Atari’s core business returns to profit, but consolidated group posts $5.5m net loss as Thunderful drags on results

Atari has released its consolidated financial results for the full 2025-26 fiscal year, reporting revenue growth of 66% year-on-year to $65 million (€56.0 million), its highest level in more than a decade, driven largely by the acquisition of Swedish publisher Thunderful and continued growth across its Games and Hardware lines.

However, once Thunderful’s results are stripped out, the picture is more mixed. Atari’s pre-existing business drops to a current operating income of $1.0 million (€0.9 million) and net income of $0.1 million (€0.1 million). While both figures are a YoY improvement, the consolidated group that includes Thunderful posted a current operating loss of $7.7 million (€6.7 million) and a net loss of $5.5 million (€4.8 million) for the year.

Thunderful alone lost $8.8 million (€7.6 million) at the operating level.

CEO Wade Rosen described the results as Atari “reaching operational profitability for the first time in several years,” a characterization that applies to the core Atari business rather than the group as a whole.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers:

For the full year ending March 31, 2026

• Current operating income/(loss): -$7.7 million (-€6.7 million) with Thunderful; $1.0 million (€0.9 million) excluding
• Net income/(loss): -$5.5 million (-€4.8 million) with Thunderful; $0.1 million (€0.1 million) excluding

The highlights:

Atari’s Games segment released 30 titles across owned and licensed IP during the year, including Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster, and a next-generation console release of RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic.

Games revenue rose 67.7% YoY to $53.2 million (€46.1 million), or 25% to $39.5 million (€34.3 million) excluding Thunderful. Hardware revenue rose 83% to $8.4 million (€7.3 million). The company also acquired the IP rights to five Ubisoft titles, including Child of Eden and Grow Home.

Atari raised its stake in Thunderful to 97% over the course of the year, delisting the Swedish publisher from Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market in February 2026. Post-closing, the company acquired emulation specialist Implicit Conversions in April 2026, and Crossy Road maker Hipster Whale for an initial $29.3 million, with the latter generating $8.3 million in revenue and $4.6 million in EBITDA over the trailing twelve months to January 2026.

The company also completed a redomiciliation from France to Luxembourg on July 6, 2026, and refinanced $33.8 million (€29.3 million) in convertible bonds after a principal shareholder, Irata, declined to convert them.

Looking ahead, Atari says it will continue investing in its games pipeline and “selectively consider potential acquisitions,” with its full audited annual report still pending final procedures.

Atari’s results are prepared under IFRS, the international accounting standard used across the EU, rather than US GAAP. That distinction matters; Atari actually reports two different “operating income” figures in its results: “current operating income” and a separate “operating income” line.

That second figure, excluding Thunderful, jumped to $4.5 million (€3.9 million) from a $4.5 million (€3.9 million) loss a year earlier — but Atari says that swing is mostly down to a one-off, non-cash accounting gain of $5.1 million (€4.4 million) linked to the Thunderful deal and not a sign the underlying business grew.

Ustwo Games was pushed out of mobile by the rise of free-to-play – but the mobile way of doing things is coming to PC

Ustwo Games has always been synonymous with tactile mobile game experiences, chiefly their breakout hit Monument Valley and subsequent releases Assemble With Care and Desta: The Memories Between. Earlier this year it announced plans to change that, and shift to a PC-first strategy.

It’s far from the only mobile-first firm to begin looking for new pastures. Back in 2023 mobile giant FunPlus unveiled a cross-platform strategy, bringing titles like Aniimo to PC and console, while Outfit7, the firm behind the Talking Tom mobile franchise (which has more than 26 billion downloads under its belt), now has its sights set on PC.

Maria Sayans

During a keynote at this year’s Develop conference, Ustwo Games CEO Maria Sayans said the decision to move to PC should have been made earlier. “Some of our projects that never saw the light of day could’ve been killed sooner,” she said, saying that might have meant the company could have avoided laying off four of its 30 employees earlier this year. “For a team our size and one that has never done redundancies, it was really painful,” said Sayans (who subsequently announced plans to hire more contractors rather than full-time staff to reduce costs). “Inevitably, I look back and think that had we made this decision sooner, we wouldn’t be in that situation.”

At the same time, the studio took some bigger swings that would ultimately help to set it up for the future. “We did three new ideas in different genres that we had not done before,” said Sayans, “which was wonderful because we learned so much and stretched our ability to look at what we could do. If we hadn’t done that, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today.”

This experimentation let Ustwo adapt mobile’s tactile features to other platforms before fully committing to PC.

Monument Valley remains the firm’s best-known game.

“We’re still going to have mechanics that are very tactile, quick to understand, and incredibly satisfying,” said Daniel Gray, chief creative officer and game director at Ustwo Games, during the Develop talk. “A lot of what we do transitions over.”

“Another thing that will persist is making the most of the people that are working on the game – the life experiences and interests they have, leaning into them and allowing a game to feel genuine… The philosophy of how we make stuff will transition too.”

Free-to-play dominance

Gray noted that Ustwo always aimed to offer players a meaningful experience on mobile, rather than a simple distraction. But over time, the studio recognised the mobile market was shifting away from this approach.

“[When making Assemble with Care], we really believed in making games a more artistic medium for your average person,” he explained. “Our mission was to have somebody go, ‘You know what? I’m not just going to play match-three games as a distraction on my phone. I’m going to go there for a story, an experience, to feel something, to walk away having changed my mind on the world to some degree’.”

“I was full of positivity then that the mobile industry was going to go, ‘No, people are going to read short stories and play interactive media on their phone as a wholesome form of entertainment.’ Ten years later, that’s turned out not to be the case.”

Gray said that if Ustwo had remained mobile-first, it would have needed to adopt a free-to-play model, which he was not comfortable with.

“I want to tell stories. I want to do finite things. I want to focus on polish rather than extensive gameplay. I think we need to do the things that we’re personally interested in doing to do a good job of them.”

“Platform holders wanted to make games that had more retention and lasted longer. We’ll never be good at that”

Another motivation, said Sayans, was that Ustwo was being pushed toward a free-to-play model by platform holders.

“They wanted to make games that had more retention and lasted longer. So as a business model, we would become a free-to-play developer. We’ll never be good at that. It’s so against our DNA that it was impossible to even consider, and we didn’t want to do it anyway.

“Later, it became clear that it’s also incredibly difficult, and the barriers are really, really high on free-to-play. So that was never going to be a path for us.”

At the same time, Sayans said that producing premium mobile games had also become financially unsustainable. “We are a company with an average cost per employee similar to an AAA developer. We are an expensive studio making games with sensibilities that were not going to fly on mobile.”

Outsiders

For Ustwo, the idea of transitioning from mobile began with Assemble with Care, the company’s first PC release. But Alba: A Wildlife Adventure was the first time the team felt like they “were making a real video game.”

“It became clear that we needed to actually shift more rapidly towards PC [after that], and to reorganise the company and rethink the future,” said Sayans.

Gray agreed, adding that even when Ustwo focused on mobile development, the team did not feel aligned with the broader mobile industry.

“We’d go to mobile conferences, and everyone would be banging on about retention of active users, whereas our game lasts an hour, and it costs us however many millions to make. We always felt somewhat outside of that sphere – we felt a little bit between that and what people did on PC and console.

Desta: The Memories Between attempted to appeal to both PC and mobile players, and struggled as a result. | Image credit: Ustwo

The transition to PC was reinforced by Desta, which represented a significant departure from Ustwo’s typical projects. Rather than focusing on tactile puzzle-solving, Desta combined elements of turn-based tactics and sports games. It was an attempt to “make a game that was fully mobile but also for PC,” in the the words of chief development officer Peter Pashley, which Gray admitted “didn’t necessarily work out” given the underwhelming sales.

“We had to accommodate two very different sets of players,” he said. “Being trapped between those two audiences, we started going further down a path of thinking about what it would be like if we built stuff for PC and console from scratch.”

Peter Pashley, chief development officer at Ustwo Games, said the studio’s future was built on deprioritising mobile development. .

“We aren’t thinking about mobile. We need to have a clear vision of the people playing the game and make the game for them”

“People have asked, is this still going to be released on mobile? Surely you’ve got to still put them out on mobile?” Pashley noted. “But we’ve said, no, we need to make sure we have a clear vision of the people playing the game and make the game for them. We’re lucky enough for things to work out and be successful. So maybe we’ll find a way to go back to mobile, but it can’t be something that’s in the back of our head.”

Gray emphasised that maintaining Ustwo’s core identity is a priority during the transition to a PC-first approach, acknowledging that this shift will be “challenging.”

“We’ve not shipped any of these PC-first games yet, even though we’re making three of them,” he said. “We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been in these payable contracts with platform models. To a certain degree, that’s protected us from the reality of what it’s like to ship games. We were releasing games knowing that development was paid for and that we weren’t going to walk away with 10% of what we’d cost back. And because we’re transitioning to what is now a very normal situation, it’s making us second-guess how we approach things.

“Should we be more audience-led and more specific about what we do? Does that stop us from being as creative? What’s the magic, and what’s the structure? We know we need a combination of those things, and we’ve got plans for how we’re going to do that, but we won’t know until we’ve done it.

Gray concluded: “What remains is the challenge of retaining who we are, but also doing things in a completely different way for a different type of player. It’s something we need to get right and keep assessing, but it’s not going to be solved upfront – it’s going to evolve over the next two years.”

Ultimately, he said, that the studio needs to “continue to take risks.”

“Sometimes it’s going to hit big time, sometimes it’s not. But to make good artistic stuff, you need to be able to put yourself out there a little bit and deal with the vulnerability of getting it wrong now and again.”

A different mindset

Outfit7 is also looking outside the mobile market, but for very different reasons from Ustwo. The company has fit comfortably inside the free-to-play model for years, racking up billions of downloads for Talking Tom, but now it’s looking to expand its reach to new audiences. “We know that if you are setting the trends or you are the first adopter, then you can get something out of it,” Jernej Česen, COO and general manager at Outfit7, tells GamesIndustry.biz.

Jernej Cesen | Image credit: Outfit7

“I think that for the entire industry, diversification is the key,” he continues. “If you are not exploring, you are standing still.”

Česen says that the push towards PC started with Outfit7 setting up two small cells of developers internally. “And we said to them, ‘Hey, you are the masters of your future: pitch a game and then you get ownership over [it], so you can decide how you’re going to run it’.” The move resulted in the release of Vampirio on Steam in April, which was followed by Liminal Logistics in June.

Česen says that Outfit7’s PC games are subject to the same approach that has become standard in the mobile development world: rigorous early testing with audiences, followed by the rapid rejection of ideas that don’t land (a mode of operation that is now being adopted in the PC and console world by firms like Avalanche Studios). Otherwise, its PC developers are given free rein on how to do things. “We have just the milestones where we validate this,” says Česen, “validate in the sense of, are you reaching those KPIs?”

Ustwo may have moved to PC to escape a world focused on things like “retention of active users”. But at the same time, the mobile way of doing things is slowly seeping into the PC realm.

Rokky teams up with Revolution Software to bring Broken Sword franchise to China

Game distributor Rokky has partnered with Revolution Software to co-publish its Broken Sword franchise in China.

Under the co-publishing agreement, Rokky is responsible for marketing, translation, localisation, influencer outreach, and community management.

Broken Sword – Shadow of the Templars: Reforged and the upcoming remaster of The Smoking Mirror will be available in both simplified and traditional Chinese.

The remastered titles feature redrawn backgrounds, over 30,000 reanimated character sprites, and enhanced audio.

“We are delighted to be co-publishing with Rokky, who bring enormous experience, and we are excited to work with them to deliver this game to Chinese players and grow our fan base in the east,” said Revolution Software founder and creative director Charles Cecil.

“There has long been a community of Chinese enthusiasts who have loved the Broken Sword series who have urged us to localise and publish it in China. In reforging the games, we invited gamers from China and around the world to play and offer valuable feedback which we enthusiastically incorporated.”

In recent years, Rokky has experienced “particularly strong growth” in China. Its China distribution team will transition to an official publishing unit.

This partnership marks Rokky’s first time in publishing after distributing PC games for publishers including Sony, Capcom, and Team17.

“The Chinese gaming market is massive, and success requires deep local insight into player behaviour and distribution – knowledge that Rokky has cultivated through years of presence in the region,” said Rokky CEO and founder Vadim Andreev.

“While we’ve distributed many titles before, from AAA to indie, publishing a game is an entirely different task requiring a different skill set. It brings with it new challenges, but these are challenges we are excited to tackle.”

Vadim also told GamesIndustry.biz that as Rokky enters “into the field of publishing,” it is “looking forward to learning and continuing to grow in it.”

Last month, Rokky launched an unofficial Steam tool that allows publishers and developers to monitor whether distribution Steam keys have been used.

Microsoft confirms increased Xbox prices in the UK and Europe

Xbox consoles in the UK and Europe will increase from between £130/€150 and £170/€200 following worldwide price hikes announced in late June.

The new UK and Europe prices are as follows:

UK

• Xbox Series S 512GB goes from £299.99 to £429.99
• Xbox Series S 1TB goes from £349.99 to £519.99
• Xbox Series X 1TB Digital goes from £449.99 to £619.99
• Xbox Series X 1TB Disc goes from £499.99 to £669.99

Europe

• Xbox Series S 512GB goes from €349.99 to €499.99
• Xbox Series S 1TB goes from €399.99 to €599.99
• Xbox Series X 1TB Digital goes from €549.99 to €749.99
• Xbox Series X 1TB goes from €599.99 to €799.99

Microsoft cited higher storage and memory costs as the reason for continued price rises. It has also discontinued the 2TB model.

“Console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027,” the company said in a blog post.

“The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles. Unlike phones, computers, speakers, and other consumer devices, consoles are typically not sold at a profit, but instead for less than they cost to make.”

In the weeks following the June price rise announcement, Xbox underwent significant restructuring. This included layoffs impacting 3,200 employees and the divestment of five studios.

Microsoft also reported a $1.7 billion decline in Xbox revenue in 2026, with hardware sales dropping 29% year-on-year due to lower console sales.

In response, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said the firm will “not live on past successes or be trapped by past failures.”

“We will learn from both and put our energy into creating what players will love for decades.”

Sharma also noted that although Xbox gained over 200 new players in FY26, the “business did not grow with our audience.”

“We need to close that gap by investing in what players value. That will take time, but we expect to return to growth by the end of 2027.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that Xbox leadership was “making the necessary decisions required across our content portfolio, platform, and operations to reset the business for long-term growth.”

“We have the best IP in the industry, and talented studios around the world, and believe we can bring these strengths together and expect to return the business to growth in fiscal 2027.”

Xbox is (probably) not for sale | Opinion

For much of this year, each new week has brought with it a new impetus for a rash of articles on Microsoft’s Xbox misfortunes. From deep wounds like layoffs and project cancellations, to stinging papercuts like internal memos, poorly received public statements, or unflattering data points, as the company struggles to turn around a giant business that’s veered terribly off track, each new headline feels like a little fresh bloodletting.

This week’s abrasion came from Microsoft’s own financial results – a third straight quarter of decline for the Xbox business, with a 10% slump in Xbox content and services (and a 29% drop in hardware sales) dragging the results from the company’s “More Personal Computing” division down 4% overall. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talked up an imminent return to growth for the division in the earnings call, with Xbox CEO Asha Sharma reiterating that message in a memo a couple of days later – a brave face on a bad situation, at least.

The results have, unsurprisingly, inspired yet another round of articles about the slow-rolling disaster at Xbox. The narrative is well rooted at this point, every new development presented as further proof that the troubled division is sliding ever closer to an even greater disaster.

Nobody can claim that these financial numbers are good for Xbox – they are not. They are, however, not fresh evidence of anything. In fact, they’re closely in line with expectations set quite some time ago in Microsoft’s own projections. This isn’t evidence of a new or steeper decline for Xbox, merely confirmation that it’s proceeding as expected. The division didn’t miss its expectations or targets; it just hit some very underwhelming ones.

The division didn’t miss its expectations or targets; it just hit some very underwhelming ones.

What these numbers do give us an opportunity to think about, however, is how Xbox sits in relation to the rest of Microsoft’s business – arguably the most important existential question for the platform in the coming years. Amidst the endless analysis of the division’s woes (I’m self-aware enough to acknowledge that I’ve written a fair chunk of that myself), a kind of consensus has been emerging around the idea that Microsoft would actually rather be rid of Xbox, such that the division’s current restructuring is actually packaging it up for sale. That interpretation rests on the idea that Xbox is a drag on Microsoft’s other businesses; a lengthy experiment that never yielded results and is now an expensive distraction from the company’s core, profitable ventures.

If Xbox is a drag on Microsoft, though, it’s only in conceptual or headspace terms – not financial. Financially speaking, all of the woes and throes of recent years at Xbox are barely a rounding error on Microsoft’s overall numbers. This quarter’s 10% decline for Xbox drove a 4% drop for its enclosing division, More Personal Computing – which includes Windows, Surface, and Bing, along with Xbox – but the company’s overall numbers were still up strongly, with an 18% growth in revenue and a 31% growth in net income.

In other words, a brutally bad quarter for Xbox hardly moved the needle at all on the company’s overall results. All of the distress and upset in the gaming division over the past few months – including the bill incurred on severance packages for thousands of Xbox staff – could have been wiped out on Microsoft’s bottom line by a handful of better-than-expected days in the company’s gigantic Cloud and enterprise businesses. It’s worth noting that the Windows business also had a torrid quarter, with revenues dropping 7% – and that was also essentially a rounding error compared to the gigantic numbers flowing through the company’s Cloud services.

A brutally bad quarter for Xbox hardly moved the needle at all on the company’s overall results

That’s not to say that the future of Xbox is safe just because it’s largely unimportant to Microsoft’s bottom line. That particular sword cuts both ways – certainly, Microsoft’s top management isn’t going to lose too much sleep over the numbers coming out of the Xbox division, but equally, a division that’s not contributing significantly to the company’s growth story is an easy sacrifice to make next time some part of the business needs to be dragged kicking and screaming to the altar of efficiency and cost-cutting.

It’s unlikely, however, that there’s any sense of urgency within Microsoft about the idea of selling or spinning off Xbox – to the extent that such an idea has any currency at all. Certainly, there will be some within Microsoft who favour that approach, as there have been some people at the company who have been adamant for the past twenty-five years that Xbox is a needless distraction from the core business. Those people no doubt feel vindicated by recent troubles in the division, and given Microsoft’s famously cutthroat internal politics, are probably keen to twist the knife – perhaps even to carefully brief the idea of ending the firm’s dalliance with gaming for good – but that’s far from saying that they’ve won the argument at last.

If Xbox was to be sold off – if, as quite a few commentators now seem to believe, Asha Sharma’s secret mission is to slim down the division and truss it up as an attractive package to put on the market – then it would need to overcome some very major problems along the way.

Xbox may not be in a healthy state right now, but it still drives billions of dollars of revenue every quarter

First and foremost; Xbox may not be in a healthy state right now, but it still drives billions of dollars of revenue every quarter, not least thanks to major acquisitions like Activision Blizzard. Selling off the division would signal a major strategic retreat, and a costly one at that – realistically, Microsoft would probably have to accept a sale price tens of billions lower than the price it paid for Activision Blizzard, Zenimax, and its various other acquisitions over the past decade or so. That’s a fairly humiliating climbdown for the firm, no matter how much “refocusing on our core objectives” corporate verbiage you couch it in, and it wouldn’t escape notice that it would also shrink quarterly revenues by a few percent, which doesn’t square well with the growth story companies like Microsoft need to reaffirm on every earnings call.

Secondly, there’s the fact that a sale requires two parties – and even if Microsoft did want to sell, it’s not clear who would be buying. Microsoft would absolutely want to sell off the unit wholesale, if it came to it; it doesn’t want to risk being left with a messy collection of commercially unviable components after flogging off the prime parts of the business. That leaves us looking for a buyer with that $40-50bn kind of money to spend – and while big money deals are still possible in the current climate, as the imminent closing of the $55 billion deal to take Electronic Arts private demonstrates, the potential purchasers for a gigantic business like Xbox are extremely thin on the ground.

Companies already in the games space are a non-starter – not only do none of them have the cash or the inclination for that kind of spend, they’d also almost certainly fall foul of competition authorities. Major tech firms like Amazon and Google have scaled back their gaming ambitions in recent years and are now very unlikely to be in the market for such an expensive deal. Tencent might have been a likely candidate only a few years ago; now it’s seemingly slowing its gaming investments and even pulling back from some parts of the business.

Even if Microsoft did want to sell, it’s not clear who would be buying

The EA deal does raise a more distasteful spectre, the possibility of a politically motivated buyout by ideologues seeking cultural sway – but here, too, many of the most likely candidates either have problems of their own or have probably bitten off about as much as they can chew for now. The Ellison family, hoping to finalise their acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery in the next year or so, might be interested in turning their media empire into a gaming powerhouse, for example. However, with the Warner Bros acquisition already proving legally troublesome and the vultures gathering around Oracle’s finances, which underwrite the family’s entire media spending spree, it’s unlikely they’ll have the appetite for another deal on that scale in the immediate future.

Both sides of this equation are difficult to reconcile, in other words. Microsoft’s motivation for selling is far from clear, and the reputational damage from pulling out of the business (especially given the inevitable patterns people will infer from their earlier withdrawal from other consumer spaces such as smartphones and music devices) will give the company serious pause. Even if they do explore a sale, it’s hard to imagine who’s in the market to buy. By far the most likely future for Xbox sees it staying at Microsoft in at least the medium term.

The things Sharma would do if she were packaging Xbox up to sell aren’t all that different from the things she would do to reform the division

Part of the misunderstanding, perhaps, stems from the fact that the things Sharma would do if she were packaging Xbox up to put it on the market aren’t really all that different from the things she would do to reform the division and convince Microsoft’s management that it’s serious about controlling costs and delivering results. At a company as big and fractious as Microsoft, “selling” the Xbox division to the upper management is a task with a lot of parallels to selling it to an outside buyer; it’s easy to see where the confusion can arise.

Of course, this is an assessment that could easily be proved completely wrong in a very short space of time – Microsoft could announce tomorrow that they’re exploring a sale of Xbox to some external bidder or another. The balance of probabilities, however, points very much away from that happening. For all that recent years may have shaken Microsoft’s confidence in the Xbox business, it’s unlikely to be seriously contemplating a sale or spinoff in the foreseeable future; for better or worse, the future of Xbox is almost certainly as part of Microsoft.

PlayStation reports flat Q1 sales, says it’s “cautiously moving forward” with halting physical disc production

Sony reported flat sales in its Games & Network Services (G&NS) segment for its first quarter, but operating income rose 37%, primarily due to US tariff refunds.

However, the firm noted that increased costs for next-generation platforms and restructuring lowered overall earnings.

Sony also addressed negative feedback about its decision to end physical disc production for new PlayStation games beginning January 2028.

CFO Lin Tao stated that while Sony acknowledges the criticism, it is “going to cautiously move forward” with its plans while also engaging with consumers.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers

For the three months ended June 30, 2026:

Overall

• Sales income: ¥2.83 trillion ($17.6 billion), up 8% year-on-year
• Operating income: ¥476.4 billion ($2.9 billion), up 40% year-on-year

Games & Network Services (G&NS)

• Sales income: ¥937.1 billion ($5.8 billion), up 0.6% year-on-year
• Operating income: ¥202 billion ($1.2 billion), up 37% year-on-year

The highlights

Declines in non-first-party game and hardware unit sales were the primary factors behind the G&NS segment’s flat sales in Q1.

First-party game sales fell from 6.9 million to 6 million units, while non-first-party software sales increased slightly from 65.9 million to 66.1 million units.

Total software sales reached ¥526.6 billion ($3.2 billion), with digital software and add-on content accounting for ¥485.2 billion ($3 billion). Physical software generated ¥20.5 billion ($128 million).

Regarding physical production, CFO Lin Tao stated there were “various reasons” for halting physical discs,, the main one “being that digitalisation of contents overall has been progressing.”

“It’s not just for PlayStation, but for all kinds of content, digitalisation is progressing,” she explained. “And so, when we think about the future, we put in a lot of thought and time, and we cautiously considered this, and we came to this conclusion, and we’re going to cautiously move this forward.”

Tao continued: “To this decision we have received various opinions, and people have strong views, and we understand that the community has put forward those views to us. Games are loved by many people, it’s a form of entertainment that’s loved by people, and it’s connected to people’s fond memories in many cases, and so we understand those emotions.

“We want to consider that, and in the future digital ecosystem ‘how do we engage the gamers’ is something that we would like to continue to explore.”

Network services increased 21% year-on-year to ¥172.6 billion ($1 billion). Monthly active users (MAUs) reached 125 million in June, up 2%, marking a record high for the month.

Total playtime declined 4%, but user engagement “continued to be solid” as Q1 “benefited from season updates to major titles and new hit titles.”

Hardware sales totaled ¥222 billion ($1.3 billion), down 10.4% year-on-year. PlayStation 5 unit sales declined from 2.5 million to 1.6 million units.

Sony now forecasts G&NS sales of ¥4.5 trillion ($28.1 billion), up from ¥4.4 trillion ($27.4 billion), and operating income of ¥660 billion ($4.1 billion), up from ¥600 billion ($3.7 billion).

The company also addressed its hardware production outlook given the ongoing memory shortage.

“We have secured the quantity of memory necessary to meet our projected sales volume for FY26, and there is no change to our plan for hardware profitability for FY26 to remain similar to FY25.”

Roblox Q2 revenue rises 36% to $1.5bn

Roblox has announced its second-quarter financial results, highlighting substantial year-over-year revenue growth, despite a minor shortfall in net bookings.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers

For the three months ended June 30, 2026

• Revenue: $1.5 billion (up 36% year-on-year)
• Bookings: $1.6 billion (up 8% year-on-year)
• Net losses: $185 million

The highlights

Despite higher bookings, Roblox said it experienced a shortfall driven by reduced per-hour monetisation among younger users in the US and Canada.

The firm attributed this to a “greater than expected shift of engagement from high monetising, 2025-vintage viral games, to both new and evergreen games with lower hourly monetisation.”

Roblox modified its Recommended for You algorithm to prioritize impressions for “highly retentive games at the expense of near-term monetisation.” This adjustment had a larger than anticipated short-term effect on younger users.

Average daily active users (DAUs) rose 10% year-over-year to 123 million, with notable growth in Japan (67%) and India (64%).

DAUs and hours among users over 18 increased by 32% and 27% year-over-year, respectively.

Average bookings per DAU were $12.66, a 2% year-over-year decline. Average monthly unique payers (MUPs) reached 27 million, up 15%, with average bookings per MUP at $19.25.

By the end of the second quarter, over half of global DAUs had completed age verification following this year’s rollout. More than 70% of users in the US and Australia have been age-checked.

Roblox recently launched two age-based accounts for minors: Roblox Kids for ages five to eight, and Roblox Select for ages nine to 15. These accounts now offer access to more than 30,000 games, representing a 50% increase since launch.

Total hours engaged in the second quarter rose 5% year-over-year to 29 billion. The top 10 games contributed approximately 20% of total hours, a decrease from 30% three years ago.

The platform also saw increased new user sign-ups due to “normal seasonality” and the reinstatement of Roblox in Russia after last December’s ban.

“We remain focused on capturing 10% of the global gaming market and an even greater share in the US,” said CEO David Baszucki. “Q2 delivered year-over-year gains in users and hours, following last year’s incredible growth.”

Baszucki added: “With nearly 4% of global gaming revenue running through Roblox and a vertically integrated platform that unifies discovery, a deeply capable game engine, world-class safety, and a robust economy, Roblox is uniquely positioned to capture 10% of the global gaming market.”

AppMagic: Pokémon Go generates $48.5m during 10th anniversary celebrations

Pokémon Go generated over $48.5 million in in-app purchase revenue during its 10th anniversary week, according to AppMagic data.

This increase occurred during the Road to Legends event, held from July 6 to July 12.

The event featured rotating raids of legendary Pokémon, Ultra Beasts, and Mega-Evolved Pokémon, alongside signature move unlocks and special backgrounds on the run up to Pokémon Go Fest: Global.

As a result, in-app purchase revenue was 5.9 times higher than the previous week and set a new all-time weekly record for the game.

During the same week, Pokémon Go ranked fourth among the world’s highest-grossing apps.

In the past 30 days, the game generated $98.1 million in revenue and received just over four million downloads.

The US accounted for 37% of revenue, followed by Japan at 27%. India contributed 22% of downloads, with the US at 14%.

For July, Pokémon Go ranked as the seventh highest-grossing app globally, ahead of Roblox.

“The 10th anniversary week was a huge draw for several reasons,” Matthew Reyonlds, editor of dedicated Pokémon Go publication One More Catch, tells GamesIndustry.biz.

“The ‘Road of Legends’ event saw just about every legendary Pokémon return to raids, while the optional £20/$20 battle pass offered a Gold Bottle Cap, a rare and powerful item which allowed players to fully max out a Pokémon’s stats.

“The week was then capped off by the annual Pokémon Go Fest: Global event and the full debut of Mega Mewtwo, one of the most anticipated Pokémon in the game.”

Reynolds added: “Even if monetisation has increased since the Scopely acquisition, Pokémon Go has done well to keep the core loop accessible for free players, while adding two or three major features a year since its debut.

“Features such as trading, player battles, and shiny encounters have helped it become the full Pokémon experience many were asking for at launch.”

Since its 2016 launch, Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 700 million times and has generated more than $6.4 billion in revenue, according to Appmagic estimates.

Following Scopely’s acquisition of Niantic, GamesIndustry.biz spoke to Scopely’s president of games Ed Wu and head of M&A operations Heather Tacskovics about the game’s future – which does not involve a sequel.

“I think that doing a sequel within a franchise is pretty clearly not the correct thing to do,” said Wu, who was previously SVP of Pokémon Go at Niantic.

“There’s such a big community because of the way that our games can be a part of folks’ lives wherever they go, however they explore the world. Creating a sequel that divides the community doesn’t make as much sense.

“If and when we do something new, it will really have to be from a different angle, but still with this notion of inspiring people to explore the world together.”

“I learnt a tonne about enamel pin manufacturing” – Brigador developer Stellar Jockeys on the secrets of selling video game merchandise

Since the indie boom of the 2010s, one piece of advice commonly given to smaller studios has been the value of merchandise.

The logic broadly goes as follows: game development is a risky business, and even if your game is a success, it’s not uncommon for the studio to still struggle financially. Merchandise is a way for a community to support the developer and provide a revenue stream that isn’t tied to game releases.

It’s a simple pitch, but delivery can be very complex. Stellar Jockeys, the developer of the Brigador series of isometric mech tactical shooters, began selling merchandise in 2018 after seeing initiatives like Pinny Arcade on the convention circuit, where studios at the Penny Arcade trade show produce enamel pins that can be collected by visiting booths across the floor.

Hugh Monahan | Image credit: Stellar Jockeys

“I just knew that was something that I wanted to tap into,” studio head and co-founder Hugh Monahan explains. “Anything you can do as a supplementary income stream for game development. Our first game took five years to make; our second game took ten, so any support structures you can develop along the way can help a lot. People kept asking whether there were additional ways they could support us. I wanted that to come with something, and so merch was a good way to do that.”

Initially, Stellar Jockeys turned to third-parties that specialise in games merchandise, like Fangamer and Indiebox, but that didn’t work out. “So the only recourse was to just do it ourselves.”

Part of the reason for doing merchandise was to help with the cost of exhibiting at trade shows. Monahan looked to Californian studio The Behemoth for inspiration after wondering how the maker of Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers was able to sustain a huge footprint on the floor at shows like Penny Arcade.

“I couldn’t figure it out – this was such an expensive operation,” he says. “Then I really started digging in and spoke to some of the guys who work there. They do it because they have such a strong merch operation. It mostly defrays the cost of exhibiting, or ends up being profitable for them.”

Hidden complexity

One of the first pieces of merchandise that Stellar Jockeys made was T-shirts. As a result, Monahan has some to-the-point advice: “Don’t do T-shirts as your first piece of merch.”

Why? There’s a huge amount of depth and complexity in creating clothing, making it an incredibly complicated enterprise to run.

Don’t start with T-shirts, advises Hugh Monahan | Image credit: Stellar Jockeys

“It’s awful,” Monahan laughs. “You’ve got to learn about fabrics. There are a load of different T-shirt styles. You have to learn about printing – are you going to screen print or use another technique? – and then you have split across all these different sizes. There’s a huge variety of SKUs. I jumped in on one of the hardest pieces of merch to get into.

“And then on top of that, Brigador has a very male audience, as we have come to learn. In my naivety, I thought we were going to do unisex shirts and women’s shirts. We still have inventory of the original run of women’s shirts. So if any ladies out there want any skull and laurel T-shirts, I would love to sell them.”

By contrast, something simple like a pin is “fabulous”, Monahan says.

“Anything that is a single item that you can have control over or are more direct in the fabrication end, where there’s not all these different variables that you are working through,” he continues. He got a useful introduction to this after Stellar Jockeys was accepted into the Pinny Arcade program at PAX. “I learned a tonne about enamel pin manufacturing. The nice thing was that we just gave them a design, they approved it, and then they handled all of the backend. There were fewer failure points, and we were able to piggyback on their brand. Those did pretty well for us.”

Pins for the win | Image credit: Stellar Jockeys

Following those first steps, Stellar Jockeys now has an extensive merchandise operation that’s now a consistent source of revenue. One of the merchandise lines that the team are most proud of is a branded lighter produced by Zippo.

“They were really nice to work with. We iterated with them on a design and did the branded lighter,” Monahan explains, adding that manufacturing was more expensive when compared with pins, but the lighters sold “extraordinarily well.”

“That was the part where I started to understand the appeal – fans will buy your stuff, but you can have stuff that has a broader appeal than just this very niche connection to your game. It was a black Zippo lighter with a skull on it. That ended up doing really well for us and started to teach me more about how to position merchandise relative to our audience and audiences in general.”

Among other things, the firm has learned just how wide its remit is when it comes to setting prices that the audience will pay, which goes well beyond the level that it would accept for the game. Stellar Jockeys producer Benjamin Glover says there are hugely different “price expectations” for actual goods versus games. For example, the studio started selling pewter figures of some of Brigador’s vehicles in 2023, which cost much more than the game they are from.

“People are willing to pay more for less,” he says. “Some of our merch packs are between $25 and $35, but our first game, which took ages to make, can be bought on sale for $5.” The lesson: people will happily pay more money for “a physical, tangible thing.”

Legislative battles

Selling merchandise hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing, with lessons learned about what type of product will sell and how exactly it should be brought to market. Since Stellar Jockeys entered the merch game, the geopolitical landscape has made the logistics increasingly complicated. “Legislation has changed a lot since we started selling merchandise,” Monahan explains. “You’ve had the evolving position of what can be sent where.”

For example, it is no longer possible for them to sell the aforementioned lighters overeseas due to new legislation introduced by the US Department of Transportation, which states that you cannot send flammable materials on a plane (the government body argues that the sparker on a Zippo lighter falls under this rule). So the company can only sell domestically.

“Brexit was a huge pain in the backside”

Prior to that, “Brexit was a huge pain in the backside,” says Monahan, “because we couldn’t sell stuff directly to the UK anymore. Eventually, they got it so you just need an import agent, but they are insanely expensive.

“The only real solution for that is either having an enormous merchandise operation that warrants someone to handle all that for you, or having a UK distribution centre. And then that is its own complication; we’ve got a pretty decent merchandise operation for an independent studio [but] for a global merchandise operation, we’re a tiny speck.” The firm still doesn’t offer its range in the UK.

The 1.0 version of Brigador was released in 2016, and this year it gained a sequel, Brigador Killers | Image credit: Stellar Jockeys

Lessons learned

What advice does Stellar Jockey have for indie studios looking to enter the merchandise business? First and foremost, don’t sell posters.

“We cut ourselves off at the knees on that,” Monahan says. “There’s a reason why posters are a very specific set of dimensions. It’s because of shipping tubes. When we made our first poster, it was this giant square that didn’t fit any format, so we had to fold it, which was awful. Nobody wants a hand-folded poster… We learnt the hard way why a lot of these things are done the way that they are done, and it pretty much burnt almost all of our initial poster run.”

Stellar Jockeys sells models of the mechs from Brigador | Image credit: Stellar Jockeys

Second, when you level up and start offering T-shirts, Monahan says it’s important to have a proper understanding of concepts like sizing distribution.

“There’s a standard bell curve of sizes that’s the general population expectation of what sizes are going to sell,” he explains. “Ours was completely shifted off of that.”

Above all, the Stellar Jockeys team says it’s crucial to recognise that merchandise is an “all in” enterprise, rather than something that can be left to one side.

“There are no half measure here,” Monahan says. “It’s one thing to bring stuff to a convention and sell it. That’s very doable, especially a small thing like a patch. You can fill a backpack with enough of those and sell them throughout the event. But if you actually want to do an in-house operation, it is a full commitment. This is a long-term relationship. There’s no dipping in and dipping out.”

He also advises that studios focus should focus on just delivering a single item in the first instance and expand once that’s successful, rather than launching a full range right out of the gate.

“It’s about finding one piece that is your entry point, that you are passionate about or know enough about to get it right, and then just focus on doing that one thing really well,” Monahan says. “And then if you find you still have an appetite for it and if there’s an audience that is willing to purchase this stuff, then you can start building out from there. You don’t want to jump into dealing with multiple sizes or all of those kinds of things.”

Benjamin Glover | Image credit: Stellar Jockeys

Glover adds that for studios that already have a community, there is no harm in simply asking your fans. “You can survey your own audience and ask them what they’d buy,” he says. “Some people can be very forthright.”

Monahan also points out that while there are considerable upsides to selling physical merchandise, you can open yourself up to big issues if you don’t take the process seriously.

“The opportunity to damage your reputation is significant if you are not committed to the process,” he says. “If you’re not properly representing what you are selling.”

Looking back, Monahan regrets starting out with T-shirts, and laments the mistakes with posters. Yet despite all the bumps in the road that Stellar Jockeys has faced when it comes to merchandising, he says that the venture has “absolutely” been worth it for the studio.

“I went into this always thinking of it in terms of merchandise as marketing,” he says. “I would rather spend $10,000 making some cool merch and selling it, even if we’re not making a profit off of it between the labour and cost of goods, because [it results in] a cool piece that someone has on their desk. That’s something that keeps hitting.”

Xbox revenue plunges $1.7bn, with hardware dropping 29% YoY

Microsoft has published its latest financial results, with Xbox revenue down 7% for the full year and 10% in the fourth quarter.

Growth in Game Pass partially offset annual declines, but hardware revenue dropped 29% due to reduced console sales.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers

For the three months ended June 30, 2026:

• Revenue: $90 billion (up 18% year-on-year)
• Net income: $35.8 billion (up 31% year-on-year)
• More Personal Computing (incl. Xbox) revenue: $12.9 billion (down 4% year-on-year)

The highlights

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the company’s Q4 results as a “very strong close to what was a record fiscal year.”

“Going forward, we have two goals. First, ensuring AI empowers every person, amplifying their agency and ambition,” said Nadella. “Second, empowering every organisation to build their own continuous learning loop and ensuring that they don’t outsource their core IP.”

Microsoft’s overall revenue was driven by its Cloud segment, which increased 27% to $59.3 billion.

Its Intelligent Cloud services also rose 32% to $39.3 billion, while Productivity and Business Processes grew 14% to $37.8 billion.

The 4% revenue decrease in More Personal Computing was attributed to a 10% drop in Xbox content and services.

The firm noted that during the same period last year, Xbox “benefited from strong first-party content performance.”

Hardware revenue declined 13% and is projected to decrease further year over year.

For its full-year results, Microsoft posted an 18% increase in total revenue of $331.8 billion. Operating income rose 21% to $155.2 billion, while net income increased 22% to $133.7 billion.

Following Microsoft’s fourth-quarter and full-year results, it undertook layoffs affecting 4,800 roles across its organisation, resulting in a 2.1% cut to its global workforce.

“We are making the necessary decisions required across our content portfolio, platform, and operations to reset the business for long-term growth,” said Nadella.

“We have the best IP in the industry, and talented studios around the world, and believe we can bring these strengths together and expect to return the business to growth in fiscal 2027.”

This included 1,600 positions at Xbox, with further reductions planned throughout FY27, totaling 3,200 roles.

As part of the restructuring, four studios transitioned to new management. Double Fine Productions and Compulsion Games became independent, while Undead Labs and Ninja Theory began negotiations for new ownership.

Arkane Leon began consultation proceedings to “review potential strategic options.”

Yesterday, Double Fine announced it cut 23 roles following its complete separation from Xbox earlier this week.

“Our business is changing because the world around it is changing,” said Microsoft EVP and chief people officer Amy Coleman.

“The way technology is built, deployed, and used is transforming faster than at any point in my time here. Our customers’ needs are shifting, the business models that serve them are shifting, and that means the work itself – what we do, where we focus, and how we’re organised – has to transform too.”

“People want to play arcade racers again” – How the developer of Wreckreation went from a company-wide redundancy notice to working on a sequel

When we last heard from Fiona Sperry in December, she had just put the entire team at Three Fields Entertainment on notice of redundancy.

The studio had released driving game Wreckreation barely six weeks previously. But in a LinkedIn post, Sperry – who was previously studio head at Burnout maker Criterion – explained that Three Fields would “not see revenue from game sales for the foreseeable future,” and that without “the enthusiasm or financial support from our publisher [THQ Nordic] to continue development, we simply cannot sustain the studio in its current form.”

Eight months later, a lot has changed. “As it turned out, I didn’t make any redundancies,” Sperry tells GamesIndustry.biz.

Fiona Sperry | Image credit: Fiona Sperry

She went public early about the risk of job losses as a way to raise awareness of the crisis Three Fields found itself in. “I thought, well, no one can help us if they don’t know we need helping,” she says. “It was shit timing because it was before Christmas.”

In response, several people suggested starting a Patreon for Wreckreation, and Sperry noted the game Paralives from Alex Massé had found success through its Patreon programme. “And so we said, ‘Well, do you know what? We’ll give it a go’.” The company launched its Patreon the same month.

“Then in January, the team all came back from Christmas and they were like, ‘Look, we want to carry on.’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s a bit risky, because basically we’ve got about three months’ worth of money. So we can give it a go, but obviously what we’re risking is your redundancy money’.”

But the plan worked. Thanks to Patreon funds donated by more than a thousand backers, Three Fields was able to continue working on Wreckreation, ultimately delivering eighteen updates to fix problems like the cars’ handling (an issue that was picked up on in reviews).

Now, Wreckreation 2 has been announced. But it’s being made by a completely different company – When Tides Turn. So what’s going on?

End of the road

Sperry calls the last year “one of the most commercially challenging periods in my career,” a time when she was worrying whether the company would even be able to make payroll. Wreckreation was released even though the team knew it had problems. “We were aware of all our issues, but we got to a point where we had to publish it,” she says. “We’d had to make decisions that we probably wouldn’t have done otherwise if we didn’t have to get a game out and just get money in the door.”

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There were misaligned expectations, too. “I think people were expecting a kind of Burnout-style game, and we made a game that was more about an exploration of freedom and creativity in racing games, which perhaps wasn’t what people wanted.”

Sperry says she “immediately got on Discord” at launch and started talking to players, some of whom were initially cynical. But gradually, Three Fields was able to build, and in some cases rebuild, the relationship with its player base, to the point where Wreckreation 2 is now on the cards.

“If you’d said to me in January we’d be here now in July having announced a sequel, and having actually a lot of support from our players… It’s been quite a journey.”

But the sequel isn’t being made by Three Fields – it’s being made by a new company called When Tides Turn, which has Sperry as its sole director. (Three Fields was originally founded in 2014 by Sperry and Alex Ward, creative director for the Burnout games, who has now taken a step back from the games business.)

Wreckreation 2 will build on a “really solid tech foundation” says Sperry | Image credit: When Tides Turn

Three Fields is still going, Sperry explains. “It’s still the home of those old games,” she says, which include titles like Dangerous Golf and Dangerous Driving, along with Wreckreation. “So if we do any more updates on Wreckreation 1, it would be done under the Three Fields name.”

However, no one works there anymore. “All of the team have been transferred to the new company,” she says. “I remain as a director of both, but they are separate entities.”

Sperry says there are a few reasons for starting a new firm. One is to do something completely on her own. “It’s the first time I’ve started a studio,” she says, adding that the name is intentional. “It’s evocative of how I feel that tides have turned, and looking back over my quite long career and feeling like it’s a new start.”

The sequel dilemma

When Tides Turn is able to make a sequel to Wreckreation because “we essentially sold the [IP] rights from one company to another company,” explains Sperry. As to why, the answer is a little more complex.

“People say, ‘Why are you doing this rather than continue with Wreckreation 1?'” says Sperry. “And it’s like, well, we continued with Wreckreation 1 as long as we could. We did 18 updates. Six of them were content packs, the other 12 were fixes and improvements and things people were asking for. And we tried to do that for as long as we could, but the reality was that we were literally doing it for nothing.

“So in order for us to be able to secure the future for our staff and not end up back in a redundancy position, making a new game was the only path forward.”

Sperry started at Criterion in 1997, and remained at the studio until 2014, ten years after it was bought by EA | Image credit: When Tides Turn

Starting a new game was inevitable, it being another Wreckreation was decidedly less so: Video Game Insights estimates that Wreckreation sold around 32,500 units across Steam. PlayStation, and Xbox, which is not the sort of number that suggests strong demand for a sequel.

“We have had that conversation,” says Sperry, “and some people said to me, ‘Well, why don’t you just do a new name?’ And we did debate that. But I think reality is that we have this core audience who are actually very loyal to it, and who still play it, and have put hundreds and hundreds of hours in it. And I suppose we felt a responsibility to them to continue with it, and to turn that around.”

“Everyone says arcade racing’s dead, and actually, I’m not sure that’s entirely true”

She also notes that there’s still huge affection for the old Burnout games, as evidenced by the r/Burnout subreddit having some 10,000 members. Which begs the question, why not just do Burnout again?

“I mean, if you see the trailer, absolutely we’re making an arcade racing game,” replies Sperry. “Everyone keeps saying that arcade racing is dead and big publishers are staying away from it. And that was the start of my thesis, really, for the new company: everyone says arcade racing’s dead, and actually, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. Every time somebody tries to do one, there’s interest.”

She points to Maverick’s upcoming story-based driving game Clutch as a “really interesting” new title in the racing space. But there’s also the fact that Amazon recently pulled out of publishing Clutch, with gaming head Jeff Gattis telling GamesIndustry.biz that “we didn’t see a real fit in the market for that game.”

Amazon pulled out of publishing Clutch, which is now being self published by Maverick Games | Image credit: Maverick Games

Sperry acknowledges that for the big publishers, the potential size of the arcade racing market probably isn’t large enough. “If you are only making three games and you’re going to focus on those, then maybe that isn’t what you would do. However, there’s still a big audience. I mean, by the time I left EA, Burnout had sold over 25 million copies. So there’s definitely been a market, and I think from everything I’m hearing and seeing, there’s a love for that, and people would like to be playing those games again.”

She also points out that the overheads for When Tides Turn are tiny compared with what the big publishers might throw at a game. “We’re a team of ten people, and we’re self-publishing,” she says. “We’re not EA, we don’t need it to sell 10 million copies.” As touched on by Mike Bithell recently, it’s a case of product/market fit – committing the appropriate resources for the size of the audience.

Pressures

Sperry is bullish about the prospects of Wreckreation 2, but she acknowledges industry circumstances are not favourable. “Obviously there are pressures, of course there are.”

One of those pressures is finding the cash. Any money made by the first Wreckreation goes to Three Fields rather than When Tides Turn. “It’s minimal anyway, so it’s irrelevant,” says Sperry. “Three Fields actually makes more money from our old games.”

Three Fields’ first game was Dangerous Golf in 2016 | Image credit: Three Fields Entertainment

When Tides Turn does, however, have the Patreon fund, which has now been switched over to Wreckreation 2. That alone isn’t enough to fund a new game, but Sperry says she has also been able to secure support from the UK Games Fund.

“Ultimately we’re reliant on the grant and the money that we hope to raise from angel investors,” she says.

It’s no secret that funding is hard to come by in the UK games industry right now, but Sperry thinks the relatively small amounts the company needs are attainable. “I mean, we’re not sitting here saying we need five million pounds. It’s a fairly modest amount, and I feel confident that we can get what we need. I think the challenge is just making sure that we focus on the game, and making sure that the game is as good as it can be.”

“It’s indicative of what you can do when you are transparent with people”

And this time around, Sperry and her team are taking a completely different approach to development. Rather than beavering away in secret before revealing their labours to the world, the team at When Tides Turn is embracing open development on Wreckreation 2, bringing in player feedback from the very start.

Sperry has been partly inspired by the open development approach taken by Evil Raptor, the developers of Far Far West, which launched into Early Access in April, selling over a million units in its first two weeks. “I loved what they were doing,” she says. “It’s indicative of what you can do when you are transparent with people. Although obviously the game’s got to be good, there’s no substitute for that.”

She says the team at When Tides Turn is using Steam’s playtest facility. “We’ll open up a play test, we’ll let people play for a few weeks, then we’ll take all the feedback, close that down, work again, and then update it again. And I think that’s a really exciting way to work, and it keeps you really honest.”

The six months of open development on the Wreckreation updates have been a transformative experience for the team. “Yes, there’s pressure, but actually I’m having a really good time. And I think being that close to customers is brilliant.”

When Tides Turn is embracing open development for Wreckreation 2 | Image credit: When Tides Turn

In particular, she says it has revealed the disconnect between developers and players in terms of what’s important. “I had a really long list of issues with Wreckreation 1 when it launched, of things I thought we needed to fix, and pretty much that list went in the bin on day one,” she says. “Once people start playing your game, that’s when you really work out what matters – and they weren’t necessarily the things that we thought would matter.”

Wreckreation 2 has only been in development for “a few months” – but Sperry says that players were testing builds of the game within a month of starting development, and because the difficult technical aspects were already tackled in the first game, the team is now “building on a really solid tech foundation.”

“Once people start playing your game, that’s when you really work out what matters”

In short, she’s hopeful for the future. “We are finally in a position where I think we’ve got the tech that we need, we’ve definitely got the team that we need, we’ve got an audience that’s already engaged – albeit fairly small at the moment. But we have about a thousand people who are definitely passionate about this game.”

That’s enough to start with, she thinks. And beyond that, she has been buoyed by the way the UK industry rallied round her when times were tough.

“I’ve been very encouraged the last six months by the support I’ve received,” she smiles. “I think that’s indicative of a desire within the UK to remember that actually we’re really good at making games here, and actually there’s not many games here that are still British owned. And I’ve seen that in action, people wanting that to still be a thing. It’s been heartening to see.”

John Hight steps down as Wizards of the Coast president

John Hight, the president of Wizards of the Coast, will be stepping down on September 1. The news was given through a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on July 27.

The filing notes that Hight will continue employment with the company as an advisor after September 1.

Hight joined Wizards of the Coast two years ago, in August 2024. He was previously general manager for the Warcraft franchise at Blizzard, where he worked for nearly 13 years.

John Hight | Image credit: Wizards of the Coast

As head of Wizards of the Coast, he oversaw the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering franchises, as well as a range of video game titles currently in development, including the sci-fi RPG Exodus.

Hasbro, the owner of Wizards of the Coast, recorded a $56 million impairment charge against its video game portfolio last week, confirming it has cancelled “several” games scheduled for release in 2028 and beyond.

Wizards of the Coast provided the following statement to GamesIndustry.biz:

“After two years as President of Wizards of the Coast, John Hight is transitioning from the role, effective September 1. We’re deeply grateful for his leadership and the contributions he’s made to our teams and our games during his tenure. John will continue to support Wizards in an advisory capacity while pursuing other creative and professional opportunities he’s passionate about.

“There is no change to the strength of the Wizards business. Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons continue to perform incredibly well, consistent with our most recent earnings release, and our upcoming 2027 video game slate, including Exodus and Warlock remains on track.

“We’re launching an internal and external search for John’s successor and will share updates as appropriate.”

GamesIndustry.biz spoke to Hight last year, when he expressed interest in making a new Dungeons and Dragons MMO. “I’d love to have that,” he said. “I think that we’ll want to rethink what an MMO is in this day and age. I think the traditional model that Blizzard – well, even before that, Ultima Online, Everquest – pursued, that could use updating.”

At the time of the interview, a team of developers that were formerly working on EA’s cancelled Black Panther game had just joined Wizards of the Coast to work on a new title. The team was led by veteran creative director Michael de Plater, who was a key figure at Monolith Productions, and director of 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. No further details have since been released on what the team is working on.

Hight also talked in the interview about Wizards of the Coast’s collaboration with Stig Asmussen, the director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. Asmussen’s studio Giant Skull was working with the company on an action-adventure game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe – but in May this year, Wizards of the Coast announced that it had ended its publishing agreement with Giant Skull.

“Across the industry, we don’t think enough about how we match the scope to what we’re making” – Mike Bithell on why the world needs an im-slim

2025 was a very bad year for Mike Bithell. In August, he announced that the majority of full-time staff were being let go from Bithell Games, with 11 jobs being made redundant.

Bithell rose to prominence as one of the wave of outspoken indie creators in the early 2010s, releasing his breakout hit Thomas Was Alone in 2012. He followed that up with the stealth game Volume in 2015, along with the “Bithell Shorts” Subsurface Circular and Quarantine Circular. But then Bithell Games started to take on bigger, licensed properties, beginning with John Wick Hex in 2019 and followed by a collaboration with Disney on Tron: Identity and Tron: Catalyst, released in 2023 and 2025, respectively. The company’s headcount grew.

Mike Bithell | Image credit: Bithell Games

Ultimately, it didn’t work out. John Wick Hex did well, selling nearly 450,000 units across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox, according to estimates from Video Game Insights. But the Tron games bombed. VGI reckons that Tron: Catalyst sold only around 16,000 units across Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox (the game was also released on Switch, for which figures aren’t available). VGI data for Tron: Identity are even lower – just under 9,000 units for Steam (again, Switch sales are unavailable).

Given those numbers, it’s little surprise that the company had to downsize. Bithell Games is now just three people: “myself, Alexander [Sliwinski] my business partner, and a marketing person,” Bithell tells GamesIndustry.biz. He’s frank about the awfulness of the situation he faced last summer.

“It sucked,” he says. “It was a very talented team. They were fucking awesome. They were the best people I’ve ever worked with.”

Vampirium 1997 is set in an alternative 1990s | Image credit: Bithell Games

Coming back from that dreadful summer has been hard. “It was a little while before I got started again,” says Bithell. “But I distract myself by coding, and that weirdly ended up being something interesting.” That weird something is Vampirium 1997, an immersive sim in which Dracula is the King of England (the similarity to Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula novels is entirely coincidental, Bithell says – he wasn’t aware of Newman’s books).

“I needed a project just from a ‘keeping myself sane’ point of view,” explains Bithell. “I decided to learn Godot, because I’ve been using Unity for all these years and I was ready to try something else. So just as a hobby thing, I started to play with Godot, and then made prototypes of different things, because that’s how I learn engines. And one of them, a couple of months later, turned into the beginnings of this. But it was a tough time. It was a really tough time.”

Im-slim

Vampirium 1997, as a small, experimental game based on new IP, is the antithesis of working on Disney-licensed titles. “It is nice to have complete control and to… not have to worry about the absolutely reasonable concerns of major corporations,” says Bithell, who’s relishing the freedom to “just make something that feels very me, and to be able to talk about it completely freely and give honest, complete answers to what we’re doing with it. I’m really enjoying that aspect of it.”

“Right now I’m loving what I’m doing,” he adds. “I want to go wherever this game takes me. I genuinely think there’s awesome potential.”

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In Vampirium 1997, the player is an assassin in the employ of Dracula. But unlike the giants of the immersive sim genre like Thief, Deus Ex, or Dishonored, the game uses a minimalist, top-down approach with static character portraits and verb-based choices. Bithell is calling it an “im-slim”.

“It’s taking the possibility space, the verbiage, the ability to figure out your own path through a space of immersive sims, but then abstracting it into this tile-based game,” he says.

“I can make a mechanic very quickly, I can add a new verb to the game in a couple of days”

It’s a bold format to experiment with. Games in the genre are often critically well received, but are rarely huge sellers, and often take an enormous amount of time to produce owing to the complexity of the emergent gameplay. It seems like an awful lot to take on as a single developer. Is it really possible to do an im-slim?

“I hope so,” responds Bithell. “It’d be a terrible shame if it wasn’t. I think for me, it’s much like real dieting. It’s about slimming the right aspects of it.”

His strategy is to make the visuals of the game as simple as possible while putting the majority of development time into the game’s intricate web of interactions. “That, to me, is the thing that I care about as a player of those games.” Trimming the game down to tiles and words “frees me up to massively overinvest in the possibility space,” he says. “So I can make a mechanic very quickly, I can add a new verb to the game in a couple of days. And when you compare that to if you wanted to add a new mechanic to a traditional 3D game, obviously that’s an enormous investment of time.”

Vampirium 1997 uses a tile-based system | Image credit: Bithell Games

Of course, with something like that, the temptation is to always keep adding. “As a designer, the form encourages experimentation, it encourages you to keep expanding,” acknowledges Bithell. “In a traditional 3D environment, that’s feature creep. That’s a nightmare for your entire team. With this game though, something that starts as a very small idea can scale up and become something. And that’s the strength of this game.”

He gives the example of adding a “push” verb in response to a playtester asking why they didn’t have the option to push another character off a balcony. That, in turn, sparked new ideas. Can you push characters into objects to damage them? Can you shove them into different rooms? “That verb that started as the balcony push becomes the shove verb, and then has all of these interesting tweaks on gameplay elsewhere in the game.”

“As a creative, that’s the good stuff when you can actually just run through an idea and see where it takes you,” says Bithell. But crucially, the time impact is small – measured in days rather than months of extra development time.

Risk versus reward

Vampirium 1997 was announced in early July after only nine months in development, and with no inkling of a release date. One might think that the early reveal was a way to get investors on board – but that’s not the case, says Bithell. “No, we don’t want investment. I don’t want any money coming in from anyone else.”

Now Bithell Games has been stripped down to a skeleton staff, he thinks the money coming in from back catalogue sales will be enough to sustain the firm for the near future. “We are obviously a very cheap company to run at this point.”

More to the point, Bithell questions whether investors would be interested in something so unproven. “It is a very experimental game. I think you would actually have a hard time convincing a publisher this early that this concept works. We have faith in it, but it is a weird game.”

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More generally he laments what he sees as risk aversion among game publishers, with most now only willing to fund projects once they are already well advanced. “You have to convince the publishers that you are a sure thing. And the problem is that requires people either to go into massive debt or to have a previously successful thing. And a lot of developers who are in the position we are – where we do have a back catalogue and an ability to sustain for a little while – are looking at that situation and going, ‘Sorry, so why do I need to go to a publisher for the last 20% in exchange for an enormous cut of what we would ever make, if they’re not interested in helping us to get to the finish line? Why would we let them join in the fun of actually launching the game and making money?’ That seems counterproductive.”

“Why do I need to go to a publisher for the last 20% in exchange for an enormous cut?”

He says he understands why publishers have become more cautious in recent years, and doesn’t want to “knock all publishers with the same brush,” but recognises that it has become more difficult for developers to get new games off the ground.

“I remember when we were pitching games to publishers a decade ago, you could basically have a really nice document with great artwork, and a nice idea, and a track record of shipping games, and you could walk in and you could get good funding for a good game. But now, in many cases, you actually need to announce the game in order to prove the audience is there to get people to come to you.”

Sensible scope

On paper, Vampirium 1997 is a risky game thanks to its experimental nature and the patchy financial success of previous immersive sims. But Bithell is confident. He says it’s all about determining the appropriate scope for the size of the potential audience – the product/market fit.

“The thing that I think other industries are frankly better than us at doing is going: what is the market for this product? And then making the amazing, revolutionary step of going, well, what’s the scale of project we should make for that, then? And I think where a lot of games go wrong with immersive sims is they go, ‘This will be the one that crosses over to mainstream AAA, so we will go for a big visual flourish, we’ll spend a lot of money on it’.”

The possibility space in Vampirium 1997 is explored through text | Image credit: Bithell Games

Bithell is taking the opposite approach, making something with a very small budget and then seeing whether the audience is there for it before building up. “I think across the industry, we don’t think enough about how we match the scope to what we’re making,” he says. “It’s the stuff that other industries figured out 70 years ago. I think optimism unfortunately often plays too big a role, and I’m very guilty of that. I’ve definitely made that mistake in the past of going, ‘No, this one will be the version of this genre that absolutely blows up’.”

“Optimism unfortunately often plays too big a role”

For Vampirium 1997, by contrast, the aim is to slowly build interest through social media – although Bithell says a key component is the game’s mailing list, through which he has been releasing chapters of a story called The Lost Portrait which is building up the game’s lore. “Everything old is new again,” he says regarding the sudden reemergence of newsletters. “The places we’re having success right now with our marketing and spreading the word are the things that basically I was doing in 2012.”

And although he says there’s been a “vacuum of support” in the industry since publishers began pulling back from funding early-stage projects, he has been heartened to see studios step in to fill the gap. “There’s definitely a long history of indies helping each other out with stuff,” he says. “People are pulling together for warmth.”

Pragmata and Resident Evil franchise boost Capcom’s Q1 ordinary profit by 81% to $252.5m

Capcom released its Q1 financial results, reporting significant growth in net and ordinary profit driven by strong sales of Pragmata and catalogue titles – particularly its Resident Evil franchise.

The company stated it is “on track” to achieve its full-year forecast of ¥210 billion ($1.3 billion) in net sales and ¥58 billion ($367.5 million) in net income.

The numbers

For the three months ended June 30, 2026:

• Net sales: ¥70.4 billion ($429.5 million), up 54.7% year-on-year
• Operating profit: ¥41 billion ($250.1 million), up 66.9% year-on-year
• Ordinary profit: ¥41.4 billion ($252.5 million), up 81.1% year-on-year
• Net income: ¥29.1 billion ($177.5 million), up 69.2% year-on-year

The highlights

Capcom credited its Digital Earnings segment as the main driver of Q1 performance, generating net sales of ¥54.6 billion ($333 million), up 83% year-on-year, and operating profit of ¥37.5 billion ($228.7 million), up 87.5%.

Total unit sales reached 23.81 million, surpassing 14.16 million units sold in the same period last year. This includes the April launch of new IP Pragmata, which has sold over 2.5 million units worldwide. The game reached 1 million copies sold in two days and 2 million in 16 days.

Regarding catalogue titles, Capcom noted that “various initiatives for cultivating a wider user base drove sales growth” during the quarter, including pricing strategies, animated tie-ins, and multiplatform releases.

Resident Evil Requiem was a standout, now exceeding 8 million units sold. Capcom also reported “ongoing sales growth” from other franchise titles, led by Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 2.

Devil May Cry 5 reached cumulative sales of 14 million units. Street Fighter 6 benefited from “bolstered coordination between its games and esports activities,” resulting in 60 million units sold.

Overall, catalogue title unit sales reached 21.26 million, up from 13.36 million units last quarter.

Capcom’s Q1 earnings were further supported by its Arcade Operations and Amusement Equipment divisions, driven by “efficient operations of existing stores and promoting new store formats” and sales of its new smart pachinko machine.

Looking ahead, Capcom’s forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2027, remains unchanged from its full-year projection in May 2026.

Games for Change Festival to expand and move to new cities

Games for Change (G4C) has announced that its annual festival will be hosted in a new city during odd-numbered years, starting with Arizona in 2027.

As GamesBeat reports, the New York-based nonprofit organisation has partnered with Arizona State University (ASU) for next year’s event, taking place October 11 to 13.

As part of the partnership, ASU’s Endless Games and Learning Lab will support G4C participants and offer access to game design courses.

Both parties will also collaborate on research projects exploring AI, game ecosystems, and how games can support workplace learning.

The G4C Festival will return to New York in even-numbered years. It will resume a three-day schedule due to increased attendance, which reached roughly 1,000 in-person visitors this year.

“Bringing the Festival to Arizona State University is about widening the room, so more of the creators, developers, educators, and researchers doing this work can be part of it,” said Games for Change president Susanna Pollack.

ASU Endless Games and Learning Lab founding director Mark Ollila added: “This partnership recognises the power of microcredentials in building competency-based learning paths that are flexible, meaningful and future-facing.

“Our lab focuses on ‘make to learn, play to learn and learn to earn’ – using games not just as content, but as a mechanism for skills development, exploration and economic opportunity.”

G4C also partnered with London Games Festival earlier this year for its inaugural Games for Change London Summit, which took place on April 15.

The summit was designed to “bring together industry professionals, educators, policymakers, and innovators to explore how games can inspire positive social change.”

Last week, G4C announced the winners of this year’s awards, with Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight receiving the Game and Experience of the Year awards.

Hexecutable’s Consume Me received Best Narrative, Best Gameplay, and the Indie Breakout Award, while Thatgamecompany won the Industry Leader Award.

It also published its Raising Good Gamers report, which offers a roadmap for better supporting families who play games by grounding parental concerns about gaming in “evidence rather than fear.”

“This is us speaking to the world” – Why London is keen to host esports events like the Valorant Masters

Last month, London hosted the Valorant Masters, one of the biggest dates in the calendar for Riot Games’ tactical shooter.

This isn’t the first time that the city has hosted big esports shows. In 2024, London was the venue of the League of Legends World Championship, while last year the UK capital hosted the Blast Premier London Open, a Counter-Strike event.

It’s a deliberate strategy: City Hall wants London to be “the destination of choice for esports,” says Justine Simons OBE, the deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries.

“We know it’s an area that’s growing super fast,” she says. “The global audience is 640 million, and it’s predicted to be worth $10 billion by 2033. This is a huge opportunity. It’s something that has been growing and growing over the last decade, certainly in the last few years.”

The character Gekko from Valorant | Image credit: Riot Games

Research published last month by the Mayor’s office found that 39,700 people physically attended an esports event in London in 2024, and claimed that hosting these shows can bring in around £30 million for the city’s economy.

Esports is just one arm of London’s strategy for video games, sitting alongside the millions that the Mayor of London has invested in the sector, usually via Games London, which runs the London Games Festival.

“It’s all part of a bigger strategic story,” Simons argues. “It’s not something that’s jumped out of nowhere. We’ve been on this for a decade, really. What’s clear is that it’s really starting to pay off now.”

She adds that London is already the biggest European city for esports, but says that City Hall isn’t looking to rest on its laurels.

The planning process

On Riot’s side, the planning for an event begins between 18 and 24 months beforehand.

“We have four big regions where we rotate our international events: the Americas, EMEA, South East Asia and Korea, and then China,” explains John Needham, president of publishing and esports at Riot Games. “We try to balance regions across all our esports so we’re not in the same region with all our esports at the same time.”

John Needham | Image credit: Riot Games

From there, it’s a case of narrowing down to a specific country, and then cities.

“We start looking at player density in cities,” Needham continues. “We have a lot of data on how many players we have.”

After that, Riot looks at “access”, which Needham says is “great” for London. “It’s so accessible across all of Europe.” Then the next step is venues, which is generally when the cities themselves become involved in the process.

“These days, cities will really lean in to help and give us areas where we can do fan activations, to help us promote the event around the city,” Needham says. “But mostly it’s about player density and accessibility for other players to come participate in our event.”

As Riot gets closer to its events – about a year out – the company starts to look at what is happening in the game.

“We leverage our esports events as platforms to do big game announcements,” Needham says. “We want them to be these big moments for our players where a bunch of different things come together: music, consumer products, esports, and game announcements. We deliver these really memorable moments for our players. We’ll start looking at that, at the thematics that are going to be happening in the game, and then we’ll start building our broadcast kits and what we actually need to produce the event.”

Then, a month out, Riot ramps up the marketing to build excitement going into the show; not just the matches, but also the other content at the event.

“We have four big regions where we rotate our international events”

“We’ll start building all this momentum going into what players will see going into the weekend,” Needham says. “When you come to one of our big international events, there’ll be a fan activation area. Our sponsors will be there activating. We have an artist alley where some of our more skilled artists in our community will come and be able to sell their art there, we’ll do press days.”

And then, the day arrives. Members of Riot’s games team typically make some big announcements, “and then we’ll showcase the best players in the world competing for a championship,” Needham says. “It’s very much this holistic, unified experience that we try to deliver to our players. It’s a cultural moment where we strengthen our relationship with them and make them proud to be a part of our community.”

Impact

These shows, in addition to being a huge showcase for the games and companies in question, are also a sizeable economic boon to the host city. Simons cites data from City Hall showing that the League of Legends World Championship generated £12 million in economic impact and reached 50 million people globally. The Counter-Strike Blast Premier London Open generated £30 million and was watched by 89 million gamers around the world.

But the economic impact is only one part of the story.

“You’ve got the economic potential, but also reputationally, this is us speaking to the world,” Simons says. “This is a way in which we can communicate to the rest of the globe what a dynamic and creative capital we are. Then the value is in the jobs, because they generate lots of jobs. Then there’s the wider impact – hospitality, hotel rooms.”

London hosted the Valorant Masters final in June | Image credit: Riot Games

Only a fraction of the total audience for these games travels to attend in person. The O2 Arena, which hosted the League of Legends World Championship finals in 2024, has a capacity of 20,000 people. The venue for the Blast Premier London Open – OVO Arena Wembley – can hold 12,500 people, while Copperbox, where Riot recently held the Valorant Masters final, holds between 6,000 and 7,481 attendees.

Even if these venues were at capacity, the numbers in the room would still only represent less than 1% of the total audience. But this isn’t a problem as far as Riot and London’s City Hall are concerned.

“These events are a great way for us to reach a global audience”

“We draw a lot of tourism,” Needham explains. “There’s lots of research that shows the benefit to the local economy. When you watch our broadcasts, we’ll showcase a lot of local culture and a lot of the local sights in the area. Cities see this; they can see this is a way for them to promote broader tourism to a very valuable young audience. There’s a lot of value there for cities.”

Simons adds: “These events are a great way for us to reach a global audience to show that London is an exciting, dynamic, and creative place. Also, as an audience, all demographics play games. In esports, a big portion of the audience is under 30. It’s a brilliant way for us to reach that community globally and project our values. London is open, it’s diverse, it’s inclusive, you can be yourself here, all those values are present in the games community.”

She concludes: “It’s a very inclusive, community-spirited industry, which really chimes with our values as Londoners.”

Why new EU deepfake legislation means games need to be careful when featuring real-world people and locations

The EU AI Act’s deepfake transparency rules present an interesting challenge for game studios. The obligation is broader than the popular understanding of a deepfake, extending beyond fake videos of politicians, to a wide range of AI-generated and AI-manipulated content. This has prompted concern among many game studios that AI-generated assets may be prohibited – yet recent guidance suggests that several common uses of AI in games are unlikely to fall within its scope. The real complexity lies in the grey areas between fantasy and realism.

The EU AI Act’s transparency obligations, including the requirement to label certain AI content, are here and apply from 2 August 2026. Notably, it covers all media types (audio, video and images).

As with most EU digital regulations, it applies beyond Europe, which means studios that are based outside the EU could also be caught. The labelling obligation is triggered where a studio is located outside of the EU, creates an AI deepfake and expects it to be distributed in the EU including by incorporating it in a game that is available in the EU or by posting the content online.

Welcome clarity for the games industry

The good news is that the recent European Commission guidance, released on 21 July, provides last-minute but helpful colour for game studios. For once, games are not treated as an afterthought of a digital regulation. It makes clear that common uses of AI within games are unlikely to be a deepfake. Specifically:

• AI voice replication for fictional characters when there is no deception as to the identity of the narrators
• AI-generated fictitious environments (for example, fictitious forests and castles)
• AI-generation or manipulation of background scenes, special effects, or technical pre- and post-processing.

This makes sense. The deepfake obligation is trying to capture content that creates a false impression of authenticity and truthfulness. A fantasy underwater world or medieval battle with dragons is unlikely to appear to be a real place or event.

Where the grey area begins

However, there are circumstances in which game content does raise deepfake questions. Examples include the recreation of celebrity voices, the depiction of real sports events, or the inclusion of replicas of real historical figures. A high degree of photorealism renders it more likely that such content will be considered a deepfake.

It is also worth remembering that the obligation goes beyond the game itself. Trailers, billboards, advertisements, influencer campaigns and other social media content could all trigger it.

Your legal obligation extends beyond the game itself. Trailers, billboards, advertisements, influencer campaigns and other social media content are all subject to it

The key question is whether the AI content could lead people to believe they are seeing or hearing something real. The AI Act defines a deepfake as AI-generated or AI-manipulated content that resembles existing persons, objects, places, entities or events and would falsely appear to be authentic or truthful.

Importantly, it is enough for simulated content to resemble someone or something that exists, can plausibly exist or could have plausibly existed in reality to meet that aspect of the definition. The rationale is that such content could be a source of deception.

Gaming examples

The distinction is often easier to understand in practice. The following examples illustrate the types of content that are less likely, and more likely, to trigger the deepfake labelling obligations.

Likely not a deepfake:

• AI-generated voice acting for a witch, alien or robot character
• AI-generated fantasy worlds with floating islands, glittering caves or underwater kingdoms
• AI-assisted lip-syncing or body language for fictional characters
• AI-generated fictional brands or products appearing in-game.

Could be a deepfake:

• A football game recreating a real athlete’s voice using AI
• A racing game using a realistic AI-generated version of a real driver in promotional materials
• A documentary-style game trailer depicting real-world political events through AI-generated footage
• A billboard featuring AI-generated images of real musicians.

Unauthorised depictions of real people fall under the remit of the law. | Image credit: Activision

The two-tier approach to labelling

Where an AI-deepfake has been generated, it must be disclosed that the content has been artificially generated or manipulated. In practice, in most cases, this will mean adding a visual label. The Commission has made optional label designs available to use.

There are two tiers here:

1. If the deepfake forms part of an evidently artistic, creative, satirical or fictional work, the disclosure obligation must only be met in a manner that does not interfere with the display or enjoyment of the work.
2. If the deepfake does not form part of an evidently artistic, creative, satirical or fictional work, it must be labelled in a clear and distinguishable manner at the latest at the time of the first interaction or exposure to the content.

The European Commission’s guidelines expressly recognise that gaming imagery can fall within the first more flexible tier for creative/ fictional work. The guidance is less specific on how such content should be labelled, but notes that relevant factors include the nature of the content, the audience and the context. This suggests that the Commission expects a case-specific assessment rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, giving studios some flexibility. The takeaway is that context matters. The same AI-generated content may be treated differently depending on whether it appears within a creative work or is used in promotional material, with the latter more likely to have stricter rules on how and when the label must be shown.

Practical steps towards compliance

A sensible first step towards compliance is a tailored AI content policy that sets out when staff can use AI to generate or manipulate content, when such content needs to be labelled and how to label such content. This should be grounded in the reality of the specific studio and reflect the nature of the games they develop and the AI they use. Ideally, the staff actually creating AI-generated content should be trained on the policy so that it becomes a practical tool for day-to-day decision-making, rather than a document that sits forgotten in a dusty corner of the intranet after the lawyers have labelled it “final”.

That policy should lead staff through a series of practical questions, with the aim of capturing the nuance of the rule and avoiding over- or under-labelling:

• Is this depicting a real or plausibly real person, object, place or event?
• Is the content highly realistic?
• Could audiences believe it is authentic?
• Will it be distributed in the EU?

