Gaming, in brief

Spending on Japanese anime worldwide reached a record 4.45 trillion yen in 2025. [1]

That is about $28.2 billion, up 15.8% on the year before. [1]

The Association of Japanese Animations, which writes a yearly report on the industry, released the figures. [1]

It shared them at TIFFCOM, the business market of the Tokyo International Film Festival. [1]

Many Japanese companies are going abroad to find new money, the report's editor said. [5]

He said the next step is selling goods and services to fans abroad, not just shows. [1]

Film financiers call this a production committee: partners share the cost and the rights. [7]

It spreads the risk, but it can cap budgets and slow decisions, a Tokyo panel heard. [7]

A weak yen makes these totals look smaller when they are counted in dollars. [3]

It also makes money earned abroad worth more yen when it comes home. [3]

The report's editor warned that exchange rates affect the comparison between home and abroad. [1]

These are early figures; the full report comes out in early December. [2]

Fans spent a record 4.45 trillion yen on Japanese anime in 2025, and the studios that draw it earned 505.5 billion yen of that. [1]

A total in trillions is hard to picture, so the studios' own 505.5 billion yen is easy to miss.

Fans outside Japan spent 2.54 trillion yen, up 17.2%, and a weak yen makes those earnings worth more at home. [1][3]

How much of anime's record year was Demon Slayer alone.

The report gives totals, and one film took about $800 million worldwide, some of it in 2026. Nobody has said what the year looks like without it. [3]

Whether the record holds when it is counted in dollars.

The report's editor warned that exchange rates affect the comparison. The Hollywood Reporter puts the total at $28.5 billion and Variety at $28.2 billion for the same 4.45 trillion yen. [1][3]

Fans in Japan and abroad both spent more on anime in 2025, and the studios that draw it earned a record 505.5 billion yen.

Bloomberg reports EA closed BioWare after choosing a Star Wars game over Mass Effect. [17]

BioWare was EA's studio for role-playing games, the maker of Mass Effect. [8]

Private investors bought EA for $55 billion in August. [18]

EA owes $18 billion after private investors bought it with borrowed money. [8]

Each game would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make. [17]

EA could not afford both, and picked Battlefront 3 as the less risky bet. [17]

Battlefront 3 has not even started development yet. [19]

Three of BioWare's recent games, including Anthem, missed their sales goals. [19]

Laura Miele, an EA boss who backed BioWare, was moved to another job this summer. [20]

EA must pay that debt from its profits, which favours games it can predict. [8]

A leveraged buyout is a purchase paid for with borrowed money that the bought company repays. [8]

EA's new owners get the bet they judged more predictable for repaying the debt. [8]

BioWare's staff lost their jobs, and Mass Effect players lost the next game. [17]

Why a publisher short of money cuts a game that could still earn

A company has a fixed pot of money for new projects

It guesses each project's earnings, and how sure that guess is

It ranks the projects and pays from the top down

When the pot is empty, the rest stop, even ones that would earn

Debt makes the pot smaller, because lenders are paid first

A game is often cut because a safer game ranked above it, not because it would lose money. The money ran out before the list reached it.

Romero Games' team when Xbox paid for its game, and now that a new publisher does.

EA, paying down $18 billion of debt, could fund one costly game and ranked Star Wars Battlefront 3 above Mass Effect as the less risky one.

EA moved the staff of Project Rene to Project Evergreen, so one Sims game is funded and the other waits.

The new publisher pays for a game sized for 16 people, so the plan was cut to fit the money.

Its funder stopped paying before Early Access, and without that money the studio cannot finish the game.

The ranking rests on guesses about future sales, so a safe bet can still fail. A cut project is never made, so nobody can check whether it would have earned.

EA's new owners see the debt. BioWare's staff saw their own game, and players saw the closure.

In games, owners short of money are choosing which games to keep: EA kept Star Wars and closed BioWare. [17]

Star Wars Battlefront 3 was picked as the more predictable way to pay down $18 billion of debt. [8]

What EA will do with Mass Effect now.

