Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications!
Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!
Xbox Updates
April 9th: After it was rumored back in December, with Bobby Kotick out of the picture Blizzard and NetEase did officially restore their partnership, bringing Blizzard’s games back to China in Summer 2024 after the previous delisting last January. In negotiating for this, Microsoft has also entered its own agreement with NetEease for Xbox ports of the publisher’s major titles like the recently revealed Marvel Rivals.
April 24th: Although actually part of the previous 1900 layoffs back in January, 15 people were newly revealed to have been fired as part of a full closure for community management subsidiary Bethesda France.
April 25th: Xbox’s latest earnings report perfectly illustrated the sharp duality of the company’s status and exactly why the publisher will only continue to expand its multiplatform release strategy, with hardware sales dropping another 30% while software/services/etc. revenue is significantly up, but almost exclusively thanks to the addition of Activision Blizzard King’s portfolio. The fruits of the aggressive acquisitions and the new multiplat strategy were shown when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged Xbox becoming the current top seller of the PlayStation Store with seven first party titles topping the charts, four being from the Zenimax and ABK acquisitions, two being the recently ported Sea of Thieves and Grounded, the last being Minecraft. Sea of Thieves on PS5 was understood to be the main test for more multiplat releases being greenlit, and it’s going swimmingly so far.
The incoming June Xbox Games Showcase is now widely expected to center on the reveals of Gears 6 and the legally mandated multiplat Call of Duty: Black Ops 6/Gulf War, as well as the second Indiana Jones trailer and a massive ABK catalog drop on Game Pass, among other projects. The Verge’s Tom Warren previously reported that the event will premiere June 9th, which Xbox confirmed on April 30th while announcing that it will be followed immediately by what is currently being marketed as a dedicated [Redacted] Developer Direct like year’s presentation for Starfield. This mystery game is Treyarch’s aforementioned COD entry. Tom Warren also reported that the following release dates/windows will be announced in the Showcase: September for Starfield: Shattered Space, October for COD, November for Avowed, and December for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, though I remain skeptical of that game avoiding a delay.
Blizzcon 2024 was officially canceled.
April 29th: ID@Xbox Showcase: The presentation opened with another Palworld update, followed by 33 Immortals returning from last year to present its first boss fight and the closed beta test this month. Action RPG Astor: Blade of the Monolith was announced to be launching for all platforms May 30th. Developer Claymore revealed their tactics game Commandos: Origins, a reboot of a minor cult classic series coming to Game Pass. Survival game Fera: The Sundered Tribes is coming to PC and Xbox Series this year. Developer Moonana re-revealed their Kickstarter project, cyberpunk turn-based 2D rhythm JRPG Keylocker, coming to PC and Xbox Series S|X in Summer 2024. The game was previously committed to PS4/5 and Switch ports which have likely been delayed by a funding and timed exclusivity deal with Xbox. A brief teaser trailer announced the annual Jackbox release, the company’s first M-rated release, Jackbox Naughty Pack. Developer Hack the Publisher revealed Centum, an “unreliable” narrative adventure about an attempted prisoner escape, coming to PC and Xbox Series S|X in Summer 2024.
Chinese developers Misty Mountain Studio shadowdropped their first game The Rewinder on Game Pass after its previous Steam launch; you might remember them from last year’s Indie World appearance for their second game Death Trick: Double Blind, which launched in March. Publisher Gamera Games announced four more Xbox/PC Game Pass releases besides The Rewinder, Firework, Depersonalization, Keplerth, and Volcano Princess, all in 2024. Following its reveal last year, highly Lily-anticipated game Dungeons of Hinterberg saw a July 18th launch date announced in a new trailer. Pixeljunk developers Q-Games revealed multiplayer puzzle party game All You Need is Help, coming this fall to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox One/Series/Game Pass. One year after launching for PC and PlayStation, Humanity is coming to Xbox One/Series and Game Pass on May 30th. Don’t od’s Lost Records: Bloom & Rage saw a new trailer. Hack n slash Hangry saw a new gameplay trailer. Sumo Digital battle royale kart racer Stampede: Racing Royale will come to Xbox this year. Roguelike shooter Sulfur will come to Xbox this year.