The Commission’s guidance goes some way towards demystifying deepfake labelling for the games industry. Many AI-powered features found in games are unlikely to qualify as deepfakes. For most studios, the key challenge is developing the judgment needed to determine when AI-generated content tips into territory that requires disclosure.

After half a decade of job losses, there is no “business as usual” | Opinion

The past five years of writing about the games business has come with a helping of cognitive dissonance so severe that it often felt like whiplash. Record success one week; record layoffs the next. Studios launch critically and commercially acclaimed games, only to make large swathes of their creative teams redundant a few months later. Every even-numbered headline is about financial doom and gloom; every odd-numbered one is about soaring demand and record-breaking sales.

It’s hard to overstate just how much damage has been done to the underlying fabric of the industry’s creative side since the mass layoffs really started to kick in around 2022. It’s not just that tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs, upending their lives and their careers in the process. We’ve had downturns before; but the endless grind of it, the long years in which the bad news has never stopped coming, has taken a deeper toll, one for which a full accounting is yet to be made.

The games business has never been good at retaining talent, historically losing a significant proportion of its most experienced staff every year as they reach an age where family and other responsibilities can no longer be squared away with the high demands and constant instability of game development jobs. This becomes a vicious cycle – losing older, more experienced staff and leaving behind their younger colleagues allows the late-night-crunch-and-pizza-parties vibe to continue long past the stage where it’s become actively damaging to a company’s work culture and productivity.

The games business has never been good at retaining talent

Things have improved over the years, albeit slowly and unevenly, but the brutal layoffs have pushed the situation many steps back. A 25-year-old forced to move to a new city and struggling to find work after a layoff is in a tough situation but can often scrape by until something comes up. A 35-year-old with two kids in school facing the same situation doesn’t have that luxury – and no matter how passionate about games they may be, will be wary of putting themselves and their families in that kind of vulnerable position again.

The effects of that brain drain – the quiet departure of people with countless combined years of experience – will be felt long after the economic situation turns around and the mass layoffs taper off. They’ll be felt in missed deadlines, in miscommunication between teams, in poorly specified features, in project plans that fail to make proper allowance for vital, overlooked tasks; in an endless number of wheels expensively reinvented at studio after studio for years to come.

Yet even that assessment may underestimate the scale of the damage, because the headline layoff figures, as awful as they are, disguise a worse reality. Kotaku published an excellent piece this week on the impact of the layoffs on contractors, which highlights an overlooked aspect of what’s happened. Some of the reason why working culture has seemed to improve at studios and publishers in the past couple of decades is actually down to an explosion in the use of subcontracting staff and companies – much of which has been a useful shortcut to bringing on board valuable expertise, but at least some of which has effectively functioned as a way to outsource crunch conditions to people who don’t technically work for you.

Using subcontractors is a way to outsource crunch conditions to people who don’t technically work for you

Unsurprisingly, when directly employed studio staff are being let go, the subcontractors – a pool of labour who enjoy few if any of the protections of direct hires – bear an even worse brunt. I’ve been told that some of the biggest rounds of layoffs of the past few years saw a 2:1 or even 3:1 ratio of contractor positions slashed to in-house staff made redundant. Redundancy numbers pull in the headlines, but statements like Asha Sharma’s reference to culling 50% of Xbox “vendor spend” get lost in the noise, despite the likelihood that this represents thousands more jobs lost on top of those people being directly made redundant by Microsoft.

It’s impossible to make a full accounting, but entirely likely that including contractors in the numbers would at least double the actual layoff figures in the past half decade. Being laid off is terrible for anyone, of course, but for contract or outsourcing staff it can be especially disruptive. Outsource staff are often bound by contracts that prevent them from talking about projects they’ve worked on, for example, severely tying their hands in terms of job hunting in future. Granted, that’s also become a major issue for directly employed staff – it’s not uncommon for developers to have multi-year stretches on their resumes which say “third-person action adventure” or something equally vague, because the project they worked on was cancelled and even its name is under NDA.

In the face of all this disruption – not just of businesses or of projects but of lives, and with it a wholesale destruction of priceless reservoirs of experience and skill – it’s increasingly hard to accept the idea that what happens after the dust settles is simply going to be a reversion to the norm. Any norm that emerges from this half-decade of grinding chaos would itself be a twisted parody of “business as usual” in which everyone spends their days flinching in anticipation of the next round of management jitters that drive staffing levels back off the cliff.

It’s far from the first time that people have felt that we can’t go on like this – efforts to push for a more equitable, stable and effective business paradigm for game creation have been around for at least the past thirty years. Major change is often only enabled by the burning down of the previous system, though, and for many people it feels like that’s what the last few years have constituted.

The model as it currently exists isn’t just unsustainable for staff, but for studios too

The model as it currently exists isn’t just unsustainable for staff who live with intolerable instability from month to month, and for whom successful execution and commercial success is no guarantee of employment continuity. It’s also unsustainable for the studios themselves; the skyrocketing costs of development are a well-documented topic, and a major concrete effect is that the number of potential sources for funding large-scale game development has shrunk dramatically. This decade has seen major outflows of both cash and investor interest from the games business, leaving very few options for securing financial backing for a major games project; the numbers are so high and the risks are so perilous.

If the current paradigm is broken for both staff and studios, though, what might a new one look like? Nobody actually has a comprehensive answer yet, but it’s unsurprising that many eyes are turning to the indie market – not as a complete model for the future, but rather as a glimmer of hope that shows that giant budgets, tortured development processes, and sweeping rounds of layoffs aren’t the only option on the table.

Indie development, at all scales, suggests a less destructive path forward. | Image credit: Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive

The indie sector can’t offer all the answers, but it gives some clear pointers about what is possible; it suggests that there really are options to replace or at least supplement the current paradigm of a handful of giant, powerful companies holding the purse strings of project funding, and upturning thousands of lives on an economic whim or the ebb and flow of a boardroom strategy.

One option, for example, is that the strategies and approaches honed at an indie scale could be applied effectively to prototyping – building smart, lean proof-of-concept builds at a rapid scale, something which modern tools and techniques have made more accessible than ever. A model in which independently created prototypes play a central role would follow the lead of some aspects of the film and TV industries; small, lean teams rapidly iterating on prototypes using seed capital from specialised production firms (enough to pay salaries and keep the lights on, but little more), with the intention of bringing those prototypes to larger publishers who bid for the right to put them into full-scale execution.

Many publishers, bluntly, are incredibly bad at starting internal development from scratch

The payday comes when a publisher buys an option and funds full-scale development – with the appeal to publishers and platform holders being that they can shift the axis around which their creative choices pivot in a way that gives them far more confidence and wastes far less time pursuing failed projects. Instead of messy, unfocused internal development from scratch (which many publishers, bluntly, are incredibly bad at), the model becomes focused around choosing from a selection of well-considered, well-planned prototypes honed by skilled teams, and then spending development budgets on executing on a clear, fixed plan.

Moving to a model like this wouldn’t be smooth sailing – nor would such a model likely exist in isolation, but rather as part of an ecosystem of different approaches in a more diverse industry. Publishers would have to unlearn some of their worst habits; boardrooms will need a long ruler to smack the knuckles of anyone who starts to reach out to do direct creative meddling, for a start. The advantages to both sides, however, would come from confidence and stability. Separating the “prototype” work from the “production” work – with studios specialising in one or the other – would avoid the messy situation of having a “production-scale” studio that suddenly has hundreds more staff than it needs when one project ends and the prototyping phase for the next begins, which is a major cause of career instability at the moment.

There is a movement to reshape creative industries in order to provide the stability and structure that people need to build long-term careers

This is far from the only idea out there (and to be clear, I’m not claiming it as mine – it’s a variation on a theme that’s been discussed many times of late) and may not even resemble what does finally emerge as a model, or a set of models, for development and creativity in the future. What seems increasingly clear, though, is that there is a wellspring of determination that something must change; things cannot go back to the way they have been. This is a sense that goes beyond the borders of the games industry; in areas like movie and TV production, themselves going through their own agonies in the era of streaming and after the collapse of low-interest financing, there’s also a growing movement to find new ways to reshape their industries in order to provide the stability and structure that creatives need to build long-term careers and do their best work.

As powerful a force as mean reversion may be, major change is also possible – and in the long term is likely inevitable. When so much of the forest has burned down around us, not all of the green shoots that emerge will be the same trees as before; and when so many of the industry’s vital creative talents are determined not to return to the systems of the past that have caused so much destruction this decade, the inertia for change may become irresistible.

The games industry is stifled by a culture of fear

The games industry is stifled by a culture of fear that prioritises algorithmic trends and market research over the creative conviction and personal taste required to produce genuine hits.

That was the conclusion of a workgroup hosted by developer and consultant Rami Ismail at the 2026 DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit, which took place in May. The Vlambeer co-founder’s workgroup – entitled “We’re moving fast and losing what made us good (creativity, craft & the future)” – called for the industry to reject risk-averse decision-making, asserting that the reflexive avoidance of failure has become a greater threat to success than the inherent uncertainty of creative work.

Ultimately, the group concluded that unique products are forged through internal coherence and disciplined validation, rather than “sanding down the edges” to appeal to everyone.

Rami Ismail at the Madeira Games Summit 2026 | Image credit: DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit

The workgroup consisted of an eclectic mix of creators, producers, communicators, publishers, and service providers, and the group’s goal was to discuss the pathways to reestablishing creativity as a central tenet of game development and game funding processes, with the idea that current incentives are misaligned with creativity.

Disproportionately successful titles such as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Peak, and Balatro were given as examples of games driven by personal conviction and individual taste that no market analysis would have predicted. Hence, the workgroup’s thesis was that the games industry creates its best works outside of market research – and that while data is a powerful tool, taste is what drives breakout hits.

This was contrasted against the reflexive need to “chase the algorithm” or “make games for everyone” – mechanisms aimed at reducing risk at the expense of creative conviction.

The pillars of creative game development

The workgroup highlighted four pillars that are key to a creatively centred game design approach. The first was creating coherence, which was defined as creating works that do not contradict their own thesis or goals. But forging games with internal consistency requires conviction, time, and continuous validation.

The second pillar was identifying weaknesses at a product, studio, and personnel level, while the third was selling the dream. The latter applies both internally and externally, and the group was in strong agreement that many creatives and leads – at both the AAA and independent level – are failing to sell the dream of the game through communication and motivation.

The fourth pillar, connecting the dots, involved connecting the disparate inputs and incentives into structures that allowed the other three pillars to succeed.

Key takeaways

One of the key points to emerge from the discussion was that stagnation is an unavoidable outcome of a fearful industry, and that creative conviction is required to maintain a studio or individual’s creative identity. However, picking a lane and excelling in it does not require a singular genre, theme, or even target demographic – although it does require knowing who you are and what you stand for.

Clair Obscur was given as an example of a game resulting from personal conviction and individual taste | Image credit: Sandall Interactive/Kepler Interactive

The workgroup acknowledged that commercial success should be a goal for any commercially developed title, but argued that imposing additional arbitrary, non-creative pressures for success creates diluted work. The group also recognised that taste is important, but is inherently divisive – it necessarily involves distinguishing an “in-group” from an “out-group.” In other words, those that like something and those that do not.

Another key takeaway was how creative people often find it difficult to make tough decisions, including letting go of their games. Studios can spend tremendous resources seeking validation and chasing ideas that are not good, or that do not fit the current moment, rather than making a decisive choice early on. The group concluded that the only thing worse than making a wrong decision is making no decision when one is needed.

“Courage is a consistent factor of most hit titles”

In relation, the workgroup found that studios and individuals often do not ask for help when it’s needed, which could prevent avoidable mistakes and unlock further opportunities. The participants acknowledged that the games industry is a deeply interdisciplinary, innovative, and iterative field, and no one person or team holds all the answers.

Finally, the group believed that the most reliable indicator of success is community building, and that many so-called overnight hits from the past few years were built on carefully cultivated or existing communities on itch.io, Tumblr, or Reddit.

Bland games won’t sell

“Many of the more fearful reflexes of the industry aim to sand down the rough edges of creative work, creating homogenous and bland works that ‘check all the boxes’, but are nevertheless (or, consequently) insincere, uninspiring, and uninteresting,” concluded Ismail. “Courage is a consistent factor of most hit titles; in funding, in publishing, in marketing, and in investment.”

Although the group overwhelmingly agreed the above to be true, they rejected the idea of a return to toxic structures centred around a creative genius. In contrast, the group called for thoughtful leadership, early and disciplined validation, collaboration that covers weaknesses and blindspots, and a rejection of fearful decision-making.

Ismail gave the following summation: “The industry’s fear of risk is currently the largest risk it faces.”

Ubisoft expects “superior financial performance” from Black Flag remake, but won’t increase guidance due to “strong competitive lineup”

Ubisoft CFO Frédérick Duguet said it expects Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced to “deliver superior financial performance” due to lower production costs.

However, Ubisoft does not plan to raise its Q2 guidance, citing a “strong competitive lineup” and the release of its own titles, including the Rayman Legends Retold remake.

During an earnings call following its recent financial results, Duguet elaborated on Black Flag Resynced’s success, noting it was expected to perform well from the outset given the advantages of producing remakes.

“Usually for remakes that are ambitious, you have a reuse of the existing assets of the original experience, but you also come with additional gameplay and features – that still comes with investments. But of course, the overall budget is not as high as the original estimate.

“You also benefit from the awareness of the game, so you can come with lower marketing, but you don’t have the same price as a full game.”

Duguet: “It’s really a different economic profile, but we expect this one to deliver superior financial performance. We should expect the direct contribution to be positive as soon as this current quarter in cumulative terms.”

When asked during the Q&A if the upcoming Rayman remake could achieve similar success, Duguet did not comment directly.

Instead, he stated it would “attract a whole new generation of players.”

“We’re coming in with a revamped and improved experience, while sticking to the original DNA of Rayman, but with additional gameplay features, a broader scope and a full revamp in 3D.

“We believe long-time fans will be very happy to rediscover an improved version of the original experience, and we should be attracting a whole new generation of players.”

Elsewhere in the call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot commented on Sony’s decision to discontinue physical discs for new PlayStation games.

When asked if Ubisoft is concerned that this decision could “prevent gamers from recycling games to the used game market, then using that to purchase new games,” he responded:

“What we saw on the PC is that it helped to grow the market. There’s also some pressure on the future cost of machines, and being able to be only digital will help make the machine more accessible.

“There are pluses and minuses, but we think it will not disturb the industry too much.”

Meccha Chameleon ranks second behind Fortnite in PC revenue for June | Newzoo charts

Indie hit Meccha Chameleon was a breakout success in June, ranking as the second-highest PC title in revenue behind Fortnite, according to Newzoo.

Developed by indie creators Lemorion_1224 and Hagneiro, the title launched on June 10 and has already sold over 15 million copies. It also debuted at No.6 on Newzoo’s PC engagement charts.

According to Newzoo, this initial sales figure surpasses Lethal Company, which sold over 10 million units in six months, and Fall Guys, which sold seven million in its first month.

“Its rapid commercial success shows that lower-budget, socially driven multiplayer experiences can achieve significant commercial results alongside major franchises,” said Newzoo market analyst Mert Şahin.

Indie life sim Paralives ranked one position above The Sims 4 at No.7, while Dead by Daylight rose 16 places to No.10 following its tenth anniversary celebrations.

“This demonstrates how long-running live-service titles can sustain commercial momentum through ongoing investment in content and community,” Şahin added.

Newzoo’s June report included a pre-order ranking chart, with Grand Theft Auto 6 leading as the highest-grossing console title based on five days of pre-orders.

Set to launch on November 19, Rockstar’s highly anticipated title generated an estimated $260 million globally from pre-orders alone.

Newzoo’s engagement rankings “showed minimal change across PC and console,” with titles such as Fortnite, Counter-Strike 2, Minecraft, Roblox, and League of Legends continuing to attract more players than recent releases.

The data firm also noted that Obsidian’s Grounded climbed over 250 places to No.16 on the console engagement charts after its release on PlayStation Plus.

“This shows how multi-game subscription services can extend the lifecycle of established titles by reconnecting them with new and returning players,” Şahin noted.

Shared exclusively with GamesIndustry.biz, here are the Top 20 PC games by revenue in the US, UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy for June 2026, according to Newzoo:

Rank
Title

1
Fortnite

2
Meccha Chameleon

3
Counter-Strike 2 & Go

4
Valorant

5
League of Legends

6
Forza Horizon 6

7
Paralives

8
The Sims 4

9
Marvel Rivals

10
Dead by Daylight

11
Destiny 2

12
007 First Light

13
World of Warcraft

14
Minecraft

15
Overwatch

16
EA Sports FC 26

17
Cyberpunk 2077

18
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

19
Subnautica 2

20
Diablo 4

And here are the Top 20 console games by revenue:

Rank
Title

1
Fortnite

2
EA Sports FC 26

3
NBA 2K26

4
007 First Light

5
Call of Duty HQ

6
EA Sports UFC 6

7
Minecraft

8
Roblox

9
MLB The Show 26

10
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream

11
Grand Theft Auto 5

12
Marvel Rivals

13
Disney Dreamlight Valley

14
Star Fox (2026)

15
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

16
Pokémon Pokopia

17
Dead by Daylight

18
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege

19
Destiny 2

20
Forza Horizon 6

Ubisoft Q1 net bookings down 9.2%, attributes drop to “high comparison base” from same period last year

Ubisoft has published its first quarter financials, with net bookings reaching €255.8 million.

This result was “slightly above guidance” thanks to Invincible: Guarding the Globe, but down 9.2% year-on-year.

The company attributed the decrease to a “high comparison base” from the same period last year, which included significant revenue from Assassin’s Creed Shadows after launching in March.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers:

• Revenue: €268.2 million (down 13.7% year-on-year)
• Net bookings: €255.8 million (down 9.2% year-on-year)
• Digital net bookings: €206.2 million (down 17.6% year-on-year)
• Back catalogue net bookings: €221 million (down 15.1% year-on-year)

The highlights:

Ubisoft’s net bookings were driven by the mobile title Invincible: Guarding the Globe, following the TV series’ fourth season release and the addition of a new in-game character.

Together, these factors “drove meaningful player acquisition, retention, and monetisation.”

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege performed “in line with expectations,” with average daily active users increasing slightly after the launch of Siege X.

The Division 2 launched Year 8 Season 1, resulting in “improved year-on-year monetisation trends driven by virtual currency conversion and DARPU records.”

The Crew Motorfest saw year-on-year growth in active users and session days after its NASCAR-themed ninth season and its inclusion on PlayStation’s PS+ subscription service.

Ubisoft’s second quarter began strongly, led by the release of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, which sold 3.5 million copies in its first two weeks and has “exceeded annual expectations.”

The franchise achieved record performance on PC, reaching a peak of 105,000 concurrent players on Steam, the highest ever for an Assassin’s Creed title on the platform.

This resulted in a “historical proportion of sales for the franchise on PC,” driven by strong performance in the US and Chinese markets.

“The strong launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced in early July by Vantage Studios is an encouraging proof point,” said Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

“This launch illustrates the enduring appeal of the Assassin’s Creed brand, as well as the early benefits of our ongoing transformation and commitment to delivering very high-quality experiences.”

Ubisoft has continued making progress in its group-wide transformation, announced earlier this year with the formation of Creative Houses.

Former Amazon Games vice president and 2K co-founder Christoph Hartmann has been appointed general manager of Creative House 2.

This unit oversees the Splinter Cell, The Division, and Ghost Recon franchises, and will also house March of the Giants.

The company also closed studios in Winnipeg and Belgrade and reduced publishing roles worldwide, with 380 jobs reportedly at risk. Ubisoft proposed that Ubisoft Barcelona will focus exclusively on the Rainbow Six franchise.

Ubisoft’s Barcelona studio was affected by layoffs after the launch of Black Flag Resynced, leading to staff strikes.

Ubisoft expects net bookings to decline “by a high single-digit percentage” and anticipates a “high single-digit negative non-IFRS operating margin.” Net bookings for Q2 are projected to be around €370 million.

“FY2026-27 remains a year of disciplined execution as we continue to implement our transformation, invest behind our strongest opportunities and prepare for a significantly stronger content cycle,” said Guillemot.

“We are confident this new operating model will strengthen our position as a leading creator of high-quality, memorable and engaging entertainment experiences, and enable the Group to return to a stronger trajectory of performance, cash generation and long-term value creation.”

EU Commission approves $55bn EA buyout, says it “would not raise competition concerns”

The EU Commission has cleared the $55 billion acquisition of Electronic Arts led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The executive body approved the acquisition under the EU Merger Regulation.

It concluded that the transaction “would not raise competition concerns, given its limited impact on competition in the markets where the companies are active. The notified transaction was examined under the normal merger review procedure.”

As the review procedure states: “In assessing proposed mergers, the Commission considers whether they can be expected to significantly impede effective competition in the EU.

“If they do not, they are approved unconditionally. If they do, and no commitments suitable to remove the impediment are proposed by the merging firms, problematic mergers must be prohibited to protect businesses and consumers from higher prices or a more limited choice of goods or services.”

The procedure continues: “Proposed mergers may be prohibited, for example, if the merging parties are major competitors or if the merger would otherwise significantly weaken effective competition in the market, in particular by creating or strengthening a dominant player.”

In September 2025, a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) offered to acquire EA.

The consortium includes Silver Lake and Affinity Partners and is backed by over $20 billion in debt financing from JPMorgan.

After the deal was announced, EA assured fans it would “maintain creative control” and “creative freedom” under the PIF-led consortium.

“The Consortium believes in our vision, our leadership and our focus on creating games, stories, and content that reflect a range of experiences and delivering them to our global player community,” the company said. “They’re investing in the creativity that defines EA.”

EA shareholders have approved the acquisition, which is now under regulatory review. If approved, it will be the largest leveraged buyout in history.

Last October, the president of the Communication Workers of America (CWA) called for a comprehensive review of the buyout.

In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), Claude Cummings Jr. called for regulators to take “all necessary steps to prevent foreign and private equity interests from destabilising the American video game industry.”

Earlier this year, US lawmakers asked the FTC to “thoroughly” review the acquisition, given its scale and EA’s “current dominance over the domestic video game labour market.”

“We respectfully urge the Commission to conduct a thorough investigation into the labour market consequences of this proposed acquisition, including EA’s existing wage-setting power, the likelihood of post-transaction layoffs, the degree of labour-market concentration in relevant geographic and occupational markets, and the role of cross-ownership in shaping labour outcomes.

“Workers deserve a fair, competitive marketplace where their skills are valued.”

Union accuses Bethesda of violating labour laws in Canada following layoffs at Montreal studio

Bethesda union OneBGS has said it has filed a legal complaint against the developer “for continuing to violate labour laws in Canada.”

The union alleged that the same day that Bethesda announced its roadmap for future Fallout releases last Friday (July 17), it also issued termination letters to Canadian employees at Bethesda Montreal impacted by recent Xbox layoffs.

“That same day, they told their laid-off Bethesda Montreal employees that they would receive the smallest severance legally possible without bargaining with the union,” the union wrote.

OneBGS stated this contradicted assurances given during a July 6 video call, when employees were told they would remain employed until September while Bethesda negotiated severance terms with the union.

“These letters stated that the Canadians are to receive the bare minimum in terms of severance: eight weeks of pay in lieu of the minimum legal notice, any outstanding vacation pay, etc. They were to also immediately lose their group benefits health insurance,” the union stated.

“Bethesda and Xbox leadership depend on our labour to make them millions, and yet when we do, we are disposed of. The cycle of workers paying for the mistakes of management ends here.”

These claims follow broader allegations that Xbox conducted layoffs “unlawfully”, without providing notice or consulting recognised unions.

An unfair labour practice (ULP) charge was filed earlier this week against Microsoft and its subsidiaries, including Xbox, ZeniMax Media Inc, Id Software, and Bethesda Game Studios.

“The unions CWA and CWA Canada have jointly filed unfair labor practice complaints against Microsoft alleging the company has unlawfully fired people without giving notice to or discussing it with the union as the employer is legally obliged to do when we are in the middle of ongoing bargaining a collective agreement,” CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth told Game Developer.

In response, Xbox said: “We respect our employees’ right to make their voices heard, and we recognise that this is a difficult time for many. We reached out to the union to begin effects bargaining and are committed to that process. We remain focused on supporting impacted employees through this transition while positioning the organisation for long-term strength.”

Inside Amazon’s plan to unite games, movies and TV – including “more games in development than at any point in our history”

Amazon has announced that its Luna video game streaming service will be incorporated into Prime Video, allowing Prime subscribers to play games directly through the video app. It follows similar moves at Netflix, where gaming titles were made available as part of the main video streaming service, leading to a “strong uptake” by players as a result.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Jeff Gattis, general manager for Amazon Luna and Amazon Game Studios, explains the background behind the changes, as well as Amazon’s strategy for games going forward, its stance on exclusivity, and the huge, unaddressed audience for video games.

Gattis was previously general manager for Xbox platforms and subscriptions, and when he joined Amazon in March 2025, he found a company whose disparate parts didn’t talk to each other. Without even counting the streaming platform Twitch, the company previously had three separate gaming divisions, all doing their own thing entirely independently.

“We had Amazon Game Studios, which of course [was] mostly making MMOs that were going on different platforms, operating really independently as a game studio,” he explains. “We had the Luna team, set in a different part of the organisation, that had built this cloud technology and was trying to figure out how to establish Luna as a gaming platform. Then we had a third group called Prime Gaming, which was effectively a benefit for Prime members, where they gave away game content and other things that you go claim on other platforms, which is sort of weird.

Luna will now be integrated into Prime Video | Image credit: Amazon

“But none of these businesses were communicating with each other. Really, we were all operating autonomously. So that’s one of the big changes we’ve made in the last year. We just kind of zoomed out and said, ‘OK, we’ve got these three things, how do we make these things work together?’ So that was the logic behind consolidating all three of these things.”

Now, everything is organised under Gattis, who describes Amazon’s gaming group as being organised into two pillars. “Luna is our gaming platform,” he says, “and Amazon Game Studios is our development platform.”

Games produced by Amazon Game Studios will be published on Luna, although some titles published by Amazon, like the upcoming Tomb Raider games Legacy of Atlantis and Catalyst, will be available on other platforms as well. Gattis says exclusives will be decided on a case by case basis, not totally unlike Xbox’s strategy. “We do believe in exclusives though,” he says, “and I think it’s an important part of sort of building a gaming platform.”

More generally, Gattis is excited about bringing some joined-up thinking to Amazon’s vast portfolio. He notes that the giant firm has access to a wealth of IP through Prime Video and MGM Studios, as well as powerful distribution and reach through Amazon Web Services and Twitch. “The problem is they’ve never been really working together to help us build a gaming platform,” he says. “So we’ve made some really good strides, coming from the top of the company all the way down, to start doing more of that integration and using those properties to help us with Luna.”

The unaddressed market

Gattis is convinced that growth in the games industry won’t come from the cutting edge. “The world doesn’t need another high-end gaming platform,” he says.

“Between Steam, and PlayStation, and Xbox, even Epic Game Store, there’s lots of places to go buy these games, and increasingly play them on all the platforms. And they’re all fighting each other for the same set of customers.”

Amazon is publishing Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis | Image credit: Crystal Dynamics

He says that historically, Amazon Luna tried to compete on the same playing field. “The thought was we’re going to go get people to turn in their consoles and drop their gaming PCs and come to Luna. We’ve kind of abandoned that. That’s a red ocean that we don’t really want to fight in right now. But we do see opportunity for people who don’t own dedicated gaming hardware.”

He points out that roughly 3 billion people play video games, but only around 500 million own consoles and PCs, with the rest mostly playing on mobile. “They like to play games, but they’re not able to play on a television screen,” Gattis says. “We think that group’s not being served.”

But targeting that group will require a different approach. “That’s an audience that doesn’t necessarily want to play AAA competitive shooters, but they do like big IP AAA games,” he says. “We’ve done things like Hogwarts Legacy, Indiana Jones, and obviously Tomb Raider in the future. Things that we’ve found with mass appeal IP that’s very approachable, games that aren’t incredibly difficult to play, the game mechanics aren’t super hard to learn.”

Gattis notes that Hogwarts Legacy in particular has done “incredibly well” on Luna. “Everybody knows the IP. Everybody loves the IP. The game itself is not overly complicated to play. And so we’ve tried to take those learnings.”

That focus on easier games for a mass audience echoes the approach taken by Delphi Interactive with its Netflix FIFA World Cup game. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Delphi head Casper Daugaard pointed out just how big an opportunity there is in targeting a more casual audience: “There are hundreds of millions of gamers who love football that aren’t actively playing football games.”

Gattis notes that this audience is “probably playing mobile games today, but also would sit down in front of a TV for a 20, 30 minute session.” One way Amazon is trying to address this audience is through a concept called GameNight on Luna, where players use their phone as a controller to play titles like trivia games or board game adaptations.

Hogwarts Legacy has done “incredibly well” on Luna | Image credit: Warner Bros. Games

“There’s a social component of it, but the idea is that you’re not committing 60 hours to a game or watching YouTube videos to figure out how to play. And we found a lot of success with that.”

But one big barrier to entry for Luna has been cost and convenience, with the service coming as a separate subscription from Prime Video, and a separate app. But by integrating Luna into Prime, Gattis says Amazon has a ready made audience of “hundreds of millions” of Amazon Prime customers – and it also provides the opportunity to target huge growth in emerging markets for gaming.

Gattis says that the “economics don’t really work” for the incumbents when it comes to emerging markets, with the sheer cost of gaming hardware and software acting as a barrier to entry. “So then they have to double down on the core player who’s spending lots of money every month. We don’t have that challenge at Amazon. It’s the beauty of the Prime membership. And so I think it’s just the opportunity to make gaming more accessible and to grow the pie.

“Some of these people may graduate to console or PC players someday. That’s still good for the industry. But otherwise there’s a lot of these games that these people would never be able to play.”

One-stop shop

In terms of payment for developers of Luna games, Gattis says that deals tend to vary, “much like they do with Game Pass.” But he emphasises that Amazon is licensing third-party content for the service, and keeping it on there for longer. “Historically with Luna and Prime Gaming, there were things that were going on for a month. And that’s just not enough time. People don’t believe in your service if things are coming and going all the time. So we’ve been signing a lot longer term.”

Gattis also wants to focus on a transmedia approach, forging closer ties between Luna games and Amazon’s film and TV portfolio. “A big part of our content strategy going forward is going to be leveraging Amazon IP,” he says. “I think this is an industry thing as a whole. You’re seeing this integration start to happen between video, TV and interactive video games.

The Fallout TV show has been a huge hit on Prime Video | Image credit: Prime Video

“It’s been things like Fallout, where there’s a game and there’s a TV show, but I think it’s even going to get tighter over time, where these video games are effectively going to be more of an extension of your movie or TV experience.”

He points to the launch of the card battler Masters of the Universe: Legends Unite on Luna to tie in with the launch of the Masters of the Universe movie, as well as the Tomb Raider TV show and upcoming games. “The vision for us is to get to much more of this world where you can imagine going into Prime Video and seeing a page that is much more about fandom and IP, as opposed to ‘here’s a bunch of shows’. So you see the Tomb Raider TV show, here’s the Tomb Raider video game, here’s Tomb Raider merchandise you can buy on Amazon.com.”

In terms of the overall mix of content on the newly integrated Luna service, Gattis says there are various first-party titles in development, and he notes that first-party and original titles are “always part of building a platform. So we believe in that. But obviously the lion’s share of our hours are going to come from third party content. So it’s a huge part of the service.”

But Gattis emphasises the importance of exclusives. “We don’t want to be a place where you can just play the same games you can play everywhere else. That was the old Luna strategy.”

James Bond and beyond

Amazon hit the headlines in June when it was reported that Amazon Game Studios would be publishing future James Bond games, after the recently released 007: First Light was self-published by IO Interactive.

007: First Light was developed and published by IO Interactive | Image credit: IO Interactive

Gattis says that nothing has been decided. “We did not confirm anything about who’s publishing or developing the next Bond sequel,” he says. “Like Hakan [Abrak, IOI CEO] said, we haven’t even discussed it really yet. The game’s awesome. That’s great. I think it’s realistic to think that there would be a sequel. Technically, Amazon does own the rights to the game, but we’re going to do what’s right by the game, we’re not trying to bring everything into Amazon.

“Given the success of this one, I think you probably want IOI developing it.”

When asked whether Amazon would consider acquiring IO Interactive in future, Gattis replies that “anything’s possible,” but adds that there are “no conversations about that right now.”

Right now, Amazon has a lot of its own content in the works. “We’ve actually got more games in development at Amazon right now than we’ve had at any point in our history,” says Gattis. “Now, they’re not all AAA games. Some of them are. Others range all the way down to those kind of GameNight experiences and some innovative stuff.”

He also points to Amazon publishing the Tomb Raider titles. “Not all AAA has to be developed in-house.”

But interestingly, Amazon recently pulled out of a publishing deal with UK studio Maverick Games for its upcoming driving title Clutch, which was showcased at Summer Game Fest in June. “We took a look at the entire portfolio across the board,” says Gattis by way of explanation. “This happens anytime new leadership comes in: let’s assess everything we’re doing. Like happens in video games, lots of projects don’t see the light of day. Unfortunately it’s hard when you have to do that.

“But I think our assessment of that was just that we didn’t see a real fit in the market for that game. I hope I’m wrong, in some ways, for the sake of the game. I want games to be made.”

Clutch is now being self-published by Maverick Games | Image credit: Maverick Games

However, even though Amazon is no longer supporting the game, Clutch is still going ahead, now self-published by Maverick. Whether there really is a market fit for the title remains to be seen – UK publisher Secret Mode certainly seems to think that the racing game niche is underserved. The publisher, which is behind Star Wars: Galactic Racer, told GamesIndustry.biz earlier this year that the driving game audience is “voracious for new experiences.”

In terms of the future of Luna and Amazon Prime, meanwhile, Gattis is bullish. He says that when Luna was relaunched back in October with the GameNight experiences, the number of active users went up by five times, although from a “relatively small base,” he admits. “But that’s a real signal for us that what we’re doing is working.

“There’s a couple hundred million Prime members worldwide. We do not have a couple hundred million people in Luna right now. So that’s our market opportunity.”

Delphi Interactive’s fan-first strategy draws major IP interest following success of James Bond and FIFA

Delphi Interactive’s success with FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition and 007 First Light has created new opportunities with major brands, according to CEO Casper Daugaard.

During a panel at The Paley Center for Media attended by Game File, Daugaard shared that there’s “been quite a few conversations with some of the most iconic brands in the world that are intrigued by our model.”

This model focuses on creating games for fans rather than only for a “subset of gamers” interested in a particular IP.

Delphi applied this approach to First Light, securing the license and partnering with IO Interactive for development.

“We said to the family and to MGM, ‘We’re not making this James Bond game for gamers, we want to make this game for James Bond fans’,” Daugaard explained.

“The whole game: the driving, the social stealth, the flirting, the MI6 program, everything should be in there. And it should be an interactive experience. It’s one of the best and most immersive ways to experience the big brands.”

He added: “If that sounds like semantics, I’ll try and argue that it is not, and it has huge implications for how we got into business.”

Delphi used the same strategy for FIFA with Netflix, aiming to reach a wider audience that includes the global football fanbase beyond players of EA’s previous FIFA titles.

“[Netflix] saw the potential. They saw that we had essentially no time to deliver, but, conveniently, we wanted to make something that was actually also a bit more casual and something that anyone could access.”

FIFA was developed by Refactor Games and published by Delphi. It was the first FIFA series release since the split from EA Sports in 2022, launching two weeks before FIFA Heroes.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz earlier this year, Daugaard said Delphi’s purpose is to “license, finance, develop, and publish games built around the world’s most iconic IP.”

Delphi president Andy Kleinman reaffirmed this mission to Game File, noting the company’s goal to address the “misalignment between bigger publishers and some of these iconic entertainment brands or sports brands.”

“Maybe they’re not prioritising some of those third-party IPs as much. That opened the opportunity where we said, ‘You know, there are these huge brands that people love. This product doesn’t exist. We should make it.’ We should become that partner, because we want it to exist.”

UK Games Growth Package driving “exceptional demand” one year on from launch

The UK government’s £30 million Games Growth Package “is already making an impact” a year on from its launch, according to UK Creative Industries Minister Ian Murray.

“Between now and 2029, it will give some of our most talented game developers the platform to kickstart or accelerate their careers, turning great ideas into real jobs and real growth right across the UK.”

The Games Growth Package was announced as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy and the Creative Industries Sector Plan.

The package allocated £28.5 million through the UK Games Fund to support early-stage developers and studio growth, and committed £1.5 million to the London Games Festival over a three-year period.

Since launch, the UK Games Fund has seen “exceptional demand across all three of its funding tracks.”

These include the Starter Fund, which offers grants of up to £20,000 for new companies; the expanded Prototype Fund, with grants of up to £100,000; and the Content Fund, which provides up to £250,000 to support project completion and studio growth alongside private investment.

“We’ve been delighted to see the high level of demand for our new grant offerings, demonstrating the huge future potential for UK independent games developers to contribute to economic growth,” said UK Games Talent and Finance CIC director Kirsty Gibson.

32 UK games companies have received support from the fund’s International Business Development strand, with a total of £3.2 million awarded in grants of up to £200,000 each for “enhanced export and international activities focused on revenue generation.”

“Twelve months on from the launch of the Creative Industries Sector Plan, we are seeing exactly the response the industry needed to make it work,” added UKIE CEO Nick Poole.

“Studios across the UK are using this funding to scale up, invest in new titles and back their own ambitions, and the demand we’ve seen across the UK Games Fund and the UK Global Screen Fund shows an industry ready to grow.”

In May, the BFI’s UK Global Screen Fund received an increased annual budget, which enabled the launch of the Video Games Release funding stream.

This stream offers grants of up to £50,000 to help UK developers cover marketing, promotion, and localisation costs during release campaigns.

This year, the London Games Festival received support from the Games Growth Package for the first time.

The festival featured over 30 events across the city, attracting visitors from 61 countries and more than 8,000 business delegates.

“The festival expanded across both public and professional audiences, re-establishing a large-scale showcase event for new games, attracting international investment, and building a business pipeline back into UK businesses,” said Head of Games London and London Games Festival director Michael French.

“It’ll grow considerably in the next year too, with a move to a central venue for a number of our tentpole events for industry and game fans alike to further establish a major international games showcase here in the UK.”

Hitscan is a new tool for connecting publishers with creators that are “driving the most impact and viewership”

For a decade now, LA-based talent management company Loaded Holdings has been building up its video games business.

First came Open World, a consultancy aimed at helping marketers unfamiliar with the industry. That division then launched NoScope, an analytics and discovery platform for the streaming giant Twitch. Now, Open World is rolling out a new product called Hitscan, which builds on NoScope.

According to Open World’s SVP of creator programs, Adam Dempsky, this is a platform that lets game publishers “gain insight on creators that are making content about their game”. He adds that the company is looking to provide more than the usual level of analytics and data available to developers and publishers about what creators are up to on services like Twitch.

Adam Dempsky | Image credit: Open World

“It can be used for creator discovery; it can be used to understand who the right creators are that you might want to work with,” Dempsky explains. “We were looking at it mostly through the lens of creator programs and earned initiatives, because there is a big component of Hitscan that tries to help understand the relationship history – how, when and in what capacity you have worked with creators in the past.”

Part of the selling point of Hitscan, as far as Open World is concerned, is the visibility it gives people at a company over their partnerships with creators, as well as how their games are being covered and by which creators.

“A lot of the time, what we’ve seen is whether it’s an indie that has a one-person marketing team, all the way to AAA publishers that might have five or more people dedicated to just creator marketing, they’re in the weeds with this day in, day out,” Dempsky explains. “It’s the only thing that they care about. We wanted the whole organisation to have that full visibility. We often see creator, brand, and product teams working in different silos. Common knowledge sharing and a single source of truth don’t really exist.

Hitscan can be used to discover creators who are having a particular impact on your game. | Image credit: Open World

“The platform helps in terms of roster management; it helps understand the data behind your IP, what creators are driving the most impact and viewership, engagement around your game, and how those creators are trending over time. You’ll be able to see when a creator joined your creator program and see the incremental value-add impact that they have driven for your game since you launched your creator program.

“We also wanted to build this to help people who might not have the largest resource bandwidth, introducing features like alerts that help you understand when creators have moved from being active contributors in your program to someone who has gone dormant for the last 30 days. This could alert you to re-engage with them. We want to be able to help contextualise that information for the creators that you work with.”

Data game

For this to work, Open World collates data on creators, which can be sorted by geography or how closely a company works with an influencer, for example.

“We are pulling in information about creators that publishers care about. A publisher could come to us and say they have worked with these 300 creators over time,” Dempsky says.

“You’re able to contextualise that data within the specific scope of your game. You will always be able to see where your game ranks for creators as well as other data around content that they are developing for your game.”

Dempsky is keen to emphasise that the directories of creators Hitscan maintains for its clients aren’t just “here is the top 500 creators on Twitch.”

“It’s about tailoring the experience to a specific publisher and how we can design a workspace experience for an EA versus a Devolver versus a Skybound versus an indie publisher that maybe has five games in the portfolio,” he says. “We are looking at building it around what matters most to each publisher and to their games. That’s ultimately how we see the vast majority of publishers in the space as well as users of our Hitscan tool, utilising the functionality that we have.”

Hitscan collates detailed data on creators | Image credit: Open World

So far, publishers including Devolver Digital and Skybound have been using Hitscan. A spokesperson from the former tells GamesIndustry.biz that the tech “provides a unique opportunity to collaborate directly to prioritise our needs and approach to creator discovery.” In particular, Devolver says the platform has been useful for “monitoring back catalogue coverage”, as it lets the label “see who is revisiting previous titles immediately” and is “super helpful in keeping an eye on both big picture and more concentrated coverage.”

Dempsky says that Hitscan is keeping an eye on creators that are “moving the needle” for a particular game – but what does this mean? What signals is the platform tracking to know which creators are making a difference?

“It starts with understanding who the right creators are to really drive impact for your game”

“A lot of times we are looking at viewership impact; we are looking at engagement of content that creators are developing,” he explains. “We look at a few different buckets. I feel like discovery is a huge element of that. We are looking at the engagement with the content creators are developing.

“Discovery is a huge element of that. It starts with understanding who the right creators are to really drive impact for your game, or who it’d be great to open up relationships with. A lot of what we are doing on the discovery side is layering in context around audience and viewership fit. Looking at backlogs of content that creators have made for different games, competitive games, similar type games and understanding how it is that what creators have done in the past can help provide those signals for an IP that hasn’t launched yet or a franchise that is brand new to the market.”

Short-form video

When it comes to the most valuable content creation platforms for developers and publishers, the story is much the same as it has been for the last decade. Twitch and YouTube are still the biggest players, but short-form platforms are a growing presence in the space.

The performance of different games with different streamers can be tracked | Image credit: Open World

“YouTube was the pioneer in the space, and is still the second biggest search engine on the internet behind Google,” says Dempsky. “Twitch came in and built a lot of momentum; it still has the niche of being the absolute leader in livestreaming, so those live moments. It’s like live sports; those moments that can’t be replicated.

“But obviously, there’s been the rise of TikTok, which has been something that we are very keen on in terms of functionality for Hitscan as well. What we are seeing is creators that might be starting with their livestream, and they might be on for a three-, four-, five-hour-long livestream, but then they chop down those clips and post them to their YouTube channel, then they chop those clips even more and put them on TikTok as 30-second clips.

“Creators that might be starting with their livestream… but then they chop down those clips”

“A lot of times they are seeing that as a way to reach a different type of audience; you want to be able to hit that audience that is there with you day in, day out, they’re there 2pm every day when you start livestreaming. But also being able to optimise for the algorithms that are out there right now.”

Looking to the future, Dempsky wants to position Hitscan as “the single source of truth” for working with creators.

“When you have a new game coming out, you need to understand who the creators you should keep an eye on are, who would be good to work with,” he says, pitching Hitscan as a tool to “develop not just a-moment-in-time visibility into performance metrics and the impact that is driven by creators, but also being that forward looking and suggested tool that shows where you’re at now [and also] your opportunities are for your program,” he says. The latter is aligned with Loaded’s recent acquisition of influencer marketing outfit Drope.me, which was built to involve creators in performance marketing.

Hitscan offers grabnular detail on the performance of different creators | Image credit: Open World

“What that acquisition signalled was that the way we want to tie in not just the intelligence layer that we have been building with Hitscan, but tying it into the functionality that Drope built, which is this activation layer,” Dempsky continues. “Understanding that you have a creator program, it’s live, you’ve got Hitscan tracking it, running the intelligence against it. But what are you going to do at the program level? What are you doing with creators? How are you keeping them engaged and sustained in your game over time?”

Dempsky sees big potential for AI to interrogate the data and deliver more useful insights. “You might say that you have a roster of 200 creator partners; Hitscan might be able to provide you with a list of creators that are similar to the ones that are in your VIP bucket,” he explains. The goal is “not just having it act as a platform that has a boatload of information that you have to sift through and parse through, but it’s actually making you smarter as a creator program manager, as someone who is keeping an eye on creator activity around your game.”

He concludes: “We wanted to build and emphasise that dynamic creator understanding, and we want Hitscan to be the single destination. You shouldn’t have a tool for tracking Twitch metrics, another for paid media boosting and one more for understanding competitors’ titles. We want this to be the single source, the single destination, and have it be something that can work and really prove of huge business value for indie labels all the way up to AAA publishers.”

Games for Change report aims to ground parental gaming concerns in “evidence rather than fear”

Non-profit organisation Games for Change has published a white paper exploring how parents approach video games, and how to shift their focus away from “fear-driven narratives focused on addiction, violence, and excessive screen time.”

Authored by G4C research director Dr Rachel Kowert and supported by Tencent, ‘What Families Need to Know About Video Games and Well-Being’ seeks to highlight how parents can positively engage with their children playing video games.

As Kowert summarised, the paper’s goal is “not to eliminate parental concerns, but to ground them in evidence rather than fear.”

“Parents are often not concerned about the right things,” Kowert told GamesIndustry.biz. “So let’s talk about what we don’t have to be worried about so we can focus our energy more efficiently.”

“We’re focusing on parents because they are an underserved group in this ecosystem. The same applies to educators; we could all collaborate more effectively. Importantly, research should be translated into clear, accessible language.”

Kowert continued: “Academics typically are very bad at getting any information out in a way that doesn’t use big, long words that no one understands, and that’s a perfect echo chamber. By bringing industry, advocates, and educators to the table, we can share our expertise and discuss what we know and don’t know.”

The paper also encourages parents to engage with their children during gameplay. Nearly 60% of children want their parents to be more involved when they play games.

“By bringing industry, advocates, and educators to the table, we can share our expertise and discuss what we know and don’t know”

Dr Rachel Kowert

Kowert illustrates this by saying: “If you can sit through a five-year-old’s soccer game, you can talk to them for five minutes about what game they’re playing.”

“Parents often think, ‘Oh, I guess I could.’ You don’t have to be great at playing games. My kids love Minecraft, but I don’t because I have poor spatial awareness, so it’s hard for me to play. But do I play it? Yes. Am I good at it? Do they care? It’s funnier that way.”

G4C founder and president Susanna Pollack also observed that parents’ perspectives on gaming have shifted following the pandemic.

“Gaming became a space for kids to connect when otherwise they couldn’t. Parents did see that, and there were many parents who were grateful for that because it was the only way to play with your friends. Parents were able to see that value. I don’t think it shifted tremendously, but I think it opened up people’s eyes.”

Pollack stated that the goal is to reduce parental anxiety about games and foster a “deeper understanding of what games can mean to children’s lives.”

“Gaming became a space for kids to connect when otherwise they couldn’t”

Susanna Pollack

“Starting from a place of anxiety, fear, and panic stems from not understanding something. And if we can move the conversation from that place to something deeper, then that can result in a holistic understanding of games. This includes things to be honestly concerned about, but also includes how it’s contributing to kids’ lives.”

Beyond the white paper’s findings, G4C is applying these principles through its Raising Good Gamers program, which offers families tools and resources to navigate gaming at home.

The organisation has also introduced pilot workshops where families create video gaming agreements. 82% of participants reported increased confidence in discussing video games with their children.

Workshops will launch across the US and UK this September, with global expansion planned for 2027.

Nintendo files motion to dismiss consumer lawsuit over tariff refunds

Nintendo has requested the dismissal of a class action lawsuit that accused the company of failing to pass on tariff refunds to consumers.

Earlier this year, two Nintendo customers alleged the platform holder raised hardware prices while seeking compensation for US tariffs.

They claimed Nintendo would break the law if it did not pass tariff refunds to customers who bought products between February 1, 2025 and February 24, 2026.

As reported by Game File, Nintendo filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing consumers who purchased tariff-affected products “received exactly what they bargained and paid for.”

“If a consumer did not want to pay the advertised price, they were free to abstain from purchasing the product or seek out competing products,” said lawyers representing Nintendo.

“The common thread among Plaintiffs’ claims is that it is somehow ‘unfair’; that Nintendo has not retroactively adjusted its prices for completed sales in response to the outcome of the tariff litigation. But that is not how commercial transactions work.

“Nintendo or one of its retailers set a price for each product, and consumers decided whether that price was worth paying. Those who bought Nintendo’s products received exactly what they bargained and paid for: a console, game and/or accessory at a price to which both parties agreed.”

They continued: “The money Plaintiffs paid represents the purchase price of the goods they wanted and received; Plaintiffs are not entitled to a rebate simply because of intervening legal developments related to tariffs.”

The filing clarified Nintendo did not pass the full cost of tariffs to consumers when it raised hardware prices.

“Nintendo did not simply increase each product’s price by the amount of tariffs it paid on that product or impose an across-the-board tariff surcharge,” the lawyers noted.

“Instead, Nintendo imposed modest and selective price adjustments, and it chose to bear the costs of tariffs on some of its most popular products of 2025, including its flagship console, the Nintendo Switch 2.”

Before the Switch 2 launched in June 2025, Nintendo delayed US pre-orders due to tariffs. Nintendo later clarified the tariffs did not affect the console’s original $449.99 price.

Nintendo subsequently sued the US government, requesting that the US Court of International Trade refund the tariffs paid “with interest.”

Ethical, low-power, and on-device: Studio Atelico’s vision for the future of generative AI

In January last year, gaming startup Studio Atelico launched the Atelico AI Engine, which operates on-device rather than relying on costly cloud solutions. Six months later, the company secured $5 million in seed funding “to redefine the role of generative AI in games.”

Now, the team is developing its first title using its own tech. Bobium Brawlers, a turn-based creature battler, is serving as a testbed for Studio Atelico’s AI-first ecosystem, which uses generative AI trained on the studio’s own artists’ work. In this case, the AI is used to generate creatures.

Chris Olson | Image credit: Studio Atelico

Chief product officer Chris Olson tells GamesIndustry.biz that the studio knows that some will have concerns about Studio Atelico’s approach, particularly regarding AI ethics, and is “intensely aware and sympathetic towards some of the issues.” But he believes “attitudes can and will change” over time, particularly since the studio is training their AI model using their own artists’ work rather than public language models.

“We want the technology to kind of uplift humans. We’re not looking to reduce steps in the workflow, so you can fire half your art team. We have an art director. We pay our artists. We recently just released a document that’s in draft form, but it hints at where we want to go, called ARC, the Artist Rights Contract, and it’s so that an artist can use this as a way to interact and protect their livelihood and their art.

“It allows them to define what their art can be used for, gives them a chance to participate in the upside if their art is trained on the models, and very specific use cases. It’s only used for this game. You have to renegotiate if you’re going to use the art for other purposes.

“There are conversations that need to be had, and there are legal battles being fought, which they should be fought, but we think that you can start to define that path and create a fertile ground for everyone to benefit.”

Studio Atelico CEO Piero Molino backs up Olson’s point: “Because we train our own models for doing these things on our own art and our own, in this case, our own decks being created in-house, so it’s our own data. We are doing it ethically when we’re not replacing anyone here. We are just creating something that would not have been possible before with data that we own.”

On device

In a talk at Nordic Game earlier this year, Studio Atelico co-founder and game design director Ennio De Nucci detailed the studio’s technology, which is designed to run on-device rather than connecting to power-hungry data centres in the cloud.

“It plugs in as a library of code, it’s really easy to integrate, and you’re able to create whatever kind of game you want,” he said.

De Nucci expounded the benefits of on-device AI: namely, low power usage and the lack of a need for constant online connection. Plus, he pointed out that vast amounts of training data simply aren’t needed when you only want the model to do one thing, like character creation.

Bobium Brawlers uses AI to generate creatures | Image credit: Studio Atelico

“Using frontier models is a complete overkill,” he said. “The training that we’ve done in our models to give us the kind of art style that we want for mobile products is not something that you can have with a cloud model.”

Most importantly, using on-device AI means developers don’t have to pay hefty fees to companies like Google and OpenAI for their generative AI models.

“The cost problem on the cloud still has not been solved,” he said. “It’s never going to be zero because you need to pay this provider that needs to make money out of this thing.”

Only with AI

Molino thinks that players will become “more attached” to creatures in Bobium Brawlers than in franchises like Pokémon, because the creatures come to life through personalised prompts.

Piero Molino | Image credit: Studio Atelico

“The unique thing about this game is the creature creation aspect that is only made possible thanks to the technology that we are developing,” he says.

“You’re creating something out of your mind,” he continues. “We’re establishing a much tighter relationship with the creative flow of someone. We found people giggling when something they’d typed popped up in front of their eyes. Yes, people have their favourite Pokémon because they have a decades-long relationship with them, but we think that we’re establishing a different type of special connection.”

Studio Atelico aims to use AI “to expand what’s possible,” rather than retrofitting AI into existing game concepts.

“We had about ten prototypes and game mechanics from that experimentation,” said Molino. “We discovered it’s like a spectrum. On one end, you have traditional game design. On the other, the open-endedness AI offers.”

“With Bobium Brawlers, we are hitting something that is somewhere in the middle, and our observation has been that the most fun comes with blending the two – classic game design with the new possibilities of AI. We wanted to make a game that was fun, but also relatively small in scope, because nobody’s figured out what’s a good recipe for an AI-based game.”

Scaling the vision

Studio Atelico’s ambitions have significant financial backing thanks to the $5 million in funding led by Air Street Capital’s Nathan Benaich, with participation from key figures at Hugging Face and Snorkel AI.

Olson is mindful of the high costs associated with user acquisition, but he believes the uniqueness of Bobium Brawlers and the studio’s AI engine will help them “figure out who we think the audience is.”

“Because it’s kind of fresh and new, and I think definitely we’re going to find some interested parties and hope we get some virality either on the school grounds or on a YouTuber influencer, that kind of action,” he says.

Bobium Brawlers is launching as a free-to-play title | Image credit: Studio Atelico

“We are not making yet another Match 3 game where you need to spend all your money in user acquisition because you have no differentiation fundamentally,” Molino explains. “We have a differentiation, and we believe that is going to be the main driver of everything.”

Molino positions the game as a “blue ocean” opportunity within a stagnant mobile market. Unlike AI-integrated games that utilise subscription models to offset cloud costs, Atelico’s on-device engine has allowed them to launch Bobium Brawlers as a free-to-play title.

But ultimately, Bobium Brawlers is intended as a showcase for the Atelico AI Engine. The goal is to transition the engine from a robust, “leaky” architecture to a toolbox that allows developers to blend AI components as they see fit, rather than relying on fixed cloud APIs.

“Our long-term aim would be to be the Epic Games of AI,” Molino says. “Where you both do the games that are made possible by new technology, and then the technology helps create new games. It’s a self-reinforcing positive loop.”

The studio plans to develop small games, gather feedback, and iterate on future projects. “Depending on each game’s success, we aim to release about one game per year, allowing us to learn what works and refine our approach based on feedback.”

“Our long-term aim would be to be the Epic Games of AI”

Kiero Molino

Molino compares this iteration roadmap to Doom, which was Id Software’s fourth first-person shooter, but its biggest success.

“They put out HoverTank, and nobody cared for it. They put out Catacombs; nobody cared for that. They put out Wolfenstein, and people started to like it, but Wolfenstein then became more successful after Doom was released, because people then went back, ‘Oh, who are these guys?’ and then figured out that they had made other shooters before.

“They iterated quickly because they had a new tech, nobody had figured out yet how to make a first-person shooter – it was a new concept, so that iteration was needed to get to the point where they had a polished product that people actually loved. I believe that we will be in a similar situation.”

Judge halts Paramount-Warner Bros. merger for a minimum of 14 days

A judge has ordered the planned Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) merger be paused for at least 14 days following accusations the deal could violate US antitrust laws.

WBD announced last October that it was considering a “potential sale”, starting the acquisition process. Following this announcement, Netflix offered $82.7 billion to acquire WBD in December, including its film studio, streaming business, and games division.

Shortly after Netflix’s offer, Paramount submitted an initial bid of $108.4 billion to acquire WBD. After months of negotiations and a lawsuit from Paramount, Netflix withdrew its bid on February 26, 2026.

Now, as reported by Variety, a state coalition argued that if the merger went ahead, it could lead to fewer movies and TV shows and higher prices.

“My office and attorneys general nationwide have secured an emergency order blocking the unlawful merger of Warner Bros. and Paramount,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

“This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day. History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people. With our lawsuit, we’re fighting for a free and fair market and a thriving film and television industry that serves creatives and audiences alike. We have a full tank of gas, the law on our side, and look forward to continuing to make our case.”

After listening to arguments from both sides last week, Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin granted a 14-day restraining order ahead of Paramount’s plan to close the deal by July 22. The restraining order can be extended to as long as 28 days.

“Plaintiff States’ showing at least demonstrates that serious questions going to the merits remain, weighing in favor of preliminary injunctive relief,” the judge said.

“Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue to operate as separate, viable companies competing in the marketplace while they wait for the Court to adjudicate this case. The balance of equities, combined with the public’s vital interest in antitrust enforcement, therefore tips sharply in favor of the requested injunctive relief.”

You can read our full timeline of the WBD acquisition here.

Court orders Midgar Studio to liquidate after failing to secure a buyer

Edge of Eternity developer Midgar Studio is closing down.

Confirming the news, Nacon CTO and Midgar founder Jérémy Zeler-Maury wrote: “I had hoped to come back here and announce that we had found an acquirer. Unfortunately, the court has now ordered the liquidation of Midgar Studio.”

In a statement posted to LinkedIn, Zeler-Maury said that “over the past few weeks, we worked until the very end to find a solution that could preserve both the company and the team.

“Despite every avenue explored and everyone who tried to help us, no solution could be completed within the timeframe of the process. I founded Midgar in 2008, driven by the desire to create games that felt like us, at the crossroads of French and Japanese sensibilities.

“Midgar has been an enormous part of my life. Saying goodbye is incredibly difficult.”

He continued: “Midgar is the work we accomplished on Hover, Edge of Eternity, Edge of Memories, and all the projects, prototypes, ideas and worlds that passed through the studio. But above all, Midgar is the people who brought our games to life, and everyone who contributed to this journey.

“To everyone who worked at Midgar, whether today or at any point over these eighteen years: thank you. You turned a vision into something real. You held on through the difficult moments, celebrated the victories, learned from our mistakes, and gave the studio its identity. Thank you as well to our partners who trusted us, and to the players who discovered our games, supported us, encouraged us, challenged us, and sometimes defended us with incredible loyalty.

“Today, my thoughts are especially with the members of the team,” he concluded. “The company is closing, but their talent, experience and value remain intact. To the studios, publishers and recruiters reading this: this team deserves your attention. Please reach out to them.”

He closed by reminding the team that “this ending does not erase anything we built”, adding that he was “proud of the games we created, proud of the identity we defended, and above all proud of every person I had the chance to share this journey with”.

“Midgar Studio ends here, but what we created will live on in our games, in our memories, and in everything each of us builds next. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being part of this story.”

Zeler-Maury did not detail how many people would be impacted by the closure, but the studio’s LinkedIn page suggests it employs between 11 and 50 staff.

Nacon subsidiaries Spiders, Kylotonn, Cyanide, and Nacon Tech filed for insolvency back in March. Midgar has followed Greedfall developer Spiders, which similarly shut down after failing to find a buyer.

Wargame and strategy specialist Slitherine Software acquired the licence, publishing rights and back catalogue for the Warhammer-derived Blood Bowl franchise from Nacon. As part of the deal, Slitherine will publish the upcoming Warhammer Blood Bowl.

“I’m not a creative. I like spreadsheets” – The low-profile team that powers Marathon, Subnautica 2, NBA 2K, and more

This article concludes ExDev Week. You can find previous articles here.

Following stints in government work, fundraising, and finance, Mitch Patterson founded Wolfjaw Studios in 2018 after becoming interested in co-development studios. “What I found was a lot of them just did anything for anybody,” he says. “They did art, they did QA, they did gameplay, they did backend, they did websites. And I was like, I’m going to do it, but I’m going to do it based on what game studios don’t actually want to work on.”

In other words, Wolfjaw would handle the kind of backend infrastructure that developers often deliberately shove down their to-do lists. “All the boring stuff that is pretty essential to the game, but nobody actually touches,” Patterson explains.

Mitchell Patterson | Image credit: Wolfjaw Studios

“People that work at game studios are artists, they’re creatives, and they want to make games. They want to present someone with a piece of art. What they don’t want to do is worry about account systems and leaderboards and matchmaking.”

Since then, Wolfjaw – which is based in Troy, New York – has quietly built up an enviable portfolio of big-name clients, including Unity, Bungie, Take-Two Interactive, Riot Games and Electronic Arts. The studio has worked on huge franchises like Destiny 2, Marathon, the NBA 2K and WWE 2K games, Subnautica, Among Us, and Apex Legends. But throughout, Wolfjaw has remained very much in the background, content to prop up the success of others rather than steal the limelight – or make its own games.

Whether external development studios should also work on original titles is something of a debate in exdev circles, but Patterson has a firm take on the matter. “I feel like I’m the only person in games that doesn’t want to make their own game,”he says. “Everyone is always like, ‘You don’t want to make a game?’ And I’m like, ‘I make plenty of games’.”

“I just like to problem-solve and make games work. I’m not a creative. I like spreadsheets, stuff like that.” In fact, for an exdev studio, he thinks making your own IP is a “very dangerous road to go down” that can turn into “a big distraction and a big financial cost,” which could ultimately kill the studio.

“It’s easier than ever to make a game, but harder than ever to be successful,” he says.

Stability

In contrast to creating original games, backend infrastructure work is relatively stable and long term, and can extend for years after a game is launched. Patterson says Wolfjaw has been working with NBA 2K for six years now, with Innersloth for five, and with Bungie for four. “We’re working on a very large contract extension with all of them, so we kind of become part of their team.”

Wolfjaw Studios was founded in 2018 | Image credit: Wolfjaw Studios

Just this year, Wolfjaw worked on the launch of WWE 2K26, Subnautica 2, and Marathon, and has two more launches to come. Its work on Marathon commenced long before the game was announced, and with even knowing what game it was. “They were like, ‘Oh, we don’t have art assets yet, so we’re just using some old assets [from the 1995 game Marathon]’. Later, we found out it was because we were making Marathon. It’s like, you guys could be honest with me, I won’t tell anybody!”

“When we first started the project, the idea was: ‘Let’s take everything from Destiny and just reuse it’,” he continues. “And then it quickly became, ‘Wait, you just can’t take 12-year-old technology and repurpose it for a brand new game’.” In the end, Wolfjaw’s backend work involved a mixture of legacy technology and new solutions.

And the studio’s biggest sign of success is that no one notices the work they are doing. Things like server management only tend to get picked up by players when they go wrong. “There have been no headlines about games we’ve worked on where the games are crashing,” says Patterson, proudly. Wolfjaw did the server scaling for Subnautica 2 – “We were expecting 250,000 concurrents at peak, and we hit 800,000” – yet despite the game’s huge launch, outcry about players being unable to get online was noticeable by its absence.

“There have been no headlines about games we’ve worked on where the games are crashing”

Of course, it’s hardly glamorous work. But the heavily technical, code-based nature of it means Wolfjaw can look outside the games industry when hiring, finding people who are content to work in the shadows. “We can bring in people that come from banking,” notes Patterson.

But it’s not all plain sailing, and Wolfjaw isn’t unaffected by the prevailing winds of the games industry. Patterson says they’re in the process of modernizing the business, and the studio underwent layoffs earlier this year. “We’ve reduced staff to some degree after a couple of big game launches, but we’re also negotiating some contracts and expecting some teams to scale back up in the coming months,” he says.

Trust

Wolfjaw typically finds its clients through word of mouth. “Games is a very small industry,” says Patterson. “So the quality of our work kind of speaks for itself.”

“The typical way we get a client is someone that worked we worked with at EA or Take-Two moves to ‘fill-in-the-blank’ publisher/studio, and when a problem arises, they can just trust that we’ll get the job done.”

Wolfjaw worked on Marathon before it knew it was Marathon | Image credit: Bungie

Trust is something that came top of the list of the most important assets for an exdev studio in our recent feature, and Patterson notes there was an influx of inexperienced operators into the live-service scene during the gaming boom of the COVID years. “A lot of people saw that as an opportunity, and got into the space without actually having the skills, or were trying to sell products that weren’t actually good.”

Wolfjaw, meanwhile, has steadily built a reputation for being reliable – and realistic. “We don’t sell anything that says, ‘Hey, use this and this will solve all of your problems’ – I don’t think that works,” says Patterson. “We focus on figuring out a custom backend system and architecture.”

“Server orchestration and latency is something that I’m still amazed many of the big AAA publishers are not good at”

More generally, he has witnessed plenty of bad practices across the industry. “Server orchestration and latency is something that I’m still amazed many of the big AAA publishers are not good at – and they’re going to need to start getting good at it.” Patterson points out the rise of markets like South America and India, and the corresponding need to take into account the nuances of mobile architecture and widely varying internet speeds.

“It’s crazy to me so many of them are still like, ‘I can build for this exact platform and nothing else, and this exact internet and nothing else’.”

He sees the sheer variety of big-name titles Wolfjaw has worked on is the studio’s biggest strength. There’s no substitute for experience.

“When I started the company, one of the things someone told me was, ‘Well, if you sign 2K, no one else is going to work with you, because you have access to so-and-so’s backend – they don’t want this information being shared’,” he recalls. “But it turned into a superpower, because while we don’t share that information, we’ve run into so many different environments and so many different experiences.”

The launch of Subnautica 2 went smoothly thanks partly to Wolfjaw’s work on server scaling | Image credit: Unknown Worlds

Now, having worked with games made in numerous coding languages and “dozens” of proprietary engines, the team is able to quickly problem solve by applying knowledge from earlier projects, as well as warn clients about potential pitfalls.

“It’s funny, Unreal gets so much press, but the majority of AAA games are on proprietary engines still to this day,” says Patterson. “Some of them are written in custom versions of languages, which is crazy.”

End of the AAA road

Now, Wolfjaw wants to get the word out that there are better ways to go about things. “I feel like there’s still a lot that needs to be done, and while the games industry has gone through craziness from COVID, and massive amounts of money being invested, and all of these giant studios, and all of these fires, all of these games flopping, and all of these systems breaking down, we’ve been building our brand, building our reputation, building our knowledge and experience, and now we want to start telling people: ‘Hey, you can do this on a $10 million budget. You can do this without having to do all of these crazy things’.

“I’ve run into a lot of people who have come from the machine of AAA publishers, and they only know how to make a game that costs $500 million”

“So the big thing we want to start doing is finding ways to work with more people and make an impact on games. And right now, I just don’t feel like we’re done yet. I’ve run into a lot of people who have come from the machine of AAA publishers, and they only know how to make a game that costs $500 million. They only know how to do certain things – and we’re going to have to reeducate some of those folks. But there’s a lot of other folks that are coming into this space. I truly believe the next big game and genre will not come from a AAA publisher.”

Wolfjaw has been working on the NBA 2K series for around six years | Image credit: 2K

Given that, Wolfjaw has been working on a much more affordable backend system. “When we build a backend, when you build an account system, 75% of it is pretty much the same thing you’re doing every time,” Patterson explains. “So what we’re trying to do is build some code-source-available tool that will allow people to build their own backend a little cheaper, or utilize us to do it in a much faster way, so that we can start working with two or three person shops.”

He says Wolfjaw has been working with Notorious Studios on a pilot of the project. “We’re trying to figure out a way of how we build for it and how we make it work,” he says, “where you take it, build it, fork it, modify it all you want. If you’re super successful, we’ll take a little cut. If not, that’s fine. So we’re trying to find ways to go downstream and allow these people to make a game for $5 million or $2 million as opposed to, ‘I need $300 million to make a game’.”

He says it’s clear that the ever-ballooning budgets of AAA games are unsustainable. “I think we’ve hit the end of the ‘$500 million games are the only way to go’.”

Kevin Robertson | Image credit: Wolfjaw Studios

Kevin Robertson – Wolfjaw’s VP of business development and strategy, who previously worked in investment at Tencent and at the venture capital firm Bitkraft – agrees that good games don’t have to cost the earth. “I was in the eye of the storm of seeing the bloviation, seeing the fake-it-till-you-make-it, seeing all this chatter and marketing, and it’s all kind of farcical. And you find this team based in upstate New York that’s just blue collar, building some of the biggest games in the planet, and supporting the most players on the planet by far out of anybody working in this space, and just quietly and humbly going about its business.

“And we have a challenge – and this has been my challenge this year – to continue to be this humble blue collar team, but start to tell our story to the world that, one, we exist, but two, we are for real. This is not some fake-it-to-make-it technology that might fall over if it hits 12,000 CCU. We’re building some major stuff.”

He acknowledges that getting the word out is a challenge. “It’s hard to make the backend sexy,” he says. “But I think there’s something about this team and this group of people building some really amazing things in an unsung fashion that nobody really knows about.”

Union slams Microsoft for “unfair labor practice”, alleging Xbox “unlawfully” laid off staff

Xbox has been accused of “unlawfully” laying off staff without giving notice to, or discussing it with, recognized unions.

As detailed on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) website and reported by Game Developer, a ULP charge has been filed against Microsoft and its subsidiaries, including Xbox, ZeniMax Media, Inc, id Software, Bethesda Game Studios, for allegedly failing to provide information to labor union Communications Workers of America (CWA).

After weeks of speculation, the sweeping job cuts at Xbox were announced on July 6. The loss of 3,200 staff, around 20% of the organisation, was revealed via an internal memo that was also posted to X. CEO Asha Sharma also confirmed that five studios were to be divested.

Now, in a new filing, the CWA accused Microsoft of repudiation/modification of contract, refusal to furnish information, refusal to bargain/bad faith bargaining (including surface bargaining/direct dealing), and coercive actions, such as surveillance.

“The unions CWA and CWA Canada have jointly filed unfair labor practice complaints against Microsoft alleging the company has unlawfully fired people without giving notice to or discussing it with the union as the employer is legally obliged to do when we are in the middle of ongoing bargaining a collective agreement,” CWA Canada president Carmel Smyth told Game Developer.

“Basically, the employer can not arbitrarily change working conditions while it is engaged in negotiating with the union. We will continue to file legal challenges if necessary, and do all we can to defend the rights of Bethesda Game Studios workers.”

In a statement to Game Developer, Xbox said: “We respect our employees’ right to make their voices heard, and we recognize that this is a difficult time for many. We reached out to the union to begin effects bargaining and are committed to that process. We remain focused on supporting impacted employees through this transition while positioning the organization for long-term strength.”

This follows similar action from other unions. Union members at Bethesda Game Studios have already gone on strike after hundreds of members were affected by layoffs across Bethesda and ZeniMax. This includes 96 at id Software, 40 remote workers at BGS Dallas, 22 at BGS Austin, 213 at ZeniMax Online Studios in Maryland, and 166 at ZeniMax Media.

Jobs roundup: July 2026 | Marathon director Joe Ziegler leaves Bungie

It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Marathon director Joe Ziegler leaves Bungie

Joe Ziegler has left Bungie four months after the launch of Marathon. Ziegler’s role as game director on the title will be passed to Del Chafe III, who will oversee the game alongside creative director Julia Nardin.

“Both of them have been operating in a strong leadership capacity for the team and are ready to guide Marathon into the next chapter with an even better and brighter future,” said Ziegler.

Criss Bürki | Manager, marketing strategy – influencers, Capcom

Criss Bürki has been appointed manager, marketing strategy – influencers at Capcom. Bürki previously held the role of global creator campaign manager at Ubisoft.

Fanny Vaudour | Producer, CD Projekt Red

Fanny Vaudour has joined CD Projekt Red as a producer. Vaudour previously served as producer at Razing Studios, Chamo Games, and Housemarque. They were also project coordinator at Ubisoft Paris Studio.

Mahmoud Ziater | Commercial lead, Qwacks

Mahmoud Ziater has been appointed commercial lead at Qwacks. Ziater previously served as marketing and sales manager at True Gaming. He is also a growth and partnerships advisor at Rivaln.

Chris Chung | Image credit: Neowiz

Chris Chung joins Neowiz as head of global business group

Chris Chung has been appointed head of global business group at Neowiz.

Chung previously served as chief product officer at Wargaming and head of business at NCSoft Korea and the head of NCSoft West. He also founded Motiga, the creator of Gigantic.

“Chung’s experience in every stage of bringing the game to the global market is exactly why he is the right fit to lead our Global Business Group, and we look forward to utilising his expertise as we grow our gaming portfolio,” said a Neowiz representative.

“In tandem with our recent leadership changes, we recognised the need to have someone with the mindset to empathise and truly partner with developers and creators across the globe.”

Neowiz recently reorganised its divisions into three groups: the Gaming Studios Group, the Global Business Group, and the Live Game Business Group.

Dylan Beale | Studio head (Guildford), Larian

Dylan Beale has been appointed studio head of Larian’s Guildford studio.

Beale was studio director at DPS Games and development director at Wargaming UK.

Jonnie Bryant joins Team17 as communications director

Jonnie Bryant has been appointed communications director at Team17. Bryant previously worked at Bethesda Softworks as global PR director.

“We’re delighted to have Jonnie become a part of our new marketing leadership,” said Team17 general manager Harley Homewood. “We are looking to fully employ his skills to help consolidate and enhance media and market awareness for all of our titles.”

Gemma Cannon | Creative designer, Sega Europe

Gemma Cannon has joined Sega Europe as a creative designer. Cannon previously served as digital designer at IGN Entertainment.

Teemu Koski | CEO of MENA business, Nodwin Gaming

Teemu Koski has taken on the role as CEO of MENA business at Nodwin Gaming.

Koski joined Nodwin in 2025 as chief business officer for MENA. He previously served as chief growth officer at YaLLa Esports.

Robert Henrysson | Image credit: Nordisk Games

Robert Henrysson steps down as Supermassive Games CEO

Robert Henrysson has announced he will step down as CEO of Supermassive Games and as a partner at Nordisk Games.

“As CEO, I was honoured to guide the studio through intense industry change, broadening its client base and establishing a culture of consistent quality across all aspects of the game development process,” said Henrysson.

“Leading a studio is never a one-man job – it is the entire team’s effort. Our commitment to continuous improvement was, and continues to be, central to everything we do. To everyone at Supermassive Games, I am so grateful for everything I’ve learnt and experienced with all of you.”

