Schell Games Lays Off Staff — 'Among Us 3D' Co-Dev Hit

Schell Games, the Pittsburgh studio behind the I Expect You to Die series and co-developer of Among Us 3D, has cut staff, according to LinkedIn posts from affected employees. The timing is rough: the studio has been one of VR's more reliable creative bets, and losses here narrow an already thin field of mid-size VR-focused developers.

GamesIndustry.biz →

Compulsion Games and Ninja Theory Confirm Independence, Lay Out What Comes Next

Two of the four studios Microsoft cut loose in July have now formally confirmed the split is complete. Both Compulsion Games and Ninja Theory are operating independently and have outlined plans for their next projects — which, under Xbox, looked increasingly uncertain. For developers at those studios, the clean break is probably a relief; for Xbox's reputation as a steward of creative talent, the saga remains an uncomfortable chapter.

Pure Xbox →

Ubisoft Posts €1.5B Loss and Scraps Seven Games

Ubisoft's financials for 2026 make for grim reading: a €1.5 billion loss and seven cancelled projects. With a market cap now below €1 billion and Tencent holding a meaningful stake, acquisition speculation has moved from idle to pointed. The company that once seemed too big to fail is now small enough to buy.

Tech Insider →

Xbox Bought Its Way to the Top — Now It Has to Prove It Can Run Studios

A useful long read on what Microsoft's studio strategy has actually produced: billions spent on acquisitions, several closures, and a pipeline that still needs to justify the price tag. The argument is simple — players judge Xbox by completed games, not org charts. The evidence so far is mixed at best.

GameSpace.com →

Thatgamecompany Launches a Publishing Label — and It'll Fund AA Projects

The Journey studio has launched Thatgamepublisher, a label specifically chasing games that 'move people through play.' Unusually for an indie publisher, it's open to AA-scale budgets and larger teams — not just sub-$1 million projects. The games market could use more publishers with a clear aesthetic mandate.

GamesIndustry.biz →

Gaming's Investment Boom Is Flowing to AI Tools — Not to Studios

A sharp analysis from SuperJoost: 2026's VC money is pouring into technology that makes games cheaper and faster to build, while actual game studios are being passed over. It's a structural shift, not a blip — investors are betting on the picks and shovels, not the miners. Studios that can't demonstrate AI-driven cost efficiency are increasingly finding the door closed.

SuperJoost / Substack →

Google DeepMind Is Using EVE Online as an AI Research Lab

DeepMind has partnered with CCP Games to use EVE Online's persistent, complex universe as a research environment for AI. Following DeepMind's history with Atari and AlphaGo, this is a meaningful step up in scope — EVE's economy, diplomacy, and emergent player behaviour offer complexity that controlled lab settings can't replicate. Worth watching for what it produces.

GIGAZINE →

Combos Debuts at Gamescom — AI Game Creation Platform for Non-Developers

Converge.AI's Combos platform made its public debut at Gamescom 2026, showing games built by the platform's own creator community rather than a development team. It's the clearest demonstration yet of AI-generated games reaching consumer-facing showcase events. Whether the output holds up as actual games rather than novelty demos is the question the industry will be asking.

PR Newswire →

Google Is Spotlighting Parallel's Colony as Its Flagship AI Game

At Gamescom Dev, Google showcased Colony from blockchain studio Parallel on its own booth, effectively endorsing it as the AI game worth watching right now. The game leans heavily on AI-driven systems throughout development. It's notable that Google is putting its brand behind a specific title — that's not endorsement language, that's a marketing partnership.

MobileGamer.biz →

Elseland Publishes 20 AI-Developed Games in a Single Drop

Vietnamese studio Elseland released 20 titles on 22 August, all developed through automated AI production pipelines. It's a proof of concept for scaled AI game development — and a preview of what discovery will look like when studios can ship this volume. For players and storefronts alike, the signal-to-noise problem is about to get considerably worse.

Vietnam Investment Review →

CD Projekt Red Rules Out Generative AI for The Witcher 4

Alongside confirming a 2028 target for The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red has stated it won't use generative AI in development, citing intellectual property concerns. With 500-plus developers on the project and a switch to Unreal Engine 5 already extending the timeline, the studio is clearly betting that handcrafted quality is the differentiator. It's a notable public position at a time when most studios are hedging.

Technology.org →

James Pond Legacy Faces Fresh AI Art Allegations — A Year After the Same Controversy

A rerelease bundle for the James Pond series is drawing identical accusations to its 2025 predecessor: AI-generated box art, trailer visuals, and possibly music. The original series creator already called out the developers publicly last year. The fact that they've apparently done it again — and again without disclosure — says something about where accountability currently sits.

Aftermath →

Finnish Studio MiTale Is Building a Bridge Between Quantum Computing and Game Development

MiTale is developing Naviqate, a tool designed to lower the barrier between quantum technologies and conventional game dev workflows, alongside QWiz — a game that turns open quantum physics problems into puzzles. It's genuinely early-stage and speculative, but as quantum hardware edges closer to practical use, someone has to start building the tooling. MiTale is apparently that someone.

