Our statement on the recent layoffs affecting workers at Coatsink, Splash Damage, Glowmade & Square Enix, putting over 300 workers at risk of redundancy in the run up to Christmas. If you work in the UK games industry, join our union today: iwgb.org.uk/en/join/game...

The next phase of the games industry is large-scale unionization actually

Last night's interview with Novara on the Rockstar firings is now up as its own standalone video, if you'd like to watch. Delighted to see the story picked up by the wider media in this way, as surreal as it felt to appear on a show I've been watching for years now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxuP...

EXCLUSIVE: So far it's been unclear what proof Rockstar Games has to justify its firing of 34 union members, who it claims were leaking "confidential information in a public forum". PMG has now seen some of the messages which contributed to this decision being made. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TvW...

the buried lede here: ubisoft made accounting "errors" that masked the fact that it's in serious debt

'Our solidarity will always emerge stronger:' Protests against Rockstar continue in London, Edinburgh, and Paris

“Don’t gather some of the most brilliant activists in the industry, treat us like crap, and then expect us to do nothing about it.” After the Game Awards cancelled its Future Class programme, @alyssamerc.bsky.social talked to its former honorees www.theguardian.com/games/2025/n...

Rockstar union workers have set up a solidarity fund to help them survive and fight after 30 of them were fired in an attempt to destroy the union. Help them fight back! If you can, any little bit you can donate will massively help their efforts. actionnetwork.org/fundraising/...

What leaks?

Rockstar: tries to bust unions🦹‍♀️ Us: Hold my controller 🎮🔥🔥 We're fighting back 💥💥 IWGB organized a protest in front of the @rockstargames.com parent company Take-Two Interactive in London today We'll make sure the credits are rolling on their corporate greed ❌️ @gameworkers.co.uk

We won't back down - we will fight @rockstargames.com & @taketwointeractive.bsky.social for our members' reinstatement. No one should be fired for union activity. You can support our campaign here: actionnetwork.org/fundraising/...

Have you considered this model for your studio? The worker cooperative is a little-known business model in games, focused on workers' rights and democratic management, working against the current AAA flow of the industry. youtu.be/bNVH8JQ4ORA #gamedev

This is being a little late to the news, but this is due to pressure from #StopKillingGames early on while the European Citizens' Initiative was launching in 2024, due to fears from Ubisoft that we would succeed

No comment on all the hack stuff but I wish AAA game budgets were public like the film industry, fascinating seeing them

There's news that Nintendo got hacked but since people don't know what they're talking about, people get hyped for a gigaleak 2 when all they got is just basically the repositories for what manages the japanese topic (news) pages.

Once again, make a hit game loved by many... and you still get hit by a truck. The industry is pretty sick right now.

Worried about the private acquisition of EA? Nathan Brown of @hitpoints.bsky.social is struggling to get too upset, given what the company has become. With enough awful things happening in games and the world, maybe we can have a little apathy, as a treat.

Newly minted evergreen meme

Industry: hey GDC, we need you to move out of San Francisco and the US at large because it's unsafe, deal with the still-too-common harassment issues, stop charging egregious for-profit fees, and for you to provide proper compensation for speakers GDC: we hear you but best we can do is rename it

ever since microsoft's layoffs in early july, the two zenimax unions have been fighting for impacted employees following the cancellation of the elder scrolls online studio's unannounced mmo. they've won laid-off workers more time (aka more pay), better severance, recall rights, and saved some jobs

Clovers' Hideki Kamiya feels "a very strong responsibility" to protect the studio during the current climate of industry layoffs www.gamesindustry.biz/clovers-hide...

Testronic makes 4.8 percent of its total workforce redundant, closes Madrid and Belgrade studios

Report: Crystal Dynamics layoffs came after developers scrambled to save Perfect Dark

Sure france has different laws, but the union really helped workers organize and make sur they didn't feel alone when Don't Nod started doing layoffs. Unions are the best way to defend ourselves against these top managements that just see us as disposable.

Diablo devs unionize following layoffs and dissatisfaction with AI, pay aftermath.site/diablo-union...

