Two weeks after release, Firewalk Studios is taking its debut shooter Concord offline on Friday, September 6.While acknowledging its high points, director Ryan Ellis admitted the PlayStation 5 and PC game's initial launch "didn’t land the way we’d intended."Concord released on August 23, and its alleged underperformance has dominated conversation around the game. On Steam, it's had low numbers since launch, and PlayStation hasn't commented on its sales or player metrics.Firewalk will "explore options" to improve Concord so it finds a better audience. Current players will be refunded for their digital (on PlayStation Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store) and physical purchases, then lose access to the game after September 6.
EA, the sprawling publisher that laid off 5 percent of its workforce in February, has reported net bookings of $7.43 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024. That's a 1 percent upswing-year-on-year and was largely driven by the company's roster of live service releases such as EA Sports FC and Madden NFL.Net revenue for FY24 increased by 2 percent over that same period to $7.56 billion. Live service titles delivered $5.54 billion of that total. Full game titles pulled in $2.02 billion, with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor highlighted as a major contributor.EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the company managed to produce "bigger, bolder world class entertainment" during the fiscal year and engaged "hundreds of millions of players and fans."He claimed EA will "co…
EA, the sprawling publisher that laid off 5 percent of its workforce in February, has reported net bookings of $7.43 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2024. That's a 1 percent upswing-year-on-year and was largely driven by the company's roster of live service releases such as EA Sports FC and Madden NFL.Net revenue for FY24 increased by 2 percent over that same period to $7.56 billion. Live service titles delivered $5.54 billion of that total. Full game titles pulled in $2.02 billion, with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor highlighted as a major contributor.EA CEO Andrew Wilson said the company managed to produce "bigger, bolder world class entertainment" during the fiscal year and engaged "hundreds of millions of players and fans."He claimed EA will "co…
A new report from Digiday reveals Roblox players will be able to buy real-life items from Walmart within the platform itself.The Walmart Discovered server, which goes active later today, will let players visit a digital replica of the store. There, they can try on in-game items and load an "ecommerce experience" that links to the retailer's website.Companies like Meta and X have openly talked about wanting their platforms to be one-stop destinations for banking, socializing, and more. With this Walmart partnership, Roblox Corp. is making a statement and (challege) to other companies with those aims.Roblox is at an advantage and disadvantage here. The platform is big with teens and young adults, but this may raise further questions about it exploiting its own playerbase.In th…
2023 and 2024 have seen significant layoffs across the game industry. Studios of all sizes have been affected, and 18,000 layoffs are estimated to have hit since 2023.According to Omdia analyst Liam Deane, the layoffs are such where companies aren't as bothered by them anymore. In fact, he speculated studios are less image-conscious about them now than in previous years."Companies become less worried about the risk of losing talent to the competition," he said in a chat with Game Developer. "Making cuts two years ago would have made you look bad to investors; now it's just part of an industry-wide trend."A survey from Game Developer Collective revealed 44 percent of participants experienced layoffs at their company in 2023. Before 2024 is over, it'll easi…
Disney Games has added five new members to its executive leadership team. Two wholly new hires with Blizzard and Blizzard experience have joined as three longtime Disney and Marvel staffers were promoted.Ray Gresko, a co-lead on development for Overwatch and Diablo 3, has been brought on as Disney Games VP. Chiefly, he'll team with Epic Games on the pair's previously announced $1.5 billion collaboration.Interestingly, Gresko's hiring is a semi-homecoming. He began in the industry at Lucasfilm working as a programmer on Star Wars: Dark Forces and its sequel.Marvel Games leader Jay Ong will now lead Disney's global games licensing business. At Marvel, he helped launch Marvel Snap and the recent Marvel's Spider-Man games, and he'll now support all franchises unde…