Tim Stokes joins Nex Playground as interim general manager, EMEA & ANZ

Tim Stokes has joined Nex Playground as interim general manager. Stokes will lead commercial growth and expansion of Nex Playground across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Ryan Ferwerda | Head of live services & mobile at EA Tiburon

Ryan Ferwerda has been promoted to head of live services & mobile at Electronic Arts Tiburon. Ferwerda previously served as head of mobile, focusing on EA Sports including roles as general manager and game director.

Emily Dixon | Senior account executive, Bastion

Emily Dixon has been appointed senior account executive at Bastion. Dixon previously worked as a games journalist, contributing to sites including GFinity, 101 Realsport, and Dualshockers.

Hakan Burak Karaman | Head of games, Rovio Entertainment

Hakan Burak Karaman has been promoted to head of games at Rovio Entertainment. Karaman previously served as senior product manager, having joined Rovio as product manager in April 2023.

Christopher Serra joins Paramount Games as VP of business development and licensing

Christopher Serra has been appointed VP of business development and licensing at Paramount Games.

Serra previously served as director of games business development at Oculus VR.

Alexis Bonte departs Stillfront as CEO

Alexis Bonte will leave his role as CEO of Stillfront, a position he assumed in October 2024. He joined the company in 2017 as group COO.

“Alexis stepped into the CEO role at a challenging time and has led the company through a decisive period of strategic and organisational change with great professionalism and commitment, leaving Stillfront stronger and well positioned for its next chapter,” said Stillfront chair of the board Lars-Johan Jarnheimer.

“We are grateful that Alexis remains fully dedicated to Stillfront throughout the transition to ensure a smooth and seamless handover.”

Jakub Karolczak | Production coordinator, 11 Bit Studios

Jakub Karolczak has been promoted to production coordinator at 11 Bit Studios. He previously served as senior producer at the company.

Hector Parra | Live game producer, Niantic

Hector Parra has been appointed live game producer at Niantic. He previously served as producer at CGBOT and creative project manager at Dracma Studios.

Nicholas Penwarden leaves Epic Games

Nicholas Penwarden has announced his departure from Epic Games, where he served as engineering fellow and VP of engineering for 15 years, holding roles including director of Unreal Engine and development manager of Unreal Engine 4.

“I’m proud of the part I was able to play in Unreal Engine’s evolution from UE3 to where it stands today,” said Penwarden.

“It’s remarkable to see how far the engine has come, how much the community has grown, and all the incredible games and experiences developers have created with it.

“Most of all, I’m proud of the team we built: the most talented, passionate, and extraordinary group of engine and game developers I could have hoped to work alongside.”

Raptor PR announces two new appointments

Raptor PR has appointed Ruzbeh Gazdar as account director and Sophia Hollis as senior account executive.

Gazdar was a senior account manager at GingerMay, and Hollis was an account executive at Zeno London.

Joe Kearns | Project manager, Yrs Truly

Joe Kearns has joined Yrs Truly as project manager. He previously served as a producer at ICHI Worldwide.

Jaakko Harlas departs from Supercell

Jaakko Harlas has announced his departure from Supercell, where he served as head of investments for over 12 years.

“The market is becoming much more diverse” – Will the proliferation of football video games last?

Since 2022, when FIFA and Electronic Arts ended their almost 30-year partnership, a wide range of new football video games have emerged, including the free-to-play title UFL and the Netflix exclusive FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition from Delphi Interactive.

“There is a trend toward offering more choice for fans. In other words, offering more games for more gamers,” says Delphi founder and CEO Casper Daugaard.

Casper Daugaard | Image credit: Delphi Interactive

“We’re also seeing games that are buoyed by trusted licenses continue to resonate well with players, and that games without licenses are struggling to get off the ground.”

Eugene Nashilov, the CEO of UFL maker Strikerz, says that the sector is in its “most active phase in years”.

“The market is becoming much more diverse,” he says. “We now have a few full simulation games, arcade football, social football, mobile-first products, manager and fantasy games, and experimental platform-based experiences.

Eugene Nashilov | Image credit: Strikerz

“At the same time, EA Sports FC and eFootball remain the leaders in audience, legacy, and commercial scale. UFL is one of the few projects directly challenging them in the full football simulation space. So I’d say the market is opening up, but it is still very difficult. Football is an attractive genre in gaming, but also one of the hardest to execute well.”

From the perspective of eFootball maker Konami, the football market is in a “transition period”, at least on the development side of things.

“Historically, the direction was shaped by annual premium releases, whereas it’s now evolving towards more diverse formats, such as free-to-play and live service models,” explains eFootball general producer Junichi Taya.

“This has widened the target audience and made the space more dynamic, which has influenced how we build and deliver a football experience as we focus on continuous iteration. Simultaneously, player expectations have increased significantly as they expect authenticity in gameplay with consistent updates that keep the experience fresh. This shift has allowed us to reach and nurture growing markets through mobile and cross-platform accessibility, where new audiences are engaging with football games for the first time. Overall, it’s a healthy and growing market that constantly changes in how experiences are delivered and sustained.”

But can EA’s dominance be challenged?

Diversification

EA ruled the football roost for decades with its licensed FIFA games, while (despite its best efforts) Konami played second fiddle with the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise, now branded as eFootball. There were other popular experiences beyond those two, such as Sega and Sports Interactive’s Football Manager franchise, but FIFA and PES were the main names.

FIFA and EA ended their partnership in 2022, reportedly over licensing costs, and EA rebranded its football series as EA Sports FC the following year. Not much has changed since then for the US publishing giant – despite the odd sales wobble, its football business appears to have held up. (the company did not answer questions from GamesIndustry.biz for this feature.)

EA Sports FC 26 | Image credit: EA

FIFA, meanwhile, vowed to diversify its video game offerings, with president Gianni Infantino saying: “I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans.”

Earlier this year, the organisation announced its new Digital Football strategy, which sees multiple developers and publishers make games under its licence, including the already announced Netflix World Cup title from Delphi Interactive and Refactor Games.

On paper, FIFA’s Digital Football strategy is a logical bet for the governing body. Rather than mostly going all-in with one partner, as it did with Electronic Arts, the organisation is spreading its bets across a variety of different studios and formats, ranging from Netflix to Roblox. The vision, according to those with knowledge of the strategy, is for a broad global reach with a particular eye on the youth market. That demands a robust presence in free-to-play and mobile, informing decisions like the rebrand of Gamefam’s Roblox hit Super League Soccer to FIFA Super Soccer.

But the question is, can the market support this many experiences? Is the audience big enough to sustain this many different kinds of FIFA games?

“We believe that the market can support a range of experiences as they can offer varied gameplay interactions that deliver different value to players,” Konami’s Taya says. “As football invites a diverse global audience, we believe that there are multiple approaches to support them and provide meaningful moments across competitive, casual and social play. We believe it is important to continue providing game experiences tailored to the needs of different players, on the platforms that best suit those experiences. Increased competition offering different gameplay styles encourages innovation across the industry and pushes all of us to deliver meaningful experiences.”

UFL was released on consoles in 2024, later coming to PC and mobile | Image credit: Strikerz

Strikerz’s Nashilov agrees, saying that there is “room for variety” in the space.

“Football is huge and very diverse,” he argues. “A 10-year-old playing on Roblox, a competitive PvP console player, a mobile-first player commuting home, a fantasy football fan, and someone who wants a quick social party experience are not necessarily looking for the same product.

“So the idea of tailor-made football experiences for different audiences makes sense.”

He continues: “I also believe, however, that FIFA’s broader strategy will eventually need a truly top-tier FIFA-branded football game at the centre of the ecosystem. The FIFA brand is extremely powerful, but in gaming, brands need to be reinforced by great products to fall into the expectation basket of the community. The challenge there is execution. Football games are difficult to build and even more difficult to sustain. Retention, gameplay depth, community trust and long-term content quality are really hard to achieve.”

“FIFA’s broader strategy will eventually need a truly top-tier FIFA-branded football game at the centre”

Delphi’s Daugaard, who runs one of the companies involved in the Digital Football strategy, also believes that the initiative will please the widest variety of fans.

“There is a wide diversity of needs, both met and unmet, within the global football gaming community,” he says. “A broader variety of football experiences has the opportunity to better serve existing players, while reaching the underserved football fans of the world.”

This, Daugaard argues, is the big opportunity for football games at the moment – making the sport even more accessible to a large audience.

“There are hundreds of millions of gamers who love football that aren’t actively playing football games,” he says.

“The next generation of football fans is evolving, and gaming is one of the key access points to connect with the beautiful game. Digital play is a key driver for why kids follow a sport.

“We’re also seeing some strong opportunities in emerging gaming markets, including MENA, Latin America, South East Asia and India, where growth in gaming mirrors the growth of football fandom. There is a ton of opportunity to bring more football game experiences to players in those parts of the world.”

Cultural relevance

“Football is not just a sport. It is entertainment, competition, friendship, identity, influencers, clubs, leagues, players, fashion, memes, arguments, weekend rituals – ultimately, a lifestyle,” says Nashilov.

Konami launched eFootball in 2021 | Image credit: Konami

“The opportunity is to build football games that understand and reflect the full cultural context, not only the 90 minutes on the pitch.

“We live in a hyperconnected world where football moments travel instantly through social media, creators and short-form content. A successful football game today needs strong gameplay, but it must also offer cultural relevance, live-ops energy and the ability to feel connected to what is happening in real football and the community.”

Konami’s Taya agrees that there is a “demand for flexibility and an approachable experience,” but notes that one of the biggest challenges is “delivering a gameplay experience that feels authentic whilst still being accessible to a wide audience,” since football fans are “very sensitive to realism.”

Junichi Taya | Image credit: Konami

“Alongside that, development costs and the demands of a live-service title of delivering constant updates and implementing improvements from community feedback continue to rise,” he says. “These challenges, however, also create opportunities, as a live-service model allows for deeper, long-term engagement through cross-platform play and mobile accessibility. We focus on building closer relationships with players by responding to feedback and implementing improvements consistently to evolve the game over time.”

Another challenge raised by Strikerz’s Nashilov is the audience’s desire for “something fresh”.

“Major publishers are focused on CCG [collectible card game] progression systems built around powerful squad-building economies and live-ops content,” he says. “Players engage with these systems heavily, but at the same time, there is also frustration. Many players feel that the genre has not changed enough in terms of gameplay, innovation or conceptually new experiences.

“Football may look simple from the outside, but making a great football game is extremely hard”

“Another challenge is execution. Football may look simple from the outside, but making a great football game is extremely hard. You need responsive gameplay, animation quality, AI, physics, matchmaking, licenses, content, economy, esports potential and constant live operations. Very few teams can sustain that at scale.”

Daugaard agrees on the complexity point, noting some of the mazes that developers and publishers need to navigate to have a successful game.

“Rights to players, teams, and leagues can be complicated and expensive, and navigating that ecosystem is often required for long-term success at scale,” he says.

“We also see a lot of barriers to play for new audiences – gaming hardware costs, premium pricing, and ongoing microtransactions can make the genre feel both expensive and intimidating for new audiences to find an on-ramp.”

Evolution

While the rush of global interest in football generated by the 2026 World Cup is now winding down, the future appears bright for the football game market.

Nashilov believes that the genre will continue to “steadily” evolve; incumbent market leaders will build on the existing foundations, while new blood will try to enter the space with a variety of approaches.

“Some projects will find their audience. Some will not survive. That is normal,” he says.

FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition is available on Netflix Games | Image credit: Netflix

“The accessibility of game development is improving, so more football games will appear. But the top end of the genre still requires high-end technology, deep football understanding, production power and years of iteration.

“For me, the most exciting part is that football gaming is no longer standing still. The genre is becoming more competitive, more diverse and more culturally aware. That creates pressure, but it also creates opportunity – and I think players will benefit from that the most.”

“The genre is becoming more competitive, more diverse and more culturally aware”

Konami’s Taya adds: “We see a very positive future for the genre as football is truly universal due to its unparalleled global popularity and continuously evolves. We believe our strategy of consistently refining gameplay and building something that evolves alongside the sport itself resonates with players.

“A key part of that future is continuing to expand into and nurture growing markets, making football more accessible to new audiences while supporting existing players. For example, we will continue to make ongoing investments in game servers, which are essential for action football games, while working with global companies to provide a comfortable, competitive environment for our continuously growing users. With eFootball, our focus is on building an ecosystem that can grow over time and evolve alongside our global community.”

This positive sentiment is carried over by Delphi’s Daugaard, who says that a greater variety of experiences is only a good thing for the genre.

“We expect growth overall, just as both football fandom and gaming continue to grow globally,” he says. “More diverse football gaming experiences can help make the genre more accessible, and ultimately democratise and globalise football gaming for more people.”

“There has to be a reason for people to buy an Xbox” – Senior leadership reinforces commitment to console exclusivity

Following the recent restructure at Xbox, senior leadership has emphasised the firm’s focus on keeping games exclusive to its platform.

Last month, the company announced it would return to making its portfolio titles exclusive to its platform, after it began releasing games on PlayStation and Switch in 2024.

Chief strategy officer Matthew Ball clarified to GamesRadar that “this decision was made very early” and will remain in effect for the foreseeable future.

“Asha [Sharma] believes that to build a platform, you must have exclusive services and software – in this case, games,” said Ball. “And so to return our platform to consistent growth, we need a reliable pipeline of exclusive games.”

CCO Matt Booty added: “There has to be a reason for people to buy an Xbox.”

Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution are the first confirmed platform exclusives. Other upcoming titles, such as Forza Horizon 6 and Fable, will continue to be available on multiple platforms.

“To return our platform to consistent growth, we need a reliable pipeline of exclusive games,” said Ball. “I can assure you Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution are not the only titles we’re planning.”

Regarding the exclusivity decision process, Ball stated that Xbox has an established framework, “including how we evaluate them.”

Booty added: “We are the stewards of over 20 game franchises that have made a billion dollars in their lifetime. There are a lot of different games in our portfolio, and we have to think about how different games serve different purposes within it.”

Several factors influenced Xbox’s decision to reverse its multiplatform strategy after two years.

“There is scant evidence of any platform ever being built, let alone sustained, without having exclusive content,” Ball explained.

“It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about cable networks, streaming video channels, broadcast, terrestrial radio, a Hollywood studio, a music label – you need it.”

“We should narrow in on the literal role of these titles. We are asking players to make an investment in our consoles. These investments are real; they involve trade-offs in life. Given this, we need to give players a clear reason to pick us. And even after they chose us, we still have an obligation to earn that purchase.”

Ball continued: “There have been a lot of companies that have tried to come into the console or video game platforming business, lacking franchises such as ours and the player connections we have today, and instead just believing technology is going to get you across the line. It doesn’t.”

An unnamed studio lead within Xbox’s portfolio stated that while “console exclusives aren’t a silver bullet,” the previous strategy “wasn’t working, so clearly something had to change.”

“If this is a way for us to rebuild trust with the Xbox community and give players a reason to return home, then it has to be worth a shot.”

32 workers at ZA/UM laid off following release of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies

ZA/UM has announced layoffs impacting 32 employees across all departments.

In a statement on social media, the Disco Elysium developer explained that the commercial performance of its latest release, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, “has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size.”

“This changes the shape of ZA/UM, but not its purpose. Our artistic standards remain unchanged: we will persist.”

ZA/UM consulted representatives of the ZA/UM Workers’ Alliance during the redundancy process.

Last year, UK staff unionised as the Workers’ Alliance, represented by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

“We can exercise our legal rights should we need to,” marketing manager Poppy Ingham told GamesIndustry.biz last year. “But mostly so we can try and have the studio work as a collaborative project between the workers and management. We like being here.

“We want to continue being here. So let’s try and get a seat at the table in the big management meetings.”

Ingham added: “Our meetings are completely open to our other colleagues who might be based and employed by our Porto arm or our Tallinn arm, for example. So although we can only exercise legal protection for UK workers, we can still bring in other workers from around the world to feed in on what we’re doing.”

The previous round of layoffs at ZA/UM took place in 2024 after the cancellation of three games, including a sequel and an expansion to Disco Elysium. Approximately 20 employees were affected.

ZA/UM president Ed Tomaszewski stated that after the first two cancellations, the studio reassigned staff to other projects.

The cancellation of the Disco Elysium expansion, however, resulted in layoffs.

“Given the financial realities of being an independent studio, we were not able to continue with a part of the team,” Tomaszewski told us.

“After the success of Disco Elysium and the energy that came from it, not only did the team think that they could do anything, but they thought they could do everything and all at once.

“This was a painful lesson for the studio to learn, where we got a better sense of what we were able to achieve as we moved along, but had to make painful decisions along the way.”

UKIE: 22% of UK games industry workforce affected by job losses in last three years

22% of UK games industry workers have experienced job loss in the last three years, including redundancies, studio closures, and the end of fixed-term contracts.

This data comes from UKIE, which has released the third edition of its industry census, now called the UK Games Industry Workforce Demographics Survey.

Professor Mark Taylor designed, conducted, and authored the survey, which is based on responses from 1,610 UK games industry professionals collected between November 2025 and January 2026.

This is a decrease from 3,603 respondents in the 2021 edition. UKIE noted these results are “best understood as a snapshot rather than an exhaustive audit.”

“The findings reflect the experiences of those who took part during significant upheaval. Because both the industry and respondent base have changed since previous editions, they should be read on their own terms rather than compared directly with earlier findings,” the report said.

Job losses

The survey’s primary focus was the effect of layoffs and studio closures, with 22% of respondents experiencing job loss in the past three years.

Half of respondents who left a job, including those who transitioned to new roles, secured new employment within three months. Those who have been searching for a new role for over a year are the most likely to plan to leave the industry altogether.

Non-binary (29%) and female (23%) respondents were more likely to have lost a job than men (20%), and writers and artists were disproportionately affected, with 44% and 31% reporting job losses, respectively.

The report identified a direct correlation between job loss and declining mental health, noting that job loss is often linked to increased mental health conditions.

Image credit: UKIE

Demographics

Women comprise 33% of the workforce, which is significantly below the 49% in the broader UK workforce but similar to other European games industries.

5% of respondents identified as non-binary or another gender. 6% identified as trans, with 2% describing their gender as male or female and 4% as non-binary or another description.

Regarding age, 48% of respondents were 35 or older, while 7% were 25 or younger. The UK games workforce is predominantly White at 88%, with White British representation increasing in more senior roles.

1% of respondents identified as Black, and 5% as mixed, multiple ethnicities, or Asian. Ethnic minorities held only 6% of senior leadership roles in organisations with more than 24 employees.

24% of respondents hold a non-UK nationality, including 16% from the EEA. The data suggests advancing to senior positions by changing jobs has become harder for non-UK nationals, likely due to visa complexities.

33% of the UK games workforce identifies as LGBTQIA+, significantly higher than the national average of 3.7%.

Shifting sentiment gap

While 81% of those surveyed are proud to be part of the UK games industry, only 38% would recommend it as a great place to work.

Women and non-binary respondents reported lower satisfaction with both their workplaces and the industry as a whole than men did.

There has been a sharp increase in self-disclosed conditions. Reports of ADHD rose to 27% (from 10% in 2021) and autism to 16% (from 4%), indicating both higher prevalence and greater industry awareness.

41% of respondents work in organisations with fewer than 100 employees. 61% work mainly from home, while 41% must spend some weekly hours at a specified location, compared to 15% in the broader UK workforce.

London’s share of the workforce declined from 37% to 26%, while headcount increased modestly across most other UK regions.

Image credit: UKIE

64% of respondents grew up in households where the main earner held a managerial or professional role, compared to 37% in the wider UK workforce. This suggests ongoing barriers for those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

84% of respondents hold a degree. Workplace training is also prevalent, with 32% receiving employer-provided training compared to 18% in the wider UK workforce.

Outlook

In response to these findings, UKIE’s Raise The Game initiative has formed a coalition of industry partners to expand their efforts and support them with a dedicated fund.

These partners include: Into Games, Many Cats Studio, Melanin Gamers, POC in Play, Safe In Our World, Special Effect, Code Coven, Limit Break, Games Leadership, and Women in Games.

“Together, these partners will develop an action plan that responds directly to what this survey has found, so that the next generation of games professionals enters an industry that is equitable and safe for everyone.”

Sky-high prices risk disaster for a console market struggling to grow | Opinion

Nobody needs to hear again about how the crisis in component costs is causing havoc on the hardware side of the games industry. That particular bell has been tolling for some months now, and we’re resigned to not being able to do anything much about it. This is an event to be weathered, not one that is within the industry’s power to prevent.

What’s still worth trying to understand, however, is how this will affect the shape of the games business in the longer term. Just as the pandemic era skewed the industry for years afterwards – to some degree, we’re still feeling its influence today – so too will the era of brutally unaffordable gaming hardware create ripple effects that persist long after prices reach some kind of tolerable equilibrium.

This week’s forecast from S&P Global Market Intelligence gives us a bit of a starting point for thinking about those long term effects. Focused solely on the console market, it predicts overall sales slumping to around 27 million units next year, down from highs of over 45 million in the first half of this decade. From 2028, the forecast is for a slow recovery, although by the end of the decade, S&P anticipates unit sales still being well shy of the 40 million mark.

S&P’s forecast shows a dip in console sales in 2027 | Image credit: S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan

There’s a certain degree of crystal ball gazing involved in any forecast this long-term, of course, and no forecast can anticipate a black swan – the crisis in RAM and storage costs being precisely one such black swan. All the same, I don’t think anyone would disagree with the broad thesis that attempting to sell increasingly geriatric consoles at wildly inflated prices isn’t going to do anything good to sales figures in the coming years.

If anything, S&P’s estimate may be rather optimistic, as it’s built on the assumption that the component pricing situation will ease off in time for next-generation hardware to launch in the $600 to $800 price range by 2028. That’s not impossible, but it also doesn’t seem to be the most likely of all possible futures. Almost all RAM production is in the hands of three companies that are currently enjoying unprecedented pricing power and are consequently very motivated to draw out this situation for as long as they possibly can.

“What this forecast comes down to is 25 to 30 million ‘missing’ console sales over the course of five years”

Even so, let’s accept the optimistic forecast for the sake of argument. In this scenario, the final years of the PS5 era are a whimper rather than a bang, and while the launch of PS6 (and of Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox) would turn things around, it will do so slowly, with the new systems’ installed base growth being muted compared to the past couple of generations. Switch 2, having managed to get in under the wire and launch before things got really bad, essentially holds up the console market through those years – although here too, S&P seems a tad optimistic, as the forecast might assume that Nintendo is willing and able to continue soaking up much of the component price increase in the name of keeping its hardware reasonably priced.

What this forecast comes down to is, effectively, somewhere in the region of 25 to 30 million “missing” console sales over the course of five years. That’s the stone tossed into the pond from which the ripples spread out. Even if the recovery continues apace from 2030 onwards, tens of millions of missing units – new consoles that would normally have been in the installed base, representing consumers who have either stuck with old hardware, dropped out of the console market entirely, or simply never become a console consumer at all – is a major gap in the addressable audience. This absence would be felt for years.

Those ripples might extend well past a single console generation, because all of this is happening at a precarious moment for the console business. A topic that comes up fairly regularly in industry conversations, but is all too often hand-waved away, is the question of market stagnation. We all know that consoles have been robustly healthy for the past decade or so, defying the doomsayers who predicted that smart devices would be a deathblow to the category. Yet underneath that commercial success lies the troubling fact that the actual installed base has grown relatively slowly, if at all, since the start of this century.

The PlayStation 2 is still the best selling home console | Image credit: Nikita Kostrykin on Unsplash

The PlayStation 2, launched over 25 years ago, remains the best-selling console of all time at around 160 million units. While the PS2 was the undisputed king of the home console market in that era, in the handheld market, both the Nintendo DS (lifetime sales of over 150 million) and the PlayStation Portable (somewhere in the ballpark of 80 million) were its contemporaries. Compare that to today’s systems: the Nintendo Switch with about 155 million sales, the PS5 at over 93 million, and the Xbox Series consoles at somewhere short of 30 million. Decades on from the PS2 era, those total unit numbers across home and handheld devices are in the same range, if not a bit lower.

This isn’t to knock the success of contemporary systems. They genuinely are commercially very successful, but a great deal of that success has come in spite of the actual audience remaining basically the same size for the past 20 years.

“The last major push to continue that expansion came around the Wii era”

The PS1 and PS2 generations both saw massive expansion of the audience for video games; this was the era when the games business boasted of being “recession-proof”, with the steady widening of its demographic reach creating strong underlying growth that outweighed any temporary economic hiccups. Yet arguably the last major push to continue that expansion came around the Wii era, when the industry actively courted women and older consumers with software that spread out the medium’s net to cover exercise programs, dancing and singing games, and a brief flourishing of a whole host of non-traditional titles designed to serve as a welcoming entry point for new consumers dipping their toes in the waters.

For a while, it worked; the Wii genuinely moved the demographic needle, at least for a moment, with Nielsen reporting back in 2009 that almost half of Wii owners were women, with a significant portion being women aged over 35, a market the industry had never made much headway with before. Yet the momentum faded almost as fast as it started.

Blame the arrival of smartphones; blame the fact that bringing in this new demographic turned out to be easier than holding on to them; blame the building backlash to the expansion of the medium’s horizons that a few years later would culminate in the ugly misogyny of Gamergate. Wherever the blame lies, the outcome is the same: the newcomers didn’t stick around, and there hasn’t been a significant expansion of the console demographic since then, with console installed bases remaining roughly static despite global population and income growth.

The Nintendo Wii helped to expand the console audience | Image credit: Denise Jans on Unsplash

To be clear, this isn’t just about women – they’re a demographic that’s well-studied and reported on by market research firms, but can be considered broadly indicative of a wider failure of console platforms to reach new audiences. Console owners are skewing older simply because the generations who grew up with them keep playing as they grow older, but at the other end of the demographic pyramid, the picture is more complex. Consoles do still reach a solidly sized audience of kids and teens, but they’re battling with mobile devices for attention – and it’s a battle in which they’re steadily losing ground.

Consequently, while Millennials and Gen X gamers are still engaged with their consoles, creating growth among consumers in their 40s and 50s, there’s a much bigger question mark around the replenishment of the demographic pyramid and the next generation of game consumers. Germany’s long-running JIM-Studie, an annual survey of youth media usage trends, shows the console as a minority device among teenagers, and slipping year on year; a similar study by Japan’s INTAGE shows an even clearer slide, with game engagement steadily falling among under-30s, remaining steady among 30 to 50 year olds, and only showing significant growth in the 50+ demographic. Japan is a few years ahead of the curve here, given the relative timing of its console and mobile gaming booms, but the pattern will probably repeat in other markets too.

“The next generation of consoles is going to be make-or-break”

That brings us back to the slump the S&P data predicts: that potential 30 million hole in the console installed base as the industry approaches 2030. The timing could not be worse. The next generation of consoles is going to be make-or-break in terms of proving that these platforms can still engage younger audiences who have increasingly turned to smart devices for their entertainment.

If those consoles instead limp out into a market that’s in a slump due to spiralling costs, it will make it exceptionally hard to hold on to the current audience, let alone make an appealing pitch to a new market of young people with an unprecedented set of other platforms vying for their attention. The ripples would spread widely – if the next generation of consoles can’t engage a young audience, the uphill struggle for the one after that will be all the steeper, and a steadily ageing console audience puts a distant but nonetheless looming expiry date on the market segment overall.

Over a decade of focusing on more aggressively monetising the existing audience rather than working to broaden the market may slowly but surely have painted the console into a corner. It’s a corner that’s been profitable and successful thus far, but one that suddenly looks very narrow in the face of soaring prices that threaten to be a tipping point for faltering engagement from young consumers. If the pricing crisis crushes console engagement for a whole generation of potential gamers, the people who predicted the end of consoles when smartphones appeared may turn out to have been right after all – even if they were off by a few decades.

Bethesda reveals plans for Fallout 5, The Elder Scrolls 6, and more

Todd Howard, executive producer and game director at Bethesda Game Studios, has published a note outlining the company’s plans over the coming years, including Fallout 5 and The Elder Scrolls 6, as well as remasters of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, and a Fallout Shelter TV show.

The strategy is closely focused on evolving existing franchises, as well as emphasising user-generated content. “We’re investing more deeply in the worlds players love, giving creators a bigger role in shaping their experiences, and bringing our teams closer together so we can get our games into your hands sooner, support them longer, and continue building them alongside you for decades to come,” said Howard.

“We’ve believed from the beginning that our worlds belong not only to the people who make them, but also to the people who play them. That’s why we’ve long provided players with the tools to create their own experiences, dating back to the Morrowind Construction Set. This year marked another major milestone for Creations with its expansion to Fallout 4, joining Skyrim and Starfield. We’re proud to say Creators have already earned more than $10 million in royalties from their work.”

In terms of the plans for Fallout, Howard said the franchise was one of the studio’s biggest priorities, noting that Fallout 4 has now sold more than 35 million copies. “Fallout 5 remains our long-range destination,” he said, “and we have multiple Fallout projects in active development right now.”

Fallout 76 will be getting an expansion next year | Image credit: Bethesda Softworks

These projects include the Raven Rock expansion for Fallout 76, which is due next year and which offers a prequel story to Fallout 3. In addition, Howard promised further seasons for Fallout Shelter, which has now surpassed 250 million players. “An unscripted Fallout Shelter television project is also in the works with our partners at Amazon Studios and Kilter Films,” he said, adding that production on season three of Amazon’s Fallout show is already underway.

“We also know many players want to revisit previous Fallout experiences,” said Howard. “While we’re not announcing any dates today, we have been working on remasters for both Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.”

In addition, Howard promised something special for Fallout’s 30th anniversary in 2027, “when Fallout Day will be celebrated live in Washington, DC.”

The note emphasised collaboration among studios, confirming that Obsidian is working on a new Fallout project, as previously reported.

Fallout: New Vegas is being remastered | Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks

“We’re also bringing our teams closer together across Bethesda,” said Howard. “ZeniMax Online Studios will partner closely with Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls franchise, while continuing to deliver incredible new experiences for The Elder Scrolls Online.” He promised more ESO to come in the future.

“By aligning more directly across the franchise, we can create even better experiences for players,” he said. “Bringing our teams closer together is helping us build a stronger foundation for everything we create next.”

Howard said that both The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5 are being developed using Creation Engine 3, the same technology used in Starfield, and noted that Fallout 5 is in preproduction. But he said that The Elder Scrolls 6 is our “primary development focus”, and that the majority of the studio’s team is currently working on it. It’s now 15 years since the launch of the previous game in the series, Skyrim, and its long-awaited sequel was announced in 2018.

“The next chapter is on the way,” said Howard. “We’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day.”

The announcement trailer for The Elder Scrolls 6 was shown in 2018 Watch on YouTube

Howard also announced continued support for Starfield: “As we enter Year 3, we’ll continue expanding the Settled Systems with new stories, targeted gameplay improvements, and additional updates, while preparing for the launch of new Starborn content next year. More than 40% of players already customize their experience through Creations, and we’ll continue investing in creators and giving players new ways to make Starfield their own.”

“Across Bethesda Game Studios, we’re building for the future of Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Starfield,” Howard concluded. “We’re investing in our technology, bringing teams closer together, supporting our live games, expanding into new forms of entertainment, and developing the next generation of Bethesda RPGs.”

The reveal follows Bethesda’s announcement at the start of July that it was moving to a “franchise-centric” planning strategy to better focus resources on long-term growth and stability.

“We are shifting from a planning model primarily centered on what’s next for each independent studio to one that focuses on our strongest franchises and determining the content roadmap that best serves our players and Bethesda as a whole,” said CEO Jill Braff.

Bethesda Game Studios was hit by Microsoft’s sweeping cuts this month, with the company cutting 3,200 jobs across the whole of its Xbox division. Bethesda’s sister studios under Zenimax Media, id Software and Zenimax Online Studios, were hit particularly hard, with layoffs at the latter including several leadership positions.

The OneBGS union organised a protest against the cuts, which affected a total of 440 union members. “The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear,” said the union in a statement. “We won’t let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilise. We need every single member visible and unified.”

Develop:Brighton showed the UK games industry is done with hand-wringing and is determined to save itself | Opinion

I got a feeling of déjà vu at Develop:Brighton this year, where once again it was meltingly hot, and once again the conference was coming hard on the heels of sweeping cuts at Microsoft. Although this time around the weather was even hotter, and the cuts were even deeper, with around 20% of the Xbox division being hacked away.

Last year, I wrote that Develop’s sunny exterior hid bleak thoughts, as the industry reeled from the shocks inflicted over the past few years. This year, there were still plenty of gloomy conversations about the state of the industry and the endless news of layoffs, but the tone was different. The shock has morphed into acceptance. There’s a collective realisation that we can no longer go back to the old ways of doing things, and that instead the UK industry has to find ways to adapt to the new normal.

Brighton was scorchingly hot this year | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

The talk in corridors and parties was of how UK studios can ensure resilience and sustainability in an age where funding is more scarce and the AAA blockbuster engine is threatening to implode (or has already, depending on who you ask). The solution offered by many was closer collaboration. In an age of insecurity, studios are drawing together for safety. It’s dangerous to go alone.

 

The most obvious example of this is the rise of regional hubs, networks, and communities. Some are already well established, like Game Republic, but new ones are emerging, like the Manchester Games Network and Peterborough’s People in Games. Scottish Games Network founder Brian Baglow was at Develop with a talk encouraging companies to look beyond gaming to secure supplementary funding and opportunities, applying their development skills to areas like health care or heritage that require interactive expertise.

Some conference attendees were even floating the idea of a kind of “hub of hubs” – a way to connect regional networks in order to share information and skills.

Dundee’s 4J Studios gave the opening keynote at Develop: Brighton 2026, talking about their new Minecraft-like game Reforj | Image credit: 388win

At the inaugural Specialist XDEV get-together (a side event hosted by Tanglewood Games, PitStop Productions, and Inferno Studios), collaboration was high on the conversation agenda. There was talk of studios with different specialisations – audio, engine support, and so on – forming an alliance to offer a one-stop shop for clients. Something like this would obviously take a lot of work and negotiation, but it seems the will is there. More generally, it feels like the UK industry is done with hand-wringing and is determined to save itself. Companies know they will have to look to each other to do that, rather than vainly hoping things will improve or waiting for help to arrive from elsewhere.

 

The logical next step might be the further rise of studio collectives, something we’ve seen elsewhere in Europe with groups like Isle of Strays and Nova Assembly. Kepler Interactive, meanwhile, is co-run by a group of independent studios that includes Clair Obscur maker Sandfall Interactive. The benefits of banding together are clear: studios can share in the profits of hits, while blunting the sting of misses, but the companies retain their all-important independence. That’s something to be cherished at a time when corporate owners seem all too keen to make cuts.

Hangar 13’s free ice cream van made a welcome reappearance | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

The other big topic at Develop was funding, and there are tiny signs of optimism on this front. For example, venture capital firms like Griffin and Vgames have established project financing funds that give money directly to indie developers rather than taking an equity stake.

But publishers and investors are generally still reluctant to provide funding until a game is relatively deep into development. That leaves the question of how developers are meant to get new projects to the demo stage – especially if their previous game flopped and back catalogue sales are minimal or non-existent.

The side event Brilliant Indie Treasures returned to Brighton in a brand new (air conditioned) venue | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

There was some good news last summer with the announcement that the UK government is providing £30 million over three years as part of its Games Growth Package, with a portion of that money going to the UK Games Fund to provide prototype grants. But other countries are even more generous on this front. Earlier this year, GamesIndustry.biz spoke to the developer of Imprinted, Filippo Beck Peccoz, who said the majority of funding for his game came from the state of Bavaria, and that the game wouldn’t have been possible without that support. Germany announced in January that it would fund its games industry to the tune of €125 million in 2026.

 

Filling that funding gap for prototypes remains one of the biggest challenges facing the UK industry. Mike Bithell, head of Bithell Games, spelled it out when speaking to GamesIndustry.biz at Develop: “That is the current problem, especially for smaller indies – getting the funding that gets you to the point where the publisher is convinced enough that you’re a sure thing that they’ll bother investing in you, because they are not taking the risks they were even a few years ago.”

That prototype funding will have to come from somewhere for UK developers to continue to produce innovative new games. But who is going to step up and take the risk?

Why releasing games on the web could be right for your studio in 2026

Romy Halfweeg is Business Development Manager at web gaming platform Poki.

If you’re a publisher or developer, you’re likely staring at Steam’s daily release numbers with a mix of awe and sheer existential terror. Or maybe you’re looking at spiralling mobile UA costs and questioning when they ever got this high. But what if I told you that a different highly engaged platform exists, yet is largely ignored by developers? That platform is the web, and yet in Unity’s 2025 edition of its annual Gaming Report, only 11% of developers considered developing or porting a game on it.

There’s a tendency to consider browser gaming a nostalgia channel, a relic of the Internet Explorer era of the noughties. But browser gaming’s relevance didn’t end in the late 2000s. Back then, web games like Farmville were a massive driver of tech and consumer adoption, powering a whole generation of devs with the insights and LiveOps experience to dominate the mobile boom that followed a few years later. As Adobe removed support for Flash in 2020, HTML5 gaming continued web gaming’s momentum, and it never slowed down. Today, hundreds of millions of players are playing on web, and the market is expected to grow to $2.69 billion in 2027. It’s a massive market you can reach today – if you have the right type of game.

When the web isn’t right

The web isn’t going to be the right home for every studio. It’s not the platform for studios building a 150GB narrative epic with ray-traced facial hair and a cinematic orchestral score. But there are a number of profitable and celebrated gaming IPs that started out in the browser – titles such as RuneScape, Henry Stickmin, Super Meat Boy and Bloons Tower Defense for who web was and is the right fit. Other much-loved web IPs, such as Moshi Monsters, are making a comeback after successful crowdfunding, and viral web games such as Level Devil by Unept continue to be multi-platform successes today with more than ten million installs across Google Play and Steam.

Legacy web IP such as Moshi Monsters is making a comeback. | Image credit: Mind Candy

Gen Alpha leads web adoption because browser games appeal to that demographic’s preference for short-form, instant access entertainment. Although browser gaming is popular with the younger generation, the audience is more diverse than this single demographic: students, commuters, and office workers can be found playing web games as part of their daily schedules.

For a game with the right scope, the web provides access to vast, varied audiences across a range of platforms – and it can also serve as a legitimate platform for sustainable business growth and testing wild concepts. For developers, this means a short time-to-market, low-risk development cycles, and promising ROI potential. So let’s dig into whether this ecosystem is a relevant, viable move for your studio today.

De-risking your studio

One of the biggest strengths of web gaming is that it enables studios to deploy tightly scoped games, quickly. Relying on one massive, multi-year project to keep a studio afloat is a risky approach. Web gaming allows studios to diversify and fundamentally de-risk individual projects. I’ve seen studios adopt a portfolio approach – shipping multiple, smaller web titles via short development cycles – to create a highly stable, recurring revenue foundation.

Those web games can fund and sustain studio growth, fuel bigger game projects, pay for business development, and keep the lights on without the constant existential dread of betting the entire company on a single launch.

The games that work on web

It’s therefore encouraging that the technology is ready to support web games made by all sizes and backgrounds of developers. Unity and web-specific engines like PlayCanvas, Construct and Defold have optimized their HTML5 export pipelines, so that web games can be produced by all developers regardless of the size or notoriety of the team making the title.

Game engines such as Construct are designed for HTML5. | Image credit: Scirra

The web also bypasses the app store duopoly and its notorious discovery bottlenecks. Because the barrier to entry involves simply clicking a link, it’s easy to onboard new users. However, this is a double-edged sword. Closing a tab is just as frictionless as opening one, meaning studios must actively combat high-potential player churn from the very first seconds.

Browser gaming metrics show that an average session length sits at a healthy 22 minutes. Within that session, a single web game typically gets about 6 to 10 minutes of player attention. On average, a user will play about 3 different games in one sitting. Individual session lengths for games are short in length, so developers should use these figures to guide their game design, development, and iteration process.

Web audiences expect an instantly playable experience: if a game forces players to wait, they will bounce to another tab

This reality dictates exactly what types of games thrive in the browser ecosystem. Web audiences expect an instantly playable experience: if a game forces players to wait, they will bounce to another tab. The most effective games drop players directly into the action with accessible gameplay that can quickly be mastered by players; it’s why genres such as racing, platforming, and dress-up are especially strong on web. They’re all built on foundational gaming mechanics that have a universal understanding.

Games with bright, colorful 2D or 3D assets also lend themselves well to the web, as they quickly capture attention. Likewise, strong visual feedback such as particle debris, camera shakes, and light trails also do well to keep players engaged and prevent churn. The key message here is that the web is best fitted for games optimized for attention, meaning that mobile titles lend themselves well to the platform. Bite-sized instant casual experiences perform well as browser games, and the best part is that studios can achieve this without the need to create and maintain a massively complex meta-layer or a bloated feature set to maximize engagement.

Web hits such as Level Devil adopt bright, colourful visuals | Image credit: Unept

While major web platforms also support more complex games with deeper features, varied gameplay loops, and longer playtimes, the core experience still needs to hit fast. Any game should be engaging and playable within seconds. The golden rule is that a small, focused scope drives the best ROI: these games are faster to develop, easier to monetize, and tend to engage and retain players more effectively. Then, if your game performs well, expand it through ongoing updates to grow to a bigger web game over time.

Monetizing on web

When it comes to monetization, most browser games adopt an ad-driven approach, with banner ads and rewarded video being key sources of revenue. For teams with existing premium or IAP-driven games, a move to rewarded video to meet web gaming’s audience is viable, provided the maths is sound. Instead of taking players through IAP funnels, IAP buttons and interactions can be swapped for rewarded ad placements, rewarding extra lives or in-game currency for ad views.

This transition is only possible if the in-game economics lend themselves to this new format of ad rewards. Awarding too much premium currency for a 30-second ad view will rapidly inflate the game’s economy, leading to content exhaustion, ruined progression curves, and inevitable player churn. Therefore, rewards should be balanced to maintain the game’s economy and keep players engaged in the core loop of the game.

Understanding the caveats

The web has its own set of rules. While a lot of mobile design philosophies can carry over, studios looking for success on web need to do more than simply port a mobile game. The biggest hurdle studios face is loading times and asset size restrictions – the initial download of a web title really shouldn’t exceed the 5MB to 8MB range. Even seasoned mobile teams used to generous app store sizes should reconsider the cost of their textures, audio files, and complex animations. Studios either need to design for the web from day one, or make sure to optimize the game for web engines.

Because of the smaller scope, budgets are low and dev cycles are fast, meaning there’s way less financial risk

But developers who adhere to those constraints are able to create web games that generate a tidy profit. Because of the smaller scope of web gaming projects, budgets are low and dev cycles are fast, meaning there’s way less financial risk. Studios can use the web ecosystem to rapidly iterate and test out new game ideas. Browser games also provide instant global reach to players who might never open Steam or rarely check the App Store. It’s a low-risk way to test what themes, mechanics, or art styles resonate in entirely different global markets while building up great studio, brand, and IP awareness globally.

The web isn’t a magic wand that’s going to instantly turn a failing studio into a unicorn overnight. But if your team is already building games of a suitable scope, or if you’re looking for a way to fund that bigger dream project, it’s an option you should definitely explore.

Jobs roundup: July 2026 | Chris Chung joins Neowiz as head of global business group

It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Chris Chung joins Neowiz as head of global business group

Chris Chung has been appointed head of global business group like 345win app at Neowiz.

Chung previously served as chief product officer at Wargaming and head of business at NCSoft Korea and the head of NCSoft West. He also founded Motiga, the creator of Gigantic.

“Chung’s experience in every stage of bringing the game to the global market is exactly why he is the right fit to lead our Global Business Group, and we look forward to utilising his expertise as we grow our gaming portfolio,” said a Neowiz representative.

“In tandem with our recent leadership changes, we recognised the need to have someone with the mindset to empathise and truly partner with developers and creators across the globe.”

Neowiz recently reorganised its divisions into three groups: the Gaming Studios Group, the Global Business Group, and the Live Game Business Group.

Dylan Beale | Studio head (Guildford), Larian

Dylan Beale has been appointed studio head of Larian’s Guildford studio.

Beale was studio director at DPS Games and development director at Wargaming UK.

Jonnie Bryant joins Team17 as communications director

Jonnie Bryant has been appointed communications director at Team17. Bryant previously worked at Bethesda Softworks as global PR director.

“We’re delighted to have Jonnie become a part of our new marketing leadership,” said Team17 general manager Harley Homewood. “We are looking to fully employ his skills to help consolidate and enhance media and market awareness for all of our titles.”

Gemma Cannon | Creative designer, Sega Europe

Gemma Cannon has joined Sega Europe as a creative designer. Cannon previously served as digital designer at IGN Entertainment.

Teemu Koski | CEO of MENA business, Nodwin Gaming

Teemu Koski has taken on the role as CEO of MENA business at Nodwin Gaming.

Koski joined Nodwin in 2025 as chief business officer for MENA. He previously served as chief growth officer at YaLLa Esports.

Robert Henrysson | Image credit: Nordisk Games

Robert Henrysson steps down as Supermassive Games CEO

Robert Henrysson has announced he will step down as CEO of Supermassive Games and as a partner at Nordisk Games.

“As CEO, I was honoured to guide the studio through intense industry change, broadening its client base and establishing a culture of consistent quality across all aspects of the game development process,” said Henrysson.

“Leading a studio is never a one-man job – it is the entire team’s effort. Our commitment to continuous improvement was, and continues to be, central to everything we do. To everyone at Supermassive Games, I am so grateful for everything I’ve learnt and experienced with all of you.”

Tim Stokes joins Nex Playground as interim general manager, EMEA & ANZ

Tim Stokes has joined Nex Playground as interim general manager. Stokes will lead commercial growth and expansion of Nex Playground across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Ryan Ferwerda | Head of live services & mobile at EA Tiburon

Ryan Ferwerda has been promoted to head of live services & mobile at Electronic Arts Tiburon. Ferwerda previously served as head of mobile, focusing on EA Sports including roles as general manager and game director.

Emily Dixon | Senior account executive, Bastion

Emily Dixon has been appointed senior account executive at Bastion. Dixon previously worked as a games journalist, contributing to sites including GFinity, 101 Realsport, and Dualshockers.

Hakan Burak Karaman | Head of games, Rovio Entertainment

Hakan Burak Karaman has been promoted to head of games at Rovio Entertainment. Karaman previously served as senior product manager, having joined Rovio as product manager in April 2023.

Christopher Serra joins Paramount Games as VP of business development and licensing

Christopher Serra has been appointed VP of business development and licensing at Paramount Games.

Serra previously served as director of games business development at Oculus VR.

Alexis Bonte departs Stillfront as CEO

Alexis Bonte will leave his role as CEO of Stillfront, a position he assumed in October 2024. He joined the company in 2017 as group COO.

“Alexis stepped into the CEO role at a challenging time and has led the company through a decisive period of strategic and organisational change with great professionalism and commitment, leaving Stillfront stronger and well positioned for its next chapter,” said Stillfront chair of the board Lars-Johan Jarnheimer.

“We are grateful that Alexis remains fully dedicated to Stillfront throughout the transition to ensure a smooth and seamless handover.”

Jakub Karolczak | Production coordinator, 11 Bit Studios

Jakub Karolczak has been promoted to production coordinator at 11 Bit Studios. He previously served as senior producer at the company.

Hector Parra | Live game producer, Niantic

Hector Parra has been appointed live game producer at Niantic. He previously served as producer at CGBOT and creative project manager at Dracma Studios.

Nicholas Penwarden leaves Epic Games

Nicholas Penwarden has announced his departure from Epic Games, where he served as engineering fellow and VP of engineering for 15 years, holding roles including director of Unreal Engine and development manager of Unreal Engine 4.

“I’m proud of the part I was able to play in Unreal Engine’s evolution from UE3 to where it stands today,” said Penwarden.

“It’s remarkable to see how far the engine has come, how much the community has grown, and all the incredible games and experiences developers have created with it.

“Most of all, I’m proud of the team we built: the most talented, passionate, and extraordinary group of engine and game developers I could have hoped to work alongside.”

Raptor PR announces two new appointments

Raptor PR has appointed Ruzbeh Gazdar as account director and Sophia Hollis as senior account executive.

Gazdar was a senior account manager at GingerMay, and Hollis was an account executive at Zeno London.

Joe Kearns | Project manager, Yrs Truly

Joe Kearns has joined Yrs Truly as project manager. He previously served as a producer at ICHI Worldwide.

Jaakko Harlas departs from Supercell

Jaakko Harlas has announced his departure from Supercell, where he served as head of investments for over 12 years.

London Games Festival moves to central venue for 2027 showcase

Games London has announced that the London Games Festival will move to a central venue in 2027.

The event will now be held at the Business Design Centre to provide a more accessible showcase and bigger professional programme.

The New Game Plus public showcase, B2B Games Finance Market event, and several industry conferences and networking opportunities will be hosted at the venue.

Games London’s Ensemble exhibition and Screen Play conference will take place at other venues, with the BAFTA Game Awards returning to Queen Elizabeth Hall at Southbank.

A Friday Late event focused on games will be held at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

The festival’s Official Selection will return, offering a curated line-up of games both in-person and online for international audiences.

The full London Games Festival programme will run from April 12 to April 19, 2027. Events at the Business Design Centre will run from April 15 to April 17.

“We’re excited to be taking a bigger combined suite of events to one single venue next year, making key parts of the festival easier to access and enabling them to grow – while also maintaining a spread of fantastic cultural events across the capital during the festival week thanks to partnerships with BAFTA, V&A and BFI,” said director of London Games Festival Michael French.

“The Business Design Centre specifically is a historically important site for the UK games industry – it’s the home to the very first UK video games trade shows nearly 40 years ago. We look forward to showing what a modern, creative and curated spin on a major international games showcase looks like in this iconic venue.”

Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries Justine Simons added: “London is one of the world’s leading cities for games makers, and the London Games Festival has played a major role in that success.

“Over the last decade, the festival has gone from strength to strength attracting thousands of gamers, developers and industry leaders to the capital. The move to the Business Design Centre reflects this success, allowing the festival to expand even further and welcome more visitors.

“It is another important step in cementing London’s position as a global gaming capital, as we continue to build a better London for everyone.”

Keynote speaker announcements will be released later this year once ticket sales commence.

In October, applications will open for the Games Finance Market, Official Selection, and Ensemble 2027, alongside broader calls for speakers.

Earlier this year, London Games Festival hosted 30 events across the city, attracting over 100,000 visitors from 61 countries.

Attendance included 36% from Greater London, 49% from the rest of the UK, and 15% international visitors, with more than 8,000 B2B delegates.

“If I work on that, my kids will think I’m Gandalf” – Blackbird Interactive on the highs and lows of external development

This article is part of ExDev Week.

Canadian studio Blackbird Interactive, which was founded by Relic Entertainment and EA Canada alumni back in 2007, is probably best known for creating Hardspace: Shipbreaker. But the studio has always had its hand in the external development jar as well.

“We do basically everything,” explains president and chief creative officer Rory McGuire. “We do full work-for-hire projects, we do co-development, and we also do our own original games.”

McGuire gives Minecraft Legends and Homeworld 3 as examples of Blackbird’s full work-for-hire contracts, and the studio has also worked on titles like Escape the Backrooms and the Starfield DLC Terran Armada. But not everything Blackbird has worked on is public, such is the often secretive nature of co-development contracts. “We worked briefly with the Respawn team on Apex Legends,” notes McGuire. “We haven’t talked too much about it, but that was about a year we worked with them.”

Hardspace: Shipbreaker was published by Focus Entertainment in 2022, but Blackbird bought the full IP rights in 2025 | Image credit: Blackbird Interactive

From the very beginning, Blackbird’s business model has involved taking on work-for-hire and then investing the profits back into the studio’s own original games. McGuire likens the studio to Gearbox Software, which started out by making expansions and ports for other people’s games, such as the PC version of Halo: Combat Evolved.

“They gave us a lot of advice on how to structure the business,” he says. “They referred us to other studios that had been using this model too, and it’s actually quite ubiquitous. Blizzard got started this way.” Indeed, back when it was still known as Silicon & Synapse, Blizzard did a number of ports, including bringing J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Vol. I to the Amiga.

But when so much of the company’s day-to-day activities involve working on other people’s games and taking direction from elsewhere, how does Blackbird keep its creatively talented team happy? And how does it balance work-for-hire with developing its own original titles?

Creative excitement

“It’s definitely complicated,” says McGuire. “I think you have to invest more time into it than you would think. A big part of it is making sure that the people are excited about working on the thing.

Rory McGuire | Image credit: Blackbird Interactive

“So, for example, we did the PS5 port of Minecraft. There are some people that would say, ‘Oh, that’s a 10-year-old game and there’s no creative challenge there, I don’t want to do that’. And then there’s another person that’ll say, ‘Oh, if I work on that, my kids will think I’m Gandalf, and that’s the best thing I could ever work on’. So I think you have to invest the time into talking with individual people and see who’s excited about it.

“I think that simple litmus test of ‘are people excited to work on this’ is also a great way of determining whether or not you should take on the project. If it’s a project that nobody wants to do and you can’t find a silver lining, maybe it doesn’t have as much value to the company.”

Alex Delamaire | Image credit: Blackbird Interactive

Alex Delamaire, Blackbird’s director of business and development strategy, adds that exdev work can offer a welcome change of pace compared with working on original projects. “Going into uncharted waters can be very exciting, but it can be a bit stressful as well,” he says. “And it’s nice to sometimes mix it up with projects where you’re working on really cool, established brands.”

McGuire points to Blackbird’s recent remasters of Warcraft 1 and 2. “For the people on that team, being able to go in and look at the code from 27 or 29 years ago is really cool… but also they learn a lot from it.”

Variety is the great allure of external development. “There’s a lot of different opportunities for people to try their hands at different things and learn different things,” says McGuire. “We’re not just an RTS studio anymore.”

The remastered versions of Warcraft 1 and 2 were released in 2024 | Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment

But that variety can also cause headaches. “I think for us the challenge has been balancing projects where obviously we have credentials and we can be legitimate, even if they’re in a slightly different genre, and then finding projects that are actually genuinely exciting to our teams,” says Delamaire. “Sometimes we’ll see if we can try to get something that’s a little bit out of our league, but that is creatively interesting.”

He gives Escape The Backrooms as an example. “We’re not necessarily a horror game developer, but we have people at Blackbird who in the past have worked on games that may actually be in that genre.” The past experience of Blackbird’s employees can help to convince clients the firm can take on a project, even if the studio doesn’t have anything similar in its back catalogue, he says.

Humble pie

But working for an external client also requires a certain amount of humbleness. “I think at the end of the day, you’re in a service position,” says McGuire. “You have to make them happy with the work that you’ve done.” Maintaining that relationship with a client is crucial, he says – making them feel like the notes they have given on a project are being properly acted on.

“When you’re in a service position and someone else is paying for everything, anything they ask for has a lot more weight to it than if, say, our internal creative director was asking for something,” he continues. “Like, the internal creative director isn’t necessarily going to scrap the project and pull funding if they don’t get what they want, but every publisher request, either near term or distantly, has that repercussion behind it.”

Blackbird worked on the Terran Armada DLC for Starfield | Image credit: Bethesda Softworks

But it’s not as simple as just doing everything the client asks. “You have to manage the partner,” says McGuire. “If a partner is asking for too much stuff, you have to make them aware of the fact that, hey, we need to sit down and prioritise this, we need to understand what you actually need. And that conversation, it’s never easy, but it’s also always respected and appreciated.”

There’s no one size fits all, either. “Every partner’s different,” says McGuire. “Some want to be very hands-on, some want you to be self-directed.”

“We’ve worked with partners that had 40 different people giving us feedback on stuff, so you’re always going to get disparate feedback – and the least important feedback might come from the loudest voice.”

“You may have an opinion on it, but in the end, it’s their product”

Delamaire adds that it’s important to be aware of the internal dynamics within the client organisation and the constraints they’re under. “Coming from the outside, some things might seem very obvious to you, and you may be like, ‘Oh, we should do this, or we should maybe tweak things that way’. But there’s often reasons why they haven’t done it yet, or it’s been a little difficult.”

“There’s definitely been times where… if we had been in charge, let’s say, of the commercial strategy and marketing, you would have done it differently, but that was not our place,” he continues. “You may have an opinion on it, but in the end, it’s their product, it’s their strategy.”

Going all in

Given the example of Gearbox given earlier, we’re intrigued as to whether Blackbird sees itself as eventually becoming entirely focused on original titles in the future, and ditching the external development contracts.

Delamaire says a better example might be Behaviour Interactive, which has an internally developed powerhouse in the form of Dead By Daylight, but which still maintains a strong focus on external development. “I think we see ourselves probably a bit more like that,” he says, “because it’s kind of how we’ve always operated from the start.”

The great thing about external development, he says, is that it encourages you to go outside your comfort zone and stretch your skills.

McGuire agrees. “I think there is value in it, and I think that there is learning in it,” he says, adding that any internally developed game Blackbird puts out would have to be a “pretty dramatic success” for the company to consider giving up exdev and pulling everyone onto that one property.

Secret Mode brought in Blackbird to work on Escape The Backrooms | Image credit: Fancy Games/Blackbird Interactive/Secret Mode

Given the current climate in the games industry, it also makes sense to spread the financial risk and avoid putting all your eggs in one basket. McGuire says the company tries to maintain a diverse range of partners for that very reason. “It’s pretty rare that you’re going to have corporate restructures or cancellations across multiple partners at the same time. I mean, it did happen in 2023, but since then it hasn’t happened as much.”

When cancellations do happen, McGuire says Blackbird can usually find homes for the developers on another project within a couple of months. But making sure those contracts keep coming in isn’t exactly easy. “It does mean a lot of hustling and a lot of work for myself and Alex, because essentially we need to have a constant influx of work,” says McGuire.

In addition, the wider changes in the industry have affected the kind of work that comes in. “Large-scale work-for-hire projects that are like $15-20 million are still out there, but they’re a lot less frequent than they used to be.”

Instead, Blackbird is seeing a lot more 6-18 month projects, as opposed to 18-36 month projects – which means a lot more time spent on business development.

Movie-style production

A lot of people have been talking about the games industry shifting to a more movie-style production process, where companies retain a small core of creatives and then hire external developers to work on the project once it’s ready to go into full production.

“We’re definitely seeing a lot of partners that are taking that approach,” says McGuire. “We’re definitely seeing it more often than what was previously the case. I don’t know if that’s where the industry is going to end up; I think it will be a way that people make games.”

Homeworld 3 was released in 2024; Blackbird also developed Homeworld: Deserts of Kharak in 2016 | Image credit: Blackbird Interactive/Gearbox Publishing/2K

He still sees just as many games being made in the more traditional fashion, with an internal team – but he points out that the high cost of development in some regions, like the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, will make the movie-style production approach more attractive. “If you’re in that market, I think it’s a little bit different,” he says. “In that market, I think we will see this a lot more.”

We’re also seeing the rise of external development studios in Asia and other emerging markets, where costs are much lower than in North America – which could potentially draw away some of the contracts that would normally go to Blackbird and other studios. “It’s definitely a factor,” acknowledges McGuire, “and it’s something that is going to drive down the average cost. Our headcount price can only go so low, whereas that’s not the case in some of these emerging markets. I mean, China’s one, but Brazil has also had a huge scene emerge, and they have the advantage of being on a similar time zone to North America, too, so they’re even arguably more competitive.”

That kind of thing can influence decision-making, he says, noting Blackbird won a recent contract on the basis that the company was in the same time zone as the client. But that and price aren’t the only factors to consider, he emphasises.

“Our headcount price can only go so low, whereas that’s not the case in some of these emerging markets”

“If you’re producing shoes for a sports game or you’re producing boxes and crates for a shooter, sure, I think anyone in any market can do that,” he says. “But part of the appeal that we have is that we have worked on our own games. So if you’re working on, say, a sci-fi game with a certain feel and vibe, we’re a pretty good fit to work on that, and we live and breathe that stuff. You might not get that from a developer in an emerging market in the same way, but you will get a better price.”

He points out that there are work-for-hire and co-dev partners in North America that are “two or three times the price of China” that are still getting work. “And that is because they offer something, a special service, that emerging markets don’t.”

And Blackbird offers something US companies don’t, thanks to its location in Vancouver. Delamaire points to a 2025 CBRE Research report on the one-year costs of rent and wages for a company of 500 people in both the United States and Canada. All of the major Canadian cities are far cheaper to do business in: the costs for Vancouver come out at $41.7 million, whereas the San Francisco Bay Area is more than double, at $86.7 million.

“Ontario and Vancouver are competing at a level that is dramatically lower than what you would pay in some of the capital markets, like Seattle, San Francisco, and LA,” says McGuire. “That’s definitely an advantage for us.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wins Best Game at Develop:Star Awards 2026

The Develop:Star Awards 2026 were held last night, where Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 continued its success by winning three awards.

Sandfall Interactive’s title was recognised for Best Game, Best Narrative, and Best Audio.

Frontier Developments was named Best Studio after launching Jurassic World Evolution 3, while Landfall and Aggro Crab’s Peak received Best Original IP.

Both developers also jointly received the Best Small Studio award.

Sony Interactive Entertainment received the Publishing Star award, and Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Yōtei won Best Visual Art.

No Man’s Sky took home the inaugural Best Ongoing Game award, and FuturLab’s PowerWash Simulator was recognised for Best Mobile Game.

This year’s Develop:Star Award recipient was Monument Valley 3 developer Ustwo Games.

“Thank you to everyone who joined us for The Develop:Star Awards last night and congratulations to all the winners and those shortlisted,” said Tandem Events managing director Andy Lane.

“It was a wonderful evening spent celebrating the very best of the amazing work released over the past year, and the amazing people behind that work. Thank you to our sponsors, everyone who voted, and all those who made the night possible, it was an evening to remember.”

Here’s the full list of winners:

• The Develop Star Award: Ustwo Games
• Best Studio: Frontier Developments
• Best Small Studio: Landfall Games and Aggro Crab
• Best Game: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive, Kepler Interactive)
• Best Mobile Game: PowerWash Simulator (FuturLab)
• Publishing Star (Sponsored by IO Interactive): Sony Interactive Entertainment
• Best Game Design: Blue Prince (Dogubomb, Raw Fury)
• Best Narrative: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Best Original IP: Peak (Landfall Games & Aggro Crab)
• Best Visual Art: Ghost of Yōtei (Sucker Punch Productions, Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Best Audio: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
• Best Technical Innovation: Crimson Desert (Pearl Abyss)
• Best Ongoing Game: No Man’s Sky (Hello Games)
• Tomorrow’s Star (Sponsored by Amiqus): Nicole Gregory (Jagex)
• Best EDI Initiative: Limit Break Mentorship
• Best Marketing Campaign: Dispatch (AdHoc Studio, Guillotine)
• Supporting Star: Dead Nice Studio
• Best In-Game Accessibility: Doom: The Dark Ages (Id Software, Bethesda Softworks)
• Talent & Recruitment Star: IO Interactive Talent & Acquisition Team

The Develop:Star Awards will return next year on Wednesday, July 14, during Develop:Brighton 2027, which will be held from July 13 to July 15.

Should you work on your own games as an external development studio?

This article is part of ExDev Week.

Earlier this year, the outsourcing company Envar Studio released its own game, Witchspire. It’s just one example of external development studios turning their hand to original titles.

Projects like Witchspire can act as an advertisement for the talents of the studio behind them, as well as giving teams a creative outlet beyond working on other people’s titles. But how do you balance internal projects against external work? And are they a distraction from the company’s focus?

GamesIndustry.biz contacted a range of external development studios – including Airship, CodeDev, Code Wizards, Huey Games, Lab42, Pipeworks, Redcatpig, Sumo Digital, Tanglewood Games, and Third Kind Games – to ask what they think. Should you work on your own games as an external development studio?

Yes, they can co-exist

“I think it’s incredibly important to work on your own projects,” says Bryan Freitas, tech director at the Azores-based porting and co-development studio Redcatpig, which has created two original titles in the form of Keo and Hovershock. “There’s only so much you can do to make an external project feel like your own. Work on enough of them without your ideas moving forward, and you’ll drift toward demotivation fast.”

Redcatpig created the vehicular combat game Keo | Image credit: Redcatpig

“The best work tends to come from people building something they actually believe in, something that gives them real personal satisfaction,” he continues. “External projects can get there too, if you’re fortunate enough. Most of the time, it comes from working on your own.”

João Toste, art director at Redcatpig, thinks internally made games provide valuable experience. “You see how an art choice plays out across a full production cycle, not just a slice of one,” he says. “When you eventually find yourself in a project with tighter constraints and no margin for error, you already know what those mistakes look like before you make them.”

“These projects give us the opportunity to apply learnings and grow our skills”

João Toste, Redcatpig

“Working on our own projects gives us the creative freedom to experiment with new styles and techniques,” says Mike Sherak, managing director of the art division at Virtuos. “It also gives us firsthand experience of the complex nature of game development that our partners know all too well. These projects give us the opportunity to apply learnings and grow our skills.”

Terry Goodwin, studio co-director at Lab42 – which developed A Storied Life: Tabitha, but has also worked on a wide range of external contracts – agrees that internal projects provide valuable learning opportunities. “If part of your service offering as a studio is expertise at working within or managing a product across its entire development life cycle, you need to ensure that your team not only has that end-to-end experience, but that it’s kept sharp,” he says.

Lab42 developed A Storied Life: Tabitha | Image credit: Lab42/Secret Mode

“In external development, you rarely see out a single project from concept ideation through to launch and beyond,” he continues, “so, naturally, it becomes important to find or create those opportunities yourself to gain or retain that experience.”

Then again, he acknowledges the financial risk involved: “You’re reliant a little bit more on success after release, as opposed to being paid purely by milestones in a work-for-hire arrangement.”

“We put our clients and our external development work first”

Rob Hewson, Huey Games

Rob Hewson of Huey Games – which has ported titles like Outbound and Deliver At All Costs to consoles – says the firm’s focus has always been on minimizing risk, noting that the company was founded on the philosophy “survive long enough to get lucky.”

As such, although Huey Games does have its own internal projects, the number one goal is “ensuring that we always have work coming through the door,” he says. “We put our clients and our external development work first. That means that we have to carefully silo off any internal prototypes that we take on to ensure that they won’t impact our external services. When we do commit to an internal project, we resource it properly – it gets a dedicated team with a protected budget.”

But even though relatively risk-free external development is Huey Games’ main priority, Hewson acknowledges that creating original games provides useful experience. “It’s only when you are making games yourself that you can continue to understand and appreciate the challenges that your clients are tackling.”

Huey Games released Hyper Sentinel in 2018 | Image credit: Huey Games

Lindsay Gupton, CEO of Pipeworks – which worked on the remaster of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee – sees the pluses and minuses of external versus internal projects. “Partner work exposes us to different pipelines, engines, production models, and creative challenges,” he says. “Internal projects let us apply those lessons to opportunities where we own the full experience and can experiment.”

“The balance is never about choosing between our own projects and partner projects. Both can co-exist. It is instead about making sure each side strengthens the other.”

Rav Tharanee, chief strategy officer of the Virtuos studio Third Kind Games, says that his firm has always worked on original titles alongside co-development. “Each one taught us something that made us sharper on other projects,” he says. “The balance works because original projects were never bolted on as an afterthought. They were always part of what TKG was meant to be.”

“There’s a lot of value to be gained from the occasional creative palate cleanser”

James Oates, Sumo Digital

Finally, James Oates, vice president of Sumo Digital, offers a more philosophical take. “Ownership can take many forms,” he says. “While we’ve loved developing our own titles, I’ve also seen some of our teams at their most fulfilled working alongside external partners. The key is building a level of trust that gives teams genuine autonomy. When people are trusted to make decisions and influence the outcome, they develop real ownership and accountability regardless of whether the project is internal or external.

“I also think there’s a lot of value to be gained from the occasional creative palate cleanser, particularly on longer-running projects. Game jams, secondments, and cross-project creative or technical knowledge-sharing sessions all help people step outside their normal routines. They often spark new ideas, fresh perspectives and unexpected solutions that can then be brought back into the day-to-day work.

“Ultimately, I don’t think it’s about whether the project belongs to you. It’s about whether people feel empowered to make a meaningful contribution to its success.”

No, concentrate on one thing

Stuart Muckley, CEO of the Code Wizards Group, says that his firm is a “100% purebred service provider” that doesn’t create its own games. “Why? Because we believe that we need to focus on what we do best, including backend engineering, data pipelines, 24×7 NOCs [network operations centres], and helping studios manage their IT.”

“We believe that we need to focus on what we do best”

Stuart Muckley, Code Wizards

That said, Code Wizards does work on internal projects to “help boost our productivity,” he says. “Just never games.”

But he doesn’t begrudge the idea of other companies balancing making their own games alongside external work. “We completely understand that studios are four different forms: pure game studios, service providers to game studios, game studios who are doing work-for-hire/exdev temporarily, and service providers who wish to evolve into game studios,” he says.

“There’s no right or wrong, but for us, we want to be easy to understand and simple to work with. Being a service provider to game studios is our mission, and central to what we do.”

Joe Harford, CEO of the art provider Airship, which has worked on a huge range of games, including Forza Horizon 6 and State of Decay 3, is wary of internal projects. “Most of our work is on other people’s games, and I genuinely love that. You get to touch dozens of worlds you’d never get to build on your own.

Forza Horizon 6 is one of many games worked on by Airship | Image credit: Playground Games/Xbox Game Studios

“I’d be cautious of the romance of owning IP, though. For a service studio, it can quietly become a trap. It eats resources, time, and money, it pulls your focus off the service that actually pays everyone, and taken too far, it puts you in competition with the very clients you’re meant to be supporting.

“We do make our own IP, but very deliberately as a training ground, not a business. It’s how we sharpen our skills and stand in our clients’ shoes, so we actually understand the pressure and the decisions they’re living with rather than guessing at them.

“Product and service are genuinely different business models, and running both well is harder than most people admit. We know what we’re best at, and we stick to it.”

“It pulls your focus off the service that actually pays everyone”

Joe Harford, Airship

Chris Wood, CEO of the Unreal engine studio Tanglewood Games, agrees with Harford that there are risks to working on your own games. “We made a conscious decision early on not to do our own projects and to instead focus solely on providing a service to an incredibly high standard,” he says.

“Once a studio has its own title on the go, its time and loyalties become divided. Your best people are likely pulled onto your own project right when a client needs them, and clients pick up on that, even if it is never said out loud. We just do not have that tension. When you bring us in, you get our full attention, and there is nothing else quietly competing for it.

“I think that is a big part of why we have been successful across multiple projects for different clients. As the service is all we do, it receives our full focus, rather than being squeezed in around something of our own. It is a simple way to operate, and I think clients appreciate knowing where they stand with us.”

Finally, Myke Parrott, CEO of Unreal specialists CodeDev, has had a similar experience to Tanglewood. “From day one at CodeDev we’ve focused entirely on external projects, typically augmenting existing development teams on their IP, rather than our own projects,” he says.

However, he’s leaving the door open for changes in the future. “As we grow, we’re seeing increasing demand for more self-contained, full-spectrum development teams who can take on entire projects of one form or another,” he says. “We’ll have a very exciting solution to announce about that very soon, and part of that ambition will be to develop veteran-led new IP from scratch.”

“We thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?” – Minecraft specialists 4J Studios on building a new sandbox crafting game from first principles

Minecraft has been incredibly lucrative for 4J Studios. The Dundee-based firm, which was established in 2005 by Chris van der Kuyl, Paddy Burns, and Frank Arnot, has ported Mojang’s game to almost every console under the sun since 2012.

“They did really well off of Minecraft,” says Brian Gomez, executive producer and creative director at 4J, noting that the studio’s leadership had the foresight to negotiate a royalty arrangement. “And that has just generated incredible wealth for themselves and for the studio.”

Reforj offers more refined sclupting than Minecraft | Image credit: 4J Studios

Arnot left 4J in 2012, but van der Kuyl and Burns remain, now chairman and CEO, respectively. “What I like about them is that those two should be floating on a yacht or sitting on a beach somewhere and just enjoying retirement, because that’s maybe what I would do,” says Gomez. “Some people win the lottery or they become very rich and it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m going to go collect exotic cars and that’s my thing’. Their thing is making games.”

“Nobody is saying, ‘Boy, do I love the game industry right now'”

He thinks it takes a special kind of commitment to remain under the current circumstances. “Nobody is saying, ‘Boy, do I love the game industry right now’. It’s garbage right now. It was ‘survive until ’25’, and well, we’re past ’25 and halfway through ’26, and things are still garbage. So these two guys could have easily just folded up shop and said, ‘You know what? Forget it. I’ve got an island to go to’. But they don’t, because this is the thing they’re passionate about.”

Now, after well over a decade of porting and updating Minecraft, 4J is having a stab at making its own Minecraft-style game: Reforj. Partly, it’s a pragmatic decision. “We would probably still be in the Minecraft business, except that around 2019, Paddy saw the writing on the wall,” says Gomez. Microsoft (which bought Mojang in 2014) began pulling development in house, “so we knew that our time making those royalties off of Minecraft was probably limited, and that if we wanted to have a future as a studio, we needed to do other things – we couldn’t just put everything in the Minecraft basket.”

Technology led

“We still wanted to make games in this type of genre,” says Gomez, noting that the developers at 4J still very much enjoy working on Minecraft after all these years, and have become very good at making the game sing on consoles. “So we thought, well, how would we reinvent this wheel?”

He says that Burns put a question to the engineering team back in around 2019: if we had a chance to make our own open-world, voxel-based engine, what would you do? After years trying to get Minecraft to work on all sorts of devices, the team had a few ideas about what their own, homegrown game engine might look like.

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Burns laid out a couple of ground rules. First, he wanted the engine to run at 60 frames a second, no matter what ridiculous levels of destruction were happening on screen. Second, he wanted the engine to be designed around a controller rather than a mouse, and to run natively on current consoles. “So with those things in mind, we set about making what became the Elements Engine,” says Gomez.

Sometime around 2023/24, the engine was stable enough for 4J to begin work on designing a game. But what would they make?

“The design team set about coming up with pitches based on different types, different genres, different audiences, very different games,” says Gomez. “We came up with about six different concepts that made it through the final running of what we wanted to do next. And a lot of them were, I’d say, more niche.”

The broadest one was what became Reforj: a survival crafting game in the vein of Hytale or Minecraft. But there are a few key differences. One is that each world is a fully destructible, four kilometre by four kilometre planetoid that loops around, rather than a vast open world. The size limit helps to keep the performance high, but planetoids can be linked by portals to enable greater scale.

Another difference is that the Elements Engine permits the creation of much higher fidelity creations than Minecraft’s simple 1×1 blocks will allow. “Ours has got 660 different shapes,” Gomez says.

Houses built in Reforj | Image credit: 4J Studios

To begin with, players create a basic model – a house, perhaps – using simple cubes, in a similar way to Minecraft. But then they can use the sculpting tool to refine and change the shapes, allowing much more detail. “So they might pick a staircase shape, and then they just point the cursor at that block, and then they can transform it into a staircase,” explains Gomez.

On top of the sculpting tool, there’s a circuit system that involves bouncing rays of Aura off reflective blocks to power objects. The “pioneer” players of the game have already used the circuit system to create complicated experiences. “There’s splitters, there’s logic gates like AND/OR, there’s inverters if you want to flip a signal from being weak to powerful, or vice versa,” explains Gomez. “Somebody was able to actually make a playable Space Invaders game, which just blew us away.”

