GamesIndustry

Hungary-based animation studio Digic has laid off 35 members of staff.

As reported by Forbes Hungary, the Embracer Group subsidiary cut approximately 10% of its workforce following an internal reorganisation earlier this year.

"Due to the market changes of the past period, economic challenges and the long-term arrangement for hybrid work, it has become necessary to review our operation," the company said in a statement.

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Capcom has released the results for the first half of its fiscal year, with net sales rising to $498 million – thanks in part to the launch of Street Fighter 6.

The publisher's Digital Contents division, which handles its video games business, saw net sales of ¥61.3 million ($407.6 million) for the six months ended September 30, 2023. This marks a new H1 record for the company, as well as a year-on-year increase of 70%.

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Why I Love is a series of guest editorials on GamesIndustry.biz intended to showcase the ways in which game developers appreciate each other's work. This entry was contributed by Pete Wicher, audio director and lead writer at Jukai Studio. Jukai's new game Stray Souls launched this week on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Nine years ago, Sony unceremoniously launched a mysterious horror game on the PlayStation Store. Enigmatically titled P.T. It launched with little fanfare as a surprise "shadow drop" during a Sony press conference.

When the first person completed the game on stream a mere few hours after it launched, P.T. immediately went viral when the end credits revealed its true purpose: the whole thing was a promotion to announce a new Silent Hill game! To this day it remains one of the most ambitious and original ways to announce a game: through the use of another game! While Silent Hills was tragically canceled, P.T. remained ingrained in the public consciousness.

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Die Gute Fabrik's Saltsea Chronicles is a story that documents the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

The game takes place generations after sea levels have risen, focusing on how communities rebuild and survive a flooded world.

It was only fitting, then, for the Danish developer to publish a report alongside the release of its latest title, sharing its carbon impact during development, from January 2020 to the launch of Saltsea Chronicles this October.

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Valve is changing the currency used for sales in Argentina and Turkey on Steam to USD next month due to "exchange rate volatility."

From November 20, two new pricing regions will be implemented, LATAM-USD (including Argentina) and MENA-USD (including Turkey), Valve announced on Steamworks.

Over 25 countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and North Africa will receive regionalised pricing (a full list of the countries can be found at the end of this story).

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Polish developer CI Games has revealed that its latest hit, Lords of the Fallen, was its most expensive project to date with total costs of PLN 281 million ($66.2 million).

The figure was shared during an investor call, as reported by Polish site Bankier and spotted by Game World Observer. Total development costs were came in at PLN 178 million ($41.9 million), although this does not include licensing fees paid to Epic Games for the use of its Unreal Engine.

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AI-assisted game studio Harmony Games has closed a $3 million seed funding round.

With the investment, the company aims to grow its mobile market presence and workforce.

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Nintendo will issue new community tournament guidelines that impose age, revenue, and hardware regulations.

Among the changes, tournaments may include up to 200 in-person and 300 online competitors.

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Nintendo is positioning itself to crack down on online content that it considers to infringe upon its copyright.

This is according to the firm's newly updated content guidelines.

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Among the presentations in last month's Game Devs of Color Expo was Achimostawinan Games' talk on Growing Indigenous Worlds in Games, which explored the themes of reappropriation and combating stereotypes of creative works for Indigenous people.

Creative leads Meagan Byrne and Sadekaronhes Esquivel also spoke about their game design inspirations for the March release Hill Agency: Purity Decay, as well as some of their frustrations.

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The number of available roles in the UK games industry declined further this month, with just 1,324 positions currently being advertised.

That's according to the latest Games Jobs Live report, which offers insight into how ongoing uncertainty is affecting recruitment in the games industry.

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Artisan Studios is setting up a development studio in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The Canadian-based company plans to employ over 200 developers in its new offices, collaborating with local artists across the MENA region to develop new IPs.

The developer will expand into publishing its titles, in addition to developing what it says will be "the first AAA titles in the GCC region."

