Rayark: A Musical Empire Built on Aesthetics, and Its Fourteen Years of Cracks

30-Second Overview: In September 2011, six young graduates from the National Taiwan University College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science founded Rayark Games on Beishan Road in Jinshan, Taipei, with a capital of NT$30 million and a team of 16. In January 2012, Cytus was released on iOS, reaching number one on the charts in 14 countries within a month. Subsequent titles like Deemo climbed the Oricon charts in Japan, Cytus II won iOS Game of the Year in 2015, and VOEZ became a launch title for the Nintendo Switch. Fourteen years later, Rayark has released over ten games with more than 130 million global downloads, but the keywords surrounding them have shifted from "genius" to "a pity." After struggling through eight years, Sdorica will officially enter maintenance mode in February 2026; the Cytus II animation, which began Kickstarter fundraising in 2015, has still not been delivered as of 2026; and following the 2020 ICE Morse code incident, Rayark modified its games to comply with the Chinese market. Aesthetics allowed them to be seen by the world, but also caused them to stumble in every field outside of music.

What an Arcade Machine Taught Them

Rayark Inc. official logo. Source: English Wikipedia File:Logo of Rayark Inc.png. Fair use editorial commentary.

The story of Rayark begins with a failure.

In 2008, Ming-Yang You was a first-year master's student at National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Network Media and Information. He and two friends founded "Hypaa Studio" at the university to develop THEIA, a large-scale arcade touchscreen music game¹. That same year, South Korea's PENTAVISION released DJ Max Technika on arcade platforms; while its gameplay was similar to THEIA, it completely overwhelmed them in terms of music quality, interface design, and overall polish².

"We thought that if the gameplay was fun, it would sell, but the market response taught us that visuals and music are vital," Ming-Yang You recalled later¹.

This realization became the underlying logic for all of Rayark's subsequent products: gameplay is just the foundation; aesthetics are the moat.

After the failure of THEIA, Hypaa Studio did not shut down immediately. They spent two years trying again, releasing their second arcade machine, Mozarc, in 2010. It was a 6K falling-note music game with gameplay similar to PENTAVISION's DJ Max at the time, but it utilized Hypaa's own music library³⁴. During its deployment period, Mozarc accumulated a collection of tracks including "Bloody Purity," "Colorful Skies," "Saika," "Beyond," "Sanctity," and "Holy Knight"—song titles that would later appear in the tracklists of Cytus and Deemo³. In other words, while Hypaa's two arcade machines were not commercial successes, they left behind a set of musical assets that allowed Rayark, founded two years later, to avoid building a music library from scratch.

💡 Did You Know?
A Rayark player recalled in a 2026 comment: "The art for Mozarc was excellent. Unfortunately, the failure rate of the plastic button keys was too high, and when they were later changed to microswitch buttons, the tactile feel was poor, causing it to fade from the market. Hypaa actually operated this game for a very long time; it's hard to find the machines now, and you don't see anyone playing them anymore. The servers stayed up for quite a while before finally shutting down completely."⁵ This is the real reason Rayark transitioned from arcades to mobile platforms: an independent team simply cannot sustain the maintenance costs of hardware.

Three years later, in September 2011, the team founded Rayark Games on Beishan Road, Jinshan District, Taipei. With a registered capital of NT$30 million and a team of 16, they shifted their focus entirely from arcades to mobile platforms⁶. The six co-founders were Chih-Yuan Chung, Ming-Yang You, Shih-Chun Chang, Chang-Yen Hsieh, Shan-Yung Yang, and Yung-Ting Lee. Five came from NTU's Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering (Shan-Yung Yang B91; Ming-Yang You and Chang-Yen Hsieh B92), and one came from the NTU Graduate Institute of Telecommunications Engineering (Chih-Yuan Chung)⁷⁶.

💡 Did You Know?
Ming-Yang You was the only one among the six whose undergraduate studies were not in the College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; he studied in NTU's Department of Forest Science (B92). "I originally wanted to study Computer Science, but I didn't do well on the exams, so I ended up in Forest Science," he said in a 2012 interview⁷. Moving from Forest Science to the Graduate Institute of Network Media and Information, and then founding a music mobile game company at age 26, this cross-disciplinary path became the source of Rayark's aesthetic sensibility and unexpectedly made him the company's public spokesperson.

Chih-Yuan Chung served as CTO; years later, he led the team through a complete transition from PaaS to a Kubernetes container architecture. Rayark operates nearly fifty K8s clusters on Google Cloud, allowing "three people to maintain games with millions of users"⁸. Chang-Yen Hsieh later became the producer for Sdorica⁹. Yung-Ting Lee served as Game Director and was one of Rayark's early company spokespersons¹⁰.

The shared background of these six colleagues from NTU's College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science eventually became the engineering foundation for Rayark's aesthetic formula: they could fine-tune the judgment precision of music games, build cross-platform engines, and keep servers stable on the launch day of the Nintendo Switch. However, this foundation faces entirely different challenges in the realms of long-term RPG operations, animation production, and political public relations.

Cytus and Deemo: Two Pillars of a Musical Empire

On January 12, 2012, Cytus was released on iOS¹¹.

The Cytus II version featuring the signature "dynamic scanning line" gameplay of the Cytus series. Source: English Wikipedia File:Cytus II gameplay.png. Fair use editorial commentary.

The gameplay is simple and intuitive, involving tapping notes following a dynamic scanning line. However, what truly made it stand out was the quality of its art and music; the sci-fi visual design combined with high-level original electronic music gave Cytus a distinct identity in a highly homogenized mobile rhythm game market. Within one month of launch, it hit number one on the App Store charts in 14 countries, held the top spot on Japan's music game charts for 29 consecutive days, and reached 1 million paid downloads by April 2015¹¹.