Time for a story

One big way in which Reforj differs from Minecraft is in its integration of a wide-reaching narrative from the off – something that was only grafted on to Minecraft much later through various different media.

“We wanted there to be a story,” says Gomez. “I mean, my background is I’ve done a ton of writing for different games before, so I am a story guy, I’m a narrative guy.” Among his many previous positions, Gomez was the design director on Silent Hill: Downpour, and later became the senior manager of creative development at Disney Interactive, before moving on to be executive producer of the Jurassic games at Universal. “Basically anything digital and dinosaurs at Universal was through me,” he says.

“You never worried about that when you lived in Scotland”

But before all that, he was creative director at VIS Entertainment in Edinburgh, the studio behind the Rockstar-published PS2 title State of Emergency. VIS was wound down in 2005, but many of the folks there ended up at 4J – and in 2022, van der Kuyl was able to tempt Gomez away from his life in Los Angeles and back to Scotland. Partly, the decision to relocate was about safety.

“My wife’s an educator, and she had a lockdown at her school,” says Gomez. “Nothing actually happened, but it was a scare. And she said, ‘I realised in that moment that I’d be willing to sacrifice my life for my students. I hope you’ll forgive me if that ever happens.’ So I told Chris about that conversation, and he said, ‘You never worried about that when you lived in Scotland, right?’ I said, ‘You’re right.’ He said, ‘Would you like to come back? Because I have a job for you if you’d like to come back’.”

Brian Gomez (left) joined 4J Studios in 2022 | Image credit: 4J Studios

One of the motivations for introducing a story to Reforj was “a fear of seeing what happened with Minecraft,” says Gomez. “Minecraft had such a blank slate – that was a strength, because people could tell their own stories in it, as Joe Garrett did [aka the YouTuber Stampy]. But then it comes to the film, and now they’ve got to invent lore. And is it Notch and company inventing that lore?”

The story that Gomez and the 4J team have come up with involves a conflict between two civilizations known as the Gatekeepers and Tunnellers. But the game has been carefully designed to make the narrative optional: players will encounter ruins, artefacts, and technology that give hints about what has happened, but they are also free to ignore it all if they wish. However, one piece of lore directly affects the game’s difficulty. Players will collect Aura, the substance that powers the game’s circuits, and the more of the substance they stockpile, the more it will attract the insect-like Tunnellers to invade their world.

Stamp of approval

The aforementioned Joe Garrett – better known as the Minecraft YouTuber Stampy, whose channel has over 10 million subscribers – was initially a friend of the studio, but went on to be employed as a member of the Reforj design team.

“He had crossed paths with 4J early on,” explains Gomez. “Anytime he’d come up to Scotland, they would give him tours of the studio… So when it came time to make the Elements Engine, we gave him a very early look at it.” Garrett’s feedback proved invaluable, and Gomez spoke to Garrett about what a more formal relationship would look like.

The Tunnellers are insectoid-like enemies | Image credit: 4J Studios

“My most important thing was I just wanted to get a feel from Joe about what his expectations were,” he says. “And I just wanted to make sure that he didn’t just want to make Minecraft, because I didn’t want to just make Minecraft. I didn’t walk away from a pretty good career at Universal just to go and make Minecraft.

“And he made it really clear. He was like, ‘I don’t want to just make Minecraft. There’s so many things I want to do in this genre that are different’. So once I saw that there was the creative chemistry there, I was like, ‘Well, do you just want to be a member of the design team?'”

“I didn’t want to just make Minecraft”

Garrett came up with the Aura energy system, but in addition, as someone who has played an enormous amount of Minecraft and other crafting games, he provided some key input on the controls. “Joe was very much at the core of getting the sculpting to feel right,” says Gomez.

“We just watch him play. Imagine if you made basketballs, and then you had LeBron James or somebody on your team, and you go, ‘Here’s a new basketball, go try it.’ And then you watch them play basketball, and then they can tell you all the things that are wrong with that basketball. And then you’re like, ‘Okay, come on, let’s go re-engineer it’. That’s what it’s like.”

Room for one more

It’s clear that Reforj shares a lot of DNA with Minecraft, but the game also expands on Mojang’s 15-year-old original in a number of ways, most notably with the much more nuanced crafting abilities that veer away from simple blocks. The Elements Engine also offers a significant upgrade on the tech of the original – in a demo given to GamesIndustry.biz, even exploding a mountain with a vast column of TNT didn’t cause the frame rate to blink.

Reforj doesn’t yet have a release date for Early Access, although it is currently being playtesting by a large number of players

It’s also clear there’s room for more games beyond Minecraft in this genre, something that was proven by the huge launch of Hytale earlier this year, months after Riot Games pulled its backing. “We’re rooting for those guys,” says Gomez. “It sucked that they lost their publisher the way they did. We were all amazed that they were able to get something out so quickly.”

Gomez says it makes sense that there’s space for more than one block-based survival crafting game, giving the example of first-person shooters. “Just because you play Halo doesn’t mean that you’ll never play Call of Duty or something else.”

Yet he is under no illusions that Reforj will topple Minecraft from its lofty perch. “4J has a lot of love for Minecraft, and we don’t honestly expect people to abandon Minecraft for Reforj, in the same way that people don’t abandon Call of Duty for Halo,” he says. But 4J is confident the two can coexist alongside, with curious players keen to see what new tricks Reforj can bring to the genre. “We do think we offer something very different from Minecraft.”

“I had a front row seat to one of the greatest creative explosions in history” – Glen Schofield announces retirement

Glen Schofield has announced his retirement after a 35-year career in the industry.

“The past couple of decades have been some of the greatest times in video games,” Schofield said in a video posted to LinkedIn.

“Some of the best games have come out over these times, [from] some of the greatest talent in the world I’ve been able to work with. I thank you all. I had a front row seat to one of the greatest creative explosions in history.”

He continued: “To EA, thank you for letting me make Dead Space, Activision, you gave me the keys to three Call of Duty games, and I really appreciate your trust.”

“This is an amazing industry, with so many talented people, and I know times are tough right now, but the future is really, really bright. I wish you all, the next generation of game makers, the best of luck.”

In an interview with GamesBeat earlier this year, Schofield stated that he decided to retire after completing The Callisto Protocol.

“It was the hardest development in my life,” he said. “I didn’t think anything could be harder than Lord of the Rings, but that one was.

During that time – I’ve always been painting and drawing and doing all that stuff. I picked up sculpting. I’m painting. I’m drawing. As I’m thinking during this, I’m like, ‘I don’t know if I can do the day to day anymore’.”

“I’ve had a great time, I’ve had a fantastic career. It seems like an inflexion point in the industry. A time for the next generation to emerge and do their own thing.”

In addition to his work on Dead Space, three Call of Duty titles, and The Callisto Protocol, Schofield directed games in the Gex and Legacy of Kain franchises at Crystal Dynamics.

He served as vice president and general manager of Visceral Games (formerly EA Redwood Shores), co-founded Sledgehammer Games, and was founder and CEO of Striking Distance Studios.

Schofield left Striking Distance Studios in 2023 to “pursue new opportunities.”

Earlier this year, we spoke with Schofield about potential solutions for challenges facing the AAA industry.

“All I’m hearing is that we have to make development cheaper. We have to spend less money and we have to do it with fewer people. One word I don’t hear in any of that is ‘creativity’. You have to be creative 99% of the time.”

What lessons have developers learned from external development?

This article is part of ExDev Week.

GamesIndustry.biz asked a range of external development studios what lessons they have learned over the years, and the responses ranged widely – but one common thread was the vital importance of maintaining good relationships with clients, which trumped most other concerns. A reminder that at the end of the day, external development is a people business.

Thanks to Airship, CodeDev, Code Wizards, Huey Games, Lab42, Pingle Studio, Pipeworks, Redcatpig, Sumo Digital, Tanglewood Games, Third Kind Games, and Virtuos for sharing their insights.

Trust and communication come above all

One thing that came across loud and clear in the responses from exdev companies was the value placed on trust between them and the client. “External development lives or dies on trust, not talent,” says Joe Harford, CEO of the art provider Airship. “There’s no shortage of studios that can turn out beautiful hero assets. What’s rare is a partner you can hand a messy, time sensitive brief to and know they’ll ask the right questions, protect your art direction, and deliver on the date they promised.”

Airship worked on Ghost of Yotei, among many other projects | Image credit: Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Stuart Muckley, CEO of the Code Wizards Group, agrees that trust is paramount. “Games evolve during development,” he says. “Trust is what allows things to change and lets service providers/exdevs (constructively) offer feedback to the studio they are working with. That trust enables us to be honest where things aren’t working and find solutions if there’s a problem.”

Trust is the essential precursor to good communication. “In game development, there will always be challenges and unexpected bumps in the road, but addressing potential problems early, with clear and honest communication is always the right way to deal with things,” says Myke Parrott, CEO of Unreal specialists CodeDev. “Honesty, integrity and reputation are everything!”

“Trust enables us to be honest where things aren’t working and find solutions if there’s a problem”

Stuart Muckley, Code Wizards

Terry Goodwin, studio co-director at the Sumo Digital-owned Lab42, agrees. “Curating a culture of honesty and transparency with your partners is such a key part of providing external development services that you’ll be doomed in the long-term if you get into the habit of hiding things or lying by omission.” Not everything will go right all the time, he says, “but how you respond to those problems is within your control.”

“Trust is earned through delivery, not promised upfront,” counsels Rav Tharanee, chief strategy officer of Third Kind Games, giving the example of how his firm met a hard, six-month deadline for a 60hz performance mode on Forza Horizon 4. “But beyond the delivery, it’s the relationships that matter. Being present, being genuinely invested in a client’s team and their vision, is how trust compounds.”

Align your vision with the client

“For me, the biggest lesson we’ve learned is the power of vision alignment,” says James Oates, Vice President of Sumo Digital. “Whether you’re working on an internal or external project, it’s vital that teams are aligned around strong pillars and a shared understanding of the experience you’re trying to create for players.”

External development teams have to work hard to stay aligned, he says. “Being more visible at every stage, validating progress against agreed user stories, maintaining regular feedback loops, and playing the game together all help keep teams moving in unison.”

“It’s vital that teams are aligned around strong pillars and a shared understanding”

James Oates, Sumo Digital

Established IP or live games, meanwhile, provide an extra challenge. “We not only have to align on what the product is today, but also become trusted custodians of where the IP is heading in the future,” Oates says. “That means understanding the creative vision, respecting what players already love, and helping shape the next chapter without losing what makes the game special.”

Harford says that the best work happens when “the line between us and the client disappears.” But Rob Hewson of porting specialists Huey Games says it’s not always easy to stay aligned. “Different clients work in very different ways, and with external development there’s always a danger that miscommunication or misalignment of expectations can cause issues,” he says.

Lindsay Gupton, CEO of Pipeworks, agrees: “Different studios have different cultures, pipelines, tools, and ways of thinking about the creative process,” he says – but adds that this can provide a valuable learning experience. “Being exposed to that variety has made Pipeworks more adaptable, more disciplined, and more thoughtful about how we show up as a partner and developer, with best practices refined over 27 years and counting.”

Pipeworks was behind the remaster of Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee | Image credit: Pipeworks Studios/Atari

Be malleable

Adaptability is a key aspect of exdev. “The biggest thing external development teaches you is how little ‘your way’ matters if the client disagrees with it,” says Bryan Freitas, tech director at the Azores-based co-dev studio Redcatpig. “You have to stay malleable to their tools, their workflows, their communication style and really integrate their team. That flexibility is the job.”

Chris Wood, CEO of Unreal support studio Tanglewood Games, says that the main lesson he has learned from external development is that it’s “a service business first, and an engineering business second.” He says success is related to how seamlessly the external studio slips into the production process, which necessarily involves adaptation – something that isn’t always easy.

“You quickly learn you cannot turn up with one fixed way of doing things and expect it to fit”

Chris Wood, Tanglewood Games

“There is almost no standardisation in this industry, and job titles mean different things from one studio to the next,” he says. “As well as this, the way projects are run, who is responsible for what, how production works, contract terms, payment terms, it all varies. You quickly learn you cannot turn up with one fixed way of doing things and expect it to fit. You have to read each client on their own terms.

“So the skill – and it has taken us a while to appreciate it is a skill in its own right – is in managing the engagement itself. That only really comes from doing it across a lot of different clients. Anyone can build what they are told to build, but the harder bit is dropping into an unfamiliar setup, working out how that particular client actually operates, and getting on with the work without creating friction.”

Add value

“I know that ‘add value’ is a very corporate phrase, but it’s important,” says Muckley, who emphasises the importance of going beyond the bare minimum required. “We focus on outcomes,” he says. “Instead of studios asking us to do something like ‘integrate GameLift,’ we work with them to understand what CCU and DAU they need, what the game mode looks like, what are the latency requirements they need, and where do they want the game to evolve in future. By doing this, we can use our own internal expertise to propose a plan to work together and we can dovetail this around their development roadmaps. Then we can ensure we’re one less thing for them to worry about and we’re hitting their requirements.”

Huey Games worked on the console ports of Outbound | Image credit: Square Glade Games/Silver Lining Interactive

Hewson also stresses the importance of going above and beyond clients’ expectations. “We always tell people that we’re more than happy to have a complimentary engineering call,” he says, “because we know that if we talk to developers early, we can help them to avoid some of the common pitfalls and ultimately save them money and headaches later down the line. Now, maybe they don’t hire us to do the work on that occasion, but hopefully they will appreciate the insights, and maybe they’ll recommend us to somebody else or return to us in future for support.”

Dmytro Kovtun, CEO of UX specialists Pingle Studio, says that external development only works when the partner owns the outcome, not just the tasks. “If you just ‘do the spec’ and never ask if it really helps the player, projects suffer,” he says.

“If we talk to developers early, we can help them to avoid some of the common pitfalls”

Rob Hewson, Huey Games

He adds that the toughest projects are the “ones that build the strongest trust,” and that “not shipping anything we’re not proud of” is why studios come back and recommend Pingle. “We’re ready to take on risk,” he says. “Publishers don’t need a vendor that only picks easy jobs. They need a partner who can absorb technical debt, fix the hard problems, and pass certification on the first try.

For me, the clearest sign that external development is working is simple: the client stops calling you ‘the outsourcing team’ and starts treating you as part of their roadmap.”

Specialise

“Focus really matters,” says Parrott, emphasising the need for an area of specialism. “If you have a world-class team of senior Unreal professionals, then the knowledge-sharing and upskilling becomes invaluable. Early on, it’s tempting to be everything to everyone, but saying no is sometimes the best thing for all involved.”

“It’s tempting to be everything to everyone, but saying no is sometimes the best thing”

Myke Parrott, CodeDev

Hewson agrees that it’s essential to have a “tight set of services” and specialisms. “At Huey Games, we specialise in porting, optimisation, and networked games, and by being focused, we’re able to continue to find those marginal gains and continue to bring new efficiencies to the table.”

That said, there’s room to diversify when it comes to business models. “Most of our projects are still milestone-based, but increasingly we’re working with self-publishing indies, for whom a revenue share model for porting might be more attractive,” says Hewson. “It provides us with a diversified revenue stream.”

Keep up to date

Hewson also emphasises the need to continuously improve your studio’s technology systems and processes. “External development is a business where efficiency compounds,” he says. “Every marginal gain we find translates directly into better value and a smoother experience for clients.”

He adds that exdev studios like Huey Games are afforded a unique overview. “We work across multiple projects concurrently, so we have the advantage of being able to spot common issues across a broader range of projects and deliver these insights as gains for our customers.”

“Player expectations around visuals have moved faster than most studios anticipated”

João Toste, Redcatpig

The difficulty is in keeping on top of it all. “This means always conducting post-mortems on projects to identify those key areas for improvement, but also engaging in a pre-mortem so that we can try to anticipate and mitigate potential issues at the outset.”

João Toste, art director at Redcatpig, notes that things move quickly in video games. “Player expectations around visuals have moved faster than most studios anticipated,” he says. “What passed three years ago doesn’t pass today, and that gap is exactly where a seasoned external art team earns its place. You’re not just filling a production slot or reinforcing a canvas, the differentiator is in bringing a trained eye that has seen enough projects, enough pipelines, and enough last-minute pivots to know what holds up and what doesn’t.

“Adapting to a client’s workflow is the starting point, but the real value comes when you can look at a process, or an art direction decision, and see where it’s going to cost them later. I’ve been in situations where the right move was to propose a change rather than just execute headfirst.”

Scale carefully

Tharanee says that scaling up a studio has to be done methodically. “Scale forces formalisation,” he says. “Going from nine people to 50-plus on Blankos Block Party meant rebuilding across production, hiring, and culture. Running Blankos and Hearthstone in parallel was the moment TKG became a proper multi-project studio. That capability had to be built.”

Third Kind Games worked on the Mythic Boss Rush mode for Hearthstone, among other things | Image credit: Blizzard

Those lessons on careful scaling also apply to projects. “We learned that scope discipline is everything,” says Tharanee. “Building intentionally, without letting process run away from you, is what separates the projects you’re proud of from the ones that keep you up at night.”

Mike Sherak, managing director of art division at Virtuos, stresses that geography is no impediment to scaling studios. “A key lesson learned is that there are great developers everywhere,” he says. “Today, we are now able to be close to our partners while leveraging great developers across the world.”

Marco Bettencourt, CEO and Founder of Redcatpig, says that his studio has grown from three founders to over 40 people, “and that growth came directly from proving ourselves on our own game before asking anyone else to trust us with theirs.” He thinks the experience of creating the online multiplayer vehicle combat game Keo helped the team learn the instinct to “protect deadlines” and “manage scope,” which in turn has benefited external partners. “We have lived through most of their problems.”

“Growth in this industry rarely comes from one big swing,” he concludes. “It comes from compounding the right experience over enough projects that the team stops guessing and starts knowing.”

“It’s not like the Eye of Sauron is looking at everything we’re doing” – Silent Hill F developer NeoBards on why trust is essential for co-dev

This article is part of ExDev Week.

As is often the case with studios specialising in outsourcing and co-development, NeoBards Entertainment is not a household name – despite having worked on some of the most recognisable franchises in the industry. But the studio’s collaboration with Konami on last year’s Silent Hill F finally brought the Taipei-based team into the limelight. Although the game’s concept came from Konami, NeoBards handled the majority of programming, production, and design.

The horror title was the fastest-selling entry in the venerable series – reaching more than 2 million units sold and hitting 6 million players – as well as being something of a critical darling. Which put NeoBards in what executive chairman Jean-Marc Morel calls “a good position”.

“You’re as good as your last project,” he says. “But that also puts some pressure on you, because whatever you do has to be as good as what you did before, otherwise people think you were just lucky.”

Jean-Marc Morel | Image credit: NeoBards Entertainment

Looking at the studio’s output, no one would accuse them of relying on pure luck. A frequent collaborator with Japanese heavyweights, NeoBards has worked on a number of ports and remasters for Capcom’s top franchises, including Devil May Cry and Onimusha, and was chosen by the publisher to develop Resident Evil: Resistance and Resident Evil Re:Verse. It has also partnered with Square Enix on Marvel’s Avengers and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The studio’s strong ties to Japan have proved to be an unexpected boon given the downward trend elsewhere.

“I would say that the Japanese market right now is a little more stable than what’s going in the US and Europe,” Morel says. “Sometimes they’re too conservative, but in this particular case I think they were right.”

As the AAA industry meltdown continues unabated, the outsourcing and co-development model NeoBards specialises in is becoming standard practice to deal with increasingly complex games. But is this contract system a more sustainable way to work than keeping everything in-house? To Morel, the question doesn’t make much sense given that the system has long been synonymous with AAA gamedev.

NeoBards Entertainment developed Silent Hill F on behalf of Konami | Image credit: NeoBards Entertainment/Konami

“Outsourcing and co-dev isn’t something new, it’s been going on for a long time. Look at the credits on a GTA game. I don’t think all the people there are inside [Rockstar],” he says, adding that this way of working might have actually exacerbated the current situation. “Maybe one of the reasons you have people losing their jobs in the West is because knowledge and know-how are becoming global. Twenty years ago, finding a console developer outside the West was complicated, and now it’s not. That’s globalisation. And in software development you can work from anywhere, which lends itself to that type of work relationship.

“But for it to be successful, people internally in the studios have to, excuse my French, have their shit together. They have to know how to run that type of project, otherwise they’re gonna hit the wall.”

Trust and communication

NeoBards knows a thing or two about how to do outsourcing and co-dev, with two decades of specialisation that have allowed the studio to perfect its approach. For COO Wonder Lin, it’s all about building lasting relationships from small beginnings.

“When someone comes to us and says they want to work together in a big game, if it’s the first time, I suggest we start with something small scale,” she says. “We need to communicate with creatives, not just businesspeople. Creators have their own mindset about the game, and sharing that vision with our team is not easy.”

“It’s very difficult for an internal dev team to trust people from outside,” agrees Morel. “It takes a while to get used to the idea, and to sell the idea internally that you’re going to work with external people.”

NeoBards worked on Marvel’s Avengers from Crystal Dynamics | Image credit: Crystal Dynamics

Having mutual confidence in each other’s abilities is essential for a good working relationship. “In our relationship with Konami or Capcom, they trust us,” says Morel. “It’s not like the Eye of Sauron is looking at everything we’re doing. They know when they give us a project that it will be on time, there will be no surprises and no trouble, and the quality will be there.”

NeoBards’ solution for gaining trust is simple, and surprisingly old school: Face-to-face time.

“We want to visit them in person in their studio to get to know them, to check their ideas and what they really think behind the vision they sent us. It’s a chance to mingle and get to know each other. Trust must be earned, and that takes time,” Lin says, pointing out that any tension or friction can be smoothed out by spending time together. “We usually fly over there and talk, or we invite them to come over so they can meet the team. Once you know their faces and you sit down to mingle for a while after work, a lot of issues can be solved.”

Wonder Lin | Image credit: NeoBards Entertainment

“When we did our co-dev project on Marvel’s Avengers with Crystal Dynamics, we flew there,” Morel adds. “We sent our people over there to spend time with the team. Once you put a face on the name, meetings go much faster.”

This personal touch is a vital tool to succeed in what NeoBards thinks is the most important step in a co-dev or outsourcing relationship: Choosing the right partner. Inevitably, being selective is a necessary part of the equation.

“We won’t jump into a huge project,” Morel continues. “The same way some publishers and partners are selective towards who they want to work with, we’re also in a position where we have to pay attention to who we’re working with. It goes both ways. Publishers don’t want to work with a company that doesn’t look stable. If they can afford that as a publisher, we also want to make sure we don’t work with partners that aren’t necessarily stable. It’s a good business practice.”

NeoBards is aware that their privileged position allows them to be selective, something they have enjoyed since their beginnings due to their unique situation. “We like to say we’re a young company with an older team that has been together for a long time,” as Morel puts it. The studio was formed by experienced developers that brought their reputation and contacts over from previous employers, some of them publishers that are now clients.

“We respect people’s IP. We’re not going in there to tell them what to do or how to do it”

“If you’re a very, very financially stable company, then you can be selective,” Morel says. “If you’re a young company that needs projects, I think you’re tempted to take whatever you can. When you start and you have 20 people you need to get projects, otherwise you disappear.”

“If you don’t have a proven record, it’s difficult,” Lin agrees. “We’ve been in development for a while, so it’s easier to get contracts. Also, we’re lucky that our partners come back to us. We build relationships. Even with first projects, our goal is to build happy experiences. That means everything. They will come back and that will be beneficial to each other.”

Morel adds that to deliver those good experiences as a contracted studio, it’s vital not to lose sight of the team’s position.

“We respect people’s IP. We’re not going in there to tell them what to do or how to do it. If we have ideas we could propose, we will, but in the end we’re not there to rock the boat in terms of co-dev. You have to understand where you stand. That’s also why choosing your partner is so important,” he says.

Staff contentment

Keeping partners happy is an obvious necessity, but maintaining employee happiness is arguably just as important. But how to do that when staff is working on a game they might not normally have chosen to work on?

For Lin, the key is finding projects they’re passionate about. “At NeoBards we’ve always wanted to tell our own stories,” she says, adding that one way of doing that is putting their own spin on the classics, particularly games that staff members played in their childhoods. Silent Hill F fit the bill nicely due to the series’ cult following, giving employees the chance to be part of the franchise’s long-awaited comeback.

Resident Evil: Resistance | Image credit: NeoBards Entertainment/Capcom

“We also try to have a diversity of genres, not only horror games, but action titles, multiplayer, etc. I think it’s important to have a different landscape of projects for multiple reasons,” Morel adds, citing the valuable experience and skills staff can gain from working on different types of games, and most importantly, the benefit of avoiding being pigeonholed into a genre. “We try to get away from that categorisation. I think it’s important to have that for people.”

While their work on Resident Evil and Silent Hill suggests a horror bent, a closer look reveals a more varied catalogue. The full-dev Resistance and Re:Verge were live-service games, with the co-dev Marvel’s Avengers adding a totally different type of multiplayer. That’s not to say the studio is averse to single-player titles, with their co-dev work on Final Fantasy VII Rebirth proving they can also handle big RPGs.

Beyond Japan

With the vast majority of partners based in Japan, one wonders whether NeoBards will expand into a more global cooperation model. The Taiwan-based studio appears primed for collaborating with Chinese studios due to linguistic and cultural affinities, plus the fact that it has a satellite studio in Suzhou, China. Lin says NeoBards maintains good relationships with studios in the region, and sometimes receives opportunities for collaboration, but no projects have officially materialised yet. She adds that outsourcing is way more prevalent than co-dev in China, though.

Even if the studio wants to take on more projects, there’s the limitation of size and the eternal struggle of quality versus quantity, something that Morel says becomes difficult to manage after a certain size. The studio currently has around 300 employees.

“When doing co-dev, you’re on a train that you’re not driving”

“If our capacity is kind of full but there’s an opportunity we like a lot, we can grow so we can take that opportunity,” Lin adds. “But we don’t want to grow too big.”

And so, the studio will continue to be selective. After experiencing the whole gamut of outsourcing with ports, co-dev and full-dev, NeoBards might have found the system that works best for them, Morel says.

“To me, full-dev is where we want to be. Because in the end, the results are our own doing. When doing co-dev, you’re on a train that you’re not driving. You’re in the passenger seat. And if you have a crazy driver, you have a crazy drive. That’s why choosing the driver is so important.”

Former Epic Games VP Steve Allison appointed chief business officer at Saber Interactive

Former Epic Games vice president Steve Allison has joined Saber Interactive as chief business officer.

In his new role, Allison will oversee the developer’s publishing, marketing, and revenue opportunities. He will report directly to Saber CEO Matthew Karch.

“I have been extremely impressed with what Matt, Andrey and Anton have built over the years,” said Allison. “Saber’s strength is the talented studios that build high-quality games at 30 to 50% the cost of industry norms.

“The upcoming slate is exceptional with Space Marine 3, Jurassic Park, Turok, Hellraiser, the upcoming John Wick game and several unannounced projects that we can talk about very soon. It’s an honour to join Matt and the team as Saber enters this transformative period.”

Allison has over thirty years of industry experience, having spearheaded the creation and launch of the Epic Games Store and its third-party publishing division.

We spoke to Allison earlier this year about his vision for the platform, and how its infrastructure still has room for improvement.

Before joining Epic, Allison served as SVP of publishing at Telltale for over eight years. He was also chief marketing officer and SVP at Midway Games and spent more than a decade at Atari in roles including vice president of marketing and business development.

“Steve Allison has done more to shape and modernise the game industry than anyone else I know,” said Karch.

“He has created major companies, developed new platforms and spearheaded bestselling IP. He is not only one of the most knowledgeable and experienced individuals in games, but he is also incredibly handsome – a trait we were sorely lacking after leaving Aspyr with Embracer. We are lucky to have him help lead Saber into the next phase of our journey, even if I need to avoid joint photo ops.”

Saber Interactive was previously owned by Embracer, which acquired the developer in 2020 for $525 million.

It was then sold in 2024 for $247 million in a deal where Embracer divested several assets from Saber to Beacon Interactive, a company founded by Saber’s co-founder and CEO Karch.

Sabre retained several studios, including Nimble Giant, 3D Realms, Sandbox Strategies, New World Interactive, Slipgate, Mad Head Games, Fractured Byte, and DIGIC.

The developer then secured funding to help clear debt to Embracer, with Aleph Capital Partners and Crestview Partners investing an undisclosed sum in the company.

How Evil Trout aims to turn a cult free game into a Steam hit – again

This week, indie studio Evil Trout Inc is releasing its second game, The Incident At Galley House. It’s a remake of Type Help, a detective game that first made waves as a free release on Itch.io. At this point, any sharp-eyed sleuths may be getting a sense of déjà vu. Because this is not just Evil Trout’s second game but its second detective game in the space of 18 months – the first, The Roottrees Are Dead, was a remake of a game that first made waves as a free release on Itch.io.

Both of the original Itch.io games were created by other developers, before being taken under the wing (or perhaps fin) of Evil Trout and adapted into a premium, Steam-ready form by studio founder Robin Ward.

Robin Ward | Image credit: Evil Trout

“I’m still not sure whether lighting struck me twice in terms of finding these awesome gems,” Ward tells Gamesindustry.biz. “Or if Itch is just full of them, and few people are paying attention.”

Whatever the case, it means that Evil Trout’s projects are already a proven quantity, in terms of both quality and audience interest, before development officially begins. It seems like a canny strategy, in these uncertain times for game development. According to Ward, though, this was never really the plan.

He set up Evil Trout in 2023 after leaving behind Discourse, a tech startup he’d founded, to pursue his dream of making a game. His own game, that is: The Secrets Of Skellig, a third-person puzzler that promised to do for crosswords what The Witness did for connect-the-dots. The game was never released, after a series of events in late 2023 led Ward down a different path.

That November, while walking the dog, Ward broke his arm. “It was much too painful and awkward to keep programming,” he says. While recovering, he spotted a post on the Something Awful forums from Jeremy Johnston – a fellow developer who’d recently offered to playtest Ward’s Skellig when the time came. “Jeremy posted, like, ‘hey, I made this puzzle game, some people have said it’s pretty good,’” Ward says. “And I was like, ‘well, I have a flight coming up [to programmer conference Handmade Seattle], I’m going to download this game and try it.’”

The game was, of course, The Roottrees Are Dead.

It had started life as an entry for the 2023 Global Game Jam. The theme that year was ‘Roots’, which Johnston interpreted in the familial sense, creating an Obra Dinn-inspired puzzle game about a family tree. Positive feedback from friends encouraged Johnston to keep working on the game. He released a more complete version on Itch.io in November 2023, where it was received in a way he wasn’t expecting.

The Roottree sisters, as rendered by artist Henning Ludvigsen, replacing an image that had been generated using Midjourney. | Image credit: Evil Trout

“This isn’t a sob story or anything, but I made a lot of stuff before this, and very few things got any traction, at all,” he says. “I’ve been a game developer on commercial products too, before this.” (Until he was laid off, shortly before Roottrees’ Itch.io release, Johnston had been a senior game designer at Arizona racing specialist Rainbow Studios.) “And nothing I’ve ever worked on had the electricity that this game did.”

Johnston’s promotion of the game had been limited to posting a link on a couple of subreddits and the aforementioned Something Awful forum, but its reputation spread. The only sour note in the response to the game was Johnston’s decision to use AI-generated art for the game’s character portraits – something that had felt justified on a solo project he was releasing for free. “That’s when Robin reached out.”

Ward had played the game on his trip to Seattle, in his hotel room in the evenings. “If this game was polished and had good art, I really think it could find a bigger audience,” he remembers thinking. He got in touch with Johnston and put forward a proposal: “What if I help you bring this to Steam? I’m a developer, I think I can do it, and I’ll fund getting new art and everything. What do you think?’

“I didn’t know if I’d make my money back, and I was prepared to lose it”

He wasn’t the only one to get in touch with a similar pitch, Johnston reveals, but Ward had the advantage of sending not just a message but a proof-of-concept. “Very quickly he was like, ‘and here’s what it could look like!’ and showed me the living room with the computer,” Johnston says. “I was like, okay, this guy’s serious!”

And so naturally, he said yes. “There was no risk, really, for me,” Johnston reflects now. “Robin took on all the risk. He put all of his own money and time into it. So, like, why would I say no to this?”

Ward sold some of his shares in Discourse, and used the money to fund Roottrees’ development. The game’s budget was around $60,000, most of which went towards paying a professional artist, Henning Ludvigsen, to replace the AI art. “I didn’t know if I’d make my money back, and I was prepared to lose it,” Wards says. “The way I put it to my wife was like, ‘I can lose this once. I’m not doing this again.’”

Roottrees recouped its budget within the first 48 hours and kept selling, an unexpected success that has powered Evil Trout’s next project. “Roottrees directly covered the development costs of Galley House,” Ward says, adding that the second game’s budget is much larger: around $250,000.

It might look like a safer bet, given that The Incident at Galley House follows the model established by Evil Trout’s first success. But again, Ward insists this wasn’t his intention.

“I legitimately thought that finding another game like Roottrees would never happen to me again… and then I played Type Help”

“I legitimately thought that finding another game like Roottrees was never likely to happen to me again… and then I played Type Help,” Ward says. It was a text-based take on the detective game, inspired partly by Roottrees, that arrived on Itch.io in January 2025, less than a fortnight after Evil Trout’s debut came to Steam.

“I got the exact same feeling that I got with Roottrees,” Ward says. He hadn’t played the game with his next project in mind, but he admits to thinking ‘this worked well last time’. “Before I’d even finished the game, I contacted William to talk to him about it.”

Type Help’s scenes were presented as text transcripts; The Incident at Galley House boasts a full voice cast. | Image credit: Evil Trout

Rous first came up with the idea for Type Help’s story while he was still at university, and spent two years fiddling with the game on and off. By the time he released the game on Itch.io, Rous says he’d lost “kind of lost faith in it”, and put it out mainly for his own benefit, as a way of marking the project as done. “I hadn’t anticipated hearing anything back from it,” he says. “At the time, I didn’t even have an email address on my profile. I was very lucky that Robin still managed to contact me.”

When Ward told Johnston about this, he didn’t expect it to go anywhere. “I told him: I don’t think Type Help needs to be remade,” he says. It was perfect as a text game, Johnston reckons, and he didn’t think Rous would agree to having it adapted in this way. “Not every author wants a movie of their work.”

This was not Rous’ reaction at all. “At first, all I wanted was to convince them to take on the game, regardless of what they intended to do with it,” he says. “I was more than happy to see anyone turn my text game into a flashy product if they were willing to spend the time and money on it!”

While Roottrees’ Steam version significantly polished and expanded the Itch.io original, Galley House is a total overhaul. Rather than plain text, the game’s scenes are represented by 2D art and a cast of voice actors delivering every line. And to access those scenes, rather than typing, you manipulate a kind of sci-fi gadget to input codes.

This last part was Johnston’s idea. He’d taken on a new day job at WB Games San Diego during Roottrees’ production, leaving Ward to finish it off, but the game’s success allowed him to leave that job (the studio was later closed by Warner Bros) and join Evil Trout as its second full-time member.

“Unlike Roottrees, it needed to work on Steam Deck, and potentially consoles”

He came up with machine as a solution to a problem they’d faced on Roottrees: it worked beautifully on mouse and keyboard, but in a way that didn’t translate to controller input. One of Ward’s core aims for this remake was that, “unlike Roottrees, it would work on Steam Deck, and potentially consoles,” Johnston says. “This meant not relying on a text interface.”

The result is a game that feels wholly different to Type Help – even before you reach the parts that have been dramatically expanded and extended. (No spoilers here, beyond Rous’ explanation of his thinking: “I’d never been particularly happy with the sudden ending of Type Help.”) Johnston, who was dubious that Type Help even needed a remake, is proud of what they’ve achieved here. “All I can hope is that people like it as much as I do,” he says.

Fingers crossed – not only because Galley House deserves success, but because it will define Evil Trout’s future. Johnston is confident he and Ward will work together on another game, but “what it is, and the scope” will depend on how this one performs. “The other members of the team, including William, will also be welcome to contribute if they’d like,” Johnston says, “but taking a risk on an unproven game that may or may not be a success is very daunting, so we’re leaving it up to them.”

Unproven? That’s right – Evil Trout is leaving behind the model that has powered its first two games. “I’d like to work on a game from the ground up rather than gilding another Itch game,” Ward says. “Jeremy and I have a few ideas for games, and over the coming months we’ll be exploring them and deciding on what makes the most sense to work on next.” That’s the plan, anyway. It’s always possible he’ll end up playing something that upends everything, all over again.

Analyst: Game console shipments expected to decline 19.5% to 33.9m units in 2026

Game console shipments are expected to fall 19.5% this year to 33.9 million units, according to new analyst data.

A report from S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan attributes this decline to higher console prices, implemented to address the ongoing RAM and storage crisis, which is making consoles less affordable for consumers.

This decline reverses the gains following last year’s Nintendo Switch 2 launch, which had increased global console shipments by 13.5% to 42.1 million units.

S&P’s console forecast, compiled in July 2026, includes only home gaming consoles from Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo.

The data firm projects console shipments will fall to about 27.1 million units by 2027, with a gradual recovery to 37.4 million units by 2030.

“A critical assumption underlying our forecast’s recovery period later in the decade is that the component crisis eases sufficiently by 2028 to allow Sony and Microsoft to bring next-generation hardware to market at price points in the $600 to $800 range,” said S&P Global Market Intelligence analyst Neil Barbour.

“For now, the market faces a compounding problem: hardware that is either too old or too expensive for the median consumer, a software slate that is thin outside a handful of tentpole releases, and a macro environment that keeps any meaningful price relief off the table.”

Image credit: S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan

Nintendo Switch 2

S&P forecasts Switch 2 sales of 17.1 million units in 2026, comparable to the original Switch’s second-year performance and similar to the Wii.

Nintendo’s latest full-year results project Switch 2 sales will decline 16.9% to 16.5 million units in its second fiscal year after launch.

Alongside a $50 price increase impacting sales, S&P notes that “compounding matters is the lack of a clear software tentpole in the near term,” since the major title Pokémon Wind and Waves will not launch until late 2027.

PlayStation 5

In its sixth year, PlayStation 5 shipped 17.1 million units across all models in 2025, a 15.2% decrease year-on-year. S&P expects shipments to decline further to 13.2 million in 2026.

Due to the ongoing RAM crisis, Sony increased prices for all PS5 models in April 2026. The base PS5 rose from $550 to $650, the digital edition from $500 to $600, and the Pro from $750 to $900.

Barbour noted these figures are challenging for consumers considering a six-year-old device, and the gap between PS5 and PS4 sales is already negative and widening.

He also questioned whether the highly anticipated release of Grand Theft Auto 6 will be compelling enough to offset the higher price, even with strong demand for compatible hardware.

“That framing does not inspire confidence for 2027 or beyond. Our forecast models a potential PlayStation 6 launch in 2028, contributing 4 million units in its first year and scaling to 17.2 million by 2030.”

Xbox Series X|S

Microsoft shipped 3.2 million Xbox Series X|S consoles last year, marking the lowest annual total on record. Quarterly shipments fell below 500,000 for the first time in S&P’s dataset during Q1 2026.

S&P forecasts 2.5 million Xbox Series units sold in 2026, with “a rapid wind-down toward zero thereafter.”

Barbour attributes this significant decline to “an uneven first-party software library, a subscription-first strategy that did not noticeably improve hardware sales and pricing that now puts an Xbox Series X $100 above a standard PS5.”

Xbox’s next-generation console, codenamed Project Helix, will support both Xbox and PC games as well as backwards compatibility, likely resulting in a higher price point.

Image credit: S&P Global Market Intelligence Kagan

Barbour highlighted the risk that this approach could limit the console’s appeal to “a narrower, more enthusiast-oriented audience.”

S&P predicts that the next Xbox console will sell roughly two million units in its launch year, scaling to 7.3 million by 2030.

“The actual outcome could look very different,” Barbour added. “A fully open PC platform with Xbox branding would not really resemble a console and likely not be counted in this model.

“Our forecast is functionally splitting the difference between a proper Xbox successor and an Xbox-certification program with PC OEMs, and readers should treat the post-2027 Microsoft trajectory as a range of outcomes contingent on decisions yet to be made or revealed.”

What does the future of external development look like?

This article is part of ExDev Week.

External development, whether it involves porting, co-development, asset creation, or any one of a number of other things, is becoming an increasingly important part of the industry as games get ever larger and more complex. Hiring external teams has often been cited as a solution to the games industry’s long-running and seemingly endemic problem of recruiting huge internal teams only to let them go again once a game is complete.

But what does the future look like for external development companies? Will the industry switch over to a movie-style production process, where one-off teams, probably made up of external developers, are assembled on a per-game basis? Or will we see a return to bigger internal teams once the current, years-long wave of layoffs is over? And what about AI?

GamesIndustry.biz asked a number of senior figures in the external development space what they think the future holds.

Claude Bordeleau (Chief Revenue Officer, Winking Studios)

“The future of external development will be more strategic, more integrated, and increasingly central to how games are made,” says Claude Bordeleau of Winking Studios, one of the largest external game development studios in the world. Bordeleau is also a member of the External Development Summit (XDS) advisory committee, and was previously a director at Keywords Studios.”In the short term, the market is still digesting the over-expansion of the last few years. Budgets are under pressure, greenlights are harder to secure, and many publishers are being more cautious. But longer term, I believe external development will continue to grow. Games are not getting simpler. Players expect more content, more platforms, better live support, and higher production values. Very few companies want to maintain every capability internally at the level required.

“That means external development is moving from capacity support to capability support. It is no longer only about helping a team produce more assets. Increasingly, the best partners will own features, pipelines, live content, co-development mandates, and in some cases significant portions of a game.

“External development is moving from capacity support to capability support”

“I also expect the market to polarise. Large, tier-one providers will benefit from scale, security, global reach, and the ability to support complex multi-disciplinary programs. At the same time, highly specialised boutique studios will continue to thrive when they offer exceptional craft or rare expertise. The most challenged companies will likely be those caught in the middle: not large enough to provide scale and not specialized enough to command a premium.

“Geography will also evolve. The winning model is not simply ‘East versus West’ or ‘low cost versus high cost’. It is trust. Clients need partners who understand their creative goals, communicate clearly, protect their IP, and take accountability. I believe the strongest global teams will combine Western-facing leadership, creative direction, and client intimacy with the extraordinary production depth and technical strength that exists across Asia and other major development regions. When executed well, that combination can create exceptional value by combining creative proximity, operational scale, and access to world-class talent.”AI will undoubtedly reshape game development workflows, but I do not believe it will diminish the need for great external partners. Historically, better tools have not reduced ambition; they have raised expectations. Every major technological advancement in our industry has ultimately led to larger worlds, richer experiences, and greater demands from players.

“AI will automate certain repetitive and derivative tasks, but creativity, taste, judgment, and vision remain fundamentally human capabilities. AI is extraordinarily powerful at recognising and recombining patterns, but it still requires human intelligence to create new ones. The most memorable games are not built on efficiency alone; they are built on original ideas, emotional resonance, and the craftsmanship required to transform a vision into an experience that players care about.

“Human connection will become an even greater differentiator”

“AI will also increase the amount, variety, and responsiveness of content that players expect. As a result, service providers will need to evolve from transactional, asset-based production toward higher-value creative, technical, and strategic contributions. The studios that thrive will be those that successfully combine human creativity with technological leverage.

“Ultimately, I believe human connection will become an even greater differentiator. Publishers will continue to seek partners they trust, teams that genuinely care about the games they are helping create, and collaborators capable of bringing passion, creativity, and fresh thinking to the table. The future is not human creativity versus AI; it is talented teams using AI to amplify their capabilities and create experiences that would not have been possible otherwise.

“Finally, I think the industry is being reminded that games are still driven by passion. The last few years saw more corporatization, financial engineering, and process-heavy management across parts of the industry. Some of that was necessary, but great games are ultimately built by talented people serving a strong creative vision. The best external development companies will be those where management enables creators rather than gets in their way.

“So the future of external development is not just ‘more outsourcing’, it is deeper partnership. The companies that succeed will be trusted, creative, technologically adaptable, globally capable, and willing to take meaningful ownership in the success of the games they help build.”

Xu Xiaojun (Studio Head, Studio Gobo)

“The optimists among the external developers see publishers reducing headcount as an opportunity, while the pessimists fear declining demand,” says Xu Xiaojun, whose Brighton-based studio collaborated with Sony on Lego Horizon Adventures. “The reality is likely somewhere in between: reduced overall demand, but more reliance on external development.

“Looking from an industry point of view, external developers are the ‘cost centre’. As in any industry, maturity brings efficiency, or so the theory goes – thus ‘costs’ will be optimised. This implies suppliers – external developers – will accept lower margins to win business. But different to other industries, our ‘assets’ are people. When the industry picks up – led by new technology, innovation, or new playing habits – external developers will compete against publishers again for talent, because the potential reward and profit will outweigh the risk of carrying the fixed costs. Business logic dictates the publishers will not externalise profit, and only externalise risks. External developers shouldn’t be satisfied with just being a cost solution.

“I see a future where external development continues to play a pivotal role. The studios that thrive will be those who can successfully convert project experience into enduring expertise, and can deliver value beyond headcount alone.”

Stuart Muckley (CEO, Code Wizards Group)

“People often look at the current industry setup and settle on one thing that’s behind it all,” says Stuart Muckley, head of the Code Wizards Group, which has worked on everything from Apex Legends to Fruit Ninja. “Obviously that’s too simplistic, as it’s not AI, nor live games not landing, nor wages, nor budgets, nor changes in the market, nor player behaviour. Instead, it’s all those things, plus the fact that games are exceeding budget. Those overruns are either making the game come out at breakeven or at a loss.

“For ExDev, and especially service providers, it’s an opportunity and a challenge.

“The drive for cost efficacy (not efficiency) is leading to studios thinking differently. Lots of which mirrors how the movie business has changed over the years.

“Cost used to be the only determining factor. Now it’s quality versus cost versus risk. Quality matters, because players want to play the best game, and only good games keep players spending and playing. Cost is important, but so long as a game is coming in on budget, then it’s less of a problem. Risk is currently a massive determinant, because companies don’t want games to be leaked/released/hacked, and IP needs protecting. Deciding how a studio is structured, how much external development should be utilised, and which teams to use is a factor in all three elements.

“It’s very likely game projects will start to follow a model similar to the movie business”

“Equally important, we are seeing a shift from long-term to shorter-term investment, which often involves small amounts being invested in individual games (project financing) rather than investors taking equity in a studio.

“The first consequence of increased project financing is that it’s very likely game projects will start to follow a model similar to the movie business, where a legal entity is created for each game. Investment can then differ between games, and the studio can greenlight each ‘project’ as it’s ready for the next milestone.

“Let’s create an example to help illustrate this.

“Assume that Amazing Studio Inc. wants to create a game called Wizardlicious. Amazing Studio Inc. would create a new company called Wizardlicious Limited or Wizardlicious Inc. At the beginning, Amazing Studio Inc. would own 100% of the game company, but could then take investment as a sale of a percentage of the Wizardlicious company. This leaves the studio 100% self-owned, but each game can take different investments and have many equity owners.

“Creating an entity per game allows the IP/franchise to vest in the main studio and the game risk to be allocated to the new legal entity. It minimises the risk, as the game company could be shut down without many ramifications to the studio. It allows more transparent investment, because the capital means a share of the game company, and any legal governance is around that game only. It also allows an individual game to be sold more easily. Best of all, it allows investors to capitalise a game they think is achievable within 1-4 years and get a riskier, larger investment back in a relatively short term.

“A side effect is that it will reduce the desire to hire staff for the game entity (apart from short-term freelancers) and most of the development will be outsourced. The studio will bring in various parties to lead the effort – think executive producers and art directors – but they will instrument the other outsourced exdev and service providers. It’s likely new studios will emerge through angel and funding rounds, but investors will be clear that they’re backing a team, probably for the long term, and spreading risk among future titles.

“Most of the development will be outsourced”

“For exdev/service providers this is both an opportunity and a challenge: increased workload is always welcome, but there is zero chance of credit insurance against the new game entities. This means the risk largely resides with the exdev/service provider. Whether this will lead to pre-payments, more frequent payments, and invoice factoring is yet to be seen. But risk management will be a major attribute in this new world.

“Lastly, and I’m biased on this, we see the rise of specialist exdev/service providers. Where once a single studio may have been commissioned for full SKU, there’s now many teams being pulled in for a single game and/or full SKU exdevs are focusing on genres or platforms. Specialist service providers/exdevs are a way of derisking part of the development by bringing in experts to help the build. They’re onboarded and offboarded as soon as the work is complete, which also helps cashflow and cost management. Best of all, those same providers can be re-engaged for the next game in the series (or DLC or similar games) without having to have them on the payroll.”

Marco Bettencourt (CEO and Founder, Redcatpig)

“The future of external development will be much less about outsourcing and much more about true co-development,” says Marco Bettencourt, head of the Azores-based co-dev and porting studio Redcatpig, which recently worked on ports of Planet of Lana.

“The strongest partnerships are the ones where, after a while, the client almost forgets we are an external team. When that happens, external development is doing its real job.

“As games become bigger, more technical, and more multi-platform, studios will need external partners that can do more than provide extra capacity. They will need teams that can take ownership, understand the creative and technical vision, integrate into existing pipelines, and help solve production problems with accountability.

“Geography will matter less”

“I also believe geography will matter less. Great teams can now be built outside the traditional development hubs, as long as they have the right talent, communication culture and production discipline.

“The future is not about making games cheaper. It is about helping studios make better games, with trusted partners working as a real extension of the internal team.”

Adam Orth (COO, Midwest Games)

“External development in games is already expanding beyond the traditional co-development, porting, QA, and art support ecosystem we know today, and it will continue evolving quickly over the next two years,” says Adam Orth of the for-hire publishing support company Midwest Games. Orth’s career has seen him take on senior roles at Microsoft Game Studios, Digital Eclipse, Readyverse Studios, PopCap Games, LucasArts, and Sony Computer Entertainment, among others.

“The next major evolution is external publishing development: experienced publishing operators embedding alongside studios and publishers to provide scalable support across production, marketing, community, platform strategy, forecasting, data analysis, creator programs, and launch execution. As teams continue to face intense budget pressure, hiring constraints and an increasingly competitive marketplace, the old model of building every publishing function internally has already become harder to justify.

“The next major evolution is external publishing development”

“At Midwest Games, we see the future clearly as a flexible, modular publishing ecosystem where external specialists can plug into a project at the exact moment they are needed. That might mean helping an independent developer shape a stronger funding ask, supporting a self-publishing team through Early Access, augmenting a larger publisher with tactical go-to-market expertise, or using data and forecasting tools to pressure-test positioning before major spend begins. The best external partners will not simply execute against a task list. They will bring publishing judgment, market context, operational discipline, and measurable impact to every engagement, helping teams make smarter decisions, reach the right players, and build momentum that extends well beyond launch week into the full product life cycle.”

Chris Wood (CEO, Tanglewood Games)

“A shift is happening, and needs to happen, in how the industry views and values specialist studios and the focused expertise we provide,” says Chris Woods, head of the Unreal Engine support studio Tanglewood Games, based in Hartlepool in the UK. “We are valuable partners, nimble and experienced enough to slot into any development team in a frictionless way, who can take projects to the next level.

“Studios like Tanglewood Games are also learning the value in banding together, sharing our knowledge of fitting into pipelines seamlessly, but also pitching co-operatively to share opportunities and offer multi-faceted solutions.

“The future of the games industry isn’t teams of hundreds at huge studios, it’s in highly specialised studios coming together, each doing what they do best to achieve common creative goals. Networks of these specialised studios are being formed right now, and I strongly believe these networks hold the key to a future of sustainable and efficient game development.”

Myke Parrott (CEO, CodeDev)

“I think the future of external development is incredibly bright,” says Myke Parrott, head of CodeDev – The Unreal Guys, a Surrey-based firm that specialises in Unreal co-development work.

“Over the last 12 to 18 months, we’ve seen a real shift in how studios view specialist external partners. It’s no longer just about adding capacity – it’s about bringing in deep expertise exactly when it’s needed, whether that’s solving complex technical challenges, accelerating delivery, or de-risking critical milestones. Being able to flex up and down at speed gives developers top-class talent options that otherwise would be very difficult to attract in such a timely manner when compared to hiring FTEs.

“At the same time, the role of external development is expanding beyond pure production. The best partners, I believe, will increasingly help studios explore new technologies and drive innovation, whether that’s UEFN, Verse, AI-assisted workflows, or emerging platforms. As games become more technically demanding, external studios won’t just be an extension of development teams – they’ll become trusted partners in R&D and innovation as well. I think that’s where the industry is heading.”

Id claims it has “the crew we need to build the games and tech we’re known for” following mass layoffs

A social post from the account of id Software has stated that the studio still has “the crew we need to build the games and tech we’re known for” after dramatic staff cuts across the Xbox portfolio lead to claims that the firm would no longer maintain the idtech engine used to create Doom, Wolfenstein and the recent Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

The post on X, which contains no attribution, says that “the team today is about the same size we were when making DOOM (2016)”.

“We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward.”

The post follows previous claims that the layoffs at the company, which resulted in the loss of 136 people – around half the company – has left it incapable of maintaining idtech. Kotaku previously reported a departed staff member as saying that “id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever,” after the loss of so many key staff in the firm’s Texas base.

Microsoft later stated that “there are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations,” and denied claims that only one staff member in Texas was left working on the platform.

The full post reads as follows:

“Thank you all for the support this week.

While our studio was impacted, those changes were spread across teams. We still have the crew we need to build the games and tech we’re known for. The team today is about the same size we were when making DOOM (2016). We have always had a flat studio where everyone is a maker, and we will remain true to that philosophy moving forward.

We are focused on supporting each other and the team members impacted. We’re going to keep building the great games and tech that have defined us for the past 35 years, and we’re looking forward to seeing you at QuakeCon this August.”

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced on Monday that the firm would be cutting 3,200 jobs over the course of this financial year,around 20% of its total workforce, with 1,600 staff being made redundant immediately. Staff have been dismissed from across the business, and five studios are being divested.

Id co-founder John Carmack said yesterday that his “‘Microsoft will probably be a good steward of the brand’ statement isn’t aging well”, and that “I’m saddened, but I can’t muster anger or outrage over it.”

“They want us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear” – Bethesda union members organise protest in response to Xbox layoffs

Union members at Bethesda Game Studios will strike next week in response to mass layoffs at Xbox.

OneBGS plans to hold marches outside the company’s studios in Montreal, Rockville, Austin, and Texas, according to an email from the OneBGS Mobilising Committee (via Game Developer).

The rallies are scheduled for next Wednesday, July 15, at 12:30pm EST.

“Because we organised and certified our unions, we have hard-won legal rights and protections that non-unionised studios simply do not have,” said OneBGS.

“The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won’t let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilise. We need every single member visible and unified.”

A total of 440 union members were affected by the layoffs across Bethesda and ZeniMax. This includes 96 at Id Software, 40 remote workers at BGS Dallas, 22 at BGS Austin, 213 at ZeniMax Online Studios in Maryland, and 166 at ZeniMax Media.

“Microsoft and BGS are trying to frame these cuts as an ‘entrepreneurial change in the scope of business,’ claiming they are transitioning from a ‘studio-based business model to a franchise-based model’ to dodge their legal obligation to bargain the decision with us,” the union continued.

Bethesda CEO Jill Braff stated this in an email to employees earlier this week, adding that the company would “align the right talent, technology, and resources across the organisation” by focusing on its “strongest franchises.”

“While we push that legal fight forward, Microsoft is still legally required right now to sit down with us for ‘Effects Bargaining,’ said OneBGS. “This means we have the right to negotiate exactly how these layoffs impact our people, and we are heading to the table to fight for every single affected worker.”

The union concluded: “We are going to be demanding preferential transfers to force Microsoft to place affected BGS workers into open roles across Xbox and Microsoft first, stronger severance and extended healthcare to ensure no one is financially abandoned, as well as recall rights to ensure our laid-off members are the first ones hired back when BGS expands.”

OneBGS was formed in 2024 when it joined the Communication Workers of America.

It was the third ZeniMax-owned studio to unionise, following OneBGS Montreal and ZeniMax Workers after Microsoft and the CWA entered a labour neutrality agreement in 2022.

Can a top-down, focused software strategy save Xbox? | Opinion

When Asha Sharma passed the 100-day mark at the helm of Xbox last month, the consensus assessment was cautiously positive – but as I wrote at the time, Sharma’s role so far had mostly been crowd-pleasing positioning statements, and the genuinely hard choices would need to be made soon.

A month later, we’ve started to see those hard choices being made. Xbox cut 1,600 jobs on Monday, with another 1,600 planned to go by the end of the year, representing fully 20% of the Xbox organisation. Five internal studios are gone entirely, either to be spun off as independents or sold – Compulsion, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, and Arkane. The remaining studios have also been hit, with some apparently losing as much as half of their developer headcount.

This is a very hard set of decisions to square with bullish statements about reinvigorating the Xbox business or ambitions of reaching a billion consumers. Lewis Packwood characterised it rather fairly as another retreat for Xbox – yet another “darkest day since the last one” for a business that seems to go through these violent spasms with increasing regularity.

A WARN notice filed in Texas has confirmed 136 developers were laid off from Doom: The Dark Ages maker id Software | Image credit: id Software/Bethesda Softworks

If the actions and the words seem contradictory, though, it’s because Sharma and the rest of the new leadership team have been handed two wildly conflicting priorities that they must reconcile. The damaged, stumbling Xbox business must be put back on a growth path. At the same time, the Xbox division needs to get its spending under control and start delivering some return on the gigantic investment it has received in recent years.

You could make a decent argument for either of those priorities. Xbox really does need to get back on its feet as a brand and a platform, as it’s essentially lacked a coherent and compelling proposition for its consumers for years now. Equally, the widely reported figure of $20 billion being invested in the division in recent years (not including money spent on acquisitions!) only for revenues to decline rather than grow is very hard to justify given how productive that money could have been in Microsoft’s more rapidly growing and profitable business units.

“Consequences are for people whose jobs don’t come with a snappy acronym and a corner office”

The problem arises from trying to do them both at once. “Do more with less” is a great boardroom soundbite, but an insanely hard thing to implement in practice. Sharma’s attempt to square this circle, it seems, boils down to shrinking the division’s studio network. On the face of it, this seems like a move designed to deal with the financial issue – cut costs to make the bottom-line numbers glow a slightly less angry red next quarter – at the expense of tackling the problems with the Xbox platform itself.

The reality, though, is that slashing 3,200 jobs doesn’t make much of a dent in the financial troubles of a department that’s burned through $20 billion with nothing to show for it in the space of a few years. It’s not nothing – direct employee costs and ancillary costs racked up on the projects they were working on probably amounts to about half a billion dollars a year – but on the scale of Microsoft’s accounting, that’s at least living right next door to nothing.

So while cost saving is certainly part of the motivation, it’s largely performative: the Xbox division ritualistically shaving off its hair to show the rest of the company how contrite it is over strategic missteps and how serious it is about spending money responsibly. (Of course, the people whose careers are being sacrificed for this performance aren’t the ones who made those bad strategic decisions, or indeed were anywhere near the rooms where they happened; consequences are for people whose jobs don’t come with a snappy acronym and a corner office.)

South of Midnight studio Compulsion Games is one of five being let go from Xbox | Image credit: Compulsion Games/Xbox Game Studios

The rest of the motivation is, I think, genuinely an attempt to make Xbox better at handling its first-party pipeline. I reserve judgement about whether it’s a good attempt at that, but the problem Sharma and her team have identified is real enough: the way that Xbox managed the studios it bought over the past decade was incredibly weak.

For years, the company has seemed to be entirely unable to get a grip of development processes or product priorities. Whether that was due to a lack of competence, a poorly designed management structure, or, as some have suggested, some noble but ultimately foolish “hands-off” oversight policies, the results speak for themselves. Xbox owns some of the most valuable IP and storied studios in gaming and has done little or nothing with most of them.

Whatever was going on within Microsoft, it seemed to affect every studio that came into its orbit. Companies it bought which had reliably released games on reasonable schedules for years suddenly slowed down to a crawl; the disruption of the COVID era didn’t help, but it in no way explains the extent of the phenomenon. Major projects sat in development hell for year after year – not in cheap, early-concept stages, but with full-scale development teams turning out massive amounts of work only to see it scrapped at the next dramatic change of course. Projects cancelled after the best part of a decade in development had, by some accounts, not made any meaningful advances towards the finish line in several years.

“Xbox owns some of the most valuable IP and storied studios in gaming and has done little or nothing with most of them”

Compared to the tight ships that Sony and Nintendo run with their first-party development efforts, this has been a motorway pile-up in slow motion. That’s not to say that either Sony or Nintendo are flawless executors, as they both struggle to keep their first-party pipeline on track at times, or misstep badly in their efforts (like Sony essentially wasting half of this generation on live service dead-ends). The point is that managing internal studios and first-party development is insanely hard, and bizarrely, I don’t think Microsoft ever fully appreciated that.

Perhaps this was a consequence of software being Microsoft’s core competence (yes, yes, insert whatever snide comment about Windows 11 you like at this point) while hardware is a field it has rarely dabbled in. Either way, while it feels weird to ascribe naïveté to one of the most ruthless corporate giants on earth, there does seem to have been a certain doe-eyed “we’ll buy loads of studios and magic will just happen” kind of thinking in some key parts of the company.

A few months after the dramatic leadership transition at Xbox, the new team reckons it has identified the major problems with first-party software, and while I’m not entirely convinced that its fixes are the right prescription, acknowledging the problems is a step further than the previous management achieved.

Problem number one: Xbox management lacks the experience and competences needed to oversee such a huge, sprawling network of studios and projects. Prescription: some of them have to go, and while I find the strategic thinking behind which studios to cut somewhat lightweight, cutting down to a size that allows the core team to retain focus and oversight makes sense.

Problem number two: Xbox-owned IP has been sitting fallow in many cases, which seems largely to be a consequence of core management choosing not to take an active role in IP management and matching the needs of the IP libraries with the abilities of its studios. Prescription: start doing that. We see the beginnings of a very different Xbox first-party strategy with the decision to put Obsidian to work on a Fallout title, thus finally making a move to rectify what’s arguably the single biggest piece of low-hanging fruit left to rot on the vine under previous leadership.

Obsidian previously worked on Fallout: New Vegas | Image credit: Obsidian Entertainment/Bethesda Softworks

Of course, imposing top-down control of first-party development also means that you need to be very, very confident in your team’s ability to steer it effectively. It feels cruel to quote one of Sony’s most successful first-party titles here, but there’s a line about great power and great responsibility that applies. However, decentralised decision-making that seemed to leave nobody with genuine responsibility for the first-party software strategy has been tried and failed. A new approach is needed.

Nonetheless, it’s perhaps not a great sign that the first draft attempt at imposing this strategy boils down to “let’s just focus on really big commercially successful games and get rid of teams making smaller titles”. This is one of those bits of logic that occasionally pops up in the industry and looks like common sense on the surface – but breaks down the moment you apply any understanding of what the actual role of first-party software is in a platform ecosystem. The Catch-22 of software strategy has always been that you cannot build a mass-market platform solely on the back of mass-market games; look closely at the audience for any genuinely successful mass-market platform, and it turns out to be made up of countless niches loosely packed together.

“You cannot build a mass-market platform solely on the back of mass-market games”

Even so, the “reset” of Xbox shouldn’t be dismissed entirely. At least the problems seem to be better diagnosed now, even if the solutions still need work. Of course, in a week when 1,600 people have had their lives turned upside down due to terrible decisions made far above their heads – and thousands of others are left wondering when and where the axe will fall next – it’s more than fair to be angry at the destructive waste of it, rather than concerned with the strategic positioning of it all.

Nobody should forget that Microsoft actively chose to put itself in this position, spending billions buying studios it now can’t manage properly, thus playing havoc with the lives of thousands. This kind of thing is sadly something we’re getting used to in the industry; but it was contemptible behaviour when Embracer did it, and it’s no less contemptible when Microsoft does it. Even acknowledging the impossible, conflicting priorities Xbox is faced with, and even if this whole sorry affair does end up snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, it won’t quickly be forgotten how shabbily Microsoft has treated the people and studios it was responsible for. Attempting to earn back some of that lost goodwill can be another competing priority on Asha Sharma’s increasingly difficult to-do list.

Why two games media veterans think a “classic old-school style multi-format video games website” will flourish in 2026

Times are bleak in the games industry, and they’re no less challenging in the media that covers it. Twenty years ago there were dozens of print magazines and hundreds of games websites pumping out daily news, previews and reviews. Those numbers have declined steeply over the following years, and while the pandemic drove a brief spike in audiences and revenues that mirrored that of the wider games market – prompting a short-lived and ill-fated round of consolidation – the media landscape is now dominated by a small number of behemoths, with video influencers increasingly dominating conversation and marketing plans.

So launching a new games media website is a novelty – particularly one with a design and an editorial brief that would not have looked out of place in the glory days of the early 2000s. Respec is a new site launched by Tom Orry and Alex Donaldson, who have a combined tally of 40 years in games media, and who believe that there’s an opportunity to establish a new site with a small team, a clear voice, and a passion for playing and writing about games.

Both recently worked on Eurogamer (owned by GamesIndustry.biz parent IGN Entertainment) but Donaldson launched and managed RPG Site – which shares a platform and some staff with Respec – while Orry founded and operated Videogamer, an early adopter of Patreon funding before a series of ownership changes culminated in its removal from both Metacritic and Google due to AI-written game reviews.

Both are of the opinion that “a lot of websites have been chronically mismanaged on the financial side,” says Orry, and that there’s room for a “classic old-school style multi-format video games website” with a lean team focused on covering what they care about, rather than what they feel obliged to cover.

Respec shares its platform with sibling RPG Site. | Image credit: Double Black

“There were loads of these around 15 years ago, but then they got squeezed by the ad market, acquired and run into the ground, or pushed too hard and ran out of money,” he says. “We think this kind of website, run on a tight budget and with the support of readers, can very much still exist in the year 2026.”

The core of Respec is old-school text-based games coverage, supported by a weekly podcast and a YouTube channel carrying a mix of reviews and more eclectic Let’s Plays. “Text is for the work, and video will be for the playful, fun, silly hangout stuff,” says Orry.

Tom Orry | Image credit: Double Black

He believes that Respec can succeed by having a clear voice and a convivial feel. “The best video game magazines felt like clubs and the early websites/fansites felt like clubs,” he says. “We will talk to and with our readers, engage with them, and provide the kind of articles they enjoy rather than what we think will gain the most traction online.”

The voice will be distinctly local, too. “In a media space increasingly squeezed by US ownership, we want to make something that is totally unapologetically British, in keeping with the tradition of the magazines we loved growing up,” says Orry. “That might sound provincial, but we also know from many other examples both inside and outside games that this sort of tone travels well.”

Reader revenues

The site will be primarily advertising-funded with the bulk of its content being free to read, but with paid subscriptions via Patreon offering exclusive weekly podcasts and occasional features. While Donaldson believes it is “tremendously difficult to build a business that has direct user subscriptions as its primary revenue driver off the bat,” he hopes that users with sufficient income can be motivated to back the site and be rewarded with “some fun exclusives,” with a view to growing direct funding “significantly” over time.

Orry believes that the site’s clear independence will help to scale this. “Corporate-owned media, especially in the specialist sector in the UK, has struggled to get substantial financial support from readers,” he says. “Why support the corporation when that same entity is laying people off? Respec is entirely independent with the owners working on the site. Our goals are aligned, our expectations are reasonable, and we don’t need constant growth.”

Alex Donaldson | Image credit: Double Black

In the meantime, Donaldson’s experience running RPG Site means he’s used to “extracting the maximum advertising revenue from our footprint while still respecting the user, and I will be doing that here.” Respec is currently funded from the profits of RPG Site owner Double Black, which Donaldson says it has “strong margins” that can absorb the costs until Respec achieves profitability, and with potential to expand in the meantime.

“We’re bullish about 2027 as a particularly strong year for the role-playing genre,” he says. “Strong performance on RPG Site will unlock more investment, as will growth in Respec’s earning potential.”

The backing of its established sibling means that Respec has time and space to establish its voice and find its audience, and build the credibility its founders see as crucial to the brand’s long-term success.

“In the first months, while page views will be a metric we’ll measure, the most important thing I’m going to be looking at is actually penetration within that audience,” says Donaldson. “Respect, reputation, trust. That can be reflected in more nebulous metrics like the mood in comments, on social media, and among industry colleagues – but also in concrete metrics like bounce rate, dwell time, and sessions per user. These are the hallmarks of a healthier site that is less reliant on search and in turn are things we can build a sustainable business around.”

“It’s easier than people realize to trick your way to high traffic numbers via search, but it’s more difficult to build an actual audience. A year in, obviously, we’re looking to have Respec clear of the suckling support of its genre expert sibling – but it’ll be one step at a time to get there.”

Their goal is not to build to the size of the established games sites, says Orry, but to create something “new and manageable. We love games media and want to give people something they can enjoy and support.”

“Ultimately, the goal is to build a brand that people feel invested in and trust – and to keep it independent,” says Donaldson. “We’ve experienced life inside bigger machines, and though it has its benefits, one thing my experience has gradually bequeathed me is an understanding that a small, fast moving ship can be wildly successful on its own terms – and more fun to work on to boot.”

Layoffs begin at Ubisoft Barcelona following Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced launch

Following the launch of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced, layoffs have begun at Ubisoft Barcelona affecting 51 employees.

“After seven years at Ubisoft Barcelona, this is not how I imagined it would end,” wrote QA/QC lead Isabel Codina García on LinkedIn (thanks Kotaku). “But I am genuinely grateful for the people I have met and everything I have learned along the way.”

These cuts were first announced with the closures of the Winnipeg and Belgrade studios, as part of Ubisoft’s restructuring process introduced earlier this year.

Following the announcement, staff went on strike, organised by the Spanish union La Confederación General del Trabajo.

They called for negotiations on a new studio mandate to retain affected employees and requested job protection to prevent further layoffs for at least five years.

García noted that “there will not be further mandates for the Barcelona studio, despite the team proposing new AC projects.”

As previously reported, the studio will now focus exclusively on the Rainbow Six franchise.

Black Flag Resynced is now one of the highest-rated games of the year, earning a Metacritic score of 84 at the time of writing. This is the franchise’s best-reviewed title since 2013’s original Black Flag.

Ubisoft previously stated that this restructuring would be the final round of cost-cutting and studio closures, aiming to save €200 million.

The company closed its Stockholm and Halifax studios and cancelled three new IPs as well as the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake.

It also introduced its Creative House structure, comprising five divisions, each overseeing multiple studios focused on Ubisoft’s gaming brands and IP.

This structure includes Vantage Studios, which is backed by Tencent and will focus on Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six.

SVP of studio operations Marie-Sophie de Waubert told GamesIndustry.biz that seven games would receive additional development time “to ensure enhanced quality benchmarks are fully met and maximise long-term value creation.”

“We had already initiated an internal transformation in recent years, which resulted in improved game quality in 2025.

“However, in a market that has become persistently more competitive, particularly across AAA titles and shooters, it’s necessary to go much further. When content quality reaches the highest standard, this market offers the potential for exceptional financial performance, and the group must therefore complete its transformation.”

You can now enter the 2026 UK GamesIndustry.biz Best Places To Work Awards

Games firms in the UK can now enter the GamesIndustry.biz Best Places To Work Awards 2026.

The awards are returning for their ninth instalment in what has once again proven to be a difficult year for firms across the industry – but one which has nevertheless contained successes for companies big and small. The Best Places To Work Awards celebrate the organisations and the people who truly support their team members.

The awards are open to all games companies with offices in the UK, including developers, publishers, service companies, retail and media, and you can submit your company through this form. The deadline for all entries is Friday, August 21st. Winners will be announced during an awards ceremony that will take place at the Royal Institute on Thursday, October 1, following the conclusion of the GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit.

The categories are the same as last year, although we have slightly updated our entry forms to enable more consistent comparisons between each entry. Each form retains free-text description fields so that each applicant has the opportunity to highlight any activities that don’t fit into defined categories.

The Best Places To Work Awards criteria is based on a two survey system, one for the employer to fill in (and worth 20% of the score) and the other for employees (80% of the score). For a detailed rundown on how the awards process works, our Frequently Asked Questions and how these awards are judged, click here.

All employer data and identifiable employee information is deleted once the awards and any reports have been processed. Businesses that do not win will not be named.

Participants can receive a free report from us featuring their overall scores, and we also have benchmarking and advanced reports available for a fee.

Alongside the Best Places for small, mid-size and large companies we also have special awards. These are awards designed to highlight excellence in specific areas. This year, those awards include:

The Diversity Award | Highlighting a company that is proactive in trying to improve the inclusion and diversity of their business and the wider games industry. Companies can enter here.

The CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Award | Celebrating a company that has gone above and beyond supporting international and local charities, the local community and the games business. To participate, enter here.

The Health & Wellbeing Award | This award is for companies that offer strong health benefits and proactively support the physical and mental wellbeing of their teams through initiatives and awareness. To participate, enter here.

The Training and Development Award | Added in 2024, this award is for companies who offer extensive training, development and educational opportunities for employees. You can enter through here.

The Education Award | Here we spotlight a business that goes the extra mile in supporting the development of the next generation of video game talent. Enter here.

The Green Award | This special award is for those companies who are guaranteeing their workplace is environmentally sustainable and are playing their part in combating climate change. You can participate here.

HR Hero | This is for a person who has gone above and beyond in looking after teams and individuals, and has made a significant impact in ensuring the games industry is a better place to work. You can submit people for this award here.

The awards take place following the GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit in October.Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

The ceremony will take place at The Royal Institution of Great Britain in London alongside our HR Summit on Thursday, October 1st. Amiqus, Playground Games, and IO Interactive are sponsoring this year’s event.

“We’re very happy to be supporting both the GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit and the Best Places To Work Awards,” says Liz Prince, Business Manager at Amiqus. “At Amiqus, we’re passionate about helping studios build inclusive, engaging workplaces where people can do their best work, so it’s fantastic to be involved in events that put people, culture and leadership at the centre of the conversation.

“What makes these events especially valuable is how well they complement each other. The HR Summit creates space for honest discussions, shared learning and new ideas, while the Best Places To Work Awards shine a spotlight on the studios and businesses that are turning those ideas into action. Bringing the industry together to both learn from each other and celebrate success helps raise standards for everyone, and we’re proud to play a part in that.”

The Midsize Company award is once again sponsored by Playground Games.

“We’re proud to support GI.Biz in recognising the UK’s best mid-sized Video Game Studios,” says Paul Evans, director of HR & talent acquisition at Playground Games. “These are not only teams that are creating brilliant games, but studios who are also setting the standard for what a great place to work looks like in our industry.”

The Education Award is sponsored by IO Interactive.

“We believe great games are made by people who genuinely love making games,” says Marina Surdu, Global Employer Branding Manager. “Education helps turn that passion into a craft and, most importantly, gives talented individuals the opportunity to pursue it. That’s why we’re proud to sponsor the Education Award and recognize the people and initiatives that help future developers learn, grow, and become the impactful people behind the impactful games that shape our industry and create lasting memories for players.”

To take part, click here. The deadline for all completed applications is Friday August 21st.

