This week’s Video Games Industry Memo is sponsored by Games In Italy

Discover Italy’s video game industry at gamescom

• I recommend a load of video game journalists you should be following

• Esports Nations Cup gets delayed until next year due to ongoing conflict in the region

• Mortal Shell II generates plenty of hype ahead of today’s release

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Hello VGIM-ers,

I’m writing this week’s introduction from a train streaking its way back from Edinburgh’s Book Festival, where I got to talk about all things Power Play to a bumper crowd. Thanks to Caro Clarke for being such a swell host.

If you want to see me on tour later this year, I’ve got good news for you. I’ve confirmed that I’ll be heading to Jersey, Guildford and Stratford-upon-Avon for their book festivals this Autumn. Tickets are available here.

And don’t forget, VGIM goes Daily for gamescom next week. Free subscribers will get a delivery Monday through to Friday morning. Paid supporters will get an exclusive audio extra with their newsletter called the “Insider Track”, featuring some intriguing on-the-ground interviews.

Get subscribed as a paid supporter of the newsletter here.

The big read - Five games journalists you should be following

Obvious oversight: Last weekend, I read Joost van Dreunen’s fascinating deep dive into the state of video game media. If you’ve not read it, you really should read it here. But upon finishing the piece, I realised something. Despite writing lists of books, podcasts and newsletters that you should consume to understand the industry, I hadn’t written one about the journalists who make much of that coverage possible. D’oh.

Route one journalism: So in this week’s VGIM, I’ve done my best to correct that. I’ve picked five video game journalists whose work I’ve followed closely over the past year, explaining what they cover, what’s interesting about it and why I think it’s valuable. And then because I’ve realised there are so many great journalists out there – despite the grimness of the chart featured above – I chucked in a load of additional tips at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!

Chris Kerr, Game Developer

Somehow still around: Chris is the Senior Editor for News at Game Developer. Full disclosure: I’ve known him for the better part of a decade, since we both briefly worked at Pocket Gamer together in 2015 (lord, bury me in the cold hard ground). But in the past few years, it’s fair to say that he’s really hit his stride.

Newsworthy journalism: Chris’s biggest strength is that he’s a Proper News Hound. He has developed a habit of breaking news, including reporting on the imaginative giant rat protest staged by unionised workers at Bethesda to oppose Microsoft layoffs. He’s got a habit of pulling together well-sourced behind-the-scenes features, such as this week’s feature about what EA employees think of their new Saudi owners. He also asks tough questions fairly, even if overly jumpy PR pros don’t like it when he does.

Holding power to account: One of van Dreunen’s points about games journalism is that it works most effectively when it sits outside of the institutions it covers. Chris’s reporting provides a meaningful check on companies, something that the industry – including its executive class – should be grateful for.

Nicole Carpenter, Freelance

Top of the game: Nicole Carpenter is one of the best freelancers in the business. After being inexplicably laid off by Polygon, game publications across the world were quick to bring them on board to get the benefits of her excellent reporting.

Real range: Nicole has written for the New York Times about the role of video games in reducing violence amongst prisoners at Rikers Island prison. She reported on the removal of the horror game Horses from sale on Steam and Epic Games for Aftermath, being one of the only writers to assess a content censorship decision against the age-rating criteria one of the storefronts used to justify the game’s removal. Nicole also reported on Roblox hit experience Grow A Garden for Game File well before it hit its record-breaking peak.

Mad respect: From what I’ve heard from editors and writers across the biz, Nicole is one of those rare all-rounders capable of tackling business and cultural stories in a way that can bring consumers with her. Even in a tough games journalism landscape, that’s something to be known for.

Isa Muhammad, Pocket Gamer

A literal gap in the market: The Middle East has become an important hub of the video games world. Yet English-language reporting on the region is often poor or patchy, leaving much of the activity in the area underreported.

On-the-ground reporting: Isa Muhammad, Pocket Gamer’s MENA Reporter, is one of the few writers covering the region effectively. He’s written features on some of the more complex market dynamics, such as Roblox’s entry into Saudi Arabia through an education partnership with the Public Investment Fund-backed Savvy Games. He covers public policy developments in the territory, including news of cross-governmental partnerships in places such as Abu Dhabi. He also maintains a healthy interest in public policy globally, covering stories such as Apple’s ongoing challenges with regulators in Europe and beyond.

Providing regional balance: I know I enjoy Isa’s work because he writes crisply about policy. But his coverage of the MENA region is fair and informed, making him a handy journalist to follow if you truly want to understand what’s happening in an emerging industry powerhouse.

