Yostar
Shanghai Yostar Co., Ltd. (Chinese: 上海悠星), often known as simply Yostar Games or Yostar, is a video game developer and publisher based in Shanghai, China. They are the publisher of the English, Japanese, and Korean servers (collectively known as the Global server) of Arknights.
Background
Yostar was previously known as Studio GameMaster (GM), a Chinese doujin gaming student society that dedicated themselves in making spin-off games. Since their official approch to the gaming industry, the company has been investing a lot in ACGN-themed games in China. They are also the sole leader who opened the Japanese ACGN market to China through Azur Lane and Arknights. While they act solely as a game publisher, in recent years, they are planning to focus on their own game development and expanding to other fields such as anime production.
While Yostar is based in mainland China, they also opened offical branches in Tokyo and Hong Kong; the former is focused on the JP servers of their games while the latter on the KR and Global servers.
Yostar is notably one of the major shareholders of Hypergryph, the developer of Arknights, where they holds around 15% of HG's stocks as of 2023; in fact, some of HG's employees used to work with Yostar. This gives them a major influence in Arknights' development, particularly in regards to its internationalization.
Subsidiaries
Studio GM
Since the transformation of Yostar, Studio GM has become its minor subsidary. Their first and only work is Nono from Isekai (诺诺来自异世界), which was launched in 2016 but was eventually shut down in 2018 likely due to low popularity.
Yostar Pictures
Yostar Pictures is an animation production studio and a subsidiary of Yostar founded on January 2020 under the collaboration with the Japanese studios ARCH and ALBACROW. They are the studio that creates various short animations and preview videos (PVs) for their published games, such as Azur Lane and Blue Archive. For Arknights, their contributions include the events' PVs, Holy Knight Light original video animation (OVA), and the in-game cutscene in JT8-2 under Hypergryph's oversight as GRAVITY WELL is likely not established by then.
Yostar Pictures produced the anime adaptations of their published games, which includes Arknights (Prelude to Dawn and Perish in Frost), Azur Lane, and Blue Archive.
Currently, Yostar Pictures has one subsidary:
- ARCUS: The 3D animation production studio and a subsidiary of Yostar. They are the studio that created the 3D animated music video of several songs for the Global server, starting with Ain't Seen Nothing Like This, and certain promotional videos for major Arknights events.
Production
Games (developed)
- Isekai Kara No Nono (CN and JP; 2017–2018)
- Nekoparaiten (TBD)
Games (published)
- Azur Lane (EN and JP; 2018–present)
- Epic Seven (JP; 2019–2022)[1]
- Mahjong Soul (EN, JP, and KR; 2019–present)
- Arknights (Global; 2020–present)
- Blue Archive (JP and CN; 2021–present and 2023–present, respectively)
- Guardian Tales (JP; 2021–present)
- Revived Witch (EN and KR; 2021–2023)[2]
- Aether Gazer (EN and JP; 2023–present)
Anime
- Azur Lane: Bisoku Zenshin! (January–March 2021)
- Sorairo Utility (December 2021)
- Arknights: Prelude to Dawn (October 2022)
- Arknights: Perish in Frost (October 2023)
- Blue Archive The Animation (April 2024)
Notable employees/collaborators
- Yao Meng (姚蒙): Founder and CEO
- Chen Kai (陈开): Official register
- Li Hengda (李衡达): Director-general for the Japanese branch
- Watanabe Yūki (渡邉 祐記): Key animation director for Yostar Pictures; known for his previous works for A-I Pictures.
- Saitō Kengo (斉藤 健吾): Director for Yostar Pictures; known for his previous works for Studio Trigger.