When Riot speaks about restructuring, the fighting game community listens closely. This week, 2XKO Executive Producer Tom Cannon shared a difficult update: the 2XKO team is being reduced in size. The reason is clear and measured. While the game has built a passionate core audience, overall engagement hasn’t reached the level required to sustain a large development team long term...
The shutdown of Pahdo Labs following the cancellation of Starlight Re:Volver is not just another “indie studio runs out of money” story. It’s a case study in how modern funding expectations, live-service pressure, and ambitious scope collide often at the indie-to-AA boundary. Despite raising $17.5 million, Pahdo Labs has now ceased all game development. Both Starlight Re:Volver and the follow-up project Edge of Divinity have been abandoned, leaving behind playable but incomplete builds. The reason given is blunt: declining player numbers, mixed reviews, and investors unwilling to continue funding iteration. This isn’t a failure of passion or effort. It’s a failure of alignment between vision, scope, and funding reality...
Ubisoft is facing one of the most serious internal reckonings in its history. Five unions representing workers across France have jointly called for a three-day international strike in February, urging employees worldwide to down tools in response to aggressive cost-cutting and a blanket return-to-office mandate. This is not a symbolic protest. It is a direct challenge to how one of the industry’s largest publishers now defines work, creativity, and responsibility...
For more than two decades, Freeplay has existed to prove something radical: that video games are not just commercial products, but cultural, artistic, and experimental works worthy of the same institutional support as film, theatre, and visual art. Now, in a moment that should concern the entire Australian games industry, Freeplay has warned it may be forced to wind down after failing to secure ongoing funding...
In 2026, a wide range of federal and state-based funding programs are opening up that directly target prototyping, production, skills development, and market readiness for game developers at every stage. Whether you’re an emerging solo developer or an established studio scaling up, these grants can significantly de-risk development and give your project the breathing room it needs to mature. The key is understanding which funds align with your current stage and designing your application accordingly...
When storefronts talk about “ownership,” it’s usually marketing language. GOG is one of the few platforms where it has always meant something concrete. That’s why the news that GOG has been acquired by its co-founder Michał Kiciński, separating it operationally from CD Projekt, is more than a business reshuffle - it’s a philosophical reset...
When Vince Zampella’s name appears in a headline, it usually signals a major shift in the shooter genre or a new phase for a blockbuster franchise. This time, the news was far more sobering. Reports from California confirm that Vince Zampella, co-founder of Call of Duty and one of the most influential figures in modern game development, has died aged 55 following a car crash in the mountains north of Los Angeles...
When Larian Studios speaks, the industry listens and not just because of Baldur’s Gate 3 or the newly announced Divinity project. Larian has become a rare example of a large studio that pairs scale with strong creative values. That’s why CEO Swen Vincke’s comments about AI use at The Game Awards 2025 sparked such a strong reaction...
Now that Paramount has put forward a massive $163B hostile bid, outbidding Netflix’s earlier $125B offer, the future of those game franchises suddenly looks uncertain. The streaming war has collided with the games industry, and the outcome may reshape how blockbuster games are financed, marketed, distributed - and who owns the stories players care about. To understand the scale: this would be the largest acquisition in entertainment history. It is not a bidding war over a studio. It is a bidding war over culture...
Santa Ragione’s Horses was never meant to be comfortable. It is deliberately disturbing, thematically abrasive, and visually confrontational - the kind of experimental, short-form horror game that pushes interactive art into uncomfortable territory. But discomfort is not the same as danger, and yet Horses has now been banned by Steam and pulled by Epic Games Store just 24 hours before launch, plunging the studio into a financial crisis after two years of development and nearly $100,000 invested...
