This hellhole of a genocidal late stage capitalist empire has its worst possible person back at the helm, and I have to talk about video games. This wasn’t an easy one, but goddamnit I did it. I don’t know what this series will look like next year, but right now, I’m glad to be here with y’all.
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
A majority of the 300+ unionized QA developers at Zenimax went on a one day strike across Maryland and Texas to protest Microsoft’s handling of remote work, contract bargaining, and outsourcing. The union filed an unfair labor complaint last month which accuses their parent company of stonewalling negotiations, denying remote work requests on top of a two days in office mandate, and outsourcing QA positions without their agreement.
Microsoft’s unconscionable decision to maintain business as usual in the bloated abusive Call of Duty development pipeline has unfortunately been rewarded with Black Ops 6 securing another “return to form” launch in reviews and sales after the half-baked MWIII caused a dip. Leaks have started to emerge about 2025’s COD, said to be another Black Ops sequel but with a near-future setting instead of a period setting, and developed by MWIII’s Sledgehammer who continues to get the shortest end of the stick in this whole mess. Infinity Ward is reported to be developing another Modern Warfare entry to launch in 2026.
A Warcraft 30th Anniversary stream brought several big announcements for Blizzard’s franchise. Warcraft: Remastered and Warcraft 2: Remastered were both revealed and shadowdropped for PC after previously leaking from a datamine, and an overhaul 2.0 patch for Warcraft 3: Reforged released alongside them. All three of these were of course developed by the team formerly known as Vicarious Visions. The next WoW expansion, Midnight, received a brief reveal teaser which announced player housing will finally arrive for the MMO, while Mists of Pandaria was announced for WoW Classic. The full reveal of the Midnight expansion is scheduled for Summer 2025 alongside Pandaria’s launch,
Phil Spencer took a major Bloomberg Interview with Dina Bass, and he had so many upsetting things to say. He opened with talking about how he’s already thinking about the next Xbox acquisition after ABK, looking at the mobile and Asian markets in particular. Hey, remember how you had a talented Asian studio who just put out a hit game, Phil? You fucked them over, tried to fire them all, and then gave them to the PUBG guys? Anyway, Spencer did also finally fully confirm that an incredibly pointless Xbox handheld is happening, but it’s in very early development and wouldn’t launch until late in this decade if it gets finished at all. A Steam Deck is a more effective portable Xbox than a real one will ever, ever be, but maybe a cheaper handheld Xbox is all they’re willing to make now anyway.
Discussing the multiplatform strategy Xbox took this year, Spencer explicitly said that there are no red lines in what IPs can branch out. He pointed out that the next Halo is further out before a decision would be made anyway, just as I have before, but make no mistake on what the message is here: it’s all ultimately happening, including Halo. Spencer’s last comment took a shot at the PS5 Pro’s infamous high price, saying “We’re not going to grow the market with $1000 consoles”. Realistically, there’s no real way to reconcile this declaration with the state of high-end hardware development and especially the international economy. Whatever small chance we had for prices to go back down again died a hard death after Trump’s reelection. Kotaku already has an in-depth explanation on how Trump’s planned tariffs will affect the games industry, better than I could muster.
Microsoft announced that support for the Xbox One/Series era Avatar Editor will end on January 9th 2025. Xbox 360 Avatars are also supported on Xbox One and Series via the Xbox Original Avatar app, which will remain online.
November 27th: Microsoft continues to insist that its plans to sell Xbox games directly through its mobile app and introduce its own dedicated mobile storefront are being obstructed by Google policies and the legal status of said policies, even after the Android app store was already declared an illegal monopoly by the US court. Google claims that Microsoft could go forward with its plans at any time and is choosing not to in order to undermine Google and further advance their legal victory and ability to skirt Google’s rules.
