video games

Bungie, the gaming company that created sci-fi hits such as Halo, Destiny, and Marathon, has laid off 220 employees, roughly a 17% reduction to its workforce, the company announced Wednesday.…

Bungie employees say they were caught off-guard by 17% staff reduction

A team of former Google DeepMind researchers are betting that their unique behavior engine for NPCs will make games more fun and dynamic.

Artificial Agency raises $16M to use AI to make NPCs feel more realistic in video games

For over a decade, real-money gaming companies and fantasy sports startups have marketed themselves as video game companies. But as these businesses face increasing regulatory scrutiny, a coalition of more…

Indian game firms want to distance themselves from fantasy sports

Here are the latest companies venturing into the gaming scene and details about each offering, including pricing, examples of titles and supported devices. 

YouTube and LinkedIn have games now, and here’s how you can play them

Meta plans to bring more generative AI tech into games, specifically VR, AR and mixed reality games, as the company looks to reinvigorate its flagging metaverse strategy. According to a…

Meta plans to bring generative AI to metaverse games

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10 years in the making, retro game emulator Delta is now No. 1 on the iOS charts

Video game emulator Delta’s decade-long struggle against the iOS App Store began with a school-issued TI-84 calculator. When Riley Testut was a sophomore in high school, he showed his friends how to load illicit software onto their bulky graphing calculators. Such behavior was generally discouraged at school, but he wasn’t…

10 years in the making, retro game emulator Delta is now No. 1 on the iOS charts

Turkey has gained a well-earned reputation as being a veritable cauldron of mobile games startups, leading to the rise of VCs dedicated to the sector. The latest to join this…

A new games-focused VC in Turkey shows the industry there continues to gain steam

Video game startups weren’t immune to recent market pressures, but the industry heads into 2024 on better footing than some sectors.

Video game startups could be a bright spot for VC in 2024

OpenAI’s new — and first! — video-generating model, Sora, can pull off some genuinely impressive cinematographic feats. But the model’s even more capable than OpenAI initially made it out to…

OpenAI’s Sora video-generating model can render video games, too

ByteDance’s gaming ambition has been an expensive, short-lived pursuit. In late 2021, the TikTok parent’s plans for video games came into the spotlight after it became one of the firm’s…

After two ambitious years, TikTok parent ByteDance starts mass layoffs in gaming

SAG-AFTRA members voted overwhelmingly on Monday to authorize a strike against the video game industry. The union — which includes video game performers like voice, motion capture and stunt actors…

Hollywood strikes could soon extend to the video game industry

Several years ago, Aleksander Caban, the co-founder of Carbon Studio, a Polish VR game developer, observed a major problem in modern game design. He had to create rocks, hills, paths…

Auctoria uses generative AI to create video game models

Thanks to the regulatory process, this deal will significantly enhance competition in the video game industry while securing workers’ rights and consumer interests.

A merger that’s good for workers and consumers

Tencent, one of the world’s largest gaming companies, is set to gobble up Techland, the Polish game developer known for open-world zombie games like Dying Light, adding yet another member…

Zombie game maker Techland joins Tencent’s global empire in latest acquisition

EA (Electronic Arts) announced Monday that its new studio Cliffhanger Games is developing a third-person, single-player Black Panther game in a joint effort with Marvel Games. Cliffhanger Games claims that…

EA to launch single-player Black Panther video game

Gaming startup Proxima emerged from stealth earlier this week, announcing its funding round as well as its inaugural game, Lumari, a social sandbox adventure game that appears to be a…

Lumari is a new social sandbox game with cute creatures, building capabilities and more

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Spiraling costs are killing the mobile gaming space

The moat between new developers and the establishment is prohibitively wide and deep, and it starts with costs.

Spiraling costs are killing the mobile gaming space

Over the past decade, China’s games industry has seen explosive growth, overtaken the U.S. in market size and given rise to global publishing giants like Tencent and NetEase. The boom…

China’s games industry shrinks for the first time in years

Niantic, the company behind the mega-hit Pokémon GO, has reached an inflection point. Whether because of pandemic fatigue or frustration over the limitations of today’s AR tech, the Google-spawned startup…

Niantic tries its hand at sports with NBA All-World

Depending on who you ask, generative AI is either massively overhyped or undervalued. Defined as algorithm-driven tech that creates text, art and other forms of media given a prompt, it’s…

Scenario lands $6M for its AI platform that generates game art assets

There’s a new D&D video game on the way from the Montreal studio formerly known as Tuque Games. Wizards of the Coast, which publishes Dungeons & Dragons, has relaunched the…

An ‘ambitious’ new D&D game is on the way from Invoke Studios

Entertainment platform Fandom announced today its acquisition of seven entertainment and gaming brands from media company Red Ventures, including online publications Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb,…

Fandom acquires Metacritic, GameSpot, TV Guide and other entertainment brands in deal worth around $55M

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How Blaseball’s fantasy sports fever dream is embracing the future

A star pitcher is resurrected from the Hall of Flame. A Hellmouth swallows the state of Utah. Crows descend on Tastykake Stadium, pecking slugger Jessica Telephone out of a peanut shell. This is Blaseball, the absurdist baseball simulator that captured the most delightfully wacky corners of the internet when it…

How Blaseball’s fantasy sports fever dream is embracing the future

AI Dungeon realized the dream many gamers have had since the ’80s: an evolving storyline that players themselves create and direct. Now, it’s going further with a new feature that…

Latitude brings AI-generated artwork to AI Dungeon

Nintendo finally revealed a name and a release date for the sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a game that defined the Nintendo Switch and quickly…

Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild sequel Tears of the Kingdom comes out next May

Roblox is announcing a wave of new funding for developers building the cutting edge of games on the platform. The company introduced the Game Fund, a Roblox-flavored version of a…

Roblox will give a handful of game developers $500,000 each to build its future

Welcome back to Chain Reaction, where we unpack and explain the latest in crypto news, drama and trends, breaking things down block by block for…

A video game industry veteran on making the art behind popular NFTs

Amazon announced the launch of Alexa Game Control, allowing gamers to play games by using their voice. “Dead Island 2” will be the first game to be compatible with Alexa…

Amazon’s adding voice-powered gaming to big name games with Alexa Game Control

If software is eating the world, AI isn’t far behind. AI-powered text-, art- and audio-generating systems will soon make — and already are making — their way into the tools…

Disney-backed Inworld raises new cash for its AI-powered virtual characters

Netflix requests the help of cloud gaming specialists in its recent job listing posts, a possible hint at what’s to come for its ongoing gaming venture. As noted by Protocol,…

Netflix explores cloud gaming as it looks for new hires