Bloomberg's sources describe why it chose Star Wars. EA has not said whether the series goes to another studio or stops. [19]

Anthropic told its AI coding tool, Claude Code, to stop rebuilding other people's games. [12]

The new rule arrived around 27 October, and users cannot switch it off. [21]

It says: do not build a recreation of a specific existing game, even if renamed. [12]

Original games, games in a genre and games from users' own designs still work. [12]

Anthropic said using Claude to copy someone's work breaks its rules. [12]

Small studios had cancelled public demos, fearing AI copies would reach shops first. [12]

Developers may take some relief, Game Developer says, though the rule may only stop lazy copiers. [12]

Safety limits are rules inside an AI that refuse some requests, and can be tricked. [12]

Copiers can switch to open AI models that have no such rule, users pointed out. [12]

Nobody has said how the tool tells whether a user owns the game they describe. [12]

Claude Code now refuses to rebuild a specific existing game. [12]

How Claude will tell a copy from an original game.

The rule names no test, and Anthropic says it will keep adjusting it. [12]

A union at Rockstar's UK studios could cover more than 1,600 workers, the IWGB union says. [15]

Rockstar makes Grand Theft Auto, and GTA 6 reaches consoles on 19 November. [22]

That is nearly every UK worker below the level of director, the union says. [15]

Rockstar has more than 4,700 staff in 12 places around the world, Bloomberg reported. [15]

Staff vote on recognising the union from 12 to 26 November. [22]

A yes would make it the biggest recognised union in the UK games industry. [22]

A recognised union can bargain over pay, overtime, job cuts and AI rules. [22]

Labour law calls this recognition: the employer agrees to bargain with the union. [22]

A worker on the union's committee said management choices are kept hidden from staff. [15]

The tribunal over 31 sacked staff hears closing arguments on 17 and 18 November. [22]

How many Rockstar staff will vote yes.

The vote runs from 12 to 26 November, and the result is not known until it closes. [22]

Raw Power Games says it may close before its game Chronicles: Medieval comes out. [9]

The studio, in Copenhagen, says its funding is no longer in place. [9]

The game is a medieval open world that mixes strategy and sword fighting. [9]

It was close to Early Access, an early version players can play before release. [9]

Its first trailer drew more than 2 million views on IGN's channel. [9]

The studio did not say who its funder was or why the money stopped. [9]

It asked players to keep the game on their Steam wishlists. [9]

If the studio closes, the game its staff built for years may never come out. [9]

The studio says its staff are carrying the heaviest weight. [9]

Its funder stopped paying before Early Access, and without that money the studio cannot finish the game.

Their funding ended just before Early Access, and the studio may close. [9]

Who stopped paying for Chronicles: Medieval, and why.

Raw Power Games blamed circumstances outside its control and named nobody. [9]

Romero Games has a new publisher for the shooter that Xbox stopped paying for. [10]

The studio is led by John Romero, a co-creator of Doom. [23]

Microsoft pulled the game's funding in 2025, during cuts across Xbox. [23]

The team fell from 110 people to just 5. [23]

It now has 15 or 16 people making a smaller game. [10]

Romero says the studio owns all the old game's art and code, so it reuses them. [10]

He cannot name the publisher or a release date yet. [23]

Owning the work let the studio start again without starting from nothing. [10]

Most of the 110 people who worked on the first game did not come back. [10]

Romero Games found a new publisher and is making its game again. [10]

The new publisher pays for a game sized for 16 people, so the plan was cut to fit the money.

The team fell from 110 to five when Xbox's money stopped, and only 16 work there now. [23][10]

Dan Greenawalt, who founded Turn 10 Studios and led Forza Motorsport, is retiring. [24]

He spent 27 years at Microsoft and directed eight Forza Motorsport racing games. [24]

Last month Microsoft merged Turn 10 into Playground Games, maker of Forza Horizon. [24]

The merger was part of an Xbox reset with 3,200 job cuts and four studio closures. [25]

Playground's boss announced the retirement in a memo, The Verge reported. [25]

Forza Motorsport is getting no new content, and its team now supports Horizon. [24]

Merging two teams leaves one game series with no team of its own. [24]

Forza Horizon, the more profitable series, keeps the people. [24]

Forza Motorsport players get no new cars, tracks or regular fixes. [24]

EA paused Project Rene, a next Sims game that had been worked on for years. [26]

The Sims is EA's game about building houses and running little lives. [26]

Project Rene looked like an online Sims that would also run on phones. [26]

EA moved its people to Project Evergreen, rumoured to be a fuller Sims 4. [26]

The Sims 4 has more than 100 add-on packs, about $1,600 bought one by one. [26]

EA said it is focusing on the long-term potential of The Sims. [26]

Like BioWare's cut, it moves EA's people onto one project instead of two. [26]

Nobody outside EA knows when Project Evergreen will come out, or what it will cost. [26]

EA moved the staff of Project Rene to Project Evergreen, so one Sims game is funded and the other waits.