Everything Else
November 4th: Right after shitcanning numerous people in the closure of their short lived AAA team, Netflix announced that its head of Netflix Gaming, Mike Verdu, is now a VP of Generative AI for Games. Jesus fucking Christ. The company also announced that as of December 1st, 20 out of 24 interactive television specials will be delisted, leaving only Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt finale, and two Man vs Wild episodes. The very beginning of its expansion into gaming will already largely be lost media just like all digital-only media eventually will be in this broken empire owned by Silicon Valley.
November 5th: Nintendohad its latest fiscal briefing, which forced both us and the company to reckon with the fact that it’s been seven months since the Switch 2 reveal was promised and it still hasn’t happened. I don’t think any of us thought the reveal would wait until the very end of the promised window in March 2025, but it sure is starting to feel like it will.Nintendo felt the heat of impatience from its shareholders and responded thusly, insisting that Switch 2 plans have’t changed, while officially (re)confirming that the successor console is backwards compatible, it supports existing Switch games and the Nintendo Switch Online service.
I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t point out, like I have before, that this is consistent with everything Nintendo has been already saying since Satoru Iwata was still alive ten years ago. Iwata announced the Wii U’s successor and explained that the Switch’s development had a defining principle of not only consolidating the software development pipeline, but also the hardware pipeline with simple future-proofed forward-compatible elements from devkit tools to the OS and digital ecosystem. This was reinforced by his successor Shuntaro Furukawa regularly repeating over the years in investor Q&As that games and the NSO system would transfer across generations instead of starting from scratch. The Game Freak hack earlier this year also directly evidenced just how similar and easily transferable/useable Switch 2 devkit tools are to Switch 1’s. But I’m still glad for this announcement as it’s resolving the issue for good.
For more general business news, Nintendo also lowered its hardware sales forecast while announcing that the Switch has passed 146 million consoles sold, and that Zelda; Echoes of Wisdom launched to over 2.5 million copies sold. The publisher offered two unique comments, one emphasizing the serious growth its smaller franchises have seen on Switch, and one about further strengthening third party partnerships going into next gen, with the usual A-list and B-list publishers highlighted, and also FromSoftware.
November 6th:Sega has unfortunately revealed that it’s delisting dozens of classic games across several platforms as of December 6th: the Sega Genesis Classics Collection and its 50+ games on Switch, PS4, and Xbox, its individual components on Steam, and several remastered Saturn and Dreamcast games on Xbox like Nights into Dreams and Crazy Taxi. The Genesis games on Nintendo Switch Online will remain available. Separately, Sega announced that a new Virtua Fighter is in development alongside its slate of other franchise reboots.
In a promotional video for Metal Gear Solid Delta which also announced that some actors like David Hayter are recording new audio for the game after all, Little Mermaid actress Jodi Benson made an appearance to reveal that she was the true voice behind the character Eva who appears in both MGS3 and MGS4; she was originally credited under a false pseudonym to avoid conflict with the family friendly roles central to her career.
A ratings board listing leaked the existence ofincoming native PS5/Series S|X ports for Larian’s Divinity Original 2: Definitive Edition.
November 7th: G/O Media continued its brutal mismanagement of Kotaku by firing two more writers after only hiring them earlier this year. Willa Rowe and Moises Taveras confirmed publicly that they were laid off, while senior editor Alyssa Mercante announced she was leaving on her own terms after two years. That leaves six full time staff left with a larger reliance on freelancers to fulfill G/O’s quantity mandates under stricter content guidelines that are proven to have actively damaged the site’s viewcounts.
At midnight on the fifth anniversary of Death Stranding’s original launch, Kojima Productions had a big surprise announcement: the Death Stranding IP has been bought from Sony and 505 Games, leaving it now under his studio’s sole ownership, and to commemorate the occasion, a port of Death Stranding: Director’s Cut for Xbox Series S|X has been shadowdropped. While nothing has been officially announced yet about Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, I anticipate it will launch as a timed PS5 exclusive due to pre-existing circumstances, and then the Xbox version will be day and date with the PC port sometime later. I also won’t be shocked to see at least the first game comfortably hit the Switch 2.