On November 13, 2013, Deemo was released¹². If Cytus is sci-fi electronic music, Deemo is classical piano. Players play the piano in a black-and-white world filled with a fairy-tale atmosphere; the music shifts from electronic to classical and lyrical, and the art style moves from cold sci-fi to warm hand-drawn aesthetics.

The Deemo Last Recital PS Vita cover; the black-and-white fairy-tale style is the signature art of the Deemo series. Source: English Wikipedia File:DeemoLastRecitalVita.jpg. Fair use editorial commentary.

Deemo became one of Rayark's biggest commercial successes. By October 2014, it had accumulated 7 million downloads, and by the time the animation was announced in 2021, it reached 28 million downloads¹². The soundtrack sold exceptionally well in the Japanese market, winning App Store Taiwan's 2013 Best of Year for Indie Developer and Google Play Taiwan's 2014 Best Game Music. The Nintendo Switch version holds a Metacritic score of 88¹². The sequel, DEEMO II, launched on January 13, 2022, with 1 million players participating in pre-registration globally; it surpassed one million downloads in its first week and served as Rayark's 10th-anniversary commemorative title¹³.

📝 Curator's Note
Cytus and Deemo established Rayark's brand formula: rhythm games × high-quality art × narrative packaging. This formula gave Rayark a unique position in the global mobile game market, but it also boxed in their subsequent attempts. Looking back fourteen years later, all of Rayark's most successful works are rhythm games, while all of their most failed attempts were efforts to apply this formula to non-music genres.

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_At the Rayark booth in 2018, showing the backs of cosplay players. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Photo: player cosplay snapshot, CC BY-SA 2.0._

The Year of the Switch Launch: Five Projects at Once

Between 2015 and 2018, Rayark was simultaneously advancing five product lines.

Implosion was released on iOS/Android on April 8, 2015, and arrived on Nintendo Switch on July 6, 2017¹⁴. A 3D action game, its visual quality was close to console standards for mobile games at the time. Using a paid download model on the App Store with no in-app purchases, it earned a Metacritic score of 93, reached the #7 spot in the App Store Top Grossing charts within one week of launch, and maintained a 91.9% five-star rating¹⁴. It won 2015 iOS Game of the Year Asia, the 2015 Bahamut ACG Creative Awards, and the 2014 Unity Awards Golden Cube¹⁴.

In June 2016, VOEZ was released on mobile. The following year, on March 3, 2017, VOEZ became one of the launch titles for Nintendo Switch; Rayark was one of the few non-Nintendo first-party rhythm game developers on the Switch launch lineup¹⁵. By early 2017, global downloads had surpassed 10 million¹⁵. Nintendo Life gave it an 8/10, calling it "the Switch's secret weapon"¹⁶.

Cover art for VOEZ on Nintendo Switch (published by Flyhigh Works)—a March 3, 2017, Switch launch title. Source: English Wikipedia File:SwitchVOEZ.jpg. Fair use editorial commentary.

On January 18, 2018, Cytus II was released, serving as the sequel to the original Cytus six years later¹⁷. The new system pushed rhythm gamers' precision to its limits, eventually accumulating over 18 million global downloads. In May 2026, Rayark announced that Cytus II would be released for Nintendo Switch 2 / Switch in 2027, featuring over 500 tracks¹⁷¹⁸.

During these years, the Cytus IP also expanded into derivative works. In November 2014, the multimedia musical Code: Cytus, commissioned by the Quanta Education Foundation, was performed for four shows in Taiwan¹¹, bringing mobile game tracks to the theater. In February 2015, Rayark collaborated with Japan's Capcom to release an arcade version titled Cytus: Omega. It was unveiled at JAEPO 2015 and began location testing in July, but this collaborative version was ultimately canceled on March 30, 2018¹¹. A comment from datapythoness in May 2026—"Cytus also thought about an arcade version. I was lucky enough to experience it live; back then, I was really looking forward to a large-scale rhythm game cabinet from Taiwan. It's a pity it later faded away silently"¹⁹—provides the most direct player perspective on this derivative project. On April 25, 2019, _Cytus α was released on Nintendo Switch, adding two new chapters and an online Battle Score mode, earning a Metacritic score of 81¹¹. This marked the first time the Cytus series officially arrived on a home console.

Implosion proved that Rayark's technical capabilities were sufficient to cross genres. However, the business models for action games and rhythm games are completely different: rhythm games rely on continuous song pack updates to maintain revenue, whereas action games are typically one-time purchases.

Then came Sdorica on April 19, 2018⁹.

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Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone: Eight Years of Sdorica

The _Sdorica game logo (aurora subtitle version). Source: English Wikipedia File:Sdorica logo.png. Fair use editorial commentary._

Sdorica was Rayark's boldest experiment.

The project began in 2013, entered development in 2014, and was originally scheduled for a 2016 launch. It was delayed to 2017, then again to April 19, 2018, when the official open beta finally launched. Following a five-year development cycle, pre-registrations exceeded 1.5 million people; downloads surpassed 2.5 million on April 30, and broke 5 million on May 11⁹. After launch, daily active users exceeded 1 million.

It is a mobile RPG telling the story of heroes and "soul-infusing" in the world of Myriad. Chang-yen Hsieh served as the producer⁹²⁰. Rayark applied the art budget from their rhythm games to create RPG character illustrations and applied their narrative expertise to the character progression system. However, they quickly discovered that the "muscles" required for a rhythm game's playlist are entirely different from those required for an RPG's content update cycle.