For more details, contact bestplacestowork@gamesindustry.biz. For sponsorship enquiries, contact matt.butlin@gamer-network.net

Report: Obsidian to work on Fallout title as unannounced projects cancelled

Obsidian is reportedly developing a new Fallout game after canceling several unannounced projects.

This is part of a broader Xbox restructuring that reportedly impacted 60 to 70 Obsidian employees.

According to Bloomberg, a small team will continue work on a planned Avowed sequel in hopes of reviving the project. Others will focus on DLC for The Outer Worlds 2 and content for Grounded 2.

The main strategy is said to be for Obsidian to develop a new Fallout game led by studio design director Josh Sawyer.

Bethesda is expected to collaborate with Obsidian on the project. An Xbox spokesperson declined to comment on this strategy.

Obsidian previously developed Fallout: New Vegas, also directed by Sawyer. The game served as the setting for the second season of Prime Video’s adaptation of the franchise.

The series quickly became Prime Video’s sixth-most watched of all time, and Fallout game sales increased significantly after its premiere last December.

Obsidian is among several studios affected by the Xbox restructuring announced earlier this week.

Id Software confirmed 136 layoffs, while 22 employees at Bethesda Game Studios in Austin were also affected.

Reportedly, up to half of ZeniMax Online Studios’ development team may be impacted. Staff reductions also occurred at Activision, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios.

Five internal studios were divested. Compulsion Games and Double Fine will become independent studios. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will enter new ownership terms, and Arkane has started consultation proceedings.

“Since 2018, we have aggressively expanded our studio portfolio while the number of games created each month across the industry now outpaces the last ten years combined,” said Xbox CEO Asha Sharma.

“We now find ourselves competing not only with the largest publishers, but also with independent studios. It is neither possible nor desirable to own every great independent studio. We have also learned that we are not the best home for every type of studio.

“As we reset Xbox, we will help independent creators succeed by providing open development tools and audiences to realise their vision.”

Nintendo confirms Switch 1 consoles will be withdrawn from Europe following EU law change on batteries

Nintendo has confirmed that sales of its original Switch console system – including its Lite and OLED models – will be discontinued in Europe next year.

Nintendo outlined its plans in a blog post, confirming that from this summer, as it prepares for “upcoming changes in European battery regulations coming into effect in mid-February 2027, selected Nintendo products in Europe will begin to be replaced on a rolling basis by revisions that contain a user-replaceable battery.”

The company stressed that “there is no difference in functionality between current products and revised products containing user-replaceable batteries.”

The changes are a result of a 2023 European Union law that requires portable gaming consoles to have replaceable batteries by 2027. First proposed in 2020, the regulation only applies to future versions of handheld consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck.

Nintendo revealed that the following products will not be replaced by versions that contain user-replaceable batteries in Europe:

• Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Controller for Nintendo Switch
• Pokémon GO Plus +
• Nintendo Switch
• Nintendo Switch Lite
• Nintendo Switch – OLED Model
• Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
• SEGA Mega Drive Control Pad for Nintendo Switch
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) Controller for Nintendo Switch

The first revised products are expected to become available from summer 2026 and will be rolled out between now and early 2027.

“Due to a variety of factors, revised products may not become available in all European countries simultaneously,” the company added.

Specifically addressing the Switch, IGN reports Nintendo said: “Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model will all continue to be manufactured in 2026, and should be widely available in Europe all year.

“From mid-February 2027, almost 10 years after Nintendo Switch launched in March 2017, Nintendo will no longer sell to retailers hardware in the Nintendo Switch family of systems – specifically Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite and Nintendo Switch – OLED Model.”

The company also confirmed to IGN that it “plan[s] to continue selling Nintendo Switch outside of regions where Nintendo of Europe conducts business.”

We recently learned that Nintendo Switch 2 helped US physical games spending see its first year-on-year increase since 2009.

Premium mobile games are back, with releases up 77% in 2025

In unexpected but welcome news, premium mobile games are seeing a resurgence, after years in which free-to-play has been seen as the only option worth pursuing.

The total number of premium game releases increased by 77% in 2025, according to exclusive research undertaken for GamesIndustry.biz by the mobile data firm AppMagic. Just under 750 premium titles were released on mobile last year.

That figure is still a fraction of the free-to-play segment, which accounted for a massive 96% of mobile downloads in 2025. Yet the data points to strong growth in the premium market.

According to AppMagic, the sector is dominated by original premium titles and simultaneous cross-platform launches, with ports of existing games making up just 3% of all premium game releases. However, the number of ports of PC and console titles increased last year – up from just 7 in 2024 to 23 in 2025 – and the revenue in this sector is growing.

Monthly downloads and revenue of PC/console-to-mobile ports released since 2019 | Image credit: AppMagic

Among mobile ports, Balatro was the primary driver of growth – that game has now made $21.3 million in total revenue on mobile according to AppMagic estimates, with more than 3.1 million downloads – contributing to a 44.6% year-on-year increase in mobile port revenue in 2025, and an increase in downloads of 38.3%.

However, even when Balatro is excluded from the analysis, the data still shows a clear positive trend in port revenue, indicating that growth is not driven by a single title alone. Other big winners in the premium mobile port space include Slay the Spire (total estimated lifetime revenue: $13.1 million), Human Fall Flat ($7.8 million), Dead Cells ($6.5 million), and Ultimate Custom Night ($5.3 million).

The data suggests that porting titles to mobile could be a useful opportunity for PC and console developers, with the potential for an additional revenue stream – and there are signs that more studios are taking advantage of this opportunity.

A growing trend

Marco Bettencourt, CEO of the Azores-based porting and co-development company Redcatpig, says the studio has noticed an increase in the number of requests coming through for mobile releases of premium PC games. “There’s a massive movement right now in getting games from PC to mobile,” he says. “What I’m feeling is that devs want to explore different SKUs when their games reach the end of their life cycle on a platform.”

He says he has been surprised by the rally around premium titles, given the received wisdom about the mobile market. “I’ll be honest, when I started seeing projects for premium games going to mobile, I was a bit suspicious,” he says. “I was like, ‘Is this really going to work?’ Because we all know that the mobile space is all about free-to-play, and it’s a bit of a bloodbath sometimes… But when I saw what happened with Planet of Lana, I was like, ‘Dude, this is really cool. This is massive’.”

Planet of Lana was ported to mobile in 2025, more than two years after its release on PC | Image credit: Wishfully/Thunderful Publishing

Redcatpig ported Wishfully’s 2023 puzzle-platform game Planet of Lana on behalf of Playdigious, which licenses PC games for mobile ports. Abrial Da Costa, CEO of Playdigious, tells GamesIndustry.biz that the title continues to “perform well,” and AppMagic estimates that the mobile version has made nearly $189,000 in total revenue since its release in December 2025.

Other games in Playdigious’s catalogue have performed even better – the company was also behind the mobile port of Dead Cells, which Da Costa says is its biggest success. It follows strong sales of the mobile release of Subnautica in 2025, while the best performers in 2024 were Loop Hero and Little Nightmares. This year, Subnautica Below Zero, Sea of Stars, and Slime Rancher are performing particularly well, according to Da Costa.

Not every premium mobile port lands: Da Costa says that Skul: The Hero Slayer and Children of Morta “underperformed relative to expectations,” despite being “very good games,” and last year’s sales of Besiege were “disappointing.” As one would expect, the more well known titles tend to sell better. “Our sales are closely tied to the notoriety of the IP and its community,” notes Da Costa.

The lesson seems to be that if a game has already been a big hit on PC, it’s also likely to perform well on mobile – and awards can help. Da Costa says that among the “smaller gems,” Chants of Sennaar – winner of Google Play’s Best Indie Game of 2025 award – continues to sell well, while other solid back-catalogue sellers include Northgard, Cultist Simulator, and Spiritfarer.

Dead Cells has been a huge hit on mobile | Image credit: Motion Twin

Interestingly, Da Costa says Playdigious has seen a particular increase in sales in countries like the Philippines, Thailand, and Mexico, and notes that the majority of Dead Cells’ sales came from mainland China.

But the French mobile publisher, which was established 10 years ago, is still very choosy when it comes to taking on projects. “The indie market is full of gems that deserve a mobile adaptation, and thanks to our track record and recognised expertise, we do get approached a lot,” says Da Costa. “That said, we always aim for excellence to deliver the best possible adaptation, so we’re very selective about which IPs we take on. It’s quality over quantity. We review a lot of projects a year and ultimately release five to seven games.

“As the indie games market keeps growing, we do see more opportunities, but premium mobile remains a niche compared to free-to-play, so making the right choices is essential. Our model is also built on a fair revenue-share with IP owners: we take on the financial risk of investing in an IP, and our partners get paid from day one, with no recoup costs.”

A shift in mindset

As to why there seems to be an increasing market for premium mobile titles, Da Costa has a theory. “We think subscription services like Apple Arcade and Netflix Games have boosted demand for higher-quality games, helped by strong editorial curation that has both grown the market and respected the consumer.

“Apple Arcade and Netflix Games have boosted demand for higher-quality games”

Abrial Da Costa, Playdigious

“The arrival of third-party stores like the Epic Games Store is also helping promote premium games, and consumers appreciate the reassurance of buying a game with no ads and no in-app purchases. Google’s recent moves, such as [adding PC support to] Google Play Games, also reflect a broader push to build bridges between PC and mobile gaming, improving accessibility and growing the ecosystem. As technology keeps evolving, it will become possible to port even bigger IPs to mobile, and we’re already preparing some exciting surprises for our players.”

Bettencourt, meanwhile, thinks that players might be tired of free-to-play games nagging them for money, and premium indie titles provide some sweet relief. “Single player indie games have a special place in this market,” he says. “We are talking about a game that makes you feel good, and you want to feel good on the subway, you want to feel good on the bus, you want to feel good on the plane. To me, it makes a lot of sense.”

Premium game releases on the App Store and Google Play by year | Image credit: AppMagic

PC/console-to-mobile game port releases by year | Image credit: AppMagic

There’s a chance that this pivot towards premium titles could be a blip, of course. AppMagic’s report shows a similar surge in 2022, when nearly 1,000 premium titles were released on mobile, before more than halving in 2023, and dropping again to 422 in 2024.

But the revenue trend is clear. According to AppMagic’s data, revenue from mobile ports rose from around $7 million in 2022 to around $15 million in 2025, and 2026 looks set to increase on that again: premium mobile ports pulled in around $10.2 million in revenue in the five months to May 2026.

Free-to-play may still represent the lion’s share of total mobile revenues, but the data shows a substantial, and growing, opportunity for high-quality paid titles too – and in a market as huge as mobile, a small market share adds up to a significant amount of money.

“Workers deserve protection, not to be treated like disposable line items” – Hundreds of union members affected by Xbox layoffs

Hundreds of union members from the Communication Workers of America were affected by the mass layoffs at Xbox this week.

3,200 positions were eliminated and five internal studios were divested as part of major organisational restructuring.

The CWA said it will take “all necessary legal and contractual action to defend our members and their rights.”

This includes immediate bargaining for fair severance, decisions on vendor contracts, internal placement in open roles, and recall rights.

In partnership with the United Videogame Workers union, the CWA also recently launched a hardship fund for laid-off developers.

“As Microsoft restructures, the workers powering its biggest franchises deserve protection, not to be treated like disposable line items,” said CWA District 6 vice president Derrick Osobase.

“It is our CWA members who make the games that make Xbox valuable. [These] layoffs decimated the teams at Id Software, Bethesda Game Studios, and ZeniMax Online Studios, legendary studios whose employees brought us games like Doom, Quake, Elder Scrolls, and Fallout.

Osobase continued: “The layoffs that occurred this week will lower the quality of these iconic games and make them less fun to play with longer delays in releases, ultimately hurting the players and driving down revenue for Microsoft.”

In response to a CWA call to action earlier this year, Xbox said it respected “the rights of our team members to make their voices heard.”

“We have a long track record of good faith partnership with labour organisations, as demonstrated by the several finalised bargaining agreements our teams have reached with the CWA and our labour principles,” a spokesperson said.

Both parties entered into a labour neutrality agreement in 2022 as Microsoft was in the process of acquiring Activision Blizzard.

“Although our union signed neutrality agreements with Microsoft, we have been extremely disappointed by a company that has slow-walked our members at the bargaining table, making CWA members wait for the protections of a union contract,” said CWA president Claude Cummings Jr.

“When Microsoft decides to treat the workers who built Xbox as expendable, it should know who they’re dealing with. This is not just a fight with the thousands of workers across Xbox; it’s a fight with each and every member at CWA.”

In response to the layoffs, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma stated the company had “spread [itself] too thin.”

“In order to grow, we made a bunch of bets,” said Sharma. “As we did that, we inherently didn’t focus on the core business.”

“The number one measure of your strategy is what you put your resources behind, and we simply spread ourselves too thin.”

“There’s a wealth of talent here, our focus is on how to leverage and support it” – Atari appoints Andreas Deptolla as Atari Europe president

Atari has appointed former CTO Andreas Deptolla as president of Atari Europe.

In this new role, Deptolla will oversee Atari’s European operations, which consists of approximately 100 employees, including studios in the UK and Sweden. He will also continue to manage Atari’s European headquarters in Munster.

Deptolla will report to Atari CEO and chairman Wade Rosen. Richard Snowdon, CEO of Coatsink, has been named vice president of Atari Europe and will report to Deptolla.

Andreas Deptolla | Image credit: Atari

“Since joining Atari in 2023, Andreas has established himself as a valued and influential leader, contributing to the company’s revitalisation,” said Rosen.

“In this expanded role, Andreas will direct our growing European business footprint and play a key role in establishing Atari as an iconic gaming and pop culture brand.”

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Deptolla outlined his vision for Atari Europe and its approach to supporting acquired studios and game companies.

Last year, Atari entered a $5.2 million subscription agreement with Thunderful, acquiring an 82% stake.

“We are not acquiring companies for them to lose their operations and have no guidance,” says Deptolla.

“What’s really important for us is how we define one unique culture. Everybody looks at our core values and how we implement our systems, which means studios can focus on what they do really well. We can come in on certain things like whether it’s finance, HR, legal, or publishing, where we have a muscle in the law of expertise.”

“When you acquire companies, you have to assess what the current situation is. The first order of business for us is to ensure that everything a studio is working on is right and world-class IP. We’ve made really good progress on that. Whether that’s early coaching or finding the right titles, our own IP, licensed IP, or IP to acquire in order to set them up for success, because that’s what the employers care about.”

Regarding his goals as president, Deptolla aims to uphold the “one Atari” concept across the company.

“There is significant opportunity in Europe,” he says. “There is a wealth of talent here, so our focus is on how we can leverage and support it. Each region, including the UK, Germany, and Sweden, offers unique advantages such as grants and tax credits.

“We are also exploring how we can expand distribution, licensing, and partnerships in Europe, all through organic growth.”

Xbox retreats again – but to where? | Opinion

Last July, when Microsoft made sweeping cuts to its gaming division, axing employees at King, Raven Software, Rare, Blizzard, and more, shuttering The Initiative, and cancelling the Perfect Dark reboot, Everwild, and ZeniMax Online’s Project Blackbird, I said it was Microsoft’s darkest day since the last one.

This week is proof that things can always get worse.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has announced that 3,200 people will be discarded in the company’s quest for… well, I’m not sure what. A “reset” is the publicly given statement. This translates to keeping the things that make the most money and binning off everything else. The margins must be appeased.

Almost all those studios that Xbox cherrypicked nearly a decade ago to boost its first-party offering are being cast aside. Double Fine, Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Arkane Lyon – now surplus to requirements.

Phil Spencer’s big Game Pass plan has failed. All these studios were meant to fill out Microsoft’s subscription service, but the numbers didn’t add up in the end. Microsoft stopped reporting Game Pass subscriber figures quite some time ago now, which tells you all you need to know.

Game Pass subscriber numbers are not where Microsoft needs them to be | Image credit: Microsoft / Xbox

Today’s cuts are a way to stem the bleeding. But the big question is, where is this all going? The answer is: nowhere good.

“Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined,” said Sharma, expressing a desire for a flatter, leaner organisation, with fewer management layers. It’s not clear yet exactly where the job losses will come, but it seems likely the platform teams will bear the brunt, and teams at Bethesda are being stripped back to just those on the core franchises. Meanwhile, Minecraft maker Mojang and mobile behemoth King are being brought closer into the fold, reporting directly to Sharma.

The strategy is clear: keep the money makers, the big names like Call of Duty, Fallout, and Minecraft, and ditch the interesting but profit-light experimental games. From a managerial perspective, it seems sound, if depressing, especially for anyone who wants to play anything other than endless sequels from safe franchises. But then you remember that Xbox is supposedly launching a new console soon, and you begin to wonder whether any of this makes sense.

Shouldn’t all those studios be beavering away making launch titles for Project Helix, which may or may not be coming out next year? The typical strategy for a console launch is to pad it out with exclusives, after all. But nothing about this next console generation will be normal.

It seems that original, experimental games like Double Fine’s Keeper are off the menu for now | Image credit: Double Fine Productions/Xbox Game Studios

The soaring cost of components means we’re staring down the barrel of $1,000+ consoles, meaning the next generation will be the most niche yet – and continuing a trend whereby console gaming is becoming the preserve of the well-off, while everyone else makes do with whatever their mobile or mouldering PC can run.

Microsoft is hedging its bets by making Project Helix PC compatible – but blurring the line between PC and console is what started the rot at Xbox in the first place.

A decade ago, Microsoft talked about unifying the PC and Xbox platforms, and committed to launching its first-party titles on PC. But at a stroke, this strategy eliminated the need to buy an Xbox. Players everywhere saw the logic: buy a PC instead, and you can play all of the games on PC, as well as those on Xbox.

“Microsoft can cut and cut and cut, but the end game remains elusive”

That logic remains undefeated, and won’t be adjusted by an Xbox that also plays PC games. After all, we already have PCs that play Xbox games.

Which makes me wonder where all this is going. Microsoft can cut and cut and cut, but the end game remains elusive. The deal with consoles – with a few notable exceptions – was always that they offered simplicity and affordability, with new generations offering a significant step up over the last. Affordability is now out of the window, and the visual differences between generations have reached a point where only the most technologically attuned can tell them apart – casual audiences merely blink in confusion at words like “ray tracing” and “Gaussian splatting”.

In short, there’s little there to convince a mass audience to splurge $1,000+ on a new machine with games that look little different from the old ones, and which can already be played on various other devices. The hardcore fans and early adopters will turn up, but beyond that…

We don’t know how much Project Helix will cost, but the likelihood, given recent rises in component costs, is that it will be a lot | Image credit: Microsoft

Which all leads me to think that whatever strategy Xbox has for the future, it surely can’t solely rely on selling a very expensive box in vast numbers. Can it?

The alternative might be to embrace the much-threatened streaming future, perhaps with a low-cost streaming box similar to the mothballed Xbox Keystone. Chief strategy officer Matthew Ball has hinted at the allure of streaming. But then again, that would surely rely on Game Pass, a grand experiment that has proven unfruitful. “To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content,” said Sharma. “While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected.”

So what’s left? Selling streamed games at full price? That one has been done, with predictably poor results. Creating a cut-price, lower-powered console? That one worked for Nintendo, but there’s no sign Microsoft intends to follow suit.

Maybe Xbox will duck back into the ancient groove, relying on producing exclusive titles for its own console. That looks like it might be its strategy, although as ever, things are confusing in Xbox land, and muddied further by the rules around Call of Duty having to remain cross platform.

“The question is, where does it end? At what point does this battle turn in Microsoft’s favour?”

It also seems unclear whether exclusivity in this case will mean true Xbox exclusivity – as in, without a PC version. That would certainly be a selling point for new hardware, but still there remains the problem of those soaring component prices and the prospect of a next-gen console few can afford. Thus, Xbox is caught on the horns of a dilemma – if it makes its games exclusive to Xbox, it will probably only be able to sell them to a relatively tiny install base of those who can afford what is probably going to be a really quite expensive new console. That shallow sales pool might not justify the vast expense of producing modern AAA titles. But if those games are available on PC as well, the reasoning for buying the console all but evaporates.

Meanwhile, Xbox retreats ever further, slimming down its studio roster yet again (although at least this time the studios in question got to look for new owners, rather than being cut off at the knees.) The question is, where does it end? At what point does this battle turn in Microsoft’s favour? Looking towards the horizon, it’s hard to see what might constitute that turning point. It’s conceivable that Microsoft might exit the expensive and margin-thin hardware business entirely, relying instead on profiting from its remaining lucrative software franchises. Or there might be an even more radical reset to come.

In short, cutting thousands of staff and offloading some of its least-profitable studios might be a way to make the spreadsheet numbers look slightly more healthy in the short term, but it does practically nothing to solve the bigger problems facing Xbox, with its ever-sliding software and hardware revenues. If anything, cuts seem counterintuitive ahead of a new console launch, while the company’s future strategy remains as confusing as it was last summer, even with new leadership. Which all leads me to think we’ll be having similar conversations this time next year.

“We simply spread ourselves too thin” – Xbox’s Asha Sharma on firm’s restructuring plans

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has shared additional details on the restructuring announced yesterday, which will result in 3,200 layoffs.

“In order to grow, we made a bunch of bets,” Sharma told Fortune. “As we did that, we inherently didn’t focus on the core business.

“The number one measure of your strategy is what you put your resources behind, and we simply spread ourselves too thin.”

To realign resources and refocus on its core business, the company will divest five internal studios.

Compulsion Games and Double Fine will become independent, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will seek new acquisition and funding, and Arkane Lyon will enter a consultation process to explore strategic options.

In addition to these organizational changes, the restructuring is driven by recent financial declines and the need to streamline Xbox’s management structure.

Last month, Sharma noted that Microsoft had spent over $20 billion on Xbox over the past five years (excluding Activision Blizzard), adding that revenue had dropped by an estimated $500 million per year.

“We are operating at margins that are three to ten times lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses,” she wrote in a memo to staff published yesterday.

“We entered this generation with a smaller install base and a higher cost structure. To grow, we bet on Game Pass, multi-platform, and a broader portfolio of content. While those businesses have created meaningful value, they did not grow at the pace we expected.

“As that happened, our core business weakened, and we added more teams, more investment, and more time, hoping for a better outcome.”

Sharma noted that Xbox’s management layers have expanded, with platform teams now 40% larger than at the start of the current generation, while both player base and overall play time have declined.

The Xbox CEO plans to reduce management layers to no more than five, and where possible, three, in response to some teams currently having up to 14 layers.

“As Xbox grew our headcount, we became more fragmented,” said Sharma. “Teams, studios, and functions often operate independently, and it became harder to work towards a shared goal, make the right tradeoffs, and get things done.”

Sharma concluded: “These changes are about a bigger future at Xbox, not a smaller one. I want Xbox to be one of the few companies that entertains more than a billion people each day and gives everyone the opportunity to create and connect.

“I know we can achieve this goal. Xbox has been one of the most beloved franchises in entertainment history, with talented studios around the world, and we will return to growth in 2027.”

“We can break even and be self-sustaining within Riot” – The firm behind League of Legends is “super close” to making esports sustainable

Riot Games’ esports business still isn’t profitable.

This has been the case for a long time, and historically it hasn’t necessarily been a problem for the League of Legends giant; at various points in the past, then-head of esports John Needham explained that his firm wanted to ensure the broader ecosystem, including the various esports teams, was profitable. But the aim was for esports to be a sustainable business in its own right.

That business is now “super close” to being profitable. What’s changed? Needham – now head of publishing and esports at Riot – says the firm has adjusted how it operates its pro-gaming business since 2020.

“Coming out of the pandemic, we were in this esports winter,” he tells GamesIndustry.biz.

John Needham | Image credit: Riot Games

“The sponsorship business was weak, teams were having a hard time getting capital and investment in their business. We pivoted our business model away from sponsorships to digital items; that was a big positive move for teams. Teams also adjusted how much they were spending. The team business is in as good a place as it has ever been, now, and we are trying to do other things to allow teams to make alternate sources of revenue.”

Some teams, like France’s Karmine Corp (aka KCorp) or South Korea’s T1, are running their own esports events, and Riot says it is being “more liberal” in letting them participate in third-party tournaments.

“We’ve loosened up a bit about how we manage the sport, and teams have adjusted their financial model, and we are sharing more revenues with them than we ever have,” Needham continues. “Last year, for the Valorant Champions tour, we shared over $100m in digital revenues with teams.”

No blazers

Over the years, Riot’s approach to esports has changed. To start with, the company tried to ape the look and feel of traditional sports broadcasts – “serious shows with guys with ties and blazers on,” Needham laughs.

“Very quickly, our players didn’t want that. They wanted our casters to be having fun, to be talking about our esports like gamers would, to be not so serious and buttoned up.”

Needham argues that esports is probably “more important” to Riot than to any other publisher.

“The core experience of our games is competition,” he explains. “We think about esports as really just an extension of the core game experience.”

“About 60% of our viewers watch esports to learn about the game”

For a long time, esports functioned more as a marketing expense for Riot Games. The ecosystem wasn’t about making money for the company, but rather showcasing its titles to a huge audience. The goal has now shifted to be explicitly profitable, but the old ethos is still in effect.

“The most important part of esports for us is just getting our players to go back in and play our games to engage in our games,” Needham says. “It’s a very good way to inspire players to play, and we have tons of science around the effect that esports has on engaging players. About 60% of our viewers watch esports to learn about the game. So when you watch our broadcasts, you’ll see they’re very technical, and that’s the reason why – we’re trying to help our players learn how to play our games better.”

Riot Games’ Valorant can attract big audiences | Image credit: Riot Games

Riot’s esports broadcasts appeal to the hardcore audience – the players that want to understand the depth of the mechanics in the studio’s games – but expanding beyond that audience has “always” been the plan for the League of Legends firm.

“We have continued to set new viewership records with our international events year on year,” Needham says. “One of the great parts of esports is that it allows us to keep engaged with players who may not actively be playing our games. I think we’ve seen that play out. Our player bases are growing in League of Legends, Valorant, and Teamfight Tactics, but our viewership in esports events is growing at a faster rate.”

He continues: “Our esports viewers are some of the most valuable players in our game and some of our biggest advocates out there in gaming communities. We are always looking to grow, and luckily, we are.”

Riot recently launched the fighting game 2XKO. On paper, there’s a readability to these kinds of titles that isn’t present in the company’s other games – a regular person is more likely to watch a fighting game and understand what is happening than something more complicated like a MOBA – which would make it a better prospect for a wide viewership. But Needham says that Riot’s view of 2XKO’s esports potential is less as a “viewership product” due to the established fighting games scene.

“There’s a pre-existing circuit of esports events like Evo,” Needham says. “As we think about esports for our games, we want to think about esports in a way that is super authentic to our community and do it in a way that the community expects. The fighting game community expects you to participate in these circuits that they love so much. We’re really investing in how we can show up at Evo in a great and authentic way that the fighting game community expects. It’s another variation of esports for us.”

Gambling

Last year, Riot ran into controversy after allowing gambling firms to sponsor esports teams, prompting a backlash from parts of its community. Needham sees such clients as an uncomfortable reality of anything competitive.

“Gambling is going to happen around esports regardless of if we are involved or not,” he says. “Our thought was to find a good, best-in-class way to engage with these betting platforms in a way that was good for players. We designed this programme in which a betting platform, an official betting platform of Riot esports, must subscribe to our data service. We make sure they’re getting clean data from us.

“Gambling is going to happen around esports regardless of if we are involved or not”

“We don’t promote them on our broadcast or anything, but they are allowed to put our marks on their site. They help us monitor the competitive integrity of our esports matches and isolate matches where we may have match-fixing or other activities that compromise the integrity of our sport. We take the integrity of our competitions very seriously, and this is just one of the ways that we could manage any match-fixing activity that might be happening in our sport. We don’t find it that often, but this does help us do that.”

In addition to heading up esports efforts at Riot, Needham’s new job title also places him at the head of the company’s esports business. Essentially, he is in charge of everything that “wraps around the game,” such as music, consumer products, platform player support, quality assurance… the list goes on.

League of Legends is still going strong some 17 years after its launch | Image credit: Riot Games

“Our big goal at the end of the day is to deliver these mind-blowing cultural moments for players, because we are a fandom engine at the end of the day, for Riot,” he explains. “We want to take players of our games, we want to elevate them to be fans of our games, to be fans of Riot, because we have games that we don’t think of in terms of years, but in terms of generations. All of our games have had tremendous longevity because Riot invests a lot back into our players, whether that’s esports events, music videos, big cinematics, or consumer products. These are all ways that we try to invest back into the community and keep them engaged in our games over very long periods of time.”

One massive transmedia project in recent memory is Arcane, the Netflix anime based on League of Legends that drew in a huge audience, even people who aren’t into games. Needham says Riot is “so proud” of the show. When asked whether the success of Arcane has prompted Riot to expand its transmedia ambitions, he is coy. “Transmedia is a part of our future,” he states, simply. “We are developing a lot of exciting projects right now.”

Future projects

Riot continues to expand its games, both in number and scope. For much of the firm’s history, it was focused on a single title: League of Legends. Then in 2019, Riot announced three new games and teased a number of upcoming projects, mostly codenamed: Project A became Valorant, and Project L became 2XKO. Still to release is Project F, a multiplayer game, and a subsequently announced MMO, also set in the world of Runeterra. The firm continues to maintain League and has big plans for Valorant.

“We will have a very exciting year for Valorant this next year, and that’s all I can say,” Needham says. “We’re not ready to announce anything yet. The Valorant IP will be growing very soon.”

The free-to-play fighting game 2XKO was released in January 2026 | Image credit: Riot Games

Looking ahead to the next few years, Needham’s plans for Riot’s esports business are largely centred around “getting out there and doing more events.”

“We’re trying to reach our fans more,” he explains. “This last year, we have experimented with a college tour across China, which was very successful. We’re going to be doing something similar next year with League of Legends outside of China. You’ll see us doing more live events, you’ll see us leveraging some of our team facilities and their events to do some official Riot events. Getting out more and touching our fans will be a bigger part of the esports experience going forward.

“I am just hoping to evolve this business model to a place where we are a self-sustaining business, and all the benefits of esports, Riot will get for free, essentially. We can break even and be self-sustaining within Riot as a standalone business. Even though we want to be tightly integrated with the games, it would just be great if we could do that. We are well on our way to sustainability. We’re very close.”

Sony leadership says AI tools are “an important foundational technology supporting our strategy”

Sony says implementing AI tools in development is “enhancing” their work “by removing repetitive tasks and enabling faster iteration.”

During a meeting on the Game & Network Services segment’s performance and strategy last month, Sony Interactive Entertainment’s leadership called AI an “important foundational technology supporting our strategy.”

“AI is already helping us across various fields by improving development efficiency, enhancing the player experience, improving content discovery, and enabling creators to build richer content,” said SIE CEO and president Hideaki Nishino, studio business CEO Hermen Hulst, and senior vice president of finance and corporate development Lynn Azar in a joint statement.

Sony provided examples of AI tools, including the use of synthetic voices as early placeholders.

“This is less about cost efficiency and more about improving quality and development speed, which we see as highly valuable,” they said.

“AI has been deeply embedded in our development processes, and we are increasingly seeing its impact on more immersive in-game experiences, where characters and worlds are enhanced by AI capabilities.”

SIE leadership continued: “At the same time, we are experimenting at a more fundamental level with smaller, AI-first initiatives, while remaining realistic about near-term efficiency gains. These efforts position us to stay at the forefront as AI continues to evolve, both in development processes and in shaping future player experiences.”

Earlier this year, SIE outlined how its first-party studios use AI tools in development.

Teams at Naughty Dog, San Diego Studio, and others have used Mockingbird, an AI tool that generates facial models from performance capture. This tool was recently used in Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered.

“These practical applications allow our teams to spend less time on manual, high-effort tasks and to instead reinvest their time into building richer worlds and gameplay,” said Nishino.

“The vision, design, and emotional impact of our games will always come from the talent of our studios and performers. AI is meant to augment their capabilities, not to replace them.”

Sony’s commitment to AI aligns with its broader shift toward a digital-first ecosystem.

This transition is underscored by plans announced last week to end production of physical discs for new PlayStation games starting January 2028.

Sony clarified in a separate announcement that developers and publishers can continue to re-order discs for games released before the end-of-production date.

Compulsion Games and Double Fine confirm “Independence Day” from Xbox

Compulsion Games and Double Fine – two formerly Xbox-owned developers now spun out from the Xbox family of studios as Microsoft enacts a deep round of cuts and divestitures – have released statements about the changes.

Reports that Xbox was allegedly shuttering We Happy Few and South of Midnight developer, Compulsion Games, first began to circulate last month, with Tim Schafer’s Double Fine and Hellblade developer Ninja Theory also reportedly at risk of closure.

Compulsion Games has now confirmed the studio will “return to independent management,” and retain the rights to Contrast, We Happy Few, and South of Midnight.

Here’s Compulsion Games’ statement in full:

When Compulsion Games was founded in 2009 as an independent studio, we were just a few dreamers in a leaky old gramophone factory devoted to creating rich storylines and experiences that felt handcrafted. We care about the craft of making games, the stories we tell, the players who experience them, and the assembled creators who put their heart and soul into doing something different.

Today, we’re sharing that Compulsion Games will return to independent management following our time as part of Xbox. As part of this transition, we will retain the rights to Contrast, We Happy Few, and our award-winning South of Midnight. We’re grateful for the years we spent with Xbox, for the support they provided our team, and for the opportunity to bring these games to players around the world. As an independent studio, we’re excited to continue building the distinctive games that define Compulsion while taking the next steps in our journey.

Our immediate priority is to support our team throughout this transition period. We are confident in the future of Compulsion Games and look forward to this next chapter where one thing will remain constant: we will create unique games that tell important stories, all with the goal of touching the hearts and minds of our players.

Double Fine marked the changes with a blog post entitled “Independence Day,” writing:

Once again, Double Fine Productions will be an independent studio.

We’re thankful to everyone at Xbox for seven great years together, and for working with us to reach an outcome which preserves our history and culture, and returns ownership of our games to us.

To everyone who has reached out to us these past few weeks: Thank you so much for all your kind words, we’ve been deeply touched by all your messages. We will share more news soon on what comes next.

Your continued support is greatly appreciated, Tim & All at Double Fine.

After weeks of speculation, the sweeping job cuts announced at Xbox earlier today (July 6) have been formally announced. The loss of 3,200 staff, around 20% of the organisation, was announced this morning via an internal memo that was also posted to X. CEO Asha Sharma confirmed that five studios were to be divested, with Double Fine and Compulsion Games becoming independent, and Ninja Theory and Undead Labs in the process of being acquired. Arkane Lyon has entered a consultation process in line with French employment law.

Interview: While GDC falters, Gamescom goes from strength to strength

At Gamescom Latam in Brazil earlier this year, GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Tim Endres, director of Gamescom at Koelnmesse, and Stefan Heikhaus, his counterpart at Game, the German Games Industry Association.

Naturally, the growth of Gamescom Latam was on the discussion agenda, but Endres and Heikhaus also addressed complaints about last year’s event, the possibility of adding more shows under the Gamescom brand, and how the Cologne event – which attracted more than 350,000 visitors last year – can help to affect the image of video games in the eyes of policymakers. But first, we looked ahead to this year’s Gamescom.

How are things looking for Gamescom in August?

Tim Endres: First of all, we had an excellent early bird result. Exhibitors increased by over 15%, and ticketing is also running very well. But in terms of the program and what’s happening in Cologne, first of all, there’s the integration of Gamescom Dev. Devcom was always part of the Gamescom week, but now Gamescom starts on Monday, August 24 with Gamescom Dev.

Tim Endres | Image credit: Gamescom

It’s not just a rebranding, it’s a complete integration into the Gamescom ecosystem. We use the same stages, so the big stage of Gamescom Dev is also the stage where the political opening will take place and the Gamescom Congress will take place. Then we have Gamescom Biz, our digital business platform where the whole industry can connect, that’s now all on the same level. All business people are under one roof, with no need to decide to switch from one event to another. So it’s perfect for matchmaking opportunities.

It’s interesting that ticket sales are going quickly this year. I’ve heard similar from the organisers of Nordic Game: they said they sold 33% more tickets compared with the equivalent time point last year. I’m wondering whether there’s a direct relation to the decline in attendance we’ve seen at GDC. Do you think people are skipping GDC and going to Gamescom instead?

TE: Difficult to say. Of course, we see what happens in the event ecosystem worldwide. It’s not our job to comment on this, but what we see is the strong growth of Gamescom, especially because we took place during the pandemic and invested a lot. We have relevant digital platforms, and now we’re hybrid, and that seems to be the perfect setting for the industry.

Why isn’t there something equivalent to Gamescom in the UK?

Stefan Heikhaus | Image credit: C. Sönke-Peters

Stefan Heikhaus: You cannot start up an event like Gamescom suddenly. It’s a long process, and many mistakes have been made in the past. I think that the team that ran Gamescom made a couple of very good decisions: not only the change in location [from Leipzig], but also decisions about which direction we develop, which trends we follow, what we do price-wise, how we work together with all the exhibitors. There’s so many things that come together, and I think this is something that is important if anyone wants to start a new event. I think it’s difficult to do something like that. You have to start small.

One of the things I hear from developers I’ve spoken to is how important government help is for that industry. How important is that for the games industry in Germany?

SH: If you want to grow a market – not only in our industry, but in others – it’s always an argument to have governmental support, and tax support is the most effective methodology. I think it is very important to get over a certain threshold with games, to create a basic development in your region, which then automatically attracts others to come and build games in your region.

Of course, at least in Germany, it’s always been questioned by some people. We have a continuous discussion about it. Due to its sensitivity, it’s important that you talk to everyone involved to get the best out of it for all sides: for the government, for us, for the games, for the game developers, and for the community.

How important has Gamescom itself been in terms of influencing that dialogue with the government?

SH: I think it’s no secret that Gamescom helped over the past 20 years in terms of how people perceive games and how they think about it – going from a very negative view that it’s very dangerous to kids to a more, let’s call it “adult” view, because there are also a lot of positive things. And I think that bringing policymakers into contact with games and what they mean to people was very important.

In that sense, if a politician sees 300,000 people enjoying games at your event, it makes the point obvious.

SH: Yes. They see themselves and then they go back with these impressions, and then they make up their own mind.

Gamescom Latam took place in São Paulo on April 30 to May 3 | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

In terms of Gamescom Latam, what made you decide to come to Brazil?

TE: Well, first of all, Gamescom nowadays is not only a single event in August, it’s a complete ecosystem for the whole gaming community. The LATAM region is one of the most growing and one of the most dynamic markets.

Do you feel like it’s the next big region that could emerge, or has it already emerged?

TE: It’s always difficult to say what’s going to be the next big region, but what we see is that it’s growing very fast, that it’s very dynamic, and that’s why we are here with Gamescom Latam.

SH: I just would like to add that the idea to grow Gamescom beyond the borders of Germany is quite old, but you also need the right circumstances. We worked together with Gustavo [Steinberg] and his team – he had established the BIG Festival here – so we combined the power of Gamescom with what he already had achieved with the BIG Festival. If you look at Gamescom Asia, it’s a similar situation – we merged with the Thailand Game Show.

The Nintendo booth at Gamescom Latam 2026 | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

You’ve got some big names on the show floor, like Nvidia, AMD, and Nintendo, but I noticed Sony and Microsoft don’t have a booth. Is it difficult to get exhibitors to come?

TE: In terms of exhibitors, we see a strong growth at Gamescom Latam, but of course there is room for things to improve. It’s the third edition of Gamescom Latam, and in the first years, you cannot expect a Gamescom like in Cologne, which reached more than 1,500 exhibitors. It takes time, and each region has its specifics, and that’s absolutely okay.

What’s your aim for this event? Do you want to focus on specifically Brazilian games or Latin American games, or do you want to bring outside companies to showcase their games in Brazil?

TE: Gamescom Latam is the platform for the LATAM market. So it’s the right platform for everyone who wants to enter this market, make business, show their games to the community, and get their games noticed in the region. So it’s focused on entering the market, but also on making announcements which are relevant worldwide.

SH: This question, how important is Gamescom Latam for the rest of the world versus Latin America, is something we should talk about in a few years. I mean, it’s the third edition – Gamescom is now in its 17th year, and we grew from a local event into the world’s biggest gaming event. So I think we should give these two additional Gamescoms a bit of time, and then see how successfully they develop.

Do you have plans to expand into any other areas of the world?

TE: We have Gamescom Cologne, we have Gamescom Latam, and we have Gamescom Asia, and right now we are focusing on those three events. Of course, we are always having a look at what’s happening in other regions, but there are no current plans to launch in the next year.

Last year there was some criticism from some of the exhibitors at Gamescom Latam, where they talked of penalties for leaving their booth. How has Gamescom responded to those criticisms?

SH: In the first place, we left this to the local business. We supported them with all our knowledge, they came back to us, and we discussed what is the best procedure, but they managed it themselves. And as far as I know, they were able to resolve all the issues we had back then.

If you have one of the biggest brands in this event market, then of course there are things where you step into pitfalls or where you’re clearly doing something wrong. And then the most important thing is they then react in the right way, and I believe that the Gamescom Latam team did exactly that.

I mean, you can see it, because they changed the model. So you have these zones, for example, where they bring together all the BIG Festival games, and they have the dev area where a couple of hundred games applied for it, and then they chose 10 who are now present there. So they made changes in the programs to prevent this from happening again.

TE: And in general, Gamescom invests a lot for the indie developers. This year we will invest a a six-digit sum in our Gamescom Awesome Indies Showcase to make the platform more relevant for indie developers and to give them a very strong digital platform under the Gamescom brand to showcase their games and all their creativity.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What kind of PS6 could justify a $1,000 price tag? | Opinion

The death of consoles has been predicted with atomic clock levels of regularity for at least the past quarter century. Each new wave of consumer hardware with the capacity – real or hypothetical – to play games has been heralded as the final nail in the coffin. Some of those, like home PCs and smartphones, found healthy, thriving places in the gaming ecosystem. Others, like smart TVs, ended up being sideshows at most – but through it all, consoles have kept on trucking, with revenues continuing to climb even if there’s been a concerning stagnation in the overall audience size for quite some time.

Consequently, I have no intention of making a “this time, consoles are definitely really doomed” argument. The core idea of them, a dedicated device that’s solely designed to play good-quality games with a minimum of technical fuss, is extremely appealing to a large market segment in a way that nothing has ever managed to supplant. It’s telling that both Valve and Microsoft see the potential growth path for PC gaming in blurring the line between PC and console by adopting major parts of the console experience.

What is apparent, however, is that the next generation shift in the console market is going to demand a significant evolution, not just in terms of hardware and performance but in terms of the overall strategy of the console platforms.

An asking price of over $1,000 only be justified by hardware that’s a massive, exciting departure from the current gen systems

The component pricing crisis means that next-gen systems which follow the same upgrade strategy as in previous generations will cost north of $1000 – more than doubling the launch price of the current generation. That’s a challenging value proposition, one that can truly only be justified by hardware that’s a massive, exciting departure from the current gen systems.

Microsoft has dropped broad hints in the past couple of months about reconsidering its strategy with Project Helix in light of the new pricing challenges. We know even less about the PlayStation 6 or what Sony’s original vision for the system may have been, but it seems safe to assume that those plans, too, have not survived the RAMageddon crisis intact.

One option for the company might have been to push back the PS6 launch for a year or two, eking a longer lifespan out of the PS5 and hoping that component prices come back down to earth over time. That would be a calculated gamble – it could work out, though the downside risk would see the company ending up stewarding an aging platform that’s lost its market inertia but still facing sky-high component prices nonetheless.

This week, however, we saw a pretty strong hint that Sony actually intends to stick to its original timeline – not that it’s ever announced a timeline for PS6, but a late 2027 launch was broadly what everyone expected. The company’s terse announcement that it will stop selling games on physical discs from January 2028 has received a lot of attention, almost all of it negative, but the specific date chosen for the deadline is also interesting. If we assume that PS6 will be entirely a digital-only console – a pretty safe assumption given this announcement – then ceasing disc production from January 2028 would fit nicely with a timeline in which PS6 launches in late 2027, making winter 2027 into the handover season in which both consoles are promoted side-by-side, with PS5 getting its last major first-party releases.

This week was a strong hint that Sony intends to stick to a late 2027 launch for PS6

Assuming that’s the case, it does essentially mean that Sony’s first announcement of anything even vaguely PS6-related has essentially been “no discs, suck it up losers”, which feels rather like the console equivalent of a botched gender reveal party that sets a nearby forest on fire – but it at least gives us the broad outlines of a timeline.

There’s some far less official information out there, too, including a recent post from a leaker claiming insider knowledge of hardware planning, who suggested that the PS6’s bill of materials – the basic cost of the components that will go into the console – has shot up $200 in just a few months, and is now hovering north of $950. Whether it’s real insider information or not, it’s entirely credible in light of the price hikes we’ve seen across the industry in recent months.

So there’s the broad shape of the dilemma. Signs are pointing to Sony sticking to its late 2027 timeline; but the state of the hardware industry is suggesting that a PS6 launching in that timeframe will cost at least $1000. That price point would be a hard sell at any time, but this is arguably a tougher situation than most, because there’s no obvious technological step up that PS6 can take advantage of as its major selling point. The past few generations have benefitted enormously from having a key technology that made them markedly different to their predecessor – for the PS5 it was the fast SSD, while support for HD and then 4K resolutions were also major reasons to upgrade hardware at previous transitions.

PS6 hardware can undoubtedly offer a major bump in graphical performance, of course, but diminishing returns on graphical fidelity updates have kicked in hard in recent years. While the PS5 will be seven years old at that point, it will be hard to convince even fairly devoted consumers to upgrade quickly if all that involves is swapping one box under the TV for another and spending $1000+ to buy some more raytracing and better FSR upscaling.

So what might a PS6 that can get the market interested enough to overlook (or at least tolerate) its huge price point actually look like? I don’t claim to have any inside line here, but logically speaking, Sony must be thinking hard about how to clearly and dramatically delineate the PS6 from its predecessor – making it not so much into an incremental upgrade (a hard sell at $1000), but a brand new, exciting, must-have gaming platform.

There are a few things – circumstantial though they may be – which suggest that a new form factor might be part of Sony’s solution to that problem. Making such a clean break from physical media, and making a point of announcing it 18 months in advance, could hint at the new system not just lacking a disc drive by default (like the PS5 Pro already does), but actually not being suitable for attaching a drive to at all – a digital-only console by necessity as much as desire.

Rather than trying to launch both a home console and a handheld in this disastrously expensive market, Sony’s handheld ambition might actually be one and the same as its PS6 planning

That would make particular sense if PS6 is a move towards some kind of handheld, semi-portable form factor. There has been persistent industry chatter for a couple of years about Sony having a renewed interest in the handheld space, with the PS Portal seen as an experimental toe in the water that heralds a more significant move back into that market. We might reasonably speculate that rather than trying to launch both a home console and a handheld in this disastrously expensive market, Sony’s handheld ambition might actually be one and the same as its PS6 planning.

That could also help to solve another hardware-related problem that’s been an open question about PS6 – assuming it follows the expected evolutionary upgrade path, just how huge would this thing be? The PS5 is already a beast of a machine. Sony did a good job of making it run reasonably quietly thanks to a very large fan and cooling system that prevents it from sounding like a busy day on Heathrow’s runways like the PS4 did. The consequence, though, is that the system itself is about as big as a piece of consumer hardware like this can realistically get. Anything larger would be a very tough sell to a lot of households (PS5s already tend to end up awkwardly positioned in living rooms due to not fitting properly under the TV). While chipsets have become more efficient in the intervening years, by and large the scaling laws are unforgiving; you want more teraflops, you need more watts and more cubic centimetres for cooling. High-end PC graphics cards alone occupy about half the volume of a modern console.

The Playstation Portal has been a successful foray back into the handheld market. | Image credit: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Shifting the form factor of PS6 to encompass some kind of portable functionality might offer a solution to this problem as well. It would essentially move the key selling point of the system away from top-end performance and towards functionality, opening up breathing room from Sony and its chip partner AMD to explore more efficient chipsets with lower power consumption and less aggressive cooling needs. That approach would also maximise the benefit of the collaboration between Sony and AMD on developing FSR upscaling technology, which could help to smooth over the smaller than usual performance bump that would result from such a decision.

Again, I have absolutely no insider information to offer here – but as we inch closer to the point where Sony will presumably start sharing some hard information about its new system, the question of what that system actually needs to look like in order to sell a cash-strapped public on a $1000 upgrade is hard to dismiss. For the first time in PlayStation’s history, market conditions far out of Sony’s hands may dictate that “it’s like the previous PlayStation, but with upgrades” may not be a pitch that works for enough of the potential audience. I don’t doubt that there can and will be a thriving console market in the next generation of hardware – but I’m increasingly unconvinced that the devices that actually succeed in that market will look very much like the current gen of home consoles.

Where did all the UK game events go?

A recurring question in the UK games scene is why such a significant territory can’t sustain its own major consumer event, in the style of the US PAX, the French Paris Games Week or German titan Gamescom. The country’s largest video game consumer show, EGX, paused during COVID before being merged into the pop-culture behemoth of MCM Comic Con in 2024, while other major events like Insomnia, WASD, and EGX Rezzed have long since folded. (GamesIndustry.biz was formerly owned by MCM and EGX operator ReedPop.)

Subsequent attempts to launch new events have foundered. 2025 debut To The Moon was a conspicuous failure, with a sparsely populated show floor and low visitor numbers. Meanwhile, a mooted resurrection of the Insomnia Gaming Festival failed to get off the ground earlier this year owing to a lack of industry support.

The only successes have been smaller-scale, notably the various retro-focused markets and expos run by Replay Events and others, as well as shows like the Guildford Games Festival and the newly established, esports-focused DreamHack Birmingham. B2B events, meanwhile, have proved consistently successful, with an annual lineup that now includes Develop Brighton, Game Republic New Horizons, Pocket Gamer Connects London, and Adventure X.

But considering that the UK video games market is worth £8.7 billion, there’s a surprising lack of really big consumer shows – and certainly nothing on the scale of Gamescom in Germany, a country whose games market is actually smaller at €9.4 billion (£8.09 billion).

So what’s going on? Why is the UK struggling to keep hold of its big consumer shows? Are these kinds of events simply outdated in the post-COVID world of digital showcases, or is there a deeper problem?

Consumer demand

Games London head Michael French, who oversees New Game Plus at the London Games Festival (LGF), thinks that the pandemic was a watershed moment. “The industry around us has changed,” he says. “So the pretext to have an event is probably somewhat different now than it was even a few years ago. I think COVID is the thing to point out, where it sort of changed everyone’s budget, and then afterwards things never changed back.” Major exhibitors, chiefly AAA publishers, cut consumer events out of their marketing budgets and did not restore them when lockdowns ended.

Michael French | Image credit: Games London

This is despite that fact that demand for events hasn’t gone away. In fact, Jackie Mulligan – co-director of Game Republic, which puts on around a dozen UK events a year – thinks that after losing “two years of connection,” there’s been an even greater demand for in-person events since COVID. “I mean, we did an event with barely any advertising for consumers, and we had 6,000 people for a consumer show in Wakefield,” she says.

French agrees there’s still a demand. “Consumers really want an event, they love events,” he says. “There is a very passionate base of people that love these shows, and community groups that engage with them.”

Sponsors

The main reason the LGF has been able to thrive is that it is not reliant on exhibitor spend. “We’re in a very privileged position at London Games Festival, because we are publicly funded, which helps offset the risk,” explains French. As part of its Games Growth Package, the UK government has committed £1.5 million to the LGF over the next three years. “Obviously having that money comes with caveats,” he says. “New Game Plus is a bit more curated than other events… And then at the end of it, we do a lot of measuring on economic output and the economic impact of the event, which helps justify the public spending.”

Shows without access to public funds typically rely on one or two big sponsors to provide the necessary cash, he explains. “Ultimately, that sort of pays for everything, or at least helps you break even.”

When asked why the UK has been struggling to put on big consumer shows, David Lilley has an immediate response. “Money is the answer,” he says. “Events cost money. To do something like WASD will cost half a million pounds, and in order to do that, you need some form of underwriting.”

David Lilley

Lilley is now commercial director for Kudos Games Services, but previously he co-founded Roucan Events, the company behind WASD, and before that he was head of events at ReedPop, running EGX, EGX Rezzed, MCM Comic Con, and the GamesIndustry.biz B2B events.

“When we did EGX – which was big and bold and loud and brilliant – we had the support of PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Square Enix, Warner Bros., Ubisoft, Sega,” he explains. “You had all of these people who were prepared to put their money behind supporting a UK event. Without first parties, it’s almost impossible to put events on.”

Smaller entities can’t offer the money that events require. Lilley singles out Devolver as being a great supporter of WASD. “Devolver were incredible,” he says. “And we got support from loads of fantastic indies. But it just isn’t enough. It’s not enough money.”

Lilley thinks the way that big companies divvy up their global marketing budget has changed. “It used to be GDC, E3, Gamescom, EGX, Paris [Games Week], Tokyo [Game Show] – those parties would get global budget. I don’t know who’s getting global budget now, because the industry has changed. So the event companies are not making the same money that they were making before – and events are largely about money, because your starting point is so expensive.”

The Devolver booth at WASD 2024, the final edition of the show. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

French thinks that at least some of that global marketing budget is now being used on events in emerging territories. “I think they probably look at an event in LATAM [Latin America] or somewhere in an untouched part of Europe or Asia as a market they haven’t necessarily saturated,” he says. “Their priorities have changed as their budgets have shifted.”

He points out that the UK market is “incredibly established and sophisticated and mature”, with limited room for growth, but emphasises that it still needs support. “I think that a lot of those big companies have forgotten that support for these events and programs, no matter where they are, is supporting that ecosystem. It goes back into it, and those audiences are the next generation of customers for those companies. So they’ve sort of fallen out of the habit of realising that ‘if we show up to an event, it’s an investment in our future.'”

Rising costs

The overwhelming expense of putting on an event is venue hire, which has rapidly increased in recent years, to a level that Game Republic co-director Jamie Sefton describes as “astronomical”. “The reason why we didn’t have a GaMaYo [Game Makers Yorkshire] for so long in Leeds was because we couldn’t find a venue in Leeds city centre that was good – say, 10-15 minutes from the station – but that wasn’t going to cripple us financially,” he says.

“The price of venues has definitely gone up,” says French, adding that there have also been steep rises in the cost of staff, food, hotels, and various other things. “They’ve all gone up in line with all the cost of living issues, and exacerbated by Brexit.”

“I think those price rises have happened globally,” he adds, “but we’ve really felt it.”

Jamie Sefton

Mulligan agrees that the price of drinks and food has been particularly impacted by Brexit, and she also points to the surging costs for travel, as well as the increased bureaucracy involved when bringing speakers into the country. Craig Fletcher – who founded Multiplay, the company behind Insomnia – concurs. “Suddenly you have terms that people haven’t heard for 40 years cropping up, like ‘carnet’. Most people have to actually look up what a carnet is.”

He points to one thing in particular that has shot up in price. “Tables went up massively,” he says. “We had to rent a thousand tables back in the day when we had 2,000 people for Insomnia. If suddenly that goes up by four times, that’s a lot.”

Craig Fletcher

Fletcher says this ultimately proved fatal for Insomnia. “We just couldn’t succeed at getting the costs down, because you’d find a way to save a cost somewhere else, and another one would’ve increased. It’s like trying to put a carpet down and one corner’s always coming up, and to do the same level of quality just cost way more.”

He points out that for a lot of events, the ticket sales alone don’t cover the operating costs – and it can be a tricky proposition to raise prices. “The problem is, are people prepared to pay the price that it would be to put it on?”

The Gamescom gravity well

The rise of Gamescom, which last year attracted 357,000 visitors, has also had a detrimental effect on the UK events scene by drawing all the attention to Germany. “If you’re a company with less money to spend, then it makes sense to pick one big European event,” says French. “As well as having those business halls, it feels like all of the German consumers show up to Gamescom.”

“I think Gamescom just won, frankly,” declares Fletcher. “People just got used to just doing all their consumer stuff at Gamescom,” to the point that’s almost unstoppable. “Once there’s so many people going from the industry to an event, everyone else feels like they have to go. It’s almost FOMO.”

He says that because people feel like they have to be there for the B2B side, it makes sense for them to extend their B2C reach at the same event. “It makes it an easier decision, because once you’ve mobilised your resources to deliver an event, doing more is cheaper. You’re already sending staff there, you’re already booking travel, you’re already sending trucks, you’re already booking hotels. Your mobilisation costs have already happened.”

Gamescom has reached critical mass, according to Fletcher. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

Gamescom also benefits from government support, being co-organised by Game, the German games industry association, and Lilley says the city of Cologne participates by offering it fixed-price hotel rooms – reducing another significant operating expense.

French thinks the UK trade bodies, UKIE and TIGA, should be doing more to support UK events. “We have good relationships with both of them,” he says, “but I think there’s more to do… the flip side is for some of the big companies, the decision-making has left the UK. Decades ago, for some of them, when they moved headquarters to places like Geneva and Germany. Which probably explains why some momentum moved towards Gamescom.”

The future

In terms of where UK consumer events go from here, Fletcher says that recent failures have made the situation worse. “A big problem is people have had their confidence knocked multiple times now with events being cancelled,” he says. “These events starting then failing just makes it harder for everyone else: not just to convince consumers that this is actually going to happen, but also [to convince] any of the potential commercial partners.”

Lilley emphasises that any new events starting up shouldn’t try to go toe to toe with Gamescom by putting on a huge-scale exhibition. “You can’t compete, so don’t,” he says. “If I was to give a recommendation to anyone, I would suggest start small, grow sustainably, and then you’ve got a chance to do something big. Going from naught to a hundred is impossible. We didn’t do that with EGX. EGX grew over 15 years.”

Jackie Mulligan | Image credit: Game Republic

Mulligan says that one trend she’s seen is games being integrated into other events, like film or music festivals. “I think that’s a good thing,” she says, adding that it shows how games have gone mainstream. But in terms of standalone games shows, Sefton thinks that they should be tightly focused. “You really have to know your audience. It worries me seeing an event and they say, ‘Oh, this event’s for everybody’. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh God, are you sure about that?'”

He points to Game Republic’s WX Games Weekend being focused around families, while Replay Events specialises in retro, and a general drift away from queuing up to play demos of new games – which attendees could just as easily play on Steam in the comfort of their own homes – and towards celebrating fandom.

He says he was inspired by visiting PAX in the United States around eight years ago. “That was a bit of an epiphany for me,” he says. “It’s focused on community. You had rooms at PAX where you had people who were passionate about one game – a whole room with ten Steel Battalion controllers set up and about 30 people in there, and it was just for everybody around the world who loved that game.”

But there still remains the question of money. “Events are hard to fund,” says Lilley. “I’ve been burned by that, and I don’t think there’s anything that would get me back to doing events at the moment, because it’s not enough to have the will and it’s not enough to work hard, you’ve got to have the funding to make them profitable: it’s the only way.”

“We are profoundly disappointed by Sony’s decision” – Game companies express dismay at the end of PlayStation disc production

Earlier this week, Sony announced plans to discontinue production of physical discs for new PlayStation games launching from January 2028.

After that, games will be sold only in digital format, while titles released on disc before January 2028 will not be affected.

Sony has reportedly begun repurposing its last physical disc factory. Workers at the Austrian plant are being retrained to manufacture optical microlenses for power-consumption applications.

The platform holder also revealed it would be closing down the PlayStation Store on PS3 and PS Vita by July 2027, meaning that new content purchases will no longer be possible once these stores close.

Sony’s shift to an all-digital model has raised concerns among developers and publishers who consider physical media essential to the gaming ecosystem and its consumers.

To understand the impact of ending physical disc production, we collected responses from game companies about the implications for creators, collectors, and game preservation.

Iam8bit

Iam8bit produces premium collector’s editions of physical games, including the recent Blue Prince Commissary Bundle for PS5 and an exclusive PS5 edition of Fear the Spotlight with unique cover and disc art.

In a statement sent to GamesIndustry.biz, Iam8bit co-owners and co-creative directors Jon Gibson and Amanda White said:

“We are profoundly disappointed by Sony’s decision to suspend physical games production in 2028. Physical games are vital to games preservation, ownership, and consumer choice, values that have guided iam8bit since our first physical release in 2016. Our commitment to these values remains unchanged. Long live physical media.”

Deluxe physical edition of Barbie Rewind comes with an Atari Barbie doll | Image credit: Atari

Atari

Atari is known for its physical game releases. Its subsidiary, Digital Eclipse, recently announced a deluxe physical version of Barbie Rewind for PS5 and Nintendo Switch 2 that comes with a Barbie doll.

Atari also released collector’s editions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind and The Thing: Remastered, featuring steelbooks and additional physical items.

“We remain committed to game preservation and creating products for fans for whom collecting physical editions is an important part of their gaming experience, along with physical items that allow them to celebrate their favourite games,” the firm told GamesIndustry.biz.

“We strive to make the games we develop and publish as accessible as possible, which includes distributing physical editions whenever feasible. As the market evolves, we’ll continue to explore new and compelling ways to satisfy collector demand.”

Silver Lining Interactive

Manchester-based Silver Lining Interactive often issues physical versions of its games after digital release. Founder Luke Keighran describes this as a highly profitable part of the business.

“We do not only have a very, very strong retail market, but a wholesale market as well,” he told us earlier this year. “Day-one purchases are becoming more difficult for retail, but the catalogue business is still extremely strong. If a game does well on digital, it will normally do well at retail.”

In a statement shared to LinkedIn, the company said it was “obviously disappointed by the news” and highlighted that “there is still a large community of customers who prefer and cherish their physical game collections.”

Physical collector’s edition of Spirit of the North 2 for PS5 comes with a disc and other items related to the game | Image credit: Silver Lining Interactive

“We are working with PlayStation to understand exactly how this transition will be implemented and what it means for independent publishers. While we seek clarity on the future, we want to offer absolute certainty about the present: this policy will not impact our existing library.

“The industry landscape is still settling after this announcement, but whatever form the future takes, Silver Lining Interactive is committed to both our developer partners and our players. We will keep physical media available for as long as players want it.

It concluded: “We firmly believe in giving our community a choice wherever viable, and will continue working hard to deliver games in both digital formats and physical boxes, whether that means a disc, a cartridge, a key card, or a code-in-box release. It is time for us to put our ‘creative hats’ on to see how we can continue bringing games to physical.”

Lost in Cult

Lost in Cult publishes high-quality, art-focused video game books and physical editions of indie games. The company also runs a label for curated indie games that can be played offline on PS5 and Switch.

The company has released physical editions of Paper Trial, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, Thank Goodness You’re Here, and Immortality, among others.

“As a company on a mission to preserve video games, we are deeply saddened by the recent news from PlayStation on ending physical disc production from 2028,” it said in a statement.

“We aim to do everything in our power to preserve video games to the best of our ability and will continue to do so for as long as we can.”

Definitive physical edition of Tomb Raider includes a soundtrack CD in addition to other items | Image credit: Limited Run Games

Limited Run Games

Limited Run Games works with developers to make physical collector’s editions and merchandise. Its latest release, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for Switch 2, comes with physical items, a soundtrack CD, and a steelbook.

“Sony’s decision to move fully digital marks the end of an era, and we understand why the math points that way for a platform holder at that scale,” it said in a post on its website.

“We have spent a decade, alongside the fans and collectors who kept this flame alive long before us, proving that people still want to hold their games, to own them outright, and to keep them on a shelf for good. We are not slowing down either.”

Strictly Limited

Strictly Limited publishes physical standard, deluxe, and collector’s editions of digital titles across platforms.

In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, Strictly Limited’s head of business unit Sascha Hoffmann-Nowak said physical editions are “highly relevant when it comes to ensuring players’ ownership and preserving video games as part of our cultural heritage.”

“We’ll continue releasing physical PS5 games for as long as it’s possible and will continue publishing physical editions of games regardless of the platform they appear on, even if those platforms evolve. We do have a different approach to physical editions for such releases in place.”

Video Game History Foundation

From a preservation perspective, Frank Cifaldi, director of the Video Game History Foundation, said, “museums and archives have been preparing for this future for a while.”

“From the perspective of professional preservationists, this doesn’t have as much of an impact as you might expect,” said Cifaldi.

“The reality is that the vast majority of video games produced over the last two decades were not made for dedicated home video game consoles, let alone pressed to physical media. And even when they were released on physical media, a day-one digital patch was all but guaranteed, meaning that even though a disc is preserving data in an accessible way, it may not represent the game that people actually played.”

“The vast majority of video games produced over the last two decades were not made for dedicated home video game consoles”

Frank Cifaldi

Cifaldi added: “What continues to baffle us is what the industry expects institutions like ours to do about it. If platform owners are deciding to eliminate physical media and older digital storefronts, then we’d also like to see trade groups like the Entertainment Software Association offer meaningful solutions for archives and museums to legally preserve digital-only content and make it accessible for research.

“Everyone agrees this is a serious problem, but the ESA has repeatedly opposed the efforts of cultural heritage institutions to reform digital copy protection laws to make it easier to do this work. The industry needs to meaningfully come to the table on this issue, because asking museums to download a copy of Grand Theft Auto 6 and hope that it’ll run in 50 years is not a preservation solution.”

Jobs roundup: July 2026 | Robert Henrysson steps down as Supermassive Games CEO

It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Robert Henrysson steps down as Supermassive Games CEO

Robert Henrysson has announced he will step down as CEO of Supermassive Games and as a partner at Nordisk Games.

“As CEO, I was honoured to guide the studio through intense industry change, broadening its client base and establishing a culture of consistent quality across all aspects of the game development process,” said Henrysson.

“Leading a studio is never a one-man job – it is the entire team’s effort. Our commitment to continuous improvement was, and continues to be, central to everything we do. To everyone at Supermassive Games, I am so grateful for everything I’ve learnt and experienced with all of you.”

Christopher Serra joins Paramount Games as VP of business development and licensing

Christopher Serra has been appointed VP of business development and licensing at Paramount Games.

Serra previously served as director of games business development at Oculus VR.

Alexis Bonte departs Stillfront as CEO

Alexis Bonte will leave his role as CEO of Stillfront, a position he assumed in October 2024. He joined the company in 2017 as group COO.

“Alexis stepped into the CEO role at a challenging time and has led the company through a decisive period of strategic and organisational change with great professionalism and commitment, leaving Stillfront stronger and well positioned for its next chapter,” said Stillfront chair of the board Lars-Johan Jarnheimer.

“We are grateful that Alexis remains fully dedicated to Stillfront throughout the transition to ensure a smooth and seamless handover.”

Jakub Karolczak | Production coordinator, 11 Bit Studios

Jakub Karolczak has been promoted to production coordinator at 11 Bit Studios. He previously served as senior producer at the company.

Hector Parra | Live game producer, Niantic

Hector Parra has been appointed live game producer at Niantic. He previously served as producer at CGBOT and creative project manager at Dracma Studios.

Nicholas Penwarden leaves Epic Games

Nicholas Penwarden has announced his departure from Epic Games, where he served as engineering fellow and VP of engineering for 15 years, holding roles including director of Unreal Engine and development manager of Unreal Engine 4.

“I’m proud of the part I was able to play in Unreal Engine’s evolution from UE3 to where it stands today,” said Penwarden.

“It’s remarkable to see how far the engine has come, how much the community has grown, and all the incredible games and experiences developers have created with it.

“Most of all, I’m proud of the team we built: the most talented, passionate, and extraordinary group of engine and game developers I could have hoped to work alongside.”

Raptor PR announces two new appointments

Raptor PR has appointed Ruzbeh Gazdar as account director and Sophia Hollis as senior account executive.

Gazdar was a senior account manager at GingerMay, and Hollis was an account executive at Zeno London.

Joe Kearns | Project manager, Yrs Truly

Joe Kearns has joined Yrs Truly as project manager. He previously served as a producer at ICHI Worldwide.

Jaakko Harlas departs from Supercell

Jaakko Harlas has announced his departure from Supercell, where he served as head of investments for over 12 years.

Creator-distributed discount codes drive massive uptake of game storefronts, according to new Tebex data

Game codes distributed by content creators to their community drive significant additional revenue for game storefronts, according to new research by provider Tebex, although its data pointed to the impact being overwhelmingly driven by a small number of top-tier creators.

The study, which analysed over 1.5 million creator-backed transactions by 635,000 players over a period lasting a little over two years, found that 80.4% of players using creator codes did so on their first ever purchase and half completed that purchase on the same day they joined the platform. Tebex asserts that this proves that creators are directly driving new business, rather than cannibalising sales that would have taken place anyway.

The firm also found that creator-issued codes were associated with much higher spend, with mobile webstore basket value increasing by 93% when a creator code is applied, from an average value of $27 to $52.

That impact was overwhelmingly confined to top-tier creators, though. The top 100 creators covered by the data, who represented only 1.6% of the total creator count, drove 75.9% of total gross merchandise value (GMV) of all the games tracked. A single unnamed creator accounted for $4.9M. The report characterised this as a rebuttal to the theory that multiple micro-influencers are able to outperform fewer large ones, although it noted that smaller “long-tail” creators nevertheless dominated in specific geographic markets, providing things like community interaction and localised translation that benefited game operators.

The outsize influence of a small number of creators was further emphasised by 87.4% of players only ever using one creator’s code. Half of the codes tracked in the data did not confer any discount, either, pointing to codes as a means of players demonstrating loyalty and support to a creator rather than purely coupons to drive sales.

The study noted that the creator ecosystem was most developed in Minecraft, with almost 30% ot total gross merchandise value (GMV) on the platform being attributable to creators. The largest opportunity was Rockstar-owned GTA 5 roleplay platform FiveM, which had a total GMV of $366.9M of which only 3.9% was attributable to creators. The study described FiveM as “one of the most visible, high-value opportunity gaps in the gaming sector today.”

“The goal isn’t to build something that burns brightly for a few years and disappears” – Cosmic Division CEO on launching a “responsibly ambitious” studio

In May, former Housemarque game director Harry Krueger launched Cosmic Division, a new indie studio based in downtown Helsinki. Krueger was previously game director at Housemarque, where he worked on titles including Nex Machina, Returnal, and Saros.

Co-founded by design director Henri Mustonen, who spent over a decade at Housemarque, and COO Mika Laaja, Cosmic Division is focused on sustainability and staying grounded.

“The goal isn’t to build something that burns brightly for a few years and disappears. The goal is to build the forever studio, something that endures,” Krueger tells GamesIndustry.biz.

“This is my third job in the games industry, and ideally I’d like it to be my last. We want to build on our strengths, pick our battles carefully, find the right people and partners, and ride this whole thing into the sunset.”

Defining a sustainable vision

Krueger says Cosmic Division was founded on the principles of steady growth, restraint, and adaptability.

“Our goal with Cosmic Division is to be ‘responsibly ambitious.’ Sustainability starts with thinking long-term. We want to avoid aggressive growth and take a measured approach to building strong foundations that support both the studio and the games we create for years to come.”

Cosmic Division’s Harry Krueger | Image credit: Sam Jamsen

He continues: “Practically speaking, that means prioritising talent over process, managing project scope responsibly, maintaining a healthy runway, and being deliberate about the people and partners we bring on board. Good design is ultimately about setting constraints, and I believe the same is true for running a studio, especially in its early stages of growth. More is not always better; often it’s just more.”

This philosophy extends into Cosmic Division’s business operations. The studio secured funding in a seed round supported by undisclosed partners and is currently prioritising building its small development team.

“At this stage, every investment we make is really about establishing the right foundations for the studio, and creating the right environment for great games to emerge consistently and sustainably over the long term. Above all, we want to maintain our momentum and focus on building the best possible game with our lean and mean team.”

As for its first game, Krueger says Cosmic Division is “building on the strengths and lessons we’ve accumulated over the years of creating intense, compelling action games.”

“Players will likely recognise some of our creative DNA, but they should also expect a few surprises along the way. We want to establish a unique voice for Cosmic Division with our first title, and part of the excitement of starting a new studio is the opportunity to challenge ourselves creatively and explore new territory.”

“Ultimately, I don’t believe there’s a secret formula for standing out. Quality rarely comes from ideas alone; it comes from commitment, execution and craftsmanship. All we can do is focus on making the best game possible, push ourselves creatively, and create something we’re genuinely proud of. If we succeed at that, I trust we’ll find our audience.”

Kreuger was previously the game director of Housemarque’s Returnal | Image credit: Housemarque

Lessons from AAA development

This “responsibly ambitious” approach is rooted in lessons learned from the team’s collective experience in the AAA space – specifically, what not to do.

“It has taught us to be careful and deliberate,” notes Krueger. “Creating a game is an enormous challenge, even with an established team, clear vision, and strong funding. Building a studio from the ground up adds a separate layer of complexity, so it’s important to be disciplined about where we invest our time, energy, and resources.”

“Another big lesson from AAA development is that too much scale and ambition inevitably introduce complexity, and significant effort can go towards managing overhead and minimising inefficiencies. While that might be necessary for building certain large-scale experiences, I believe the games we want to create at Cosmic Division can be achieved while staying fairly lean.

“Quality rarely comes from ideas alone; it comes from commitment, execution and craftsmanship”

“Growing beyond a certain point can slow things down, reduce flexibility, and make it harder to stay aligned around a singular vision. That’s usually when compromise starts creeping in. And compromising often leads to mediocrity.”

Krueger also advocates for a “subtractive” design process to avoid the common pitfalls of over-ambition.

“One of the biggest lessons is that ambition needs to be balanced with realism and execution. That means scoping responsibly, growing deliberately, and resisting the temptation to create your magnum opus at every turn. Brainstorming is additive, but great design is often subtractive. The process of distillation should start early, to avoid late-stage cuts and compromises that can negatively affect both the game and the team.”

Krueger ultimately recognised that focusing on essentials applies not only to game development but also to building the studio.

“Starting Cosmic Division has reinforced that lesson, as my role today is much broader than it was as a developer. I’m still deeply passionate about the craft, and maintaining a clear creative vision remains a core part of my job.

“The difference is that I now have to create the conditions for that vision to succeed: building the team, finding the right partners, securing funding, and making sure the studio itself remains healthy and sustainable in the long term.”

Sega Europe vet Jurgen Post steps down as West Studios COO, Rovio’s Alex Pelletier-Normand taking his place

The COO of Sega Europe’s West Studios, Jurgen Post, is stepping down and being replaced by Rovio’s Alex Pelletier-Normand (pictured).

In a press release – following GamesIndustry.biz spotting signs of Post’s departure via Companies House – the publisher said that Pelletier-Norman would be taking on this new role in addition to his current position as CEO of the Angry Birds maker.

Post will be remaining at Sega Europe in an advisory position. His additional responsibilities as regional managing director are being taken over by Tatsuyuki Miyazaki, a 20-plus-year Sega veteran and Sega Europe’s chief corporate officer.

“Jurgen came back to Sega Europe in 2024 and helped set the business on an upward trajectory. The whole Sega group expresses its warmest gratitude to him for his contributions and looks forward to his continued counsel in a new advisory capacity,” Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi said.

“In Alex, we have a leader who understands how to innovate. His expertise and the close partnership between Sega and Rovio will be invaluable in taking both businesses to the next level.”

Pelletier-Normand added: “There’s a wealth of experience and talent across Rovio and Sega Europe’s studios, and I’m relishing the challenge of bringing it all together to keep both businesses improving and innovating. What excites me most is how much these teams can learn from each other. Sega and Rovio share the same creative ambition, and bringing our strengths together puts us in a fantastic position to deliver for players wherever and however they want to play.”

