The development team at Neople behind action RPG The First Berserker: Khazan has reportedly been broken up and reassigned across other Nexon projects, following sales that failed to meet expectations.
An April 8 report from Korean outlet Yonhap News, citing a statement from a Nexon official, confirmed that personnel have been moved to other projects where their experience can be put to use. Neople reportedly maintained that this does not constitute a full dissolution of the Khazan team, but given the scope of the reassignments, the practical outcome looks the same.
What makes the timing so jarring
Here's the thing: this news landed just days after Nexon CEO Junghun Lee publicly held up Khazan as a strategic win during the company's March 31 capital markets briefing. Lee described the game as proof that the long-running Dungeon & Fighter IP could travel beyond its core Asian audience.
"The first game in this series, The First Berserker: Khazan, was released in 2025 and delivered a hardcore action experience tailored specifically to Western audiences," Lee said. "Khazan demonstrated that Dungeon & Fighter can travel. We are now preparing for its China launch, which will further validate its longterm potential."
That China launch, as it turns out, is part of the problem. Yonhap News cited the delayed China release as one of the factors dragging down the game's overall sales numbers. A Tencent publishing deal was supposed to bring Khazan to millions of new players in that market, but the timing never aligned with the game's momentum window.
A game that earned better than this
The frustrating part for players is that Khazan was not a bad game. Nexon acknowledged as much in an earnings call last year, noting that while Q1 revenue came in below outlook, the game achieved its objective "as a strategic first step in a multi-year plan to introduce Dungeon & Fighter IP to a global audience." Strong player and critic reception at launch made the sales miss sting even more.
The game received its most recent update on March 31, the same day as the capital markets briefing where Lee praised it. That update now looks like it may have been one of the last.
What most players miss in situations like this is the gap between critical reception and commercial viability. A game can land well with the people who play it and still fall short of the revenue targets a publisher needs to justify continued investment. Khazan had genuinely sharp combat and a distinct visual identity rooted in the Dungeon & Fighter universe. Its level design was a weaker point, the kind of flaw that a sequel could have addressed directly.
Where Neople's talent goes from here
Nexon has other projects in development that may absorb the reassigned staff. Project Overkill, described by Nexon as "an online action RPG for PC and console which fully modernizes combat physics, visuals, and overall presentation while reinterpreting Dungeon & Fighter's icon raids, dungeons and cooperative play," is one destination. Vindictus: Defying Fate, which promises fast-paced action built around timed dodges and counters, is another.
This is not the first time Nexon has had to make a hard call on a title that showed promise but underperformed commercially. The company previously categorized The First Descendant as a game that "did not work" after 110,000 mixed Steam reviews and a strong launch that lost momentum. The pattern points to a publisher that moves quickly when the numbers don't land, regardless of what the reviews say.
For fans of the Soulslike and action RPG space, the Khazan situation is a reminder that critical goodwill alone does not keep a development team together. Keep an eye on Nexon's upcoming slate for signs of where the Neople talent resurfaces. Make sure to check out more:
