Gaming, in brief

Owners cutting studios

Microsoft told Arkane Lyon in July that it meant to close the studio. [3] Analysts say EA closed BioWare because its buyout left it paying $1.8 billion a year in interest. [14] Xbox's first chief operating officer left after three months, amid reports of more Xbox layoffs. [11]

Game worlds sold to screens

Netflix reportedly offered Xbox $500 million for seven years of films and shows from its games. [9] Prime Video will show Fallout Shelter: The Experiment, a contest based on the Fallout games, from 13 January. [58] Spin Master, a toy company, added three Paramount horror films to its card game. [59]

AI in the studios

The maker of Future? No Thanks! removed AI voices from his game and offered refunds. [29] Creative Assembly says it is looking into AI-made art in its Shogun 2 remaster. [27] Hollywood's biggest crew union hired its first officer to deal with AI. [54]

Players pushing back

A petition to save the next Mass Effect passed 76,500 signatures. [16] Xbox owners complained when a Call of Duty advert replaced their own home-screen pictures. [23] A San Francisco zombie game came down after city officials condemned it. [31]

One pressure seen across the day runs through Gaming too.

• Companies cutting staffBuilding ↑ · seen in 3 beats→

1. 1Arkane Lyon, the French Xbox studio making Marvel's Blade, nears a 13 November deadline under French law to find a buyer, and Microsoft adds a month to the talks
2. 2Analysts tie BioWare's end to EA's debt
3. 3Netflix and Xbox split $300 million apart
4. 4Xbox's first operations chief leaves after three months
5. 5Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 comes out

The consultation now runs about a month past 13 November, and the next sign is whether a buyer or a partner for Arkane and Marvel's Blade is named before that longer period ends. [3][6]

Also seen in Finance and Tech.

Banks say they are cutting staff to make room for AI, and game owners are closing studios to save money while they carry big debts.

Two analysts say EA's closure of BioWare followed from its buyout. [14]

Joost van Dreunen told IGN that EA carries $18 billion of debt from its sale to Saudi Arabia's state fund and two investment firms. [14]

The interest alone is about $1.8 billion a year, more than the $1.5 billion EA earns before interest, tax and some accounting costs. [14]

PC Gamer explains that in such a buyout the loans sit on the bought company itself. [15]

Thomas Marrone, who produces the game Star Trek Online, compared breaking up proven teams to setting fire to equipment. [19]

Van Dreunen said a 50-person team on a game years from launch is the easiest cost to cut. [14]

That puts teams like BioWare's first in line when interest is bigger than earnings.

Netflix offered Microsoft's Xbox $500 million for the sole right to turn its games into films and shows for seven years, Puck, a news site, reported. [9][10]

Xbox boss Asha Sharma's team asked for $800 million, and Netflix withdrew. [9][10] The two firms already make Minecraft and Diablo cartoons and a Gears of War film together. [9]

Xbox told Puck it had record interest in its games, and Puck says Xbox is now making smaller deals with more partners. [10]

Xbox's names now go to several companies at once: Diablo at Netflix, Fallout at Prime Video, a Call of Duty film at Paramount and a Minecraft sequel at Warner Bros. [10]

Each of those deals is smaller than the one Netflix wanted.

An owner can sell one game world to many companies at once, so a buyer who wants it alone must pay for every deal the owner turns away.

Xbox priced every other deal it would have to refuse for seven years, so its number came out $300 million higher.

Behind that is a price two companies argued over, and part of it was for the deals the owner would have had to refuse.

