GreaterThan Group raises $100M to back Vonderhaar's new shooter, Star Wars game

David Vonderhaar is back with a $100 million war chest behind him, and the former Treyarch designer is not trying to build the next Call of Duty. GreaterThan Group, led by former NetEase executive Simon Zhu, has raised the fund to back creator-led studios, including Vonderhaar’s BulletFarm and Casey Hudson’s Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.

That money matters because Vonderhaar is one of the clearest creative fingerprints behind the Black Ops era. He spent roughly 18 years at Treyarch, worked on eight Call of Duty games, and helped define the pace, readability and competitive pressure that kept Black Ops in the center of the shooter conversation. If there is one lesson he appears to be carrying into BulletFarm, it is that players notice when a shooter feels instantly legible, when movement and combat click fast, and when the core loop gives squads a reason to come back together. But this project also looks like an answer to the limits of that formula.

At GDC, Vonderhaar described the unannounced BulletFarm game as feeling like “if David Lynch made shooters,” and said it is not a “Call of Duty killer.” That points to a deliberate break from the annualized, hyper-optimized military template that made his name. BulletFarm was announced in February 2024 as a remote-first AAA studio backed by NetEase, built in Los Angeles around Unreal Engine 5, co-operative gameplay and an original universe. Those are not the ingredients of a straight Black Ops clone. They suggest a slower-burn world, a stranger tone and a game built around playing with others rather than chasing the exact same competitive lane that Call of Duty has owned for years.

GreaterThan Group’s first known portfolio also includes Arcanaut Studios and MAGship, another sign that Zhu is betting on auteurs instead of anonymous content pipelines. Hudson, who is developing Fate of the Old Republic, brings his own heavyweight pedigree from BioWare’s Mass Effect trilogy and earlier work on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Together, these bets point to a sharper thesis: in a more cautious market, the safest way to stand out may be to give veteran creators room to make something personal.

For military-style shooters trying to pull time away from Call of Duty, that could be the real story. Vonderhaar knows the Black Ops machine from the inside, and this new backing gives him a shot to keep the discipline while ditching the sameness. If BulletFarm lands, it may not beat Call of Duty at its own game. It may make a better one for players ready for something weirder, tighter and more co-op driven.