EA really wants people to know it's truly, madly, deeply invested in generative AI.Taking the stage during the company's recent investor day, EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke about how the technology is driving innovation within EA studios and said it has become "the very core of our business."Wilson previously claimed 60 percent of EA's development processes could be "impacted" by generative AI, and said the technology is something the publisher is "embracing deeply." Those remarks came shortly after EA laid off 5 percent of its workforce.Doubling down on that narrative, Wilson said AI isn't a "buzzword" for EA and noted the company currently has over "100 novel AI projects" in development across three categories: efficiency, expansion, and transformation.Discussing the former, Wilson said efficiency isn't just about delivering "cost savings," but rather "doing what we do today faster, cheaper, and at a higher quality.""That means driving more iterations, more testing and high quality content for our communities. It means removing obstacles for our game developers," he added. "I…
Author: Elijah Turner
After a year of laying off developers, Behaviour Interactive is bringing some new ones into the fold. The Dead by Daylight developer/publisher announced today that it is acquiring Red Hook Studios, the company behind Darkest Dungeon and Darkest Dungeon II.It's incredibly rare for a game studio to announce an acquisition like this so soon after a year of layoffs and studio closures. So rare, in fact, that the only comparable example feels like Activision Blizzard's establishment of the Polish game studio Elsewhere in May 2024 while parent company Microsoft axed jobs across the company.The news may be bittersweet for plenty of the game development community. On the one hand, the Red Hook acquisition looks to be a coup for both companies. On the other hand, so many other developers lost work—and an entire studio was closed down—on the road here.In an interview with Game Developer, Red Hook Studios co-founders Tyler Sigman and Chris Bourassa, joined by Behaviour Interactive CEO Rémi Racine, explained why both parties pursued this transaction. For Red Hook, it was a chance for stability that would fuel bigger and loftier dreams, and according to Racine, it's a move…
Even after laying off over a thousand employees at the start of the year, game engine and monetization solutions developer Unity has yet to see the 'profitable growth' it sought. Today the company reported a 16 percent decline in revenue year-over-year (down from $533 million to $426 million), contributing to a net loss of $126 million for the time period ending July 31, 2024.Unity's losses are nothing new, but their persistent presence was what drove an ill-advised "Runtime Fee" policy introduced in late 2023 that was altered for Unity 6 users after a mass uproar from developers. The good news is it is losing less money; net losses declined about 35 percent, decreasing from $193 million in 2023 to $126 million.
Unity's Grow Solutions did not in fact, grow
Some of Unity's revenue dip was expected given the company announced it would be winding down strategic partnerships and professional services that proven vestigial to its operations. What's surprising is that revenue from Grow Solutions …
The traditionally online and free-to-play-based game industry of South Korean game development may be shifting gears. According to a recent report from Wesley LeBlanc in the final issue of Game Informer, developers at multiple studios like Round8 Studio, Shift Up, and Pearl Abyss are seeing signs that players at home and abroad are attracted to single-player experiences on PC and console.LeBlanc reached out to developers after seeing these companies releasing single-player games like Round8 Studio's Lies of P, Shift Up's Stellar Blade (published by Sony Interactive Entertainment), and Pearl Abyss' upcoming Crimson Desert. Even longtime online and mobile publishers are spreading their platform wings, with Nexon subsidiary Neople soon releasing the single-player The First Berserker: Khazan, and NCSoft bringing the free-to-play PC game Throne and Liberty to consoles in September.Developers at these companies confirmed to LeBlanc that the trend is real—and more of them are joining the "traditional" console and PC market sometimes thought to be calcified here in the West.But why are they making the jump? There wasn't one clear answer—instead a constella…
Last week saw the formations of wall-to-wall unions within Blizzard and ZeniMax, which represent some of the biggest moves in the game industry's current unionization drive.On the newest Game Developer Podcast episode, Bethesda's Autumn Mitchell touched on several benefits won by union negotiators during discussions with Microsoft. One such benefit is "recall rights," wherein companies are required to offer to bring back employees they laid off if they need to refill their role two or three years after they're dismissed from the company.Mitchell explained that she'd seen these terms in other tech industry contracts, and their inclusion is a boon for employees and employer alike. "We're talking about eliminating that 'revolving door' at least to some degree," she said, alluding to the fact that high turnover obliterates institutional knowledge.In other words, the industry's swaths of layoffs could potentially be alleviated by studios having a fast method to re-hire new talent after their finances are stabilized.Fellow Bethesda developer Chris Lusco highlighted other unionization gains, such as converting some freelancers to…
UK game development conference Develop will head to Liverpool in November for Develop: North.The one-day event will take place on November 14, 2024, at The Spine in Liverpool. Registration will open in September, when more details will be announced.Develop has become a mainstay on the UK game industry calendar and takes place in Brighton in July. The show attracted a record number of attendees this year, with 5225 people heading to the seaside earlier this month—an increase of 5 percent on last year.Organizer Tandem Events said there was also a "sizable increase" in the number of exhibitors across an expanded expo floor."Over the three days Develop:Brighton 2024 played host to over 100 sessions, from roundtable discussions to headline keynotes, as well as the biggest ever industry expo and the Develop:Star Awards—celebrating industry excellence over the past twelve months," it added in a press release.This year's keynotes were delivered by Sony's Shuhei Yoshida and Greg Rice, Interior/Night's Caroline Marchal, and Super Evil Megacorp's Kristian Segerstrale."The continued growth and success of Develop:Brighton shows the desire among t…