Neople’s new Soulslike from last year, The First Berserker: Khazan, starring Ben Starr of Final Fantasy XVI and Balatro fame and set within the world of Dungeon and Fighter was one of the more loved and arguably better Soulslikes to come out in recent years. Our own Francesco De Meo really enjoyed his time with it, giving it a 9/10 in his review, and he wasn’t alone in his praise. But despite its quality, its publisher Nexon has decided to “reassign” the development team and any hopes of a follow-up are seemingly out the window after the game missed Nexon’s commercial expectations.
This comes from a report from Korean outlet YNA as spotted on ResetEra. According to the report (via machine translation), Neople “has reassigned a large number of its production staff for the AAA action-adventure game, ‘First Berserker: Khazan,’ which was ambitiously unveiled last March, due to poor performance.”
A statement attributed to Nexon says, “As the roadmap for the large-scale Khazan project enters its completion phase, we have decided to separate the organization responsible for completing the remaining missions from the personnel assigned to other projects that require a concentration of human resources.“
“We plan to actively support the personnel with the expertise who led the completion of a global AAA title through the Khazan Project so that they can be assigned to projects where they can utilize their respective experience and capabilities.”
Of course it’s worth noting that this is all coming from machine translation, so there could be elements of it that got lost along the way, but it’s not news that Khazan underperformed. Nexon confirmed as much last year, but still called it at least a partial success because it proved that there could be interest in the Dungeon and Fighter IP on a global scale.
Nexon even recently called that success out in its capital markets briefing (the same one where it slammed The First Descendent and dug into its AI strategy), saying, “Khazan demonstrated that Dungeon&Fighter can travel,” and that it will continue to evaluate its “long term potential” with its upcoming release in China.
All of this leaves the future of The First Berserker: Khazan series in an odd place. With the team seemingly put on something else, if Nexon does actually plan to revisit it, we may be waiting a while before there’s any news of a new game in the series. Or, this could unfortunately be a one-and-done situation, as Nexon looks to expand the Dungeon and Fighter series in other ways with another new game.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech’s gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry’s movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he’s done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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