September 18, 2026

Active gaming company Nex has raised $150 million in Series E funding after sales of its family-focused Nex Playground console surpassed 1 million units. Its subscriber base has also grown 7× over the past 18 months, approaching one million active subscribers. The funding will fuel further international expansion, with launches planned for Germany this year and Japan and Korea in 2027.

Related: Major Publishers Eye Nex Playground for Old Kinect and Wii Games

Generative AI adoption among Japanese game developers has surged to 85.8%, up from 51% last year, according to CESA’s 2026 industry survey. 63% now use AI daily, with developers primarily expecting gains in productivity, shorter development cycles and lower costs. Most respondents also reported using human review and restrictions on AI-generated output as safeguards.

Related: AI Is Reducing Demand for Entry-Level Game Dev Roles in Japan

A draft of the EU’s proposed KIDS Act could impose new rules on virtually any online game available in Europe. The proposal targets mechanics that encourage excessive play by minors, potentially affecting login bonuses and penalties for taking breaks, while also introducing stricter requirements around age assurance, parental controls, player communication and virtual currencies. The legislation is still a draft and must be approved by the European Parliament and member states before becoming law.

Indie developer Kyle Thompson breaks down the making of Well Dweller, a hand-drawn Metroidvania created with GameMaker, Spine and Photoshop, with music composed by his brother Eric. Thompson discusses its dark fairy-tale world, redesigning major mechanics late in development, and lessons learned from previous games Sheepo, Islets and Crypt Custodian.

Top App Games’ mobile strategy title Ludus: Merge Arena generated $29 million in gross turnover during H1 2026, including a record $14.8 million Q2. The game has now surpassed $50 million in lifetime gross turnover and 12 million players, with 765,000+ monthly active users recorded in July.

Five former members of Epic Games’ Fortnite music team have launched The Drop Circuit, a new studio focused on building music-driven games inside UEFN. The team includes veterans of Fortnite Festival and Harmonix, and has partnered with Epidemic Sound for access to more than 55,000 tracks. Its first release, Go Viral Tycoon, launches today, with the studio planning to eventually bring rhythm games to Fortnite’s creator ecosystem.

Unity has released an official Codex plugin with 31 Unity-authored skills covering everything from UI, sprites and shaders to physics, multiplayer, IAPs and LevelPlay. Codex can also use the Unity CLI to create projects, manage packages, build, test and read logs, while relying on current guidance written and maintained by Unity engineers rather than outdated training data.

Microsoft is expanding Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) with new self-service tools that let Xbox PC developers package and upload precompiled shaders themselves. The technology moves shader compilation away from players’ PCs, helping reduce first-launch waits and shader stutter. Microsoft says ASD has previously cut launch times by up to 95% in supported games.

Technical artist Pavel Kuzmenko has built texLab, a native C++ plugin for Unreal Engine 5.7 and 5.8 that lets artists pack, unpack, preview and batch-process PBR textures without leaving the editor. It supports layouts like ORM and RMA, previews actual BC7/BC5 compression before export, and includes validation tools designed to prevent incorrect channel packing across large projects.

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