The gameplay reveal trailer for Tails of Iron 2: Whiskers of Winter debuted; developer Odd Bugg’s gritty RPG series will continue this year on PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series, still narrated by Geralt himself, Doug Cockle. Point and click comedy adventure game Times & Galaxy was announced to launch in June 2024 for PC, Xbox, Switch, and PS5. Lastly, a major new Vampire Survivors update was announced and shadowdropped, and the developers of the masterful Paradise Killer revealed their second game, Promise Mascot Agency, a cutesy take on Like a Dragon’s crime sandbox melodrama with mascot collecting, coming in 2025 to PC, Switch, Xbox One/Series, and PS4/5.
Everything Else
April 1st: Ubisoft announced 45 more total layoffs in its Global Publishing and Asia-Pacific divisions. 45 people were fired, and further effort was made to take money from you in the same breath, as the annual Ubisoft Forward digital event was confirmed to premiere June 10th in the same week as Summer Game Fest. With rumors of a May PlayStation Showcase building, this year’s rendition of the busiest season in video games is slowly coming into focus.
April 2nd: Indie developer Yellow Brick Games, founded by Bioware veteran Mike Laidlaw after his very brief tenure at Ubisoft, fully revealed their debut game Eternal Strands, scheduled to launch in 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. The third person fantasy action RPG is built in Unreal 5 and focuses on dynamic environment/weather interaction. Yellow Brick also recently pivoted into self-publishing the game instead of receiving distribution from Take-Two’s Private Division.
April 3rd: The Federal Trade Commission formally rejected an application made by the ESRB last year to receive approval to develop and use facial recognition technology to verify the ages of video game players.
According to a local newspaper in Kyoto, a suspect has been arrested for the persistent death threats made which got Nintendo Live physical events canceled. The 27 year old local government and zoo employee confessed to the crime of sending 39 death threats, apparently motivated by dissatisfaction with Splatoon 3, as he mainly targeted Splatoon focused events and cited a “shitty game” in one published excerpt of his threats.
April 5th: Rebekah Valentine issued a staggering new report at IGN about workplace culture at current Life is Strange developer Deck Nine, in which over a dozen current and former employees testified to experiencing a longterm toxic culture at the studio which protected abuse and discrimination, allowed consistent crunch, and is actively hampering the company’s future. Square Enix picked up the studio to support the Life is Strange series and then fully take it over from Don’t Nod when the latter moved on, releasing prequel Before the Storm and third mainline game True Colors, and currently developing Life is Strange 4.
Before the Storm was made with major crunch, True Colors saw less total but still plenty, with one TC dev saying they worked 70-80 hours a week for a whole month, another taking on extra overtime to protect others from having to do the same, forced to do so by the studio’s strict deadlines, tight budgets, and skirting responsibility by acting like no one was forced/told to do it. Square Enix’s direction over the developer exacerbated but never created these conditions, and Deck Nine leadership never attempted pushback or communication on the issues. Mishandling of the game’s marginalized characters and themes surrounding them similarly came from both Square publishing and studio leadership, along with the unfortunately typical low pay, unequal access to promotions experienced by marginalized workers, and permissiveness towards toxic worker behavior from sexual harassment, racism, transphobia, to even nazi dogwhistles.
Deck Nine Chief Creative Officer and narrative director Zak Garriss was the eye of this storm of unacceptable behavior, acting as a serial predator towards younger female employees, calling Black Lives Matter a hate group, and repeatedly negatively affecting the writing of sensitive topics and marginalized characters within Life is Strange: True Colors. A trans character was arbitrarily removed late in development and anyone questioning the decision was reprimanded. Garriss fought hard to protect two climactic story beats which the rest of the team hated and did ultimately successfully remove: protagonist Alex having a date rape drug used against her, and invoking racist tropes while depicting migrant mining workers in the backstory. Garriss was treated preferentially and protectively by other leadership before and after his voluntary departure; they attempted to bring him back right after True Colors’ successful launch, and when the team erupted against the decision, instead of actually backing down, they just began secretly working with him through Telltale Games instead, even having story meetings at his house.
Deck Nine’s first Telltale collaboration, Telltale’s The Expanse, did of course launch last year, but the developer lost two other Telltale projects in quick succession, in part out of dissatisfaction with studio leadership: producing a new Walking Dead entry, and writing the script for The Wolf Among Us 2. The developer then saw numerous layoffs I’ve previously covered in which all staff regardless of tenure only received two weeks’ severance. Life is Strange 4 is now the only project the studio has, leaving them back to complete dependence on an abusive publisher and a series whose fanbase might be much more skeptical towards now.
Credit to former Deck Nine producer Madeleine Tate for this quote: “I worry that True Colors and Before the Storm are important to the queer community, and I just worry people will think they can’t play these anymore. But every good thing we got in those stories was fought for hard by female writers and queer writers, and games aren’t made by one person…If you’re marginalized you have to love games so much more to make them because you have to put up with so much more shit.”
After launching multiplayer life sim Palia in beta last fall, developer Singularity 6 announced that it was firing 35% of staff.
Takashi Mochizuki at Bloomberg reported that due to ongoing developmental difficulties and delays on Dragon Quest 12, longtime series producer Yu Miyake has been reassigned by Square Enix to the publisher’s mobile division, with Nier series producer Yosuke Saito potentially taking his place at the DQ team.
In response to the EU ruling in favor of third party app stores, Apple has officially lifted its global ban on game emulators in the iPhone App Store, reaching parity with Android on the issue after many years and leaving individual developers responsible for following laws.
April 8th: Tom Phillips at Eurogamer reported that major UK retailer GAME is engaging in undefined layoffs and moving the majority of staff to zero hour contracts.
April 9th: Ubisoft premiered a new story trailer for Massive’s Star Wars Outlaws, showing off a lot of classic Star Wars nostalgia beats and announcing an official scheduled launch date of August 30th 2024 for PC, PS5, Series S|X, and cloud gaming. With preorders now opened, the game’s physical edition is confirmed to require a one-time online connection like the same developer’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Two paid story DLCs are also confirmed. In continuation of one of my favorite industry running jokes, Ubisoft itself accidentally leaked the release date by making the trailer’s Youtube upload description go live early.
Electronic Arts announced that seasonal support for Battlefield 2042 will end after two and a half years with Season 7 due to personnel and resources fully shifting over to the next Battlefield project, entering full development as the…sighs Connected Battlefield Universe? Also, joining DICE, Criterion, and Ripple Effect on this project is a team from EA Motive with the same two leaders as the Dead Space Remake*, who will be focusing on the return of a single player campaign to Battlefield. EA Motive’s other team on Marvel’s Iron Man will continue their work separately. *According to multiple sources, a followup to Dead Space Remake, whether another remake or a more fully original next step for the series, was in early consideration before being shelved due to the Remake’s sales. EA is publicly denying the claims.
April 10th:
Immortals of Aveum developer and EA partner Ascendant Studios reportedly furloughed around 30 people, much of their remaining staff, after previously firing a large portion last year due to their debut title’s failed launch.
Having already hit troubled waters with Cities: Skylines 2, Lamplighters League and Bloodlines 2, Paradox Interactive announced that support for the floundering 4X game Star Trek: Infinite has ended after just six months since launch.
