Take-Two Interactive, the publisher behind Grand Theft Auto, and the parent company of Rockstar Games and 2K has announced that the company has decided to lay off around 5% of its workforce or around 600 employees. The company announced in a statement on Tuesday that the identified in-development game projects would be canceled as a result of the budget cuts.

According to a filing made on Tuesday, the company expects to spend up to $200 million as part of the downsizing effort, which includes up to $140 million in project cancellations and $35 million in employee-related expenses. In addition, this decision will save around $160 million for Take-Two Interactive.

CEO of Take-Two Interactive Strauss Zelnick had stated earlier in the year that the company was considering reducing costs, but he also stated at the time that there were “no current plans” for layoffs. Moreover, the company launched a previous “cost reduction program” in February of last year with the goal to save $50 million annually. That decision resulted in a round of layoffs in the following month, affecting several companies.

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Sega has sold Relic Entertainment and will shed 240 staff across its European studios, including Sega Europe, Creative Assembly, and Hardlight. Creative Assembly and Hardlight are known for creating Total War and Sonic Dream Team. Jurgen Post, the director of Sega Europe, emailed the staff this morning to inform them of the cuts and the sale of Relic Entertainment, which developed Dawn of War and Company of Heroes.

The layoffs affected approximately 240 Creative Assembly, Hardlight, and Sega Europe employees. However, the email did not mention Two Point Studios and Sports Interactive, two other studios owned by Sega Europe.

Most job losses will occur at Creative Assembly at the publisher’s Sega Europe office. Sega Europe laid off 121 Relic Entertainment employees in May 2023. Later in September, Sega canceled Creative Assembly’s multiplayer extraction shooter ‘Hyenas.’ A few jobs will be affected at Sega Hardlight, another UK-based studio and the developer behind the mobile game Sonic Dream Team.

In an official statement, Sega explained the adjustments to a “rapidly changing” financial environment this morning. This comprised a “reactionary decline from the stay-at-home demand in Covid-19 and the economic downturn due to inflation,” which translates to “profitability has been lowered.”

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According to reports from Insider Gaming, the leaked specs for the PlayStation 5 Pro earlier today were real, and Sony is reportedly targeting a 2024 holiday release. On March 15, the YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead posted a video about leaked documents from Sony that showed the specs for the PlayStation 5 Pro. Later, Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson confirmed that the leaked PS5 Pro specs document was real.

As per Insider Gaming’s report, the leaked document is from a PlayStation developer portal sent to first-party developers within Sony. Henderson’s report suggests that first-party PlayStation studios have been testing the PlayStation 5 Pro devkit since September last year, and third-party studios reportedly got access this January.

Sony has been developing the PlayStation 5 Pro under the codename ‘Trinity’, and the console will be targeting improved performance and consistent frames at 4K resolution. In addition, the Pro model will also introduce a new ‘Performance Mode’ for 8K resolution. Furthermore, the Pro model could come with a much more powerful GPU than the current PS5 models, which could be up to three times faster.

The leaked document also mentioned PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which is rumoured to be PlayStation’s machine learning for image upscaling, similar to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR. The PSSR will be able to upscale up to 8K resolution and improve ray tracing performance on the PlayStation 5 Pro.

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On Thursday, Embracer Group confirmed that the company has sold a large portion of Saber Interactive for $247 million and will cease all operations in Russia. Beacon Interactive, a company controlled by Matthew Karch, the co-founder of Saber Interactive has bought them through a group of private investors. After the deal, Beacon will acquire nearly 3,000 employees and 38 projects from Embracer.

Embracer announced that the company sold all of the Saber Interactive-branded studios, including New World Interactive, Nimble Giant Entertainment, 3D Realms, Mad Head Games, Fractured Byte, Sandbox Strategies, and Slipgate Ironworks.

According to the announcement, Embracer will retain Aspyr, TripWire, Beamdog, Tuxedo Labs, Demiurge, Shiver, Snapshot Games, and 34 Big Things. Furthermore, the company will continue working with 4A Games and Zen Studios for now, as Saber plans to acquire them in the future.

Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors said in a statement,

I am pleased that we have found a win-win solution for Embracer and the parts of Saber that now will leave us. This transaction puts both companies in a stronger position to thrive going forward.

