Peaked at #93 on the iOS top-grossing chart, an 80-person star team is liquidated.
On launch day, it hit #1 on the App Store free chart and #1 on TapTap's trending games chart. Sixteen months later, a single notice: servers shut down on November 30. Even more dramatic, the company's boss beat the game to the exit — by this February, he was already sitting in an office at NetEase. The game is called Mimumimuha.
On August 31, Qutang Network issued a shutdown notice: operating conditions and the terms for continued investment were no longer viable, so the game would end operations on November 30, 2026. On the same day, new-user registration and top-ups were closed, and the download portal will be gradually shut down starting September 30. This “life simulation” title, which launched across all platforms on July 24, 2025, had staggering peak numbers: on day one of its open beta, it simultaneously topped the App Store China free chart and TapTap's trending games chart (source: GameLook). Yet its best result on the iOS top-grossing chart was just #93 — after which it quickly slid out of the mainstream rankings. After October 2025, the game had no more major version updates, and its official accounts went silent: “the servers are still running, but content has stopped iterating.” From open beta to shutdown, roughly 16 months.
The shutdown notice and the liquidation news surfaced almost simultaneously. According to public information from the Shanghai Third Intermediate People's Court, the compulsory liquidation application for Qutang Network was accepted in February 2026, under case number (2026) Hu 03 Qiang Qing 129. About three months after the open beta, layoff rumors began circulating, and several art outsourcing companies successively sued the firm over commissioned-creation contract disputes. By June 2026, the company had entered bankruptcy liquidation.
Lay the company's cards on the table and the opening hand wasn't bad at all. Founder Zheng Zhouli, a former vice president of Taomee Network and a core creator behind Mole's World and Seer, started his venture in 2021 and registered Qutang in November 2022. The project was incubated within the FunPlus ecosystem, with external funding in place: Zheng held roughly 30%, FunPlus-affiliated parties about 21%, and Guangzhou Tianti, under Hong Kong-listed Baioo Family Interactive, about 29.4%. The team peaked at around 80 people. It had the investors, the pedigree, and a hot category — and then what? The heat of a #1 free chart never turned into revenue; the game's lifetime income couldn't support an 80-person company.
What really left the industry with mixed feelings was the founder's own “escape” story. According to media reports, Zheng Zhouli joined NetEase's Eggy Studio in February 2026, working on side-mode content for Eggy Party, based in Hangzhou. The game hadn't even officially shut down (it closes November 30), yet the boss had already started at a new employer in February. Media headlines were blunt: the game shuts down, but the man has already moved on. Some curse him for bailing fast, but from another angle: the company had already been ordered into compulsory liquidation in February, and a founder staying on a sinking ship is pointless — he simply saw reality earlier than most.
National Business Daily's commentary was razor sharp: this case will further reduce the primary market's appetite for “short-term viral hits,” pushing capital toward teams with proven long-term operating experience; and as big companies absorb battle-tested talent from small and mid-tier teams, the gap between large and small studios will only widen. In plain terms: capital no longer believes in “overnight fame,” only in “staying alive for the long haul.”
Why did this one die? I pondered it for a long time, and the answer is actually cold: the free chart is a traffic chart, while the top-grossing chart is a value chart. Topping both on day one was a traffic gift from the platform; #93 is the real ticket price players cast with their wallets. Even more gutting is the contrast — the Eggy Party side-mode that Zheng now works on relies on UGC, with players creating the content and cultivating the ecosystem themselves; Mimumimuha, by contrast, followed the old model of a publisher unilaterally feeding content, and once the feeding stopped, the game died. One lives on players' creativity, the other on its own cash flow.
Of course, I shouldn't overstate it. Entrepreneurship is inherently a near-death gamble, and shipping a product that topped two charts already beats 99% of projects; a shutdown doesn't mean the work was wasted — the team's experience and brand accumulation remain. The industry is full of star projects that died; what matters is the next title. Zheng's résumé, from Taomee to Qutang to NetEase, still holds up — he simply spent 16 months validating an expensive piece of common sense.
My stance is direct: nostalgia gets people to download; only a closed commercial loop gets people to stay. The glory of topping the charts on day one is matched by the sting of #93 on the top-grossing chart. Topping the free chart can fool a publisher for a day, but it can't fool a financial statement for sixteen months.
One last question: did you ever play Mimumimuha? Do you feel a pang now that it's shutting down? Is there a shut-down game you still want to curse with “would one more year have killed you”? Come chat in the Gghubs comments section.