Matthew Reynolds, One More Catch

Experienced pro: Matthew has been a familiar figure within games journalism for many years. He’s previously been an editor at the likes of Polygon, Eurogamer and Digital Spy, as well as contributing for The Guardian, Mobilegamer.biz and Rock Paper Shotgun. But while he’s certainly worth following for his wider work, I’m tipping him here because I think One More Catch, his publication, gives us a glimpse of where consumer video game media could go next.

Gotta catch ‘em all: In contrast to other writers on the list, Matthew’s site is dedicated to Pokémon Go and the next generation of Pokémon games. One More Catch features guides on how to catch rare Pokémon in the real world, on-the-ground reporting from in-person events for the community and includes relevant (and sometimes literally tasty) news that the community is interested in.

Serving the community: I’ll freely admit that it has been many a year since I have meaningfully played many of the games that Matthew covers. But in a sector where game communities can easily exceed the populations of major cities, One More Catch feels like the consumer games journalism equivalent of a subscription-backed local news service. That makes it something well worth keeping an eye on.

Mikhail Klimentov, ReaderGrev

Reporting from beyond the Grev: Mikhail was an editor at Launcher, The Washington Post’s video games and esports vertical. Launcher was shuttered in 2023, but he stayed on at the Post. He was then eventually laid off by WaPo completely in 2026 because that’s journalism/game journalism for you. Since then, he’s been working independently as a freelance journalist and as the editor of his own newsletter, ReaderGrev. And he continues to break stories well worth reading.

Live service optimism: I enjoy his work because he covers subsections of the industry that I tend to spend less time exploring. Mikhail writes engagingly about live-service games, such as this write-up of the satirical intent behind Bungie’s Marathon. His depth of interest in games like Valorant means he’s got excellent ‘ins’ at Riot, allowing him to grab esports exclusives that others can’t get a hold of. His contact book is clearly great too, as evidenced by a recent long-read with Jason Schreier about the Bloomberg journalist’s decision to start a YouTube channel.

Personal perspective: I remain a little sceptical about the long-term commercial prospects of writer-led outlets because, frankly, I’ve seen the economics of it far too clearly firsthand. But in a fragmented media landscape, Mikhail’s a reminder that great reporting featuring exclusive insights that’s delivered from a unique perspective is always valuable.

Further recommendations

• I skipped over plenty of journalists working at major media outlets here because I feel like their work gets plenty of attention. But if you are interested in writers from Big League outlets that I follow, Laura Cress (BBC News), Keza MacDonald and Keith Stuart (The Guardian), Gene Park (The Washington Post) and Jason Schreier and Cecilia D’Anastasio (Bloomberg) are all regular reads for me.

• In terms of the biggest business journalists, my go-tos for information are Stephen Totilo (Game File), Chris Dring (The Game Business), and Neil Long (MobileGamer.Biz). At the main trade outlets, Jon Hicks has built a great team at GI Biz, including Alex Forbes-Calvin, Sophie McEvoy and Lewis Packwood, to name but a few. Craig Chapple at Pocket Gamer Biz is a regular read of mine, particularly his Friday newsletter.

• On social video, I follow Jake Brigstock’s coverage of games for the i100, Tamoor Hussain’s excellent cut-downs from his Twitch feed, and Rob Leane’s videos for The Radio Times (not just because he was nice about Power Play in one of them, I swear). The Daily Mail’s games team has also done a remarkable job growing an enormous audience for video game news via a social video-first strategy, posing an interesting question about where growth truly comes from in the modern media landscape. Chris Bratt’s People Make Games is my favourite games journalism-focused YouTube channel.

• I’ve previously recommended podcasts via VGIM. But the voices I’m most drawn to in the current landscape are Samuel Roberts at BackPage, Steffan Powell and the team at Press X to Continue and Maddy Myers on Triple Click.

• There’s also a long list of people whose work I generally watch out for when chucking links into VGIM. This includes Lucy James, Rollo Romig, Vikki Blake, Chris Tapsell, Bertie Purchese, Patrick Klepek, Luke Plunkett, Rebekah Valentine and Nathan Grayson.

• And of course, I wouldn’t be able to tap out of this piece without referencing VGIM’s cadre of freelance writers: Tom Regan, George Young and Anna Mahtani. They’re all brilliant and well worth your time.