The Quantum Insider →

Free GameDev Assets: Unreal Fab, Unity, Godot, and More — August/September Round-Up

GameFromScratch has compiled the August/September free asset drop: three Unreal Engine freebies on Fab, a free Unity publisher asset, Kenney packs, and Godot store additions. Routine but genuinely useful, particularly for solo developers and small teams watching budgets.

GameFromScratch →

The Witcher 4's Unreal Engine 5 Switch Is Meaningfully Extending Development — CDPR Acknowledges It

CD Projekt Red's 2028 target for The Witcher 4 is partly explained by the switch from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5 — the studio says that transition alone accounts for a meaningful portion of the timeline. It's a rare public acknowledgement from a major studio that engine migration has real costs. Useful context for anyone benchmarking UE5 adoption timelines.

Technology.org →

Gamescom ONL 2026: Lego Skylines, Gears of War E-Day, Witcher 3 DLC, and Dozens More

Opening Night Live 2026 was one of the show's most packed editions: Paradox and Lego announced Lego Skylines (a brick-ified Cities: Skylines), Gears of War E-Day confirmed an October release as an Xbox exclusive, and CD Projekt Red revealed The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, a narrative bridge DLC ahead of The Witcher 4. Wizards of the Coast's Exodus, a sci-fi third-person shooter with a talking octopus co-pilot, landed an April 2027 date. The full list runs deep — Dlala Studios announced Murals, Paradox showed post-apocalyptic city-builder Afterworld, Valor Mortis confirmed its October 13 date, and HoYoverse revealed cosy life-sim Petit Planet.

IGN →

GTA 6 Extended Look Premieres on Netflix Tomorrow — Hours Before the YouTube Drop

Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto VI: An Extended Look will debut on Netflix on 27 August at 3 p.m. ET, before hitting YouTube and other platforms. The Netflix-first window is a strategic choice — the partnership, confirmed in a previous issue, continues to pay off for both parties. This is the one gaming premiere that every platform wishes it had.

Collider →

The Witcher 4 Has a Release Window: 2028

CD Projekt Red has confirmed a 2028 target for The Witcher 4, the first time the studio has put a year on the project. More than 500 developers are working on it, Ciri leads the new trilogy, and it runs on Unreal Engine 5. The studio previously only confirmed it wouldn't arrive before 2027, so this is a meaningful narrowing of expectations.

Technology.org →

Xbox Is Running Two Days of Gamescom Showcases — Dragon's Dogma 2 and CoD MW4 in the Mix

Xbox is following ONL with back-to-back broadcast days, with a second showcase on 27 August featuring Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, Planet Zoo 2, Cassette Beasts 2002, Turok: Origins, and more. For a platform under scrutiny about its creative output, two days of uninterrupted game reveals is the right counter-programming.

GamesRadar+ →

Brazil Brings 35 Indie Games to Gamescom — Including a 19th-Century Survival Adventure

Brazil's contingent at Gamescom 2026 includes 35 indie titles in a coordinated national showcase. The standout is ARIDA 2: Rise of the Brave, a survival adventure set in Brazil's drought-stricken 19th-century backlands. The scale of the Brazilian showing signals a regional scene that's punching well above its historical profile.

The Escapist →

Ananta Gets a Release Date — Free-to-Play Anime GTA Arrives January 2027

Ananta, the free-to-play open-world game that's drawn repeated comparisons to GTA in anime form, now has a launch window: January 2027. The date was confirmed during Gamescom ONL. Given the crowded open-world market, the anime aesthetic is either a distinguishing strength or a very specific bet.

GamesRadar+ →

Ubisoft's Market Cap Has Fallen Below €1B — Acquisition Math Is Getting Interesting

Ubisoft's €1.5 billion loss and seven cancelled games leave the company with a market cap below €1 billion. Tencent holds roughly 9.6% of the parent and 26.32% of Vantage Studios. With EA having gone private and the broader consolidation trend ongoing, analysts are openly talking acquisition. A company once worth €10 billion is now, on paper, affordable.

Tech Insider →

Gaming's VC Boom Is Funding Infrastructure, Not Studios

The SuperJoost analysis is worth filing under business as well as AI: 2026's investment surge is explicitly targeting technology that makes game development cheaper, not the studios doing the developing. The implication for mid-size studios without a cost-reduction story to sell to investors is bleak. This is capital allocation as a leading indicator of industry restructuring.

SuperJoost / Substack →

UK Studios and the Tax Year: What Funding Is Actually Available — and What It Costs

Sheridans lawyers Isobel Sims and Alex Tutty have broken down the funding landscape for UK game studios as the new tax year advances, including an honest look at the strings attached. The 'no such thing as a free lunch' framing is apt: grants, tax relief, and public funding all come with compliance overhead that smaller studios frequently underestimate.

GamesIndustry.biz →

Xbox's Acquisition Spree: The Studios Are There, the Games Aren't Yet

GameSpace's analysis of Microsoft's studio strategy is direct: the investment is done, and the measure of success is now completed games and stable franchises — not headcount on a corporate org chart. Xbox has bought its way to an enormous portfolio. Whether it can manage it is a different question, and one the next two years will start to answer.

GameSpace.com →