Post initially worked at Sega Europe for over 10 years, joining in 2006 as managing director before eventually becoming its president and COO. He left in 2017, saying that “time to move on and maybe do one last trick, before I disappear forever.”

Months later, he joined Chinese games giant Tencent as the president of international partners for the company’s European arm. Three years later, Post joined Miniclip as its CEO, before returning to Sega Europe in 2024 as chief operating officer for its West Studios, as well as regional managing director.

Pelletier-Normand was appointed Rovio’s CEO in 2021 after joining as EVP of games in 2019. Before that he spent 16 years at Gameloft between 2003 and 2019.

Rovio, of course, came under the Sega banner after the Japanese giant spent €706 million on the Angry Birds maker in 2023. The deal hasn’t been without its issues, with Sega recording a $200 million impairment charge on the cost of acquiring Rovio in February of this year. GamesIndustry.biz recently spoke to a number of experts to discuss why the deal has disappointed and what the plan for Rovio should be moving forward.

Union raises concerns over gender pay gaps, bonus management, and crunch at Rockstar

Rockstar union members have raised concerns regarding potential gender-based pay gaps, contractual overtime requirements, and the management of bonuses.

Speaking to Game Developer, three members of the Rockstar Game Workers Union explained their reasons for pursuing collective action and voluntary union recognition.

In response, Rockstar’s parent company Take Two Interactive said: “We have fostered a culture which is focused on teamwork, excellence, and kindness, and where we support and reward the team across all levels of the business through competitive compensation and benefits policies.

“We are proud that as a result, our employee retention is well above the industry standard. We have received a request from a union seeking to discuss voluntary recognition. We value an open and constructive dialogue with all stakeholders and will arrange to meet.”

Despite the company’s commitment to open dialogue, employees highlighted ongoing concerns about Rockstar’s labour practices.

The employees, who requested anonymity, are not part of the group laid off last year that is currently in a legal dispute with Rockstar over alleged union busting.

One employee described Rockstar’s bonus system as unpredictable, leading to significant fluctuations in annual pay due to retrospective feedback.

“When the bonus is particularly good, it can be a windfall, but often the bonus is disappointing and one can end up being paid considerably less than expected for the year,” they said.

“The reasoning given for this is often nebulous, inconsistent between departments, even inconsistent between team members within the same department, and sometimes hinges on completely subjective or retroactive criticisms.”

The worker continued: “The main problem is that [bonuses and progression are] all completely discretionary for the company, and they are under no obligation to show their working. Employees want good pay, and if literally anything they do that year could affect it, they will naturally feel they have to be as pliable as possible to their boss’s whims.”

Employees also reported that the median gender pay gap at Rockstar “has widened” in recent years and that the company has discontinued initiatives intended to address it.

A primary concern was crunch, with one worker stating that Rockstar “built into our contracts, as standard, an opt out of UK Working Time Regulations that stops your employer being able to ask you to do more than about 10 hours extra each week.”

Although workers can opt out of this law to work additional hours, employees state that this provision is “built into” their contracts, requiring them to opt back in to prevent excessive overtime.

“The union successfully ran a campaign to inform people they could opt back in to the regulations at any time, which resulted in Rockstar management simplifying the process and removing the obligation to meet with HR,” the worker continued.

“Part of the problem with crunch is that there is not an agreed definition, and now it seems the company thinks that offering specific and limited compensation as an incentive for overtime means it no longer qualifies as crunch.”

Overall, workers stated that roles at Rockstar are not balanced, with some staff “not being adequately compensated for their role” in developing Grand Theft Auto 6.

“There are those [within Rockstar and Take-Two] with hundreds of millions of pounds, there are those receiving excellent pay for their work and are grateful, and there are certainly those that are woefully underpaid for their effort and the incredible profits gained,” said one source. “Especially when you consider that the company gets hundreds of millions in tax breaks for [its] UK workers.”

Godot bans “autonomous AI agent use or vibe coded” contributions

Godot has updated its contribution policy and “take[n] steps” to reduce “demoralizing” AI contributions.

In a frank statement posted on its website, the Godot Foundation talked candidly about the overwhelming number of code contributions coming from new “AI-generated contributions” and revealed plans to require “all code to be human authored.”

“A large part of the backlog comes from the fact that the number of qualified reviewers is small, reviewing pull requests (PRs) is demanding, and we can’t keep up with everything coming in,” the Godot Foundation admitted in a blog post.

“This problem is compounded by the recent increase in AI-generated contributions, both by AI agents and by humans submitting AI-generated code. The amount of effort required to make a PR has gone down (and number of PRs has increased as a result), while the amount of work to review PRs and the amount of people available to review has stayed the same. This reviewer shortage was already a problem, but it was one that we successfully ignored. We can no longer ignore it.”

The statement added: “AI contributions have the added pain of being demoralizing. Reviewing PRs is already tedious work, but it is rewarding because reviewers generally feel that their efforts are contributing to educating a new contributor (who may become a future maintainer/reviewer). If your feedback on PRs is just being absorbed by a machine and not going towards mentoring a potential future maintainer, it becomes much harder to justify spending your free time on PR review.”

As a result, the team will now focus on encouraging new contributors to become future maintainers – “LLMs can’t learn from specific feedback and thus can’t benefit from maintainers providing feedback” – ensuring all contributions are human-made, adding barriers to “low-effort slop,” and increasing the incentive to review pull requests.

This means the contribution policy will be updated to reflect new rules that prohibit autonomous AI agent use or vibe coding, AI-generated “substantial” code, no AI-generated text in human-to-human communication, and human approval.

Using AI agents or “vibe coding” already leads to an auto-ban from the GitHub repository “and will continue to do so.”

“Things change every day with respect to the current suite of AI tools available. We will continue taking a conservative approach in our policies towards them, but we will re-evaluate as things evolve,” the post concluded.

AI continues to be a contentious topic among developers and players alike. Earlier this year, a translator formerly employed by Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 studio Warhorse Studios claimed he had been “fired and replaced with AI,” while Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn developer Lucas Pope is reluctant to talk about his current game for fear it’ll “get slurped up by AI.”

Ubisoft appoints former 2K and Amazon exec Christoph Hartmann to lead Creative House 2, overseeing Splinter Cell, The Division and Ghost Recon

Ubisoft has appointed Christoph Hartmann as General Manager of Creative House 2, the business unit that oversees the Splinter Cell, The Division and Ghost Recon franchises. Hartmann is an industry veteran, having founded and lead the 2K Games label at Take-Two before leaving in 2017 to head up Amazon’s troubled games business. He left Amazon in January.

Christoph Hartmann | Image credit: Amazon Games

Creative House 2 is the second major business unit in the new structure that Ubisoft announced as part of its long-drawn-out restructuring process, under which Creative Houses are wholly responsible for key IP while being supported by central business teams. The first Creative House, which contains Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Rainbow Six, has been renamed as Vantage Studios and is headed by Charlie Guillemot, son of Ubisoft president Yves.

Creative House 2 will also house March of Giants, the free-to-play multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game created by a series of veteran Ubisoft creatives that the firm acquired from Amazon in December.

As General Manager, Hartmann will “oversee Creative House 2’s strategic direction and the long-term development of its portfolio,” the company said in a press release.

“Christoph is exactly the kind of leader we needed for Creative House 2—a passionate gamer with a proven ability to bring out the best in creative teams and build franchises that last,” said Yves Guillemot, co-founder and CEO, Ubisoft. “His experience across development and publishing as well as his management style give him a rare understanding of what it takes to make great games. I am confident Christoph will elevate our teams and brands to new heights and deepen their connection with the dedicated players who love these franchises.”

“The talented teams at March of Giants, Massive, Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft Paris, and Ubisoft Toronto have always known how to create worlds that players lose themselves in. With Creative House 2, we are giving them the structure, support and vision to go further, to build the kind of intense, unforgettable experiences that remind players why they fell in love with games in the first place. That is what great games have always been about, and that is what we are here to make.”

Subnautica 2 studio Unknown Worlds’ CEO resigns as Krafton agrees to pay $250m bonus

Krafton has settled its lawsuit with the former leadership team of Subnautica 2 developer, Unknown Worlds, and agreed to pay the $250 million disputed bonus.

Details of the legal complaint against Krafton, Inc. by the former leadership of Subnautica 2 developer Unknown Worlds became public this time last year.

The complaint concerned a $250 million bonus payout tied to revenue targets for the 2025 Early Access release of Subnautica 2, which the former shareholders of Unknown Worlds Entertainment, represented by Fortis Advisors LLC, allege owners Krafton, Inc. sought to avoid paying by delaying the game through “pressure tactics.”

In its defence, Krafton accused the three former leaders of threatening to self-publish Subnautica 2, “releasing it without Krafton’s backing, marketing, promotion, or distribution.” This, Krafton claims, left it with “no choice but to terminate their employment,” along with allegations that Max McGuire, Ted Gill, and Charlie Cleveland downloaded tens of thousands of “company files” and emails in the lead up to these terminations. The founders strenuously deny this, and claim the publisher “chang[ed] its story mid-litigation about why it fired the founders and seized control over Unknown Worlds.”

A new report by Bloomberg now claims Krafton has agreed to pay bonuses to “the entire staff of subsidiary Unknown Worlds Entertainment” following a settlement with the studio’s CEO and co-founders.

As part of the settlement, CEO Ted Gill has stepped down from his role – which was initially stripped from him until a court ordered Krafton to reinstate him earlier this year – insisting “we mutually agreed to part ways” and “new leadership is the best way for the studio to move forward.”

“We’re all super excited about Subnautica 2 and its tremendous success,” Gill said.

Bloomberg states the bonuses will be paid across three instalments to developers across the team, even recent recruits. It’s thought the team will be “compensated significantly more” than initially agreed.

It’s thought Krafton will look to appoint an external CEO to lead the studio.

For more, read GameIndustry.biz‘s timeline of the former Subnautica 2 leads versus Krafton here.

“I get very excited about trying to invent something new” – Assassin’s Creed composer Jesper Kyd reflects on his three-decade career

Even if you don’t know the name Jesper Kyd, it’s more than likely you’ve heard his music. The Danish composer and sound designer has worked on the soundtracks to dozens of games over the past three decades, including huge franchises like Borderlands, State of Decay, and Assassin’s Creed. Indeed, the signature tune of the latter series, Ezio’s Family, was his work.

But one of his oldest working relationships is with IO Interactive: he composed the soundtrack for the first Hitman game back in 2000, and he has since worked on many other IOI titles, like Kane & Lynch and Freedom Fighters. Not 007 First Light, though. He’s not sure that the thought appeals.

“I get very excited about trying to invent something new,” he explains. “So I’m not saying I would never write a Bond score, but I’m saying what really excites me is to write something new, where I get to write my own themes. That’s what I made a career out of: writing my own original melodies.”

Jesper Kyd poses next to a statue of Ezio from Assassin’s Creed | Image credit: Jesper Kyd

Innovation is what really gets his juices flowing. It all goes back to his involvement in the demo scene as a teenager, trying to outdo his peers by pushing the Commodore 64 and later the Amiga to their limits. “It was very competitive, but in the best of ways,” he says. “It was always about trying to show off what you could do. Somebody would put five sprites on the screen that could rotate, and then somebody’s like, ‘I’ve done six’.”

That experience went deep into his psyche. “It’s shaped how I see things and in my head: things should always innovate. Things should always do something new and fresh.”

Of course, he accepts that’s not always possible for practical reasons. “Sometimes you need a sequel that does things more of the same, and not try to redo everything, and take things away that people love.” Imagine the outcry if a James Bond game dared to launch without Monty Norman’s iconic theme tune. “Also, the financial model doesn’t work for every single thing that comes out to be innovative. You also need sequels, you also need tested and tried things to make the economy work.”

There’s been a lot of talk in the games industry recently about how to reduce ballooning budgets, especially in AAA, so we’re interested in whether Kyd has felt any impact. “It hasn’t affected me,” he says. “For me, it’s kind of the opposite: I feel like we are writing more and more music, and that usually a score is minimum three hours now, and it can balloon to more.

“I also feel like the production quality is really important, and people seem to understand very well that production quality means we got to record live… Music can add so much to a project if it’s implemented and written with the right instincts and the right approach. It can just add an enormous amount of atmosphere to a game or a film. I think people are becoming more and more aware of that, and so I don’t feel they’re pulling back.”

Steady evolution

Kyd is at his happiest when he’s moving forward, evolving his style, learning something new. And never stopping. We’re speaking at Nordic Game, and he says if he wasn’t here, he’d be making music. “Every single day I make music.”

He’s always searching for the next challenging project. “For me, learning is everything. Again, that’s the demo scene spirit. You have to keep pushing. And so that’s what I do. I push myself constantly to do something I haven’t done before. And then I pick up so many new things: like when I did the soundtrack for Samson, which just came out, I’d never done a trip hop inspired score, but the game takes place in the 1990s, so the trip-hop-inspired thing made complete sense to us. And so now I know how to do trip hop.”

Jesper Kyd created a trip hop soundtrack for Liquid Swords’ Samson | Image credit: Liquid Swords

He doesn’t always get the opportunity. “Sometimes you get involved with a project with a tight deadline, and so the experimentation phase is a little more limited. But I love when I have time to experiment, and time to fail, so we can figure some stuff out. And failing is just as important as winning in the very beginning of a project, because you need to find out what is the right path forward – and you can only do that sometimes by failing. So I look at it like failing forward. It’s a good thing.”

Nowadays, he’s grateful that he tends to be brought on board “really early” in game’s development, which hasn’t always been the case in the past. But coming in early also creates its own challenges, he says, “because then you don’t have a game to look at, or the game doesn’t look good.”

In that case, he relies on concept art. “That, for me, can be incredibly inspiring,” he says. “I love concept art.”

“One of the challenging things of working in video games is you don’t always get to work with the creative director”

Kyd isn’t shy in sharing his opinions on what a game should sound like. “If you were presenting an idea to me and I think I have a better idea, I’m definitely going to tell you my idea,” he says. “I’m not going to hold back, I never hold back. But if your idea is better than my idea, then I’m all in.” He says he likes to be given an open brief. “That’s what you want when you hire a composer, or when you hire someone like me, who is more trying to experiment and come up with something unusual.”

But he also likes to collaborate closely with the game’s creative lead – something that isn’t always possible. “One of the challenging things of working in video games is you don’t always get to work with the creative director, because the creative director is usually incredibly busy- and when the music is starting to be implemented in the game, it’s sometimes crunch time too.”

Games versus films

This is one of the areas where games differ from films. When working on the latter, he gets to work with the director “most of the time, if not all the time, and you get a straight path to the lore of the project, the founder of the vision. You don’t always get that in video games, because you’re often working with an audio director, and if you have a really out-there question, that question needs to be sent to the creative director. And so you might not always have a free flow back and forth.”

Kyd has applied his skills to films, too | Image credit: Ben Bentley

That close interaction with the creative lead is something he particularly enjoys about working in films – his previous film projects include the Chinese action movie Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe and the folk horror flick Tumbbad. He points out that whereas a game’s creative director is pulled in many different directions near launch, a film’s director has plenty of time to devote to the musical score in post production.

Kyd says that the world-building skills he has learnt in making game music translate well to film, but very little else can be brought across. In film, he says, “you have to be able to jump between moods and scenes really fast and really seamlessly. You might hit three or four moods in 10 seconds in a film, and you have to be able to do that fluently. In games, we tend to stay in one mood for longer.

“You don’t want a main theme just repeated throughout the game – it would drive you nuts”

“I can do a four-minute exploration cue, and if there’s a battle coming up, then we have a two-minute battle cue, and if there’s a really intense battle, then we have an intense battle cue. If you go back into sneaking around, then we have sneaking around music. It shifts between the music styles. But in film, you have to go all over the place at all times. It’s a whole other language.

“And character themes are incredibly important in film. You end up bringing themes back for different characters, and then rewriting the themes in many different ways… You have to be able to write a theme and then write five variations: a sad version, tense version, energetic version… That doesn’t always happen in games, because if a game is a hundred hours long, you don’t want a main theme just repeated throughout the game – it would drive you nuts. You want 20 themes, and then you maybe do some minor variations. But it’s not like a two-hour movie, where you can have a theme become the cornerstone of the whole soundtrack, and you just keep bringing it back.”

Highlights

Looking back over his long career, Kyd says his early work with IO Interactive was a highlight. “Working on Hitman back then was such a joy,” he says. “I felt like we were all surprised at how well that game did, and then I got to do Hitman Contracts, which was an all electronic score, which is great fun to do after doing an all symphonic score. And then on Blood Money, combining electronic and symphonic into this new, other thing.”

Assassin’s Creed was another bright spot. “It’s great fun to hear all the different takes on Ezio’s Family whenever a new Assassin’s Creed comes up,” he says.

Kyd created the Ezio’s Family theme for Assassin’s Creed 2 | Image credit: Ubisoft

In terms of the future, he thinks the interactive element of video game scoring is going to get better and better. “But I’m not necessarily all in with making things as interactive as possible,” he says. “I think it’s incredibly important to remember music should still sound like music.”

Dynamic music can throw up problems, he thinks. “It shouldn’t sound like modules of music, and you shouldn’t be able to hear when it’s changing and branching into different modules.” He’s also not a huge fan of the piecemeal nature of a dynamic soundtrack. “If it’s all just 30-second loops, it’s not the same as writing big, epic, beautiful, four-minute exploration tracks, which people can really end up getting into. Instead, it will become very systemic, and it will become more invisible, and you might not even notice the music anymore. I am not that type of composer.”

Understandably, he wants game music to take centre stage. “I want the music to contribute to the storytelling and the atmosphere of the game, because I think it can make things feel heavier and deeper, and you feel more when it’s really implemented, with the music helping the game shine – that we can improve on.”

Sony to discontinue physical discs for new games launching on PS consoles from January 2028

Sony will discontinue physical disc production for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles starting January 2028.

The company stated the decision is “in response to shifting trends in consumer preference and the broader entertainment industry” as it transitions from physical to digital formats.

Starting January 2028, games will be available only in digital format through the PlayStation Store and other retailers. This change does not affect titles released or launching on disc before that date.

“This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs,” it said.

“This transition will enable us to align more closely with how most of our community prefers to access and play games today.”

As reported by Game File, Sony recorded that “nearly four in five purchases of full games” on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 were digital over the past financial year.

“We’ll continue to prioritise our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that’s at retailers or the PlayStation Store.”

A Sony spokesperson later clarified to Game File that it is “committed to delivering experiences from past generations to new platforms our players are using,” referring to the potential for games to be lost as consumers buy access to a game rather than the full title on a physical disc.

“[As with] all digital content, including games, movies, and music, players are purchasing a personal license for non-commercial use,” the spokesperson said.

Ampere Analysis senior games research analyst Piers Harding-Rolls told Game File that Sony’s decision will “offset pressure on margins from other directions – development and staffing costs, for example.

“The advantage of everything going digital for the industry is that sales can be tracked much more easily and there is less commercial risk for publishers wanting to continue selling via retail.”

Both PlayStation and Xbox have released digital-only versions of their consoles to reduce costs. Last year, Nintendo introduced Game-Key Cards, physical download-only copies of select titles.

Rockstar also announced that Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch as a download-only title this November.

Last week, Circana data showed that the launch of the Switch 2 last year contributed to a year-on-year increase in US physical game spending for the first time since 2009.

However, it was a small increase of 3%, which Circana’s senior director Mat Piscatella described as a “temporary blip” in boxed sales.

“All other ecosystems are continuing to drop by double-digit percentages,” Piscatella told GamesIndustry.biz.

“At some point, this will all bottom out – perhaps we’re getting there now – until the console manufacturers decide to no longer produce units with physical drives.”

IGN expands partnership with Gamescom, adds game previews to official indie showcase

The organizers of Gamescom, Koelnmesse and Game – The German Games Industry Association, have agreed on a new partnership with IGN for Gamescom’s “gamescom awesome indies show”, expanding a long-established relationship under which IGN has served as the production partner of the official Gamescom consumer broadcast. IGN is owned by GamesIndustry.biz parent IGN Entertainment.

The 60-75-minute show is streamed live on the Thursday evening of the event, and includes a mix of world-exclusive trailer premieres, gameplay reveals, and developer interviews. This year’s showcase will now include game previews, one of IGN’s most popular content formats globally. Formatted to fit the livestream format, these previews will give an objective, first-hand account of what players can expect from some of the games featured in the showcase.

IGN will also continue to power the distinctive glass cube “gamescom studio” on the show floor, broadcasting in both in English and German throughout the show, and will once again create bespoke content for Japan and China through its global teams. IGN has served as the official production partner for gamescom studio since 2019.

“We are thrilled to be expanding our partnership with game and Koelnmesse to bring even more incredible gamescom content to people around the world,” said Yael Prough, President, IGN Entertainment, “and in doing so help shine a light on the creativity, innovation, and talent in the thriving indie community.”

“IGN has been a trusted partner for years,” said Tim Endres, Director gamescom at Koelnmesse. “We’re happy to be working with the team in this new capacity to bring a fresh, innovative approach to the gamescom awesome indies show and bring to life the exciting and groundbreaking indie games that are part of gamescom.”

Stefan Heikhaus, Head of gamescom & Events at game added: “This partnership is a strong signal to the indie community. We want to evolve the gamescom awesome indies show to create more awareness of the amazing indies games that are being showcased at gamescom. We want gamescom to be the platform for people to discover the most exciting indie games.”

Editorial and sponsorship integration into the show is open to any independent developer or publisher who is exhibiting in the entertainment area, indie area, or event arena. Those interested in applying can do so here.

Eve Online’s Carbon engine is now open source: Fenris Creations explains why

In 2024, Fenris Creations – then called CCP Games – said that it was planning to make its Carbon game engine open source. Now, some two years later, the tech behind the long-running sci-fi MMO Eve Online is available on GitHub for everyone to use.

The open-source project is something that the company’s core tech team has been working on at a “slow burn” for some time now, with the bulk of the work done in the last 12 weeks. Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Fenris Creations’ senior development director for core technology, Ben Hunter, explains the reasoning behind it all. “We wanted to get the code out there for inspectability and building trust with the community,” he says.

Ben Hunter | Image credit: Fenris Creations

“Fenris has a long history of building communities and engaging with them. If you look back to the early days of Eve Online, when we exposed our application programming interface (API), that was the start of our effort to engage with the community and let them build something with it. We arrived at this point two and a half to three years ago, where we decided there’s nothing really special about our sauce in terms of the actual code. We, and the community, would be better served by actually getting it out there, having more eyes on it, so that we can actually learn and grow from that, and people can do crazy things with it, which we’re very excited to see.”

It’s early days at the moment. Hunter says that things are “leaning towards” people using Carbon to build within the Eve ecosystem. Members of the community have already been submitting pull requests (PRs) – proposed changes to a codebase – for security fixes, and there’s been chatter about someone making a web app to watch Eve Online content.

“We have to see how that manifests, but essentially, you can build anything with it,” Hunter says.

Carbon is available in its entirety across a number of different modules. Most of the tech is under the MIT License, a popular and permissive option. Only two modules aren’t under that banner: spatial audio clustering is covered by Apache License 2.0, while IO has a Python Software Foundation License.

None of these licenses has any commercial element; someone can use all of Carbon for free. They could make their own MMO using the tech, for free. They could even fork off the engine and build their own version, similar to how the Linux distro system works.

But making money isn’t the point of this venture.

“It’s about garnering the actual interest from people so that they want to invest their time, their effort, their money into contributing something,” Hunter explains. “It’s this belief that rising tides lift all ships. If we improve the code and we can all benefit from it, it’s good for everyone.”

Security concerns

Open sourcing creates a bit of extra work for the core tech team; they’ve got to handle PRs and monitor the changes. This is something Fenris has slowly been hiring towards for years now.

“We announced our intention to open source a couple of years ago, then throughout that period, slowly ramped up in some of the teams, not specifically for open source itself, but rather just to augment the teams so they’d have more bandwidth to handle the mechanics,” Hunter says. “We have reserved time during our sprint process to review PRs, process them, and go through everything.”

Eve Online launched back in 2003. | Image credit: CCP

There are many benefits to opening up your tech and letting anyone take a look under the hood. But bad actors are always out there, looking for any exploit they can find. Hunter says that security is “absolutely” a concern moving forward, adding that it’s a pressure that ensures the team “increases the effort” they put in when reviewing code and making architectural decisions.

“But at the same time, the holes that were there would have been there anyway,” he says. “Actually having the ability to have third parties contribute to and help us close any potential security gaps is very good. To be honest, for an engine that is 23 years old, the number of security-related PRs that we’ve had is quite minimal. That’s eye-opening, in a good way – there’s been a lot of work done over the years. As you can imagine, Eve Online has garnered a lot of interest over the years because of the scale of the fleet fights, the battles, and things like that. Nefarious actors, definitely, in the past, have wanted to probe that and try to disrupt it. There’s been a lot of battle-hardening over 23 years to the infrastructural stack of the engine and the networking layer.”

“The ability to have third parties contribute to and help us close any potential security gaps is very good”

As well as gameplay integrity, there’s also the game’s economy. Eve Online has a complicated, robust, and incredibly valuable in-game economy, with estimates suggesting a trading volume of more than $50 million per year. That part of the game isn’t open source. In fact, Hunter says that a great deal of care was taken in deciding what was marked off for open source and what was not.

“We had to make very careful considerations for what we carved out and what we left off,” he says. “Probably the hardest part of doing the open source project is deciding what genuinely is engine versus what is two decades of things that grew up around it, and then also rebuilding all of the pieces that were middleware or licensing that no longer would be applicable for open sourcing. That’s definitely been a big part of the challenge.”

Weighting from Godot

To help thread the needle, Fenris asked for advice from Godot – an open-source engine project that started in 2014 and that has seen substantial success in the past few years. Hunter notes that “the rise of open, permissible software is definitely a trend at the moment.”

“The main conversations were around governance models,” he continues. “We were expecting Godot to come in and have this playbook of how to govern an open source project at scale like that, but in reality, what it came down to was making the right architectural choices and having the architecture help protect and define the surface area for contribution. If you roll that down, that’s a plug-in model for the engine, which is something Unreal and Unity have, and it’s something we are currently implementing for Carbon at the moment.

We’re moving to this plug-in architecture with our tooling. It’s also something we’ll be open-sourcing in the coming months. The biggest light-bulb moment in that conversation is that we can make some architectural decisions that will help with the actual operational governance of the open source project.”

Ben Hunter says that Fenris Creations sought advice from Godot about creating an open-source engine. | Image credit: Fenris Creations

Regarding Carbon’s governance structure, the project is fully permissible and open. Fenris is accepting contributions and putting together PR templates and contribution guidelines.

“We basically had our code ready to be open-sourced before we had some of the machinery in place to process the actual governance of it,” Hunter says. “That work has all the details of how you can contribute, what criteria you have to meet when it comes to testing your work before it is submitted, and disclosing that you have utilised an LLM. We don’t mind you using an LLM, but you have to disclose it because we may subject it to different scrutiny than if it were not disclosed.”

Looking at the broader engine ecosystem, Hunter describes the landscape as “shifting quite considerably”, pointing at Epic’s recent announcement regarding integrating AI in Unreal Engine 6.

“We don’t mind you using an LLM, but you have to disclose it”

“You’re seeing a lot of the developers that were traditionally going to Unity or Unreal starting to shift gears a little bit towards Godot,” he says. “If you look at Epic’s recent announcements, they are shifting things quite a bit to ensure they can enter the LLM era. Unreal’s been changing a lot of its foundations with the new Verse language and the Scene Graph replacing the Actor model to provide more persistence in large-scale environments. That’s something that Carbon has been doing at scale for a very long time. It’s something we’ve definitely seen the value in contributing to, and a lot of the other engines are starting to want to have their own pathway to this as well.

“There’s a lot of re-architecting going on at the moment, but also the biggest part of this is figuring out the most useful way to integrate or utilise LLMs for workflows more than anything else. We ourselves also have a tools gateway that we’ve just created internally for LLM interfaces, which we are rolling out to the game teams in the coming weeks and after it’s had a bit of hardening time, we’ll be rolling that out as open source as well. There’s definitely a shift in the industry at the moment.”

Testing in the wild

Looking forward, Fenris Creations is going to be developing Carbon in the open. Anyone and everyone can look, and that’s going to impact how the team works.

“The biggest thing is that we will be putting a lot more scrutiny into any bigger architectural changes that we make,” Hunter says. “That’s something that we now have to have much more consideration with the game teams because we will want them to do their own testing of that as well.

“The other, which will definitely change now, is we are seeing the need to create a test project. I don’t want to call it a game, but it’s an example game that is more for the testability and understanding the architecture and get started quickly in the engine. That’s another thing that’s changing a lot. We, as the core tech group, will have to create that test example, and that will become our test space, which will be our example project. Right now, when we make changes to the engine, we have to jump into Eve or Eve Frontier and try to test in those game examples. We don’t have our own simplified example to run through.”

Eve Frontier is a space survival game that integrates the crypto token $EVE. | Image credit: Fenris Creations

It’s taken a great deal of work to get here, but now Carbon is open source, what does Fenris Creations want for its engine over the next five years? Hunter says that he hopes to see a large, “Eve-centric” community build up around the engine that will “create their own augmented versions of the game experience”.

“If you look at history, when we released the API for Eve Online, we saw various side applications that helped you manage the skills of your character or fit the ship,” he continues.

“With Carbon, we’ve given the capabilities and tools to the community, and the ability to make that a much richer experience is so much higher. But if you look at the direction of what Eve Frontier in particular is doing, where they’re becoming a very open builder game, there’s so much more potential there further down the road. I would say that in five years from now, we’d have quite a large community building a lot of infrastructure and apps and experiences around the Eve universe, as it were.”

He concludes: “Of course, anything is possible with it being MIT-licensed, but I would like to see it contributing to the Eve universe as a whole.”

Slitherine acquires Warhammer Blood Bowl licence from troubled French publisher Nacon

Wargame and strategy specialist Slitherine Software has acquired the licence, publishing rights and back catalogue for the Warhammer-derived Blood Bowl franchise from Nacon, following the latter’s filing for insolvency. As part of the deal, Slitherine will publish the upcoming Warhammer Blood Bowl.

The game will continue to be made by long-standing developer Cyanide Studio. Slitherine said it would “continue actively supporting and expanding the Blood Bowl video game, with a strong focus on community feedback, long-term development, and ongoing player engagement.”

Cyanide filed for insolvency in March alongside three other Nacon-owned studios including Greedfall developer Spiders, which subsequently shut down after failing to find a buyer. Marco Minoli, Director of Publishing at Slitherine, tells GamesIndustry.biz that the deal allows Nacaon to “to maintain their studio structure while giving the franchise the specialized, dedicated publishing support that Slitherine is uniquely positioned to offer.”

“We aren’t taking an ownership stake in Cyanide,” he says, “but we are securing a long term development deal with them. Our singular goal is to guarantee the absolute, long-term continuity of development for the game.” He described the deal as “a major, highly significant investment for Slitherine.”

“We aren’t taking an ownership stake in Cyanide, but we are securing a long term development deal with them.”

“As soon as Nacon’s restructuring process began, we saw an opportunity to step up and protect a franchise we love,” he says. “We proactively approached Cyanide and presented a definitive case for why Slitherine would be the ideal partner to support the game moving forward.

“From day one, our visions for the future of Blood Bowl were perfectly aligned. We backed that up with a highly competitive commercial proposition that met their financial objectives. There were certainly other players at the table, but we were focused entirely on our own pitch, and we’re thrilled that our shared vision won out.”

Previous titles in the Blood Bowl series, a turn-based sports game in the Warhammer fantasy setting, have sold almost a million units on Steam, according to GameDiscoverCo data. Slitherine has previously published the Warhammer 40,000: Battlesector and Warhammer 40,000: Gladius games.

“We are delighted to partner with Slitherine to ensure the future of the Blood Bowl video games,” said Patrick Pligersdorffer, CEO of Cyanide. “Slitherine has proven its expertise, publishing high-quality strategy games. We believe it is a perfect match.”

Slitherine said that the acquisition was part of a “wider expansion across the strategy and tactics space, following a series of recent publishing partnerships and catalog acquisitions announced by the company over the past year.”

UK workers request voluntary union recognition at Rockstar

Rockstar employees in the UK have requested voluntary union recognition from the developer to address pay transparency, flexible working, and overtime.

The Rockstar Game Workers Union (RGWU), part of the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB), was established last month.

Members of the IWGB have been organising at Rockstar since 2019, representing “a significant portion of the workforce across each of the studio’s sites in Edinburgh, Dundee, Lincoln, Leeds, and London.”

As the RGWU has grown, the IWGB stated that “Rockstar has already made improvements to workers’ conditions, including unprecedented average pay rises and financial incentives for crunch for the first time ever.”

If formally recognised, the RGWU would make Rockstar the second UK developer with a recognised union. ZA/UM was the first, reaching this milestone in October 2025.

The request for recognition follows an ongoing legal dispute between the IWGB and Rockstar over the dismissal of 34 employees in the UK and Canada last year.

The IWGB accused Rockstar of union busting. Rockstar stated the dismissals were due to staff allegedly leaking “confidential information in a public forum,” specifically a Discord server operated by the IWGB.

The IWGB filed formal legal claims against Rockstar, and the issue was raised in UK Parliament. A final employment tribunal hearing is scheduled for September 2026, “where it will be decided whether workers were unlawfully fired for trade union activity.”

Additional information about the ongoing dispute is available in our timeline of events.

“Applying for union recognition is the next step in strengthening their presence in the workplace,” said IWGB Union president Alex Marshall.

“Rockstar has maintained that it respects workers’ trade union rights. This is now an opportunity for it to demonstrate that in practice.

“Grand Theft Auto 6 has reportedly already generated more than $3 billion in preorder sales. Rockstar bosses can easily afford to sit around the table with the people whose hard work created these games, and give them a meaningful voice in their workplace.”

Rockstar North production co-ordinator Shanti Easton-Steel added: “This is a landmark moment for the Rockstar Game Workers Union, and hopefully for the industry as a whole.

“It’s thanks to the hard work of so many of our members – both those currently with us and those who were fired last October – that we are now in a strong enough position to pursue formal recognition.

“Whilst it’s painful that our dismissed colleagues are not here to share this milestone moment, the best way we can honour their contribution now is by succeeding in the fight they helped us to start, and making them proud to have been a part of it.”

Xbox ends deal to fund and publish IO Interactive’s Project Fantasy; redundancies expected

Xbox has exited a deal to fund and publish IO Interactive’s online fantasy RPG, codenamed Project Fantasy, a move that may lead to job losses.

IO Interactive stated it must “adapt to this new reality and its short-term consequences, including staff decisions.”

The developer added it will “support those affected through this challenging transition,” and clarified it was “100% committed” to Project Fantasy and that the game “will see the light of day.”

Speaking to Bloomberg, an Xbox spokesperson clarified the firm is “taking a fresh look at where we invest so we’re focusing on our highest priorities” and is “not reducing our overall investment in games.”

“We expect to invest about the same in content as last year. What’s changing is where we’re investing and the kinds of projects we’re backing.”

This decision coincides with a significant round of job cuts at Xbox expected to begin next week.

According to The Verge, further studio closures may occur, including Blade developer Arkane Studios Lyon.

Sources indicate Microsoft is “exploring options to sell” the developer, as was reportedly the case with Compulsion Games, Double Fine, and Ninja Theory.

Last month, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma said the firm needed to “reassess [its] investment priorities for the next five years,” warning that it had “become too reliant on vendors to operate our systems and must become more self-reliant as an engineering culture to build for the future.”

In response to reports of layoffs, the Communications Workers of America union expressed support for Xbox staff.

CWA District 9 VP Frank Acre said staff within Microsoft’s gaming division “will not be treated as disposable.”

“Every company faces real business challenges and pressures. That is a fact. But let me tell you this: it’s our CWA members who make the gains that make Xbox valuable.”

In response, Xbox said it respects “the right of our team members to make their voices heard.”

It added: “We have a long track record of good faith partnership with labour organisations, as demonstrated by the several finalised bargaining agreements our teams have reached with the CWA and our labour principles.

“We are continuing to negotiate in good faith with the CWA to reach agreements across Xbox.”

Rokky launches unofficial Steam tool for checking if bundle and press keys have been used

Key distribution platform Rokky has debuted a free browser plugin for publishers and developers to monitor if distributed Steam keys have been used. The firm described it as a tool for “partner reconciliation and sales forecasting” and “safe post-bundle verification”.

The Steam Key Checker plugin, which has not been developed with or approved by Valve, works by asking users to upload a CSV of issued keys which are then checked against the user’s Steam partner account. Rokky CEO Vadim Andreev suggests to GamesIndustry.biz that the tool will be most beneficial to publishers who need to manage keys en masse, after generating large numbers of keys to be included in bundles or distributed to press or influencers. “Lots of publishers do this, especially indie and AA developers, and so many have no idea what happens to these keys once they are sent off,” he says.

The tool has not been developed with Valve. | Image credit: Rokky

“Steam does let you track every key generated, but actually doing so in practice is very time consuming and can get quite confusing. Especially if you’re a publisher undertaking many marketing or distribution campaigns all at once, and so are generating hundreds to thousands of game keys to be sent globally.”

“For example, if an influencer doesn’t cover a game, the publisher could use this tool to actually check if the influencer redeemed the code and if they did but weren’t covering it, the publisher could look into why. It’s a tool designed to provide more data to publishers and support their distribution strategies.”

“This is a feature that a lot of publishers have told us they wish Steam had. We made this Steam Key Checker free as we hope it serves as a temporary solution to this problem, one that Steam themselves will eventually solve.”

Andreev says the firm has not worked with Valve on the tool, and there was a risk that it will update the Steam platform in a way that would prevent it from working. He also admits there is a risk that publishers could use the tool to enable them to revoke keys that had been issued in bundles but not used. “I would seriously advise against doing that,” he says. “It’s not meant to be a tool to punish customers.”

CWA union says Xbox workers are not “disposable” as layoffs loom

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) union has come out in support of its members at Xbox as reports of mass layoffs continue to loom.

At an online press conference – as reported by Kotaku – CWA District 9 VP Frank Acre said staff within Microsoft’s games business “will not be treated as disposable”.

He continued, saying that the Xbox giant has no shortage of money – citing the price increase in consoles recently – while Sherveen Uduwana, a rep for United Video Game Workers, pointed to the huge sums being spent on executive compensation, such as Satya Nadella’s $96.5 million compensation for the last financial year. Meanwhile, Diablo 4 senior environment artist Mahreen Fatima noted that Microsoft has spent massive amounts on artificial intelligence.

“They’re just choosing not to protect us,” they said.

Acre added: “The money is there. Leadership is simply choosing where it goes and who pays. Every company faces real business challenges and pressures. That is a fact. But let me tell you this: it’s our CWA members who make the gains that make Xbox valuable.”

In a statement to press, an Xbox spokesperson said that the company respects “the right of our team members to make their voices heard.

“We have a long track record of good faith partnership with labour organisations, as demonstrated by the several finalised bargaining agreements our teams have reached with the CWA and our labour principles. We are continuing to negotiate in good faith with the CWA to reach agreements across Xbox.”

Microsoft entered into a labour neutrality agreement with the CWA back in 2022 when the Xbox giant was trying to push through its acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The union then backed the deal, saying that employees will have “a seat at the table”.

In June, Bloomberg reported that Xbox was planning to make layoffs as new CEO Asha Sharma attempts to redirect the business. There’s even reporting that Microsoft was looking to close Compulsion Games, while Double Fine and Ninja Theory could also be shut down. The Verge reports that Ninja Theory has told staff that the studio is looking for a buyer.

Double Fine recently became the latest Microsoft subsidiary to unionise.

Meanwhile, The Information says that one option being weighed up by Microsoft is to spin off Xbox as either a separate entity or a wholly-owned subsidiary. The games business might also be sold.

nDreams founder launches new studio Atmospheric to create “original IP across games and music”

The founder of VR studio nDreams, Patrick O’Luanaigh, has launched a new studio called Atmospheric, described as “a new independent entertainment company creating original intellectual property across games and music.” O’Luanaigh stepped down from nDreams in May 2025 after 19 years as CEO, and eighteen months after the studio was acquired by Aonic. Prior to founding nDreams, he held senior roles at SCi, Eidos and Codemasters.

Atmospheric will “explore new ways of bringing games and music together, developing immersive worlds in which narrative, interactivity and audio are conceived as part of a single creative vision,” the firm said in a press release, adding that its approach “centres on building distinctive worlds and stories that can extend naturally across games, music and other formats.”

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, O’Luanaigh says this does not mean the studio was making “a music-based game like Guitar Hero, Beat Saber or even PaRappa the Rapper.

“I guess a movie like Baby Driver might be a closer analogy, actually,” he says. “We’re exploring how music can affect gameplay and in particular the emotional response that players get when playing.”

“I love powerful stories, twisting narrative, flawed yet lovable characters and games that make you feel things. I loved the Telltale games, and indie games like Firewatch. But I’ve also been a part-time composer and audio engineer, so it’s a chance for me to come up with something a little different – a game that doubles down on tension, storyline, music and audio, but still very much indie.”

Patrick Luanaigh in his studio. | Image credit: Atmospheric

O’Luanaigh says he is currently the only employee, working with freelance contributors for art, writing, and some coding, and does not foresee recruiting any staff until the company’s first game is signed. The studio has taken no investment and is currently self-funded. “Our plan is to get a publishing partner on board at the right time – probably the start of next year – to help fund the full game,” he says.

He described the impetus behind the studio’s founding as being how much he’d missed being hands-on with coding and creative development. “I started as a coder and creative director, but for my last eight years at nDreams, I had to step away and spend my time managing people and investors. I’m lucky enough to have the chance to get back to what I really love, and try to make something different – something I’m really proud of – with the help of a few brilliant people.

“I loved my time at nDreams, and I’m very proud of what we achieved. But my very happiest time there was when the team was small, working on something truly innovative and utterly exciting, as opposed to when we were 250-people strong building big projects. There is much less pressure this time, and I’m going to make sure the journey remains incredibly fun.”

“I literally built an investment firm that wouldn’t have funded my own pitch” – Why the money isn’t reaching the games that need it

A roundtable workshop at the this year’s Madeira Games Summit, at which executives and studio leaders spoke under the condition of anonymity, gave some insight into why funding keeps going to the same companies and risk-averse projects, rather than deserving, original video games.

Hosted by Vivrato founder Adam Boyes – formerly co-CEO of Iron Galaxy Studios and VP of third-party relations at PlayStation – the workshop consisted of four stages. First, the participants wrote game pitches, then they designed investment funds, before building a hypothetical portfolio as a group. Finally, they rewrote their pitches using what they had learned.

Adam Boyes

The result: when given $1 million to invest, almost nobody built a fund to back video games.

Participants who had passionately pitched original game projects at the start of the session found themselves designing funds that were weighted toward tools, infrastructure, platform technology, and Roblox creator ecosystems. Less than half of the total capital allocated across all fund designs went to traditional game content.

The irony was not lost on the room. As one participant put it: “I literally built an investment firm that wouldn’t have funded my own pitch.”

This highlights the core problem: developers and investors do not operate from the same mental model, and most developers don’t realise this until they are forced to sit in the other chair.

Key insights

A major insight from the workshop was the language gap between developers and investors.

In their pitches, the participants led with creative vision, emotional conviction, and game design, but when asked to switch to the investor seat, they instinctively demanded financial results like return structures and downside protection. Leaders knew how to think like investors, but they didn’t apply that thinking when they were on the other side of the table.

GamesIndustry.biz editorial director Jon Hicks interviews Bethesda’s Angela Browder at the Madeira Games Summit. | Image credit: DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit

This revelation prompted some introspection from the participants. “The dichotomy in mindset between pitching and investing was something I’d never felt before,” said one. “As a developer I’d say take more risks,” said another. “As an investor I’d only email the ones already succeeding.”

One participant who had run a company for nine years found themselves being drawn to Roblox rather than conventional game development, judging its model as “the most interesting because of the number of bets.”

“As a developer I’d say take more risks. As an investor I’d only email the ones already succeeding”

Another key insight was that no one quoted returns when they made their initial pitches, even though all who designed a fund included explicit return targets and timelines. “Articulating passion in a way that also shows forecast and realistic return – that’s the work,” said one participant.

The attendees observed that the investors who remain interested in games – having been burned by previous forays – are more risk-averse than they used to be, which makes the communication burden on developers higher.

Solutions offered in order to lower the risk for investors included the use of demos and playtesting platforms to validate the market for a game, as well as targeting emerging markets via local payment structures.

Pitch recommendations

Several recommendations for developers emerged from the workshop. One was to lead every pitch with return expectations and a specific timeframe.

Another was to identify what kind of capital was actually needed – publisher advance, equity investment, or a revenue share deal – as well as to carefully research the investment fund’s remit before approaching them. Pitching content to a tools-and-tech fund, to cite one example, would be a wasted meeting for both sides.

One piece of advice was to actually talk with fund managers and ask how they make money, with the idea that even a short, 15-minute conversation could provide invaluable pitch preparation. The discussion suggested that there’s a need for more operators who understand both the investment and development mindset, and can bridge the gap between them.

Adam Boyes at Madeira Games Summit 2026. | Image credit: DevGAMM Madeira Games Summit

A key finding that emerged during discussion was that most developers pitch their dream funding targets first, but a more effective approach is to deliberately sequence pitches in order of target hierarchy, and only approach the desired backers at the end of the process.

The suggested sequence was to first pitch to friends and industry contacts to gain feedback, before then targeting those who are likely to reject the pitch, in order to learn from their responses. The third target should be long-shot funders and publishers, before finally pitching to the “real” targets, with the benefit of having delivered and honed the pitch over dozens of previous presentations over a period of 9-12 months.

Attendees also suggested other ways in which the industry could adapt to support companies looking for funding. One proposal was to create structured forums where developers can practice investor-side thinking before they’re in live pitch situations.

Another was to create fund structures that are purpose-built for games, for example using revenue-share models that match game development timelines rather than traditional fund cycles. Indeed, one idea was to normalize the three-game deal structure, with the notion that this would provide better “portfolio math” – the equations and frameworks used by investors to calculate returns – as well as giving developers more runway.

Boyes provides the final conclusion: “The money exists. The games exist. The gap is a translation problem – and it’s solvable. The developers in this room proved it by thinking like investors the moment real capital was on the table. The work is getting them to bring that thinking into every pitch meeting, not just the ones where it’s their own money at risk.”

PlayStation CEO says company wants to “revitalise” live-service games

The CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Hideaki Nishino, has said that he wants to “revitalise” live-service projects through a combination of first- and third-party content.

Speaking to the Japanese media outlet Famitsu – translated by Wccftech – the executive said that live service is still a relatively new kind of game and that it is “important to continuously provide something”.

“We believe that live service games are content that attracts users on a global level, so we want to continue to revitalise the market through both first-party and third-party content,” Nishino said.

“We are not only focusing on promoting new releases, but also considering what we can do with older titles in the medium to long term. Also, this year we are planning to release our own live service title, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and we hope everyone will enjoy it.”

He continued: “With live service games, it’s important to continuously provide something. The genre itself is relatively new, and I think many people are trying various things, so we also want to continue to take on challenges within that context.”

It appears this interview was conducted some time ago. There are remarks that Nishino made about how PlayStation decides what projects are exclusive to its consoles and which come to other platforms, such as PC, that were posted to and discussed on ResetEra weeks ago.

But the online version of the interview went live on June 26, the day after Sony announced it was making severe cuts at Destiny maker Bungie, which the PlayStation maker acquired for $3.6 billion in 2022.

At the time, then-Sony Interactive Entertainment boss Jim Ryan told GamesIndustry.biz that the deal was about multiplayer and live-service titles.

Sony has had little luck with its live-service slate; Concord was pulled from sale after just two weeks following its August 2024 release and the company has cancelled service-based projects from Bend Studio and Bluepoint Games.

Sony shut down Concord’s developer, Firewalk Studios, following the debacle. The platform holder has since closed Bluepoint Games.

The only major success that PlayStation has had with this kind of game is Helldivers 2, which, according to Alinea Analytics, has sold over 20 million copies and generated more than $700 million in revenue.

SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron sued over allegations of “concerted anticompetitive behaviour” in DRAM market

Chip giants SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron are the subject of a class action lawsuit claiming that the three have engaged in “concerted anticompetitive behaviour” in the DRAM market.

As reported by Law360, the class is represented by antitrust specialist Bathaee Dunne LLP, which alleged in its initial filing with the District Court for the Northern District of California that the three companies coordinated their exit from DDR3 and DDR4 production and pivoted to producing high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for data centres. That’s on top of accusations that they have been fixing supplies and prices since 2022.

Lawyers claim that the trio has cut the supply of consumer – or ‘conventional’ – DRAM in defiance of “all economic and business logic”, pointing to Micron’s 2025 shutdown of its consumer-facing Crucial DRAM business at what is claimed to be its “most profitable point in its history”. Conventional DRAM prices have risen by around 700% over the last four years.

The filing also notes that Samsung, Hynix and Micron were found to be taking part in a criminal conspiracy to fix DRAM prices between 1998 and 2002.

Lawyers also say that due to the massive amount of capital required to set up a DRAM fab – estimated to be $15-to-$20 billion – and the long roadmap involved, it’s hard for new entrants to join the market and “discipline” the three companies.

The class is made up of consumers and brick-and-mortar retailers.

SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have all signed huge deals to provide hardware for AI data centres and has thus focused on providing chips for that purpose. As a result, there has been a severe downturn in consumer-facing DRAM and NAND supply, resulting in soaring prices.

Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Valve have all increased the costs of their game hardware; Valve also recently said that its soon-to-be-released Steam Machine console costs more than it would like as a result of the AI boom.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz earlier this year, one industry expert described the current market for hardware as “totally crazy”.

In its financials for its last quarter, Micron reported a 1,398% increase in profit year-on-year.

CD Projekt rebrands to CD Projekt Red

Polish games firm CD Projekt has opted to change its name to CD Projekt Red.

The decision was voted on at the company’s general meeting on June 23 – as spotted by local finance outlet Bankier.pl – and was done to “unify the company’s name with that of the CD Projekt Red studio”, according to justification put forward by management.

CD Projekt was founded in 1994 as a distributor for foreign video games in Poland. Eight years later, the company set up the CD Projekt Red studio to develop a game based on The Witcher book series, for which it had acquired the rights.

“The studio’s activities currently correspond to the Company’s core operational activity, which consists of producing and publishing video games and managing the Company’s brands, including through the creation and licensing of accompanying products,” management wrote in justification of the name change ahead of the general meeting.

“In the opinion of the management board, the new company name will ensure consistency in the communication of the CD Projekt Red brand, which will, among other things, facilitate the identification of the company with its products on the global market.”

In addition to the CD Projekt Red studio, the CD Projekt holding company also used to have the GOG storefront under its umbrella. At the end of 2025, CD Projekt sold the PC platform to Michał Kiciński, one of the its founders, for $25 million.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz following the deal’s being announced, GOG managing director Maciej Gołębiewski said that CD Projekt initiated the deal, but added that this did not come as a surprise.

“We have different strategies,” he said. “GOG has a different strategy, CD Projekt has [its] own strategy. So I think at this point it was really natural.”

CD Projekt Red is currently working on The Witcher 4, while the company’s Boston office is handling development on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. There’s also a multiplayer game set in The Witcher universe in the works at CD Projekt Red North America – codenamed Project Sirius – while CD Projekt Red is also developing its first original IP in Project Hadar.

Valve can afford a niche, pricey hardware launch; Sony and Microsoft can’t | Opinion

The great hardware pricing crisis may feel like it’s been going on for ages, but in truth, its full effects have only been felt in certain specific consumer sectors so far. If you’re directly shopping for PC components like RAM or SSDs, you know just how bad things have become; people in the market for things like SD cards or USB sticks may also have seen some jaw-dropping prices lately.

If you’re buying something pre-assembled from a major manufacturer, though, the impact – while real – probably hasn’t felt all that bad yet. Price hikes have happened, with newer models especially being priced well above their predecessors, but it’s not quite the full-blown pricing apocalypse we were warned about.

Not yet, anyway. Before anyone dismisses fears about soaring hardware prices as overblown, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are a few layers of cushioning in play here.

Major manufacturers generally have supply contracts that protect them from sudden massive price spikes, but they don’t get grandfathered into the old pricing for very long – such contracts are a protection against short-term market instability, not a guarantee of long-term pricing. In turn, those large companies also prefer to smooth out the pricing impact on their consumers, accepting a temporary hit to their margins to avoid the massive sudden price shocks that would result from passing through new component costs all at once.

It’s very apparent that we’re coming to the end of whatever grace period those contracts and policies might have offered. This week, Microsoft became the latest major manufacturer to hike prices, adding $100 to the 512GB Xbox Series S and $150 to the 1TB version.

Days earlier, we saw Apple raising starting prices across its entire line-up of Macs and iPads by at least $100 (and over $1,000 for some high-end models). The iPhone held its pricing, but it’s likely that new models arriving in the autumn will carry eye-watering price tags. For all that Apple is noted for extravagant pricing policies in many cases, it was actually one of the last major hold-outs in this move; most PC manufacturers have already passed through huge price hikes, though some – like Microsoft – are still warning grimly of worse to come.

Pricing for Valve’s Steam Machine was announced this week. | Image credit: Valve

That’s the context in which we have to consider Valve’s $1,000+ pricing for the Steam Machine. Coming hot on the heels of 40%+ price rises for the Steam Deck, and fully exposed to all of the same market pressures – not least of which being that Valve isn’t a major enough hardware manufacturer to command any pricing power with component suppliers – the price tag wasn’t a surprise. It was still a disappointment, of course, not least for Valve themselves I suspect, but this is the market reality right now.

For some consumers, in some niches, the Steam Machine may still look like a pretty good deal, at least once they get over the initial sharp intake of breath at the number of digits in the price. If you’re someone with an elderly gaming PC on its last legs who has been priced out of upgrades, for example, Valve’s offering is one of the more cost-effective ways to be able to play new releases. The high price points will certainly limit the addressable market for the device, but it will probably carve out a decent niche for itself among consumers who are directly comparing it to gaming PC pricing, rather than to consoles or other consumer devices.

For Valve, a decent niche may be just fine. For other major companies in the industry, not so much. It’s often observed that the Switch 2 outstripped the lifetime sales of the Steam Deck in under a month. That illustrates the vastly different scales which Nintendo and Valve operate at in the hardware market, but it also serves as a reminder that the commercial performance of the Steam Deck, which was perfectly fine for Valve, would have been an absolute catastrophe for Nintendo. The Steam Deck could thrive in a niche; if the Switch 2 had only found a niche of that scale, it would have been a disaster worse than the failure of the Wii U.

The Wii U: 13.5 million lifetime sales was a disappointment for Nintendo. | Image credit: Nintendo

The same logic applies to two other industry giants who are lining up massive, consequential hardware launches in the next couple of years – launches which are likely to come while component pricing is still sky-high. Neither Sony nor Microsoft can afford for their next consoles to be a “niche success”; a level of commercial success that would make for a decent new string to Valve’s extensive bow would be the stuff of nightmares for a PlayStation or Xbox launch.

Yet both of those companies are facing down the barrel of exactly the same supply chain and pricing issues that forced Valve to hike prices over that psychologically massive $1,000 mark. Both of them do have a lot more muscle to throw around in terms of pricing power, which will help, and they’re also better situated to subsidise hardware pricing somewhat (unlike Valve, which would effectively be subsidising every Linux nerd’s next home media server – including mine – if they had sold the Steam Machine at a loss). Nonetheless, both companies have still had to raise prices on current-gen hardware – and there’s little reason to assume that Microsoft’s move this week won’t be followed by similar from Sony before the year is out.

Moreover, for their next-gen offerings they’re trying to build vastly more ambitious hardware than the Steam Machine, whose raw performance seems to be situated somewhere around the same level as a PS5. At the kind of performance bracket we’d normally expect from a PlayStation 6 or Microsoft’s Project Helix, we have to start contemplating not only $1,000 price tags, but even higher; $1,000 may actually be the best-case scenario for an entry-level console in the next generation.

The discussions behind closed doors at both companies are undoubtedly intense. The question of how much cost the console market can sustain before your device simply isn’t a mass-market proposition any more is an extremely tough one. We’ve seen that a lot of consumers are remarkably tolerant of high prices for some consumer devices like smartphones, but translating that directly into the console market doesn’t make a lot of sense. The risk of launching a console that’s simply priced out of its target market is very real – and it would be a brutally costly mistake to rectify, with heavy hardware subsidies being basically the only lever the platform holders could pull to try to claw back their audience.

“$1,000 may actually be the best-case scenario for an entry-level console in the next generation”

Given that situation, it’s unsurprising that we’re starting to see hints of strategies aimed at mitigating those risks – at least in part. Microsoft’s messaging around Project Helix remains minimal, but in the past weeks it’s hinted that it’s reconsidering a lot of fundamentals around the console in response to the hardware pricing crisis. What that reconsideration looks like is up in the air. We know that in the relatively recent past, Project Helix was pitched as a high-end, premium device that would combine Xbox console and gaming PC into a single system – an ambition that now looks incredibly hard to fulfil at a mass-market price point. A repeat of the reasonably successful Series S/Series X specification split might be one option to soften the pricing blow without entirely abandoning that original vision. Leaning more heavily on streaming (perhaps resurrecting the notion of an Xbox streaming-only device as an entry-level console) or adapting the Game Pass model to include payment plans for hardware could also be possible.

We know even less about Sony’s plans for PS6 at this juncture, but I suspect that the company’s recent return to a relentless focus on big, high-profile PlayStation exclusives is not disconnected from its worries about the direction of hardware pricing. Refocusing on the kind of big single-player exclusives that made the PS4 into such a powerhouse is good business under any circumstances, but if the next-gen console is going to have to justify a $1,000+ price tag, the first-party software line-up will have to shoulder an immense amount of the responsibility for selling hardware. Consumers faced with a doubling of console prices over the course of a single generation will be far, far less forgiving of a sparse release schedule than they were last time around.

Steam Machine isn’t exactly a canary in the coal mine for these consoles – it’s a very different beast from the outset, especially given the nature of Valve’s position within PC gaming more broadly. For a system with relatively low-powered hardware to hit this price point, however, is a stark warning about the direction pricing is going, and just how bad things are going to get on that front – in ways that Valve may be able to tolerate, but risk catastrophe for Sony or Microsoft. Both companies are no doubt scrambling to find ways to lessen the impact; but with component prices expected to rise even further by the end of this year, their room for manoeuvre is uncomfortably narrow.

Xbox hits worst US sales month on record, PS5 drops 58%, as hardware prices soar

Xbox just had its worst May on record in terms of hardware unit sales, while PlayStation 5 fell to its lowest May since 2000, as consumers feel the impact of increasing prices.

That’s according to Circana’s latest video games sales report, which suggests that PlayStation 5 unit sales declined by 58% compared to last May, while Xbox Series hardware units fell by 12%.

Overall spending on game hardware actually increased by 38% when compared to a year ago ($249M), but this was propped up by Nintendo Switch 2. PS5 spending was down 43%, driven by recent price increases, while Xbox hardware spending actually grew 7% compared to a year ago.

Notably, the average price paid for a new unit of video game hardware reached $502 in May, which is up 14% compared to a year ago ($440). Last month, the average price of a PlayStation 5 console increased by 33% versus a year ago to $672, with Xbox Series up 22%, to $524.

Nintendo Switch 2 was again the best-selling hardware platform in both units and dollars for May and 2026 year-to-date, and reached the end of its first year with a US installed base of 5.9M units.

Nintendo Switch 2 is the 2nd fastest-selling video game hardware in US tracked history, behind only the Game Boy Advance (6.5M).

007 First Light was May’s number one title in full game dollar sales, debuting as the 4th best-seller of 2026 year-to-date. Forza Horizon 6 was the 2nd best-selling game of the month and finished May ranked 5th year-to-date.

In the latest big price increase for gaming hardware, Microsoft announced earlier this week that Xbox consoles will soon cost between $100 and $150 more.

Starting August 1, 2026, the cheapest Series X 1TB model without a disc drive will retail for $749.99, while the cheapest 512GB Xbox Series S model will now cost $499.99. This means that an Xbox Series X disc-drive model now costs $300 more than it did at launch in 2020, while the Series S is 50% more expensive.

In a statement, Xbox blamed the price increases on “the current components crisis” impacting the consumer electronics industry, which has seen all three major console manufacturers raise prices significantly.

“Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x, and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027,” Microsoft said.

Earlier this week, Valve confirmed its Steam Machine would retail for over $1,000 – a price point some analysts later speculated would be “the floor” for next-gen consoles expected to arrive from 2027.

Five things to avoid when marketing your indie game | Opinion

Axel Fälth and Linn Stjernlöf of Mi5 Communications share over two decades of experience within PR and marketing in the tech and games industry, and have worked with clients including Raw Fury, Ubisoft, Sega, Low Drag Labs, IO Interactive, Bethesda and Krufs Productionss.

Last year, over 20,000 new titles were released on Steam, up from around 3,000 a decade earlier. One of the reasons behind this impressive increase is the growing number of new indie studios popping up around the world – this is a natural consequence of how the industry has changed since the COVID pandemic, and over the years, we have come to work more and more with indie studios.

These studios all share the same dream: to be the next big indie hit. But many games with great potential struggle to cut through the noise, as they compete against both AAA titles and other indies to gain the attention of investors and potential players.

Every now and again you see the next indie star rise: all of a sudden everyone is discussing, streaming, sharing, and playing the same new game. This is no coincidence. Most of the time, these teams have not only made a great game, but also done a lot of work to make themselves heard and seen.

Of course, there are lucky exceptions. Perhaps the right person- be that a streamer or an editor at a gaming site – got hold of the game at the right moment, and as a consequence the game snowballed towards commercial success. But in our experience, many of the most successful indie games have benefited from teams that put in the effort to market their game, rather than blindly launching it into the void and hoping for the best.

Indie hit Meccha Chameleon has sold more than 7 million units. | Image credit: lemorion_1224

Let’s be real. It’s not only understandable, but rational that marketing and communications aren’t at the top of most developers’ priority list. Making games is expensive both in terms of money and time. At some point, most will need to start cutting things from their budget, and our observation is that quite often marketing and communications are among the first things that get the chop.

You don’t need to close the door to communication and marketing, even if money is tight. But if you’re shouldering the burden yourself, there are a few common mistakes and pitfalls to bear in mind. Below, we highlight a few traps that are easy to fall into, but just as easy to avoid.

Not knowing your target audience

Many studios know their game inside out, but struggle to answer who the game is actually for. Imagine who will buy, play, and enjoy your game. Where do those players spend their time? Who and what influences their purchasing decisions? Once you have answered those questions, you can streamline your communication efforts and make sure your time and budget are well spent. This helps you to reach only the people who are relevant when time and money are limited.

Overly technical communication

Developers often focus on features, systems, and technical aspects of the game. That’s only natural when development and creation are the main focus for the studio. It is not, however, these aspects that will engage possible consumers. Players connect with emotions, experiences, and outcomes. Studios need to take a step back from development and articulate the feelings the game will and should evoke in the players. Once that’s done, all of the marketing assets should elevate these feelings, whether it’s through catch-phrases, trailers, screenshots, or press release copy.

Analysis paralysis

Marketing can feel overwhelming, especially for smaller teams. There are so many channels, media outlets, communities, and ways of communication that the flood of options can lead to decision paralysis. If you are starting to feel this way, begin with two to three channels that feel easily manageable and make sense for you, your team, and your game. Once you have them properly planned and running regularly, you can add additional beats and channels. Consistency and achievable activities outperform ambitious plans that never materialise.

Putting all your eggs in one basket

In games marketing, there is no such thing as a silver bullet for each game launch. It can seem like an easy solution to go all in on a trending platform you’ve seen other studios succeed on. But with a sparse budget, you need to be creative and open to trying, failing, and trying again. A diversified approach that involves continuously testing to find out what works for each game in that particular time window is the safer road to success. Whether it is influencer marketing, PR, digital marketing, or getting your game visible at events, it is always hard to predict the outcome. Will your game find its players on social media like Meccha Chameleon, gain wishlists through a launch trailer like Minimo, or achieve a hyped launch through a positive preview on PC Gamer like Esoteric Ebb?

Treating PR as a launch activity

It is tempting to leave the communication and outreach until the launch or first demo. But communication has a role throughout a game’s lifecycle, from studio branding and investor relations to community building and product marketing. Visibility is built over time, not just at launch. Momentum is not built in a single beat. It is created by committed focus and effort, from the first idea to post-launch activities. The investment in time, analytics, and community building during development will be reaped at launch.

These five traps are easy to avoid when you know how to tackle them, and by doing so, you are already doing a lot more than most indie game developers. There is so much untapped talent in the indie game scene, so many great games just wait to be discovered. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to give your game the attention it deserves: it might be what is needed to to reach its full potential.

Amazon Brazil GTA 6 description mentions unannounced features

Grand Theft Auto VI – better known as GTA 6 – has had unannounced features detailed by a listing on Amazon Brazil.

The details were noticed by the Brazilian site Sucumba Games. The Amazon listing describes some details we already knew or could assume – two playable protagonists, a larger map – but there are new pieces of information Rockstar hasn’t yet shared.

The full (machine-translated) product description is as follows:

• “AVAILABLE TO PLAY ON 11/19/2026 WITH ADVANCE DELIVERY.
• FORMAT: CODE IN BOX: PHYSICAL VERSION OF GTA VI CONTAINING DOWNLOAD CODE INSIDE THE PACKAGING.
• PRE-ORDER: All pre-orders and purchases of Grand Theft Auto VI made before November 20th will receive the Vintage Vice City Pack, a collection of items reminiscent of the era when neon shone brightest.
• LARGER MAP: Explore Vice City, beaches, swamps, small towns, and various regions of Leonida.
• TWO PLAYABLE PROTAGONISTS: Switch between Jason and Lucia during the story and participate in missions as a duo.A MORE VIBRANT OPEN WORLD: NPCs with their own routines, random events, interactive establishments, and a greater sense of immersion.
• INTEGRATED SOCIAL NETWORKS: Watch viral videos, follow influencers, and discover world events through your in-game mobile phone.
• NEXT-GENERATION GRAPHICS: Advanced lighting, dynamic weather, more natural animations, and a high level of detail in environments.”

This information was likely provided to Amazon by Rockstar or publisher Take-Two Interactive and is probably accurate.

Amazon Brasil VAZOU detalhes do GTA 6 na descrição da Mídia Física que a Rockstar não havia confirmado

• Mundo Aberto mais vivo com NPC’s tendo rotina própria
• Redes Sociais integradas
• Gráficos de nova geração com Clima dinâmico

Lojas do exterior não tem essa descrição. pic.twitter.com/PWHWKMnbco

— Sucumba Games (@SucumbaGames) June 26, 2026

NPCs having their own routines and procedural or “random” events being possible is a new detail, as is the depth of the social network mechanic. We’ve seen this teased previously in trailers, but now we understand that the social networks will have their own influencers.

Other details we already knew, such as the lack of a disc version of GTA 6 at launch and the pre-order bonuses.

GTA 6 is coming on November 19, 2026. Retailers are warning of console shortages as fan anticipation for Trailer 3 is reaching a fever pitch.

Retiring Mario and Zelda director Takashi Tezuka clarifies he’ll still be involved at Nintendo

Veteran Nintendo designer Takashi Tezuka says he’ll still be involved with the company in some capacity, even though he’ll no longer be part of its executive board.

It was announced last month by Nintendo that Tezuka would retire from his role as an executive officer today, June 26.

During a Q&A session at Nintendo’s 2026 shareholders’ meeting, however, Tezuka reportedly said he would still be involved as as ‘production producer’.

In Japan, a production producer is a term often used in anime to describe a job similar to a line producer, where someone works between the creative and financial staff to oversee the day-to-day creation of content.

As reported by X user NStyles, who attended the meeting and has reported on previous Q&As in the past, one shareholder asked if Tezuka could share some words about his resignation.

Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa reportedly replied that Tezuka started with the company during the Nintendo days, but would continue to be involved in development going forward.

Tezuka then appeared to confirm this too, reportedly saying (via machine translation): “On this occasion, I will be stepping down upon the expiration of my term. Looking back on 42 years, my feeling is ‘that was such enjoyable work’.

“We used to make our own games from scratch, things you couldn’t find in toy stores. Now the company has grown on a large scale, and there’s the joy of creating together with many people. With new technologies like 3D, stereoscopic imagery and motion controls, it was a joy to work as an engineer.

“Working at Nintendo is about developing and delivering products that bring joy to people around the world. It’s something the entire company thinks about and creates with flexibility. I truly feel that working for this company was the right choice.

“Going forward, I will continue to be involved as a production producer. Thank you for providing me with this opportunity to say a few words.”

回答17
古川：手塚はファミコンソフトから関わってきた。今後も開発に関わっていく。あとは本人から。

手塚：この度、任期満了で退任します。
42年間をふりかえってみて「楽しい仕事だったな」と感じました。
自分たちでおもちゃ屋にない遊びを手作りしていた。…

— あれっくす (@NStyles) June 26, 2026

Tezuka was then reportedly met with loud applause from the shareholders.

Tezuka is one of the most experienced game designers at Nintendo, having directed classic games such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario World, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Yoshi’s Island. Most recently, Tezuka was the producer of Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

At 65, Tezuka is at Nintendo’s typical retirement age, though his longtime collaborator, Shigeru Miyamoto (73), also remains active at the company as executive fellow.

Epic’s Sweeney claims Steam AI labels are “really irresponsible of Valve”

The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, has said that Valve’s decision to have disclosure labels for projects on Steam that make use of AI is “really irresponsible”.

Speaking to PC Gamer, the Fortnite chief said that this decision makes life harder for developers, arguing that AI is a way for creators to make unique assets comparable with asset stores or photoscanning. Sweeney continued, saying that the real value isn’t in creating the perfect asset, but rather in the game, narrative and gameplay around those objects.

“It’s unfortunate we’re in this situation. It’s unfortunate that so many developers now are put into this position. If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wishlist it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game,” Sweeney said.

“I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”

Sweeney also discussed the loud public opposition to the use of AI in game development. The Epic boss said that the issue is “not a PR question”, but rather one of “adoption of tools”.

“There’s nothing like a prompt-to-game solution on the horizon that anybody expects will work. All we have right now is the acceleration of programming using these coding assistant tools,” Sweeney said. “They make programmers more productive for a lot of things—like it’s a lot better. Instead of spending an hour hunting down a bug, Claude Code might spend an hour hunting it down for you, then you spend five minutes fixing it.”

Pressed on AI use being a PR problem – that the case has not successfully been made to consumers – Sweeney said that it’s “impossible” to “reconcile the idea” that developers shouldn’t use AI – which he frames as “productivity-improving tools” – with the current state of the market.

“We’ve got to find greater means of efficiency,” he said.

“It’s unfortunate that so many of the AI companies operating early on had such shitty practices, you know, like one of them was found by a court to have gone off to a BitTorrent site and downloaded terabytes of data, that’s ridiculous, they shouldn’t do that. But the industry is, over time, coming up with better practices, and you’re seeing efforts to use thoroughly licensed content bases for future AI models.”

Sweeney has been outspoken about the use of AI in the games industry, previously arguing that platforms should stop tagging games that make use of AI and that the use of AI in development should have no bearing on how a game is received.

Recently, GamesIndustry.biz had a week of content about AI, covering topics including whether the technology was useful for coding and the use of AI in game development in general.

Japan’s discounted PS5 is a strategic investment, says Sony CEO Hideaki Nishino

The president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment has explained that its Japan-only PS5 is selling at a loss in an attempt to grow its audience in Japan.

In November 2025 the company announced a special Japan-only PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, which is sold at a discounted price of ¥55,000 ($340).

Given that Sony recently announced widespread price increases for its consoles which now see the region-free PS5 Digital Edition priced at ¥89,980 ($555) in Japan, the region-locked version – which has stayed at the same price – now appears even more heavily discounted, at around 40% cheaper.

In a new interview with Famitsu, SIE president and CEO Hideaki Nishino was asked how Sony could possibly manage to sell the Japan-only edition of the console at such a comparatively low price when the current economic landscape and surge in component costs must mean it’s selling at a loss.

Nishino replied that the Japan-only version was introduced because the company noticed players from around the world were taking advantage of the weak yen by importing region-free PS5 consoles from Japan instead of buying them in their own country.

By selling the console at a heavily subsidized price and region locking it to Japan, Sony hoped to stop players importing it from other countries, but also grow the PlayStation userbase in Japan, a country where the Nintendo Switch has dominated in recent years.

The Japan-only PS5 Digital Edition costs ¥55,000 ($340). A Digital Edition in the US costs $599.

“We were aware that, due to exchange rate fluctuations, there was a trend of PS5 consoles being exported from Japan to overseas markets,” Nishino explained (via machine translation). “Given this situation, we decided that it was crucial to ensure that the PS5 was delivered properly to our Japanese customers.

“While ‘countermeasure’ may not be the best term to use, we believe that by making a Japanese-only model limited to Japanese accounts, we were able to set a unique price for Japanese market. By offering a more affordable price compared to the multi-language Digital Edition, we hope to further revitalize the Japanese gaming community and market, which is a key market for us.”

Regarding selling the console at a loss, Nishino added: “We consider the PS5 Digital Edition Japanese-only model a strategic investment. While we won’t disclose specific figures, we plan to recoup the costs across our entire business operations. Although the business situation differs from that in overseas markets, we hope you understand that this is an important and necessary investment for the Japanese market.”

When asked if that meant Sony placed more importance on the Japanese market than others, Nishino replied that Sony wants to see PlayStation do well in all markets, and it’s currently focusing more on Japan because it wants to see growth there.

“Because we operate globally, we don’t prioritize or downplay any particular market,” he explained. “We strategically consider how to allocate funds within the overall balance, and as part of that, we are actively investing in Japan because we want to further increase the number of PlayStation users there.”

Last year’s decision to sell a discounted Japan-only PS5 Digital may have been somewhat influenced by comments made by Capcom president Haruhito Tsujimoto, who partly blamed Monster Hunter Wilds’ poor sales momentum on the price of PlayStation 5 consoles, which he claimed in an interview was providing a barrier to entry for younger players in particular.

“The console costs around ¥80,000 ($540),” he told Nikkei in September 2005. “Factoring in the cost of software and monthly subscriptions, it comes to around ¥100,000 ($675) at the time of purchase. This is not an easily affordable price, especially for younger generations. This situation is not limited to Japan, but is similar overseas.”

Epic Games CEO says it’s ‘really irresponsible’ of Steam to make studios disclose AI use

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has criticised rival Valve for forcing studios to disclose when they use AI in game development.

Since 2024, Valve has required developers to disclose on Steam whether generative AI was used in the creation of their games. This then appears on the game’s store page in a section called ‘AI Generated Content Disclosure’.

This was reportedly tweaked in January 2026 to make it clearer to developers that the two main types of AI that needed a disclosure are the use of AI to generate content for the game, or AI content generated during gameplay, while “AI-powered tools” such as code helpers don’t have to be disclosed.

In a new interview with PC Gamer, Sweeney has criticised Steam’s requirements, claiming that any developer who declares that it uses AI to generate content for its game risks being vilified by players.

“It’s unfortunate we’re in this situation,” Sweeney said. “It’s unfortunate that so many developers now are put into this position.