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News in brief

Delayed until next year: The inaugural Esports Nations Cup has been pushed back to 2027. The tournament, which was intended to introduce international competition to the esports calendar, has claimed that the ‘wider regional situation’ has made hosting it this year impossible. As we discovered earlier this year when speaking to the Esports Foundation about moving the Esports World Cup to Paris, the organisers really don’t want to mention the war when discussing the postponement.

Cutting the cut: Apple has proposed to the Northern District Court of California that it charge developers a 15% fee for purchases made outside of its store, dropping to 5% for small businesses. The company was forced to propose the structure as part of its ongoing legal battle with Epic Games, submitting the terms in a filing issued shortly after the Supreme Court rejected its attempt to pause action in the lower courts. Epic has since stated that it believes the proposals are “far outside of the bounds of the North Circuit’s guidance on permissible fees.” The fight continues.

Under investigation: Roblox is under investigation by the bipartisan Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism over issues of child safety. In a letter issued to David Baszucki, Roblox’s Chief Exec last week, the Committee’s Chairman Josh Hawley and ranking member Richard J. Durbin “appears to prioritise revenue and engagement metrics over the safety and wellbeing of our children”, citing the 65,381 cases of suspected child sexual exploitation that the platform reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children last year. The company’s safety chief Matt Kaufmann has said that the company “look[s] forward to sharing the facts about how we work to protect children on the platform” ahead of the committee’s 31st August deadline.

Getting Twitchy: Backlash has continued against Twitch, following last week’s announcement that users would have to opt out of having their content used for AI training purposes. BBC News reports that Mary Kish, the company’s head of community, hosted an official live stream to help streamers turn off training. The outlet also reported that it is unclear how long the company has been using streams to train models, suggesting training may have been taking place before the announcement.

Sacré bleu!: Finally, France’s constitutional council has struck down the country’s mooted social media ban for teens. Anyone under the age of 15 was set to be barred from opening an account on social platforms from September onwards. However, the court has blocked the law from going into force because it will “disproportionately infringe upon the freedom of expression and communication” of teens and “fail to provide the legal safeguards necessary to ensure the right to respect for private life.” France’s Government will likely need to tweak rules to pass them before President Emmanuel Macron steps down in 2027.

Moving on

Legendary game developer Warren Spector has announced that he is retiring from making video games…Ryan Rubin has joined Blizzard as a Senior Producer…Mario Kart aficionado and VGIM enthusiast Lukas Roper is now Senior Unity Developer at ColePowered Games…David Bailey has popped up as Lead Commercial Manager - Licensing at Games Workshop…And Tim Repa-Davies is now VP Business Affairs and General Counsel at publisher Secret Mode…

Jobs ahoy

A16Z Games has a Manager, Growth post open in the States…Supercell has a fascinating opening for a Marketing Lead, New Games in its London office…Avalanche is hiring a Senior Game Designer in Sweden…TripleDot need a new Producer…And The Pokemon Company wants to choose you as its Influencer Marketing Manager in Bellevue…

Events and conferences

• gamescom, Cologne - 26th-30th August

• PAX West, Seattle - 4th-7th September

• Nexus Games Conference, Dublin - 23rd-26th September

• Power Play promotional event, Jersey - 26th September

• Melbourne International Games Week, Melbourne - 2nd-11th October

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Games of the week

• Mortal Shell II - Souls-like sequel that is generating a lot of buzz from in-the-know influencers lands in hands today.

• STALKER 2: Cost of Hope - Major non-linear expansion to the 2024 hit role-playing game arrives on PC and console.

• STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT - The incomprehensibly capitalised and punctuated titled visual novel is available after a recent reboot.

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Before you go…

How can you get people to understand the importance of investigative journalism? By getting them to play, of course.

The Global Investigative Journalism Network explores how games like Predatorgate, a short narrative experience based on one journalist’s experience of Greece’s Predator spying software scandal, can build media literacy in a world crying out for it.

This week’s Video Games Industry Memo is sponsored by Fifty

Media built around a deeper understanding of gamers

• We run the rule over the latest batch of industry financial updates

• Ukie gets upset over incoming easy-to-exit subscription rules

• Madden NFL 27 kicks off the Saudi-era of EA in the week’s releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

It’s nice to be back on newsletter duties. Before we dive into the Big Read, I have a Big Announcement about VGIM’s gamescom plans: we’re going daily for the first time.

Yep, you heard it right. With the support of our friends at Fifty, VGIM will land in inboxes every morning from Monday to Friday throughout gamescom so you know exactly what’s going on in Cologne.

