Publisher Headup has formed a new independent studio: Goon Squad.

Consisting of the publisher's own in-house development team, Headup says the formation of Goon Squad "marks a significant milestone in Headup's 15-year journey" and "is a testament to Headup’s commitment to nurturing creativity and innovation."

"Headup is empowering this creative hub to flourish independently, fostering a space where new gaming experiences can take root and grow while sharpening its own positioning with a clear publishing focus," the team explained.

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Gamescom kicked off last night with its annual Opening Night Live showcase, bringing a range of game announcements, release dates and gameplay reveals for a range of upcoming titles.

Xbox and Take-Two dominated the Geoff Keighley-hosted presentation, which was livestreamed from Koelnmesse in Cologne. If you missed the full two-hour showcase, here are the main highlights:

GamesIndustry.biz will be reporting from Gamescom all week. You can keep up with our coverage right here.

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Virtuos has acquired British indie game developer, Third Kind Games.

Virtuos says the acquisition will enhance its "AAA co-development capabilities and establish a new foothold for Virtuos in the UK."

The buyout will not affect the game's management, as Virtuos says Third Kind - which employs over 70 in Leamington Spa, UK, and has worked on games like Fable, Forza Horizon 4, and Sea of Thieves - will continue to be led by its nine co-founders, all of whom formerly worked at Activision.

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Space Ape has shut down Rival Kingdoms, saying it had been "a privilege" to have run the RTS game penned by Rhianna Pratchett for almost a decade.

The developer said it had no plans to sell or transfer the mobile game to another company, revive it, develop a sequel, or permit players to play the game on private servers.

Whilst the developer stopped short of revealing why it had decided to shutter the game, a statement posted on its website said, "all games have a life cycle, and Rival Kingdoms is no exception."

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Tencent has secured Gamescom's 2024 sustainability award.

Tencent Americas president Brent Irvin accepted the award from Playing for the Planet at Gamescom's Opening Night Live.

The award celebrates organisations that demonstrate public commitments to sustainable values, as well as share their approaches to carbon accounting and emissions reductions.

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Opinions on Peter Molyneux vary.

For some, he's a whimsical raconteur responsible for some of the most inspirational games in this industry.

For others, he's someone who wilfully misleads fans and has somewhat sullied his reputation with ill-advised pivots into motion controls, Kickstarter and NFTs.

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Atsuko Tanaka – the Japanese voice behind iconic characters like Street Fighter's Chun-Li, Lara Croft, Bayonetta, and Tess in the Japanese version of The Last of Us – has died at the age of 61.

As well as extensive video game credits, which include Nier Replicant's Kaine, Tanaka also had notable roles in anime and other shows, including Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost of the Shell and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Tanaka's death was revealed by her son, voice actor Hikaru Tanaka, who confirmed she died of an undisclosed illness earlier today (August 20).

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Speaking at Devcom today, Red Meat Games creative content strategist Judy Ehrentraut discussed the importance of ethically training generative AI models, and how certain tools can be utilised during game development.

"AI is the biggest buzzword and it's either hyped as the new way to solve every productivity problem, or it's received with a groan," Ehrentraut acknowledged.

"I think both of these takes are really valuable, because disruptive technologies are not necessarily good or bad. It depends on how they are used, and it really depends on the approach that we take and whether it's ethical or not."

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Black Myth: Wukong was released today, and already it has set new records on Steam.

At the time of writing, the game is being played by 2.13 million concurrent users making it the best performing single-player game of all time by this metric.

It more than doubles the record Cyberpunk 2077 set when it launched in 2020, when it reached one million concurrent users within two hours of its debut. It has even passed the peak of another 2024 hit, Palworld, which VG247 reports topped out at 2.1 million concurrent users.

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As part of our series of daily podcasts from Devcom and Gamescom 2024, GamesIndustry.biz editor-in-chief James Batchelor is joined by Execution Labs co-founder and former IGDA Montreal executive director Jason Della Rocca.

Drawing on Della Rocca's years of experiences working with indie developers, we discuss the biggest challenges these studios face in today's market, from the impact of layoffs and studio closures to the shrinking indie publisher scene.