“If you want to launch a game, and get it as widely publicized as possible, you’ve got to put it on Steam so people can wish list it, and if you want to play it on Steam, then you have to get this Scarlet Letter of AI attached to your product, and now there is a hater community trying to kill the game.

“I think it’s really irresponsible of Valve. They shouldn’t do it, because it makes it much, much, much harder for a game developer to have a chance of success. You have to choose from either not using tools that can make you way more productive, and probably failing due to competition that does.”

Epic recently showed how it was integrating AI into Unreal Engine 6.

Sweeney’s comments should come as no surprise given that Epic Games has started talking more this month about its upcoming Unreal Engine 6 and its heavy focus on integration with AI models like Claude and Gemini.

Earlier this month at a State of Unreal event in Chicago, Epic showed how AI large language models (LLMs) can be used directly with Unreal Engine 6 to generate content. During a demonstration, it used a Claude prompt window to furnish a virtual apartment by asking for items, which were then pulled from the assets library.

It later showed how it could change the lighting in a city scene by asking Claude to alter the time of day, or even use a static photo as a reference. Epic stressed that developers will have final control over their creations and can manually change their results.

Last year Sweeney said on X that he didn’t see the point in digital game stores flagging when a game has used AI during development, claiming it “makes no sense for game stores, where AI will be involved in nearly all future production”.

Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox consoles by $100-$150

Microsoft is raising the price of Xbox Series S and X by $100 for 512 GB models and $150 for 1 TB models, it’s announced, while 2 TB model consoles will be discontinued.

Starting August 1, 2026, the cheapest Series X 1TB model without a disc drive will retail for $749.99, while the disc-drive model will retail for $799.99.

The cheapest 512GB Xbox Series S model will now cost $499.99, with the 1TB model going for $599.99.

Microsoft raised the prices of its Xbox consoles twice last year. The latest rise means that an Xbox Series X disc-drive model now costs $300 more than it did at launch in 2020, while the Series S is 50% more expensive.

In a statement, Xbox blamed the price increases on “the current components crisis” impacting the consumer electronics industry, which has seen all three major console manufacturers raise prices significantly.

“We hoped another price increase would not be necessary, and we have spent the last several months working with suppliers on options,” the company said. “Unfortunately, console storage and memory prices have increased by more than 2.5x, and we expect another doubling by the fall of 2027.

New US Xbox Console Prices

• Series X 1TB (disc drive) – $799.99 (+$150)
• Series X 1TB (digital) – $749.99 (+$150)
• Series X 2TB Galaxy Black – Discontinued
• Series S 512GB – $499.99 (+$100)
• Series S 1TB – $599.99 (+$150

“The entire consumer electronics industry is struggling with the current components crisis, but the effects are particularly hard on consoles. Unlike phones, computers, speakers, and other consumer devices, consoles are typically not sold at a profit, but instead for less than they cost to make.”

Alongside the price rise news, Microsoft announced new programs to help make its consoles more affordable, including Buy Now, Pay Later options through Microsoft Stores, and interest-free financing for up to 12 months via Amazon.

The company also said it’s working with retail partners on new programs to provide previously played consoles at lower prices. “Players who are ready to upgrade or no longer use their console will be able to trade it in with participating retail partners for cash or store credit,” it said. “Those consoles will then be made available at lower prices for players.”

News of the programs follows comments from CEO Asha Sharma earlier this month, indicating that Xbox was exploring ‘radically different business models’ to make its next console affordable. Earlier this week, Valve confirmed its Steam Machine would retail for over $1,000 – a price point some analysts later speculated would be “the floor” for next-gen consoles expected to arrive from 2027.

The global economic situation has piled pressure on game console manufacturers, which have historically reduced prices over time. At this stage of PlayStation 4’s lifecycle, the console retailed for as little as $200, but the cheapest PlayStation 5 model costs 50% more ($200 / £200) than it did at launch in 2020.

Both Sony and Microsoft raised the prices of their game consoles last year. Then, in March, Sony announced a massive $100 price increase for PlayStation 5 consoles, citing the “global economic landscape”. Last month, Nintendo followed with a price increase for Nintendo Switch 2 in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Japan.

It’s a challenging market for home consoles in general, with prices higher than ever and consumers squeezed by a higher cost of living. According to Circana data, hardware and software sales in the US had the worst November since tracking began in 2025. The average price of new video game hardware in the US in November 2019 was $235, compared with $439 in November 2025.

“Mission Impossible is high on my list” – how Paramount plans to use co-dev to exploit its archive, while building its own all-new IP

Just before Summer Games Fest kicked off, Paramount Skydance announced it was merging its video games divisions into a new entity called Paramount Games Studio.

The venture brings Skydance’s studios – Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media – under the same umbrella as Paramount’s IP. The 170-strong outfit is helmed by EVP and head of games, Dan Prigg, who previously worked at Scopely and Aspyr Media before joining Skydance Interactive in 2022 as EVP and head of studio. He tells GamesIndustry.biz that the new organisation is the most sensible way to serve the company’s purposes.

Dan Prigg | Image credit: Paramount Games Studio

“Paramount, prior to the merger, was just licensing,” he explains. “They weren’t doing any internal development. They weren’t really doing much in terms of co-development and publishing. Skydance had a couple of studios, and we had licensing on our own.” The newly united business “looked at the whole thing holistically” and concluded the sensible option was “one division that can help control the slate, help with the brands, really build the communities.”

The new division was born with several titles already in development, including the Marvel 1943 title that Amy Hennig has been working on for some time, an unspecified Star Wars title from the same studio, and the externally-developed Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game. At SGF the firm announced a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game from hack-and-slash specialists PlatinumGames and Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a horror romp from genre specialists BlooberTeam. It’s looking to sign more, chiefly through co-development because “we have more IP than we have actual capacity,” says Prigg.

Finding co-development partners

In terms of picking developers to work on projects, Prigg says Paramount has a pretty simple philosophy: “right IP, right team, right size,” with the latter referring to both the scope of the game and the size of the team that makes it. “We don’t necessarily want to do some sort of massive AAA IP that may not make sense for the IP,” he says. “With Platinum, we got a great triple-A studio that is passionate about our IP and that’s what we want to find, from a studio perspective.”

Other brands may get smaller games, if the the right partner can be found. “It’s going to be a combination,” says Prigg. “A double-A title is going to feel just as good as a triple-A title if you do it right. I don’t want to break myself into jail by saying it always has to be AAA, because then the smaller studios who might do something amazing for us aren’t going to try.”

“I don’t want to say it always has to be AAA, because then the smaller studios who might do something amazing for us aren’t going to try”

“I think we’re always going to be looking at pitches, and I don’t want to be saying ‘we’ll only use these kinds of studios.’ I want the best studios to rise up,” he says, admitting that he knows this is opening him up to a deluge of inbound pitches. “It’s about finding the best partner that makes sense, who could really bring out the IP for us– whether they are internal, co-development or licensing.”

It’s not looking purely at PC and console, either. The company already has a presence in Roblox with titles such as SpongeBob Squarepants and TMNT: Battle Tycoon, and outreach that Prigg says will continue. “We want to be where the fans are,” he says, “and Gen Alpha, this is where they’re participating.” It’s also “actively looking at” mobile, with a view to building on successful partnerships with Scopley and FunPlus.

“We’re trying to make games for all generations,” says Prigg. “That’s the hard part – it’s not just four quadrants, it’s 4D quadrants. We have so much IP across so many different generations that it’s hard to keep track of it all and see what makes sense, but that’s the fun part.

“There’s kids who may have never heard of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles… or there might be that Gen X that hadn’t thought of Turtles in 20 years. For us, it’s really about the exposure: if we continue to build a brand, maybe then they want to see the TV show or the movie or an animation. That’s where we want to make sure that we’re doing our part from a games perspective, to do the best representation.”

A huge IP archive

There is no shortage of IP to choose from, with decades of film and TV brands waiting to be exploited. “Mission Impossible is still high on my list,” says Prigg. “Star Trek is a big perennial. That’s a big one for us and it’s very loved. Franchises like SpongeBob and Avatar are big ones. The Nick games themselves are huge. We want to bring those back to a certain degree, asking how we could continue to build those brands.”

The team is not rushing into any given IP, though, because “trying to find a studio for an IP, you usually find the wrong studio,” he says. “We’ll keep looking at game ideas, but it has to be right. We can’t force it and put it on a roadmap to be done by this date and it’s going to be this sort of game. That just feels like putting the cart before the horse.”

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier began as a licenced title which Paramount opted to co-develop and publish.

This extends, he claims, to not tying a game’s schedule to that of the IP that its based on – an approach that previously delivered generations of hastily-developed and usually very poorly-reviewed licenced games that were rushed out to match a film release. Prigg says that Paramount Games Studios’ release schedule is its own and not beholden to timing of the wider IP.

“There are ways that we try to work with theatrical, TV, animation and all the groups,” he says. “There are opportunities where our job is to continue to build the brand. Our job is to continue just to make great games, but you can’t do it if you’re under the extra restriction of having to be out by the theatrical release date. The games stand on their own. No one’s going to complain about that. If it can coincide, or help fill a gap from a brand perspective by being in between the Ninja Turtle movies, for example, that’s a plus to me.”

There is a recent highly successful example of this from outside the Paramount stable: IO Interactive’s 007 First Light, which has not-entirely-intentionally filled a major gap between James Bond films.

“The IO guys did a great job,” Prigg admits. “If you look at that kind of marketing, they almost treat it like a movie release. They’re really treating it like: ‘Hey, you’re not going to get another James Bond film for at least three or four years, but this is going to satisfy that feeling’. It’s going to feel like a movie release. And I think that’s where great lessons can be learned there of making our games really feel like theatrical releases and have their own identity.”

Prigg is keen for Paramount’s output to have a similar impact to 007 First Light. | Image credit: IO Interactive

Games that spark movies

Nor is Paramount Games planning to simply exploit the parent company’s archives. The company also has a studio working on original properties: Skydance Interactive, who previously shipped VR releases The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners and 2024’s Behemoth. Prigg describes it as a “hyper-talented” team that’s no longer VR-focused and has been set on developing entirely new IP for PC and console.

“The intent is like we have this small hyper-focused team with great technology, they’re great storytellers, let’s do something original that might be super interesting,” he says. The goal is for a games team with access to a vast reserve of world-famous intellectual property to launch its own hit – which could then become linear entertainment itself.

“Stories can come from anywhere,” says Prigg. “The old flywheel was movies make an IP, and then everyone feeds off of that. I think you’re starting to see games are starting to create the IPs and stories, that potentially movies and TV are going to come from.”

The Hollywood curse

There is a long history of the film industry seeking to get into the games business, and it has not been a happy one. Various studios including previous iterations of Paramount have all made splashy investments in games and studios only to retreat back to the relatively safe money of licensing when things don’t work out. The only Hollywood heavyweight to have found long-term success is Warner, with WB Games making smart investments in things like Lego stalwart TT Games and the Batman titles from Rocksteady. (That group will soon be joining the Paramount organization; Prigg says it’s “definitely looking too far forward” to say how the groups would integrate and he’s “just treating my division as a business-as-usual”).

“We genuinely believe that games are a medium that is going to be worthy for our audience”

Prigg is aware of Hollywood’s chequered history in the games space, and says that this iteration of Paramount is being “pragmatic” and not “overly aggressive” in its approach. “I would say that all the way up to the senior leadership here actually believes in games,” he continues. “That’s a big differentiator between, say, other media companies where they’re mainly in TV and film, and games felt like it was something that they would try and if it didn’t work out they’d stop. Here we genuinely believe that games are a medium that is going to be worthy for our audience.”

“But I don’t want to scale too big or overindex in terms of resources. I don’t want to just ramp up and buy a whole bunch of studios for no reason. I want to actually have it come from a plan, and scale from a business perspective.”

There are, at least, some recent examples of companies that have made licenced IP work in games, from 007 First Light through to Scopely’s Monoply Go!. Paramount, Prigg believes, will find its own way. “I think we’re just going to be in a unique place where to a larger degree, we’re just going to have to carve out our own space and probably do stuff that no one is doing. I’m okay with that.”

There may not be enough consoles this Christmas to meet demand, major retailer warns

The release of Grand Theft Auto 6 may lead to a shortage of consoles at Christmas, a major retailer has warned.

A senior games buyer for an unnamed retailer has told The Game Business that the combination of component shortages and price increases mean consoles have been in shorter supply than usual, and that while stock may be available during this relatively quiet period, the release of GTA 6 will “likely” lead to a situation where console stock sells out.

“We’ve been informed that because of the on-going issues around hardware component availability, we won’t be getting the units we want ahead of GTA,” the senior games buyer – speaking without his employer’s permission – told the publication.

“Demand will likely outstrip supply during the year end period,” he added.

The Game Business has contacted Sony and Microsoft for comment on the claims made, but notes that Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball already told the publication earlier this month that supply levels were currently an issue.

“I can tell you definitively demand for our console exceeds the supply,” Ball told it at the time.

“We are putting them in as many stores as possible. We are producing them as quickly as possible. There is a severe limitation to how quickly we can do that, but it’s not a question of appetite.

“We need to do more, but there are constraints here. And so there are, unfortunately, a number of different markets in which we do not have supply. There are other markets in which we have inadequate supply. That is a privilege as a company it is a challenge for us to figure out.”

PlayStation and Rockstar have partnered for a marketing campaign designed to sell more PS5 consoles off the back of GTA 6’s release.

PlayStation and Rockstar revealed their marketing campaign for the game on Wednesday, which has Sony declaring that it “plays best on PS5”. The expectation is therefore that a large number of PS5 consoles will be sold off the back of this campaign.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is set for release on November 19, and while its physical release won’t include a disc at launch, it will still likely sell in extremely high numbers, including among those who have not yet purchased a current-gen console.

There may be some players who have been continuing to play on PS4 or Xbox One and were planning to upgrade to PS5 or Xbox Series X/S when GTA 6 came out, leading to a likely surge in console prices above that typically expected during the holiday period anyway.

The standard edition of GTA 6 will retail for $80 USD, and the Ultimate Edition, which contains various in-game rewards, will retail for $100 USD.

Sony confirms it’s laying off ‘most of the Destiny team’ and ‘some’ Marathon devs

Sony has announced that it will be making further layoffs at Bungie.

The news was broken by the Destiny 2 studio in a statement on X, saying: “With great sadness, we are announcing a reduction in force as we reorganize Bungie.”

It added: “As the leaders of Bungie, past and present, we recognize Destiny 2 fell short of expectations these past several years. Following our final content update to Destiny 2, and with our future projects still in early incubation, we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size.

Update – Studio head departs25th Jun 2026 / 5:13 pm

Bungie studio head Justin Truman, who succeeded Pete Parsons last year, is stepping down following the news of layoffs, Bloomberg News reports.

“We know this decision has a profound impact on the people affected, their families, friends, and teammates. While these changes are necessary to best position the studio now and for the future, that does not lessen the difficulty of this moment or the impact it has on those affected.

“Later, we will share more about that future with you all but today is not that day.

“Today, we wish to extend our gratitude and compassion to every member of the Bungie team who has been impacted and to those who remain. We hope you will do the same.”

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hermen Hulst informed SIE employees of the news today, sending an internal email which was later published on the Sony website.

“Today I want to share a difficult update regarding Bungie,” Hulst’s email reads. “We have made the decision to reduce Bungie’s workforce, affecting a significant number of employees, including most of the Destiny team and some Marathon team members.

“There are also reductions across SIE teams that support Bungie’s operations. Those impacted at Bungie and within SIE are being informed today.

“This is painful news, especially for talented colleagues whose roles have been eliminated. This decision was made only after extensive discussion and careful consideration, and I want to provide some context on how we arrived here.

“Over the past several months, together with Bungie leadership, we reviewed the studio’s long-term direction, development priorities, resource needs, and role within our broader portfolio strategy. We explored multiple alternatives before concluding that a reduction was necessary to align the studio’s resources with its current priorities and long-term goals.

“As Bungie recently shared in its Destiny 2 update, the studio has begun a new journey following the release of the game’s final live-service content update. What Bungie has accomplished with Destiny over the past decade has been truly remarkable. The franchise has left a lasting mark on players and the industry, and everyone who contributed to its success should be proud of what they helped create.

“Marathon remains an important part of our portfolio, and we will continue to support the team as they build on the strong foundation established in Season 1 and 2, and as they work on incubation efforts for future projects. While it’s too early to discuss, we are encouraged by the creativity and opportunities that lie ahead.

“Our immediate priority is supporting affected employees through this transition. We are providing transition support and, where possible, working to identify opportunities across SIE and our global network of studios.

“I want to sincerely thank every affected employee for their hard work, creativity, and contributions to Bungie, SIE, and the broader gaming community. I know today’s news is deeply difficult not only for those leaving, but for those colleagues and friends that remain. Please take the time you need to process this news and support one another. Thank you for your resilience and continued support during this difficult time.”

Destiny 2 received its last content update earlier this month, with reports claiming Bungie had no plans for the game’s team after this.

Destiny 2’s final major content update, Monument of Triumph, was released on June 9, bringing an end to the game’s nine-year run of content.

A Bloomberg report last month claimed that Bungie was planning a “significant” number of layoffs once the game’s content ended, and would be focusing on the extraction shooter Marathon in the near term, with some Destiny 2 developers already transferred to the game.

The publication claimed that Bungie didn’t have a new project lined up for Destiny 2’s development team following its final content update, and didn’t plan to immediately start development on Destiny 3.

Sony Interactive Entertainment recently reported a $765 million impairment loss related to Bungie assets, following the release of its extraction shooter Marathon. Sony has not said how the game has performed since its release earlier this year.

Bungie has seen numerous rounds of layoffs since it was acquired by Sony in 2022. At the time, the PlayStation company said Bungie would “continue to operate independently, maintaining the ability to self-publish and reach players wherever they choose to play”.

A report at the time, however, stated that the company’s board structure was contingent on Bungie hitting certain financial goals, and that if it failed to do so Sony could choose to dissolve the existing board and assume full control of the company.

In October 2023, Bungie’s staff were reportedly warned that revenue was running at around 45% below projections for the year, which was said to have been attributed to poor player retention for Destiny 2.

Struggling to meet its targets and with the threat of a potential Sony takeover looming, Bungie’s leadership reportedly embarked on a wide-ranging cost-cutting plan that saw 100 of the studio’s 1,200 employees laid off in October 2023.

Further layoffs followed in July 2024, when Bungie announced it was laying off 220 staff – roughly 17% of the studio – citing “rising costs of development and industry shifts” as the reason.

VC fund VGames launches new $10m Indie Fund

Venture capital firm VGames is launching a new $10 million Indie Fund.

The organisation is giving project financing to smaller studios in exchange for a share of revenue, rather than equity. The Indie Fund is specifically aimed at premium PC and console titles with the aim of creating “commercially ambitious titles” that don’t rely on free-to-play monetisation.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, investor Lior Elovitch said that while VGames has seen “very strong returns” and observed “a very healthy exit environment” in the mobile market, the same cannot be said for PC and console, hence the specific focus of the Indie Fund.

“In recent years, the exit environment for PC/console has been more challenging, in the number of exits and their size,” he said. “So we’re changing our investment strategy to revenue share/project financing rather than equity, for those kinds of studios.”

He continued: “For PC/console studios, we believe this model can generate better returns for our limited partners compared to equity investments. It’s also better suited for those studios that are used to the revenue share model publishers offer.”

Elovitch adds that VGames is planning to back between 10 and 20 studios with investments of between $500,000 and $1 million each.

“Our check size varies depending on the studio-specific needs,” he said.

VGames also said that it has no say in a studio’s product roadmap or creative direction, as well as go-to-market discussions. The VC added that studios keep their independence and retain IP rights.

“Independent developers are building some of the most important games in the industry today,” VGames partner Daniel Mironov said.

“Technology is allowing smaller teams to compete at a level that simply wasn’t possible a few years ago. But financing models haven’t evolved at the same pace. We believe studios need funding structures that match the realities of modern game development – flexible capital that supports growth without forcing founders into unnecessary dilution or loss of control.”

VGames was founded back in 2020 and initially raised $30 million to support Israeli and Eastern European studios. To date, the organisation has funded over 50 companies, including SuperPlay, 1047 Games and Pocket Haven.

Ghost of Yotei sparks tourism push in Japan’s Mount Yotei region

The real-life towns around Japan’s Mount Yōtei have kickstarted a tourism campaign designed to attract fans of PlayStation’s Ghost of Yotei game.

The Sucker Punch-developed action-adventure game, released last year, is set in the Hokkaido region of Japan in the 1600s.

The previous entry in the series, 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima, sparked a tourism boom on the real island of Tsushima, which began running tours and selling merchandise, and even made Sucker Punch’s creative directors permanent tourist ambassadors. In 2021, the popularity of the game led to fans helping raise more than $260,000 to rebuild a shrine on the island.

Now, seven towns and villages near Mount Yōtei, including Niseko and Kutchan, are hoping they can capitalize on similar interest in the PS5 sequel, which Sony claims is so far outselling its predecessor.

According to Nikkei (paywalled), Niseko Town has signed a partnership agreement with a major IP collaboration firm, so that it can sell Ghost of Yotei merchandise to tourists, in addition to collaborations with local businesses.

Kumagera Seisakusho, a craft shop that manufactures goods made from Hokkaido-grown timber, is selling a range of pin badges and magnets featuring the Ghost of Yotei, and there are reportedly plans to collaborate with other local businesses in the future.

Like Tsushima, Niseko is also considering introducing tours that visit locations featured in the Ghost of Yotei Story.

A town near Mount Yotei is selling merchandise made from local timber.

An official from Niseko said (via machine translation: “We hope that people will learn about the scenery in spring, summer, and autumn through the game, and that this will lead to them actually visiting the town.”

Speaking to VGC last year, Sucker Punch’s former studio head, Brian Fleming, shared his experience visiting Tsushima during the press tour for Ghost of Yotei.

“I was there a week ago and spent the day with a lot of the tourism folks, who were staying in a hotel named Hotel Jin – which is not an accident,” Fleming said. “You asked me at the start how I was feeling, and I said I was at peace, and I think part of that was that visit.”

He added: “Our tour guide brought tourists from UAE and Germany up to Kaneda Castle, which is mind-blowing, right? These people came all this way to do that. It’s just so fulfilling to feel that way and say, wow, this really touched people, both the travellers and people’s lives there.

“We met a mom from the island sitting on a plane going back to Fukuoka from Tsushima, who realized who we are. It was so exciting. And you’re like, man, this is just crazy. Like, how did this happen for us?

“It was incredibly fulfilling. We didn’t anticipate any of that. The fans fixed the shrine, this beautiful shrine that I got to go visit. And the old one is still there. It’s completely amazing. And the Tsushima fans raised money for that shrine. Will the same thing happen with Yotei? I’m not sure, but I’m excited for the game to launch and for those stories to be in.”

Nintendo gives the first look at its new Kyoto development centre, the Technology Development Building

Nintendo has given the first look at its new development centre, which is currently under construction.

The building, which Nintendo has now confirmed will be named the Technology Development Building, is located next to its main headquarters in Kyoto, after it successfully purchased the land there in 2022.

Taking up a building area of just over 6,084 square metres and a total floor area of 49,305 square metres, the Technology Development Building will have nine floors above ground, and a basement floor.

Initially due to be completed by the end of 2027 and proposed as a 12-storey building, Nintendo stated back in 2023 that it had been delayed until 2028 because it “decided to up-scale the building”.

According to the company’s latest information, this has been delayed even further, and it’s now now scheduled to open in March 2029 with a total construction cost estimated at ¥121 billion ($747.7 million).

“The Technology Development Building will serve as Nintendo’s new research and development hub for software and hardware,” Nintendo said in a statement (via machine translation). “It will house offices for developers, as well as development server facilities and other functions and equipment necessary for future research and development. It will continue to receive ongoing investment.

“Moving forward, we will continue to strive to deliver ‘entertainment that is unique to Nintendo’ to customers around the world by continuing to build the Technology Development Building and investing in further research and development, to provide more why people choose Nintendo as a ‘unique and reliable form of entertainment’.”

The location of the new Technology Development Building.

A report by Nikkei in August 2023 claimed that Nintendo was anticipating a long-term increase of staff, and was therefore considering the addition of extra floors to the building, pushing the completion date back.

The article quoted Nintendo president Shuntaro Furakawa as saying: “The development resources required per piece of software are increasing. We would like to maintain the level of recruitment of the past few years.”

It’s not clear if this strategy has changed in any way since the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, or as a result of other factors such as Japan’s current economic climate or rising costs in the tech sector.

GTA 6 disc version will reportedly be coming in December, insider claims

Physical copies of Grand Theft Auto 6 which include a disc are set to come in December, it’s claimed.

That’s according to Polish site PPE.pl, whose insider Graczdari was previously responsible for the initial claims that GTA 6 would not have a physical version on release day, in order to prevent leaks.

Shortly after that report was published, Rockstar‘s parent company Take-Two denied that it was planning to release a physical version of GTA 6 some time after its November 19 release date.

This week it was finally confirmed that while GTA 6 will indeed have a physical release on November 19, it will only be a code in a box, rather than a physical disc. This partially corroborated Graczdari’s claim that the game wouldn’t have a physical release – at least in the traditional sense – because Rockstar wanted to prevent leaks.

Now Graczdari – who handles physical game sales in Europe and previously correctly leaked information on release dates of Oblivion: Remastered physical copies, the Switch 2 port of Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds and the PS5 port of Microsoft Flight Simulator – says a disc version of GTA 6 will still be coming this year.

Reporting again via PPE.pl, they claim that the ‘code in a box’ versions of GTA 6 are only for the initial production run, and that both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will get physical copies containing a disc some time in December.

“Generally speaking, the release with the code will be a one-shot, and the option for a disc release will follow,” they claimed (via machine translation).

Should the claims be true, the implication is that once the boxed copies with codes sell out, there will be no more physical copies available until the disc editions arrive in December.

Given that there have been numerous instances of players acquiring physical copies of games early – often through retailers who receive shipments before release – and streaming them online, the decision to release GTA 6 without a disc could be justified to avoid spoilers, from Rockstar’s point of view.

It would also allow Rockstar to make higher margins on the game, which many analysts predict will be the most lucrative entertainment launch of all time.

The standard edition of GTA 6 will retail for $80 USD, and the Ultimate Edition, which contains various in-game rewards, will retail for $100 USD.

GTA 6: Will $80 be the new standard, and will more publishers start to skip physical releases?

With a release date committed to and huge sales guaranteed, one of the last big questions around GTA 6 was the price tag. Today, we received the answer: $79.99 for the standard edition, and $99.99 for the ultimate edition, with the physical editions coming with not a disc but a download code.

That means the game has joined Mario Kart World in aiming for eighty dollars – above the $70 norm, but not the great leap forward that some analysts had predicted and some fans had feared. With huge pent-up demand sure to drive huge sales, will that price point become the new standard? And will more publishers follow Rockstar’s lead by skipping on-disc releases? Plus, what are the wider implications for the industry as a whole?

GamesIndustry.biz posed the above questions to a panel of expert analysts, including Joost van Dreunen, CEO of Aldora and author of the Superjoost Playlist newsletter; Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games research at Ampere Analysis; Rhys Elliott, head of market analysis at Alinea Analytics; Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana; Neil Barbour, industry analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence; and Gareth Sutcliffe, head of media technology and games at Enders Analysis.

Is the price a surprise?

Harding-Rolls says the price tag didn’t come as a shock to him, “although the pricing lands cheaper than many rumours,” he says. “I expected there to be some premium for GTA 6 because of its stature, and if any game can charge $79.99 without a major backlash, it’s GTA.”

Piers Harding-Rolls | Image credit: Ampere Analysis

However, he notes that many players will choose to order the ultimate edition, meaning a healthy number of sales at the $100 figure that some had forseen as the base price. “What is perhaps more of a surprise is the lack of early access for the ultimate edition – a common strategy to drive buyers to higher priced editions of the game. Also, there is no news on a collector’s edition, but that might come later.”

Similarly, van Dreunen wasn’t shocked that GTA 6 went beyond the $70 industry standard. “Rockstar priced exactly where its leverage lets it,” he says. Likewise, Piscatella says he wasn’t surprised that the base SKUs are a little higher than we’re used to. “It’s not egregious,” he concludes. “It’s fine.”

Elliott says he had previously predicted an $80 price point. “Of course, Rockstar could have charged $100+ for base GTA 6,” he says. “The market would’ve borne it, but they didn’t, and that was the right choice.”

He points out that the “real cash cow” is GTA Online rather than the game’s cover price. “Capping GTA 6’s addressable audience at launch to squeeze the base price would have been penny-wise and pound-foolish.”

Rhys Elliott | Image credit: Alinea Analytics

The big issue, he says, will be “one GTA hasn’t really faced before: shifting players off GTA 5. A higher base price raises the switching cost, and that works directly against GTA 5-to-GTA 6 migration. Live service is mostly zero-sum in today’s oversaturated attention economy, so GTA 6 isn’t just up against other studios’ games, it’s up against TikTok, Netflix, and its own predecessor.”

Barbour argues that even at a higher than usual price point of $80, GTA 6 still offers good value for consumers. “If any game can make the argument that it’s offering more bang for the buck, it’s probably Grand Theft Auto,” he says. “There will be some social media pushback on this price point, but I anticipate it will trim unit sales only at the very edges of the margins.”

Will other publishers follow suit on pricing?

Sutcliffe says that Rockstar has effectively set a new $80 ceiling for a standard edition AAA title. “That will inhibit any other publisher from even attempting to exceed that for at least the next 24 months. Yet the ultimate edition price delta is highly competitive, with the mix possibly favouring that SKU overall.”

But he points out that it still remains to be seen what platform holders will charge for GTA 6 console bundles. “Console bundling promotions are the unknown and most intriguing, given that Xbox and PS5 will get at least one price rise between now and holiday. GTA will be an interesting lever used to camouflage the increase, possibly with exclusive content.”

Gareth Sutcliffe | Image credit: Enders Analysis

Barbour thinks we might see other games try to move toward the $80 price point, “particularly the prestige annualized franchises like Call of Duty, EA Sports FC and, of course, Take-Two’s own NBA2K.

“Maybe they wait a year to see how GTA does, or maybe they just rip the band aid off. They already have some cover from some Switch 2 physical releases going to market at $80. But if you’re a mid-major publisher putting out a single-player-focused game, you’ll probably want to hang back in the previous $60-70 range for a while longer.”

Piscatella points out that nothing was stopping developers and publishers from charging $80 before today’s announcement, but suspects that some publishers will “likely follow quickly, having convinced themselves that their game is ‘super premium’ or some other such thing. When this type of thing happened before (for example, when Call of Duty 2 went to $59.99 for the Xbox 360 launch) it took a few months for other publishers to follow suit, but eventually that pricing became more common.”

He adds that at release, the average selling price for many games far exceeds the standard base SKU price thanks to various special editions. “Launch day price sensitivities can also be quite low for highly anticipated games,” he says. “And prices can always be lowered post-launch.”

Van Dreunen, by contrast, thinks it’s unlikely we’ll see many others follow Rockstar’s lead. “Publishers will now only be able to price their games at $80 if they match the quality and experience,” he says. “What Rockstar and only a few others, like Nintendo and EA, can do is charge a premium for titles in a market characterized by a glut of content and risk-averse consumers. The games industry has developed a luxury tier, and in order to charge those prices, consumers will expect the highest quality experience.”

Joost van Dreunen | Image credit: THIS 2023/Alexander Håkansson

Harding-Rolls judges it similarly. “There are certain games that can get away with charging more than the standard $69.99, and GTA 6 is one of them. Mario Kart World also pulled it off,” he says. “Publishers will be aware that some games get a pass at this level, while others are likely to face a consumer backlash. As such, I don’t think this means that all AAA games will be priced at $79.99 for the standard edition moving forward.”

Elliott is in agreement that $80 is unlikely to be the new standard, although he suspects it won’t be for want of people trying. “The short answer is no, and I think a lot of publishers are about to learn that the hard way,” he says. “GTA 6 has more pricing power than any game on earth, and it still didn’t go above $80. If the biggest release in the industry’s history looked at the ceiling and chose not to break it, that should tell everyone else the ceiling is real, and they’ll smack their head on it.

“The danger is that publishers read ‘GTA is $80’ as a green light and push their own run-of-the-mill or new-IP games to $80, when the lesson is the opposite: even GTA didn’t think it could go higher.”

Will more publishers start to skip physical releases?

Harding-Rolls points out that GTA 6 is far from the first title to skip discs. “Having a code instead of a disc is becoming increasingly commonplace, so I think this just follows an existing trend, rather than necessarily prompting publishers to follow Rockstar’s approach,” he says. “Commercially, it just makes sense in terms of the cost of goods to go digital-code-only in a physical case. I’m sure that will be disappointing for some players, but it’s possible there will be collector’s editions to come nearer to launch.”

Piscatella agrees. “In any case, the decline of physical on PlayStation and Xbox is near the end game at this point anyways,” he says. “Nintendo will hold on a bit longer, but this is just more part of the trend than the starting point of a new one, in my opinion.”

Image credit: S&P Global Market Intelligence

Barbour notes a digital-only release aligns with the publisher’s overall strategy. “Take-Two reported 97% of its revenue running through digital online channels for fiscal year 2026, and other major publishers are in that league,” he says. “I would expect more of them to adopt this strategy of leading with digital and following up with physical where prudent.”

The move away from discs will be a boon for Microsoft, Sutcliffe thinks. “Digital only distribution gives a slight assist to Xbox, which has broadly disappeared in retail channels outside of the US and UK,” he says. “Xbox is an invisible platform that has been largely abandoned by physical retailers in international markets. Take-Two deserves credit for moving the industry forward and out of physical product for good.”

He adds that skipping discs will also help when it comes to any last-minute changes to the game. “Going digital-only allows Take-Two to be much later on having a final gold master,” he says. “It indicates the title is probably still coming in hot.”

Elliott adds that the lack of a physical version will help Rockstar to keep its secrets intact until launch. “This is the most leak-averse studio in the industry,” he says, “and it won’t want physical copies ‘falling off the back of a truck’ ahead of the street date, which, as we know, has always been a risk with discs. I suspect that’s part of the calculus here.”

“Going digital-only allows Take-Two to be much later on having a final gold master. It indicates the title is probably still coming in hot”

Gareth Sutcliffe

He also points out that the lack of physical discs removes the second-hand market from the equation. “As long as cheap second-hand copies exist, they set a price floor Rockstar can’t control, and they give every player a permanent ‘just wait and buy it used’ option. Remove the disc and Rockstar and the platforms own the entire price curve, including how high they hold the price and how slowly they ever discount it.”

But van Dreunen thinks that the future won’t be entirely digital, since physical editions can be sold for a premium. “Instead of becoming an afterthought, I predict it will soon become one of the highest margin SKUs for publishers,” he says. “Giving die-hard fans a unique collectible, probably complete with GTA’s foldout map and other cool swag, will likely command a significantly higher price point than the base game. It will enrich the experience and signal to your friends the level of commitment you have to the franchise, similar to being a movie buff or a Swiftie.”

What are the wider implications for the industry?

Piscatella says that the implications of GTA 6’s launch in November are both massive and small at the same time. “Grand Theft Auto 6 is a true outlier in every sense of the word when it comes to video games,” he says. “And if Grand Theft Auto 6 can indeed re-energize console players, bring new players in (especially younger players that have been slower to adopt consoles than prior generations), and cause lapsed players to return, then the implications are massive. If it could get some free-to-play-only players actually buying a new video game? Even better.”

But for most developers and publishers, the implications will be minor, he thinks. “This is a massive outlier which breaks the top end of the scale.”

Mat Piscatella

“Outside observers will use the GTA6 release as a barometer of the industry’s overall health and measure everyone’s success against it,” says van Dreunen. “That’s naive, of course, because it is only releasing to the console market currently, and it is expected to be the biggest release in years. Nevertheless, it will suck momentum out of firms that aren’t anywhere near the same level. I’d expect to see a noticeable dip in user activity around titles like Fortnite, for instance, and Take-Two’s success will come at the expense of struggling publishers like Ubisoft and Stillfront.”

Barbour says that in terms of GTA 6’s inflated price point, “the push to $80 flirts with the same negative feedback loop that engulfed recorded music, cable TV, and film exhibition over the past two decades. Reduced user acquisition opportunities lead to fewer purchases, pushing vendors to offset slower growth with higher prices, which risks further alienating consumers.

“The component shortages are exacerbating this situation and pushing publishers to decisions that are easy to rationalize. But if and when the macroeconomic picture normalizes, gaming is arguably at its best when it’s a volume business, not an expensive hobby serving a select group.”

“I’d expect to see a noticeable dip in user activity around titles like Fortnite”

Joost van Dreunen

But Elliott points towards the positives. “GTA 6 will undoubtedly bring more consumers into the latest-gen console fold,” he says, adding that the game is “one of the best console-shifting adverts the current generation will ever get.”

“Many consumers who began playing during the lockdowns but stopped after the world opened up again will likely return for GTA 6,” he says. And those players might in turn seek out releases they have missed in the meantime. “I can see games like Spider-Man, Elden Ring, and the newer sports titles getting a lift.”

What questions remain to be answered about GTA 6?

Although we now know how much GTA 6 will cost, there are still a few unknowns. Harding-Rolls notes that it’s unclear whether there are more editions to come, such as a collector’s edition, and we still don’t know the game’s local pricing outside the United States. “Additionally, one thing is not clear as yet – how Rockstar is going to treat the GTA Online audience and GTA 6’s future online elements, which is key to the commercial opportunity for Take-Two.”

A few questions still remain unanswered about GTA 6’s launch. | Image credit: Rockstar Games

It’s unclear whether the online components will be ready at launch. GTA Online shipped two weeks after GTA 5, and its debut was beset by technical difficulties, while Rockstar’s press release today refers only to a “single-player experience”. Van Dreunen believes that the company will have learnt some lessons from the past. “Unlike last time, when taking GTA5 online initially was a disaster, Take-Two seems much better prepared to immediately cater to its online audience,” he says.

“Having recently acquired a user-generated marketplace and invested in live-streaming, the company will materially improve its upside, so I’d look past initial unit sales and base my long-term expectations on its ability to grow what it calls ‘recurring consumer spending’.”

Piscatella, meanwhile, is just glad it’s all nearly over. “It’s been how many years of everyone talking about this game and its potential impact? It’s been exhausting for all involved. The dang thing just has to launch already.”

Why new investment house Denmu has $50m to give to “auteur” developers

Denmu is a new investment firm with $50 million to play with. The organisation was founded in 2025 by general partners Ryan You and Michael Fan, who act as the firm’s CEO and creative director, respectively. Both coming from an investment background, including some shared time at VC firm Galaxy Interactive, they felt that the financial options available to developers weren’t right for every project.

Ryan You | Image credit: Denmu

“A lot of the model is right, but games are pretty simple compared to other very capital-intensive industries,” You explains. “It’s basically equity from investors and advances from publishers. We tried to see if there was a way to provide a more scaled and efficient way to bring capital to video games and support the games we want. While equity and publisher advance work well for certain kinds of games, it doesn’t work for a lot of other titles.”

Denmu – which means ‘electric dreams’ in Japanese – is taking a longer-term view of its partnerships with developers, saying it wants to prioritise creative vision. To this end, the investment house says it wants to back ‘auteurs’, a concept that Fan takes a very broad view of, tracing etymologies to both French (an initiator) and Latin (someone who grows), as well as how it came to be known in entertainment, thanks to French filmmakers in Hollywood.

“They wanted to disassociate themselves with the past generation,” Fan explains. “The idea back then was, why should they make movies based on what the corporate studios want? Why should they make movies by checking boxes from the marketing guys? The movie should be a reflection of the artist, of the people who made it. This is what some video games should be – a reflection of the human.”

Michael Fan | Image credit: Denmu

At a point in the not-so-distant past, there was a small but significant group of auteurs within game development: names like Hideo Kojima, Peter Molyneux and David Cage. Of those early-2000s AAA titans, though, only Kojima persists, and the mantle of the auteur has been picked up by the indie scene.

“Every word and concept, when it’s taken to the extreme, you lose what it initially meant,” Fan says. “It becomes perverted. That’s a perversion that we’ve also seen in the French movie scene, where the ego takes over everything. For me, an auteur doesn’t mean celebrity. It doesn’t even mean one person. Actually, in many cases – especially in video games – you see a lot of art that’s being co-authored.” Fan cites one of Denmu’s first major partnerships, with Too Kyo Games on The Hundred Line. That was a studio founded by veterans of Japanese developer Spike Chunsoft, including the creator of Danganronpa, Kazutaka Kodaka.

“A lot of people will think of Kodaka because he’s shiny, he’s flamboyant, he’s lovely, he’s a really good friend,” Fan continues. “But if you truly want to understand this game, you have to understand who [Zero Escape creator] Kotaro Uchikoshi is. If you don’t understand who that is, you don’t understand why there are 100 different endings or why the game turned out like this. At the same time, the music, the characters, and the design are also being made by all the different individuals on the team. Too Kyo Games isn’t just Kodaka. There are four or five founders. This is important. When we say we want to put the artist at the centre and look for the auteur, it clearly doesn’t mean looking for some celebrity and making them a mascot or something. It’s way beyond that.”

“When we say we want to look for the auteur, it doesn’t mean looking for some celebrity and making them a mascot or something. It’s way beyond that.”

At the moment, Denmu has $50 million in funding to distribute to suitable creatives. The company says that the average investment is between $1 million and $5 million, though there are some projects that might require closer to $10 million.

A lot of the investment that Denmu makes is co-financing, meaning it is one of a few companies chipping in for a project. That’s also how the organisation has managed to end up with a AAA game in its stable, though the team isn’t able to share any details aside that the project as a “big IP holder”.

“That’s in the $50m-to-$100m range,” You explains. “But they don’t need all the money to come from us. We rarely fund the entire budget of a game. We don’t think that’s the right way. In films, you often have a lot of different parties financing a movie. That’s probably good for the industry, since it’s not relying on one entity to do it.

“That also means we probably aren’t going to fund every AAA game, especially if it is from scratch and they need a lot of money. We see more people doing what we are doing, but a little bit differently. I am pretty optimistic.”

Denmu says it backed The Hundred Line: The Last Defense Academy on the strength of the creative vision. | Image credit: Aniplex

In addition to being able to stump up cash to help fund projects, Denmu’s founders believe the company’s biggest value-add is what it calls an East-West bridge, giving access to both games ecosystems. Both You and Fan were born in China, with Fan growing up in France, and both have spent most of their working years in the United States.

“We do a lot of regional partnerships and marketing for all the games we do,” You says. “Back to The Hundred Line – probably the first video that the studio put out about the game before launch, has our logo on it because we helped them produce that and partnered with the platforms in China and the West to help them to get it out. We had those resources. That’s the value-add we provide, in addition to our money.”

“We do a lot of Chinese partnerships and marketing for all the games we do”

At the moment, most of the games that Denmu has in its portfolio are from Asia, but among them are games that have Asian styling but are made by Western developers. In fact, Fan and You say that their biggest investments are with Western studios, but they are unable to talk about them yet.

Asked what the company would like the future balance of their portfolio to be, Fan says that Denmu has a ‘glocal’ approach to video games, with You saying that the firm doesn’t think about its portfolio having a “particular region fit”.

“It’s not global, it’s not local, it’s glocal,” Fan says. “That’s a global understanding of local nuances. That is what games are going to be. Video games are the biggest vehicle for culture for this and future generations. It has to be understood within a cultural context. Culture is never local and is never global; it’s always in between. When you say [the bridge] looks more East-to-West, I’d argue that’s not 100% true. Even the Japanese games we grew up playing were influenced by the West. We wouldn’t have the JRPG without American RPGs. What we are going to see is that interesting mix of different cultures.”

China is an area of particular interest is. Fan believes that the massive changes the country has seen in the last few decades is going to yield a huge wave of creative energy.

“”We’re not excited about China for the cost, or the speed or whatever. It’s because of culture. We are going to see creators from the generation that grew up in the fastest-growing society in modern history.”

“We’re not excited about China for the cost, or the speed or whatever,” he says. “It’s actually because of culture. We are going to see creators from the generation that grew up in the fastest-growing society in modern history. We are talking about a generation that grew up with bicycles everywhere, and now you have EVs everywhere. Beijing was one of the most polluted cities ever and now you have blue sky. That’s happened within 20-to-30 years. What does it do to creators and their brains? My question is, what games are they going to make that are going to be so wild and original that we have never seen them before?”

The bulk of the firm’s investments are in archetypally Asian titles. | Image credit: A Plus

So far, Denmu has had a hand in projects including The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Blue Protocol: Star Resonance, Bleach: Soul Resonance, Labyrinth of the Demon King, MotorSlice and Silly Polybeast. The company won’t comment on how well its investments have performed commercially or financially. But You does say that Denmu has already had limited partner investors “doubling down” on Denmu based on its performance to date.

“That might give you an indication,” he says. “We are very happy with that.”

The organisation is also viewing this $50 million pot as just the first step in a much larger and more ambitious plan.

“Our goal is to provide an alternative link between capital and the games industry, which is very much needed”

“$50m is not going to change the industry. This is just a prototype,” You says. “Our goal down the road is to provide an alternative link between capital and the games industry, which is very much needed. There are a lot of capital sources that are interested in games. They grew up playing video games and it’s hard for them to deploy capital if they are not in the industry. A lot of VCs left. We want to provide an alternative way for them to deploy capital to the industry, and the industry can benefit from that.”

Five years from now, You says that Denmu would like to have a “larger capital pool” to give to developers, but the firm’s ambitions go beyond simply giving out more money.

“We’d love to have customised solutions for every game,” he says. “At whatever stage you are in, whatever kind of money you need, as long as you are an auteur and are making an interesting game, we have a way to help you. We pass on a lot of deals not because we don’t like them, it just doesn’t fit with our narrow model because we have limited capital. The future plan is to develop a different model solution to meet different needs and basically become a one-stop shop for people in the games industry looking to raise capital.”

For Fan, on the more creative side of things, his aim for the company is to turn “dreams into memories”.

“The thing that makes me the happiest is going to a game jam or an event, and we’ll start talking about games, and sometimes they’ll mention games that we helped to make,” he says.

“That means the world to me. I’m already super happy and super grateful. In five years, if we can keep doing this, I’ll be super happy.”

‘People will accept it’: Industry analysts say GTA VI having no disc version ‘won’t make much difference’

Industry analysts have told VGC that the decision to release Grand Theft Auto VI without a disc is unlikely to have a significant impact on the game’s sales.

Rockstar confirmed today that the physical version of GTA VI will ship with a digital download code inside the box, instead of a disc.

The Game Business’s Chris Dring told VGC that, in his opinion, the decision is one that entirely benefits Rockstar and will see the game selling in large numbers regardless, despite the negative impact it will have on retailers.

“The decision will understandably upset some players, and potentially impact less digital-savvy consumers,” he said. “But in truth, for the majority of people, it won’t make much of a difference.

“It will make it easier for Rockstar to keep working on the game right up until launch, without the need to have something ready for duplication and distribution. It will also prevent pre-owned and second-hand sales, and reduce the likelihood of the game leaking ahead of release.

“The big losers are games retailers, although there are not many of those these days. Plus second-hand outlets like eBay and CEX. They’ll need to focus on the secondary opportunities, like add-on items and hardware). The winners are the PlayStation and Xbox stores.

“Ultimately, people will accept it. It’s GTA.”

The Ultimate Edition of Grand Theft Auto 6 costs $100 and features a selection of DLC including guns, outfits and vehicles.

Circana senior director and video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella agrees the decision won’t affect sales much, but suggests the impact on retailers could be considered a positive, as it could cater to players without disc drives who would otherwise have bought the digital version directly through their console’s store.

“Grand Theft Auto VI will be far from the first or only code in box on retail shelves,” Piscatella told us. “It’s been a pretty common practice for several years now.

“In one respect, this could be considered a good thing for retailers (well, those retailers that don’t like to sell used games at least). In the US, as of the end of May 2026, 52% of Xbox Series and 27% of PlayStation 5 consoles sold do not include a disc drive (although there is the PS5 add-on disc drive accessory – Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service).

“Digital-only PlayStation and Xbox consoles have grown in popularity over time as well. So, code in box does allow retailers to have a bigger addressable market than if the game only included a disc.

“But ultimately, I don’t think it matters all that much either way. Both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series are heavily weighted towards digital distribution at this point (Xbox Series more so than PlayStation 5), with that shift towards digital continuing to grow over time. I see this as just another step in a trend that has been ongoing since the early 2010s.

“There is clearly a group of players that would prefer owning physical media with the game being included on disc. However, I don’t see this distribution choice having a meaningful impact on sales potential at the end of the day. It’s Grand Theft Auto VI, after all.”

GTA 6 sales predictions: how many copies will Rockstar sell at $80?

We already know the GTA 6 release date, and now we know how much it will cost – a slightly elevated but not unprecedented price of $79.99, with a $100 special edition adding a series of additional content to the single-player game. We also know that it will be paying lip service to the notion of a physical release, with the boxed version containing only a code to download the game.

Those variables established, we can step up a level on what’s become an established industry small-talking point: how many copies is the game going to sell, boosted by 13 years of anticipation and a release calendar that has been all but emptied as other publishers retreat to safety? We asked a group of industry analysts what they were expecting the launch sales to clock in at, now the price is locked down.

“I predict GTA 6 will at least replicate the success of its predecessor,” says Aldora’s Joost van Dreunen, “and sell-in to at least 30% of the overall console audience, totalling 38 million copies and just over $3 billion in sales within its first 12 months.”

Piers Harding-Rolls at Ampere Analysis offers an estimate that comes in just below that. “I think 30-35 million units are achievable by the end of the year,” he says.

Gareth Sutcliffe of Enders Analysis says there is hypothetical potential for that to be exceeded, saying that a “blow out sales scenario” would be “in excess of 50 million units in year one, possibly closing in on 60 million,” a figure he describes as “unparalleled.”

Gareth Sutcliffe thinks GTA 6 could sell north of 50 million units in its first year. | Image credit: Rockstar Games

Alinea Analytics’ Rhys Elliott says he “wouldn’t be surprised to see around 30 million sold in the first week, building toward 50 million heading into 2027.” He concedes that would require the game to sell roughly a fifth of its lifetime sales inside six weeks, but says that GTA 5’s launch sales of 11 to 15 million units, on a smaller install base, suggests the demand might be there. “Doubling that on a current base of 90 million-plus PS5s, before you even count Xbox Series, isn’t a stretch for the most anticipated launch in the industry’s history,” he says.

A wild card in this is console hardware. Sony, unsurprisingly, is the partner of choice, marking the price reveal with a blog post proclaiming that the game plays best on PS5. Notably absent is any mention of a hardware bundle, which traditionally accompanies such debuts – which may speak to the risk of further PS5 price increases between now and the console’s release.

Hardware supply issues, which have already bedevilled the Steam Machine, may limit the number of people who can play the game at launch – while a competitively priced console bundle might prove a useful sweetener if Sony is once again forced to increase the base price of the PS5.

‘North of a grand is the floor’: Analysts debate whether Steam Machine means PS6 and Xbox Helix will cost $1000+

Analysts have been reacting to the price of the Steam Machine by giving their views on what it will mean for the price of next-gen consoles.

Valve announced this week that the Steam Machine – its compact system designed for playing PC games on TV – will cost $1,049 for a 500GB model and $1,349 for a 2TB one.

The company has conceded that the price is “significantly more” than it wanted to charge, but says it “reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months”.

This continued rise in component costs has also seen Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all announcing price increases for their consoles, and analysts have warned that the PlayStation 6 and Xbox Project Helix will almost certainly have a higher launch price than any Sony or Microsoft console before them.

The only thing analysts can’t agree on is whether Sony or Microsoft will step beyond three-figure territory and charge $1,000 or more for their new console.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Aldora CEO Joost van Dreunen said he believed it was certain, warning: “At this rate, the next generation may not even release until 2028, and when it does, north of a grand is the floor. Even existing devices are getting marked up.”

He added: “The memory makers – Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron – are now ‘post-consumer’, which tells you gamers matter less and prices go up. Earlier this month, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma conceded that its upcoming console is going to need a new business model and hardware partners just to ship, and that storage and memory will cost five times more by holiday 2027 than they did in 2024.”

Circana senior director Mat Piscatella told the publication that he wasn’t as certain that PS6 or Xbox Project Helix could cost four digits, but wasn’t ruling it out. “It will possibly (even likely) happen anyways,” he explained. “Given the chaos in the world of components (and lots of other things, for that matter) the future here is beyond cloudy.”

Newzoo market intelligence director Manu Rosier suggested that while there may be versions of each console that do cost more than $1,000, he believes there will still be a base model costing three digits – even if that means $999 – because of the psychological effect a four-digit price has on customers.

Manu Rosier says a $1,000 price tag for PS6 isn’t a crazy thing to consider when the PS5 Pro currently only costs $100 less than that.

“The PS5 Pro is already at $899 after two hikes inside a year, so the distance to $1,000 is short,” he said. “Base next-generation models are likely to hold under $999 for psychological and marketing reasons.

“Premium tiers are a separate question. Component costs sit outside the manufacturers’ control, and there is no sign of an AI-driven cooldown in memory and storage demand. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has already said memory costs will affect Project Helix pricing and availability.”

Finally, Ampere Analysis’s head of games research Piers Harding-Rolls told the publication that he thinks there’s still a chance for next-gen consoles to cost less than $1,000, because Sony and Microsoft have better relationships with component manufacturers with Valve, which needs to make a profit on every Steam Machine sold.

“Next-gen consoles will likely be more expensive, but they have different levers that can be pulled to offset hardware costs, which can support cheaper pricing,” Harding-Rolls suggested.

“Sony has more scale than Valve and is better positioned in terms of supply chain accessibility through its entrenched relationships and broader electronics business. Console companies will be hoping that they can take advantage of improving component inventories and more stable pricing as it gets closer to the launch of next-gen consoles. Market disruption and other factors means this is most likely to be at the end of 2028.”

Rockstar confirms Grand Theft Auto 6 Ultimate Edition and pre-order bonuses as well as price

Rockstar has confirmed the pre-order and Ultimate Edition bonuses for Grand Theft Auto 6.

Update: GTA 6 Price confirmed24th Jun 2026 / 11:30 am

Take-Two has now confirmed the price of the game, this story has been updated accordingly.

The Ultimate Edition will include “an exclusive collection of premium vehicles, weapons, apparel, and action threaded across all aspects of Jason and Lucia’s story,” according to the studio.

Players who pre-order or buy the Standard or Ultimate Edition before November 20 will also get the Vintage Vice City Pack, which features ” a collection of items that flash back to when the neon burned brightest”.

Take-Two has also confirmed that the Standard Edition of the game will cost $79.99 and the Ultimate Edition will cost $99.99.

Rockstar has also confirmed that the physical version of Grand Theft Auto 6 will not include a disc at launch, and will instead include a code in a box.

The full list of content included in the Ultimate Edition, with Rockstar’s descriptions, is as follows:

Vehicle – ’95 Grotti Cheetah
Grotti’s signature mid ’90s sports car and ode to Shore Drive, the ’95 Grotti Cheetah is complete with a minimalist, retro-futuristic livery and available to punctuate later-stage action.

Weapons – Hawk & Little Morgan Revolvers
His and hers versions of this powerful revolver with classic Vice City stylings sourced from the Vercetti Estate, including palm-tree-etched grips, engraved detailing, and high-performance scope.

Weapons – Personalized Variants
Personalized sidearms with detailed engravings for Jason’s Girardi ES9 pistol and Lucia’s Klose K17 pistol.

Looks – Vice City Style
Whether poolside or side by side, Jason and Lucia can look the part with exclusive outfits, tattoos, and more.

Vehicles – Jason’s Safehouse Vehicles
Switch gears and soak up the sun in an Army fatigue-tinged Dinka Enduro motorcycle or Crest Kayak.

Modkit – Ganado Retro Build
Inject some muscle and classic stylings into Jason’s well-worn Vapid Ganado low-riding pickup with exclusive mods.

Mod shop – Rideout Customs
Transform vanilla vehicles into magnificent works of art with detailed interiors, exquisite rims, and donk stylings. Only open for business with the Ultimate Edition.

Hair salon – Sara’s Unisex Salon
Get signature salon styles for both Jason and Lucia, including facial hair for Jason and makeup and nails for Lucia. Only open for business with the Ultimate Edition.

Watercraft – Shitzu Squalo
Perfect for casting in Gambit Bay and reeling in catches of all sorts, this gradient pink and blue Squalo docked at Washington Beach is made open-ocean-ready with an explosives-laden weapons crate.

Clothing Store – Stock 305
Style various unique and exclusive looks for Jason and Lucia at Stockyard’s premiere destination for elevated streetwear. Only open for business with the Ultimate Edition.

Vehicle and Garage – ’67 Vapid Dominator Buggy
A Mud Club monster offering impressive off-road handling for the backwoods of Mount Kalaga and beyond. Conveniently store it at the Paradise Garage in Watson Bay, which features a weapon locker plus a secure place to deposit stolen goods to be fenced.

Tattoo Shop – Electric Fang Tattoo
Stockyard’s most iconic ink bar, with over 50 signature tattoos for both Jason and Lucia — all designed by the artist collective FAILE. Only open for business with the Ultimate Edition.

Mod shop – One-Eyed Willie’s
This mod shop in Lake Leonida specializes in off-road modifications and hand-painted automotive artistry. Only open for business with the Ultimate Edition.

Looks – Goodtime Gear
A capsule collection of apparel and accessories inspired by the Goodtime State’s hit TV show character, Macca the Gator.

Gang Compound – PTT Youngin$ Illegal Goods Store
Raid the compound of one of Southside Vice City’s loudest and most socially active gangs and escape safely to score some special items and distinct contraband.

Special Commission – Classic Car Collection
Track down a variety of abandoned classic and work-in-progress project cars and revitalize them to their former glory in this special commission from eccentric collector and local fixer, Wyman.

Rockstar confirms there will be no disc version of GTA 6 at launch

Rockstar Games has confirmed that the physical version of Grand Theft Auto 6 will ship with a digital download code inside the box.

The news was confirmed on Wednesday, alongside details of the game’s standard and Ultimate editions, which will go up for pre-order on June 25.

According to Rockstar, those who pre-order GTA6 will be able to pre-load its content on November 12, so that it’s ready to play on November 19 for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

The standard edition of GTA 6 will retail for $80 USD, and the Ultimate Edition, which contains various in-game rewards, will retail for $100 USD. The physical versions will “contain a download code inside the box”, according to an announcement.

Confirmation that the launch version of the game will not ship on disc seems to partly corroborate an earlier report that there would be no physical version on release day for the much-anticipated Rockstar sequel, in an effort to prevent leaks.

Polish site PPE.pl reported in January that GTA6 would likely get a physical release later, potentially in 2027. It was claimed that the decision was partly made to avoid leaks – something that has already plagued the new Grand Theft Auto in recent years, and an issue Rockstar has historically been serious about tackling.

GTA 6’s box version will be a download code.

Shortly after the report was published, Rockstar’s parent company, Take-Two, denied that it was planning to release a physical version of GTA6 after the initial launch date. Technically, this is correct: retailers will have something to sell on November 19, but it won’t be a proper physical version, so there will be little incentive for consumers to head to stores.

Given that there have been numerous instances of players acquiring physical copies of games early – often through retailers who receive shipments before release – and streaming them online, this could justify delaying the physical release of GTA 6 to avoid spoilers, from Rockstar’s point of view.

It would also allow Rockstar to make higher margins on the game, which many analysts predict will be the most lucrative entertainment launch of all time.

Rockstar Games revealed the official cover art for Grand Theft Auto 6 last week and confirmed that pre-orders for the game will begin on June 25. Those who pre-order and purchase the game before November 20 will receive the Vintage Vice City Pack, a collection of in-game items “that flash back to when the neon burned brightest”.

In Wednesday’s announcement, Rockstar says the launch version of the game will “feature a single player experience”, potentially suggesting that the next iteration of Grand Theft Auto Online could arrive later, as it did with the last GTA game.

A synopsis for the game reads: “Vice City, USA. Jason and Lucia have always known the deck is stacked against them. But when an easy score goes wrong, they find themselves on the darkest side of the sunniest place in America, in the middle of a conspiracy stretching across the state of Leonida — forced to rely on each other more than ever if they want to make it out alive.”

AppCharge: Direct-to-consumer market worth around $17bn today

New research suggests that direct-to-consumer spending on mobile was around $17 billion in 2025.

That’s according to data from AppCharge, which estimates that DTC spending has caused a median revenue increase of 15% across all respondents to its report. Transposing Newzoo’s $113.3 billion in in-app sales for 2025 and the company has arrived at that $17 billion figure.

At the moment, the majority of games industry respondents are exploring DTC – that’s 42% of companies, while 16% are testing the concept. 12% are scaling up their direct-to-consumer business. This is a new segment for a lot of firms, with 73% saying that they are at least “somewhat confident” in their understanding of the sector.

45% of respondents make less than 10% of their revenue from DTC, while 17% make between 10-and-29%. 10% make 30%-49%, with another 9% making 50-to-69% of their revenue.

8% makes 70-to-89% of revenue from this business, but 11% makes over 90%.

Growth projections for the space are mixed, too. AppMagic believes that direct-to-consumer spending will increase by 26% year-on-year in the United States alone. The company says that 30% of Monopoly Go’s recent revenue has come from DTC, adding that in the middle of 2025 this share was “several times lower”.

25% of respondents believe their DTC revenue will stay flat, while 8% forecast a decline. 11% say that there will be a sub-5% increase. 18% reckons their direct-to-consumer revenue will rise by 18%.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the main reason that developers and publishers are turning to DTC, this is the reason that 63% of respondents gave. 53% say that building a direct relationship with players is the primary objective, while 45% say that they want to “improve monetisation opportunities”.

50% of respondents said that making players aware of their DTC business is the primary challenge. 41% say that this is player acquisition, while 36% say scaling the operation is the main issue.

“Studios aren’t just building web stores,” AppCharge’s CEO and co-founder Maor Sason wrote.

“They’re hiring for roles that didn’t exist two years ago, rethinking how they operate, and facing demands the app store model never required.

“The publishers who committed to this early aren’t just ahead on revenue. They know their players better, they retain them longer, and they have more control over where the business goes next.

“In a few years, we won’t think of DTC as an alternative. It will simply be how the most successful games operate, with large studios generating 50%+ of their revenue by selling directly to their players.”

Earlier this year, AppCharge said that DTC is a “core new revenue system” for developers.

Mobygames announces new suite of pro tools for users to maintain their career profile, find jobs and see industry insights

Atari-owned industry database MobyGames has launched a new suite of tools for industry professionals, including rich profiles for people to record and share their career progress and achievements, and access to “personalized Job postings, insights and industry tracking.” The service launches today as a free beta, with certain features to be paywalled at final launch.

The firm said the launch was motivated by the shortcomings of other professional networks that “don’t cater to the nuances of working in gaming,” and jobs boards that “don’t capture the network and personalized intelligence that actually drives how careers move in this industry.”

At launch, users can verify their identity and update their profile on the site to add more detail on their different roles and the titles on which they are credited. This service will remain free to use. The site describes it as enabling users to “provide your own context to what your work entailed,” with examples including “which art assets you created, how you supported distribution, or which characters you voiced.” Users can also specify which company they worked with for each credit.

A new “professional” tier adds the ability to “visualise their gaming network and connections,” “see game launch and media coverage updates from their professional network,” and “access personalized Job postings, insights and industry tracking, including recommendations, compensation ranges, connections working at target companies, and more.”

Reece Denzel | Image credit: MobyGames

The Professional tier will be free for the beta period, which is expected to run until August, and be $14.99 a month (or $11.99 a month with an annual subscription) after full release, Product Manager Reece Denzel tells GamesIndustry.biz. The firm will “actively solicit feedback” from users during the beta period.

The site already offered paid “plus” tiers offering additional data access, which it describes as targeting hobbyists. That service was rebranded from MobyPro in December last year.

The service resembles IMDBPro, the professional tier of the long-established and now Amazon-owned movie database, but Denzel says that while MobyGames looked at IMDBPro as an inspiration “we are building features from the ground up to target the specific needs of those working in games.”

“The information we track is very games-specific, and we are going beyond just being a directory. Our updates on jobs, game releases, and market trends provide a dynamic environment that delivers more value for games industry professionals than IMDbPro can,” he says.

In a press release, the firm described MobyGames as “the most complete, structured record of game development credits in existence,” claiming that it includes data on more than 350,000 games and add-ons, 1.3 million individuals, and 50,000 companies.

“Ask any games professional what platform they use to manage their career, and you’ll hear the same frustrations — existing solutions were not designed for this industry,” said Andreas Deptolla, President of Atari Europe. “MobyGames has documented game credits with more depth and accuracy than anyone else for decades. Combining that foundation with a purpose-built professional network was simply the obvious thing to do.”

Atari acquired MobyGames in 2022 for $1.5 million from retro hardware manufacturer Antstream. The site was launched in 1999 and was purchased by game rental service GameFly in 2010, prompting an unpopular redesign which was rolled back after the site was purchased by design firm Blue Flame Labs in 2013, in collaboration with then-overseer of GDC Simon Carless..

Tencent is reportedly in talks to sell its shares in some Japanese studios, even if that means taking a loss

Chinese publishing giant Tencent is reportedly in talks to exit some of the investments it previously made in Japanese game development studios.

Tencent, the world’s largest games company, has invested in more than 800 developers worldwide, including stakes in Epic Games, Larian, and Krafton, as well as shares in Ubisoft and many others. It also owns Riot Games and Supercell.

According to a report by Bloomberg, however, the company is looking to exit a number of these investments, including those involving Japanese companies.

The article specifically cites Marvelous – the Tokyo-based studio behind the Monster Hunter Stories, Rune Factory and Story of Seasons games – as one of the investments Tencent is in talks to back out of.

Tencent is said to be currently evaluating its minority holdings in a number of studios, and in some cases is willing to sell its stakes back to the original management team, even if this means taking a loss.

This doesn’t mean Tencent is looking to step away entirely from investment in the Japanese video games industry, however – the report stresses that the company is still assessing which of its investments still promise to be high performers.

It also claims that Tencent’s investment in ‘marquee’ studios like PlatinumGames and FromSoftware (and its parent company Kadokawa) are unaffected by this.

It’s believed that Tencent wants to have a more active role in its investments, where it essentially co-produced games with foreign studios, rather than simply investing money in them and standing back in a hands-off manner.

Tencent is reportedly looking to sell its investment in Marvelous, the studio behind the Monster Hunter Stories series.

“Video games are core to Tencent’s business,” the company said in a statement to the publication. “We remain fully committed to working with our investees and maintaining our strong presence in the Japanese game market over the long term.”

Tencent’s investments have been the cause of concern in other countries too. Earlier this year it was reported that the Trump administration was debating whether to force Chinese gaming giant Tencent to divest its stakes in video game companies.

The Financial Times report claimed that US officials had held meetings to decide whether Tencent’s investments in US gaming firms pose a security risk.

EA: AI is delivering “faster prototyping” and a “real rise in creativity” in its studios

As reported by Eurogamer, EA’s president of enterprise development, Laura Miele, has said that AI has led to a “real rise in creativity” at the company’s studios.

Miele made the remarks in conversation with GamesIndustry.biz alumnus Christopher Dring at The Game Business Live on June 8, during Summer Game Fest. In answer to the question “Will the rise of AI tools lead to shorter development cycles?”, she replied: “Perhaps in some parts they will. I really believe in what I’ve seen, that I’m pretty excited about.”

She continued: “I’ve always wanted to… help our studio developers remove friction, and I’ve always kind of wanted to be a hero to them and help them create career-defining experiences. And I think that AI, what I’ve seen, how AI has enabled removing friction from our pipelines and our tools and our workflows, has been pretty exciting.

“It’s removed some tedium out of their jobs – and I’ve seen faster prototyping, I’ve seen faster creativity, and shorter, faster conversations around creativity and coming to alignment. And so… I think it’s super interesting. I think there’s a real rise of creativity that comes from removing some of the tedious tasks about development.”

Back in 2024, EA CEO Andrew Wilson talked about how generative AI could make its development process “more efficient” and help give developers “more power.”

“We are looking at how it can make us more efficient, how [it can] give our developers more power, and how [it can] give them back more time and allow them to get to the fun more quickly,” he said.

“Based on our early assessment, we believe that more than 50% of our development processes will be positively impacted by the advances in generative AI.”

Earlier this year, football commentator Guy Mowbray gave EA permission to “replicate his voice” via AI to generate player names.

However, generative AI remains a controversial topic in the industry. A survey conducted by GamesIndustry.biz at the beginning of 2026 found that with minor variations, more than four-fifths of games industry respondents believed that no amount of AI-generated content is acceptable in the development process. Meanwhile, senior figures from across the games industry offered differing opinions on exactly how the technology could or should be used in a special feature as part of AI Week on GamesIndustry.biz.

Electronic Arts is being acquired by a consortium of investors including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, with the deal set to go through by the end of June. Analysts recently spoke to GamesIndustry.biz about why the $55 billion acquisition isn’t your usual leveraged buyout.

New video shows Tetris and Rubik’s Cube creators meeting for the first time to discuss their world famous puzzles

A newly released interview video shows footage of the creators of Tetris and the Rubik’s Cube meeting for the first time.

Alexey Pajitnov and Ernő Rubik are responsible for two of the most famous puzzles in the modern era, but the pair had never met until December 2025, when they appeared together at the OXO Video Game Museum in Spain.

Now a new video by Bandai-owned Japanese toy manufacturer Megahouse shows the moment the pair met for the first time ever, and their subsequent discussion about their creations.

“I am so excited about meeting Mr Rubik today,” Pajitnov says near the start of the video. “I’ve been obsessed for years with the Cube, and I dreamed to meet him, but finally it happened.

The video shows the pair meeting at a Spanish café and shaking hands. Pajitnov says: “Mr Ernő, its very nice to meet you. So long a time we’ve never met, that’s strange.”

They then sit at a table and discuss their respective games, with Rubik’s explaining to Pajitnov that he originally designed a 2×2 cube before changing it to the now iconic 3×3 cube.

“I love the form of the Cube by itself because it’s a very simple and very clear space relation,” Rubik explains to Pajtinov, adding: “The Cube changed my life in many ways, and I’m sure that happened with you as well [with Tetris].”

Pajitnov replies: “When I show my game to everybody, people get it like ‘that’. I’m pretty sure the Cube is even more easy to understand.”

The video then shows Pajitnov asking Rubik to take a selfie with him, “otherwise my wife will kill me”.

It then ends with Pajitnov praising the Rubik’s Cube again, saying: “If I would put something as evidence of human civilization on an interstellar space object, that would be one of the 10 objects I would definitely put on it.”

When asked if he would include Tetris too, Pajitnov says “ehhhhh”, and appears unsure.

The Tetris and Rubik brands recently came together for a collaborative puzzle called Rubik’s Tetris. The puzzle looks similar to a Rubik’s Cube, but instead of turning it until every face has blocks of the same colour, players have to turn it until all six Tetriminos are visible on the cube.

In late 2024, Digital Eclipse released Tetris Forever, an ‘interactive museum’ containing a compilation of classic Tetris games including a recreation of Pajitnov’s very first version of Tetris, developed for the Soviet-designed Electronika 60 computer.

VGC’s 5-star Tetris Forever review called it “a masterful celebration of the of the medium’s most seminal series”, concluding that the package “is handled with such attention to detail that this has to be considered the definitive telling of the Tetris story”.

“This is going to be a niche device” – Analysts react to the $1,000+ Steam Machine price reveal

Yesterday, Valve finally revealed the launch price for its hotly anticipated Steam Machine console/PC hybrid. Prices will start at $1,049 for a 515GB without a controller, and go up to $1,428 for a 2TB machine with a controller.

These prices are far higher than Valve wanted them to be. Back in February, the company pushed back the launch of the Steam Machine as a result of memory shortages, and Valve has said that the initial batch of Steam Machines will only be available in limited quantities. Across the industry, the generative AI boom is having a seismic impact on component prices and supplies, and the Steam Machine price reveal is the latest evidence of the cost to consumers.

Although the Steam Machine is a PC at heart, it’s a console in form, and going beyond the $1,000 mark is, for many, breaking a psychological barrier in terms of what consoles should cost. But what effect will the pricing have on sales? What are the implications for the upcoming consoles from Sony and Microsoft? And what does this tell us about the market more generally?

GamesIndustry.biz asked these questions to four industry analysts: Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana, Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games research at Ampere Analysis, Emmanuel “Manu” Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo, and Joost van Dreunen, CEO of Aldora. Here’s what they said.

Is the price a surprise?

Van Dreunen says that he wasn’t shocked at all to see Valve breaking the $1,000 barrier. “In fact, I predicted in March that we’d see the price of gaming consoles breach $1,000,” he says. “If anything, I underestimated the speed: even in my most pessimistic February revision, I had the top SKU near $899, and the entry price alone cleared that. It’s disappointing, certainly, because Valve prides itself on accessibility and fair pricing for consumers. But unless Valve is willing to heavily subsidize its upcoming device, it has to price in the runaway cost of memory and storage like everyone else.”

Joost van Dreunen | Image credit: THIS 2023/Alexander Håkansson

Likewise, Rosier wasn’t surprised about Valve’s pricing. “The $1,049 entry price tracks the current component market, rather than any positioning choice,” he says. “Valve set the 512GB model at $1,049, just above a clean $999. Combined with its public line that the original target is ‘no longer viable’, that points to minimal-margin pricing, not a marketing number. From Valve’s own statements and the reporting around launch, the price came in well above the $700 to $800 band Valve had originally targeted. Valve attributes the gap to higher DRAM and NAND costs as AI data-centre demand absorbs supply.”

In short, he says, “Valve is not subsidizing the hardware. Platform holders routinely sell consoles at or below build cost and recover margin on software and services. Valve’s hardware has historically carried thin margins, with the business resting on Steam software and service revenue.”

Piers Harding-Rolls | Image credit: Ampere Analysis

Harding-Rolls, by contrast, was a little taken aback to see the Steam Machine cross that significant $1,000 threshold. “Back in December I was predicting a starting price between $700 and $800,” he says. “This year it was clear with memory and storage price increases that this would go up. The Steam Deck price increase was also an indication that prices were likely to be significantly more than originally aimed for.”

He’s certain that Valve would have wanted to come in at a much lower price point. “Valve will be disappointed it can’t make Steam Machines more accessible. The company is hamstrung by its lack of hardware scale and the fact it’s not in a position to subsidise the hardware through increases in software and services sales.”

Mat Piscatella, meanwhile, says the price did took him by surprise. “I was thinking it would be higher, given everything,” he says. “This seems like a quite reasonable price, all things considered.”

How well will the Steam Machine sell?

Piscatella is sure that the Steam Machine will immediately sell out at launch, even at a $1,000+ price point. “But the question is the available quantity, which I expect will be very limited.” He expects it will remain tough to find a Steam Machine for some time.

Mat Piscatella

Van Dreunen thinks Valve’s console will find its enthusiast core, “but it won’t move console volumes at this number, and Valve can live with that,” he says. “The Machine has always been a funnel into Steam, not a profit centre. More broadly, console and PC gaming are increasingly becoming a luxury category, catering to a shrinking set of affluent fans. You have to imagine that if Valve is struggling with the increased costs of hardware components, then everyone else is, too. After having crossed the symbolic $1,000 console threshold, the next milestone is the disappearance of the sub-$500 PC.”