The first annual Triple I Initiative event: Dozens of major indie studios have come together to give themselves their own platform and space for marketing their games outside the noise and distraction of sharing ground with bigger games. The showcase is linked above with every featured game listed by a pinned comment. I’ll be covering highlights. To start, Slay the Spire II was officially revealed with a 2025 PC Early Access release window; developer Mega Crit has left the Unity engine behind in favor of Godot and updated the hit deckbuilder’s artstyle along the way. Developer ColePowered Games announced the 1.0 launch of their first person detective adventure Shadows of Doubt, scheduled to release for PS5 and Xbox Series S|X while exiting Early Access on PC later in 2024. Dinolords takes your usual medievel real time strategy and adds, well, mounted attack dinosaurs. Its early access release is coming soon.
Metamorphosis Games showed off their lusciously animated, narrative driven, sidescrolling action platformer Gestalt: Steam & Cinder, announcing a May 21st launch for PC and all consoles. Vampire Survivors was announced to finally arrive on PlayStation this summer, while a Contra crossover DLC will launch in just a few days on May 9th. Action RPG Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn reappeared with an emphasis on its composer ahead of a 2024 launch. A nine years in the making sequel to the acclaimed indigenous Alaskan puzzle platformer, Never Alone 2 was officially revealed as in development. Moonlighter developer Digital Sun announced that their self published tower defense/strategy game Cataclismo will launch on PC this July. A major content update called Act 2 was announced and released for action roguelike Death Must Die.
Survival sim Endzone 2 saw a gameplay reveal trailer and scheduled its early access release for Summer 2024. Roguelike UnderMine 2 was officially revealed, while another medieval strategy sim Norland originally set its release date for May 16th, but was just delayed July 18th for more polish. What the Car?, Triband’s sequel to my beloved comedy puzzle game What the Golf, was announced to release for Steam on September 5th 2024. Mexican developer Wabisabi Games revealed their sci 3D platformer RKGK which will launch on PC May 22nd published by Gearbox. Australian narrative RPG Broken Roads appeared as a surprise shadowdrop launch, and city builder Laysara: Summit Kingdom also shadowdropped. A new DLC, Dwarves of Runenberg, was announced and released for The Last Spell for tactical roguelike The Last Spell.
Acclaimed school management sim Let’s School was announced to be coming to Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox this Summer one year after PC launch. A new Brotato DLC Abyssal Terrors was revealed. One year after its PlayStation/PC timed exclusive launch, acclaimed and successful indigenous indie Tchia was announced to be releasing for Switch on June 27th 2024. A new trailer showed off 2D sandbox RPG Streets of Rogue 2 ahead of its scheduled launch later this year. Palworld and 33 Immortals made appearances much like their aforementioned Xbox ones. A gameplay reveal trailer was released for the V Rising Castlevania DLC. And a big, albeit already leaked, reveal for one more thing: unceremoniously dropped second Dead Cells developer Evil Empire announced their next sidescrolling action roguelike project, the unexpected The Rogue: Prince of Persia, releasing in PC Early Access on May 14th.
April 11th: Right in time for the premiere of the now highly successful Amazon series, the late free native current-gen update for Fallout 4 was announced to arrive on April 25th for PS5 and Xbox Series S|X with 4K60fps support, new technical fixes, and a brand new questline. It delivered a series of technical issues. As every series entry rocketed up sales charts off excitement for the TV show, Todd Howard received increased scrutiny about how long it will take for a new Fallout game to come out, to which he responded that they are exploring both external partnerships and shoring up internal development in order to increase output after Starfield’s 8 year development cycle. In discussing the previous report by Jeff Grubb of early meetings about a theoretical ew Vegas 2, Startmenu editor in chief Lex Luddy backed what Grubb said while adding that those meetings ended with Obsidian reluctant to tackle a game that large-scale again under modern development conditions, preferring to stick to the smaller scale they’ve embraced recently with titles like Outer Worlds, Pentiment, and Grounded.