And don't worry if you missed this week's GI Microcast, which was released yesterday - you can find all the details and listen in here. This week, Chris and James discussed the Epic Games Store's mobile launch, The Plucky Squire's brave release date, and more.

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Encouraging women to request higher pay — and not just to match the salaries of their male counterparts — could be the key to closing the gender pay gap.

That's according to Tanja Loktionova, founder of Values Value, who presented the findings of the recruitment agency's annual salary survey at Devcom yesterday.

During her session, she showed that not only do women earn less than men in almost every discipline within the games industry, but they also expect less when asked what salary they believe would be fair.

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Gamescom has scrapped its Best Nintendo Game Award due to a lack of nominees.

Gamescom's award committee confirmed it had received "too few submissions" for the award category to go ahead this year.

This is the first time since the Gamescom awards were split into platform-specific categories back in 2011 that there will be no award for Best Nintendo Switch game.

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Epic Games' Tim Sweeney has admitted that whilst its free game giveaways have been good for business, many of its exclusivity deals were "not good investments."

In a recent press call, Epic CEO Sweeney talked candidly about Epic Games Store's user acquisition methods, but acknowledged that whilst "a few of [its EGS exclusives] worked extremely well", "a lot of them were not good investments."

Conversely, Sweeney said its free games program has been "just magical" and "very economical," even though the idea of giving away its games may seem "counterintuitive" at first.

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Kwalee has launched an Arabic-language edition of its mobile game platform, Hitseeker.

The UK publisher says it will support Arabic-speaking developers "with tools, resources, and expert support to succeed on a global stage," as well as expert advice and "a collaborative environment tailored specifically to the needs of developers from MENA."

It says that it is "welcoming new partnerships with ambitious game studios in the region who could benefit from support in game design, marketing, and developing their business" by pitching directly via Hitseeker, which can then also be used to "manage the full publishing process."

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Developer Game Science has been asked to justify a document circulated to influencers and content creators that demanded coverage of Black Myth: Wukong did not include covid-19 references, "politics", or "feminist propaganda."

When the document first leaked online over the weekend, journalists were quick to point out that it did not match paperwork given to critics reviewing the game, leading some to assume it was fake.

However, further investigation by VideoGames.si and Forbes reporter Paul Tassi confirmed the document – circulated on behalf of Game Science by marketers Hero Games – was authentic.

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Developers that relegate their storytelling to cutscenes and linear dialogue are severely limiting themselves in how they tell stories — and likely driving players away.

That's according to Kelsey Beachum — best known for her narrative work on Mobius Digital's seminal 2019 title Outer Wilds, but who has also written for Dying Light 2, The Outer Worlds and Groundless, among others — as she delivered the opening keynote at Devcom in Cologne today.

Her opening example was the classic Super Mario Bros, where the story boils down to Toad telling Mario that the princess is in another castle. Illustrating this as a timeline, she marked these moments in red as they bring a complete halt to gameplay: the player is no longer involved.

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Speaking at Devcom, Stray Fawn co-founder Philomena Schwab shared how the Zurich-based studio has survived for the past eight years, from refusing to partner with a publisher to the importance of community support when developing a game.

Schwab emphasised that Stray Fawn prides itself on being an independent studio, with no publisher or external investors.

Even when its first game, genetics survival title Niche, started getting publisher interest after crowdfunding success, the studio continued to decline offers. This was due to previous experience from making a mobile game which had a publisher that didn't go so well.

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Climax Studios has opened a new location in Edinburgh.

The studio opened its doors in February, and has been recruiting a team over the past few months.

The co-developer plans to continue hiring to further support the studio and "better collaborate with partners" which include firms such as Microsoft and Sony.

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The latest episode of the GI Microcast is now available to download, taking a quick dive into the biggest stories of the past week.

Our main topic this week is the launch of the Epic Games Store on mobile, bringing Fortnite back to Android and (in the EU) iOS four years after Epic began its legal dispute with Apple and Google. We discuss the potential for alternative mobile stores, and Epic's goal to reach 100,000 installs before 2025 despite the 12 to 15 steps players must go through on each mobile ecosystem.