Problems erupted one after another following the launch. Issues included underestimating player counts on servers, gacha events not opening on schedule, Chinese character corruption in the Dragon Boat Festival version, and failure to distribute Remnant Powder²¹. Between June and July 2018, Rayark's operational decisions faced intense backlash from players, including unannounced adjustments to character stats and controversies over high-priced bundles. Within four months, the company slid from its peak, marking a turning point for Rayark's reputation²².

Among these, the one that left the deepest impression on the veteran player community was the Black Pongji incident. Black Pongji was an early popular character in Myriad; paired with Angelia SP, it was the strongest team composition at the time, and players had invested massive resources into this setup. After Rayark introduced a "zombie" mechanic (enemies can counterattack even after death) and limited Black Pongji's "taunt" to once per turn, this core team was effectively rendered useless²³. Rayark claimed this was a bug fix rather than a nerf, but players did not accept it. The change occurred shortly after the release of a new skin for the character "Bai Pang," leading veteran players to view it as a predatory business tactic: selling skins first and then nerfing old characters to force players to switch to new ones²³²⁴. "Quitting because of the Black Pongji nerf" became a common farewell among Sdorica veteran player guilds. One PTT user commented in 2026: "In the early days of Sdorica, many players in top-tier guilds quit because of the Black Pongji nerf"²⁵.

💡 Did you know?
Rayark has rarely missed the mark with rhythm or action games, but they stumbled with an RPG that required long-term live operations. The core competency of rhythm and buy-to-play games is "making a great product," whereas the core competency of RPG operations is "continuously serving a community." These require entirely different muscles.

Eight years later, on February 11, 2026, Rayark officially announced that Sdorica would enter maintenance mode²⁶²²:

Main story chapters, special events, and limited-time bundles will all cease. The final two characters, Valdrir DR and Chiyuki DR, will be distributed via in-game mail to all players or obtainable through the 《Spring Water Intoxication》 event rerun. Special soul-infusing events will continue to rerun until July 2026; no new reruns will be available after the final one concludes. The servers will continue to operate for the foreseeable future.

"The active development lifecycle of Sdorica has ended"—this was Rayark's own declaration that their battle in the RPG arena was over²⁶. For the core players who had stayed for years, this announcement was more cruel than a sudden server shutdown: the servers remain open and old characters can still be leveled, but new stories will never come again. Rayark itself understood the cost of this decision: eight years of plot, eight years of character design, and an eight-year accumulated worldview would now enter a state of freeze, leaving players to decide for themselves how much longer they wish to stay.

For Rayark in early 2026, putting Sdorica into maintenance mode was a necessary way to cut losses. For eight years, Sdorica had continuously consumed Rayark's R&D resources and blurred the clarity of their brand positioning. A company founded on "making the most beautiful rhythm games" was being held back by an RPG it could no longer sustain; every year of delaying the shutdown made the company's overall narrative harder to justify. The side effect of the maintenance mode announcement may be that the Cytus and DEEMO series will once again become the clear pillars of the Rayark brand.

Cracks Before the Morse Code: The 2014–2017 V.K. Incident

Rayark's earliest public relations crisis can be traced back to the V.K. plagiarism controversy, which occurred three years before the 2020 ICE incident.

In the summer of 2014, a composer named Waiting (using the pseudonym H&&D) received a demo from V.K. and discovered clearly plagiarized segments. Waiting wrote a letter to point out the issues, but V.K. refused to make revisions²⁷. The work, titled "Crossing Through Time and Rain," had previously been rejected by Erotes Studio (the team behind 《雨港基隆》). Months later, V.K. renamed the piece "Crossing Through Time" and sold it to another client. In November 2014, it became the theme song for the mobile game 《女神聯盟》; netizens subsequently discovered that the track bore suspicious similarities to segments of the opening theme from the anime 《魔法少女小圓》²⁷²⁸.

Upon discovering this, Rayark issued an official statement: "We have decided that until this controversy concludes, we will no longer include new music by V.K. in Rayark's games"²⁸. This was a measure taken at the level of music licensing; following the release of the Deemo PS Vita version in 2015, no further tracks by V.K. were added.

The problem was that physical/offline activities did not stop in tandem. On May 14, 2016, Rayark continued to invite V.K. to participate in a concert in Shanghai; on February 4, 2017, they invited V.K. again to participate in a Rayark "Creation" lecture²⁷. Despite being aware of the plagiarism controversy, they continued various forms of public collaboration for three consecutive years—this was the breaking point that finally led Waiting to go public.

On March 11, 2017, Waiting exposed the situation online, stating that "plagiarism in music and illustration should not be tolerated"²⁷. The following day, March 12, Rayark issued a public apology on Facebook²⁸:

Following the occurrence of said incident, Rayark did not comprehensively cease all physical/offline collaborations with V.K... In the future, we will adopt the same standard as our music licensing: until the controversy concludes, we will not collaborate in any form.

Waiting and Rayark founder Tony were middle school classmates²⁹. This personal friendship made the incident particularly painful. Waiting later publicly announced the termination of their collaboration and signed a "non-use of works" declaration³⁰, ending the two-year aftermath of the incident.

💡 Did You Know?
In its 2017 apology statement, Rayark explicitly admitted that it "did not comprehensively cease all physical/offline collaborations with V.K." The value of this statement lies in how clearly it defined the shape of the problem: they knew there was a mistake, but because V.K. was a long-term collaborator and the business relationship was difficult to sever, they split the handling into two layers: "cease music licensing, continue physical activities." This was the first time a crack appeared in the logic of "brand purity"—when brand narrative conflicts with business relationships, Rayark chose to prioritize the business relationship for three years.

