Man, it doesn’t end. In a media release titled Difficult News About Our Workforce, SIE announce the laying off of around 900 employees: London Studio to close entirely, Insomniac Games, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Firesprite impacted. Bloody hell.

Let’s goooo! Any new Pope game is an event, and an excuse to dust off the Playdate is doubly exciting. Mars After Midnight releases March 12.

Jason Schreier reports that British studio Supermassive (Until Dawn, The Quarry) will lay off 90 workers. This news comes like a month after PlayStation Productions announced a film adaptation of Until Dawn… Sad.

In a conversation with IGN, Hidetaka Miyazaki has said that “there is a high possibility that we would delegate the responsibility of director to those other Souls-ish games going forward.” He elaborated, “I think it’s very likely that we’ll see new directors going forward. And I think if we do that, I’d like to step away from that supervisory role and give them full direction and full control over those projects.” :(

Finally! The Elden Ring DLC trailer is here. H U M A N I T Y R E S T O R E D

According to five separate sources - and later seemingly confirmed by Nintendo themselves - the Switch 2 appears to’ve been delayed til 2025. Nintendo is advising publishers that its next-generation console will be delayed until the early months of 2025, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Sources close to the matter have reported that troubled Disco Elysium studio ZA/UM have let go of 24 staff, and cancelled its latest project - for the third time. We now know this included the last writer on Disco - Argo Tuulik - who has now spoken out:

It’s the people on top – the motherfuckers in sailing shoes and bowties – that fucked Harry, fucked Kim, fucked Robert, Rostov, Helen, Olga, Cash, fucked Elysium, fucked you and me too. They are not artists, they are professional fuckers.

He believes the studio “will forever remain a studio known for a single game”, with all members of the ZA/UM art collective now gone, but also reminds us of their promise: “Un jour je serai de retour près de toi.”

According to a new report, FROMSOFT is now the sole owner of the Elden Ring IP, no longer sharing rights with Bandai Namco. This change was seemingly facilitated via investments from Sony and Tencent.

On the back of similar deals with the likes of LEGO, Disney have invested $1.5B USD in Epic, and will collaborate to build an “expansive and open games and entertainment universe” in Fortnite. Not completely unsurprising, but that’s a lotta dough!

Apparently Tencent is developing a mobile adaptation of Elden Ring - with a desire for gacha elements - according to sources. The company acquired licensing rights in 2022 and has initiated a small team to prototype the game, although progress has been slow. This sounds… kinda disgusting, and currently hard to believe.