Why Are Players Both Regretful and Supportive After the Producer of *Mingmo: Yuanxu Zhiyu* Left the Team?

The cold glow of the screen fell across the room late at night, and the comments kept scrolling down one by one, like rainwater slowly gathering into lines along the windowpane. Some people rushed to leave messages on Bilibili, while others went to cheer him on under his Weibo posts. The atmosphere was strange—not simply a farewell, but more like a group of players standing on a platform that had already grown somewhat quiet, still willing to place their hopes for the next train on the same person. In recent days, discussion in the community suddenly heated up around the news that Xia Siyuan, producer of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, had left his position.

This matter actually went through a gradual process of being confirmed. Earlier reports had already said that Xia Siyuan had left the development team of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and after verifying with relevant sources, a journalist from Gamersky confirmed that he had indeed resigned from Leenzee Games. Once the news was confirmed, players reacted quickly, especially under his Bilibili and Weibo accounts, which had gone silent for months, where encouragement and support became the most concentrated voices.

I pay special attention to this kind of community sentiment, because it reflects the real temperature better than any temporary war of words. Some people recognized his past work, while others directly laid out the difficulty of the industry, saying, “Only people in the industry know how hard it is to fully deliver a UE5 single-player blockbuster, especially one launching on multiple platforms. Looking forward to your next project.” That kind of comment makes people pause instinctively, because it touches on the key point: for a UE5 single-player project, the road from concept to actual release was never an easy one.

Returning to the game itself, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has long been accompanied by plenty of controversy online, but another kind of voice can also be seen in the comments. Some players believe the game is not nearly as bad as online discourse makes it out to be, and still hope he will “return like a king” in the future. That also shows one thing: at least in the minds of a considerable number of players, the work has not been completely dismissed, and the developer’s personal vision and ability to execute a project are still being seriously acknowledged.

But beyond the surface, this feels more like a cross-section of the environment surrounding Chinese single-player games. Players’ attention toward producers is no longer just about “whether this game sold well or not”; they have started discussing what comes next, with some even suggesting that he try an overseas publishing route in the future. That judgment may not immediately become reality, but it represents the current mood of the community well: people are not merely watching a resignation story unfold—they want to know whether someone who has worked on a project of this scale can come back next time with something more mature.

So if you ask me whether Xia Siyuan’s departure is regrettable, I would say yes, but regret is not all that remains. Players generally support his decision to leave, and are still willing to place their hopes on future new works. That feeling is like the lingering afterglow at the edge of the sky in the evening, not yet fully faded, showing that the market still has patience for creators. As for the discussion stirred up this time by Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, in a way it also reminds everyone of one thing: what ultimately remains from a game is not just its versions and review scores, but also that quiet yet hard-to-fake trust between people.