WB Games’ latest earnings release showed that the division is still operating at a loss with an underperformance from MultiVersus being a main contributing factor, writing down a further $100 million after the previous $200 million writedown thanks to Suicide Squad. The plan to address this is typical Zaslav thinking: make fewer overall games and double down on expensive productions from four core IPs, DC Comics, Game of Thrones, Mortal Kombat, and TERF RPG. Separately, it has been alleged that further DLC for Mortal Kombat 1 has been canceled due to poor sales and reviews for this year’s Khaos Reigns story expansion.
November 8th: As part of its latest financial results, Sega announced that it had parted ways with developer Amplitude Studios, allowing them to buy themselves out and go independent, retaining all employees, after both Humankind and Endless Dungeon underperformed.
November 11th: As reported by Bloomberg, nine employees from NetEase, including senior executives, were arrested on charges of bribery and money laundering at a value of almost $140 million. The publisher has cut ties with outside companies associated with those arrested.
The New York Times Tech Guild union embarked on a weeklong strike against their employer in a demonstration that their 600+ members maintaining digital infrastructure are critical to company operations. Their contract negotiations remain ongoing.
November 12th: The story of acclaimed Spanish indie developer Tequila Works has just ended after a yearlong freefall since losing their publishing partner Riot Forge at the beginning of this year: the game developer filed for insolvency and is expected to close down. They made The Sexy Brutale, a game both Wolfman and I adore. They also made Deadlight, Rime, Gylt, and lastly, Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story, a partnership with corporate giants that ultimately proved lethal.
Eight people were fired at Payload Studiosjust three months after a previous round of layoffs. They will not receive severance.
Rockstar Games unexpectedly released an internally developed overhaul patch for GTA: The Trilogy – Definitive Edition (only PC and Series S|X/PS5 ports) three years after its launch. Most notably, aiming your gun while moving has been completely fixed from its original broken state, and the overall lighting, atmosphere, and weather have been redone to be more stylized and faithful to the originals. Character models and animations have been tweaked and more bugs were fixed as well. Even with the overall visual style still being questionable and the 31 missing licensed songs, it’s likely the most comprehensive improvement the collection will ever receive, which makes it a huge shame it wasn’t delivered to all platforms, and that Rockstar also removed the remasters’ original developer Grove Street Games from the credits entirely.
Like several other veteran Japanese developers, Dragon’s Dogma creator Hideaki Itsuno revealed that he’s been recruited by the growing Chinese gaming sector, joining Tencent’s Lightspeed Japan Studio. This development team has just taken on the project of a Final Fantasy 14 mobile port.
Physical releases for the Switch ports of both Antonblast and Little Kitty Big City have been announced.
November 13th: The launch of Lego Horizon Adventures officially revealed that the new actor for the recast main role of Sylens is Star Trek Voyager’s Tim Russ.
November 14th: Embracer Group’s latest earnings release showed that the publisher is seriously struggling, counting on Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 in 2025 and the Lord of the Rings IP to boost it back up in the near future. Embracer pointed to the 1.0 launch of Satisfactory, a factory sim game by Goat Simulator creators Coffee Stain, as a success and overperformance of expectations, while Epic Mickey Rebrushed has flopped.
Open world fashion-oriented life sim RPG Infinity Nikki was scheduled to launch December 5th for PS5, mobile and PC.
November 15th: As the strike continues, SAG-AFTRA announced a new contract for the localizations of international video games, one directly modeled on the terms of the previous contract for independent game productions. SAG leadership also continued to tout their over-compromising “reasonable” AI protections, demonstrating the flaws of centralized power yet again.