Embracer is now able to discontinue all operations in Russia, according to a previous board decision, while safeguarding many developer jobs under new independent ownership. At the same time, we keep key companies, valuable IPs and future publishing rights.

Cash flow is immediately improved, and we remain committed to reducing net debt. The transaction yields additional headroom to amortize debt in accordance with existing bank agreements and will improve financial flexibility.

This is the first transaction of the previously mentioned structured processes and marks a small but important step in our journey to transform Embracer into the future for the benefit of all employees, gamers, and shareholders.

Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors on the sale of Saber

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Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson said that almost 60% of the game development process could be ‘positively impacted’ by using artificial intelligence. After announcing that the company will be laying off nearly 670 employees and cancelling a number of projects, Electronic Arts has been under fire in recent weeks.

Recently, at a tech conference, CEO Andrew Wilson took to the stage and spoke about how artificial intelligence’s impact on game development is mostly positive. According to Wilson, with the use of AI in development, something that previously took six weeks to complete can now take just a few days.

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Gaming Industry Positively Impacted By AI

CEO Andrew Wilson attended the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco, explaining the benefits of generative AI in game development. Wilson said that generative AI is “incredibly exciting” and something Electronic Arts is “embracing deeply.”

We’re in the era of generative AI which is the most exciting yet by a fairly wide margin and something that we’re embracing deeply. We think about it in three core vectors: efficiency, expansion, and transformation.

I would tell you in the back of my mind my orientation is “how can we use generative AI to make us 30% more efficient as a company? How in three years from today could we be 30% more efficient? And I would tell you, part of that is how do we get our people to embrace it and for creators of games, this is incredibly exciting: the ability to get to the fun faster and get to market faster is the Holy Grail for them. And so, we see a real embrace happening inside of our company around these things that can help them get to greatness much more quickly.

Andrew Wilson on AI’s Impact on Game Development

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Wilson claims that while getting developers to embrace the technology is a necessary step in the process, AI tools will ultimately allow creators to reach greatness more quickly. For example, he stated that using generative AI increased the number of run cycles in EA Sports FC 24 from 12 to 1,200. Furthermore, Wilson claimed this made the game experience more unique and immersive.

Wilson has also expressed his excitement about the potential of artificial intelligence to produce “deeper, more immersive experiences” and “more personalization, culturalisation,” which could encourage players to interact with games and spend more money on games.

We’re watching right now how generative AI impacts monetisation on other platforms, and what we’re seeing is where there is real personalised content, bespoke to me and bespoke to my friends, monetisation is 10 to 20% greater.

If you fast forward this over a five-year-plus time horizon, you think about where we’ve gotten to in terms of efficiency, what I would like to believe is 30% more efficient as a company, where we can attract 50% more people into our network, and hopefully by virtue of the nature of the content that we can create through generative AI, which will be created faster, and more personal to every player, then there’s 10 to 20% more monetisation opportunity to us on an ARPU [Average Revenue Per User] level.

Although Wilson admits that generative AI is still in its early stages, he believes the technology has a bright future and the ability to draw in a large number of new players and connect them into a more personal and monetised video game environment.

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Epic Games published a blog post stating that Apple terminated its developer account for Sweden, which the company was planning to use to launch Fortnite and the Epic Games Store on the App Store in Europe. In mid-February, the company announced that Apple granted a developer account in the European region thanks to the European Digital Markets Act.

Epic Games announced in February that Fortnite will return to iOS in some European countries thanks to the Digital Markets Act passed in December 2022 by the European Union. Thanks to the act, it would allow Epic Games to publish Fortnite and other apps on Apple’s App Store. The bill is expected to go into effect in March 2024, but Apple decided to terminate Epic Games’ developer account.

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Apple Terminates Epic Games’ Developer Account

In the blog post, Epic Games stated that Apple had disabled the Epic Games Sweden AB developer account, citing the company’s past problems with the Fortnite creator and recent criticism of its policies.

We recently announced that Apple approved our Epic Games Sweden AB developer account. We intended to use that account to bring the Epic Games Store and Fortnite to iOS devices in Europe thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA). To our surprise, Apple has terminated that account and now we cannot develop the Epic Games Store for iOS. This is a serious violation of the DMA and shows Apple has no intention of allowing true competition on iOS devices. 

The DMA requires Apple to allow third-party app stores, like the Epic Games Store. Article 6(4) of the DMA says: “The gatekeeper shall allow and technically enable the installation and effective use of third-party software applications or software application stores using, or interoperating with, its operating system and allow those software applications or software application stores to be accessed by means other than the relevant core platform services of that gatekeeper.”

In terminating Epic’s developer account, Apple is taking out one of the largest potential competitors to the Apple App Store. They are undermining our ability to be a viable competitor and they are showing other developers what happens when you try to compete with Apple or are critical of their unfair practices.

If Apple maintains its power to kick a third party marketplace off iOS at its sole discretion, no reasonable developer would be willing to  utilize a third party app store, because they could be permanently separated from their audience at any time.

Apple said one of the reasons they terminated our developer account only a few weeks after approving it was because we publicly criticized their proposed DMA compliance plan. Apple cited this X post from this thread written by Tim Sweeney. Apple is retaliating against Epic for speaking out against Apple’s unfair and illegal practices, just as they’ve done to other developers time and time again. 

Apple also claims that Epic is a threat to their ecosystem, but this is an entirely unjustified excuse to terminate one of our accounts. Apple has been a long-time public supporter of Unreal Engine. We also have had ongoing contractual relationships with Apple going back to 2010 for Epic’s games, Unreal Engine, and our other creator tools.

Epic Games on the Developer Account Ban

Apple and Epic Games have been involved in an antitrust legal battle since August 2020, when Epic decided to use a new direct payment option in Fortnite to get around Apple’s 30% platform fees. This action resulted in removing the game from the App Store and suspending Epic’s original developer account.

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Tropic Haze, the creator of the Switch emulator Yuzu, was sued by Nintendo last month for violating the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and accusing the creators of copyright infringement. After Nintendo sued Tropic Haze in a US federal court, the emulator makers agreed to pay $2.4 million to settle the lawsuit.

In addition to paying Nintendo $2.4 million in damages, Tropic Haze has stated that Yuzu is “primarily designed to circumvent and play Nintendo Switch games.” The company agreed to end development for Yuzu permanently and stop the website or social media accounts that advertise Yuzu or any other activities that would violate Nintendo’s copyright protections.

Nintendo stated in its initial lawsuit documents that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the biggest Switch release of 2023 had been pirated more than a million times in the week and a half before its May release.

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Tropic Haze Shutting Down Yuzu

Yuzu and Citra developers confirmed in the Yuzu Discord that service and support Nintendo Switch and Nintendo 3DS emulators will be ending effective immediately. Following their announcement on Discord, the developers posted on Twitter that the firm is also being closed permanently.

Hello yuz-ers and Citra fans:

We write today to inform you that yuzu and yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effective immediately.

yuzu and its team have always been against piracy. We started the projects in good faith, out of passion for Nintendo and its consoles and games, and were not intending to cause harm. But we see now that because our projects can circumvent Nintendo’s technological protection measures and allow users to play games outside of authorized hardware, they have led to extensive piracy. In particular, we have been deeply disappointed when users have used our software to leak game content prior to its release and ruin the experience for legitimate purchasers and fans.

We have come to the decision that we cannot continue to allow this to occur. Piracy was never our intention, and we believe that piracy of video games and on video game consoles should end. Effective today, we will be pulling our code repositories offline, discontinuing our Patreon accounts and Discord servers, and, soon, shutting down our websites. We hope our actions will be a small step toward ending piracy of all creators’ works.

Thank you for your years of support and for understanding our decision.

@yuzuemu on Twitter/X

Following the announcement on Discord and Twitter, the source code for both Yuzu and Citra has been removed from GitHub. Moreover, Yuzu’s socials have been completely cleared before the shutdown. Before the service’s global shutdown, Yuzu’s social media accounts were removed, bringing the more than six-year-old service to a sad ending.

