Hello everyone and Happy New Year!
I am Michael, the producer of BlazBlue Entropy Effect and head of the 91Act studio. I rarely present myself here, but as some of you might have noticed, it usually means there’s something big coming...
Most of you have just finished the New Year holiday, but for us Chinese New Year is just around the corner! It’s not only the most important festival of the year for us, but also the most important period for BBEE as a game.
We’re almost at the 1st anniversary of our 1.0 launch, so we’re going to celebrate this milestone with our biggest ever free update with a new boss, a new character with a special set of levels to unlock & them & learn their moveset, PLUS a new Character DLC!
A tiny hint here, look at this chain, guess who is coming!
But first, a little story about how our studio very nearly died just days after the 1.0 release, and how my team helped bring us back from the brink...
*If you are not interested in our story, please scroll down to the end, there will be a small preview of the upcoming update & DLC.
WHAT'S THE STORY?
On 31st Jan 2024, just 10 days before Chinese New Year that year, we finished the Early Access and launched the 1.0 version of BBEE.
For a studio that had spent 10 years developing mobile games, this was by far our greatest professional moment – creating an excellent PC action game was just an absolutely wild dream for us! It's still sometimes hard for us to believe it.
But, we (well, mainly I and the shareholders) had to decide to shut down the studio on 5th February 2024, just 5 days after launch and only 5 days before the Chinese New Year holidays.
You're probably asking yourself why? Why did we have to shut down the studio while the game was doing well? How are we still updating the game now?
We've never told this story to players outside of China before, although some of you may have heard bits and pieces, but at this special point - the anniversary of 1.0 launch - we’d like to share our experience with you and express our unending gratitude of your support.
THE BEGINNING
Like most of Chinese developers, I began my career at big gaming companies like Tencent and Shanda. After a decade of experience in these companies, I needed to make something I truly wanted to make, so I took a leap and founded 91Act.
Mobile gaming was, and still is, the absolutely dominant market in China, and my experience was mainly in mobile too, so 91Act actually started as a mobile game developer.
Our first major success was BlazBlue Revolution Reburning, a mobile adaptation of the fighting game BlazBlue. I’ve always believed BlazBlue was the best work to come out of the 2D fighting era, so when we were thinking about the prototype of 91Act’s first game, I pushed to make a demo based on BlazBlue, which managed to get us a meeting with the producer of BlazBlue and the top management of Arc System Works and they let us make the game!
BlazBlue Revolution Reburning
Afterward, we developed Crossing Void – a turn-based RPG mobile game. Unfortunately, that project didn’t reach the same level of success. By the time it was shut down in 2020, the losses left us in a difficult position financially.
HAIL MARY TIME
This was the first time I felt that 91Act might just have to shut down, and unfortunately it wasn't the last time either. However, the gaming boom during COVID opened a door for us, as a lot of money poured into the industry.
With new investment, we pitched another BlazBlue project to Arc. This time, we wanted to create something bigger – a premium PC game.
A big inspiration for BlazBlue Entropy Effect - BlazBlue Calamity Trigger (2008)!
With existing development assets from our previous Blazblue project and the core members from that project still at 91Act, everything was set up for success. Indeed, production went well, and we managed to get a decent success over the five months of Early Access, amassing 5.4k reviews at 94.96% positive by the end of January 2024.
But things took a turn at the 1.0 release. Due to my lack of experience with PC games and players, I decided to make some big changes in the 1.0 version which were intended to address your feedback but ended up annoying many of you instead. Reviews just dropped to Mixed overnight and sales failed to meet expectations.
Normally, the underperformance of sales wouldn’t cause a devastating blow to a 10-year-old company, but we were facing another huge financial issue at that moment – we hadn’t received payments from our publisher on another important project for a long time. For a combination of reasons, the company's cash flow was completely broken.
OUR LOWEST POINT
So this was the second time I believed that 91Act might just stop right there, but I was not as lucky as the first time. After discussions with shareholders, I had to make the decision to let the entire team go before the Chinese New Year.
It wasn’t something I wanted, but it was the only way to ensure we could compensate everyone fairly. I mortgaged my house and pooled that money with all the cash from the company’s account to cover salaries, severance pay, and partial overtime payments.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, but I honestly tried my best to honor the team’s work as best as I could and I'm not sure what else I could have done differently - it was and still is a very difficult time for smaller game studios to survive financially, let alone thrive.
To my surprise, the team were way calmer than I expected, some folks even consoled ME before they left the office. What I remember most is one who left some oranges on my desk and told me not to be sad. Others even offered to stay and work for free temporarily to continue the development of BBEE to try to save the studio.
Young people are always impulsive, and as their (former) boss and elder, I greatly appreciated their dedication, but still told them to go home for the New Year first and think calmly about their future and careers. As for me, as founder of the studio I needed to do what I could to make things right.
BRIGHTER SKIES AHEAD
That night I did a live stream on Bilibili (huge social media platform in China) to explain everything to our players and promising that I will continue development, even if it had to be on my own. To my complete surprise, way more people than I expected came to the stream and expressed their support for the team.
What surprised me more was part of the team returned (as well as being impulsive, young people also never listen to advice haha), freely volunteering their time for a planned update during the holiday. This update, thanks to the team's efforts, became the turning point of the game as it won players' trust back and Steam reviews gradually turned to positive.
The negative reviews here were much more at the time, before players changed their reviews back to positive
Our story also became known to the industry and the broader gaming community thanks to several reports from the gaming outlets in China. Sales of the game picked back up and hope began to emerge again.
We still don’t have any idea how or why our story attracted that much attention at that moment. Probably it’s because everyone likes gossip and this was basically the first time such a drama had happened out in the open in the Chinese gaming industry; or maybe it’s because a lot of people were being empathetic as year-end layoffs were happening a lot for everyone.
But in any case, we survived, thanks to the efforts of my team and the incredible support and encouragement from you guys, our players!
WE'RE STILL HERE!
As sales picked up and reviews improved, I was able to bring most of the team back on reduced salaries after the Chinese New Year, gradually increasing their compensation as sales grew of course.
The day we officially reorganized the team after the CNY holiday
Since then, we’ve released regular updates, new content, and even a mobile version (China only) of BBEE in 2024. The game sales also broke 700,000 last September, which I would never have believed a year ago. We're stable, growing, and we have even more planned for this year - I can't wait to show you what we're preparing!
Finally, I'd like to say again that I'm extremely grateful for the team here at 91Act who have stuck with me through one of the worst ever periods for the gaming industry with layoffs and game studio closures happening constantly. They really went above and beyond and I want you to know it!
So that was our 2024, ups and downs, right? Even now, I still can’t believe that we are still here and about to celebrate the 1st anniversary of the 1.0 launch and our rebirth!
Anyway, let's get back to the game.
OUR ANNIVERSARY PACK - THE BIGGEST UPDATE EVER!
Free Content
First up we have a new boss, Reki
Crossover with ICEY
If you are a 2D Action Platformer enthusiast, you might have heard about this game before, it's very popular here in China. The crossover with ICEY will bring a separate series of customized levels to discover the character, and the brand-new playable character herself – ICEY - into the world of ACE.
Character DLC
Lastly, but most importantly, a brand-new character DLC will bring the highly anticipated HAZAMA to the game!
* The images here show WIP content, so could be subject to change.
This is just a short preview of our Anniversary Update, we are going to reveal much more information next week. Please keep an eye on our YouTube, X and Discord accounts (and here of course!) for the launch date, more trailers, more gameplay footage and other surprising content!
Thank you for everyone’s support in 2024,
Michael and 91Act Team.