While the V.K. incident was not a political landmine, it represented the first conflict between the logic of "aesthetic commitment" and commercial interests. In the handling of the 2020 ICE Morse code incident, one can see the same decision-making structure, though the cost was higher this time because the opponent was the Chinese market.

Morse Code 1344 7609 2575

In March 2020, Rayark's Music Director ICE (real name Wilson Lam, a Hong Kong musician who joined Rayark in 2014) released the album 《Consciousness》 under his own name, including the song 〈Telegraph : 1344 7609 2575〉 on his personal SoundCloud and YouTube³¹³². The numbers "1344 7609 2575" in the song title are Chinese Morse code.

On July 17, 2020, Chinese netizens uncovered the track and discovered that the decoded Morse code was: "Hong Kongers, add oil! Liberate Hong Kong, revolution [of our] era."³³³⁴

The following day, July 18, Ice announced his resignation from Rayark via a personal statement. The verbatim text reads:

Regarding the controversy caused by the music I released in March 2020, which has led to much discussion among netizens. Since this was my private activity and does not fall within my scope of work nor is it related to Rayark Games, I have decided to resign and will be leaving Rayark Games effective immediately³⁴.

On the same day, the Chinese distributor Longyuan Network and Rayark Games issued a joint announcement stating that 《Cytus II》 would be removed from shelves in China for rectification³⁵. Taiwanese players expressed dissatisfaction on Rayark's fan page, questioning whether the company was conducting ideological censorship; as of July 20, Rayark had still not issued an official explanation on its Taiwanese platforms³⁶. In May 2021, Longyuan and Rayark officially announced that following rectification, six tracks composed by ICE would be deleted. They promised compensation to players who had already paid, and the Chinese server of 《Cytus II》 was restored to sale³⁷.

After leaving Rayark, ICE continued to create as an individual. In July 2022, he publicly revealed his true identity; he is currently active under the name Ice@Spaceport Productions, producing trance and hardcore tracks, and continuously releasing new works on Facebook and X³⁸³⁹⁴⁰. In a comment section from May 2026, a reader of Rayark noted: "Ice is still continuing to release songs; it's just that his name is a difficult keyword to use for recognition" ²⁵. Two facts hold true simultaneously: he has not disappeared, and Rayark cannot erase him from history.

This is the Rayark version of a "political landmine" incident, and it marks the second time the logic of "aesthetic commitment" has clashed with commercial interests. During the VK克 incident three years ago, Rayark chose to prioritize commercial relationships; this time, they faced an even larger market, but the decision-making structure remained exactly the same.

One year prior, in 2019, Red Candle Games's 《Devotion》 was removed from the Steam China region on February 23 due to a talisman incident; three days later, Red Candle announced its complete removal from all of Steam⁴¹. Subsequently, the publisher, Shanghai Jumiao Information Technology, was investigated by the Yangpu District Market Supervision Administration, and its business license was revoked on June 17⁴¹. The party that truly paid the price was the distribution end; Red Candle protected the original content without yielding, but the publishing company was eliminated. In the 2020 ICE incident, Rayark chose a different path: letting the individual leave, modifying the game to comply, and preserving the Chinese distribution channel. Prioritizing commercial relationships remains the same logic seen in the VK克 incident.

⚠️ Controversial Perspectives
This represents two starkly different choices made by two iconic Taiwanese indie teams when facing pressure from the Chinese market. Red Candle did not yield on content, and the publishing company paid the price of being eliminated; Rayark yielded on content to preserve its Chinese distribution channels. The English media outlet PocketGamer.biz reported this with the headline "China pulls Cytus II from the App Store for secret pro-democracy Morse code message"⁴², while discussions in the Chinese-speaking world focused on whether "Rayark knelt / whether the separation was correct." One event, two interpretations. Rayark's choice this time is an extension of the same brand logic applied to a different source of pressure as their 2014–2017 choice regarding VK克.

Implosion: Eleven Years of Zero Day

Promotional poster for 《Implosion: Never Lose Hope》— a 3D mecha action game that won 2015 iOS Game of the Year Asia. Source: English Wikipedia File:Implosion- Never Lose Hope - cover.png. Fair use editorial commentary.

Some promises are uglier than silence.

On December 5, 2015, Rayark launched a Kickstarter campaign for the animated film 《Implosion: Zero Day》, aiming to raise US$400,000 for a 90-minute animation⁴³. Within 48 hours of launch, it reached 18% of its goal, and after 10 days, it surpassed NT$5 million⁴⁴. Completion was originally scheduled for August 2018.

In 2018, nothing was delivered.

On January 24, 2019, following a third delay announcement, Rayark admitted that "the IZD animated film cannot be completed in 2018 as expected" and provided refund options: backers could choose to receive a refund while still receiving the rewards corresponding to their pledge tier⁴⁵. Refunds were tallied in February 2019, and the first batch of goods (hoodies, T-shirts, collector's edition movie scripts, game soundtracks, manga chapters, and movie wallpapers) was sent out in March. The full set of rewards was only to be sent after the film's completion.

From 2020 to 2026, there were five years of silence. Rayark's official 《Implosion》 page and the English Wikipedia entry for Implosion still maintain a status of "animation in progress," with no release date provided¹⁴. Kickstarter backers worldwide have endured an eleven-year wait, yet as of 2026, the animation has still not been seen.

"They don't even dare to speak about the film's progress; they can't even provide half a schedule," one backer wrote under the 2019 delay announcement⁴⁵.