April 12th: As reported by Rebekah Valentine at IGN, Avalanche Studios Group of Just Cause and the upcoming Contraband made a new commitment in its ongoing collective bargaining negotiations with the company’s union, saying that the new contract will be signed in 2025 at the start of the next contract period, so that it can last the maximum amount rather than be signed now then expire in 2025 and need to be renegotiated after only a year.
April 16th:
As first reported by, ugh, Cecilia D’Anastasio at Bloomberg, major publisher Take-Two Interactive is keeping the mass layoffs going by firing 550-600 people, 5% of total staff, and canceling multiple unspecified game projects after insisting no further layoffs were planned just two months ago. The company filed these plans publicly, saying it’s taking a $140 million loss on the canceled games after operating at a general loss for seven quarters straight due to flops and long expensive developments for most of the main games in its lineup, from the massively anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6, to Borderlands 4 and Wonderlands 2 from Gearbox, Mafia 4 from Hangar13, and troubled sister games Judas and BioShock 4.
April 17th: Supergiant premiered a several hour Hades 2 technical test and Early Access livestream, revealing so many major details of the game’s opening hours that I simply can’t put them all here without upsetting some of the many fans eagerly awaiting it.
Indie World: The presentation opened with repeat appearer Little Kitty Big City, which features an explorable open city, quests, customization, and will launch May 9th 2024. WayForward and Atari unexpectedly revealed a sidescroller Metroidvania reboot of Yars’ Revenge, Yars’ Rising, coming later this year. Refind Self: Personality Test Game is a timed console exclusive coming Summer 2024. Business sim Sticky Business was shadowdropped as a timed console exclusive with day one paid DLC. The Wario Land inspired/Pizza Tower resembling Antonblast was revealed, a sidescrolling fast action platformer and timed console exclusive coming November 12th 2024 with a demo day of. First person climbing platformer Valley Peaks was announced to be coming to Switch Day 1 in 2024. Sayonara Wild Hearts creator Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is finally launching on Switch and PC May 16th 2024. Europa is a fully 3D open world adventure coming 2024, demo day of.
Top down roguelike ninja turtle action game TMNT: Splintered Fate was announced as a timed console exclusive coming July 2024. Cat Quest 3 reappeared with a multiplat launch date of August 8th 2024. Stitch. was revealed and shadowdropped as a console exclusive, a puzzle game about embroidery, featuring touch controls in handheld, free stitch mode, accessibility settings, and bonus Shikaku puzzles. Sizzle reel: Bzzzt, Schim July 18th 2024, Animal Well May 9th, Duck Detective: The Secret Salami May 23rd, Another Crab’s Treasure April 25th. Lastly, an old fashion one more thing reveal: tactical shooter Steamworld Heist 2 from Thunderful/Image&Form coming to all platforms August 8th 2024.
April 18th: Six years after their debut game Kingdom Come: Deliverance successfully launched, surviving Embracer Group subsidiary developer Warhorse Studios officially revealed Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, a bigger scale sequel to the action RPG coming later this year to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. The trailer leaked earlier the same day.
A new PlayStation Blog post gave updates on three of the platform’s upcoming indie games, most notably revealing that Darkest Dungeon 2 will release for PS4 and PS5 on July 15th after launching on PC last year. V Rising and Five ights at Freddy’s: Help Wanted 2 for PSVR2 were also covered.
Publisher Devolver Digital and developer No Brake Games delayed the scheduled launch of Human Fall Flat 2 from 2025 to 2026.
Multiple in office protests were staged by Alphabet/Google employees against their employer’s billion dollar cloud contract with the Israeli government and military during its genocidal campaign against Gaza, a contract which actively expanded in the past six months during the current violence. 28 workers were fired in retaliation.
The entertainment industry is at risk of shrinking yet again. Owner Shari Redstone has spent months attempting to put major movie studio Paramount on the market, previously turning down a bid from WB. Both Skydance (parent company of Amy Hennig’s game studio) and Sony (obvious) became the latest companies to make bids for buyout. There’s no final word at this time, but reportedly it is thankfully not looking good for either bid to be accepted, and Redstone is expected to end attempts to sell Paramount for now if that occurs. This would be another devastatingly huge lurch towards monopolization if it did occur.
Responding to reports that it was joining the overall trend against physical media in retail stores, Target publicly claimed that there are no current changes to their video game stock physical or online, and no changes to online offerings for DVDs and Blurays.
April 19th: Super Nintendo World Japan’s Donkey Kong Country expansion had its opening delayed to late 2024.
April 20th: The itch.io Palestine Children’s Relief charity game bundle went live, ultimately earning over half a million dollars.
April 22nd: The Embracer Group restructuring and subsidiary shuffle game has continued with an unexpected drastic next step, essentially dissolving itself and becoming three separate smaller games holding companies with separate public listings: tabletop publisher Asmodee, budget video game publisher Coffee Stain, which are both separate, and AAA video game publisher/main IP holder Middle Earth Enterprises, which remains under what will soon no longer be named Embracer Group. THQ Nordic and such will go with Coffee Stain while Middle Earth will have LOTR obviously, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal along with their IPs, Metro’s 4A Games, and more. Asmodee’s independence came at the price of agreeing to absorb 60% of Embracer’s debt, 900 million euros.
Atlus hosted a new half hour stream showcasing their next major RPG Metaphor Re Fantazio, presenting extensive gameplay footage and announcing its scheduled launch date of October 11th 2024 for PC, PS4/5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass.
Licensed from Middle Earth Enterprises, Weta and Take-Two Interactive/Private Division released the first full trailer for life sim Tales of the Shire, scheduled to launch later this year for PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series.
April 23rd: The US Federal Trade Commission officially banned contractual non compete clauses in the country; non-competes have been notoriously used to exploit workers across industries including in entertainment and gaming, preventing new employment and new businesses, controlling wages, and intimidating employees into remaining at unhealthy workplaces. Existing non-competes for senior executives will remain in effect, but no new ones will be allowed once this ruling goes into affect later this year.
Mere months after successfully porting Gloomhaven to consoles, former Lionhead developers Flaming Fowl announced dire straits due to the games industry’s severe belt-tightening towards funding smaller projects. The studio revealed their new strategy deckbuilder game Ironmarked, but also explained that after losing its first publisher last summer, self-funding for months, and failing to secure a new year publisher in 30+ pitches, they are forced to put development on indefinite hold and have fired over half of staffers. The company will attempt to maintain its survival and continue to seek new support.
Atari’s new campaign into gaming continued with an announced acquisition of the party game Totally Reliable Delivery Service from TinyBuild, which will henceforth be published under a relaunched Infogrames subisidary label.
One month after launching Alone in the Dark Remake for the former Embracer Group to mixed reception, developer Pieces Interactive was revealed to have fired an unknown number of staff.
April 24th:
Sim game producer Frontier Developments got into hot water for announcing a plan to charge real money to instantly get new spaceships in their game Elite Dangerous.
PS5 and Xbox Series S|X ports were announced for Bit.Trip Rerunner, a remake/reimagining of the original cult classic which first launched on PC last September.
Steam has closed a loophole which was allowing players who paid extra for early access of premium releases like Suicide Squad to play for many hours and still get full refunds because playtime before official launch didn’t count towards the “within two hours” requirement. These games are also now formally distinguished from actual early access with the Advanced Access label on the store.
Two more N64 games were surprise released for Nintendo Switch Online, obscure racing games Extreme-G and Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls, which belong to the library of Acclaim games bought in 2006 by Throwback Entertainment after Acclaim’s bankruptcy.
April 25th: Developer People Can Fly announced that they were canceling Project Dagger, bringing their total games in development down to five and self-published projects down to two.
Preview coverage debuted for the Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door Remake a month ahead of launch, revealing many brand new quality of life features added, discussing the graphical refresh in greater detail, and showing first signs that the dialogue surrounding fan favorite companion Vivian has indeed been updated to reflect the character’s trans identity and experiences being misgendered by her sister.