November 18th: Remedy’s latest investor meeting involved the exact kind of corporate transparency I’ve been calling for, putting down the exact numbers needed for their next projects to achieve 100% return on investment, or double on total expenses, which is the typical line for success in big budget entertainment production. Recently showcased multiplayer game FBC Firebreak needs to sell at least 3 million copies lifetime at its mid-tier retail pricepoint (adding up to at least $100 million in total revenue) after a development budget of 30 million euros. The hotly anticipated Control 2 needs to sell 3 to 4 million copies lifetime at full price (over $200 million in revenue) after a 50 million euro production budget. Its predecessor has sold 4.5 million copies, and Alan Wake 2 has sold 1.8 million copies in its first year. The Max Payne Remakes aren’t included here because Take-Two handled all funding.
November 19th: Reuters exclusively reported that Sony has entered early talks to buy Kadokawa Corporation, the Japanese multimedia holdings company which owns game studios From Software, Spike Chunsoft, and Acquire, and also much of what remains of the anime, manga, and light novel industries that Sony doesn’t already own, including smash hit Delicious in Dungeon. Kadokawa soon confirmed that they received a letter of intent to acquire from Sony. This poses a serious risk of furthering Sony’s monopoly in several major media industries, potentially taking three notable multiplatform game developers to full PlayStation exclusivity and creating near absolute vertical integration in the anime market by outright owning the publishers of the source material for animeafter already buying both Crunchyroll and Funimation.
We obviously all know From. Spike Chunsoft owns Danganronpa, Zero Escape, and more recent Uchikoshi/Kodaka games, and developed the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series for Game Freak as a spinoff of their own MD franchise. Acquire are the creators of Tenchu, and codevelopers of the Octopath Traveler series and the latest Mario & Luigi game. It’s important to keep in mind that From doesn’t have sole ownership of its biggest IPs: Bandai Namco still co-owns both Dark Souls and Elden Ring, and possibly Armored Core, that series has an especially tangled history I couldn’t fully navigate. If you could’ve sworn you heard From bought Elden Ring this year, that was only the trademark to the title and not the full IP copyright itself. The only IP Sony would be guaranteed to have control over are Sekiro and obviously the games it already owned, Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne, but how From would be managed by Sony more broadly is definitely something to have concern for right now.
Takashi Mochizuki ad Toyo Kezai later reported that Kadokawa has been encouraging Sony to either buy it entirely or not at all, while Sony was originally hoping to “only” buy its gaming and anime assets. The first reason for this is obvious, but also the “expert estimate” on the cost of buying out this huge publicly shared company is approximately 640 million yen or over $4 billion, and Sony has a limited acquisition budget this runs right up against, especially if other companies start bidding too and raise Kadokawa’s stock value.
Simogo announced that their acclaimed puzzle game Lorelei and the Laser Eyes will release for PS4 and PS5 on December 3rd after a period of Switch console exclusivity.
November 20th: Unknown 9: Awakening developer Reflector Entertainment announced that they were laying off 18% of employees following the game’s launch, affecting roles that “aren’t required” for their next active projects.
November 21st: Following from the Blue Protocol shutdown news and larger layoffs earlier this year, Bandai Namco announced that its Online division will be fully dissolved and absorbed into the larger publisher.
Right before this year’s Game Awards, German magazine GamesWirtschaft reported that next year’s GamesCom Opening Night Live Showcase, the smallest of the marketing presentations hosted and operated by Geoff Keighley, will have raised its prices for trailer spots by an average of 25%, and a new three minute slot option will cost a whopping $480,000 to reserve.
Grant Kirkhope joined Day 4 Night, the indie studio of Ubisoft Milan refugees including Davide Soliani, as their full time composer and an in house developer.
After a period of Switch console exclusivity this year, PS5 and Xbox Series ports for Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley were announced with no current release date, and a story DLC was revealed.
November 25th: The fight over Ubisoft’s return to office policy continues with Ubi Barcelona’s filing a lawsuit against the mandate, citing the lack of transparency and sudden, unilateral nature surrounding the decision, which was made outside the active contract negotiations the unions were pursuing.
The 2K MoCap Union has successfully formed from a vote of 15 to 6, and will immediately pursue contract negotiations with Take-Two/2K.
