The Industry Checkpoint - Issue #8

Highlights of the Week

• Sony has sued Tencent for allegedly copying of the Horizon series with its upcoming open-world survival game, Light of Motiram. The lawsuit accuses Tencent of violating trademarks and copyrights. Sony has said the game is a “slavish clone” with identical gameplay, story themes, and artistic elements. GamesBeat

• EA CEO Andrew Wilson claims that EA Sports will become the “most valuable sports business in the world”. The company’s Global Football business posted year-over-year growth and its long-term partnerships across College, NFL, FC, F1, UFC, and NHL were touted as the most “valuable in sports entertainment”. Game Developer

• The next BioShock game, first announced in 2019 and allegedly in production for over a decade is now being overhauled after it failed a publisher review. 2K Games has ousted studio head Kelley Gilmore and moved creative director Hogarth de la Plante to a publishing role. Jason Schreier (Bloomberg)

Studio News

• Aheartfulofgames, the Spanish studio behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is facing closure after owner Outright Games signaled its intention to make all employees at the studio redundant. The studio said that after Outright’s cancellation of multiple projects with little explanation, the frequency and scope of internal communications from Outright progressively diminished. In May 2025, the studio was excluded from a corporate group meeting and then was verbally informed of the decision to shutter the studio in June. The studio has formed a union section, supported by the Video Games Union Coordination (CSVI) to defend the rights of the employees and to “stand up for workplace dignity”. GamesIndustry.biz

• WB Games Montreal is reportedly working on another live-service game, based on a job role listing for the studio that specifies the game will be a “high-quality AAA game based on one of the iconic IPs from the vast WB and DC Comics catalogue”. WB Games has previously stated that it will be refocusing efforts on its biggest franchises, but there is no indication currently which franchise this live-service game will belong to. Eurogamer

• Krafton has tapped Striking Distance CEO Steve Papoutsis as CEO of UnknownWorlds to oversee the studio’s overall management and creative direction. Krafton

• Assassin’s Creed Black Flag actor, Matt Ryan, has been threatened with legal action following a slip-up earlier this year when the actor suggested Ubisoft was set to release a remake of the title. Eurogamer

Business News

• Puzzle & Dragons publisher/developer GungHo Online is considering a shareholder request from Intertrust Trustees (Cayman) LTD to oust CEO and president, Kazuki Morishita. The petitioners believe that a CEO change is required due to lackluster business performance and that the CEO is responsible for making GungHo a “one-hit wonder”. GamesIndustry.biz

• The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will not overturn the unanimous jury verdict from 2023 that Google’s app store and payments system have become illegal monopolies. The timeline for Google to begin changing how its Android app store and business practices work has started, although the Court granted one extra week in emergency stay while Google works on its appeal. The Verge Games

• Future Today is launching a collection of TV-based games to its streaming channels, playable via dedicated streaming apps (Free Games by Happy Kids, Free Games by Fawesome) as well as integraded within the HappyKids and Fawesome apps on Roku. GamesBeat

Startups and Shutdowns

• Ted Hentschke (DreadXP, Critical Reflex) has teamed up with Jacub Bałuszek-Sobolewski to form Black Lantern Collective, a new publisher dedicated to horror games. The publisher announced ten games this week and is kicking off its release schedule with Captum Mortum, an atmospheric psychological horror game launching in August. Eurogamer

M&A

• Atari has agreed to acquire Thunderful Group in a $5.2M deal. The subscription agreement for 82% of Thunderful’s shares is subject to shareholder vote “on or about” August 28. GamesIndustry.biz

Investments and Partnerships

• UK game tech company JECO has raised $1.3M in a pre-seed investment led by the government-backed British Business Bank and investment collective The Games Angels. JECO offers an “industry first” B2B tech toolkit which gives developers an automated suite of optimization tools for all software and devices. GamesIndustry.biz

• Turkey-based mobile dev Good Job Games has raised $60M in a Series A round, making for a total investment of $83M to date. The studio will be scaling their match-three mobile game Match Villains into a “generational franchise”. Game Developer

Spotlight: Last Train

• Dead Space creator and founder of Striking Distance Studios, Glen Schofield, has suggested that he could be done with game development after failing to secure funding for his latest project. Eurogamer

