Microsoft is making sweeping changes to Game Pass, seemingly to avoid bleeding out on Call of Duty sales. Also: Circana report for May 2024, SAG-AFTRA updates, more Embracer and Paradox cuts, out of control EA executive pay in the face of layoffs, and more.
Atari has finally driven its mortal enemy, Intellivision, and heard the lamentations of its pixels. Also: So. Many. Earnings. We’re covering Sony, Square Enix, Ubisoft, Take-Two, and Embracer. Also, a number of new studios were founded as the labor winter trudges on.
The Embracer Group name is going away, splitting its mega-conglomerate into three in an attempt to move on from its destructive legacy. But with Lars Wingefors sticking around to lead the holding company, our expectations are tempered. Also: Meta loses billions more as it tries to become the Windows of MR and earnings season is here!
Two months after Take-Two said it wasn’t planning layoffs it has… well… by now you know. Also, we’re trying something new and fun with this episode. Join us for a lively discussion about keeping the…
We’ve come full circle. Embracer Group just took a massive loss to get some much-needed cash in hopes of filling a seemingly bottomless hole of debt. Saber is gone. Zen is gone. 4A is gone. Gearbox is gone. Also, SAG-AFTRA may strike against video game companies, some new studios are popping up, but many others are still laying off and closing.
Triple-A game development is unsustainable. No matter whether your game succeeds or fails, the corporate machine is grinding developers up and spitting them out by the thousands. Things need to change.
The console market is going through major changes as hardware prices stay high and first party needs to pivot audience strategy. Nintendo may be struggling to find a break-even for its Switch successor, prompting a…
In the wake of 2020’s bombshell revelations about Activision’s miserable culture and history of defending sexual abusers, we hoped that Microsoft would be a better steward for the company’s 13,000 employees. With 1,900 laid off…
We think it’s safe to say that no one anticipated just how miserable 2023 would be for the amazing people creating the games we love. And while this year did bring us a deluge of delight in terms of the games, the play experiences were overshadowed by the trauma and despair of the more than 10,000 people who found themselves out of work… some just a few days before Christmas.
Embracer Group gorged itself during the pandemic when debt was cheap. Now, it’s scrambling to lay off hundreds of people to “win.” Also, Circana report for October, Epic wins against Google, and more.