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(Bloomberg) — NetEase Inc. is losing another senior executive, the latest in a string of departures after an investment pullback spearheaded by billionaire founder and chief executive officer William Ding.
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Simon Zhu, NetEase’s president for global investments and partnerships, said he was leaving the Chinese video-game company in a social media post on Friday. The company has lost at least three key employees from its embattled games division in recent months.
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Zhu, a 12-year veteran of the company, runs NetEase’s global first-party studios and invested in Destiny studio Bungie, Pokemon Go studio Niantic, Fall Guys publisher Devolver and Marvel Snap studio Second Dinner. In 2021, Zhu helped spearhead NetEase’s global expansion into new studios helmed by veterans. “Working with them has been one of the greatest honors of my career,” he wrote on LinkedIn. “My confidence in this catalog stems from a decade spent evaluating thousands of games and backing the ones with real potential.”
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Ken Li, who led NetEase’s partnership with World of Warcraft maker Blizzard, will be taking his place. The US-based Zhu wrote that he’s returned to Hangzhou for a handover with Ding.
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His departure follows several colleagues’ across NetEase’s games division. NetEase’s president of worldwide publishing for PC and console
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Matthew Weissinger, who handled publishing for NetEase’s in-house studios in North America, left late March, a NetEase spokesperson said. Previously, he held roles at Epic Games, including vice president of marketing, for eight years.
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Matthew Liu, one of NetEase’s marketing leads handling global mobile games publishing, also left the company this month, according to a NetEase spokesperson.
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Changes are also looming at some of NetEase’s most lucrative games. In April, Onmyoji producer Jin Tao told staff he will refocus on the game’s long-term operation after having spent years incubating new IPs for this eight-year-old franchise, according to an internal memo confirmed by the NetEase spokesperson. Jin says he will cut staff at under-performing teams.
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Bloomberg News reported in February that NetEase founder and Chief Executive Officer Ding has been cutting jobs and pulling back on investments in new games as he looks to boost profits. NetEase has in recent months shut down or halted work at several studios that it opened just a few years ago, such as Japan’s Ouka, Canada’s Worlds Untold and Jar of Sparks in the US.
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These high-profile departures all occurred at NetEase’s Interactive Entertainment unit — the maker of some of the company’s earliest original PC hits but that division struggled in recent years. The company’s other main gaming unit, Hangzhou-based Thunderfire, is better off. Its overseer Hu Zhipeng was promoted recently to become an executive vice president — one of only a handful of top execs reporting directly to Ding.
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“We sincerely thank them for their contributions and and wish all the best in future endeavors,” NetEase said in a statement. “These personnel changes do not represent a change in NetEase’s global strategy; we remain fully committed to expanding and advancing our games and products worldwide.”
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— Cecilia D’Anastasio and Zheping Huang
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English (US)