Activision will cut real crowd-crush footage from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4. [27]

The game's opening used video of the 2022 Halloween crush in Itaewon, Seoul. [27]

That disaster killed 160 people and injured nearly 200 more. [27]

Victims' families called it highly inappropriate and senseless to use in a game. [27]

Activision apologised and said an update will remove it on 12 November. [28]

The game's story is a made-up North Korean invasion of South Korea. [28]

Real film of real deaths had been used as the backdrop for a made-up war. [28]

Nobody at Activision has said who approved using the footage. [28]

Activision agreed to take the footage out after the families asked. [27]

Food workers at the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park say they skip meals. [16]

The park sells snacks themed on films and shows, like Simpsons cotton candy. [16]

Their union, Unite Here Local 11, speaks for about 1,700 workers there. [16]

In its own survey, over 60% said they chose between food, medicine and rent. [16]

Nearly 53% said they sometimes did not eat when hungry. [16]

One worker says his hours fell from about 40 a week to 32, at $24 hourly. [16]

Contract talks have run for about a year. [16]

Theme parks built on famous stories earn from fans, and these workers serve them. [16]

This is collective bargaining: the union negotiates one contract for all its members at the park. [16]

The union ran the survey itself and did not share its method. [16]

Universal says it bargains in good faith and raised wages in a 2023 deal. [16]

One worker's hours fell from about 40 a week to 32, while talks on a new contract have run for a year. [16]

How widely Universal's food workers go hungry.

The figures come from the union's own survey of 828 members, and its method was not shared. [16]

Comisma and Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank are setting up a fund to pay for anime. [6]

Comisma owns GANMA!, a manga app, and Qzil.la, an anime studio. [6]

The bank will bring investors who have had little way into anime until now. [6]

Comisma said many big studios are booked years ahead. [6]

The fund names Japan's goal of 6 trillion yen in sales abroad by 2033. [6]

More money could pay for more shows, if there are studios free to make them. [6]

Pooling many backers' money spreads the risk, as Japan's film committees do. [7]

Whether the anime fund can buy studio time.

Comisma says big studios are booked years ahead, so money alone may not start new shows soon. [6]

Japanese financiers met in Tokyo to discuss new ways to pay for films. [7]

Most Japanese films are paid for by a production committee of partner companies. [7]

Panellists said that system can cap budgets and make it hard for foreign investors to join. [7]

One new fund, K2P Film Fund I, raised about 5 billion yen. [7]

It plans to back around 50 films over seven years. [7]

Its investors commit money before any film is chosen, which is called a blind pool. [7]

Japan's trade ministry asked MUFG, a big bank, to study guarantees for film loans. [7]

If banks can lend against a film, more can be made with less money from partners. [7]

A completion guarantee promises a film gets finished on budget and time, not that it sells. [7]

The study runs to February 2027 and promises no loans. [7]

Anime producers at TIFFCOM in Tokyo described working with partners in other countries. [11]

Ervin Han, from a Singapore studio, said Asian films rely mostly on private money. [11]

He said government money in Asia covers up to 20% at most, if you're lucky. [11]

In Europe, a film's budget can mostly come from grants, tax breaks and sales in advance. [11]

In France, a film from any country can get public money if a French partner joins. [11]

His company sold streaming rights for its film to Crunchyroll, an anime streamer. [11]

Producers call this co-production: partners in several countries share the cost and the work. [11]

So Asian producers look for European partners to reach public money. [11]

To reach that money, Asian producers give European partners a smaller share of the work. [11]

Japan plans a new anime award in 2027 to honour the people who make anime. [29]

Its name and outline will be revealed on 2 November in Tokyo. [29]

The Association of Japanese Animations and Tokyo's city government run the festival behind it. [29]

Shimizu Akira, head of the studio A-1 Pictures, said creators should be put in the limelight. [29]

Panellists said money for training should come with the award. [29]

The 2027 start date is not yet confirmed. [29]

Panellists said the award could bring fans closer to the people behind anime. [29]

The panellists stressed their views were not the award's official plans. [29]

Paramount+, a streaming service, will show children's series from Moonbug from 1 November. [30]

Moonbug makes CoComelon and Blippi, two of the best-known shows for small children. [31]

The deal brings more than 60 hours of shows to North America, Europe and beyond. [30]

The rights are non-exclusive, so the same shows stay on Netflix and Disney+. [30]

More come on 15 December, including Blippi's second season. [30]

Selling one show to many streamers earns Moonbug more than selling it to one. [30]