The daily will be shaped slightly differently from the usual weekly newsletter. There’ll be one big story, a second section full of quick news hits and a summary of the day ahead.

And while the newsletter will be free for all, Insiders will receive a special audio extra in every newsletter to give them even deeper insight from the show floor.

For now, there’s only one thing I need from you before the first daily: I want your tips for surviving gamescom.

If you have strong opinions on the perfect number of Kolsches to drink in a single sitting, which parties you should actually go to or the best place to get some vegetables during a meat-heavy conference, email me at george@videogamesindustrymemo.com.

The best advice will feature in the first daily on Monday 24th August in the quick hits section.

The big read - Video Games Industry Finance Cheat Sheet: Summer 2026

Paraphrasing Peter Parker: With great predictability comes some responsibility. The VGIM games industry finance cheat sheet returns for yet another edition, giving you a whistle-stop tour of the financial performance of some of the industry’s biggest publicly traded companies.

Good buy for now: This quarter’s edition begins with a brief farewell to Electronic Arts. I’ve written ad nauseam about how EA’s $55bn acquisition by the Public Investment Fund has handed the Saudi state a powerful soft power asset. Its purchase also deprives industry watchers of a regular look under the hood of one of the biggest live-service video game developers. Boo, hiss, etc.

Tariff error in your favour

Switched up and up: Anyway, it’s fair to say console companies have had an interesting time over the past three months. Nintendo had a bumper quarter, largely because they received a whopping refund from the US Government after the Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs were illegal. Profits surged by 53.5% to $925m (¥147.4bn), after the company received its cash back from the US administration. A drop in year-on-year game sales despite decent sales figures for Starfox was offset by the Switch 2’s ongoing success, with the device selling 23.6m units in its first 13 months on the market. That’s a record for the company, making it the fastest-selling console in the company’s history.

Falling flat: Sony received a similarly welcome, albeit lesser, bump from tariff refunds. In the first quarter of its 2026 financial year, operating income from its game and network services division increased by $339.6m (¥54.1bn) to $1.27 billion (¥202bn) as the company received its first tranche of an estimated half-a-billion-dollar tariff refund. Sales, however, stayed flat, increasing just 0.06% year-on-year from $5.88bn (¥936.5bn) to $5.89bn (¥937.1bn). Executives will surely cross their fingers that the decrease in sales of third-party games and hardware due to the ongoing memory crisis may be rectified by the launch of Grand Theft Auto VI later this year.

Letting the side down: Once again, Microsoft’s flailing gaming division trails its console gaming rivals. Xbox reported a 10% year-on-year decline in its content and services revenue for the fourth quarter of its 2026 financial year. It also reported a 13% year-on-year drop in hardware revenues. When combined with impairment charges, Xbox was largely responsible for a 4% downturn in the company’s More Personal Computing segment. Given that the company’s overall revenue jumped by 18% to $90bn and net income grew by 31% to $35.8bn, Xbox’s struggles look increasingly awkward in the context of Microsoft’s wider success.

A mixed bunch

Spooking investors: Beyond Xbox’s struggles, Roblox was the other game business to suffer a wobbly quarter. The business reported that revenue grew 36% year-on-year to reach $1.5bn in Q2 2026. However, its daily active user count has continued to decline from its peak of 152 million in Q3 2025 to 123 million in the current quarter. Roblox also said that its 8% year-on-year growth in bookings to $1.55bn sat at the lower end of its expectations. It claimed that the underperformance was caused by its attempts to shift younger users away from “high monetising, 2025-vintage viral games” towards sustainable evergreen titles that monetise less effectively. Such long-term thinking has not been rewarded by the market, which currently values the company at 70% less than its 2025 peak.

Spin machine: One company finding some cheer amidst a lengthy period of gloom is Ubisoft. The company’s Q1 2026-2027 earnings report reads grimly, with net bookings down 9.2% to $295m (€256m) due to a comparatively strong performance in the comparable quarter last year. However, the company said that its results came in slightly above guidance due to strong performance of Invincible: Guarding the Globe. It also said that Q2 had started strongly with Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced shifting 3.5 million units within two weeks of its July launch. The company’s attempt to positively spin studio closures as “additional rightsizing” felt like an optimistic bridge too far.