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Electronic Arts announced today that the company is laying off approximately 5% of its employees as part of a restructuring plan that reduces real estate and office space as the video game industry struggles to grow due to high-interest rates. In the most recent yearly report, Electronic Arts published the headcount at 13,400 as of the end of March 2023, revealing that around 670 people will lose their jobs.

Big game publishers like Sony, Microsoft, and Riot Games have also laid off thousands of employees in recent months due to a slow recovery in the gaming market. It was also revealed that Electronic Arts is also moving away from the development of future licensed IP, which will not be successful in the future.

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Electronic Arts Cutting Off 5% of Its Workforce

CEO Andrew Wilson explained in a letter to employees that the publisher will be moving away from developing future games based on licensed IP and informed the employees about the reduction in workforce.

Given how and where we are working, we are continuing to optimize our global real estate footprint to best support our business. We are also sunsetting games and moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.

This greater focus allows us to drive creativity, accelerate innovation, and double down on our biggest opportunities — including our owned IP, sports, and massive online communities — to deliver the entertainment players want today and tomorrow. Lastly, we are streamlining our company operations to deliver deeper, more connected experiences for fans everywhere that build community, shape culture, and grow fandom.

In this time of change, we expect these decisions to impact approximately 5 percent of our workforce. I understand this will create uncertainty and be challenging for many who have worked with such dedication and passion and have made important contributions to our company. While not every team will be impacted, this is the hardest part of these changes, and we have deeply considered every option to try and limit impacts to our teams.

Our primary goal is to provide team members with opportunities to find new roles and paths to transition onto other projects. Where that’s not possible, we will support and work with each colleague with the utmost attention, care, and respect. Communicating these impacts has already begun and will be largely completed by early next quarter.

I want to extend my appreciation to everyone who has helped contribute to EA’s ongoing story. We are a team that leans into our values to lead the future of entertainment, and I look forward to what we will create together. Thank you for all that you do.

Andrew Wilson, Electronic Arts’ CEO

According to Electronic Arts, the restructuring plan’s related actions are expected to be substantially complete by the end of this year. CEO Andrew Wilson mentioned in his letter that the publisher will move away from developing games based on licensed IP, which has caused them to cancel several projects.

A representative of EA has confirmed that Marvel’s Black Panther and Iron Man games are still being developed. However, the publisher has cancelled the Star Wars Mandalorian game, which was in development at Respawn Entertainment.

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MobileRiv.com is an excellent addition to our portfolio of gaming websites, as it covers the latest and hottest topics in the mobile gaming industry. Enthusiasts, as well as casual players, can find everything from news, reviews, guides, tips, and more on MobileRiv.com, written by passionate and experienced mobile gamers.

With this addition to our portfolio, we can offer gamers of all mobile platforms more useful content. Visit MobileRiv.com today and discover the best of what mobile game has to offer.

We look forward to serving mobile gamers all around the globe with our new site.

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Toxicity in online games is prevalent still to this day. Online games’ anonymity allows some players to vent their real-life frustration on others. Also, the need to win in online competitive games makes some people say and do things that are not welcome.

To combat this problem, there are already many safeguards taken by online game developers. Some of these include chat moderation, banning toxic players, rewarding good behavior, etc. But still, we see toxic people in our online games.

So, two of the biggest game developers, Riot Games and Ubisoft, have recently teamed up to develop an AI-based database that will learn and moderate toxic behavior in online games.

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Riot Games x Ubisoft Collaboration:

The news about the collaboration came in the form of a blog post on the official Riot Games website. It was titled “Zero Harm in Comms: Riot and Ubisoft Working Together on Research Project to Create More Positive Gaming Communities”. The name of the research project is called “Zero Harm in Comms”.

As mentioned previously, Riot Games and Ubisoft are planning to develop AI-based preemptive moderation tools that detect and mitigate disruptive behavior in-game. With data gathered from games developed by both Riot Games and Ubisoft, AI can be better trained to cover a wide range of use cases.

As more and more people get into gaming, developers are looking to automate the moderation process because of a lack of manpower and resources. This AI database could be just the solution to this problem. After proper training, the AI will be able to automatically detect harmful and toxic behavior and ban players automatically.

That’s all we know so far about this new collaboration project between Riot Games and Ubisoft. Keep an eye on our website for more gaming news just like this.

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