Jackalyptic Games was born in 2022 under the name Jackalope Games and under the direction of Jack Emmert, a veteran of the video game industry who had previously worked on City of Heroes, Neverwinter, Star Trek Online and DC Universe Online. After holding positions of responsibility at Cryptic Studios and Daybreak Game, in 2022 he joined Dimensional Ink Games, a subsidiary of Daybreak Game, to develop an MMORPG set in the Marvel universe that was cancelled. That same year Emmert received support from NetEase to open a new studio in Austin, Texas.
In 2023 Jackalope Games was renamed Jackalyptic Games and announced that it had a Warhammer MMO for consoles and PC in the early stages of development with the collaboration of Games Workshop. Now this project will die along with the studio unless a savior emerges, something unlikely. Earlier this year, when a restructuring of NetEase's international teams was on the horizon, there was a rumor that the game was looking for a publisher, but it doesn't seem to have been successful.
The news of the closure of Jackalyptic Games was given by Jack Emmert himself, who in a message on LinkedIn announced that the collaboration with NetEase has come to an end after almost three and a half years.
Jackalyptic Games is the third NetEase-funded studio to close this week and cancel its game. The first two were Fantastic Pixel Castle, which was also working on an MMO led by the former boss of World of Warcraft, and Bad Brain Games, which said goodbye by showing a prototype of its action-adventure game in case anyone interested in the team or the intellectual property appears. During this year NetEase has also spun off T-Minus Zero Entertainment, which has resurrected as an independent team, Worlds Untold, a studio led by Mac Walters, screenwriter of Mass Effect, and Ouka (Visions of Mana).
NetEase still has several teams in Japan and the West, so the closure of Jackalyptic Games might not be the last. One of them, Anchor Point Studios, is located in Barcelona.