Helen Chiang left Microsoft on 23 October, three months after she became Xbox's first chief operating officer, an internal memo seen by The Verge said. [11][13]

She had worked at Microsoft for 21 years and ran Minecraft before the promotion. [12]

The job was created in July as part of the Xbox 'reset', with charge of profit and loss across games, consoles and services. [12] Microsoft would not say why she left. [11]

Her duties are split among other Xbox leaders for now. [13] The Verge notes the memo was short and that more Xbox layoffs are rumoured for this month, November and January. [11]

Activision released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on 23 October, made by its studio Infinity Ward. [22][20]

Reviews give it 84 out of 100 on Metacritic, a site that averages critics' scores. [20]

Last year's game, Black Ops 7, sold below other games in the series, according to outside tracking. [20]

It is the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since 2013, on the Switch 2. [20] A day-one extra pays into Activision's charity for veterans. [22]

Activision needs this game to do well after Black Ops 7 sold poorly, The Guardian says. [21]

Nintendo players get a Call of Duty at launch for the first time in 13 years. [20]

Mass Effect weapon charms, patches and other items that had appeared unbuyable in Battlefield 6's menus have been removed, Eurogamer reports. [17]

Players had expected them for N7 Day, the series' fan day on 7 November. [17] Both games belong to EA, which closed BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect, this week. [18]

A fan petition asking EA to sell Mass Effect or give it to another studio passed 76,500 signatures. [16]

EA owns the Mass Effect name with or without the studio that made it. [16] Only EA can decide whether it is sold, shelved or used again.

Jane Wiseman, head of original shows at Paramount+, a streaming service, is leaving. [47][48]

Casey Bloys, who now runs streaming for Skydance, the company that owns both Paramount+ and HBO Max, set out his new team on 23 October. [48]

HBO Max's head of original shows, Sarah Aubrey, will also run Paramount+'s. [47] HBO Max has about 140 million subscribers worldwide and Paramount+ about 82 million. [47]

Shows for both services now go through HBO's managers. [47] Variety says it is unclear how many more Paramount+ staff will go. [48]

HBO has spent around $200 million so far on its Harry Potter series, filings in the UK show. [45]

Plum Jam Productions, the company making it, took in 130.6 million pounds in 2025 and 18.4 million pounds in 2024. [46][45]

The money also builds sets, and a school for the child actors, meant to last seven seasons. [45] Only two seasons are ordered, and the show starts on Christmas Day. [45]

A source told Deadline the series will cost about as much as the last season of Game of Thrones. [46]

HBO is paying up front for seven seasons of a show it has only ordered two of. [45]

Sony published a blog post setting out its anime companies, Cartoon Brew reports. [43]

Aniplex, in Japan, makes anime, and Crunchyroll, an anime streaming service owned by Aniplex and Sony Pictures, shows it worldwide. [43]

Crunchyroll had more than 21 million paying subscribers in March 2026, in over 200 countries. [43]

Sony also owns the studios A-1 Pictures and CloverWorks, and set up Hayate in 2025 to make anime for viewers outside Japan. [43]

Sony makes the show, streams it and sells the music, toys and games, so it keeps the money from every stage. [43]

Demon Slayer earns for Sony that way, through films, music and merchandise as well as streaming. [43]

Behaviour Interactive, maker of the horror game Dead by Daylight, will stop selling Chucky, the killer doll from the Child's Play films, on 24 November. [24]

Players who already bought him keep him. [24] The game lost Michael Myers from Halloween in January and Pinhead from Hellraiser in 2025. [24]

Behaviour has not said why, and IGN notes that fans usually blame the licence, the deal that lets it use a character. [24]

A rented character leaves the store when the deal ends, and players who did not buy him will meet him less often in matches. [24]

A half-price sale runs until he goes. [24]

Xbox owners who switched on their console on 23 October found a full-screen advert for Modern Warfare 4 replacing their own background picture. [23]

It can be turned off in the console's settings. [23] Xbox already tests free cloud games paid for by adverts. [23]

Its strategy chief, Matthew Ball, says making games now costs too much and buyers will not pay more, so adverts can help fill the gap. [23]

Activision is owned by Microsoft, so Xbox is advertising its own game on its own console. [23] Every Xbox owner sees the advert, whether or not they play Call of Duty. [23]

Capcom's legal team asked Ultimate Frame Data, a website for fighting-game players, to remove its Street Fighter 6 data by 30 October. [25]

The site showed hitboxes, the invisible shapes that decide whether an attack lands. [25] Capcom says that data can only be pulled out with mods it does not allow. [25]

The site's owner removed it, writing 'not my choice'. [25]

