As MultiVersus heads toward its second season (for the second time), its creator Player First Games has been officially acquired by Warner Bros.Per Variety, co-founders Tony Huynh and Chris White will retain leadership of the developer. The former noted that being a part of the WB Games umbrella will benefit the studio and its playerbase."We have worked with Player First Games over several years to create and launch MultiVersus," added WB Games head David Haddad. "We are very pleased to welcome this talented team to Warner Bros. Games."MultiVersus first launched with an open beta in 2022, and was gained popularity not long after. WB Games affirmed it'd stick with the title and Player First, all but saying it was safe from the then-aftereffects of the WB Discovery merger.After its beta was shut down last year, MultiVersus returned as a full (but still free-to-play) game. Now running on Unreal Engine 5, the title appears to be doing well enough that WB wants to further invest in it and its studio.Warner Bros. previously said it wanted MultiVersus to be one of its live-service champions. Time will tell if the game can live up to those ambitions, and what else …
Category: News
A trio of alums from Pixelberry Studios have formed a new team of their own in Candlelight Games. Per the website, the Washington-based team will make narrative-based titles "[that] unite people through shared experiences.""Our mission is to deliver heartfelt, character-centric narrative games with meaningful choices that truly resonate with players," wrote co-founder Andrew Shvarts. "We're…committed to creating immersive experiences that stay with you long after the credits roll."Shvarts previously worked at Pixelberry as a creative director on its mobile narrative game, Choices. His fellow co-founders, Megan Schwarz and Royal McGraw, also worked on the game as a respective lead writer and executive producer.Schwarz and Shvarts were among those let go from Pixelberry earlier this year when the studio laid off an unspecified number of staff. More recently, the Choices developer was acquired by Series Entertainment.The three have individually said they'll offer a first look at their unannounced debut project "soon."…
Space Goblin Studio – an indie team with “AAA credentials” – has revealed its debut game, Astrobotanica, is set to release in early access in 2025.
Delivering a “unique blend of survival, exploration, and plant wizardry”, Astrobotanica is described as a “lush open-world survival adventure” that “transports players to prehistoric Earth, where an alien botanist crash-lands while searching for plant species to save their dying home planet, Aya”.
You can see it in action in the teaser below:
ASTROBOTANICA – Official Announcement Teaser
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The sad and beautiful wolf adventure Neva has a release date.
Neva, which was initially announced back in May last year, will launch across PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on 15th October, the team announced during today’s Nintendo Direct. On its release, it will retail at £16.99.
Described as an “emotionally-charged new adventure”, Neva follows the story of a young woman named Alba and her lifelong bond with a wolf.
Neva | Release Date Trailer | Coming October 15
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Defunct publisher Adult Swim games has published "sunset statements" on a number of its indie games' Steam pages, noting "Adult Swim is no longer able to continue as publisher for this game and the developer is not available to take over as publisher at this time."As spotted by GamesIndustry.biz, the near-identical statements were posted to the pages for Super House of Dead Ninjas, Traverser, Mega Coin Squad, and Zenzizenzic on Tuesday, and in at least one case, the developer was not actually contacted for a potential rights transfer, with Bitmap Bureau LTD (which made Super House of Dead Ninjas under a different name, MegaDev) taking to X to note they would like to keep the game going.
The interest is still there for some Adult Swim-affiliated developers
"Well, we're still active (under a new name), and more than willing to keep Super House Of Dead Ninjas alive!" the post said. In a reply, the developer said, "We sold the IP to Adult Swim back in the day, but we&#x…
Tose, a Japanese developer that's assisted larger studios with development on their games, saw consistent losses during the third quarter of the 2023-2024 fiscal year.In its recent earnings report spotted by Automaton, net sales for the studio came to 3.243 million yen (or $20.1 million), down 27.6 percent from the previous year. Overall losses amounted to 367 million yen over the nine-month period.
