Stellar Blade devs only had enough money to survive “for about 3 months” at one point, CEO says several major publishers rejected them before Sony

As we get closer to the release of Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, it’s been revealed the series was almost a complete non-starter. Developer Shift Up struggled to gather enough investment to ship the first action game, with the company’s boss saying the financial runway got perilously short at one point.

Speaking to Inven, as translated by Automaton, Hyung-Tae Kim, CEO of Shift Up, talks about the timeline for the first installment. Essentially, investors and publishers believed the project was too big a risk for the studio and denied requests to get monetarily involved. According to him, some even suggested if the team pivoted, they’d be more interested. Several major publishers, who are unnamed here, apparently turned the game down.