Studio head Hyung-Tae Kim said in an interview that during one of the most difficult periods, the company had only enough money for three months of salaries. Investors and major publishers did not believe in the prospects of an expensive single-player AAA action game from South Korea, where the market is mainly focused on mobile online games.
Some financial partners even offered a significantly higher valuation for the studio if the developers completely canceled the project and focused on safer directions.
Constant rejections made Kim doubt whether such an ambitious console project even had a future. The turning point came when an early prototype interested Shuhei Yoshida of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This led to a publishing agreement and helped Shift Up continue development.
The studio is now preparing a version of Stellar Blade for Nintendo Switch 2 and is working on a direct sequel, Stellar Blade: Blood Rain.