Welcome back to another roundup of MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news. We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s dive right in.
Krafton pushes AI – Krafton held its company-wide Krafton Live Talk town hall, which gave CEO Changham Kim a bully pulpit to talk up the company’s strategies in 2024. These include the launch of Dark and Darker Mobile and life sim inZOI, the expansion of PUBG into India, and the incorporation of AI tech into the studio’s game development, which Kim believes is a “game changer” that would “not only enhance production efficiency but also deliver innovative, user-centric experiences.” In other Krafton news, the company is facing a sexual harassment and wrongful termination lawsuit filed by a former employee last month.
Call of Duty – Activision is trying to put forth a strong front against toxicity in Call of Duty, as a dev blog about the subject calls attention to an updated code of conduct and talks up the effects of voice moderation applied across the series’ most recent slate of games.
Sledgehammer Games’ office space and WFH – Speaking of the COD franchise, Sledgehammer Games, which will be working on the 2026 version of the shooter, confirmed to employees that its California office is closing in favor of a smaller office space, which has yet to be found. This means that employees will continue to work from home through 2024 – a matter that has raised the hackles of A Better ABK, which called out the hypocrisy of an earlier RTO mandate from Activision-Blizzard.
CliffyB does and doesn’t want to work on Gears of War – Regrettably, Dude Huge is in the headlines again: Cliff “CliffyB” Blezinski, of LawBreakers, Radical Heights, and Gears of War infamy, put out conflicting statements that both says he’d be open to being a consultant for a Gears of War revival with Microsoft but also claimed his intent to move on from the series. We now count this as his fourth flip back in and out of game dev.
German lockboxes – Last but not least, a German state is trying to push for lockbox regulation, including full-on bans on lootboxes, social casino games, premium currency, and even the livestreaming of games with lockboxes. Leaders from the Bremen state parliament are asking the state’s senate to push these proposals to a national level.
