Chinese games juggernaut NetEase is attracting some of gaming's top talent as the industry pivots towards free-to-play live games

Just a bit ago, Hiroyuki Kobayashi left Capcom after nearly three decades to join NetEase $NetEase (NTES.US)$ . Kobayashi served as producer at Capcom for 27 years and helped create and ship some of the company's most popular and best-selling games across franchises like Dragon's Dogma, Resident Evil, and Devil May Cry. Kobayashi will serve as a producer at NetEase to help fuel the publisher's mighty live game efforts.

This is the latest in a string of NetEase-funded projects and programs. Microsoft $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ and Halo veteran Jerry Hook opened a new studio for NetEase called Jar of Sparks and recruited former Halo Infinite developers who all left 343 Industries for their new venture. NetEase also poached one of $Sega Sammy Holdings (ADR) (SGAMY.US)$ SEGA's most valuable game developers in January 2022; Toshihrio Nagoshi, the creator of SEGA's best-selling Yakuza series, left SEGA to form Nagoshi Studio for NetEase.

NetEase has also made a significant investment in Bungie to help fund the studio's "bold vision." NetEase had invested $100 million into Bungie back in 2018 following Bungie's right acquisition of Destiny from Activision-Blizzard $Activision Blizzard (ATVI.US)$ . This was also years before Bungie was purchased by Sony $Sony (SONY.US)$ for $3.7 billion.

NetEase is a leader in digital online game monetization and made $9.85 billion from online mobile and PC games in 2021.