This is the only project where Rayark truly "failed to deliver" on a promise. More serious than the operational cracks in Sdorica is this long-term silence toward global Kickstarter backers. However, media attention for this matter in the Chinese-speaking world has been far lower than that of the ICE incident, the Sdorica maintenance mode, or the AI art controversy. This may be because the Chinese-speaking indie game industry is more tolerant of such delays, or perhaps because the consequences of the delay are ultimately borne individually by all the backers from that 2015 Kickstarter funding.

Those Still Present

Rayark Video Games Co., Ltd. as of May 2026: approximately 270 employees, capital of NT$64 million, headquartered at No. 47 Dongxing Road, Xinyi District, Taipei City. Since 2012, they have released over ten games with cumulative global downloads exceeding 130 million⁴⁶. They have a branch, Rayark Japan, in Tokyo; the company is not publicly listed.

Their fourteen-year portfolio is far more extensive than what was mentioned earlier in this article. Beyond the five main lines—the Cytus series, Deemo series, Implosion, VOEZ, and Sdorica—Rayark has also released: Mandora (2012, casual puzzle) ⁶, DEEMO Final Finale (2015, PS Vita music rhythm) ¹², DEEMO -Reborn- (2019–2020, PS4/Switch/Steam music adventure, "Very Positive" on Steam reviews) ⁴⁷, MO:Astray (2019–2020, Steam/Switch/Mobile action puzzle) ⁴⁸, Soul of Eden (August 26, 2020, card strategy, developed for over 4 years, once noted for having mechanics similar to Clash Royale⁴⁹), Chaos Academy (2021, tactical card game) ⁶, and DEEMO II (January 13, 2022, reached 1 million pre-registrations globally, one million downloads in the first week) ¹³. Over fourteen years, they have produced 10+ works spanning five platforms: mobile, Switch, PS4, PC, and PS Vita.

💡 Did you know?
In Rayark's portfolio, only the Cytus series and Deemo series maintain "Cytus-level brand recognition" as music game mainstays. While every other independent work (Implosion, VOEZ, MO:Astray) is of high quality, it is difficult for readers to identify them as "a Rayark game" in a single breath—when your brand becomes synonymous with "aesthetic rhythm games," expanding into other genres can actually dilute brand recognition. Looking back over fourteen years, Rayark's strongest curatorial ability lies in the IP extension of Cytus and Deemo (musicals, soundtracks, arcade collaborations, animated films), rather than the development of new genres.

Timeline of the past three years:

• May 2023: Rayark AI art controversy. Rumors circulated online regarding "full AI creation + firing artists"; on May 27, Rayark issued a clarification via Twitter stating they "did not use AI to create the vast amount of imagery required for games, nor did they fire their art team because of it" ⁵⁰⁵¹.
• November 30, 2023: Hao Lei Coffee ceased operations.
• October 14, 2024: Rayark Concept online store ended operations⁵².
• February 11, 2026: Sdorica entered maintenance mode.
• May 22, 2026: Announced that Cytus II will be released for Nintendo Switch 2 / Switch in 2027¹⁷.

In comparison to rhythm game companies of the same era, PENTAVISION—the company that caused Hypaa Studio's crushing defeat in 2008—took a completely different path. Due to financial difficulties, it liquidated and closed in 2012, being fully absorbed by its parent company, Neowiz². In 2017, Neowiz revived the series with DJMax Respect; by December 2024, DJMax Respect V surpassed 6 million downloads, and in 2025, Neowiz's revenue hit an all-time high⁵³.

PENTAVISION survived by "being absorbed by a large corporation and then being revived." Rayark chose the opposite path: remaining independent, expanding genres, and absorbing the cost of every mistake themselves.

Rayark's situation is the most typical dilemma faced by successful independent game developers in Taiwan: while the first product explodes through passion and talent, subsequent products require organizational capability and operational discipline. The market ceiling for rhythm games dictates that Rayark must expand into other genres, but every expansion dilutes its original brand identity. The players of Cytus and the players of Sdorica are entirely different demographics; serving both groups under the same brand name may result in both groups feeling that "Rayark has changed."

Yet, Rayark remains one of the few brands in Taiwan's gaming industry with global name recognition. With 18 million downloads for Cytus II, 28 million downloads for the Deemo series, Implosion winning iOS Game of the Year, VOEZ launching on Switch, and the DEEMO animated film produced by Production I.G and Signal.MD featuring a theme song by Yuki Kajiura—these achievements remain unmatched by any other company in Taiwan's mobile gaming market as of 2026⁵⁴.

In 2008, Yu Ming-yang learned from an unsold arcade machine that "aesthetics are important." Eighteen years later, this sentence remains Rayark's greatest asset, and perhaps its greatest shackle: when you define yourself as "the person who makes the most beautiful games," the market's tolerance for error drops to zero.

✦ Aesthetics allowed Rayark to be seen by the world, but they also caused it to stumble in every non-musical arena.

The eight-year operational rift in Sdorica stems from the fundamental conflict between the formula of "Art × Music × Story" and the nature of long-term RPG service. Every event update requires high-quality new character illustrations, and every story expansion requires original music; while this was manageable for a 16-person team with NT$30 million in capital, it became a systemic time black hole within the rhythm of a game with hundreds of thousands of daily active users. The quality standard Rayark built through rhythm games—"polished until recognized at a glance"—clashed fundamentally with the content speed of mobile RPGs, where "players consume a major update in an average of three days."