• Milky Tea co-founder Jonathan Holmes is stepping away from his role as CEO after 20 years to "recharge and focus on spending more quality time” with family. The current general manager, Chris Wood, is stepping up as managing director. GamesIndustry.biz

• The longest-running editor of Rock Paper Shotgun, Graham Smith, is leaving the gaming website this week. Rock Paper Shotgun

Market Insights

• According to a report by HTML5 games distributor Playgama, the number of web browser games has grown 4.9 times over the past two years. More than 15k new games were released in Q2 of 2025 and Unity remains the leading engine for web-based games (55% of games in Q2). GamesIndustry.biz

• Niko Partners predicts a 2.3% fall in East Asia video game market in 2025 due to global issues affecting Japan and South Korea. GamesIndustry.biz

• Guerrilla's Horizon franchise has sold over 38m copies worldwide. Eurogamer

• Obsidian’s Grounded 2 has already surpassed Grounded all-time peak, having reached 49,836 as of this writing. Grounded achieved 32,012 in July 2021, approximately one year after its early access release. ComicBook Gaming

• Mobile strategy PvP battle game, Ludus: Merge Arena, has surpassed 7 million players globally. GamesBeat

• Zynga has announced that the CSR Racing franchise has crossed $1B in lifetime player spending this month. The franchise has over 180 million players worldwide. GamesBeat

• Roblox UGC game Grow a Garden had nearly 22 million concurrent users in July. Originally created by a 16-year-old, record-breaking Grow a Garden became "the top experience based on spending" within one month of release. Game Developer

Spotlight: Quarterly Recaps

• Microsoft released its financial results for Q4 of its fiscal year 2025, showing Xbox content and services revenue up 13% year-on-year. GamesIndustry.biz

• Six of the ten best-selling game son Playstation, according to data shared by Circana, were published by Microsoft: Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (#9), Minecraft (#8), Doom: The Dark Ages (#6), Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (#5), The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion: Remastered (#3), and Forza Horizon 5 (#2). GamesIndustry.biz

• Electronic Arts has published financial results for the first quarter of this fiscal year. The company outperformed expectations and claim a strong start to FY 26 which should be further bolstered by Sports releases and Battlefield 6. GamesIndustry.biz

• Krafton reports record revenue for the first half of 2025, with revenues rising to ₩1.54 trillion ($1.1 billion), an increase of 11.5% on the same period in 2024. Krafton attributed PC growth to PUBG: Battlegrounds and Inzoi. GamesIndustry.biz

• Roblox reports "significant growth across key metrics" as revenue jumps 21% YoY in Q2 FY25. The company stated that Q2 2025 results "exceeded previous top line and cash flow expectations. GamesIndustry.biz

• Meta’s Reality Labs expenses rose 1% year-on-year to $4.9B, contributing to a $4.5B operating loss for the company’s metaverse division. Revenue in the metaverse segment increased by 5% year-on-year due to sales of AI glasses. Game Developer

• Nintendo Switch 2 has sold more than 6 million units in its first seven weeks on sale. Mario Kart World has sold 5.63 million copies. Video Games Chronicle

Tech Innovations

• YouTube has started rolling out an AI feature that uses machine-learning to determine the age of viewers and feed them age-appropriate content. PC Gamer

• Levellr has released new Discord tools for video game marketers to analyze sentiment for the games being marketed. GamesBeat

• LeapFrog has announced a new electronic learning system, the LeapMove, that uses a camera and your TV for educational games that require full body movements to play. The Verge Games

Government in Games

• IWGB Game Workers union condemns its exclusion from the UK Video Games Council. In an open letter, it criticized the exclusion of the union and charitable organizations from its membership despite “an ongoing crisis in the sector involving mass layoffs, poor oversight, and unregulated AI outsourcing." GamesIndustry.biz

• In early July, the Shanghai government announced a series of measures to support software and digital content industries. One part of this policy includes a three-year pilot program that allows foreign games made in Shanghai to be treated as domestic games when applying for licenses, allowing them to avoid some of the toughest regulatory challenges in the world. The pilot program will run from July 2025 to June 2028. GamesIndustry.biz

See you next week industry watchers,

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