NO LAW Neon Giant: The Studio Behind the Game

NO LAW is being developed by Neon Giant, a Swedish studio best known for The Ascent. KRAFTON, Inc. is publishing it and has owned the studio since November 2022. The FAQ on the official site states it directly: "Neon Giant, the developers from The Ascent, are building the game. It is being published by KRAFTON." NO LAW is the studio's first first-person project.

This page covers where the studio came from, what The Ascent does and does not tell you about NO LAW, why the move to first-person is the single biggest change, and which details about the team remain unannounced.

Who is Neon Giant?

The studio is Swedish, and its best-known release is The Ascent, a cyberpunk action RPG published by Curve Digital in 2021. KRAFTON acquired the studio in November 2022, which placed it inside a South Korean publishing group best known for PUBG: Battlegrounds. NO LAW was revealed more than three years later, at The Game Awards 2025 in December 2025.

Arcade Berg is the studio's Creative Director and co-founder, and has spoken publicly about the shift away from The Ascent's formula toward a first-person game.

Beyond those points, publicly confirmed detail is thin. No headcount has been published in official NO LAW materials, no second project has been announced, and there is no roadmap beyond the 2027 release window.

What The Ascent tells you about NO LAW

Less than most people expect, and more in one specific way.

The Ascent was an isometric, twin-stick action RPG set in a dense cyberpunk arcology. It was widely praised for its art direction and environment density, and it supported co-op play. Mechanically, it shares almost nothing with NO LAW: different camera, different combat pacing, different structure.

What it does share is the art direction sensibility. A studio that built a believable, cluttered, neon-drenched vertical city in isometric is now building Port Desire in first-person. KRAFTON's description of Port Desire as "an industrial cybergrunge city lush with greenery" sits comfortably in that lineage.

One common point of confusion is worth clearing up. Because The Ascent had co-op, people search for NO LAW co-op. It does not have any. See the co-op page for the official wording.

Why the move to first-person matters

This is the most consequential fact about the studio's current direction. Neon Giant shifted from The Ascent's isometric formula to first-person for NO LAW, which is a change of camera, combat design, level design and animation pipeline all at once.

It also explains the 2027 window. A team rebuilding its core production competencies around a new perspective, while simultaneously building an open-city structure, is not a team that can promise a tight release date. The official FAQ's "we'll be more confident when it's finished" reads differently once you account for that.

The upside is that first-person is where the studio's existing strengths translate best. Environmental density and art direction are exactly the qualities that carry a first-person city, and the Gamescom ONL 2026 trailer leans on them.

The KRAFTON acquisition

KRAFTON acquired Neon Giant in November 2022, roughly a year after The Ascent shipped. The acquisition is why KRAFTON appears as publisher on the Steam page, why the official site is KRAFTON-branded, and why the NO LAW trademark belongs to KRAFTON, Inc.

For players, the practical effect is funding and publishing scale. NO LAW is a full-priced, single-player, multi-platform release with ten fully localised languages, which is a substantially larger production than an isometric indie action RPG. The publisher page covers what KRAFTON has and has not committed to.

How to follow the studio

The studio does not appear to run a separate public channel for NO LAW development commentary. The reliable channels are the official NO LAW site, the official YouTube channel, the official Discord and the official X account, all of which are linked from nolawthegame.com.

For design commentary specifically, press interviews around major showcases have been the most informative source so far, including a December 2025 PC Gamer interview covering why the team moved to first-person, and an April 2025 interview about the project.

What to watch for next

NO LAW launches in 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC. Between now and then, expect gameplay showcases rather than studio announcements as the primary source of new information. The studio's track record suggests art direction and city density will continue to be the headline strengths, and the main open question is whether the first-person combat can match the environmental work.