Giant Squid doing layoffs after SoTS released to glowing reviews is a prime example of how the industry is currently broken.

New: Blizzard cofounder's Dreamhaven is struggling in today's challenged games market per an internal letter. Its 2 new games sold below expectations. Dreamhaven now seeks funding It's not alone. Some of the most promising new studios are hitting roadblocks. Story: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

NEW: 2K Games laid off more than 80 people at BioShock 4 developer Cloud Chamber this week, about 1/3 of the studio. This new BioShock has been in the works for more than a decade across multiple studios. Here's the story behind its development hell: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Seems like the overwhelmingly negative response stuck a major nerve for these companies. Let's keep it up!

Asked some questions on the Reddit AMA, ACLU & Fight for the Future gave some great responses. Link in the comment below bsky.app/profile/acva...

Hell yeah, another Blizzard union aftermath.site/blizzard-union...

I chatted with @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social about how the UVW Freelancing Committee is committed to establishing crediting standards industry-wide. Thank you for writing this, Nicole! ❤️✊ If you’re in the US or Canada and ready for the industry to change, check out @videogameworkers.bsky.social

Ziff Davis just reported their "strongest quarterly revenue growth since 2021," up 9.8% to $352.2M, with gaming and entertainment up 7.5% YOY. So why were 8 of our members and 23 members of @zdcreatorsguild.bsky.social just laid off? bit.ly/3H0Osvb

Facing pressure from payment processors, the indie game platform delisted many adult titles this week. Itch.io began offering free NSFW content again on Thursday as it looks for new payment options. www.wired.com/story/itchio...

Visa and Mastercard released their public statements on censorship! Visa and Mastercard are pretending they don't make any judgments on legal purchases, but Collective Shout CLEARLY told us they successfully pressured payment processors. KEEP CALLING! IT'S WORKING!

This is extremely cool. GOG is taking a stand against payment processors caving to fundamentalist religious groups and is offering a bunch of "banned" games for free. freedomtobuy.games

Great work by PC Gamer showing MasterCard shares much responsibility for what happened to Steam www.pcgamer.com/games/master...

NEW: Multiple employees at ZeniMax, including two union members, have accused Microsoft of once again failing workers with its latest round of layoffs. Sources described the way the company handled the cuts as "inhumane" and claimed work will be hampered after the loss of key talent. More below:

The overall number of full-time employees at Nintendo has risen by 366 over the past year, from 5,264 to 5,630. Over the same time period, employee numbers at Sony's gaming division have shrunk by 600, from 12,700 to 12,100. www.gamesindustry.biz/nintendo-rec...

Okay, this is fucking cool. A totally *FREE* magazine for indie devs focussed on industry insights. There's even a physical option where you just pay for postage!

Studio behind Oblivion Remastered, one of 2025's biggest hits, subject to mass layoffs - report www.eurogamer.net/studio-behin...

Hello. About a year and a half ago, some guy called Ralph asked me if I wanted to make a new videogame website. We're launching it today. Maybe you can even visit it if people stop hammering the server for a second.

A modern trend in multiplayer games is the use of kernel-level anti-cheat, software that's given total access to a computer's most fundamental systems. www.xda-developers.com/kernel-level...

over 20% of the global game dev force was laid of on the last 3 years and absolutely none of it was because of piracy

The circumstances around the removal of the leadership team behind Subnautica 2 is very sketchy, and the story has only gotten more complicated as it develops. This week's episode of Unpacked from @nickjcal.bsky.social is now available!

The Subnautica story tho. Games industry be normal for just one day challenge - impossible.

SAG-AFTRA members ratify new interactive media contract, conclude 11-month strike

buy now pay later is a predatory scheme – another means of luring desperate people into debt – and games are worse for having it

Xbox's absentee landlords at the top are a big part of the problem, as the likes of Everwild/Rare show. An even bigger one is the total disdain Microsoft is increasingly showing for anything resembling humanity, which trickles down into everything else. www.eurogamer.net/xboxs-absent...