Marvelous just torched its six-year Tencent cash cow and the Story of Seasons mobile project got caught in the crossfire. The Japanese publisher announced on July 31 it was severing ties with Image Frame Investment — Tencent’s Hong Kong subsidiary that bought a 20% stake back in 2020 for around £48 million — and Tencent immediately yanked the plug on the mobile game that had been limping along since a 2019 licensing deal. Business environment and profitability were the polite excuses; in gacha terms, it was just another dead banner nobody wanted to roll on.

The license agreement itself survives the divorce, so Marvelous could theoretically shop the IP to another partner, but seven years of radio silence on a mobile entry already told the real story. Tencent’s broader retreat from Japanese studio stakes — part of a global portfolio rethink amid the industry slump — made this one of the first exits to go through. Console Story of Seasons releases keep rolling unaffected, which is the only silver lining for fans who never asked for a phone version anyway.

For the mobile scene, it’s another reminder that big Chinese publishers will cut bait the second the numbers don’t sing. No surprise, just another whale watching the banners get pulled.