The core issue behind the eleven-year delay of the Implosion animation is the collision between the standard of "making the most beautiful animation" and the execution limits of an independent company. Animation production at the level of Production I.G requires organized production pipelines and a stable, long-term writing team. When Rayark promised a 90-minute animation on Kickstarter, they used their "game development muscles" to make a promise to the animation industry. While Rayark has the technical threshold to produce Implosion animation, the difficulty lies in the total cost of "producing it and maintaining it until release"—a scale an independent company of this size cannot afford.

The ICE incident demonstrates the inevitable result when the logic of "brand purity" is extended to employees. Rayark's entire brand is built on a narrative of "aesthetic-driven, politically neutral, and globally compatible." When an employee released a song supporting Hong Kong outside of work, the internal consistency of that brand narrative was challenged. Rayark's choice—allowing the employee to resign, modifying the game to comply with the Chinese market, and retaining Chinese distribution channels—was the optimal solution for this brand logic, serving as a counterpoint to another indie path (that of Red Candle Games).

What will the next Rayark look like? Perhaps there won't be one; perhaps it will require different muscles. When aesthetics are everything, every non-aesthetic choice becomes a crack, including politics, operations, and time. But Rayark's fourteen-year trajectory also proves one thing: Taiwanese indie game teams have the ability to secure a scarce brand position in the global rhythm game market—a feat achieved in Asia only by Japan's BEMANI system and Korea's DJ Max series. Rayark's story is not over; the day Cytus II launches on Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027 will be the next milestone to test whether an "aesthetic empire" can continue to define "made-by-Taiwan" in the age of AI.

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Further Reading

• Taiwan's Game Industry and Digital Entertainment — A panoramic view of Taiwan's games, from publishing to original creation
• Red Candle Games — Another path for Taiwanese indie games: telling stories through history and choosing to exit the Chinese market
• Softstar Entertainment — The starting point of Taiwanese games telling stories in Chinese
• Gamania and the Overseas Expansion of Taiwan's Online Games — Another story of Taiwanese games going global

Image Sources

This article uses 8 licensed images, all cached at public/article-images/technology/ to avoid hotlinking from source servers:

• rayark-cafe-2021.jpg (hero) — Wikimedia Commons File:Rayark Café 20211016.jpg — Photo: Solomon203, 2021-10-16, CC BY-SA 4.0
• rayark-logo-2012.png (inline, §What an arcade machine taught them) — English Wikipedia File:Logo of Rayark Inc.png — Fair use editorial commentary on Rayark Inc. brand identity
• cytus-ii-gameplay.png (inline, §Cytus and Deemo) — English Wikipedia File:Cytus II gameplay.png — Fair use editorial commentary on the signature gameplay of the Cytus series
• deemo-cover.jpg (inline, §Cytus and Deemo) — English Wikipedia File:DeemoLastRecitalVita.jpg — Fair use editorial commentary on the art style of the DEEMO series
• rayark-booth-cosplayers-2018.jpg (inline, §The year the Switch launched) — Wikimedia Commons — Photo: 2018 ACG event cosplay snapshot, CC BY-SA 2.0
• voez-switch-cover.jpg (inline, §The year the Switch launched) — English Wikipedia File:SwitchVOEZ.jpg — Fair use editorial commentary on the VOEZ NS launch
• sdorica-logo.png (inline, §Stepping out of the comfort zone: Eight years of Sdorica) — English Wikipedia File:Sdorica logo.png — Fair use editorial commentary on Sdorica brand identity
• implosion-cover.png (inline, §Implosion: Eleven years of Zero Day) — English Wikipedia File:Implosion- Never Lose Hope - cover.png — Fair use editorial commentary on Implosion game identity