Brace Yourself Games announced that Rift of the NecroDancer will launch February 5th 2025 for PC with an unannounced later release date for Switch(es). The developer expanded the game’s scope significantly in its past year of production, and has like virtually every other indie developer recently faced serious financial difficulties in this worsening industry and resorted to mass layoffs.
Two separate new studios from Bioware veterans have floundered as funding for independent game development continues to dry up. Casey Hudson’s Humanoid Origin studio has shut down entirely after running out of money, and Mac Walters’ Worlds Untold studio is halting development and seeking a new partner after NetEase pulled out from supporting the team.
November 26th: Stephen Totilo reported on a late discovery from the tragic recent US Copyright Office decision to refuse a DMCA exemption for libraries to provide remote access to digitally preserved video games. A second DMCA exemption, one which was in effect for three years and was necessary for disabled gamers, has also been struck down in the same ruling. It received no opposition, but it was automatically reversed due to no one actively representing or advocating it in court this year. Speaking of the failed legal fight on behalf of games preservation, the arguments made in it by games publishers laid bare exactly the issue at the heart of this industry as I’ve argued before: owners of capital controlling everything solely towards the protection and accumulation of their capital at the expense of everyone and everything. Access to older games is minimized so that people won’t buy them instead of new games, pure and simple.
Shuhei Yoshida announced that he’s retiring from PlayStation and Sony after 31 years, as of January 15th 2025. He oversaw PlayStation first party development for 11 years and PlayStation Indies partnerships for the past five. He intends to remain within the games industry in some capacity.
Take-Two Interactive shut down the PC launcher for its 2K brand and removed the launcher from all PC releases.
Four years after the Nintendo Switch launched in China, the publisher announced that it will eventually close the China-specific branch of the eShop and end all online service support in the region. Support will end on March 31st 2026. Nintendo most likely intends to retreat from China as much as possiblein the face of middling success and the incoming Trump tariffs, though a pivot to supporting the Switch 2 in China instead is theoretically possible.
November 27th: Larian formally announced Patch 8 for Baldur’s Gate 3 coming in Early 2025. This new major patch offers not only the last previously promised features like photo mode and crossplay support, but will add 12 entirely new playable subclasses complete with brand new spells and abilities to expand every main class in the game. Larian also promised more big updates to come specifically for BG3’s mod support, including expanded ways “to let you tell your own stories.” It has become apparent that Larian’s goal has become to provide as much as possible outside of Hasbro/WOTC’s monetization.
At the last minute for their 2024 release windows, Devolver Digital went ahead and formally delayed the launch of three published titles into 2025: Baby Steps by Gabe Cuzillo and Bennett Foddy, Stick It to the Stickman by Free Lives, and Skate Story by Sam Eng.
November 29th: Developer Round 8 Studio announced that the expansion to their hit debut game Lies of P will launch in Q1 2025. They also announced that they are developing a sci fi survival horror game alongside Lies of P’s sequel.
December 3rd: Ubisoft announced that it had indeed officially killed development on its FTP live service shooter XDefiant less than a year after its May 2024 launch. The publisher and dev leadership spent months denying the good reporting indicating that this would ever happen. As many as 277 people have been fired with the rest of the game’s development team reassigned to other projects, and development studios Ubi San Francisco and Ubi Osaka shut down and a third, Ubi Sydney, scaled down. Servers will remain online until June 3rd 2025, but all new purchases and downloads from the game were immediately discontinued.
December 4th: Asymmetric horror developer IllFonic announced that they were firing an unconfirmed amount of people in the wake of their Killer Klowns and Predator games underperforming.
Indie developer Sweet Bandits Studios announced that they are shutting down effective immediately, having launched two games: Coffence and Deceive Inc.
December 5th: A bunch of indies or indie-adjacents got their news out of the way without giving what little money they have to Keighley next week. Nightdive shadowdropped The Thing Remastered. Mike Laidlaw and Yellow Brick Games scheduled the launch date of Eternal Strands as January 28th 2025, and announced that the game’s first post-launch update will bring a new monster and new items designed by artist Yusuke Mogi of the FF14/16 development team. Developer Raccoon Logic announced that Revenge of the Savage Planet will launch in May 2025. Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector was announced by its creators to be launching January 31st 2025. Ivy Road and Davey Wreden announced that Wanderstop will launch March 11th 2025 for PC and PS5. Lastly, developer Digital Sun unexpectedly revealed Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault for a 2025 launch on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, a sequel to their cult classic roguelike RPG that blends adventuring and shopkeeping.
Square Enix announced that it is ending support for the live service Foamstars after its last season ends in January 2025, but there are no current plans to take servers offline and all existing seasons will be playable. Maybe they read all those articles criticizing how games like Babylon’s Fall and Chocobo GP completely vanished from existence so quickly.
EA expanded its suite of accessibility mechanics which are kept completely free for anyone to use, adding 23 more for a total of 38 unprotected patents. However, some of these do use machine learning and AI.
Two of the most prominent writers at GamesIndustry.biz have announced that they are leaving the site once 2024 is over; it’s not currently known where Chris Dring and James Batchelor will go but right now this feels like yet another big blow to the state of games reporting.
December 6th: Amy-Jo Crowley and Julie Zhou reported for Reuters that Ubisoft’s founders the Guillemot family are in ongoing negotiations with Tencent and other major outside investors for a buyout of the company that wouldn’t reduce their control over their company, just like they try to do every time this comes up. Tencent has yet to make a decision because it wants greater influence on the company board and no compromise has been reached, but both parties are united on avoiding a hostile takeover. It’s clear that Ubisoft won’t survive much longer without drastic action of one kind or another.
Life is Strange developers Deck Nine announced their third round of layoffs in two years, shortly after the launch of Life is Strange 4 and mere weeks before Christmas.
More leaks occurred for Hazelight’s It Takes Two followup Split Fiction ahead of an imminent Game Awards reveal, with a launch date of March 6th 2025 revealed by bilbil-kun.
December 9th: Itch.io went offline for some hours before being restored, and the company’s official social media claims the culprit as merchandising corporation Funko of all things. They accuse Funko of using AI-powered brand protection software which detected a fansite for Funko Fusion using Itch’s page and images for the game and sent a false trademark fraud report to Itch’s registrar which in turn automatically disabled the domain until the issue was resolved. Funko and BrandShield defended themselves, but Itch.io’s founder Leaf Corcoran maintains that BrandShield was intentionally malicious.
Long after it was reported by Jason Schreier, Rocksteady and WB Games confirmed that support for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will end with its fourth season less than a year after launch. An offline mode has now released to keep the game alive after its eventual online death. Speaking of Schreier, he also reported that major publishers plan to withhold launch plans for certain fall 2025 titles until GTA6 is either delayed or has its launch date announced, so that competition with it can be avoided by up to a several week grace period. Take-Two itself has admitted to ensuring that its other 2025 titles Borderlands 4 and Mafia: The Old Country are sufficiently spaced out from the likely biggest game of this generation. The long awaited launch of GTA6 is also expected to retail its physical edition for $80, further normalizing it as a retail price just a few years after $70 was introduced and not long after BG3’s and Alan Wake 2’s $80 physical releases.
December 10th: After previously firing 30 people and canceling a game earlier this year, developer People Can Fly announced that they were “suspending or parting ways” with over 120 employees, and altering production plans. The company had a whopping six separate games in production, three with partners Square, Krafton, and Xbox, and three self-published. As part of these layoffs, one of the self-pub projects is being halted entirely while another sees its production scale reduced so that the remaining partner projects and VR game Project Bison will be the focus. The developer will now focus on hiring contractors that they can give worse compensation to and fire more easily.
A Wholesome Direct Snack (Mini) premiered, most notably announcing the sequel to Duck Detective, Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping, for a 2025 launch.
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