The floor-level standard for surviving in the video game industry across indie and triple-A players has always been ‘difficult,’ but in the last few years, it’s been kicked up a notch. GDC’s State of the Game Industry 2026 reported that 1-in-4 of its surveyed video game industry professionals have been laid off in the last two years, and it’s difficult for all studios, regardless of scale, to stay afloat. But that hasn’t stopped the global video game industry from reaching over $200B in revenue last year. A year which also saw titles from independent developers dominate the cultural conversation. One […]

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Yesterday, with reports of mass layoffs at Xbox looming and set to happen late this week, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) hosted a press conference, where current employees at studios under Microsoft's gaming portfolio spoke out to make it clear they will be fighting these layoffs as much as possible. Though a report today from Kotaku, which spoke to CWA members who attended the conference and presented their own statements reveals yet again how Microsoft has been dragging its feet on negotiating with the unions, leaving developers in a "maddening" state of uncertainty. Seeing Xbox and Microsoft drag their […]

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Once again, the video game industry is caught in a limbo state, waiting for the hammer of more mass layoffs to fall, and once again, it's Xbox and Microsoft bringing its gavel down. While Asha Sharma and the rest of Team Green's leadership position these cuts as a "reset" for the company, the CWA and its members point out that the company has tried mass layoffs, multiple times in recent years. Clearly, attempting to 'reset' the business like this hasn't been working, and now, Microsoft is poised to lose what veteran analyst Joost van Dreunen rightfully calls the gaming industry's […]

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The entire video game industry is in a tense state this week. After Bloomberg reported that Xbox planned massive layoffs following the close of its current fiscal year (which ends today, June 30), we've seen multiple reports suggest that this could be one of the worst mass layoffs the industry has seen in recent years. A high bar to hit, but one that Xbox seems poised to clear. Now, as we're surely only hours away from official confirmation of the cuts, a new report suggests that the layoffs could involve shuttering "at least five studios," including Arkane Lyon, which would […]

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At the beginning of June, a bill proposed in the California State Assembly in the United States seemed poised to make massive waves in the video game industry. The bill would've required game developers to have offline modes for their games, so that players weren't losing something they paid for when servers got shut down. The Protect Our Games Act passed its vote at the congress level, but unfortunately, as spotted by VGC, it did not make it further. After passing its initial vote, it was tossed up to the Senate, which is as far as it got. The bill […]

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Supermassive Games, the studio behind games like Until Dawn, The Quarry, The Dark Pictures Anthology and most recently, Little Nightmares 3 followed by Directive 8020 is officially going through a bit of transition. Robert Henrysson, chief executive officer of the studio and partner to its parent company Nordisk Games, is stepping down from his role, Nordisk Games announced today. He's being replaced by Graeme Law in the interim while Supermassive looks for its next leader. Nordisk shared the news on LinkedIn, where Henrysson soon followed with his own statement. Henrysson was previously chairman and chief executive officer of Avalanche Studios, […]

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Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is days away from launch at the time of this writing, and ahead of its arrival Ubisoft has just showcased what PS5 Pro players can expect when they load up this reimagined and remade seventh-gen adventure. A new trailer and PlayStation Blog post outline features that Black Flag Resynced will support, including ray-traced global illumination, ray-traced specular reflections and PlayStation's recently released and improved upscaling technology, PSSR 2.0. "We rebuilt the game from the ground up on the latest version of the Anvil engine," Ubisoft writes in the post, "modernizing nearly every system while preserving […]

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When Xbox was looking to complete its purchase of Activision Blizzard King, one of the factors that helped get it over the line was agreeing to a neutrality framework with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Ensuring that game developers under Microsoft and Xbox could unionize without fear or opposition from management. Thousands of workers have unionized since, though that hasn't stopped mass layoffs at Microsoft following the closure of the ABK deal. Now, as yet another case of mass layoffs looms over Xbox, the CWA held a press conference today, June 29, to make it clear they are ready […]

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Nioh, Dynasty Warriors, Wo Long, and Dead or Alive makers and publishers Koei Tecmo have another project in the works alongside the games we're already aware of, including Wo Long 2: Wings of Ember and Attack on Titan 3. Spotted by Automaton, a listing for a new, original IP currently under the codename FUJI appeared on the list of projects supported by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) via its IP360 program. Koei Tecmo isn't the only recognizable name on this list of projects supported by the IP360 initiative. Machine translation of the official website shows plenty of […]

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We're still months away from GTA 6, but pre-orders for what's been called the most anticipated singular entertainment release in history have gone live, and the game is living up to its given title by already dominating industry conversation. Rockstar and Take-Two's approach to its pricing, its digital-forward launch, and now the split over which console scoops up most of the launch sales for a new third-party AAA single-player title are all being contested. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, seems to fall in PlayStation's favour. This began with IGN surveying its community through its IGN Finds and commerce affiliate linking program, and […]

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Airship Syndicate is a studio that you'll likely recognize for Darksiders Genesis, or its most recent outing, the co-op action RPG Wayfinder, but whatever you recognize the name from, the studio has officially revealed its next title. DUST: Origins is a new isometric action game that Airship Syndicate is developing, and the studio is about to launch a Kickstarter for it. The Kickstarter officially begins on July 28, 2026, so there's still some time before it kicks off (pun intended). In the meantime, Airship Syndicate released a very intriguing teaser trailer that helps to establish the dark tone of the […]

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Valve revealed its price for the Steam Machine at the top of this week, and it was higher than players would've liked. The $1,049 price tag was also higher than what Valve would've liked too, as we've learned from subsequent interviews that it was supposed to be priced closer to $718. But if the component crisis that painted Valve (and every other platform manufacturer) into a price-raising corner were to end tomorrow, would Valve lower the Steam Machine's price? The answer, thankfully, seems to be a clear 'Yes,' but that doesn't mean you should hold out hope for it happening. […]

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Publisher 4Divinity, who you may recognize as the publishers of JDM: Japanese Drift Master has something very different coming to its portfolio with Sword Sage: Awakening. A third-person action RPG where you step into the shoes of San Niang, and an adventure wrapped in Chinese myth and folklore. The studio debuted a new gameplay and story trailer today, which shows off a bit of the kind of action players can expect. It's a game that, to some, will look like another Soulslike, while others will say it looks more like a traditional action game with its combat. The reality, of […]

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Circana senior director and veteran video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella has just shared the latest monthly sales numbers for the video game industry in the US for the month of May 2026. Usually, the big topic from these reports comes down to which games are at the top of the charts, and while that's still significant here, the bigger topic is what happened with hardware sales. While the Nintendo Switch 2 continued to sell and helped drive spending growth in the US video game industry for May 2026 compared to May 2025, the PS5 and PlayStation overall saw its […]

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Warhorse Studios' critically acclaimed RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has just hit its latest commercial milestone as it officially surpassed 6 million copies sold worldwide since its launch in February 2025. The developer announced the milestone in a press release, which also revealed that the studio will celebrate the milestone by putting Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 on sale during the official Steam Summer Sale. If you haven't stepped into either of Warhorse's medieval RPGs, you can grab the first game for 80% off on either the base game or the Royal Edition which comes jam-packed with all of the DLC […]

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After two price hikes in one year, Xbox and Microsoft are going for the hat trick of price hikes, with the price of the Xbox Series X/S going up for the third time in 15 months. As of August 1, 2026, the price of a Series S/X console is going up by $100 or $150, respectively. The 2TB variant is also being discontinued. The news comes from a statement shared on Xbox Wire, which also introduces multiple programs Microsoft is kicking up to try and make the consoles "more accessible," even amidst the prices rising yet again. Before digging into […]

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FromSoftware's parent company Kadokawa Corporation just nearly missed going through a major transition period. Kadokawa's chief executive officer, Takeshi Natsuno, has been able to keep his job as CEO, after some of the company's investors tried to have him replaced due to their claims that Natsuno has failed to properly capitalize on the success of Elden Ring. This comes from a report from Reuters (via GamesIndustry.Biz), which also adds that while Natsuno is staying in the CEO chair for now, he's there with a much weaker support system than what he had just a year ago. Back in 2025, Natsuno […]

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It's Thursday, which means it's also another GeForce NOW Thursday, with a new batch of games getting added to NVIDIA's cloud streaming service. Notable titles include Empulse, the Titanfall-like shooter from 1047 Games, a new action roguelike called Dark Scrolls from developer doinksoft and publisher Devolver Digital, and The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. But what's just as important is that they're all arriving on the service just as the first wave of Steam summer sales start to kick off. Now, that's not to say that those games mentioned are part of any upcoming summer sales. Empulse and Dark […]

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The final update for Destiny 2 went live a little more than two weeks ago, on June 9, 2026. Today, in the wake of Bungie putting the game and franchise it had been working on for over a decade down, the studio announced its latest round of layoffs, as a statement shared on its official X (formerly Twitter) account reads "we unfortunately could not continue operating at our previous size." This is, unfortunately, exactly what was expected to happen with Destiny 2's sunsetting. It hadn't even been 24 hours between the announcement that Destiny 2 would stop receiving content updates […]

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