Yesterday, South Korean studio Shift Up held a New Year’s event for its employees, ringing in 2025 by celebrating its successful release of Stellar Blade. To commemorate the team’s hard work, all 311 employees were gifted PS5 Pros and a 5 million won (approximately $3,442 USD) bonus. The inaugural ceremony, called ‘Shift Up Rise Up,’ shared the company’s vision and future plans.
“The plus and bonus payments are for the purpose of encouraging talent,” a Shift Up official states (translation by Google). Stellar Blade released exclusively on PS5 last April, selling over one million copies in just two months. On Metacritic, it’s sitting at scores of 81 and 9.2 for critics and users respectively.
It isn’t the first time Shift Up has shown appreciation for its developers. In 2021, Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim celebrated the PlayStation showcase of then-Stellar Blade prototype “Project Eve” by purchasing a PS5 for his 260-person staff. Shift Up’s mobile gacha game, Goddess of Victory: Nikke, is rewarding players with approximately $100 of in-game gacha currency for New Year’s as well.
Shift Up celebrates ‘stellar Blade’ success by rewarding its devs – take notes, gaming publishers
In a time of rampant layoffs in the video game industry, it’s nice to finally see developers getting rewarded for their hard work. On Monday (1/7/25), Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League studio Rocksteady announced another round of layoffs. This follows the previous round of staff made redundant at the studio when it cut employees out last September. Just days ago, Netmarble F&C announced it had laid off 25% of its Demis Re:Born development team.
While pocket change for most CEOs, the Shift Up bonuses amount to over $1,000,000 USD given to its 311 staff members. Including the value of a PS5 Pro, the number reaches above $1.2 million.
Stellar Blade is scheduled to launch on PC sometime in 2025. Since its PS5 release, Shift Up developers have added various updates and content to the base game. The Stellar Blade 1.003 update included a Boss Challenge mode. In November, a Nier: Automata crossover DLC was released. A Stellar Blade Christmas update added new holiday-themed outfits for Eve, her Drone, and a new mini-game. Later, the 1.008 update added support for the PS5 Pro, new graphics modes, and bug fixes.
The post A CEO Finally Does Something Cool: ‘Stellar Blade’ Studio Shift Up Gifts All 311 Employees PS5 Pros and an Extra Bonus appeared first on VICE.
