s the recap. Grasshopper Manufacture became independent of NetEase Games effective October 1, 2026. The announcement came on September 30, Goichi Suda remains at the helm, the office stays in Koraku, Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, headcount is 40, and the studio was founded on March 30, 1998. The separation followed thorough discussions and was amicable, with both parties saying they’ll cooperate again if the chance comes up.
The catalyst was wrapping ROMEO IS A DEAD MAN, which launched February 11, 2026, and Suda has set a target of three powerful games over the next ten years. Roughly five years under NetEase let the studio build self-publishing know-how and acquire multiple options before leaving — this is independence done in the right order.
It’s rare to get an ownership-change story you can just be happy about. But in Grasshopper’s case, the order of operations is exactly right. Ship the all-hands project, build publishing know-how under the parent company, accumulate options, then say “I want to choose for myself” and walk out the door. Nobody pushed them, and they didn’t run out of gas. A 40-person studio is definitely picking up more weight, so expect longer gaps between releases. Go in ready for that.
A company that makes sharp-edged games made the choice that lets it stay sharp-edged. For today, that’s plenty.
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