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References

1. Rayark: A rare Taiwanese mobile game developer with a unique style — Writing Science Lynn — Hypaa Studio THEIA story, direct quote from Ming-Yang You regarding the importance of visuals and music, company founding background↩²
2. Pentavision — Wikipedia — Acquired by Neowiz in 2006; DJ Max Technika in 2008; liquidated and closed in 2012; fully absorbed by Neowiz↩²
3. User blog: JCEXE/Small History of Hypaa Studio, pre-Rayark team — Cytus Wiki Fandom — Complete timeline of Hypaa Studio; 2010 Mozarc 6K fall-style arcade; Bloody Purity / Colorful Skies / Saika / Beyond / Sanctity / Holy Knight later moved to Cytus + Deemo↩²
4. Prototype AC — MOZARC — Bahamut Creation — Introduction to the Mozarc prototype arcade machine; fan creations from the player community↩
5. Threads taiwandotmd #DYwMkzBgW8k donchuenbao comment — 2026-05-26 Player comment on a Rayark Threads post: "Between Hypaa and Rayark, there was another rhythm game arcade called Mozarc" + details regarding the failure rate of plastic button components↩
6. Rayark — Wikipedia — Six co-founders (Chih-Yuan Chung, Ming-Yang You, Shih-Chun Chang, Chang-Yen Hsieh, Shan-Yung Yang, Yong-Ting Lee), established in September 2011, located on Jinshan North Road, 16-person team, capital of NT$30 million, product timeline↩²³⁴
7. B92 Ming-Yang You, B91 Shan-Yung Yang, B92 Chang-Yen Hsieh (Rayark Games) — csiecomm Blog — Interview on 2012-12-07; Ming-Yang You from Forestry/Cross-media department, Shan-Yung Yang B91, Chang-Yen Hsieh B92; direct quote from Ming-Yang You: "I originally wanted to study Computer Science, but because I didn't do well on the exams, I ended up studying Forestry"↩²
8. Rayark shifts from PaaS to embracing containers, 3 people can maintain games with millions of users — iThome — CTO Chih-Yuan Chung leads the containerization transformation, Rayark's 50 K8s clusters on GCP↩
9. Sdorica — Wikipedia — Planned in 2013 / Developed in 2014 / Open beta on 2018-04-19; 1.5 million pre-registrations; surpassed 2.5 million downloads on 4/30; surpassed 5 million downloads on 5/11; Producer Chang-Yen Hsieh↩²³⁴
10. Rayark Games: The team behind Cytus, the iOS game with thousands of 5-star reviews — Digital Age — Yong-Ting Lee as director and company spokesperson, Ming-Yang You as co-founder, Shih-Chun Chang as co-founder↩
11. Cytus — Wikipedia — Released on iOS 2012-01-12 / Android 4-13; reached 1 million paid downloads in 2015-04; ranked #1 in 14 countries; held the top spot on Japanese music game charts for 29 consecutive days↩²³⁴⁵
12. Deemo — Wikipedia — Released on iOS 2013-11-13 / Android 12-27; Vita 2015-06-24; cumulative 7 million downloads by 2014-10; 28 million downloads when the animation was announced in 2021; awards; DEEMO -Reborn-; DEEMO II; Memorial Keys animation; Metacritic score of 88 for Nintendo Switch version↩²³⁴
13. Rayark's 10th Anniversary Title "DEEMO II" Officially Released Globally — Bahamut GNN — DEEMO II released on 2022-01-13; one million downloads in the first week; 1 million global pre-registrations↩²
14. Implosion: Never Lose Hope — Wikipedia — Released on iOS/Android 2015-04-08, Switch 2017-07-06; awards; Metacritic 93; 91.9% five-star rating in the first week of launch; 2015 iOS Game of the Year Asia + 2015 Bahamut ACG Creative Awards + 2014 Unity Awards Golden Cube; Zero Day 90-minute animation in progress↩²³⁴
15. Rayark's "VOEZ" Coming Soon to Nintendo Switch — 4Gamers — VOEZ surpassed 10 million downloads by early 2017; launch title for NS on 2017-03-03↩²
16. VOEZ (2017) — Nintendo Life — Nintendo Life rated it 8/10, calling it a "secret weapon for NS"↩
17. Cytus II coming to Switch 2, Switch in 2027 — Gematsu — Announced on 2026-05-22 for release on NS / NS2 in 2027; cumulative 18 million downloads worldwide; 500+ initial tracks↩²³
18. Rayark's Popular Rhythm Game "Cytus II" Confirmed for Switch 2/Switch Versions — QooApp — Confirmed via Chinese news; releasing in 2027↩
19. Threads taiwandotmd #DYwMkzBgW8k data_pythoness comment — 2026-05-26 Player comment: "I also wanted to see Cytus become an arcade game. I was lucky enough to experience it on-site; at that time, I was really looking forward to seeing a large-scale rhythm game machine from Taiwan" — Personal experience record of the Cytus: Omega location testing↩
20. Sdorica — Moegirlpedia — Developed and published by Rayark Games; released on 2018-04-19; Producer Chang-Yen Hsieh↩
21. Series of Operational Blunders in 'Sdorica' — udn Game Corner — A series of operational controversies following Sdorica's launch in June 2018, including server congestion, gacha banners not opening on schedule, garbled text during the Dragon Boat Festival, and failure to distribute Remnant Powder.↩
22. Notice of Operational Policy Adjustment for 'Sdorica' — Bahamut — 2026-02-11 Maintenance mode Chinese announcement; no new reruns will be released after 2026-07; player community discussions.↩²
23. Sdorica Black Pongji Incident — Sdorica: Chronicles of Sdorica Bahamut Forum + catchtest pixnet review — Black Pongji zombie mechanic + mocking once per turn limit; Black Pongji + Angelia SP team composition rendered useless; Rayark claimed the bug fix was not accepted by players; occurred shortly after the release of White Pongji skin↩²
24. PTT C_Chat Re: [News] Sdorica strong characters collectively nerfed, controversy brewing — 2018-06-27 PTT C_Chat thread response; npn1992: "And then they nerfed it immediately after White Pongji came out, claiming before it was a bug, how long has the Princess SP been out?", "How long have Black Pongji and Princess SP been out? They only suddenly changed it now", "A bug that was left for so long(?) was changed right after White Pongji came out, how efficient" — Players comparing the sequence of White Pongji skin release and the nerfing of old characters↩
25. PTT C_Chat Rayark Games: The Music Empire Built on Aesthetics GTES reposted thread — 2026-05-26 PTT C_Chat player community discussion thread; selfet: "The earliest Sdorica players, including many top server guild members, quit because of the Black Pongji nerf"; Jamer: "Ice continued to release songs later; it's purely that the name is a difficult keyword for recognition"↩²