After 20 years, Garry’s Mod is removing all Nintendo-based content at request from the publisher.
After almost two years on Xbox and PC, Slime Rancher 2 was announced to be releasing for PS5 on June 11th, remaining in Early Access for now.
April 26th: In a huge victory for the American consumer and the state of the nation’s online infrastructure, the Federal Communications Commission officially voted to restore net neutrality seven years after the Trump administration overturned it.
Spanish games site Vandal, followed quickly by supporting sources, delivered the first major Switch 2 report in some time, discussing hardware details from manufacturing sources after previously and accurately doing the same for the Switch OLED three years ago, being the first to report the ethernet port and upgraded kickstand. According to Vandal, the Switch 2’s new joy-cons will attach magnetically instead of using slide rails like the original controllers, but it will be compatible with Switch 1 controllers, including the official Pro Controller, via Bluetooth.
April 27th: As first publicly announced by Geoff Keighley, veteran LucasArts developer Matthew Shell passed away from a heart attack. Shell was credited on virtually every LucasArts/Lucasfilm Games published game for over 20 years, including Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
April 29th: Two major fighting game announcements occurred at once with Tekken 8’s second DLC character Lidia revealed and coming Summer 2024, while Street Fighter 6 had the gameplay reveal for fourth DLC fighter Akuma, who will now launch May 22nd.
April 30th: After previously announcing layoffs and pay cuts in February, Deliver Us the Moon/Mars indie studio Keoken Interactive officially resorted to laying off all 13 remaining employees, leaving only the two cofounders, after failing to secure new funding at GDC2024. Brothers Koen and Paul Deetman will attempt to “rebuild Keoken brick by brick” over time.
Square Enix announced that it took a $140 million loss on recently canceled projects during its latest earnings report. Despite its universal acclaim, FF7 Rebirth is also understood to be financially underperforming right now by “only” selling a couple million copies.
May 1st: Two weeks after Take-Two Interactive first announced layoffs, the publisher filed to close an entire Seattle office and fire 70 people, which was later reported by Jason Schreier to mean the effective closure of both OlliOlli developer Roll7 and Kerbal Space Program 2 developer Intercept Games. James Batchelor at GamesIndustry.biz reported that Take-Two’s extra publishing label/department Private Division is seeing the “vast majority” of its staff laid off, not just at the Seattle office but also in New York, Munich, and Las Vegas. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick was paid over $40 million last year, easily equal to production costs on one or more smaller games like what we just lost here.
Mobile developer Belka Games fired 33 people, 20% of previous total staff.
Seven months after John Riccitiello resigned in disgrace from Unity, his permanent replacement was announced as Matthew Bromberg, formerly of EA and Zynga.
May 2nd: Dutch indie/support developer Paladin Studios shut down after 19 years due to lack of partnerships and earnings, leaving all 45 employees out of work. They worked largely in mobile games and were perhaps best known for the Nintendo published/exclusive Good Job!
After many months of delays over technical certification issues, Ubisoft’s new Warzone competitor, AKA FTP live service FPS and IP crossover XDefiant, was officially rescheduled to launch May 21st. We’ll see if that holds!
May 3rd: After months as one of the year’s biggest success stories, Helldivers 2 drew considerable controversy when Sony and Arrowhead announced the reintroduction of requiring a PlayStation Network account connection for all PC players. And then it got worse. With less than 24 hours before I publish, Sony outright delisted the game in 177 different countries that had Steam but not PSN, taking it away from any players in those areas. Steam started accepting refunds at an indefinite window for this game, but you can’t refund a game you no longer have. While I was having a very busy and stressful night and almost missing this last update, at 10PM Mountain with less than 12 hours before I published, PlayStation officially and fully rescinded the PSN policy due to the backlash and thus restored the game for the 177 countries that just lost it.
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