success Star Blade Shift Up gained a firm foothold in the AAA video game market, but the development of the game was hampered by significant financial difficulty and expressed doubts about the possibility of realizing a project of this scale in South Korea. In a recent interview with INVEN, Hyung-Tae Kim, CEO and director of Shift Up, recalled one of the most delicate moments of production: “When we were developing Stellar Blade, there was a time when the company was faced with being able to pay only about three months’ wages,” Kim said.
Difficult situation
The game originally launched in 2019 as Project Eve, thus requiring Shift Up to face a period of particularly limited financial resources. At that time, the company had not yet achieved the commercial results of “Victory: NIKKE”, which was later released in 2022 and became popular in Japan.
The situation is further complicated by difficulties encountered at work. looking for funding. Shift Up pitched Stellar Blade to several investors and major publishers, but received multiple rejections. According to King, some people believe the project won’t reach a break-even point and therefore view it as a risk for the company. In some cases, investors have even said that Shift Up’s valuation would be higher if it ditched Stellar Blade and focused on other projects.
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King himself admitted he had doubts. For a while, he wondered if it was really a good idea to try to develop a game of this type and scale in South Korea. Despite the uncertainty, Shift Up decided to continueWith the first prototype, he also successfully convinced Shuhei Yoshida, then president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Global Studios. Yoshida was impressed and offered the company a publishing deal with Sony.
The rest of the story has to do with the game’s reception and what happened next MergeShift Up. Kim attributed much of the achievement to players and said the studio will work hard to repay their support on future projects, while acknowledging that it’s impossible to get everything perfect.
The company is currently developing a sequel to the game, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, as well as a new multi-platform intellectual property codenamed Project Spirits. Meanwhile, Stellar Blade is already available for PlayStation 5 and PC, while a Nintendo Switch 2 version is scheduled to be released on November 5, 2026.