Another MMO graveyard has a new headstone. Fantastic Pixel Castle, the studio founded by legendary World of Warcraft designer Greg Street (known to the community as Ghostcrawler), is closing its doors on November 17, 2025. NetEase, the Chinese publisher that funded the studio since 2023, pulled support last month, and Street’s attempts to find alternative financing over the past few weeks have failed. The MMO codenamed Ghost will never launch.
Who Was Greg Street and What Made Him Special
Greg Street, better known by his community nickname Ghostcrawler, was the lead systems designer on World of Warcraft from 2008 to 2013. That was the golden age of WoW. When Ghostcrawler left Blizzard, he didn’t disappear into obscurity. He went to Riot Games, where he served in multiple roles including lead gameplay designer on League of Legends and eventually executive producer on Riot’s secretive League of Legends MMO project.
Street represents a particular era of MMO design. He’s someone who actually sat in the creative chair during the genre’s peak and understood what made those games work. When he left Riot in 2023 to start his own studio, people paid attention. This wasn’t just another developer chasing the MMO dream. This was someone with proven institutional knowledge and a track record of making systems that players loved and debated for years.
What Was Ghost Supposed to Be
Fantastic Pixel Castle positioned Ghost as a modernized fantasy MMORPG built around a philosophy that recent MMOs had lost sight of community. The studio believed games like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV had over-emphasized solo adventure content, pushing the genre away from its cooperative foundations. Ghost was designed to reverse that, making group play and friend networks central to the experience.
The game was divided into two shard experiences. Blue Shards would function like survival games where friends could party up, gather resources, build bases, and adventure together in what sounded like a cozy social sandbox. Red Shards featured classic MMORPG gameplay with large-scale raiding, world bosses, and permanent server-wide impacts on the game world. The design philosophy suggested a team that actually understood what made MMOs click socially while still respecting what made them mechanically compelling.
Why NetEase Pulled Out
NetEase hasn’t explicitly stated why it ended support for Fantastic Pixel Castle, but the pattern is clear. The Chinese publisher has been dramatically scaling back its international game operations. In 2024, NetEase apparently decided that international game development represented too much geopolitical risk. The company has been systematically closing veteran-led studios opened in 2022 and 2023.
Worlds Untold, Jar of Sparks, T-Minus Zero, and now Fantastic Pixel Castle have all shut down without releasing a single game. This isn’t market failure on the studios’ parts. This is strategic withdrawal. NetEase essentially lost confidence in international gaming and decided to pull the plug on the entire experiment. None of these studios even had a chance to launch their games in the market.
The MMO Graveyard Gets Bigger
Fantastic Pixel Castle’s closure fits into a larger, grimmer picture of the MMO industry in 2025. This is a genre that’s actively dying at the development level. We’ve seen major publishers cancel or abandon MMO projects repeatedly. Riot’s League of Legends MMO went through years of development before being “reset” and essentially restarted from scratch. Blizzard’s never-named World of Warcraft successor project has been running for years with no announcement.
The economic model for MMOs has become untenable for most publishers. Games like Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft are money-printing machines precisely because they’re the only two games in the genre maintaining massive, healthy playerbases. The barrier to entry is impossibly high now. A new MMO launching in 2025 would face a player base that’s already invested in established communities with years of progression. Breaking through that wall requires something revolutionary.
Greg Street’s Final Gambit
In his LinkedIn post announcing the closure, Street remained cautiously optimistic. He noted there was “still a chance” to secure funding after November 17 if enough of the team remains. This isn’t just optimism. It’s a conscious strategy. By keeping the door open to last-minute investors, Street is signaling that Ghost isn’t dead forever. Just dormant.
The tricky part is team retention. Developers don’t usually wait around for a studio to close hoping maybe it’ll reopen with new funding. Most team members will be looking for new jobs starting immediately. Street’s challenge is convincing enough of them to stay on without salary until new funding materializes. That’s a harder ask than most would imagine.
What This Means for MMO Development
If Greg Street couldn’t make this work, what does that say about MMO development in 2025? Street brought pedigree, experience, genuine design philosophy, and access to veteran talent. He had funding from a major publisher. He had a clear vision for what modern MMOs should be. And none of it was enough to survive longer than two years.
The sobering conclusion is that MMO development as a business model has become fundamentally broken outside of the two established giants. The genre that pioneered online community gaming in the mainstream has contracted to basically just World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. Everything else is either a fading relic or a failed startup.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does Fantastic Pixel Castle officially close?
November 17, 2025. Studio head Greg Street announced this date on LinkedIn on November 3, 2025.
Who was Greg Street?
Greg Street, known online as Ghostcrawler, was the lead systems designer on World of Warcraft from 2008 to 2013, later worked at Riot Games on League of Legends and Riot’s League of Legends MMO before founding Fantastic Pixel Castle in 2023.
What MMO was Fantastic Pixel Castle making?
A fantasy MMORPG codenamed Ghost. The game emphasized social play and community with two shard systems: Blue Shards for cooperative survival and resource gathering, Red Shards for traditional MMO raiding and world impact.
Why did NetEase pull funding?
NetEase is strategically scaling back international game development due to geopolitical concerns. The company has closed multiple veteran-led studios opened in 2022-2023 without releasing games.
Will Ghost ever be finished?
Unlikely but not impossible. Street mentioned there’s a small chance of funding after November 17 if enough team members remain, but most developers will likely seek new employment elsewhere.
Is there any chance Fantastic Pixel Castle gets revived as Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0?
Street mentioned the possibility of an indie version called “Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0” in his LinkedIn post, but that would require both team retention and finding independent funding, which is a long shot.
How many employees did Fantastic Pixel Castle have?
The studio operated with 11-50 employees, making it a relatively small team for developing a triple-A MMO.
Did Fantastic Pixel Castle release any games?
No, the studio was founded in 2023 and shut down in 2025 without releasing Ghost or any other titles.
What other NetEase studios have closed?
Worlds Untold, Jar of Sparks, T-Minus Zero, and Fantastic Pixel Castle all shut down as part of NetEase’s international gaming pullback, with none releasing games.
Conclusion
Fantastic Pixel Castle’s closure represents a symbolic death for the MMO genre as a living, evolving category. When even a studio led by legendary designer Greg Street can’t survive two years of development, it suggests MMO creation outside the established giants has become economically unviable. The dream of building community-driven online worlds that compete with World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV has become a financial impossibility for most publishers. Ghost will remain unplayed, another cautionary tale about the unsustainable economics of AAA game development. For Street and his team, the consolation is that they tried with genuine vision rather than cynical cash-grab mechanics. For MMO fans hoping for innovation in the genre, the conclusion is grimmer. The genre’s future looks like it belongs to whoever already has it locked down.