Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic was the biggest surprise at last year’s Game Awards 2026 showcase. Almost as unexpected as the game’s existence was the fact that Mass Effect director Casey Hudson would be leading the project. The ex-BioWare boss found funding for the game from an equally unlikely source: a veteran of the Chinese conglomerate NetEase that had just pulled funding from his previous studio the year prior. A new report at Bloomberg details how NetEase alum Simon Zhu has been going around rescuing projects that the company, from which he resigned last year, had previously pulled funding from. That includes Hudson’s previous venture, Humanoid Origin, and Call of Duty veteran David Vonderhaar ‘s BulletFarm. Zhu launched a new holding company GreaterThan Group with private investment of up to $100 million to fill a void left by what he calls an overcorrection as funding exits gaming for tech and AI instead.…