Ethan Gach

Nintendo is cutting back 120 contractor roles ahead of the release of Switch 2, which is yet to be officially announced. Some of the employees will be laid off while others will be transferred to a different roles within the company.

Prytania Media has closed down another studio.

Possibility Space has become the second studio owned by Prytania Media to close in recent weeks following Crop Circle Games' closure in March. Both studios were founded by Jeff Strain, the co-founder of Guild Wars creators ArenaNet and the founder of State Of Decay developers Undead Labs.

Possibility Space, an independent game studio with employees distributed across the globe, was abruptly shut down today by its CEO Jeff Strain, former employees revealed on Twitter. The studio launched in 2021 with the goal of creating a AAA title, and it had also hired industry notables like Waypoint's Austin Walker and Ubisoft designer Liz England. Its closure follows the shutdown of Crop Circle Games last month, another studio owned by Strain's Prytania Media, which he co-founded with his wife Annie Delisi Strain.

Possibility Space, the studio founded by State of Decay producer Jeff Strain, has reportedly shut down — with Strain blaming the closure on confidential leaks by employees.

French publishing giant Ubisoft is laying off 45 members of staff. 

Nintendo has reportedly cut 120 contractor testing roles at its North American operation — with an unspecified number said to have been converted to full-time positions — as part of a major restructuring effort that comes amid claims of a testing «lull» ahead of Switch 2's arrival.

Nintendo of America is reportedly cutting around 120 contractor jobs as part of a restructuring of its testing department ahead of Switch 2’s launch.

In case you missed the big news last week, PlayStation joined the rest of the industry in cutting hundreds of jobs across its business. What's more, the platform holder is closing one of its longest-standing developers, London Studio — but it seems another UK team may have been at risk, too.

Media Molecule has reportedly avoided closure amid the continuing round of layoffs. In 2023, approximately 9,000 workers in the video game industry were hit by a round of layoffs and some of these workers included employees at Media Molecule. Perhaps the most shocking was the fact that these layoffs had hit the biggest companies, such as Hasbro, EA, Microsoft, and more. It seemed like that was the worst it would get, and many looked to 2024 with hope for the future.

PlayStation recently announced that it will be reducing its workforce by roughly 8 percent, which translates to around 900 layoffs, and given that number, it’s no surprise that the effects are going to be felt across the company. A number of major first-party studios are set to make job cuts, Firepsrite’s rumoured Twisted Metal game has been cancelled (alongside reports of workplace toxicity within the studio), while SIE London Studio has been shut down entirely.

The official Helldivers 2 Discord was locked down last night after members repeatedly spammed "F" in every channel to pay respects.

Amongst Sony’s stable of first-party PlayStation Studios developers, none shine brighter than Insomniac Games, which has produced hit after hit without the excessively-long development schedules that are increasingly becoming the norm in the AAA gaming space. The recent leak of Insomniac’s upcoming slate lays bare just how heavily Sony relies on them, with at least six titles planned for the next decade, most of which will likely sell 10s of millions of copies.

Bioware released a new teaser trailer for its upcoming Mass Effect project as part of the company’s annual “N7 Day” celebrations. The new teaser is short, but shows a person walking down a hallway with an N7-branded coat and a face-concealing helmet. A short text snippet from the countdown indicates the game is somehow related to the previous game in the series, Mass Effect Andromeda.

Mass Effect fans are using the game's annual day of celebration to send a message to BioWare after it laid off several employees last month. 

Ubisoft's multiplayer Jolly Rog 'em up Skull and Bones is caught on the reefs once again. Recently tipped to appear in early fiscal year 2023-2024, it's now due to make landfall in the publisher's FYQ4 - sometime between January and March 2024. What's the Golden Age of Piracy equivalent for "vapourware"? I'm picturing a spectral vessel like the Flying Dutchman, crewed by glum-faced producers and with a big grimacing statue of company CEO Yves Guillemot affixed to the prow.

All unionized Dragon Age Dreadwolf QA testers have been laid off.

A group of former BioWare staff members has launched a lawsuit to seek better severance pay from the maker of Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

Blizzard Entertainment has laid off several members of the Hearthstone development team, citing «organizational changes» at the studio.

Activision Blizzard has confirmed that a «small number» of employees on its Hearthstone team have been laid off.

One developer had been with the company for 18 years.

Blizzard has suffered a round of layoffs at its Hearthstone development team.

Hearthstone has been one of the most popular digital collectible card games. It’s a free-to-play title as well and easily accessible to players through mobile devices to the PC platform. Since this game launched in 2014, the gameplay experience has continued to thrive, with players logging in daily and picking up the various launch expansions. However, while the game is apparently doing well, several cuts have been made to the team behind the game project.

Blizzard Entertainment has laid off a number of employees from its Hearthstone team.

Cult of the Lamb publisher Devolver Digital has, as revealed by its latest financial results, had offers to put some of its titles on a Game Pass-style subscription service. However, it turned these offers down as the company believed they undervalued the games.

All is not well in AAA games.

Among the chunkier morsels from yesterday's leak of Microsoft documents is an extended email from Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, dating from 2020, in which he argues that today's largest AAA videogame publishers remain dogged by their "failure" to adapt to the shift from physical to digital videogame distribution, and especially, subscription models such as Microsoft's own Game Pass. This inability to move with the times, Spencer suggests, has created a situation whereby the largest publishers rely on sheer "production scale" to attract and retain customers.

Xbox Game Pass is no doubt worth the monthly cost, especially since you can get a trial version of it for $1. However, said trial has now had its length slashed, and some may think it a strange coincidence this has happened just before Starfield gets released.

Starfield is coming next month, and Bethesda’s RPG game is launching day one on Microsoft’s Game Pass service. This means that if you have an active Game Pass subscription, you can play Starfield immediately upon its release. If you don’t have Game Pass right now, you sadly won’t be able to check its benefits out for a dollar anymore, at least not for as long. Microsoft has just cut its trial period for the subscription service in half.

Microsoft has seemingly gone back and forth on whether or not it wants to keep Xbox Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass’ $1 introductory deal around, having discontinued it in March before reintroducing it in July. Now, the company has instituted another change, and it’s not likely to prove popular among users.

Microsoft has changed its $1 Xbox Game Pass Ultimate deal. Instead of lasting the whole month before you have to pay the standard price, it now only lasts two weeks.

One of the most hotly-anticipated game releases left of 2023 is Bethesda’s massive sci-fi RPG Starfield, but will it ever come to PS5?