And in this week's What Do The Numbers Mean?, Chris takes a look at the long-awaited release date for Devolver Digital's The Plucky Squire, two fairly hefty (and one very similar) games coming out around it, and, of course, sales figures that offer a little more context.

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As the Devcom developer conference kicks off in Cologne today, the organisers have shared the results of this year's speaker survey, with almost 90% of respondents stating they believe AAA games can succeed without additional purchases.

In a survey of 100 speakers, out of 300 industry experts who will take the stage over the next two days, 89% said AAA titles can be "financially successful just by being Buy-to-Play."

The result comes after years of scrutiny over add-on-purchases within the AAA games spaces, including loot boxes (such as EA's Ultimate Team modes for its sports games), battle/season passes, and progress boosters such as XP multipliers and crafting resources.

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The closure (or near closure) of Humble Games was yet another brutal headline in what has been a bleak 18 months for indie games publishers

We've seen collapsing share prices, redundancies, a reduction in games being signed and entire company closures. Of course, publishers are caught up in the same nightmare that the entire games industry has been dealing with – a drop in game revenue mixed with over-investment and rapidly rising costs. However, there are also some fundamental (and potentially permanent) shifts in the marketplace that are making it harder for publishers to compete.

"I’ve been in publishing for almost ten years and it’s always been uncertain," says Simon Byron, who is currently MD of Yogscast Games. "You can never predict exactly how a game will perform before it’s out. You can have a sense, sure, but accurately forecasting a game’s sales is impossible – I’ve certainly never got it spot on. And that’s tricky for particular companies who have pressures to provide certainty to its shareholders.

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Trigger warning: This article contains references to rape and sexual assault

Games industry performers have raised concerns of being asked to act out explicit sexual content without notice.

In a recent report by BBC News, actors said that the "cultural secrecy around projects" results in scripts not being shared until the day of filming.

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The Sunday Times has published its first Gaming Rich List 2024, which includes the top 30 richest game developers and players in the UK.

Playrix founders Igor and Dmitry Bukhman topped the list, who have earned an estimated £12.54 billion. They also ranked at No.27 on The Sunday Times Rich List 2024.

Improbable co-founder and CEO Herman Narula came in second with £780 million, followed by King co-founder and former CEO Riccardo Zacconi at £410 million.

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Ubisoft has made another round of layoffs, this time cutting staff from two of its US studios.

A total of 45 employees have been let go across the Assassin's Creed publisher's San Francisco studio and Red Storm Entertainment, which is based in Cary, North Carolina. It is unclear which departments have been affected.

"Yesterday Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment informed their teams of a restructuring that resulted in 45 employees leaving Ubisoft," a Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN in a statement.

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Valve has a new hero shooter in the late stages of development. It's a secret!

Except it's not really, since over 20,000 invites to play the game have been sent out over Steam.

You're not meant to talk about it!

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North Beach Games has announced the opening of a new studio in Prague, and development of Stranded Deep 2.

The new studio is led by CTO and creative director Sam Edwards (Beam Team Games, creator of Stranded Deep), and general manager Tomáš Pšenička (Keen Software House, creator of Space Engineers).

The core development team will work primarily on-site in Prague, with support for remote staff working globally. It will focus on creating and supporting survival crafting games.

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Riot Games has re-organised its leadership in its esports and entertainment segments.

Current esports president John Needham has been appointed president of publishing and esports, and will "create new integrated experiences" that will combine its esports, music, and creative publishing sectors.

Needham was hired as managing director of Europe in 2017, and has since held various leading roles. Prior to Riot, he was head of European publishing at Lionhead and CEO of Cryptic Studios.

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A new report from Niko Partners, in partnership with the Saudi Esports Federation, says that markets in the Gulf Cooperation Council accounted for $2.24 billion in player spending in the Middle East and North Africa last year.

The Localisation in the MENA Region white paper provides "insights about approaches to localisation" in MENA countries, with a specific focus on GGC markets which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The report forecast that the compound annual growth rate of player spending will grow by 7.7% to reach $3.48 billion in 2028, while the number of gamers is estimated to reach 38.9 million with a growth rate of 2.9%.

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2.4 million video games were sold in Europe during July, a rise of 3.4% over the year before.