Harding-Rolls thinks that at the Steam Machine’s current price point, along with its low availability and a less clear cut use case when compared with the Steam Deck, Valve will “do well to sell more than a million this year.”

More generally, he doesn’t see Valve’s console as targeting the mainstream. “I’ve always held the view that Steam Machines are a niche proposition for a small subsegment of gamers that are looking for a more console-like way to experience PC gaming,” he says.

“In contrast to Steam Decks, which have a clearly defined mobile use case, the Steam Machine proposition is much less established or defined. As such, it’s a harder sell.

Manu Rosier | Image credit: Newzoo

“This pricing reinforces that view and underlines that this is going to be a niche device. It also sounds like availability is going to be heavily constrained. The Steam Deck price increase and this latest pricing news makes it clear that specialist games hardware and associated markets face a huge challenge to build and maintain commercial momentum.”

Rosier agrees that the volume of sales will be small, limited by supply as much as demand. “At the launch price, the Steam Machine is an enthusiast product, not a mass-market console,” he says. “Its case rests on the Steam library and the living-room form factor, not price.The price strengthens the case for cloud gaming and local streaming boxes as the cheaper route into high-end play.”

Does this mean next-gen consoles will also be $1,000+?

Seeing Valve break the $1,000 barrier inevitably leaves us asking whether the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft will follow suit. Microsoft teased its upcoming Project Helix earlier this year, although the console – which will also play PC games – doesn’t currently have a release date. Sony, meanwhile, has been tight-lipped about a potential PlayStation 6, although some have suggested it might be pushed back to 2028 or even 2029 as a result of component shortages and price rises.

Will Microsoft’s Project Helix come in at under $1,000? | Image credit: Microsoft

Whenever they arrive, Van Dreunen expects the next generation of consoles to shoot past the $1,000 mark. “At this rate, the next generation may not even release until 2028, and when it does, north of a grand is the floor. Even existing devices are getting marked up. The companies that manufacture the necessary components have fully shifted toward selling to hyperscalers, paying a premium to build out their data centres.

“The memory makers – Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron – are now ‘post-consumer’, which tells you gamers matter less and prices go up. Earlier this month, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma conceded that its upcoming console is going to need a new business model and hardware partners just to ship, and that storage and memory will cost five times more by holiday 2027 than they did in 2024.”

“Base next-generation models are likely to hold under $999 for psychological and marketing reasons”

Manu Rosier

Harding-Rolls still sees room for other manufacturers to stick to a three-digit price tag. “Next-gen consoles will likely be more expensive, but they have different levers that can be pulled to offset hardware costs, which can support cheaper pricing,” he says. “Sony has more scale than Valve and is better positioned in terms of supply chain accessibility through its entrenched relationships and broader electronics business. Console companies will be hoping that they can take advantage of improving component inventories and more stable pricing as it gets closer to the launch of next-gen consoles. Market disruption and other factors means this is most likely to be at the end of 2028.”

Piscatella agrees that $1,000 next-gen consoles aren’t a given. “But it will possibly (even likely) happen anyways. Given the chaos in the world of components (and lots of other things, for that matter) the future here is beyond cloudy.”

Rosier, meanwhile, thinks the base models of next-gen consoles will come in below $1,000, but notes that the floor is rising quickly. “The PS5 Pro is already at $899 after two hikes inside a year, so the distance to $1,000 is short,” he says.

“Base next-generation models are likely to hold under $999 for psychological and marketing reasons. Premium tiers are a separate question. Component costs sit outside the manufacturers’ control, and there is no sign of an AI-driven cooldown in memory and storage demand. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has already said memory costs will affect Project Helix pricing and availability.”

Piers Harding-Rolls says that Valve doesn’t have the hardware scale of Sony. | Image credit: Valve

Similarly to Harding-Rolls, he notes that unlike Valve, Sony and Microsoft have historically sold consoles at or below build cost. “That subsidy capacity is what can keep a base console under $999 even as build costs climb.”

But in the face of rising component costs, he sees two likely responses: “platform holders launching their own streaming boxes, and hardware-subscription models that spread the upfront cost over time.”

What does this tell us about the state of the market?

In terms of what the Steam Machine’s price point tells us about the evolution of the games market more generally, van Dreunen thinks we’re seeing a changing of the guard. “Firms that overextended in the wake of the pandemic, buying studios and chasing scale, will now pay the price,” he says. “Hardware isn’t getting cheaper, so the cost of entry has to come down some other way, through distribution and business-model innovation rather than cheaper boxes, but not every firm is capable of making that transition.

The Steam Machine comes at a time when hardware costs are soaring across the board. | Image credit: Valve

“I predict a flourishing of small and mid-sized developers in the period ahead, precisely because they rely less on high-end hardware and distribute through accessible platforms. Gaming was never really a technology business. It’s a cultural one that happens to run on technology, and the firms that remember this will outlast those still betting on silicon as their primary driver of growth.”

Piscatella, by contrast, doesn’t think Valve’s move indicates much, “other than the pricing suggests perhaps things may not be quite as dire as it appears on the component front (unless Valve is taking lower margins here or had some purchase agreements already in place, tough to say).”

“Hardware isn’t getting cheaper, so the cost of entry has to come down some other way”

Joost van Dreunen

But Harding-Rolls thinks the $1,000+ price indicates that parts of the market which depend on the sale of specialist games devices are coming under greater pressure as hardware prices increase. “Console companies are looking at ways to mitigate reduced access to memory and storage and the increase in component costs, but there is only so much that can be done,” he says. “Unfortunately, this is a medium-term challenge that will take at least two years to start to be alleviated.”

Rosier says that more generally, the cost of entry into gaming is rising, and conditions are toughest for anyone buying their first high-definition gaming device. “That tends to slow adoption among younger players and push more of that generation toward mobile,” he says. “That shift is already underway. It also tends to make low-barrier titles like Roblox more relevant to this cohort than high-end AAA games, since they run on hardware these players already own.”

He concludes that the soaring cost of hardware will encourage developers to stay disciplined on minimum PC specs. “Every notch up the spec ladder shrinks the addressable audience to the wealthier minority,” he says. “Spec sobriety is now a commercial decision as much as an engineering one.”

Nintendo Switch Online is getting a price increase in Japan

Nintendo has announced plans to increase the price of its Nintendo Switch Online service in Japan.

Switch Online is Nintendo‘s subscription service for Switch and Switch 2, which offers such features as online multiplayer, cloud saves, voice chat via mobile and GameChat.

It also provides access to Nintendo Classics, Nintendo’s on-demand libraries of retro NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, GameCube, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Boy and Mega Drive / Genesis games.

The price for Switch Online has remained the same ever since it launched back in March 2017, but Nintendo has now announced that the price will be increasing in Japan.

As of July 1, the price of a Switch Online will increase to the following (dollar price equivalents for comparison only):

• Individual plan (1 month) – was ¥306 ($1.89), now ¥400 ($2.47)
• Individual plan (3 months) – was ¥815 ($5.04), now ¥1,000 ($6.19)
• Individual plan (12 months) – was ¥2,400 ($14.86), now ¥3,000 ($18.58)
• Family plan (12 months) – was ¥4,500 ($27.87), now ¥5,800 ($35.93)
• Switch Online + Expansion Pack (12 months) – was ¥4,900 ($30.35), now ¥5,900 ($36.55)
• Switch Online + Expansion Pack – Family Plan (12 months) – was ¥8,900 ($55.13), now ¥9,900 ($61.33)

At the time of writing, Nintendo has yet to confirm whether other regions will also be getting a Switch Online price increase.

It may be, however, that Japan is the only major market that will get the price hike, possibly to the ongoing weakness of the yen, which has been near its lowest levels (compared to the US dollar) since 1986.

Japan recently increased the price of Switch 2 hardware, a move that will be replicated in the West come September.

As the yen continues to struggle, the result is a larger discrepancy in price between digital services on Switch Online. As a result, a 12-month Switch Online plan currently costs the equivalent of $14.86, whereas in the US it costs $19.99. Next week’s price increase in Japan will take it up to around $18.58.

It seems possible, then, that Nintendo’s price increase will be limited to Japan, in order to ensure the price of Switch Online is closer aligned between regions.

Nintendo recently increased the price of Switch and Switch 2 in Japan, a move that took effect on May 25 and saw the price of the ‘Japan-only’ region-locked Switch 2 rising from ¥49,980 ($309) to ¥59,980 ($371).

Whereas Switch Online price increase hasn’t yet been confirmed for the West, a hardware price increase has – starting on September 1, the price of Switch 2 consoles will rise in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Pokémon and Aardman share more details on its upcoming Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu animation

The Pokémon Company and Wallace and Gromit creators Aardman have debuted the first footage of Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu, the upcoming stop-motion animation project from both firms.

The first footage from the pilot and in-development production materials from the series were shown off to fans at the “Lights, Camera, Aardman!” panel at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

It’s currently unknown whether the footage shown as part of the event will be released to the public. The first key art for the series was also revealed, featuring Pichu, Sirfetch’d, and Fletchling.

The animation project is scheduled for release in 2027.

The panel also confirmed that the series will take place in the Galar region, the setting of Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Sirfetch’d, the evolved form of Farfetch’d, made its debut in the Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield games.

The Galar region is based on the UK, which The Pokémon Company calls a “fitting setting” for the first collaboration between the Japanese giant and British animation studio Aardman.

“It’s an honour to take part in Aardman’s panel at Annecy and talk about the shared commitment to quality, strong storytelling, memorable characters, and a genuine respect for audiences and fans,” said Phil Rynda, director of original animation at The Pokémon Company International.

“This project gives us a unique opportunity to tell stories from the point of view of Pokémon, made possible by Aardman’s extraordinary craft, remarkable artistry. Their warmth, and affection for this much-loved Pokémon cast are evident in every brilliantly crafted frame.”

Aardman is best known for its stop-motion animation projects featuring characters such as Wallace & Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Timmy Time, and Morph.

Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu is described as “an epic journey through the wilds of Galar”.

“Our heroes embark on a gallant quest to help and protect Pokémon across the region,” the description reads. “Their missions rarely go as planned, but their noble deeds forge their friendship as they step bravely into the unknown. Peril, alliances and rivalries, extraordinary Pokémon, and endless laughs await them.”

Warframe dev says the end of Destiny 2 content is ‘heartbreaking’ and not being celebrated by its rival

The team behind Warframe isn’t celebrating the news that one of its biggest rivals Destiny 2 is releasing no more content.

That’s according to the game’s community director and live ops lead Megan Everett, who says the release of Destiny 2’s final major content update, Monument of Triumph, on June 9 wasn’t a cause to rejoice.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Everett said she was devastated that Destiny 2’s content had ended and felt it would be a bad thing for the genre as a whole.

“Truthfully, it’s heartbreaking,” she said. “It’s earth-shattering. I never thought I’d ever see the day where I’d read an article from Bungie about Destiny 2 essentially shutting down.

“I’m speaking personally, but I know people would echo it as well. No one is celebrating the fact that this has happened to Destiny, and its players and that story.

“I know that people have obviously compared us in terms of being ‘direct competitors’ and stuff like that. But I think a game is healthy when you have competitors, and [Destiny’s developers] have done such an amazing job at trying to grow that story regardless of whatever situation they were in.”

Everett added that while it was nice to see players showing their support for Bungie following the announcement that it was stopping Destiny 2 content, she feels that the game could have continued for longer if that support had been ongoing.

“I think what’s unfortunate and sad is they announced this was happening, and suddenly people are showing all this support for them,” she explained.

Warframe launched in 2013 and continues to enjoy daily peak concurrent Steam players of 60,000 to 100,000.

“They’ve been getting a lot of negativity for all this time, and it’s like, where was all this love! People need to put the hate away and show the love, because they could have really used that. I know it was there, but it wasn’t as vocal as maybe some of the negativity.”

Bungie’s decision to stop making Destiny 2 content follows declining player numbers for the live service shooter, and a disappointing recent expansion.

Sony Interactive Entertainment recently reported a $765 million impairment loss related to Bungie assets, following the release of its extraction shooter Marathon. Sony has not said how the game has performed since its release earlier this year.

Volunteer-led RTS BAR signs publishing deal with Hooded Horse

Beyond All Reason (BAR), the volunteer-led “epic scale RTS” game, has signed a publishing deal with Hooded Horse.

Addressing players on its website, BAR said that while the volunteer-only model had carried the project “to greatness,” it needed a publisher to enable “the biggest things we aspire to bring for release.”

The multiplayer content “stays free forever” and the IP remains with the BAR team. The code also remains GPL (open source), with “safety provisions built into the contract for the project to continue whatever happens.”

“After almost seven years of development, BAR is going professional and teaming up with one of the most respected publishers in the strategy space to bring the game to a full Steam release,” the company said in a statement.

“It is with enormous excitement, and a fair bit of disbelief that we are finally writing this post, that we can announce Beyond All Reason has officially signed a publishing partnership with Hooded Horse and is going professional.

“This is, without exaggeration, the single biggest step in BAR’s history.”

After seven years of volunteer development, the team admitted that a full Steam release requires “long, sustained, often unglamorous effort,” as well as a “new client, a coherent campaign, scalable, reliable infrastructure, onboarding, QA, polish, [and] release coordination.”

“That is the paradox,” the team added. “BAR is alive and moving fast because volunteers keep creating amazing things. The Steam Roadmap still feels far away because many of its biggest items are exactly the kind of work the volunteer-only model struggles to finish.”

Hooded Horse – which BAR describes as a specialist in strategy, simulation, and RPG games – was brought on as publisher “after spending many months in discussions with Tim and the wider Hooded Horse team.”

The leadership team said it shared the proposal with the wider contributor network before “anything was signed.” 68% of those polled were “for” the partnership.

As part of the publishing deal, the game will continue to be available for free through the website, but the Steam version will be available as the “BAR Premium Edition.”

“The Steam release will be paid, and aside from the multiplayer experience, it will also feature additional singleplayer content. The multiplayer game will be the same on Steam, with full feature parity and cross-play. Same matchmaking, same servers, same community-built content,” the BAR team explained.

Last month, venture capital firm Griffin Gaming Partners launched a new $100 million fund to support indie games. The fund is led by Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender, who is also a managing director at Griffin. He has served as an operating partner at the firm since October 2023.

OD has a secret system to help players too scared to keep playing, Kojima says

Hideo Kojima has shared a new image of his Xbox-published horror game, OD, and claimed that it will “go beyond the limit of the ‘scariness’” that other games have reached.

Last shown at an event last September, OD is described by Kojima Productions as a completely new gaming experience that runs on Unreal Engine 5. Kojima is collaborating with movie director Jordan Peele on OD, which stars Hunter Schafer, Udo Kier, and Sophia Lillis.

In a new feature marking Xbox’s 25th anniversary, Entertainment Weekly has shared some new comments from the platform holder and Kojima regarding OD, as well as what appears to be an in-game screenshot.

According to the publication, Kojima was hesitant to talk in detail about what OD is, for fear of revealing too much, but allegedly, the broad concept is to get the player to “overdose on fear”.

“I wanted to do something new. I wanted to do something different,” Kojima said. “I had this OD concept since I was working on DS1 [Death Stranding], and I was working on it just by myself. I can’t reveal much detail, but it’s something that no one has ever seen before. A new game system.”

He added: “I pitched to many people, to the big companies, and also to the up-and-coming companies. All of them said the same thing. They said that I’m crazy, and that they really don’t understand the concept — that they will not be able to do it.”

According to Kojima, his objective for OD is to “go beyond the limit of the ‘scariness’ that other games had reached”.

“It’s a single-player game, and I wanted to make it as scary as possible,” he said. “But for those who might stop playing when it gets too scary, I have thought of a system that will allow them to keep going. I can’t say much more, because it’ll give too much of a hint on the system, and I could get in trouble for saying too much!”

OD was signed by former Xbox boss Phil Spencer. However, in the Entertainment Weekly feature, new gaming head Asha Sharma shared positive words on the project, calling it “a deeply moving game”.

“I’ve got great artists and creatives that can pick a great game better than I can, and so I want to give it space, but most importantly, I think it just represents another kind of game.”‘

Steam Machine costs over $1,000, ‘significantly more’ than Valve originally wanted to charge

Valve has revealed the price of the Steam Machine, ahead of its release.

As seen on the official Steam store, the standard Steam Machine will come in four versions, priced as follows:

• 512GB model – $1,049 / £879
• 512GB with Steam Controller – $1,128 / £938
• 2TB model – $1,349 / £1,149
• 2TB with Steam Controller – $1,428 / £1,208

Other than the storage size, both models have identical specs, though the 2TB model will also include two extra faceplates, red fabric and solid walnut.

Whereas the recently released Steam Controller was sold on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, which led to scalping issues, this time pre-orders will be going into a randomised queue.

Users will be able to register their interest for any of the Steam Machine models from now until June 25, at which point all pre-orders will be randomised and placed into a queue. Valve says it hopes this method won’t “reward bots” and will ensure everyone has a fair chance to order one without having to “schedule their life around that moment”.

Users will still be able to pre-order a Steam Machine after the June 25 window closes, but at this point their order will simply be added to the end of the queue.

Valve has confirmed that the price is higher than it had originally planned, with the ongoing surge in component costs affecting matters.

“Steam Machine, like our other hardware products, is made up of many components that we source from manufacturers around the world,” the company said in a blog post. “The price at which we sell our hardware is a direct result of the cost of these components.

The 2TB version will come with two faceplates.

“We felt like we had a good understanding of how those costs might change over time when we first started sourcing them for Steam Machine back in 2023. That understanding was born from the many years of data we all have about the evolution of PC hardware prices – primarily, that it tends to get cheaper over time as new technology arrives.

“Over the past year or so, that has changed quickly and significantly, most visibly for RAM and storage components. There are a variety of reasons, all of which are affecting hardware products everywhere. The overall effect is that our original goal for the price of Steam Machine is no longer viable.

“So the prices we’re sharing today reflect the state of the world for manufacturing – or, more accurately, it reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.

“Price wasn’t the only thing impacted by all of this – availability was as well. There were periods where we found we couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price. More than anything else, this has impacted the number of units we’ve been able to produce for launch.”

Engineer Yazan Aldehayyat also told Eurogamer that while the original price was never officially confirmed, the final price is “significantly more” than it had envisioned.

Valve’s Steam Machine price starts at $1049 / £879; original pricing “no longer viable” due to hardware supply issues

Steam has announced pricing and extremely limited availability for the Steam Machine, the desktop/living room sibling of the successful Steam Deck. It will be available in 512GB and 2TB versions, priced at $1,049 USD / £879 GBP and $1,349 USD / £1,149 GBP, and availability will be determined by a lottery system that opens today.

Early reviews from critics have been positive, citing the design and form factor as particular highlights, although reviewers said the price meant it was not as competitive with PS5 and Xbox Series consoles as some had hoped.

Users who wish to purchase can register today on the Valve website, with a deadline of June 25 at 10am Pacific time. At that point Valve will run a randomised lottery to assign places in a reservation queue, which it described as “an effort to improve the purchase experience and limit resellers.”

“As units become available, people in the reservation queue will receive an email with the option to purchase,” the firm said in an FAQ. “We’ll send the first batch of those starting Monday June 29th, and intend to get through the queue by the end of the year.”

The firm said that its original target price was “no longer viable” due to hardware pricing and availability, and the RRP “reflects the price of the components as we’ve secured them over the past 6 months.” It said that availability was also severely constrained, to the point where it “couldn’t source some of our components at all, at any price.” RAM and storage costs have rocketed in recent months as AI hyperscalers buy out available supply.

The console is available either standalone or with a bundle including a Steam controller, with the localised prices as below:

Bundle
USD
GBP
EUR
CAD
AUD
PLN

Steam Machine 515GB
$1,049
£879
€1,039
C$1,509
A$1,609
zł4,389

Steam Machine 515GB + Steam Controller
$1,128
£938
€1,108
C$1,628
A$1,728
zł4,698

Steam Machine 2TB
$1,349
£1,149
€1,359
C$1919
A$2,109
zł5,739

Steam Machine 2TB + Steam Controller
$1,428
£1,208
€1,428
C$2,038
A$2,228
zł6,048

The firm had previously said that pricing would be “pretty competitive” with equivalent PCs. Observers had initially expected the Steam Machine to be a strong competitor for the console market in general and Microsoft in particular, combining the lightweight Linux-based SteamOS with a desktop platform that supports a 20-plus-year old Steam library.

Early reviewers were positive, finding it a compelling device despite the cost. IGN’s reviewer Jackie Thomas, awarding an 8 of out 10 score, said that while it was “a bit too expensive to take on the PS5 or the Xbox Series X,” it was “an incredible entry-level gaming PC,” and “still one of the cheapest and almost certainly the easiest way to get into PC gaming right now.”

Rock Paper Shotgun’s James Archer Steam Machine review described it as “a discreet but quietly capable companion, more at home under a TV than perched on a desk” that is “truly unlike any other PC you could build or buy,” although said that its focus on living-room friendliness meant it didn’t have the advanced performance to compete with desktop gaming PCs.

Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell concurred, saying that buyers “could probably build a similar or more performant PC for a similar cost, and then be able to upgrade that indefinitely over time” and judging the device to fall short of the PS5 Pro on cost and performance grounds. “The wizards at Sony and Microsoft might have the edge when it comes to conjuring pure power from hardware with extraordinary efficiency – and in designing a UI and ecosystem around it, in that order,” he concludes. “But with the Steam Machine we have something different: a new perspective, and a new standard for living room sort-of-console design.”

Former Eidos-Montréal manager says industry bosses are ‘much more Excel than passion-driven’ these days

A veteran operations director and studio manager has criticised the current state of the games industry, suggesting that money is more important than passion these days.

Stephane D’Astous joined Ubisoft in 2003 as director of operations and PMO, before moving on to Eidos-Montréal, where he was general manager for nearly seven years.

D’Astous’s other roles have included general manager at Quantic Dream director of operations at Krafton‘s Montreal studio and most recently the VP and studio director of operations at iWOT Games Montreal.

Now, in an interview with Thunderpick, D’Astous has stated his concern about the “great consolidation” that has been taking place in the games industry, noting that in the past 15 years the growth of new industry players like Tencent, NetEase and the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia have transformed the landscape.

“Things have changed in an abrupt way, and I’m not quite sure it’s for all the good reasons,” D’Astous said.

He suggested that, compared to his time at Eidos-Montréal – where he founded and built the team behind Deus Ex: Human Revolution – these days “the people with the money and the decision power are much fewer, and their pockets are much deeper”.

“Plus,” he added, “they don’t have the same DNA of the decision maker 15 years ago – it’s much more Excel than passion-driven.”

D’Astous said he also believes the rise in game investment during the Covid-19 lockdown damaged the games industry, because investors were eagerly spending millions on game development projects without considering the possibility that engagement could drop after lockdown.

“Thousands of projects were given money, green-lighted,” he explained. “When I saw some of those… I said ‘that idea was funded? Oh my god, this is bad news’, because it will take the bomb to explode at least three, if not four, five years from now. We’ll see the end results of that bad decision of this investment.”

D’Astous was director of operations at Ubisoft Montreal when it released all three games in the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy

During D’Astous’s three years at Ubisoft Montreal, the studio released all three games in the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time trilogy – The Sands of Time, Warrior Within and The Two Thrones.

In the interview, he says those days are gone now, because game executives have unrealistically large expectations about game development these days, and with nobody in place to fight back the result is lengthy, unsustainable development times.

“How many times have I been asked to do the Witcher 3-like game with a limited budget in less than four years with a new team? This doesn’t coincide with sustainability,” he explained.

“The teams were quite small back in 2005-06, and it gave birth to a bigger, ambitious game, which is a logical business creative process to follow. “Not having the discipline of saying ‘no’ to what we call ‘scope creep’. Somebody must say if it’s not reasonable, to say no. All this is also to have proper stage-gating, because this will avoid digging the hole deeper if it’s in a bad way.”

“You just look at the number and go, ‘What happened?'” – The developers of RV There Yet? on their surprise, multi-million selling success

When Nuggets Entertainment set out to build RV There Yet? from a game jam project to full release, co-founder and CEO Tim Badylak thought it “might sell 20,000 or so units in a year.” That estimate turned out to be spectacularly conservative: the cooperative recreational vehicle adventure actually sold two million units in eight days.

“It was unreal,” recalls Badylak when GamesIndustry.biz caught up with him after he shared the numbers at Nordic Game. “You just look at the number and go, ‘What happened? Maybe something’s wrong with the back end?'” The sheer number of downloads ended up causing havoc with the game’s bug reporter, which struggled with the unexpected deluge, adds the other Nuggets co-founder, Kristoffer Andersson. “We had to upgrade that.”

RV There Yet? sees a group of friends trying to manoeuvre an RV over treacherous terrain. | Image credit: Nuggets Entertainment

Badylak puts the game’s popularity down to a number of reasons. TikTok was a big one – someone found the game’s hidden Steam page ahead of its announcement, and their post made using the game’s unfinished marketing assets went viral. (It should be noted that all of the game’s marketing was organic – the studio didn’t pay for anything.) He also notes that Valve liked the game and helped by giving it a takeover on Steam.

But a big factor was timing. RV There Yet? was inspired by titles like REPO and Lethal Company, and it hit during the height of the friendslop phenomenon, coming just a few months after Peak dominated the bestseller list. “I think it was a good decision of us to do this game now, and we actively had the conversation about ‘This might be irrelevant in a year’,” says Badylak.

He’s also convinced that the tiny window between the game’s reveal and its release was a huge help. “The fact that we released the game on its peak hype cycle, when it actually got viral, that makes us question how we’ve done things before with Satisfactory or Among the Wild, where it’s more like the traditional ‘build your community over time, keep on gathering those wishlists’. Maybe next game, we’re going to have more confidence in that actually if we think it’s cool, we can say, ‘This is coming in a week, prepare your friends’, or whatever. Maybe we can actually give the game when people are excited about it, rather than hyping people and then dragging on for years.”

Time for something different

Badylak was previously CEO of Coffee Stain Publishing, home of games like Satisfactory, Deep Rock Galactic, Valheim, and Goat Simulator, but he left to co-found Nuggets Entertainment with Andersson around six years ago. The studio has been working on the first-person farming game Among the Wild since 2021, and RV There Yet? emerged as a quick side project to alleviate the frustration of interminably toiling on a single game.

Tim Badylak (right) on stage at Nordic Game 2026. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

“We were completely burned out after those four and a half years,” Badylak told the audience in his talk at Nordic Game. “Five years of thinking of the same project makes you insane… It was years of trying to convince yourself that if we just plough on, commit to the course, this is going to be awesome. But at some point I personally hit a wall and felt like I’d do anything to do something else.”

Badylak said the concept of RV There Yet? quickly gained traction within the studio, and they decided to embrace the excitement around the new game, rather than putting it off until they finished Among the Wild. “I’m very proud of us as a team, that we actually said like, ‘Fuck it, we don’t have to do Among the Wild now, but we actually maybe have to do this game now’.” The momentum was key, he said: the “fire and spark” might have gone if they’d waited what might have been years until the previous project was finished, by which point the gaming landscape might have changed.

RV There Yet? was spun up in a week by four people while the rest of the team was on holiday. “And during that week we kind of nailed the core, and it was already fun.” The RV and the winch system were already in place, along with the smoking. Badylak noted the game was reflective of the desires of the slightly older people making it. “We’re kind of romanticizing smoking cigarettes: we can’t do that anymore. We have kids and mortgages. So just smoking cigarettes and fucking around with your friends is something that you dream about doing when you’re an old person.”

Nuggets Entertainment was working on Among the Wild for around four and a half years before breaking off to make RV There Yet? in around nine weeks. | Image credit: Nuggets Entertainment

After that initial week’s work, the game took around another eight weeks to finish. Badylak credited the team’s experience as the reason why it came together so quickly: some members of the team have known each other for more than ten years. “And then in this new studio, we worked for at least four and a half years before we started doing this, so we couldn’t have done RV There Yet?, I think, without that bonding, and developing that humour together, and the culture of creativity.”

It’s reminiscent of Toys for Bob emphasising the importance of their team’s collective experience when it comes to making good games – and Badylak was at pains to point out that this kind of speedy development is the end result of many years of work. “I think it’s very important that if anyone else is feeling the pressure of, ‘Oh we should also be able to do something in eight weeks’, I think it takes years to build that type of relationship.”

The need for speed

Another factor that sped development was a commitment to not overthink anything, and instead make rapid yes/no decisions. “If you can’t figure it out in half an hour or something, then it shouldn’t be in the game,” Andersson tells GamesIndustry.biz. “You get a little thinking time,” adds Badylak, “but the yes or no comes very quickly.”

He reckons that the time constraint, knowing they only had a few weeks to work on the title, was key, along with the enthusiasm of the team for the project. “We were newly in love with the idea,” he says, noting that typically during the development of a game, the initial excitement and infatuation morphs into a different kind of passion over months and years. “But throughout the development of RV, it was like the honeymoon phase until release.”

Smoking was one of the earliest things added to RV There Yet? | Image credit: Nuggets Entertainment

RV There Yet? launched at $7.99, a similar price to fellow friendslop title Peak from Landfall Games and Aggro Crab – another title that was put together in a matter of weeks. Andersson says that initially they thought about launching the game for free if it “wasn’t good enough,” or maybe $4, but Badylak says they kept upping their intended price point as the team became more confident in the game during development. “Every week we worked on it, we added a dollar value,” he says. “The goal for us was just to release something, even if it’s free. Then it turned out to be pretty fun.”

Nugget’s enthusiam for rapid prototyping and development echoes that of many other developers. Cryptic Studios’ Jack Emmert recently told GamesIndustry.biz that “the cost to figure out whether a game sucks or not is really high,” emphasising the need for the industry to embrace speedier prototyping in an era of shrinking margins. Evil Landfall head Kirsten-Lee Naidoo has also advocates for shorter development cycles: “We all think that that model is better, because it just eliminates so much risk. If you work on a project for six months and it doesn’t end up being anything, you can move on.”

“Throughout the development of RV, it was like the honeymoon phase until release”

Andersson says that it depends on the kind of game you’re making. “If it’s a game like RV, then yeah, maybe. But if it’s a bigger game, like Expedition 33, then you can’t do that.”

Badylak agrees, pointing out that Dwarf Fortress and “so many beautiful games” wouldn’t exist if the developers had rigidly stuck to short development cycles and abandoned projects after six months if they didn’t immediately click. He says there’s no single rule that works for everyone. “I’m not a fan of finding silver bullets.”

Nuggets is blessed with the flexibility and funding that enables it to work on a side project on a whim; that’s not something every developer will have especially if they’re locked in to development milestones with a publisher. The firm is backed by investment from Coffee Stain co-founder Stefan Hanna, and Badylak says one of the reasons the studio didn’t tie itself to a bigger investor was to retain their freedom. They wanted to “keep it local, keep it creative and flexible, [with] someone who understands us, and just be able to do things we think are funny.”

Friendslop future

After that rollercoaster launch, RV There Yet? has followed the trend of most friendslop games: the huge peak of initial engagement was followed by a rapid tail off as players move on to the next title. Badylak is sanguine about it. “People want to try something new that is lighthearted or doesn’t require you to spend 20 hours before it’s fun,” he says. “We decided to do a bespoke world and more of a campaign, rather than a procedural thing. We didn’t focus on replayability at all, we just focused on the roller-coaster ride.”

Concurrent player counts for RV There Yet? have dipped from an all-time peak of over 100,000 to around 4,000, according to SteamDB. | Image credit: Nuggets Entertainment

Badylak is also of the opinion that not every game needs to be played endlessly. “I do get the sense that people are like, ‘Oh, how’s it going, the CCUs are low?’, and I was like, it’s still higher than we ever expected. And at the same time, I don’t think every game should be a live service or a forever game. And for us, it’s awesome if people have awesome memories.”

“It’s fine if something’s consumable,” adds Andersson.

Badylak agrees: “You have memories, you had that ride with those friends. You’re forever going to have that as a moment, and it’s never going to get watered down.”

Right now, Nuggets is working on the final major update for RV There Yet? before moving on to something else. “I think it became more of a job maybe,” reflects Andersson. “It’s not as fun anymore. It’s still fun. We still have fun making the game, but it’s more of a slog right now.”

“And it goes back to the Goat [Simulator] days,” adds Badylak, referencing Coffee Stain’s 2014 hit. “At some point the DLCs… felt a little bit more like doing it for the money rather than do we have the same creative passion? We’ll see how it goes for us, but we want to try to just keep on to that creative thing that made this happen the first time, rather than facilitating something forever and then losing that.”

“We still have fun making the game, but it’s more of a slog right now”

As for what exactly comes next – whether Nuggets will make another quick game like RV There Yet?, go back to finish Among the Wild, or do something else entirely – that remains up in the air at the moment.

“That’s the soul searching we need to do,” says Badylak. “I think the most important thing for us is to try to see what we are excited about, and it might require some time to play around to find that again. We still think Among the Wild deserves a shot, because we think it’s special still – and some of the alpha players think it’s very special and are like, ‘Why aren’t you finishing this game?’ So I think there is something there, and we have the freedom to be able to do it.

“I think it maybe is just scary from a point of view where we don’t want to dig ourselves down a hole again. Or [maybe] it’s exactly what we should do, so we can get burned out again and then make another game.”

‘This era has come to a close’: Unreal Engine veteran leaves Epic Games, says the industry is at ‘a pivotal point’

A veteran Unreal Engine developer and evangelist has left Epic Games after 12 years, saying he has to adapt to changes in the industry.

Sjoerd De Jong started his career at the age of 15, when he started making levels for the original Unreal back in 1999. He went on to make a name for himself among the Unreal community for his numerous maps and Unreal Tournament mods, eventually leading to contract work at Epic Games.

In the 27 years since he started working on Unreal maps, De Jong has worked at a number of studios, including Guerrilla Games and Starbreeze, as well as founding his own studio Teotl Studios (The Solus Project, Unmechanical).

In 2014, De Jong then joined Epic Games as a ‘lead evangelist’, whose job was to visit studios, conferences and educational institutes to introduce Unreal Engine 4 to developers and establish it as a leading game development engine.

De Jong then became Epic’s senior director of developer experience between 2020 and 2025, before taking on a senior director of product role earlier this year for “a new and unannounced project”.

In a post on LinkedIn, however, De Jong has now announced that he left Epic Games last week, suggesting that “this era has come to a close” and that he had to “come to terms” with the fact that his way of working is being replaced.

“After 27 years of Unreal Engine, and 12 years at Epic Games and Unreal Engine I have decided to move on,” De Jong wrote. “Last week was my last week at Epic.

“This has been an awesome ride that has been truly life changing in so many ways. I didn’t have an easy childhood or youth and things weren’t going anywhere, but all of that changed entirely when I discovered Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine 1/2/3 put me on a very interesting trajectory for life, which in turn had a profound impact on myself as a person, my personal growth, and opportunities that opened up.

“And then Unreal Engine 4 and 5 did it all over again. Having gone through the whole of the Unreal Engine 4 era, and then the Unreal Engine 5 era while at Epic it gave me a tremendously wide and deep view across the industry and the world. Dozens of countries visited, hundreds of studios visited, hundreds of talks presented, tens of thousands of people met, and millions of developers supported every year.

“I have seen so much over the years, but what will stick with me the most is the community and everyone out there making cool things, and all the energy and passion that comes with doing so. That is what it is all about at the end of the day, to create, have fun doing it, and to help each other.

“But all of that being said, I feel like this era has come to a close, and it is time to move forward. The industry is in a very interesting place. The games industry has always been an industry where change is relentless and inevitable, but it feels like we are reaching a pivotal point now and a potent mix of things.

“As much as I love the old way of working, I think it would be strategic to come to terms with where this is heading, and to work out how to adapt and excel at solving the challenges and opportunities that we face. Let’s see where we end up.”

Although he didn’t explicitly state exactly what he was referring to, De Jong’s departure came in the same week Epic Games started talking about the upcoming Unreal Engine 6 and its heavy focus on integration with AI models like Claude and Gemini.

Epic recently showed how it was integrating AI into Unreal Engine to help with level design.

Last week at a State of Unreal event in Chicago, Epic showed how AI large language models (LLMs) can be used directly with Unreal Engine 6 to generate content. During a demonstration, it used a Claude prompt window to furnish a virtual apartment by asking for items, which were then pulled from the assets library.

It later showed how it could change the lighting in a city scene by asking Claude to alter the time of day, or even use a static photo as a reference. Epic stressed that developers will have final control over their creations and can manually change their results.

According to Epic, UE6 will introduce integrations with AI models such as Claude, Gemini, and others, which will act as “creativity and productivity multipliers,” enabling teams to “focus their efforts on the essential creative and technical tasks of development rather than time on time-consuming manual tasks”.

During State of Unreal, the Fortnite maker provided examples of such tasks developers may wish to use AI to speed up, including “setup of levels, character rigs, particle systems, skinning bone weights, as well as adjusting lighting”.

CDProjekt Red CEO says Cyberpunk didn’t finish its ‘redemption arc’, hopes The Witcher 4 will win over those who ‘lost faith’

The co-CEO of CD Projekt Red says he still doesn’t believe Cyberpunk 2077 fully redeemed itself, and that he still hopes to win back those players who lost faith in the studio.

When Cyberpunk 2077 was initially released in 2020, it was considered one of the most high-profile disastrous launches in recent memory.

After three delays, the RPG released for PC and consoles with a host of technical problems, resulting in refunds being offered, the game being pulled from the PlayStation Store, and CD Projekt facing lawsuits alleging it misled investors over the quality of the title.

Following six months of patches designed to improve the game, it returned to Sony’s online marketplace in June 2021, when CD Projekt said it believed Cyberpunk 2077‘s performance had reached a “satisfying” level.

In the six years since its initial release, a number of large updates have seen a turnaround in Cyberpunk 2077’s fortunes. The game now has 88% positive reviews on Steam, and last year CD Projekt announced it had sold 35 million copies, hitting the milestone faster than The Witcher 3.

Despite all this, CD Projekt Red co-CEO Michał Nowakowski says he still thinks the studio needs to win over players who were disappointed by that initial launch.

Nowakowski hopes The Witcher 4 will win over players who were disillusioned by the poor launch of Cyberpunk 2077.

Speaking at an Edge in Person conversation at DevGAMM Gdánsk (as reported by Knowledge), Nowakowski said Cyberpunk 2077’s launch period was “heartbreaking” for the studio, and that because its reputation was its “biggest asset”, the key priority was putting it back on an upward path.

While the number of sales and positive feedback suggests this was achieved, Nowakowski said: “I’m not 100% convinced we went through the full redemption arc.”

He added: “I’m convinced that we lost the faith of some people indefinitely, and that’s a fair thing. But I do hope we will be able to make it back – if not with The Witcher 4, then with whatever comes next.”

Nowakowski added that the one positive that came from Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was that the studio was “left with seasoned, battle-hardened veterans – leaders who were able to carry a different kind of challenge on their shoulders.”

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director says his next game won’t be a remake, but could be a ‘grand-scale’ RPG

Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi has shared his thoughts on what he’d like to work on next.

The third and final entry in the trilogy, Final Fantasy 7 Revelation, will be released in Spring 2027, and – rather than a timed PlayStation console exclusive like the first two games – will be available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC on the same day.

Its release will mark the end of a 12-year project – the first chapter was announced back at E3 2015 – meaning for the first time in more than a decade, Hamaguchi will soon be turning his attention to another project.

In an interview with Game Informer, Hamaguchi said he’d heard some players wanted him to remake Final Fantasy 6 next, but stated that in the event that would happen – which a PR stressed to the publication was purely hypothetical – he’d rather see someone else working on that.

“Right in this moment, I’m fully focused on completing Final Fantasy 7 Revelation and ensuring we’re delivering the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series in a perfect state, so that’s where I’m right now,” he replied.

“At the same time, I do see a lot of fans and community asking me to take on the helm for a Final Fantasy 6 remake,” he laughed. “So, I’m seeing a lot of that floating online, but, you know, a Final Fantasy VI Remake or any other remake, it could be me, or it could be someone else. Personally, I think that it might be in better hands if it went to another creator in Square Enix.”

Instead, Hamaguchi suggested he wanted to take on a new large-scale RPG, but didn’t specify whether this would be a new Final Fantasy game or a different series entirely.

“When you look at all the other titles that we have released at Square Enix, not just the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, I think Square Enix, as a brand, as a company, is more than capable of delivering this grand-scale RPG that could resonate to gamers across the world,” he explained.

“Fans might have a lot of different expectations, but for me personally, I do want to take on this new challenge with another RPG title after this, whether it be Final Fantasy or a different IP. Again, we don’t know. But personally, if it’s not Final Fantasy, that’s also exciting, because that could be a challenge for me. So, whatever it is, I hope fans look forward to it.”

Players who feel this could still be opening the door to a different remake project should note that Hamaguchi also specifically told Bloomberg that his next project is “not going to be a remake,” adding: “As a team, I do think there’s an opportunity to work on a smaller scale, like a AA title, or a new Final Fantasy title or even a new AAA franchise. I think all those would be good.”

Last week Hamaguchi revealed that he’s already played through Final Fantasy 7 Revelation “about 40 times”, and that one scene involving Cloud made him cry every time.

If players are happy just watching a stream then the game isn’t good enough, Shinji Mikami reportedly says

Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami has reportedly said that if a livestream of a game is enough to satisfy a player, the game itself can’t be good enough.

That’s according to Japanese comedian Eika Kano, who attributed the views to Mikami during a recent TV appearance.

As reported by Nikkan, Kano appeared on TV Asahi’s late-night chat show Mitorizu Jan last week, where he  was asked to share anecdotes about people he admired.

Kano – who regularly streams games on his own YouTube channel – explained that he had previously been conflicted about streaming games like Resident Evil titles, because a lot of those games involve puzzle and storyline elements.

“When I play Resident Evil, there are bits and pieces of the story and puzzles that come up here and there, and I realized I was giving all of that away to my viewers,” he said (via machine translation).

“I wondered how people feel about spoilers. I did get permission from Capcom, the game company behind it, but I still wondered what the actual situation was.”

Kano said he then got the opportunity to have a conversation with Mikami, during which he decided to ask what his views were on streaming, preparing to quit if Mikami said he didn’t like it.

Instead, Mikami reportedly told Kano: “If viewers watching the game stream are satisfied just by watching it through to the end, then the game must only be so good.”

He reportedly added: “It’s our job to make games that make people want to finish them with their own hands, even after watching someone else beat them.”

A remaster of Shadows of the Damned, which was created by Mikami and Suda51, was released in 2024.

The comedian said he also spoke to Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii about the same topic, and received the same response. “The gods, the legends, all share that mindset,” he suggested.

Kano’s anecdote echoes recent comments made by Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy director Naoki Hamaguchi, who said earlier this month that modern RPGs need to feature more player agency, to discourage players from choosing to watch streams instead.

“One thing RPGs like Final Fantasy need to be careful about today is the possibility that people might simply watch a stream and feel satisfied without ever playing the game themselves,” Hamaguchi said to 4Gamer (as translated by Automaton). “This is a bit of a crisis for the work itself – or rather, it’s not something game creators can wholeheartedly celebrate.”

Fandom and GameSpot owner set to buy Balatro publisher Playstack

Playstack, the publisher behind games including Balatro, Abiotic Factor, and The Rise of the Golden Idol, is set to be purchased by Integrated Media Company (IMC), the owner of Fandom and Gamespot, among numerous other brands. The news was initially reported by Game Developer.

Playstack’s current owner, TruFin, has conditionally agreed to sell its 84.5% stake to IMC. The sale is subject to a shareholder vote, and TruFin has recommended that shareholders vote in favour.

The deal will result in approximately £112.4 million in net cash proceeds for TruFin.

Harvey Elliott, founder and CEO of Playstack, responded to the proposal in a post on Playstack’s website on May 22.

“I’m excited to share that Playstack is entering its next chapter with a new investment partner. In practical terms, this is a change in ownership rather than a change in who we are. Our team, our strategy, and our commitment to publishing premium indie games remain exactly the same.

“For now, it’s business as usual. I sincerely thank TruFin for being an invaluable partner over the past seven years, helping us reach this exciting next step. I’m looking forward to sharing more about the future with you all soon.”

In a statement dated May 21, TruFin CEO James van den Bergh said:

“We believe the disposal of Playstack represents a milestone for TruFin and a clear demonstration of our disciplined approach to capital allocation and value creation. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with the Playstack team over the last few years and look forward to them achieving future success.

“IMC is a superb platform for the next stage in Playstack’s journey and we wish the team at IMC well for the future.”

Earlier this year, TruFin pointed to Playstack’s impressive hit rate, noting that 85% of the publisher’s games provide a positive return. Playstack made £55.3 million in gross revenue during 2025, an increase of 24% year-on-year, and representing 83.9% of TruFin’s total revenue.

IMC is a vehicle for the assets and private equity firm TPG. According to its website, IMC “seeks to acquire fundamentally attractive companies and partner with existing management teams to drive sustainable value creation.”

IMC also owns games media brand Gamespot alongside wiki platform Fandom, game distribution platform Fandom and YouTube brand Screen Junkies alongside other entertainment, football and ecommerce brands.

Playstack head Harvey Elliott discussed the success of Balatro in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz last year. “What has changed for us is that it’s given us a bit of confidence,” he said.

Nordic Game 2026 was full of smiles, but they hid a very tough reality | Opinion

The indie conference Nordic Game returned to Malmö this week, and although the event naturally has a big focus on Scandinavian developers, there was a multinational flavour to the event booths. Germany, Ukraine, and Moldova were among the countries represented on the show floor, and in fact the Moldovan game Lootbound scooped the People’s Choice Award, which is voted for by conference attendees. But my personal highlight was DDoD, a roguelike shooter from Ukrainian developer The Future Entertainment Company. I came for the giant mutant snails, but stayed for the tense, loot-based gameplay in a huge industrial wasteland, which felt like a tantalising cross between Stalker and Diablo.

Nordic Game gained a neighbour this year in the form of Pocket Gamer Connects Summit Malmö, which cheekily took place in the Comfort Hotel, directly opposite Nordic’s home in the converted slaughterhouse of Slagthuset. A number of visitors double-dipped, sporting lanyards for both events, although the PGC shindig was considerably smaller. It speaks to the draw of Nordic Game, I think, that it has attracted hangers-on. Maybe next year Devolver will start its own event in the car park, just as it did in the glory days of E3.

I didn’t have a chance to ask conference organiser Jacob Riis whether he was flattered by PGC’s attention, although his comments in the run up to the event that each year felt like a family reunion rang true. A large portion of the attendees I spoke to enthusiastically agreed with this sentiment, praising Nordic Game’s friendliness – of which I can attest. One attendee also ventured that the event had a much more positive feel this year, after the doom and gloom discussions of 2025. Yet many of the talks I attended were still centred on how to negotiate an era of difficult transition. Everyone is facing the same problem – too many competing games and not enough money – and that problem isn’t going away.

The VC panel at Nordic Game 2026. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

At the venture capital (VC) panel on Wednesday, investor Jason Della Rocca dished out some tough-love truths that companies in search of cash might not want to hear. “I think a lot of developers don’t really understand what VCs are looking for, what those deal structures look like,” said the co-founder of Execution Labs. “When I talk to developers, it’s still too much need-based, where the developer is: ‘I need money, I have to pay my staff, I need funds to do stuff’. And the reality is no one cares that you need money. I mean, they want to be helpful, but their job is not to help you because you need money. They’re there to back opportunities.”

Yet the traditional VC model – buying chunks of a company in the hope of a healthy return when the firm is sold – is being sorely tested by the current climate in the games industry, where mergers and acquisitions are thin on the ground. “On the PC and console side, there’s definitely been a lot less acquisitions in the last few years,” said Walter Paleari, an investment associate at Makers Fund.

“I’m sure it’s one of the reasons why Griffin started a project-funding fund. And it’s something that we think about all the time as well. There’s a lot of games that are extremely profitable and can do really, really well. At the same time, if there are no buyers for the company for pure equity investment, there’s not an exit.”

The halls of Slagthuset were packed in 2026. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

Jakob Longer, an investor at Griffin Gaming Partners, was enthusiastic about Griffin’s $100 million fund, which is particularly targeting AA titles – a sector that has been struggling to attract investment in recent years as publishers focus on smaller bets. Longer said Griffin has invested in around 16 titles so far, with the VC firm taking a revenue share rather than equity.

“We saw a lot of incredible talent out there on the market, and this is typically your AA titles that were being self published,” said Longer. “There were some incredible amounts of value to be captured inside that space.” However, he emphasised that the Special Opportunities Fund is an addition to Griffin’s usual equity investment activities, rather than a replacement. In total, Griffin has around $1.6 billion dedicated to the games sector, so the $100 million fund is relatively small in the grand scheme of things. But it will be interesting to see how many other VCs follow Griffin’s move into project funding if the acquisitions drought continues.

The “Designing for Lifetime, Not Launch Week” talk at Nordic Game 2026. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

In the panel talk “Designing for Lifetime, Not Launch Week,” Adam Orth gave a similarly blunt assessment. “The old model doesn’t work anymore. It’s inherently broken,” said the COO of Midwest Games. “That comes from … a complete defragmentation of both the development and the publishing space. When you’re looking at how you publish games, there’s really no playbook anymore.”

He described the switch over to modular publishing, whereby publishers might only take on certain aspects of the process according to the developer’s needs. (Personally, I prefer the term pick and mix publishing, although that is mostly because I still pine for Woolworths’ legendary sweet section.)

Strategic Alternatives’ Tim Campbell went one further by emphasising that publishers might not be involved in the process at all. In his talk “It’s Not About Making Games Anymore,” he recommended that developers should assume they are self-publishing from the outset, and plan accordingly.

“You have to think like a self-publishing developer,” he said. “You may not end up that way, but … traction is a prerequisite for investment. So that means you need to start thinking about product/market fit almost at the outset. You need to build that initial community.”

That self-reliant mindset will in turn make the developer more attractive for investment – which they might ultimately decide they don’t need. “If you can get a piece of software to a mature state and you can build a substantial audience that would attract an investor, you start to ask yourself a question: ‘Well, why don’t I just go the rest of the way, right?'”

Tim Campbell gives his talk at Nordic Game 2026. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

He also emphasised that even with a publisher, the future isn’t necessarily secure. “If you’re going to be in the games business … you’re going to be cancelled at one point,” he said, giving an example of a client whose game was shut down out of the blue following a board-level strategic shift at the publisher.

“Unfortunately, I see this happening with increasing frequency in my career, and my advice to developers now is you have to assume even if you’re working with a publisher, you’ve got a deal, and everything’s going great, you can be cancelled and terminated at any moment. What does that mean for you? If you don’t have your beautiful corner maintained, ready to drop into sales mode at any time, you’re not prepared for the future.”

Sage advice. But equally, I can imagine that remaining on a self-publishing war footing at all times is mentally draining. It feels like there is no safe harbour any more; hustling is the future.

The “State of the Industry 2026” panel talk. | Image credit: GamesIndustry.biz

There was little good news in the “State of the Industry 2026” talk, either, where the verdict was that the regular boosts we used to see from the introduction of new hardware are diminishing. “I think we’ve reached a technical plateau,” said Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at Newzoo.

“When you look at games launched 10 years ago… it’s on par with what you have today. I think from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5, you had the loading time that was reduced thanks to the SSD technology, but we’re not going to go 8K, 16K, 240 frames per second – you don’t see really what would be the jump from a technical standpoint to require a new platform. And I think the industry is kind of running out of ideas to create new technology for video games.”

He added that modern games are now competing with older titles. “Someone starting video games today can play Uncharted and older PlayStation games at a cheaper price, and the quality is as high as we can find today. So yeah, that’s difficult.”

“I think the industry is kind of running out of ideas to create new technology for video games”

Emmanuel Rosier

Rosier had more bad news later in the same talk when it came to increased competition from China. “Western publishers, they saw China as a new market where they could sell and make more revenue, and that was the first step. At the same time, the Asian publishers, they invested in Western studios or Western publishers, and I think they learned to make good games, and now it almost feels like they don’t need Western publishers anymore.”

Brace yourself, it gets bleaker. “I could be more pessimistic than that,” Rosier continued. “If you look at all industries, like manufacturing industries, you see what has happened through the years where all the production has moved to Asia or to China. There is a world where some of the video game production could also move to these countries.”

It’s all sobering stuff, and quite the contrast to the general bonhomie seen elsewhere in the halls of Slagthuset. Celebrations reached a peak with the Nordic Game Awards on Thursday, where Arc Raiders took home Nordic Game of the Year, and everyone retired to beers and enthusiastic karaoke.

But the hard truth underneath the cheers is that the game industry is changing. It needs to change, more to the point. Times are tougher, publishers don’t have the power they once did, and developers can’t necessarily rely on getting the funding they want or need. In Europe, it’s evolving into a leaner, more efficient, more specialised industry, where the giant companies of old are struggling to stay afloat.

It’s a necessary transition. But my god, it’s hard on everyone involved.

Rockstar vs. the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain: a timeline of events so far

In October 2025, Rockstar dismissed 34 employees across the UK and Canada for what parent company Take Two Interactive described as “gross misconduct”.

Subsequent statements clarified that this referred to “distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum,” revealed to be a Discord server operated by trade union organisation The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB).

The IWGB accused the developer of union busting, as those dismissed included 31 union members in the UK while the three who work in Canada were “union sympathetic.”

The latter employees were not members of any union “due to the difference in labour law between Canada and the UK,” the IWGB clarified to GamesIndustry.biz.

In response to IWGB’s claims, Rockstar said the dismissals were not related to union activities, and were instead the result of staff allegedly leaking “confidential information.”

“We took action against a small number of individuals who were found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum, a violation of our company policies,” the developer said in a statement.

“This was in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.”

The dispute escalated with formal legal claims filed by the IWGB against Rockstar and protests outside the company’s offices. The issue was raised in UK Parliament, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer describing the case as “deeply concerning.”

In January 2026, both parties attended a preliminary UK employment tribunal hearing during which the IWGB requested interim relief for the affected workers.

The case has wider implications for the games industry, not only for its impact on the development of what is widely expected to be the most commercially successful video game of all time, Grand Theft Auto 6, but also on the still-nascent involvement of trade unions in game development.

This timeline details the key events, which GamesIndustry.biz will update when new information comes to light.

Here’s everything we know so far about the dispute between Rockstar and the IWGB, and what it means for the dismissed employees.

October 30, 2025

The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) accused Rockstar of union busting following the dismissal of 31 employees.

The union claimed those fired were either members of IWGB or “attempting to organise” at Rockstar, and that all those dismissed at Rockstar UK were members of the IWGB Game Workers Union Discord channel claiming they were targeted “for [that] reason.”

In response, the IWGB said it would mount “a full and robust defense of its members who it believes have been targeted unfairly for exercising their legal rights.”

IWGB president Alex Marshall added: “Rockstar has just carried out the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting in the history of the games industry. This flagrant contempt for the law and for the lives of the workers who bring in their billions is an insult to their fans and the global industry.”

October 31, 2025

Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive dismissed claims of union busting, with spokesperson Alan Lewis stating the terminations were “for gross misconduct, and no other reason.”

November 6, 2025

Rockstar expanded on the above response in a statement to Bloomberg, alleging employees had leaked “confidential information” and not for union-related activities.

“We took action against a small number of individuals who were found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum, a violation of our company policies,” it said. “This was in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.”

In response, the IWGB accused Rockstar of being “afraid of hard-working staff privately discussing exercising their rights for a fairer workplace and a collective voice.”

“Management are showing they don’t care about delays to Grand Theft Auto 6, and that they’re prioritizing union-busting by targeting the very people who make the game.”

The same day, Rockstar announced that the launch of GTA 6 had been moved to November 19, 2026 for “additional polish.”

GTA 6 was originally announced in February 2022, and formally revealed with a trailer in December 2023. It had an initial release window of late 2025, before being moved to May 26, 2026.

November 7, 2025

The IWGB led protests outside the offices of Rockstar North and Take-Two Interactive in London and Edinburgh.

IWGB organiser Fred Carter said those impacted by the dismissals “were shocked” that Rockstar would “show such blatant disrespect and disregard for the rights of workers to have a union.”

“They’ve been fired for exercising their legal rights to speak to each other about their pay and conditions, to build a union in their workplace, to build a fairer, better workplace where the people who build games have a voice in how they’re made.”

He added: “People didn’t know what was going on, that their co-workers were being torn from their desks and marched out of the building […] This is a community that’s in shock and in anger.”

During the protest outside Take-Two’s London offices, an IWGB representative read out an anonymous testimony from a dismissed employee who claimed they were let go “without warning, without evidence, and without a chance to speak for [themselves].”

“We weren’t leaking anything or trying to harm the company,” they said. “We were supporting each other, trying to understand our workplace and make it better. To lose my job for that is deeply unfair. No one should be punished for being part of a union or for speaking honestly about their work.”

Image credit: People Make Games

November 12, 2025

Formal legal claims were filed by the IWGB against Rockstar, with the union stating that the developer “declined” to meet with them “to resolve the matter through negotiation.”

“We are representing employees who were dismissed by Rockstar Games in circumstances that we believe amount to victimisation and collective dismissal linked to trade union activity,” the IWGB’s legal team said in a statement.

“Despite our representation and attempts to meet with Rockstar to resolve the matter through negotiation, Rockstar have declined and persisted to terminate members of the union in a manner that is unacceptable and unlawful. Accordingly, we have now issued formal legal claims against Rockstar on behalf of the Claimants. Our members allege that Rockstar’s conduct constitutes trade union victimisation and blacklisting.”

IWGB president Alex Marshall added it will “mount a full legal defence with [its] expert group of caseworkers, legal officers, and barristers.”

“Employers like Rockstar would do well to understand that private spaces such as trade union Discord servers have protections, and that their company’s contractual clauses do not supersede UK law.

“This case stands as a warning to any employer in the games industry and beyond who thinks they are able to act with impunity against organised workers – we will not be intimidated.”

November 14, 2025

More than 200 staff at Rockstar North signed a letter demanding “the immediate reinstatement of their colleagues” following the mass termination.

Further protests took place outside Take-Two’s offices in London on November 17, in addition to a rally outside the company’s Paris headquarters led by members of Le Syndicat Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV).

Another protest took place outside Holyrood in Edinburgh on November 18, coinciding with a cross-party parliamentary group meeting about Scotland’s games industry.

Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West Christine Jardine brought up IWGB’s case of union busting in the House of Commons.

Jardine said on social media that she “urged ministers to support workers who have lost their jobs, and stop this from happening again.”

November 24, 2025

YouTube channel People Make Games published a video claiming that the alleged “confidential information” leaked by fired employees were discussions of Slack policies on a “closed, invite-only Discord used by unionised and non-unionised employees.”

The server included the IWGB, with discussions between employees and union representatives taking place in secure channels. There was also a general channel for unionised and non-unionised employees to discuss various topics.

According to the video, employees claimed that Rockstar shut down numerous internal Slack channels staff used to discuss non-work related topics due to the impact on productivity. Another change reportedly restricted what workers could put in their status messages on Slack.

As Rockstar restricts staff from accessing their inboxes outside the office, some UK employees were not made aware of these changes. Staff who had access to their inboxes subsequently shared the information on Discord for them to see.

The video stated that one employee in the Discord was concerned about these internal emails being shared in the server, and subsequently notified Rockstar leading to an investigation and the subsequent dismissals.

“I think it is absolutely normal for people to be discussing their material conditions, whether that’s bonuses, whether that’s policies, whether that’s anything like that,” IWGB president Alex Marshall told PMG. “That’s completely normal for staff to be doing that and for an employer to respond in a way that comes down so hard on that shows not only that they are governing by this lack of transparency, but they’re also trying to govern by fear.”

“They feel completely threatened by the idea of workers talking to each other and that’s why they’ve taken this act to try and destroy the union, decimate any form of solidarity being built between workers.”

December 10, 2025

The IWGB’s case against Rockstar was formally raised in UK Parliament. Scottish Labour MP for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh Chris Murray said he had met with Rockstar about the case, though the developer had “failed to reassure me they are following employment law.”

Murray called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to address the situation, and asked if “all companies, regardless of profit and size, must follow UK employment law and all workers have the right to join a union.”

In response, Starmer described the dismissal of Rockstar employees as a “deeply concerning case,” and that ministers would investigate it.

“Every worker has the right to join a trade union,” said Starmer. “We’re determined to strengthen workers rights and ensure they don’t face unfair consequences for being part of a union.”

Murray told IGN he had contacted Rockstar directly to discuss the case alongside MPs Tracy Gilbert and Scott Arthur at Rockstar North’s offices. “The meeting began with us as MPs refused entry unless an NDA was signed, a request they eventually withdrew after it being made clear this would not be signed,” Murray said.

“[It] only entrenched my concerns about the process Rockstar used to dismiss so many of their staff members. I was not assured their process paid robust attention to UK employment law, I was not convinced that this course of action was necessary, and alarmingly, I did not leave informed on exactly what these 31 people had done to warrant their immediate dismissal.”

Image credit: Ross Greer/Scottish Greens

December 11, 2025

Rockstar once again disputed the IWGB’s claims of union busting in a statement to IGN, saying that staff who were dismissed had “distributed and discussed confidential information in a public forum, in breach of company policy and legal obligations.”

“Rockstar took action against a small group of individuals, across the UK and internationally, who distributed and discussed confidential information (including specific game features from upcoming and unannounced titles) in a public forum, in breach of company policy and their legal obligations,” the developer said.

“Claims that these dismissals were linked to union membership or activities are entirely false and misleading.”

December 12, 2025

The IWGB said Rockstar’s latest statement was “littered with falsehoods and disinformation” and that it was “attempting to reverse engineer a rationale for the dismissals.”

“Once again, they have chosen to mischaracterise workers speaking about their working conditions in a private forum as ‘leaking information’,” the organisation said. “From the UK Prime Minister in the House of Commons, to the game developers across the world erupting in protest – all eyes are on Rockstar and their lawless attack on the people who make them their billions.”

Rockstar subsquently responded to the IWGB’s comment in a statement: “As we suspected and as evidenced by the response to our statement, they have no idea who was in this Discord.”

January 5, 2025

Rockstar and the IWGB attended a preliminary UK employment tribunal hearing on January 5, with the union requesting interim relief for the dismissed employees, pointing out that some no longer had “the right to remain in the country they have made their home.”

“No matter the outcome of this interim hearing, we remain confident in the strength of the case we have brought against Rockstar. We reiterate our firm belief that Rockstar broke the law when it summarily dismissed 31 of our members, and we look forward now to the day we face them in court for a full and substantive tribunal hearing.”

Rockstar said it “categorically denies the claims” heard during the hearing.

“We have consistently made clear that we took necessary action against a group of individuals across the UK and Canada who discussed highly confidential information, including relating to game features from upcoming and unannounced titles, in an insecure and public social channel,” Rockstar said in a public statement. “This was a breach of long-standing and well-understood confidentiality policies.”

“We regret that these dismissals were necessary; however, confidentiality is fundamental to everything Rockstar does,” the developer added. “This was never about union membership. We have always taken a zero-tolerance approach to unauthorized releases of information – and we always will.”

January 12, 2025

The Glasgow Employment Tribunal rejected the IWGB’s request for interim relief for the affected staff.

“In all the circumstances, the tribunal was unable to conclude that it appears likely that the tribunal will find that the principal reason for the claimants’ dismissal was their membership of the IWGB,” Judge Frances Eccles wrote in the judgement.

Eccles also highlighted that three of the affected claimants were based in Canada and not part of the IWGB, suggesting union-busting was not a factor in their dismissal. “There were also employees connected to the IWGB as members of the organising committee, who showed support for the trade union or identified themselves as trade union members on Discord and who were not dismissed,” wrote Eccles.

While the IWGB expressed disappointment with the decision, it said it “does nothing to dampen our hopes of winning justice when the full hearing takes place,” saying it felt “bolstered in our claims that these firings were not just deeply unjust but also plainly unlawful,” and noting that “the judge stated in her ruling that: ‘There was no evidence of the respondent having suffered any adverse consequences as a result of these postings’.”

“We welcome the decision, which is consistent with Rockstar’s position throughout,” a Rockstar Games spokesperson told IGN. “We regret that we were put in a position where dismissals were necessary, but we stand by our course of action as supported by the outcome of this hearing.”

Image credit: People Make Games

January 13, 2025

Following this hearing, People Make Games shared some of the evidence submitted by Rockstar which included the “confidential information” shared on the Discord server.

This was revealed to refer to a conversation between two employees about requesting time off, which turned into a discussion regarding QA testers and a “32-player session.”

PMG said Rockstar was “gravely concerned to discover some of the claimants had been sharing highly confidential and commercially sensitive information relating to the content and features of an unannounced live service.”

“They discussed the specific number of online players planned for this service, a material feature of this new title, which has not yet been revealed by Rockstar.”

The evidence also revealed that the journalist Rockstar described as “lurking” in the Discord server was narrative designer Scott Alsworth. Alsworth was an elected representative of the IWGB’s Game Workers branch, and had previously written six articles for the gaming section of socialist newspaper The Morning Star. Rockstar’s submission to the court said Alsworth’s presence on the server was a “legitimate risk” to the studio.

February 3, 2026

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick commented on the ongoing litigation, clarifying that the publisher takes its “labour relations really seriously.”

“We think we have the best creative folks in the world and we have extraordinary respect for all those people,” said Zelnick.

“With regards to that specific matter, the tribunal rejected the union’s application for interim relief, we think that was the right decision. We regret that we had to dismiss [staff], we stand by what we did and that was supported in the outcome of the hearing.”

May 28, 2026

Rockstar employees announced the formation of the Rockstar Game Workers Union (RGWU), a subsidiary of the IWGB.

The RGWU stated it was ready to launch publicly last year after reaching the 10% union threshold just before the dismissals.

“These dismissals, which we believe to be the most blatant and ruthless act of union busting the UK games sector has ever seen, sparked protests across the globe, drew international media attention, and initiated a high profile legal battle which will see its final hearing later this year,” it said.

“These mass firings did not crush our union. In fact, we are larger and stronger than we have ever been. We passed the 10% membership threshold again shortly after the dismissals, and since then have continued to see more and more workers join us from every site around the UK.”

“These sports games that were loved and revered… just went away” – How a group of ex-EA devs are launching a new NBA game

Back on July 23, 2024, indie studio Play By Play, formed by veterans of Electronic Arts, announced its debut title, The Run: Got Next.

It was a stylish three-vs-three street basketball game with an eye-catching anime-inspired art style, and overall it clearly owed a great deal of inspiration to the output of EA’s Sports Big label, including titles like NBA Street.

The very same day that Play By Play announced The Run, the NBA reached out to studio CEO Scott Probst on LinkedIn.

Scott Probst | Image credit: Play By Play

“They asked if we’d like to talk,” he says. “This is a dream come true. We had felt that we couldn’t just go to the NBA with a concept on paper and say: ‘We want to make this game’, so we had built The Run.”

After the NBA came on board, the game was rebranded to NBA: The Run. And while it now boasts official players, outfits and so on, as well as a more realistic art style, Probst says that “the core DNA has always remained the same.”

The title started life in 2021, when Probst found himself stuck indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic. “During COVID, we were playing games with people online, and friends online, and reconnecting, and noticing that the sports industry was dominated by sim-based games.”

This prompted him to fondly recall more arcadey titles like NBA Street, a franchise that has not seen a new entry since 2007’s NBA Street Homecourt. “If you think about today’s generation of kids, they’ve never even had a chance to play an NBA Street or NBA Jam,” Probst says. “A 20-year-old has never experienced that game … These sports games that were loved and revered by so many people, by us, just went away. “

Probst speculates that EA Sports Big titles like NBA Street and FIFA Street disappeared as the result of a combination of factors, one of which was the economic downturn of the late 2000s, which caused big publishers like Electronic Arts to rethink their business.

NBA: The Run offers a more arcade-style take on basketball. | Image credit: Play By Play

“The games industry as a whole suffered during that time,” he says. “The company decided to focus on fewer, bigger, better. EA was making 50, 60, 70 games a year. It reached a point where the company decided to make fewer games, bigger and better. That led to looking at everything in the portfolio and identifying the biggest performers. Unfortunately, [the EA Sports Big titles] were part of that category.”

Another reason was that EA was simply launching so many Street titles so quickly that the market became “oversaturated with those games.” But the decision to try to release something in this vein in the 2020s isn’t simply an attempt to relive the glory days. The team at Play By Play believes there is a huge market potential for this kind of title.

“You look at today’s gamer, how big games have become and where technology is, you can see that there’s more of an opportunity for these games now than in almost two decades,” Probst argues. “It feels like the time is now. It’s an easy decision. We can pontificate all day long about why they went away, but we know that, having lived through that and been at EA, there was a market for these games, and people were hungry for them every year. There’s just an opportune time right now to get a game like this out and reintroduce this type of experience to the world again. Hopefully, we’ll prove ourselves right.”

The competition

The other major licensor for the NBA is, of course, 2K Games. The Take-Two-owned label has operated the NBA 2K franchise since 2005, and it is a juggernaut for the company – in its recent full-year results, Take-Two revealed that NBA 2K26 has shipped 10 million units to date, with “recurrent consumer spending” rising 10%.

But Play By Play doesn’t see much competition between The Run and 2K.

“I don’t think we ever thought: ‘Let’s go take 2K’s market’,” laughs creative director Mike Young, an EA veteran who worked on NBA Street. “We felt that there was an opportunity to deliver something more casual and more social than their offering. But we fully anticipate people who buy our game will probably also be 2K players and will also be playing their game.”

Mike Young | Image credit: Play By Play

One big differentiator between NBA: The Run and other sports titles at the moment is monetisation. At launch, at least, Play By Play’s title won’t have any microtransactions; simply an up-front cost. Part of the thinking behind this was not wanting to “water down” the experience with not only in-game purchases, but also features like a single-player mode (The Run is multiplayer only), which would be a lot for the title’s small team to implement.

“We’re a team of 18 people,” Probst says. “We have hopes, ambitions, and dreams of doing so many different directions of where this game goes and how it could evolve, but first and foremost, we could never take our eyes off the ball, we need to be laser-focused… in order to deliver the core gameplay.”

He continues: “We feel like what we’re offering in terms of the quality and quantity of content, the price is more than fair. It’s something that we talked about for a long, long time. We never wanted to go down the free-to-play route. We always knew we were going to put a price point on the game because we didn’t want to price-gouge people. We didn’t want to have monetisation tactics in there. We didn’t want to have players ripping open a bunch of packs. For us, it was a very intentional decision to say, let’s deliver a really high-quality, awesome game that you can get into, with a price point on it with no other monetisation factors at launch.”

NBA: The Run won’t feature microtransactions at launch. | Image credit: Play By Play

Probst does say that he can’t commit to no microtransactions indefinitely, but states that whatever the future of NBA: The Run is, it will be built in tandem with the game’s community.

“One thing we do and we take very seriously is building along with the community,” he explains. “So if the community tells us that they’d be open to this or expanding here and paying additional money for that thing, or they want a specific kind of mechanic, we can do things like that. But I can’t commit to no microtransactions forever and ever, because we want to grow this thing over time; there are other ways to approach that factor. But we will always make decisions with the player in the driver’s seat.”

Small but mighty

Play By Play as a whole is around 30 people, with 18 developers focused on NBA: The Run – the rest are involved in other functions like quality assurance and so on. As a result, development on the game is rather old school; people aren’t confined to their specialities and can instead branch out into different areas.

“This is a very passion-driven team,” Probst explains. “The amount of ownership that every single person on this team has taken. There’s no one person who’s, like: ‘Hey, I’m a designer, and that is all I do. I only work in this lane’. I’ve worked on Battlefield, where we had 500 plus people on the project – you’d ask someone to do something specific and be told that’s not their area, I have to go find a different guy. That doesn’t happen on this team.”

As well as having a resourceful team, another way that Play By Play has kept costs down is discipline; the studio has focused heavily on the essentials for NBA: The Run.

“We’re always going to shoot for the moon, but also we always have this lens of the game has to be awesome,” Probst says. “So let’s not overextend ourselves to a point where we’re going to put too much in this game, and it’s going to come across as good or watered down.” That has led to a deliberately constrained, PVP-focused scope in order to deliver a “really tight core experience.”

There won’t be annual releases for NBA: The Run. | Image credit: Play By Play

NBA: The Run is set to launch on June 9. The plan for the future is an open field; Play By Play’s leadership isn’t in favour of turning it into another annualised sports series.

“We don’t want to follow that model,” Probst says. “Given that we’re ‘street’, we shouldn’t follow that model, because there’s not a real seasonality to that. It gives us a lane where we can be more creative. This game can become something that evolves over time. We can add new modes and other ways to expand this game. Is it a forever game? Time will tell, but we definitely see this is a different way where we can differentiate from what’s out there in the sports market and not build a game that incrementally changes year over year. If we’re going to add something, it’s going to be a meaningful change.”

Play By Play clearly thinks that there is a market for arcade-style sports titles that isn’t being served. Would the company consider bringing back more arcadey takes on other sports?

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Probst laughs. “We’d definitely love to be in that position. NBA: The Run is our focus and something we want to build. We want to build on our partnership with the NBA. But I also think back to those days of EA Sports Big, games like SSX, Def Jam or NFL Street: there are so many different opportunities and lanes that you can go down. Who knows what the future holds, but I think there’s a world where, if NBA: The Run does great, we could be looking at building this into something bigger over time.”

Analyst: Call of Duty’s withdrawal from last-gen consoles means it’s selling into the smallest install base since 2017

Activision’s decision to drop support for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 has reduced its potential marked by 5.6%, according to a new report from analysts S&P, which says that the corresponding launch on Switch 2 – the first time the franchise has been available on a Nintendo console since 2013 – will not make up for the loss of users on legacy consoles.

S&P analyst Neil Barbour, citing the firm’s internal data, said that the newly-announced Call of Duty will be selling into a global installed base of 147.5 million consoles, down 5.6% from the audience for last year’s Black Ops 7, which was widely held to have underperformed.

Sales of new consoles, meanwhile, are likely to be limited by ongoing hardware price increases driven by rising component costs. Sony increased the price of PS5 globally in March, and Xbox prices increased twice in 2025.

The firm’s data suggests a reduction of almost 3m in the potential console install base. | Image credit: S&P Global

The calculation is based on the firm’s audience projection of 36 million PS4 and Xbox One users active by the end of 2026, while the newly-added Switch 2 install base is projected to hit 33.9 million by the same point.

Barbour pointed out that the decision to launch on Switch “was made all the easier by the fact that Microsoft Corp. promised regulators it would do so in an effort to get the Activision Blizzard Inc. acquisition across the finish line.”

In a note to clients, Barbour said that while moving away from older consoles gave developers more headroom to leverage the capabilities of PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, “rolling in the Switch 2 complicates that narrative because it is not nearly as powerful” as other current-gen platforms. “We expect that its more modern architecture will make it easier to scale for, but developers will still have to keep the lower overall performance specifications in mind,” he said.

The Call of Duty franchise has lasted an unusually long time across multiple console generations, with PS4 having been supported for five years following the launch of its successor. PS3 was dropped after only two.

Activision announced it would be changing the franchise release schedule following the sluggish launch of Black Ops 7, and more recently new CoD releases were removed from the firm’s Game Pass subscription service as part of a series of changes by new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma.