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Engadget
4 days ago
- Business
- Engadget
Video Games Weekly: Every time this industry grows, it shrinks
Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a new story every Monday or Tuesday, broken into two parts. The first is a space for short essays and ramblings about video game trends and related topics from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who's covered the industry for more than 13 years. The second contains the video game stories from the past week that you need to know about, including some headlines from outside of Engadget. Please enjoy — and I'll see you next week. In a 2024 interview with Chris Plante , just a few months after Xbox fired 1,900 employees in one blow , Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the best way to prevent further layoffs in the video game industry was to ensure constant financial growth for major studios' shareholders. And the most logical way to do that, he intimated, was with layoffs. 'The thing that has me most concerned for the industry is the lack of growth,' Spencer said. 'When you have an industry that is projected to be smaller next year in terms of players and dollars, and you get a lot of publicly traded companies that are in the industry that have to show their investors growth — because why else does somebody own a share of someone's stock if it's not going to grow? — the side of the business that then gets scrutinized is the cost side.' He says it as if it's a natural and irrefutable fact of life. Of course the company has to continuously grow. Obviously the studio caters to its shareholders above all else. The only way to make the numbers go up is to reduce costs, which means slashing headcount. And Spencer is just a man in a Battletoads graphic tee who, clearly , has to do everything he can to make these investors, his fellow executives and himself richer. Poor guy. 'We're a business,' Spencer told Polygon . 'I've said over and over. I don't get any luxury of not having to run a profitable growing business inside of Microsoft. And we are that today. But just across the industry — you mentioned it, and in sitting here at GDC, I reflect on friends of mine in the industry that have been displaced and lost their jobs and how just, I don't want this industry to be a place where people can't, with confidence, build a career. So that's why I keep pivoting back to, how does this industry get back to growth?' He's already said the answer — layoffs — but it flies directly in the face of his stated desire to create a stable marketplace where his friends can thrive, so he watches the snake devour its own tail and shrugs, never once considering that the question itself is the problem. Fast forward to July 2, 2025. Microsoft laid off 9,000 people across its global workforce, and the Xbox division was rocked by thousands of job losses, multiple studio closures and notable game cancellations. The news came out in leaked memos, social media posts from fired employees and LinkedIn status updates, and I spoke to someone with knowledge of the situation at Halo Studios about the mood among developers. Overall, it's been a lot to keep track of. Here's all of the reported fallout, as it stands on July 8: Blizzard: Layoffs; Warcraft Rumble sunsetting Halo Studios: Layoffs affecting at least five people; we published a firsthand account of tension at the studio The Initiative: Studio closed; Perfect Dark remake canceled King: Layoffs affecting roughly 200 people, 10 percent of the studio Rare: Layoffs; creative director and Banjo-Kazooie creator Gregg Mayles is out after 35 years; Everwild canceled Raven Software: Layoffs Sledgehammer Games: Layoffs Turn 10: The Forza Motorsport team was gutted by layoffs and shut down; Turn 10 is now a Forza Horizon support studio ZeniMax Online Studios: Studio head Matt Firor is out after 18 years; Blackbird canceled Spencer said it in 2024 and it's still true today: The Xbox division is growing, with an eight percent yearly increase in revenue from Xbox content and services in the first three months of 2025. Still, for employees, it doesn't feel stable. This situation isn't unique to Microsoft, either: In May, Electronic Arts canceled its Black Panther game and closed the studio creating it, and this followed a previous culling at Respawn , which included canning a new Titanfall title, plus years of layoffs at BioWare. Meanwhile, EA CEO Andrew Wilson took home more than $25 million in the 2024 fiscal year. In 2024, 11 percent of developers across the industry were laid off, according to GDC's 2025 State of the Game Industry Survey . Statista reports the global games market is expected to grow yet again in 2025, generating more than $522 billion in revenue. Layoffs are a cruel solution to a shitty question, and at the moment , they form the backbone of the AAA industry. The world's largest studios function on a binge and purge cycle, with acquisitions , crunch and layoffs built into their business plans. This cadence is only becoming more chaotic as additional factors, like AI and consolidation, are converging to decrease hiring numbers and increase the scope of layoffs. At Microsoft, using the company's Copilot AI toolset is ' no longer optional ' for employees, and as one worker told me, 'They're trying their damndest to replace as many jobs as they can with AI agents.' Practices like these have helped propel unionization efforts across the industry, including at Xbox studios. 'We are deeply disappointed in Microsoft's decision to lay off thousands more workers, including union-represented CWA members, at a time when the company is prospering,' Communications Workers of America President Claude Cummings Jr. said about the recent layoffs. He continued, 'Right now, we are living through a moment of profound corporate consolidation and disruption. In times like these, union organizing is not just a tool for protections in the workplace; it is essential to workers' survival, and one of the strongest defenses we have against unchecked corporate power.' In addition to this most recent round of 9,000 layoffs, Microsoft fired 6,000 people across its divisions in May. The Xbox segment specifically lost more than 2,500 employees to layoffs in 2024, and Microsoft closed Arkane Austin , Alpha Dog Games and Tango Gameworks (though Krafton eventually scooped up Tango for itself, thankfully). The scattershot vibe of the closures, cancellations and layoffs — affecting productive and low-overhead studios like Tango, exciting new projects like Blackbird , and multiple proven ZeniMax teams — drives home the notion that Microsoft was always more interested in controlling these studios' IPs than supporting the developers that worked there. Layoffs are an answer to the question, 'How does this industry get back to growth?' Mass firings are not a function of artistic integrity or technological innovation, and they're antithetical to the process of actually building fresh and powerful video games. I've never asked myself how industry profits can grow, as a player or a critic. Only a small and very specific group of people have, and they don't speak for me. Unfortunately, they move for all of us. Helldivers 2 is heading to Xbox on August 26, ending its tenure as a PlayStation 5 console exclusive after a little more than one year. Helldivers 2 is developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by PlayStation, so it wasn't guaranteed to come to Xbox platforms at all. To be clear, it's not due to be included in Game Pass any time soon. Since settling its launch issues in early 2024, Helldivers 2 has been quietly building up a sizable playerbase of intergalactic freedom fighters, with more than 15 million copies sold across PC and PS5. Naughty Dog co-founder Neil Druckmann is stepping back from the development of HBO's The Last of Us television series to focus on making games again. Druckmann is a co-creator of the show and he's been spending his time recently helping produce and write it at HBO, but now that the second season is done, he's returning his attention to the studio that started it all. 'Now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet ,' he said in a statement. Welcome back, Druckmann — as Engadget deputy news editor Nathan Ingraham put it, the video game industry is happy to see you again . Former Ubisoft executives Thomas Francois, Serge Hascoet and Guillaume Patrux were convicted in France of fostering a toxic workplace with rampant sexual and psychological abuse. Former chief creative officer Hascoet was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended, and Patrux received a 12-month suspended term. Francois was additionally found guilty of attempted sexual assault and received a suspended three-year prison sentence. This wraps up a multi-year investigation by French authorities into complaints of toxicity and gender-based harassment at Ubisoft. Sucker Punch will show off about 20 minutes of Ghost of Yōtei gameplay on Thursday, July 10, at 5PM ET during a dedicated State of Play event. I can't wait to watch that wind move . I've been looking forward to Time Flies since I buzzed my way through the demo at Summer Game Fest 2022. It's a ridiculous little game that provokes poignant thoughts about human existence and pushes players to find joy in small moments, and it's finally coming to PC, Switch and PS5 on July 31. Make sure to give it a go, whenever you have some time to kill. Two days after news of the Microsoft layoffs broke, Xbox Game Studios Publishing executive producer Matt Turnbull made a post on LinkedIn offering 'ways to use LLM Al tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.' His suggested prompts included, 'Draft a friendly message I can send to old coworkers letting them know I'm exploring new opportunities,' and, 'I'm struggling with imposter syndrome after being laid off. Can you help me reframe this experience in a way that reminds me what I'm good at?' The tonedeaf post was met with appropriate ridicule and swiftly taken down. Have a tip for Jessica? You can reach her by email , Bluesky or send a message to @jesscon.96 to chat confidentially on Signal.
Indian Express
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Microsoft cancels three 3 games as layoffs impact Xbox team and its gaming studios
Microsoft, on Wednesday, July 2, announced that it is laying off approximately 9,000 employees, which is around 4 per cent of its global workforce. Many of these layoffs are also impacting the company's Xbox division as well as other gaming studios, leading to some upcoming games being cancelled. In January 2024, Microsoft's gaming division had about 20,000 employees. While the tech giant hasn't clarified how many people were impacted in the Xbox division, the cuts seem to be widespread and significant and happen to be the fourth major layoff in the last 18 months. As part of the recent layoffs, at least three upcoming video games have been cancelled. In an internal email published by Variety and later confirmed by Microsoft, Matt Booty, the head of Xbox Game Studios, said, 'We have made the decision to stop development of Perfect Dark and Everwild as well as wind down several unannounced projects across our portfolio. As part of this, we are closing one of our studios, The Initiative.' The Initiative was working on a reboot of the classic FPS series – Perfect Dark. The upcoming sci-fi espionage title has been under development since the studio opened back in 2018. Another title that is now cancelled is Everwild, a game that was under development for more than a decade by Sea of Thieves maker Rare. Founded in 1985 and acquired by Microsoft in 2002, Rare is known for games like Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007, Kinect Sports, Kameo and Banjo-Kazooie. Zenimax Online Studios, the developer of the popular massive multiplayer online game Elder Scrolls Online, is also impacted by the layoffs. As a result, the studio is also doing away with its upcoming MMORPG game codenamed Blackbird. According to Engadget, citing 'a developer with knowledge of the situation', at least five employees at Halo Studios have been fired as part of the latest layoffs. The gaming studio currently has somewhere between 200 to 300 employees and is working on multiple games, including the next major Halo instalment. Forza Horizon developer Turn 10 Studios also reportedly laid off more than 70 people. Stockholm-based gaming studio King, which Microsoft purchased back in 2023 as part of its Activision Blizzard acquisition, is reportedly cutting 10 per cent of its staff. Known for making Candy Crush, a report by Bloomberg citing people familiar with the plans suggests that the recent round of layoffs impacted around 200 jobs. Some layoffs are also taking place at Raven Software, a studio known for making hit titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Singularity, Quake 4 and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
WIRED
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere
Apr 22, 2025 10:40 AM It's likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again. But everything now—from X and YouTube to global politics—seems to carry its toxic legacy. Photo-Illustration:My earliest memory of 4chan was sitting up late at night, typing its URL into my browser, and scrolling through a thread of LOL cat memes, which were brand new at the time. Back then a photoshop of a cat saying "I can haz cheezburger" or an image of an owl saying, "ORLY?" was, without question, the funniest thing my 14-year-old brain had ever laid eyes on. So much so, I woke my dad up from laughing too hard and had to tell him that I was scrolling through pictures of cats at 2 in the morning. Later, I would become intimately familiar with the site's much more nefarious tendencies. It's strange to look back at 4chan, apparently wiped off the internet entirely last week by hackers from a rival message board, and think about how many different websites it was over its more than two decades online. What began as a hub for internet culture and an anonymous waystation for the internet's anarchic true believers devolved over the years into a fan club for mass shooters, the central node of Gamergate, and the beating heart of far-right facism around the world. A virus that infected every facet of our lives, from the slang we use to the politicians we vote for. But the site itself had been frozen in amber since the Bush administration. It is likely that there will never be a site like 4chan again—which is, likely, a very good thing. But it had also essentially already succeeded at its core project: chewing up the world and spitting it back out in its own image. Everything—from X, to Facebook, to YouTube—now sort of feels like 4chan. Which makes you wonder why it even needed to still exist. "The novelty of a website devoted to shock and gore, and the rebelliousness inherent in it, dies when your opinions become the official policy of the world's five or so richest people and the government of the United States," The Onion CEO and former extremism reporter Ben Collins tells Wired . "Like any ostensibly nihilist cultural phenomenon, it inherently dies if that phenomenon itself becomes The Man." My first experience with the more toxic side of the site came several years after my LOL cat all-nighter, when I was in college. I was a big Tumblr user—all my friends were on there—and for about a year or so, our corner of the platform felt like an extension of the house parties we would throw. That cozy vibe came crashing down for me when I got doxxed the summer going into my senior year. Someone made a "hate blog" for me—one of the first times I felt the dark presence of an anonymous stranger's digital ire, and posted my phone number on 4chan. They played a prank that was popular on the site at the time, writing in a thread that if you called my phone number was for a GameStop store that had a copy of the ultra-rare video game Battletoads . I received no less than 250 phone calls over the next 48 hours asking if I had a copy of the game. Many of the 4chan users that called me mid- Battletoad attack left messages. I listened to all of them. A pattern quickly emerged: young men, clearly nervous to even leave a message, trying to harass a stranger for, seemingly, the hell of it. Those voice mails have never left me in the 15 years I've spent covering 4chan as a journalist. I had a front row seat to the way those timid men morphed into the violent, seething underbelly of the internet. The throbbing engine of reactionary hatred that resented everything and everyone simply because resentment was the only language its users knew how to speak. I traveled the world in the 2010s, tracing 4chan's impact on global democracy. I followed it to France, Germany, Japan, and Brazil, as 4chan's users became increasingly convinced that they could take over the planet through racist memes, far-right populism, and cyberbullying. And, in a way, they did. But the ubiquity of 4chan culture ended up being an oddly Pyrrhic victory for the site itself. Collins, like me, closely followed 4chan's rise in the 2010s from internet backwater to unofficial propaganda organ of the Trump administration. As he sees it, once Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022, there was really no point to 4chan anymore. Why hide behind anonymity if a billionaire lets you post the same kind of extremist content under your real name, and even pays you for it? "[4chan's] user base just moved into a bigger ballpark and started immediately impacting American life and policy," Collins says. "Twitter became 4chan, then the 4chanified Twitter became the United States government. Its usefulness as an ammo dump in the culture war was diminished when they were saying things you would now hear every day on Twitter then six months later out of the mouths of an administration official." But understanding how 4chan went from the home of cat memes to a true internet bogeyman requires an understanding of how the site actually worked. Its features were often overlooked amid all the conversations about the site's political influence, but I'd argue they were equally, if not more important. 4chan was founded by Christopher "Moot" Poole when he was just 15. A regular user on slightly less anarchic comedy site Something Awful, Poole created a spin-off site for a message board there called 'Anime Death Tentacle Rape Whorehouse.' Poole was a fan of the Japanese message board 2chan, or Futaba Channel, and wanted to give Western anime fans their own version, so he poorly translated the site's code, and promoted his new site, 4chan, to Something Awful's anime community. Several core features were ported over in the process. 4chan users were anonymous, threads weren't permanent and would time out or "404" after a period of inactivity, and there were dozens of sub-boards you could post to. That unique combination of ephemerality, anonymity, and organized chaos proved to be a potent mix, immediately creating a race-to-the-bottom gutter culture unlike anything else on the web. The dark endpoint of the techno-utopianism that built the internet. On 4chan you were no one and nothing you did mattered unless it was so shocking, so repulsive, so hateful that someone else noticed and decided to screenshot it before it disappeared into the digital ether. "The iconic memes that came out of 4chan are because people took the time to save it, you know? And the fact that nobody predicted, nobody could predict or control what was saved or what wasn't saved, I think, is really, really fascinating," Cates Holderness, Tumblr's former head of editorial, tells WIRED . Still 4chan was more complicated than it looked from the outside. The site was organized into dozens of smaller sections, everything from comics to cooking to video games to, of course, pornography. Holderness says she learned to make bread during the pandemic thanks to 4chan's cooking board. (Full disclosure: I introduced Holderness to 4chan way back in 2012.) "When I switched to sourdough, I got really good pointers," she says. Holderness calls 4chan the internet's "Wild West" and says its demise this month felt appropriate in a way. The chaos that defined 4chan, both the good and the very, very bad, has largely been paved over by corporate platforms and their algorithms now. Our feeds deliver us content, we don't have to hunt for it. We don't have to sit in front of a computer refreshing a page to find out if we're getting a new cat meme or a new manifesto. The humanness of that era of the web, now that 4chan is gone, is likely never coming back. And we'll eventually find out if that's a good thing or a bad thing. "The snippets that we have of what 4chan was—it's all skewed,' Holderness says. 'There is no record. There's no record that can ever encapsulate what 4chan was."
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Donkey Kong designer reveals his biggest problem with his Rare redesign, and explains how his childhood breakfast cereal ban shaped Diddy Kong, too
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. To all the aspiring artists out there, the designer behind Donkey Kong shares some words of wisdom. Kevin Bayliss, art director at Rare and an art designer on Donkey Kong, Diddy Kong, Battletoads, and more, shows us that "you don't have to be an amazing artist to get a career." He shows off prototype drawings of Donkey Kong and points out why some of his design decisions were made. DK doesn't have a neck because Bayliss wasn't very good at drawing them, "so I just drew a head basically in his stomach." That's not the only shortcoming on Donkey Kong, Bayliss explains: "Unfortunately, when I designed him, because he basically had BATTLETOAD eyes, it is hard to give Donkey Kong any expression other than 'annoyed' - this is something I take a little more into consideration when creating characters today!" Donkey Kong has had a redesign in footage from Mario Kart 9 that brings him more inline with his filmic counterpart. Not everyone likes the new style, though: "DK ain't look right," writes one unsettled viewer. Bayliss also shares an interesting fact, Diddy Kong was inspired by the Coco Pops monkey. "When I was a kid I loved this character, but I wasn't allowed to have the cereal because according to my parents it was just full of sugar. (What did they know?)," he tweets. "Who'd have guessed that many years later, that same little monkey on my TV screen inspired me to create DIDDY KONG?" It's strange to think about a time before Diddy Kong. He's been around since 1994, just before I was born, and now I feel weird that the Coco Pops monkey is also older than me. My favorite cereal is the Lion bar one. So sugary, but so good. Bayliss says good art design in games "comes down to your ideas and if you can put your ideas across. Not how well you can draw a face, how well you can draw a fish, how well you can draw a banana. It all comes down to 'is the idea any good?' We'll get somebody good to model it, to draw it properly when the time comes. But the drawings are just concepts." So, don't let any perceived lack of ability hold you back. Make that concept art and spread your wings. In the meantime, if you're a fan of Rare and other companies like it, check out our list of all the best retro games you can play.
