Continuing an awful 2023 trend, Bungie sadly confirms staff layoffs across various departments, as well as delays for upcoming game Marathon and Destiny 2’s expansion, The Final Shape. Despite Sony’s $3.6 billion USD acquisition commitment, job security now appears uncertain, with ex-employees already sharing their concerns on social media.

Ahead of Alan Wake 2 releasing on October 27th, Epic Games have unveiled a clever promotional tie-in, in the form of a playable custom Fortnite island. Alan Wake: Flashback is a ‘reimagining the iconic story’, available now with island code 3426-5561-3374. We’ve seen these sort of collabs before, but this is a bit more involved, substantial and creative. Perk of a good relationship I s’pose!

Ensuring not another day goes by without games journalists googling exec headshots, long-time Bethesda SVP Head of Publishing Pete Hines has retired to ‘start an exciting new chapter’. Bethesda praised Hines’ authenticity, integrity and passion in a statement on Twitter.

It was already the best selling game of all time, but at this year’s annual Minecraft Live, it was announced that they’ve sold over 300 million copies. This puts Minecraft over 100 million ahead of the next best selling game, GTA V. Crazy.

While consumers celebrate 2023 as a ‘great year for games!’, a lot of those who make them weren’t as thrilled. Stephen Totilo at Axios looked back over the year, and spoke to developers: over 6,000 industry jobs were cut in 2023, with major studios like Epic and EA making significant staff reductions. The impact extends beyond development roles, affecting DNI and HR jobs, and disproportionately impacting women. Unions may offer a solution as the industry adjusts to post-pandemic working conditions.

As the ink dries on the final steps of Microsoft’s acquisition, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has announced he will only stay on til the end of the year - closing out his 33rd year at the company under Phil Spencer’s leadership. Kotick’s time at the helm was marred by various controversies such as; discrimination lawsuits, allegations of union busting, unfair labour practice complaints and layoffs amid record profits. Hopefully a change in leadership will help turn things around.

UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has granted Microsoft approval to acquire Activision Blizzard. This removes the final roadblock for Microsoft, allowing the biggest acquisition in videogame history - $68.7 billion USD - to conclude.

Less than a month after the absurd and disastrously-received Runtime Fee stuff, the Unity CEO steps down, effective immediately. James M. Whitehurst becomes interim CEO and Roelof Botha is appointed chairman, as the search for a new permanent CEO begins. Riccitiello’s tenure was marked by a focus on expansion, but included many boneheaded moves including floating the idea for charging real money to reload ingame guns, pushing generative AI, and more. Sooo… byebye!

Erik Peterson from Valve’s Steam Business team has shared an interesting talk/presentation on how games are surfaced, and broadly how visibility works on the platform. Always interesting to get a look behind the curtain, especially from the likes of Valve.

It’s that time again. 🎃 For the last few Octobers, A Short Hike creator Adam Gryu has opened the gates to the annual Pumpkin Festival. Jump in, admire people’s creations, and find a nice spot to carve and place your own. New this year: hats! Always a bit of fun.