Competitive players studied that data to get better before tournaments. [25] The same site's Super Smash Bros. data from Nintendo is still up. [25]

Roger Collum, who runs the Total War series at Creative Assembly, apologised for Shogun 2's Complete Edition. [26]

Sega, the publisher, pulled the remake of the 2011 strategy game from sale two days after launch. [27]

Collum said it was not made by his studio and skipped its usual checks. [26] Steam lists Mataboo, a studio in Warsaw, as a developer. [27][28]

He said Creative Assembly bans AI-made art and is investigating its use in the game. [26]

The Total War name on the box is Creative Assembly's, whoever did the work. [28] A small senior team is now working with Sega and the outside studio on a fix. [28]

IATSE, the union for more than 170,000 film and TV crew in the US and Canada, has hired its first labour and technology officer. [54]

Jillian Arnold, a former video engineer and local union president, led its AI committee in its 2024 contract talks. [54] The Animation Guild, which represents animators, is part of IATSE. [55]

Arnold will work on contracts, retraining and government policy. [54]

Companies may use AI tools in one country and not the other, a union official said. [55]

Arnold says the union wants crew to help build AI tools, so that the tools work for them instead of replacing them. [54]

GameMaker, a tool for making 2D games owned by the web-browser company Opera, will drop its licence fee for selling games built on its new engine core from 1 January 2027. [32][33]

Until now, selling a game meant buying a professional licence. [33] Games for PC, phones and the web will be free to release. [32]

Releasing on PS5, Xbox or Switch 2 will still need a paid enterprise licence. [33]

Many small developers have moved to Godot, a free engine, since a row over Unity's fees in 2023, Game Developer notes. [33]

GameMaker now gives away release on PC and phones and still charges for consoles. [33]

Phantom Blade Zero, an action game from S-Game, a studio in China, has sold about 500,000 copies on Steam through pre-orders, an analyst estimates. [38]

Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics puts that at about $24 million before its release on 28 October. [38]

It has 2.5 million Steam wishlists, a list of players who asked to be told when it comes out. [38] China is its biggest market so far. [38]

The estimate puts it ahead of Gears of War: E-Day on Steam at this stage. [38] More games from Chinese studios are now selling well around the world, Eurogamer notes. [38]

Shigeru Miyamoto, who created Mario and Zelda at Nintendo, will receive Japan's Order of Culture, the first game maker to do so. [34][35]

The Emperor will present it on 3 November, Japan's Culture Day. [34] The honour was set up in 1937. [34]

Miyamoto said his games were made by many people, and he accepts it for them. [34] He also said AI may change the work, but people will still have a role. [36]

Japan's government gives the honour for work that advanced Japanese culture, and this is the first time it has gone to games. [34]

Last year Yuji Horii, creator of Dragon Quest, received the Order of the Rising Sun. [34]

Nvidia, which makes the chips AI runs on, and the investment firm TCV have put money into Higgsfield, a company that makes images and video with AI. [53]

Higgsfield raised $400 million in August at a value of $5.4 billion. [53] It says it reached $1 billion a year in sales in September. [53]

It runs on Nvidia's computing and makes about 150 million videos and images a month. [53]

Nvidia is investing in a customer that buys its computing power. [53] Brands, studios and creators want more video than film crews can make, Higgsfield's boss says. [53]

Territory Group, the company behind film effects studios Territory Studio and Cantina Creative, has launched Lux Meridian. [52]

The new studio will make films, series and animated films with AI built into the work. [52]

It uses custom AI models from Adobe built only from material the studio has the rights to. [52] It first tried this on director Brad Peyton's film Dark Zone. [52]

Its founding teams worked on Avatar and Dune, so the AI work comes from people with big-film experience. [52] It calls itself a film studio, not a technology company. [52]

The Gotham Group, a Los Angeles firm that manages animation writers and directors, and Toonstar, an animation studio, will make up to 12 children's series together. [51]

The shows will go straight to online platforms such as YouTube. [51]

The two firms say children's TV has been hit harder than any other part of the industry, as channels cut shows for kids. [51]

Fewer channels are buying children's cartoons. [51] Creators are going online to reach viewers directly, without a channel in between.

