September 23, 2026

Microsoft is cutting 268 jobs, mostly at Halo Studios, as part of a major restructuring of its gaming business. The reduced Halo Studios will shift into a support role, while Activision will assemble a new team to develop and publish the next Halo game. Rare and World’s Edge will also move under Activision, Obsidian will report to Bethesda, and Turn 10 will merge with Playground Games. Meanwhile, a proposed sale of Ninja Theory has fallen through, leaving the Hellblade studio at risk of closure.

Indie studio Alter-Boy breaks down the six-year development of OZARK, a dark 2.5D action-horror game built in Unity by a small team working around full-time jobs. The developers discuss how its fixed camera shaped combat and level design, their heavily modified marketplace-asset workflow, real-time lighting, motion capture, co-op, and why they deliberately chose a focused 3–6 hour experience rather than chasing market trends.

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games is launching a publishing arm focused on hardcore, niche and experimental games that traditional publishers may consider too risky. The company says it will prioritize interesting ideas over potential profits and use its existing audience to help smaller studios break through. It has already received 100+ pitches, with roughly 5–10 projects currently fitting what it’s looking for.

Shift Up CEO Hyung-Tae Kim says the studio reached a point during Stellar Blade’s development where it had enough cash to cover only three more months of salaries. Multiple investors and major publishers had rejected the project, believing it wouldn’t break even, with some saying Shift Up would be worth more if it abandoned the game entirely. The team continued development and eventually secured a publishing deal with Sony after impressing Shuhei Yoshida with an early prototype.

RCS-based app store Jest has reached a $1 million gross billings run rate less than three months after enabling purchases. The platform says usage has grown 400% to more than 4 million games and apps played, with a 15% payer conversion rate among active U.S. users. Jest is now launching a second fund offering developers up to $1 million in growth funding, while letting them retain up to 90% of net revenue.

Newly independent publisher Secret Mode is betting on two very different strategies: small experimental indies and larger, proven projects like Star Wars: Galactic Racer. It’s also embracing “caretaker development,” taking over successful games like Escape the Backrooms and Chained Together to keep producing content after their original teams move on. Secret Mode says discoverability has become so unpredictable that the traditional launch-and-move-on publishing model no longer works.

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