Employees of Quantic Dream and Ubisoft Barcelona went on strike, Sony announced plans to continue working on live-service games, and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth hit a new record peak in Steam's concurrent users. Here's a recap of the main events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.
- Developers from Quantic Dream went on strike to protest upcoming layoffs. It's expected that 115 people, or a quarter of the studio's workforce, could lose their jobs due to the cancellation of the failed Spellcasters Chronicles. Additionally, activists tried to protect Star Wars Eclipse through the strike. The protest coincided with a visit from Lucasfilm representatives to Quantic Dream to assess the current state of the game. By taking action, developers aimed to draw attention from the studio's partners to the issues at hand. Protestors claim that the Star Wars Eclipse team is severely understaffed, and instead of laying off 115 people, they should be transferred to the project—without this, Star Wars Eclipse risks never being released. Quantic Dream's management hasn't commented on the strike.
- Employees of Ubisoft's Barcelona division also decided to organize a strike. They plan to strike every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon from June 30 to July 16. They hope this will protect Ubisoft Barcelona from previously announced layoffs, which would see 51 people leave the division. Protestors are demanding not only the cancellation of these layoffs but also protection against future cuts for at least five years. They also want the return of remote work, a revision of the wage increase plan, and the removal of obstacles to career development within the company.
- Hideaki Nishino, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment, gave an interview to Famitsu. During the conversation, the top manager stated that the failure of Concord and several other projects hasn't deterred the company from continuing its work on live-service games. He described this category of games as relatively young and noted that many studios are currently experimenting with different formats. Therefore, Sony has no intention of giving up and will continue to seek new ideas.
- Turning Wheel studio boasted that its roguelike game, Barony, has reached a significant milestone—sales of the Steam version of the game have surpassed one million copies. As the developers reminded, it took them 11 years to reach this point, as Barony was released back in June 2015. Notably, 75% of the game's Steam sales occurred only after Turning Wheel released a major update called Quality of Death for Barony in 2023. The studio did not disclose sales figures for the roguelike on other platforms—Epic Games Store, GOG, and Nintendo Switch.
- Another roguelike, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, set a new record for peak concurrent users on Steam this weekend. According to SteamDB, on the evening of June 28, the number of simultaneous users in the game reached 123,429. For comparison, the previous peak was 70,701 users, which The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth achieved in April 2021, when the Repentance expansion was released. The new record was made possible by a 90% discount.