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Microsoft has released the results for the first quarter of its financial year, showing a strong start for its gaming business thanks to the launch of Starfield and the inherent impact on Xbox Game Pass.

For the three months ended September 30, 2023, the company reported total revenues of $57 billion (up 13% year-on-year), including $13.7 billion (up 3%) from the More Personal Computing division, which includes Xbox.

Xbox content and services revenue rose 13% year-on-year, driven in part by the launch of Starfield, although hardware sales were down 7%.

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Managing and leading people is an essential part of every healthy studio. It's what leads people to stick around and enjoy their work, get the support they need, and it can make or break a development team.

It is also a very challenging and complex role. You are no longer just aiming to deliver the best possible work on the game, but also helping others and the overall team maintain a healthy environment where everyone can do their job effectively.

This is the first question that anyone that is considering the role should be asking themselves. The answer might very well surprise you, so make sure to consider all of this before taking your next step.

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Nintendo has removed Need for Spirit: Drink and Drive Simulator from the eShop following an investigation by PEGI.

As reported by Eurogamer, the game was allegedly assigned a PEGI 3+ rating through the International Age Rating Coalition, which "is a free, self-submitted process."

This would suggest that the game is suitable for all ages despite including alcohol and tobacco.

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Warframe maker Digital Extremes has announced that James Schmalz is no longer CEO.

Schmalz will remain on the company's board of directors. Steve Sinclair, previously as creative director, will step into the role.

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Dreams and LittleBigPlanet maker Media Molecule is reportedly looking to cut nearly 20 staffers from the studio.

According to a report by Sports Illustrated, employees were informed about the layoffs via an internal meeting today.

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Roll7 has been a remote working studio for seven years now, and as such the OlliOlli and Rollerdome developer might have a little more experience than most in how to make the set-up work.

In a presentation at last month's GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit, Roll7 head of people and operations Nisha Minhas shared some of the studio's learnings on how to embrace remote work for the long haul. While Minhas has 15 years of experience in HR, she got her first taste of remote work during the pandemic, and it made sense for her personal situation.

"For more and more people, remote working is very much becoming a secondary event of the day," Minhas said. "So as HR professionals, I think it's important that we have an awareness of that shift to one in every fourth person, and push ways to create a successful working model that works for us."

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The number of game studios in France reporting annual sales above €10 million was up 14.4% year-on-year in 2022, according to a new report from French trade body SNJV.

Over 12% of French studios did reach that €10 million threshold last year. Around 8.3% of them even surpassed €20 million in revenue. The majority was much lower though, with over half of all French studios having an annual revenue below €300,000 in 2022.

The French games industry consisted of 1,000 companies last year, including 577 game development studios. Independent studios made up 39% of the industry.

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Roblox China has been hit with layoffs, affecting employees at its headquarters in Shenzhen and teams working in the US.

A spokesperson confirmed to GamesIndustry.biz that 15 people were let go due to an "evaluation of the operational structure" of the company, also known as LuoBu.

"Those employees whose roles were impacted have been informed," the spokesperson said. "These actions are specific to LuoBu and its unique business and operational needs. No other teams within LuoBu or Roblox are impacted."

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For the first time in three years, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's pay targets did not include a specific growth milestone for Xbox Game Pass.

A Microsoft SEC filing, spotted by Axios, instead shows Nadella's only games-related performance-based incentive for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2023 was to grow Xbox Content and Services revenue by 4.4%.

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Amazon Studios' Fallout TV series will premiere on April 12, 2024.

The release date was revealed on social media by the show's official account, featuring Pip-Boy graphics from the franchise.

A teaser was shown earlier this year at Gamescom following a Starfield presentation. Shortly after, Prime Video revealed on X that the series will take place in Los Angeles, focusing on Vault 33.

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Staff at video game services firm Experis Game Solutions are seeking to unionize.

Experis Game Solutions was founded in 2009 and offers its services to various publishers and developers.