Glitch Productions, the studio behind The Amazing Digital Circus, has released the trailer for the first full season of Gameoverse. [50]

Its pilot drew 10 million views in its first three days in May. [50] The cartoon follows a heroine who ends up helping villains stop heroes in other game worlds. [50]

Erica Lindbeck, who voiced characters in Persona 5 and Spider-Man games, plays the lead. [50]

The season was ordered after the pilot's success online. [50] A studio that releases a pilot free can see how many people watch before it pays for a whole run.

Bandai Namco Filmworks announced a new anime project for The Ghost in the Shell, made again by the studio Science SARU. [44]

It follows Science SARU's TV series of the famous cyberpunk story. [44] The format was not given. [44]

The anime is paid for by a production committee of Bandai Namco Filmworks, Kodansha, Science SARU and Production I.G. [44]

In a production committee, several companies split an anime's cost and its earnings. That way no single company carries the whole risk.

Prime Video will release Fallout Shelter: The Experiment, a reality contest based on the Fallout games, on 13 January 2027. [58]

Contestants compete in mock bomb shelters for a $1 million prize. [58] It is made by Studio Lambert and Kilter Films, with Bethesda Game Studios, which makes the games. [58]

Four episodes come first, then three a week. [58]

Microsoft owns Bethesda through ZeniMax, so its Fallout name now earns as games, a Prime drama and a contest show. [7][9][58]

Xbox says it is making smaller deals with more partners, and Fallout at Prime Video is one of them. [10]

Disney confirmed a new Darkwing Duck series for Disney Plus, its streaming service. [49] The duck superhero first appeared in a 1991 cartoon that ran for 91 episodes. [49]

Mark Hamill voices him, with Seth Rogen as his sidekick Launchpad. [49] The creator, Tad Stones, advised on the show. [49]

The old series is already on Disney Plus. [49]

Disney is reviving a cartoon it already owns rather than starting a new one. [49]

The 1991 episodes sit on the same service, so new viewers can find the old show too. [49]

Amazon MGM Studios is making an animated film of Game of Pets, a new children's book series by the Australian author Aaron Blabey. [56][57]

His earlier books became DreamWorks' two Bad Guys films, which took close to $500 million worldwide. [56]

Rideback, producer of the live-action Lilo & Stitch, which passed $1 billion, will make it with Foundation Media Partners. [56]

The series is new, with one book out, so Amazon is betting on the author's earlier hits. [57]

Foundation Media Partners, one of the producers, was also behind the Bad Guys films. [56]

Spin Master, a toy company, has added A Quiet Place, Sleepy Hollow and Smile, three Paramount horror films, to its card game Hellbreak. [59]

Paramount's Friday the 13th was already in it. [59] The game also uses monsters from Universal, AMC, Blumhouse and Lionsgate. [59]

The first set reaches shops in January 2027. [59]

Film studios earn again from monsters they already own. [59] The card game gets famous names that it did not have to build.

Paolo Pedercini, who makes games as Molleindustria, removed two AI voices and two AI music loops from his game Future? No Thanks!. [30]

He had admitted the AI use earlier in the week, though he has written that AI is an anti-human project. [30]

He offers refunds by PayPal or Venmo to buyers who feel betrayed. [29] He says the game is now only slightly worse. [29]

He made the change after angry posts online and press coverage. [29] He says the AI voices kept causing what he called annoyances and bad optics. [29]

Pierre-Louis Biojout removed Tenderloin Night Shift, a shooting game he made with AI tools in a weekend. [31]

The game had players shoot 'zombies' in the Tenderloin, a San Francisco district known for crime and homelessness. [31] Mayor Daniel Lurie rejected it, and a local official called it dehumanising. [31]

Biojout apologised, refunded his advertisers and gave the game's money to a charity that helps people with addiction. [31]

AI tools let one person make a game and sell adverts in it within a weekend. [31]

The game sat on his own website, so no store checked it before the city objected. [31]