Cancellations and project delays to blame
As translated in its report, Tose puts the blame on several projects being cancelled by unnamed clients. Some were in development since the start of the 2023-2024 year, and their cuts led to "a large loss" in revenue.Blame was also laid at in-progress projects being pushed to the 2024-2025 year. As such, Tose has lowered its forecast projections from 5.520 million yen to 4.830 million yen for the remainder of the fiscal period.Tose didn't list any specific projects, but it's worth noting that throughout the decades, it's worked with Nintendo and Square Enix. The 44-year-o…
Joseph Rubino, a former cinematics editor for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V, suggested the game's planned story DLC was scrapped once Grand Theft Auto Online grew into such a gargantuan hit.Talking to SanInPlay, Rubino revealed he was at work on an expansion focused on Trevor, one of the game's co-leads. Story DLC for each lead was previously datamined, and Trevor's actor Steven Ogg mentioned its existence in April.Per Rubino, prioritizing GTA V's multiplayer marked a shift in Rockstar's hopes for the open-world game. It was such a "cash cow" that he claims the studio didn't think single-player expansions would be able to properly stand beside it."I think looking back now I would say that you could probably do both, but that was a business decision that they made," he added. Further adding to the sting was the DLC was quite a ways into development before it got cut, which he admitted made him "a little upset." Even so, he said "a lot" of that expansion was put into GTA Online. "It's not like they wasted it," he acknowledged. "It was really, really good."GTA Online has been so ever-pr…
Square Enix released Final Fantasy XIV's new Dawntrail expansion this week, and the new adventure is doing big numbers. In a new blog, director/producer Naoki Yoshida claimed the MMO hit a new record of concurrent players.Hard numbers weren't posted, but Yoshida noted the concurrents were its biggest since the soft reboot A Realm Reborn launched back in 2013. He considered it even more impressive given the game's launch issues."It has been a joy to watch you all play, each in your own unique way," he said. "But we’ve become aware of several issues that may have proven a hinderance to your overall experience. For that, I sincerely apologize."Charting Final Fantasy XIV's numbers is a little tricky, given its multiplatform status. On SteamDB, it had a recent 24-hour peak of 71,208 players, which puts it not that far behind the peak of 95,150 players back when Endwalker launched in 2021.So big was Endwalker that Square Enix had to stop selling the game ahead of launch because it'd gotten too popular. Even with that expansion's issues, it went on to become a big revenue driver for Square Enix at the time.Dawntrail's importance was…
British publisher Kwalee has acquired a 3.58 percent stake in Devolver Digital.The company said the equity investment is part of a "broader strategy for balanced growth" and described Devolver as a "fantastic brand" with "category defining games.""The investment in Devolver fits with Kwalee's broader growth strategy to expand beyond its heritage in hyper casual mobile gaming to achieve more balanced growth. The minority investment in Devolver increases Kwalee's exposure to the PC/console segment, one of its four target verticals," reads a press release."Kwalee's own entry into the PC/console market is relatively new, with its latest launch Robobeat rated 'overwhelmingly positive' on Steam, receiving 97 percent positive reviews. Kwalee has over ten promising PC/console games in the pipeline including The Precinct, The Spirit of the Samurai and In Sink."Kwalee was able to make the investment after Devolver undertook an equity placing of £7.9 million ($10 million) through the issue of 23.9 million new shares of common stock. Those shares represented 5.4 percent of the issued and outstanding share capital of De…
Kotaku Australia is being shut down by publisher Pedestrian Group so the company can focus on its own brands.The Guardian broke the news after obtaining an email sent from Pedestrian Group CEO, Matt Rowley, to a number of employees across the company.Pedestrian Group currently licenses the Kotaku brand and others including Gizmodo, Vice, Refinery29 and Lifehacker (which are also being axed) so it can deploy them in Australia.Rowley described Pedestrian Group–which is owned by media conglomerate Nine–as a "highly successful business" in that email, but indicated the company has decided to move away from licensed brands."We've made the tough decision to focus on our wholly owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome–the entire business," he said."This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people."