As reported by Urban Milwaukee, employees filed for union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) last week. The game testers are organizing with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW).

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Among Netflix's 247.15 million subscribers, less than 1% of those users play games daily.

As reported by CBNC, this is according to data from market analyst firm Apptopia, which also said that a projected average of 2.2 million users played one or more titles per day as of September.

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Original story, Monday, October 23: Insomniac Games will correct a flag error in Marvel's Spider-Man 2 in a future patch.

Shortly after the game's launch, social media posts noted that one of its main characters, Miles Morales' in-game residence features a Cuban flag. The young superhero and his family are Puerto Rican.

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Among Us studio, InnerSloth has announced that it has donated to the relief efforts for Palestinian families.

The company's donation went to the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, which provides medical aid and humanitarian support to children in the Middle East.

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Updated: Due to some double counting on Spider-Man 2, we've updated the story with the correct % figures. Previously, we stated Spider-Man 2 is the biggest PS5 launch of the year (it's now Hogwarts Legacy), and that sales were 3% lower than God of War Ragnarok (it was 27% lower).

Spider-Man 2 beat out competition from Super Mario to claim No.1 in the UK boxed retail charts, GfK data reveals.

The PlayStation 5 exclusive had a strong launch. It is the second biggest PS5 boxed launch of the year, just behind the PS5 lauch of Hogwarts Legacy back in February.

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PlayStation support studio Visual Arts has been hit with another round of layoffs, with several former employees sharing on social media last week that they have been let go.

"Unfortunately, following a wave of layoffs, last week was my last at PlayStation," former senior level designer at Visual Arts Daniel Bellemare wrote on LinkedIn.

Senior technical recruiter Matt Barney shared a similar update on LinkedIn, adding that he "knew this layoff was coming" and wished those impacted "the best of luck" in their future endeavours.

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Noodle Cat Games has closed a $12 million Series A funding round.

The studio intends to use the investment towards expanding its team and accelerate the development of its debut title.

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It can be difficult keeping track of the various comings and goings in the games industry, which is why we compile them in semi-regular round-ups.

If you have new appointments or transitions in your company that belong here, please send the names of the appointees, new role and company, and prior role and company to newhires@gamesindustry.biz.

Among them, Beck Hemsley is now a placement Artist at Sumo Leamington. Alice Balloch has stepped into the role of narrative designer at Sumo Leamington. Meanwhile, Sumo Nottingham receives a new senior producer, Brian C McAuliffe.

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President of Nintendo of America, Doug Bowser, said that the firm has no unions due to job satisfaction and engagement.

His comments came from an interview with Inverse, where the executive was asked about unionization growing in the games industry.

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This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

As you may have heard, Microsoft finalized its acquisition of Activision Blizzard last week.

I've used this space previously to talk about why I'm not a fan of the deal given Microsoft's historical abuse of its dominant position in operating systems and its behavior whenever any kind of governmental oversight threatens to rein in its business somehow.

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GameSquare today announced that it has reached a deal to acquire gaming and esports outfit Faze Clan.

The all-stock deal will see each outstanding Faze Clan share swapped for a fraction of a share in GameSquare. Given the number of outstanding Faze Clan shares, potential shares from stock options, and yesterday's closing share price of GameSquare, that would put the maximum amount of the deal around $18.5 million.

That's a far cry from the $725 million valuation Faze Clan boasted when it went public last July in a SPAC merger.

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After exploring an open-world formula with Super Mario Odyssey, Nintendo's flagship IP has returned to its platforming roots with Super Mario Bros Wonder, releasing today.

Aside from Super Mario Maker and mobile title Super Mario Run, it's been over a decade since players have been able to jump and break blocks in a new title as Nintendo's mascot.

As of writing, Mario Wonder has a Metacritic score of 93 out of 53 reviews, and it seems that critics have fallen for its reinvention of the franchise's platform formula.

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