It's an impressive result when you look at the Top Ten, where the only game released this year is Luigi's Mansion 2 HD at No.9. Every other game was released before 2024, including the month's top seller: EA Sports FC 24.

The EA football game's position at No.1 is no surprise as the European Championships took place during part of July. As a result, EA Sports FC 24 sold 69% more copies this July than FIFA 23 managed last year (when there was no international football tournament).

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The Epic Games Store is launching on mobile today.

The Fortnite firm announced it will be bringing its games marketplace to Android worldwide, and to iOS in the European Union thanks to this year's Digital Markets Act requiring Apple to enable third-party stores on its mobile ecosystem.

Epic's mobile catalogue will begin with three titles, starting with Fortnite, which marks its return to iOS, as well as Rocket League Sideswipe (a spin-off of the popular racing sports game that launched in 2021) and the brand new Fall Guys Mobile. The latter will feature cross-play and cross-progression with the popular online game already on PC and consoles.

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Adam Boyes is leaving Iron Galaxy after eight years with the developer.

Boyes announced his departure in a blog post, in which he detailed that he'll be leaving his position by the end of the year.

Boyes became CEO of the studio in June 2016 having previously held leadership roles at PlayStation, Capcom, Midway Games, and Electronic Arts.

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The GamesIndustry.biz team is heading to Cologne next week and we're going big on both Devcom and Gamescom.

In addition to bringing you the biggest news from across the industry, we're aiming to have daily podcasts and a special live show from Devcom as we explore the state of the industry today.

Here's everything you need to know:

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Genvid's Silent Hill: Ascension has won the award for Outstanding Innovation in Emerging Media Programming at the 76th Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

The interactive streaming series ran from October 31, 2023 to July 15, 2024. Comprised of 22 episodes, the series followed a choose-your-own-adventure style narrative with story outcomes decided by viewers.

Silent Hill: Ascension was developed in Unreal Engine utilising the platform's MetaHuman Creator.

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Google has opened applications for its 2024 Indie Games Fund.

A group of Latin American game studios will receive a share of $2 million, with each recipient receiving between $150,000 to $200,000.

The fund is open to indie game developers that have already launched a game on Google Play or other mobile platforms, PC and console.

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Perforce's latest annual State of Game Technology report claims the top three issues game developers currently face are funding, collaboration, and time for innovation.

Over a third of the 576 respondents - who categorise themselves as practitioners, senior management, and executives working in gaming, media/entertainment, automotive, and manufacturing - said that collaboration was difficult, claiming that "moving large files" was more of a hindrance to collaboration than remote working.

90% thought that the availability and access to senior leadership was more important than "the ability to work remotely" (81%).

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Blacknut Cloud Gaming has announced a new distribution agreement with Ubisoft.

Starting from this month, "a series of Ubisoft offerings" will join Blacknut's platform, which "allows players to access over 500+ premium games via streaming under a single subscription with no lock-in contract."

Ubisoft – which owns cloud rights to current and new Activision games over the next 15 years – confirms that franchises coming to Blacknut include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Anno, and Rayman.

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The games industry is "showing signs of a recovery" from "record-breaking layoffs, closures, and business turmoil."

That's according to DDM's Games Investment Review, which reports "a sizeable uptick" in investments, recovering ground lost in 2023.

Whilst mergers and acquisitions (M&A) remain "low" – even taking out last year's anomalous $68.7bn generated by Microsoft's acquisition of Activision – and not a single quarter in 2023 surpassed $1.3 billion, both Q1 and Q2 in 2024 have "each reached over $2.2bn."

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Leaders from Rare and Dlala will join a special panel to discuss how to support and lead development teams during times of intense change.

The panel will end this year's GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit, which will take place at London's Royal Institution on September 18. Tickets are on sale here.

Rare studio boss Craig Duncan and chief of staff Harriet Manson will join Dlala CEO Aj Grand-Scrutton and COO Gemma Foster in a discussion around the rapid rate of change happening inside and outside of the games industry, such as on-going challenges posed by economic, political and global unrest. With Rare sharing insight from within a major Microsoft-owned AAA studio, and Dlala discussing their experiences on the indie side, the discussion will centre on the role of leadership in helping their employees navigate change, and will offer actionable advice and tips for leaders and HR professionals.

