Stellar Blade nearly stalled due to Shift Up funding problems
Hyung-Tae Kim says Stellar Blade nearly got cancelled when Shift Up could only cover about three months of salaries.
- According to Kim, the team approached multiple investors and publishers, but many saw the project as too risky and doubted it would recoup its costs.
- Sony ultimately agreed to publish and fund Stellar Blade, though the available sources do not make clear how broad that support was.
What happened
According to an interview summarized by Eurogamer, Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim said Stellar Blade came close to cancellation during development. At one point, the company reportedly had enough money left to pay salaries for only about three months.
Kim said, based on the same source, that Shift Up approached several investors and major publishers, but many walked away. They reportedly considered the project too risky and questioned whether Stellar Blade would ever earn back its development costs. Some even advised the team to make a different game instead.
The summary also says Kim himself doubted at the time whether it was the right move to make a game like this in Korea. In the end, Sony reportedly agreed to publish and fund Stellar Blade, allowing the game to be completed and released.
The available sources also note that Stellar Blade later became a success, with millions of copies sold on PS5 and more than 1 million PC sales within three days, but those figures have not been independently confirmed in this cluster.
Timeline
2024: Stellar Blade launches on PS5 after a development period in which funding was reportedly under pressure, according to Kim.
2025: The PC version of Stellar Blade launches; the provided source claims more than 1 million sales within three days.
2026-09-22: Eurogamer publishes a summary of an interview in which Kim says Shift Up could only afford about three months of salaries.
2026-09-22: The same summary says multiple investors and publishers rejected the project because they saw it as too risky.
2026-09-22: According to the summary, Sony eventually agrees to publish and fund Stellar Blade.
Background
Stellar Blade was developed by Shift Up, with Hyung-Tae Kim as one of the project’s key public faces. The available information focuses mainly on the business side of development: the search for funding, the rejections from investors, and Sony’s later involvement.
The source also mentions sales figures for the PS5 and PC versions, but this cluster does not provide primary evidence for those numbers. As a result, they are presented here as reported claims rather than independently verified facts.