Maimai Leak: Sunborn's 'Wandering Earth' Game Project Dead on Arrival — Team Laid Off Right After Monetization Test

Every game project has to survive a gauntlet of milestones — greenlight, prototyping, beta, launch. But Sunborn Network's Wandering Earth IP game apparently couldn't even clear the "stay alive" checkpoint. On March 5, a set of screenshots from Maimai (China's biggest professional networking platform, think LinkedIn but with way more tea-spilling) went viral on NGA, alleging that Sunborn's Wandering Earth game project had been axed and buried six feet under.

The comment section erupted instantly. One user couldn't believe the timing: the monetization test (氪金测试, a gacha game's critical revenue-readiness checkpoint) had JUST wrapped up before the whole thing got canned — like a restaurant shutting down the moment the food hits the table. Another veteran player shrugged it off: SLGs (strategy games) made by smaller studios are basically suicide missions anyway. Sunborn trying to break into the SLG market was always a gamble.

But the juiciest reaction came from users roasting Yu Zhong (羽中, Sunborn's boss, playfully mocked as '犹中'). One commenter pointed out the core absurdity: they can't even produce enough content for Girls' Frontline 2 — their flagship title — yet decided to spin up an entirely new project at the same time. It's the classic 'trying to run before you can walk' move, except face-first into a wall.

A particularly savage comment connected the dots: so THAT'S why Sunborn had 'all the time and resources in the world' to argue with players over community drama — they were pouring everything into the Wandering Earth project, which is now dead. Another user coined the perfect nickname, calling it '跌出月球' (Fell Off the Moon) instead of '流浪地球' (Wandering Earth), and noted that with the team fired, Sunborn now has 'freed up resources to fight with their players some more.'

One user pointed out this was already the THIRD thread about this topic on NGA — the previous two were presumably deleted by community moderators (社管, community managers who act as PR crisis control). As another commenter sarcastically put it: 'better strengthen those community managers!' The classic Streisand effect in full force: the more they tried to suppress the news, the louder it got.

The thread was capped off with a meme image, turning what should be a corporate tragedy into a full-blown community comedy roast.

As of now, Sunborn has made zero official comment on the situation. But between the Maimai leaks and NGA's collective schadenfreude, the Wandering Earth project looks deader than dead. And for Sunborn? It's shaping up to be a nightmarish 2024: Girls' Frontline 2 starving for content, new project DOA, mass layoffs, and a community trust meter that just hit rock bottom. The copium supply has officially run out.