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It's going to be a busy week in Cologne with both Devcom and Gamescom attracting games professionals from around the world.

The former event kicks things off with a two-day conference that will see more than 250 speakers discussing some of the biggest challenges in the industry today across over 200 sessions.

There's a lot to wade through in the full program, so the GamesIndustry.biz team has selected our highlights of some of the sessions we think will be most interesting.

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Game publisher Reforged Studios has acquired Ground Shatter and Extra Mile Studios.

Ground Shatter is led by founder and director James Parker, and is the developer behind roguelike deck-builder Fights in Tight Spaces.

Extra Mile Studios is led by Bobby Farmer, and is known for providing co-developer services on Revolution Software's Broken Swords series.

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Mad Crusader has announced it will invest $30 million in premium AA game IPs developed in its incubation program.

The Cyprus-based company will share the investment in four rounds within two years, which will support graduates in developing initial concepts into commercial IP products.

Investors and residents of the incubator program "will have an equity stake in the product, and an equity share in Mad Crusader's game development holding."

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Phiphen, a US-based film and TV production company, is breaking into the video games sector with a new publishing business, GamesIndustry.biz can reveal.

Phiphen Games will be run by Molly Conners, who is also the CEO and founder of Phiphen, who told us the movie firm has previously invested in selected games projects in the past and was keen to do something more in the space.

"We realized that there are a lot of similarities in the way the games and film industries work, and we found that we could bring a lot of our experience in film and project management to game developers," she said.

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Valve has confirmed SteamOS support is coming to the Asus ROG Ally and other third-party handhelds.

As reported by The Verge, Valve designer Lawrence Yang confirmed the news after an update had been spotted in the latest SteamOS patch notes.

"The note about ROG Ally keys is related to third-party device support for SteamOS," said Yang. "The team is continuing to work on adding support for additional handhelds on SteamOS."

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Embracer Group has released its financial results for the first quarter of its fiscal year, with net sales dropping 24% year-on-year to SEK 7.9 billion ($754 million).

There were also sales declines across its mobile, tabletop and entertainment divisions, but the company said these were in line with expectations due to a quieter release slate compared to the same quarter last year.

Most notably, PC and console games suffered a 34% decline due to comparisons with calendar Q2 2023, when Plaion released the best-selling Dead Island 2.

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TerraTech developer Payload Studios has announced a wave of layoffs affecting 25% of its workforce.

CEO and founder Russ Clarke shared the news on LinkedIn, citing the "struggles of affecting the wider industry" for the decision.

"We tried very hard to avoid this, and I won't pretend that we got everything right over the last few years – but ultimately the games market has been very tough in recent times, and shows little sign of getting easier," Clarke wrote.

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Antstream Arcade is coming to PlayStation, making it the first third-party cloud gaming service on the platform.

Announced during Antstream's August 2024 Connection presentation yesterday (August 14), the retro game service will be available on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

It will cost $39.99 for an annual pass or $99.99 for a lifetime subscription, with an official launch date to be announced in the coming weeks.

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Amazon Video is reportedly developing a new adult-animated anthology series based on video games called Secret Level.

According to Deadline's sources, the same team behind Amazon's Love, Death & Robots series has also signed up to create original short stories "set within the worlds of beloved video games, such as Amazon Games' New World, Spelunky, and unspecified "PlayStation titles."

The show will be produced by Amazon MGM Studios and Tim Miller's Blur studio. Dave Wilson has apparently signed on to serve as supervising director and executive producer.

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The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) is set to hold its second picket tomorrow.

The picket will take place from 9am until noon on Thursday August 15 at Disney Character Voices in Burbank, California, USA.

SAG-AFTRA will be represented by members of the Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating (IMA) Committee alongside other SAG-AFTRA members, labour allies, and video game fans."

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Scottish Games Week has hit "pause" for 2024.

Scotland's biggest B2B games event says it has cancelled this year's show due to "disruption across the video game ecosystem and political landscape in 2024."

However, the event will return in October 2025 "with a larger, more diverse programme of events supporting the whole video games ecosystem."

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