26. Sdorica Enters Maintenance Mode After Final Character Releases — Gacha Go! — 2026-02-11 Maintenance mode; Valdrir DR + Chiyuki DR as the final two characters; servers remain operational; Infuse rerun until 2026-07; "Sdorica active development lifecycle ends".↩²
27. Game Music Creator Exposes VK for Plagiarism: Music and Illustrations Both Copied, Plagiarism Should Not Be Tolerated — ETtoday Game Cloud — 2017-03-11 Full exposure by Waiting@H&&D; Timeline of "Crossing Through Rain in Time" → "Crossing Through Time" → Goddess Alliance theme song; 2016/5/14 Shanghai concert + 2017/2/4 creation lecture↩²³⁴
28. VK Exposed for Composition Plagiarism, Rayark: No Cooperation Until Incident Ends — CTS News — 2017-03-13 Full transcript of Rayark's FB apology statement; "After the incident occurred, Rayark did not completely cease all physical event cooperation with VK" + "In the future, we will adopt the same standards as music copyright; until the controversy concludes, we will not cooperate in any form"; "Crossing Through Time" suspected of plagiarizing Puella Magi Madoka Magica↩²³
29. Waiting's "Non-use of Works" Statement - Plurk — In 2017, Waiting publicly announced the termination of its cooperation with Rayark; signed a non-use of works statement; mentioned the relationship as middle school classmates with Rayark founder Tony.↩
30. Composer terminates cooperation with Rayark due to plagiarism allegations - Disp BBS — 2017-03 PTT Gossiping board discussion; Waiting and Rayark founder Tony are middle school classmates; complete timeline of the incident.↩
31. Wilson Lam — SilentBlue.RemyWiki — ICE's real name is Wilson Lam; joined Rayark as Music Director in 2014; record of his departure in 2020.↩
32. 'Cytus II' Taken Down in China Due to a Composer's Song Containing Hidden Pro-Hong Kong Morse Code Message — iTechPost — Report on the ICE incident from an English media perspective.↩
33. Work Reported for Concealing 'Liberate Hong Kong' Morse Code; Rayark Music Director Announces Resignation — udn Game Corner — 2020-07-17 Netizens in China doxed him; Morse code decoded as 'Hong Kongers, add oil, Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our Times'; full timeline of the ICE incident.↩
34. Music Contains Pro-Democracy Slogans After Doxing; Rayark Music Director Ice Resigns — Newtalk News — 2020-07-18 Verbatim original text of Ice's full statement; key points of the Longyuan announcement.↩²
35. Rayark Music Director Ice Announces Resignation Due to Controversy Over Musical Composition — Bahamut GNN — Official report by Bahamut; joint announcement from Rayark and Longyuan.↩
36. Music Director's Private Creation Supports Hong Kong: Is Rayark's Method of Distancing via Weibo Correct? — TechOrange — 2020-07-20 As of that day, Rayark had not issued a formal explanation on its Taiwan official platforms; player community questioning.↩
37. China's 'Cytus II' Removed for Rectification; All ICE Compositions to be Deleted — 4Gamers — May 2021: Deletion of 6 ICE tracks; compensation provided to paying players.↩
38. Ice (composer) — NamuWiki — Wilson Lam, aka Ice; joined Rayark in 2014; left in 2020-07-18; revealed true identity through an article on 2022-07-17; currently active at Spaceport Productions producing trance + hardcore tracks.↩
39. Ice - Spaceport Productions Facebook Page — ICE's personal FB page, displaying the name "Ice - Spaceport Productions," continuously publishing music creations.↩
40. Ice@Spaceport Productions — X (Twitter) — ICE's personal X account, bio "Ice@Spaceport Productions," Hong Kong musician.↩
41. Red Candle Games — Wikipedia — 2019-02-23 "Devotion" removed from Steam China region; 2019-02-26 Red Candle announced complete removal; 2019-04-19 Shanghai Orange Cat Information Technology launched an investigation; 2019-06-17 Yangpu District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau revoked the business license of Shanghai Orange Cat.↩²
42. China pulls Cytus II from the App Store for secret pro-democracy Morse code message — PocketGamer.biz — Framing by English industry media; international media perspective.↩
43. Animated Film Adaptation of Rayark's 'Implosion', 'Implosion: Zero Day', to Launch Kickstarter Campaign — INSIDE — 2015-12-05 Kickstarter launch; reached 18% of funding goal within 48 hours.↩
44. Implosion: Zero Day — Wikipedia — Surpassed NT$5 million in 10 days; originally scheduled for completion by 2018-08; no new announcements since 2020.↩
45. Rayark's 'Implosion Zero' Movie Delayed Three Times — Disp BBS ACG Board — 2019-01-24 Announcement of the third delay; refund plan; verbatim quotes of player criticism.↩²
46. Rayark Video Games Co., Ltd. | Hiring — 104 Job Bank — 270 employees; capital of NT$64 million; cumulative 130 million downloads; product list.↩
47. DEEMO -Reborn- Steam Charts — Steambase — DEEMO -Reborn- released on Steam 2020-09-03; 20K-50K owners; 3,242 reviews "Very Positive".↩
48. Taiwanese team produces "MO:Astray" — udn Game Corner — MO: Astray 2019-2020 reviews / action-puzzle genre.↩
49. After once being mired in plagiarism clouds during development, Rayark spent 4 years incubating "Soul of Eden"! Surpassed 1.5 million downloads in one week — Digital Age — Soul of Eden developed for over 4 years; 1.5 million downloads in the first week; previously accused of copying Clash Royale; official response from Rayark.↩
50. Rayark Official Twitter AI Art Clarification Announcement — 2023-05-27 "Did not use AI to create a large amount of images required for games, and certainly did not lay off the art team because of it" original text↩
51. Rayark Clarifies No Mass Layoffs of Artists Due to AI Implementation — Bahamut GNN — Full Chinese version of Rayark's official clarification announcement↩
52. Rayark Concept Facebook — 2024-10-14 Announcement regarding the end of online store operations↩
53. Neowiz posts 60 billion won 2025 operating profit, up 82.2 percent — DigitalToday — 2024-12 DJ Max Respect V reaches 6 million downloads; 2025 Neowiz annual revenue hits new high↩
54. Rayark's Music Game "DEEMO" Animated Movie "DEEMO THE MOVIE" — Rayark Official — DEEMO THE MOVIE production companies: Production I.G + Signal.MD; General Director: Junichi Fujisaki; Director: Shuhei Matsushita; Theme Song: Yuki Kajiura↩