industry news
Former Bungie legal exec: ‘The company will never love you back, but if you let it, it’ll kill you’
Among the workers affected by Bungie's round of layoffs last October was former chief legal officer Don McGowan, who was the man heading the...
Microsoft lays off 1900 workers: Blizzard sheds Mike Ybarra, its survival game, and its customer support in one day
We've updated this story at the bottom with some of the latest news that has come forth about the scope of the layoffs and...
Baldur’s Gate 3 boss pushes back against the industry’s renewed ambition over games subscription models
This week offered another example of executive foot-in-mouth disorder when Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay suggested in an interview that games subscription business...
Discord is shedding 17 percent of its staff as part of the company’s attempt to turn a profit this year
The month of January continues to prove itself to be a brutal one for those in the gaming and tech industries. This time around...
Amazon’s Twitch lays off 500 workers over cost-cutting efforts and executive exits
Hot on the heels of yesterday's news of more layoffs at Unity comes the revelation that Amazon is the next to fire staff. As...
Marvel Snap studio secures $100M investment that assures independence and new game creation
Second Dinner, the studio headed by former Hearthstone dev Ben Brode that managed to nail down the Marvel IP to launch its digital CCG...
Unity sheds another 1800 workers from all of its departments in latest layoff round
The contraction of Unity that occurred through last January, May, and November looks to be continuing into this year, as the game engine developer...
Study finds social media game ads don’t properly disclose the existence of lockboxes and in-game purchases
A recent study conducted by legal expert and lockbox researcher Leon Y. Xiao has been completed and it finds that lockbox disclosures in social...
Chinese government fires media official over announced gaming rules proposal that battered the market
The last few weeks saw the Chinese games industry turn into a tinderbox thanks to an announced draft of new restrictions on gaming in...
Korea’s FTC fines Nexon $8.9M over MapleStory’s deceptive gear upgrade probabilities
Care for a little smile to start off this first week of 2024? Then feast your eyes on a hefty $8.9M (₩11.6M) fine levied...
Star Citizen studio CIG claims increases in revenue, salaries, headcount, and costs in 2022 financial year report
The 2022 fiscal year for Star Citizen and Squadron 42 developer Cloud Imperium Games can best be described as "all the numbers were bigger":...
Rumor: With Kotick gone, Blizzard and NetEase might repair year-long rift over China publishing
Readers likely remember that 2023 started off with a tire fire as Blizzard and NetEase had a particularly nasty dissolution of a licensing deal...
Chinese regulators go into damage control mode after proposed gaming restrictions burn $80B in market value
Last week we reported on some newly drafted restrictions by Chinese regulators that were aimed at curbing game time, limiting rewards for spending and...
China’s government drafts new restrictions on gaming time, spending and login rewards, and lockboxes
The Chinese government has decided to once more consider a tightening of the thumbscrews on gaming, as regulators in the country have issued a...
QA employees accuse Activision-Blizzard of a ‘soft layoff’ after studios mandate a return to offices in January
Activision-Blizzard is once again electing to mistreat its QA employees according to a statement from the A Better ABK proto-union, which accuses the company...
Activision-Blizzard settles its 2021 California Civil Rights department lawsuit for $50M
Who here wanted one final reminder before the end of the year that we live in a cursed capitalist hellscape where justice can be...
Epic wins its lawsuit against Google as jury finds Google Play engaged in monopolist practices
The long-running lawsuit between Epic and Google has been decided, and it's been a slam dunk win for Epic Games: A jury found that...
Project Boston was Activision-Blizzard’s attempt to create a ‘Steam of mobile’ games store
The point of the Epic v. Google antitrust lawsuit is ostensibly about whether Google is holding a monopoly that prevents competitors like Epic from...
Xbox announces plans for AI-based gamedev tools that generate game dialogue and quests ‘at scale’
The invasion of generative AI text and large language model (LLM) tools like ChatGPT into game development and design has gotten the backing of...
Nitrado CEO claims ARK Survival Ascended ‘would never have existed’ without its $4M loan
The twisty, tangled, muddy mess between Nitrado, ARK: Survival Ascended publisher Snail Games, and the wider business of private server hosting continues to present...
