Stellar Blade boss says Shift Up once had three months of pay left
Shift Up once had only about three months of salary money left while making Stellar Blade.
Chief executive Hyung-Tae Kim gave that stark account when discussing the game's difficult development. His comments were made in an interview with Korean gaming outlet Inven and carried in English by Eurogamer, which published its report on 23 September 2026.
Eurogamer said it worked from a Google Translate version of the Inven interview. That detail counts for readers. The English wording is therefore a translation, not a direct transcript from the studio.
Kim said Shift Up visited various investors to secure financial support for Stellar Blade. The response was blunt. The game was judged too risky.
For anyone outside games, that search for cash is normal. Studios often pay wages for years before a game earns anything. Investors provide money in exchange for a share, and they weigh risk against likely return.
Investors asked why the studio was making it when, in their words, it was obvious it would not break even. Break even means earning back the cost of making it.
Kim said he was also told the organisation would be valued more highly if it pursued a different project. Valuation here means the worth investors place on a company.
He admitted the doubts spread further than the meeting room. At times, he said, he questioned whether it was truly right to make a game like Stellar Blade in Korea.
Shift Up now names Project Spirit as its new flagship project. The studio describes it on its website as an 'EASTERN Fantasy' subculture cross-platform title, meaning a game planned for more than one system. It calls the game a new intellectual property, meaning an original creation it owns, following Stellar Blade and NIKKE, according to Shift Up.
What makes this stand out is the candour. Founders rarely give a cash figure for how tight development became. Three months of pay leaves little room for error.
The original conversation appeared on Inven. The Eurogamer report is the most recent dated account of those remarks.
