The French video game crisis, much like around the world, has a systemic nature but also features several local characteristics. Today, we will delve into the causes — from fatal errors by major companies and management irresponsibility to issues with government subsidies and the role of unions.

In the spring of 2024, the studio Fenris Creations, then still called CCP Games, promised to release the source code of its Carbon engine to the public. Two years later, they fulfilled that promise.

The end of the era of physical game editions is drawing closer. Sony announced that starting from January 2028, it will no longer release discs for new titles on PlayStation consoles.

Troubles continue in the French studios. This time, Supamonks — one of the teams involved in the beat ’em up roguelike Absolum — has come under fire.

Spill Games is a young studio from India that develops casual mobile games. Recently, it secured investments in a seed funding round.

Google has faced another accusation of monopoly. This time, the accuser is the South Korean Fair Trade Commission (KFTC). Read more.

The Godot team has decided to tighten the rules for pull requests to the engine’s source code. It announced that it will no longer consider proposals generated by artificial intelligence.

BR-DGE has successfully closed a £10 million funding round. The new investor in the platform is American Bettor Capital. Current investors of the company also participated in the round.

In the American state of California, for several months now, legislators have been considering Bill AB 1921, also known as the Protect Our Games Act, which aims to preserve online games. Recently, another stage in this process took place, and it did not end in favor of the initiative’s authors.

The number of people leaving the studio is unknown.

Sandy Petersen, a veteran of id Software, strongly dislikes gamers who pirate games. Recently, he wrote a post on X, where he criticized these individuals and stated that without pirates, id Software would have faced a very different fate.

Last May, Patrick O’Luanaigh left the VR studio nDreams he founded, after 19 years as CEO. Now he has decided to return to game development.

Recently, Comcast Corporation announced plans to spin off its media holding NBCUniversal into a separate publicly traded company. Amidst this, rumors have surfaced that after the business split, NBCUniversal may begin to explore new strategic directions — including entering the video game market.

This was shared on the social network X by Cyberpunk 2077’s quest director, Paweł Sasko.

The Japanese company DeNA, one of the developers of the hit mobile game Pokémon TCG Pocket, recently secured governmental support. It received 1.5 billion yen ($9.25 million) in subsidies under the IP360 program.

Robert Henrysson will no longer lead Supermassive Games studio. He has decided to leave the team after two and a half years of work at the company.

The Polysights platform has received significant investments in a pre-seed funding round, totaling $1.5 million.

It has become known about yet another studio that may cease to exist as a result of the upcoming restructuring of XBOX. As reported by GamesBeat, this is Undead Labs — the team behind the State of Decay series.

TinyBuild, the publisher of Hello Neighbor, Potion Craft, The King is Watching, and many other games, has gained a new shareholder. That shareholder is the venture capital firm Griffin Gaming Partners.