NIKKE Developers Deny Rumors That Tencent Had Taken Over The Game

Shift Up has released a statement on rumors that they had forfeited control of NIKKE: Goddess of Victory to Tencent, amid a tumultuous week for the game.

The developers told Green Post Korea that Shift Up was still developing NIKKE, and publishing was handled by Level Infinite, which is owned by Tencent.

“The game operations are handled by Level Infinite, and the game development is still handled by Shift Up. [The rumors are] not true,” a representative told the site.

Meanwhile, Level Infinite has not issued their own statement on the whole debacle, though it should be noted that both the Google Play and App Store listings for the game have them listed as the publisher at the time of writing.

Rumors that NIKKE had been taken over by Tencent started on the game’s discord, with many fans spreading a fake narrative that Tencent was out to destroy one of the highest earning games of November 2022.

These were further exaggerated on social media like Twitter and Facebook, with netizens coming up with fictionalizations such as the corporation personally intervening in balance issues to drive player spending.

It was also partially exacerbated by the fact Shift Up was also developing the upcoming console title Stellar Blade– largely by people who didn’t realize game studios could work on multiple titles simultaneously.

The NIKKE Censorship Debacle, Briefly

A lot of this follows accusations of censorship as various characters have seen redesigns from the closed beta to the full release, most noticeably with the Christmas Rupee seasonal alt.

While games like Genshin Impact had seen post-release censorship, that wasn’t the case with NIKKE- rather any alterations to character designs were done prior to their launch.

There had been some speculation that this was because of the game’s pending release in China, further driven by the sudden appearance of what appears to be the game on Billibilli.