games industry news
Lawsuit accuses Activision and Facebook of partial blame in deadly 2022 school mass shooting
The 2022 mass shooting that took place at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is one of the most shameful events in the US...
Helldivers 2 CEO steps down into a lead developer role and outlines his general vision for improvements
The name of Johan Pilestedt has been one of the more memorable ones for fans of Helldivers 2, particularly for his candid level of...
MMO Business Roundup: Nexon’s Q1 2024, Microsoft’s AI fiddling, XDefiant’s monetization
Welcome back to another quick roundup of some MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news! This time around, we've got only one first quarter report to...
Activision opens a new studio in Poland for work on ‘narrative-based and genre-defining AAA franchise’
Apparently Microsoft subsidiary Activision thinks now is a good time to open a new studio and put together a team to develop an entirely...
Square-Enix confirms that layoffs are coming to US and EU employees in June
Yesterday we reported on Square-Enix's first quarter outlook for 2024, in which it announced among other things that it plans to "rebuild its ...
MMO Business Roundup: Krafton and Roblox post Q1 2024 gains while Unity bleeds nearly $300M
Welcome back to another quick roundup of some MMO and MMO-adjacent industry news! And this time around, it's the Oops! All Q1 Reports edition!...
Square-Enix Q1 2024: Profits plummet as it promises to ‘reboot and awaken’
The opening quarter of the 2024 fiscal year indeed isn't a good one for Square-Enix. Shortly after the company warned investors of "extraordinary losses"...
Lightforge Games halts social RPG production, downsizes to a skeleton crew
Over the past few years we've been reporting on Lightforge Games, a development studio that entered our general genre radar for snapping up former...
IGDA survey casts a light on game devs’ impressions of industry diversity, job satisfaction, and crunch culture
The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) has put together the 2023 version of its game developer satisfaction survey, which continues to take the temperature...
Game devs are concerned about the sustainability of live-service titles
It certainly feels like live service is being tacked on to many recent game releases (whether it makes sense or not), which of course...
Grand Theft Auto publisher Take-Two Interactive lays off 600 employees and axes game projects
The wave of job cuts flooding the games industry doesn't appear to be slowing down anytime soon, as this time around Grand Theft Auto...
Former Blizzard boss Mike Ybarra thinks players should be able to tip developers for their work
Now that former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra has free time on his hands, he's apparently spending some of it pondering how to make our...
Ubisoft inists its AI-powered NPC tech will be used only if valuable to creatives
When Ubisoft debuted new generative AI NPC tech at GDC this year, it made a lot of promises that it would gather industry feedback...
Jeff Strain shuts down Possibility Space studio via email, blaming internal leaks to the press
Jeff Strain, the owner of Prytania Media, has elected to shut down another of his company's sub-studios. This time it's Possibility Space that has...
Former Prytania CEO blames economic downturn and lack of investor interest for Crop Circle Games closure
At the tail end of March, we finally received word that earlier furloughs of staff at Jeff Strain's Crop Circle Games transformed into a...
Microsoft’s Phil Spencer admits massive layoffs were due in part to gaming’s ‘lack of growth’
Ever since Microsoft announced a wave of layoffs that would affect 1,900 people - over 800 of whom work for Activision-Blizzard - the officially...
Jeff Strain’s Crop Circle Games studio shuts down abruptly following employee furloughs
Over the past couple of years we've been keeping a general eye on the opening of Crop Circle Games, a new indie studio formed...
Ubisoft debuts AI NPC prototypes at GDC, and it went about as well as you’d expect
Ubisoft looks to be once more chasing the latest buzzword-scented tech trend. After the studio tried and failed to make NFTs work, it's now...
‘Professional fraudsters’ admit the 189GB hack of Epic Games was a hoax supposedly used to get $85K
Last week news broke of a supposed hack of Epic Games in which a hacker gang called Mogilevich claimed to have gotten away with...
Rockstar developers push back against corporate demand to return to physical offices in April
Apparently, Rockstar Games believes that the only way it can get its next big release out the door is by mandating employees to work...
