Arabic
A report published by Noisy Pixel has revealed serious accusations made by Chinese studio Loongforce against PlayStation China regarding mismanagement, inflicting serious financial damage and attempting to take control of its co-op game project Convallaria after years of faltering development.
According to documents seen by the report, which include internal emails, chat logs and official complaints, the partnership between Loongforce and the China Hero Project began to deteriorate following a management change within PlayStation China in 2022.
The studio asserts that communication became slow and erratic while publishing and support services declined and critical decisions were repeatedly postponed without explanation. By mid-2023, Loongforce says its repeated requests regarding marketing, server deployment, and launch plans went unanswered.
Although Convallaria passed Sony’s internal beta tests in January 2025, according to the studio, the project went into a complete freeze without player testing, a PlayStation Store page, or any marketing activity.
Loongforce also claims that the game was removed from the official China Hero Project promotion despite one of its producers participating in the PlayStation China 10th Anniversary video shoot, where the game was excluded from the final version without any explanation.
By early 2025, the financial crisis worsened. The studio claims that delayed payments caused monthly losses of more than $230,000 and pushed the company to the brink of collapse by April, although the team reportedly continued to deliver weekly development builds and test servers in the United States.
Loongforce later accuses Sony of canceling a previous payment agreement and imposing new terms of cooperation that the studio deemed unreasonable, which led to the complete cessation of the collaboration, with total losses estimated at more than one million dollars.
The report also touches on accusations of conflicts of interest within SIE China’s production structure, with the studio claiming that outsourcing work was consistently awarded to Virtuos without competitive bidding or developer approval, as well as Loongforce being forced to fund a technical security restructuring carried out by a company linked to former Virtuos employees outside the scope of the original contract.
The dispute escalated in June 2025 when the studio claims it was informed of the intention to transfer Convallaria’s development leadership to a Sony-affiliated global team with the threat of blocking the game’s launch in case of refusal. Loongforce characterized this move as a direct attempt to take over the project, questioning its legality and enforceability.
Loongforce emphasizes that he tried to resolve the dispute internally for more than a year before resorting to the media, and as of press time, neither Sony nor China Hero Project has issued any official response to these accusations.