Sell games, make money: Monster Hunter maker Capcom continued its generational run of financial success by recording another banging quarter, with net sales for the first quarter of its new financial year up 54.7% year-on-year to $430m (¥70.41bn) and operating profit up 66.9% year-over-year to $250m (¥41.05bn). Capcom’s success is a reminder that being successful in the games industry can sometimes be simple. The company has recorded another successful quarter because *checks notes* it has sold a lot of games. The company shifted 23.81m games this quarter versus 14.6m this time last year, with new IP Pragmata and Resident Evil: Requiem giving it a valuable boost.

The giant grows: China’s video game powerhouse continued its fine financial form this quarter. Tencent saw revenue across its business grow 11% to $30.3bn (RMB 204.8bn) for Q2 2026, with its profits increasing 13% year on year to $17.6bn (RMB 118.4bn). Games once again performed well. The company’s Value-Added Service (VAS) division, which includes its video games portfolio, saw revenue grow 8% to $14.59bn (RMB 98.4bn) for the quarter. Domestic game revenues grew by 17% with Delta Force, Valorant PC and Mobile and the newly released Roco Kingdom: World shining. International game revenue grew 4% on a constant currency basis, with strong performances from Wuthering Waves and Valorant PC balanced by a downturn in Supercell’s portfolio.

All bets on GTA VI

Predicting problems: So, what lies ahead for the rest of the year? There are a few things worth watching. Tariff refunds are likely to stay in the pockets of console manufacturers, but consumers in the US are trying to argue in the courts that they should get a cut of that money themselves. The memory crisis continues, forcing price hikes on consoles and PCs that could continue to depress market growth. Then there’s the Grand Theft Auto VI question. Take-Two once again delivered net bookings above the company’s guidance range for its first quarter of the financial year ($1.39bn). But its fortune, and much of the rest of the industry’s, relies on Rockstar’s latest crime caper blowing the financial doors off in November, capitalising on some of that sweet Netflix-powered excitement later this month. No pressure, lads.

Completely reassuring ending: For now, the most recent quarter shows an industry continuing to wobble its way through a major rebalancing of the global games industry, disruption in both development and sales due to the emergence of the AI economy, and greater-than-ever exposure to regulatory upheaval that affects the way people pay and play games. I’m sure those problems will all magically resolve themselves in the next quarter. *coughs*

News in brief

Exit subscription music (for a game): UK video games trade body Ukie has issued a statement expressing concern over the Government’s plans to bring ‘easy to exit’ rules for subscriptions forward. Number 10 has confirmed that new rules forcing businesses to provide clearer up-front information about subscriptions, regular reminders about their operation and easier exits from them will come into force in January 2027. Ukie has asked for “clarity and flexibility”, expressing fears that players could “consume content that far exceeds the value of the refund” if someone cancels a subscription early.

Political Game: German trade body Game has released a statement ahead of gamescom calling on German and European policymakers to support the sector more effectively. It argues that “Germany and Europe remain far too weak by international standards” to benefit from global growth in the games industry. It therefore argues for an “ambitious strategy” to support the sector, funding and tax reliefs across the business lifecycle, targeted regulation of the industry and effectively using games, their ideas and technologies for the benefit of society.

Adults only: Xbox has informed players that they will have to verify their age to play R18+ games on the Microsoft and Xbox stores in Australia. The company sent a notification to users informing them that they will need to prove they are over 18 via facial age estimation, credit card, or a government-issued ID to access adult games. One game they won’t be accessing in physical form is Halloween, which has been denied classification in the territory because of the “presence of a controlled substance” (likely to be weed) in the game.

False Start: Walmart has shuttered its video game media site Restart, less than two years after launch. The news was confirmed by the site’s News Editor, Imran Khan, and Editor-in-Chief, Brandy Bertheleson, who both revealed that their employment had ended. Overall, five journalists are believed to be affected by the shutdown.

Big Success: And finally, House House, the creators of Untitled Goose Game, has scored another feel-good hit with its co-operative game Big Walk. The game, which allows players to hang out and solve puzzles together in a proximity chat-powered landscape, has sold over a million copies in its first week on sale.

Moving on

Wrapping up Electronic Arts news, Cam Weber has been appointed President and Chief Studios Officer. David Tinson is now President and Chief Operating Officer at the PIF-owned publisher…Dan Lazarides has been appointed Chief Marketing Officer at Frontier Development…David Lilley has been promoted to Chief Commercial Officer at Kudos Games Services…Video game lover and VGIM enthusiast Simone Casadei Pastorino has been appointed Partner at public affairs firm Milltown Partners…And Kat May has become Senior Influencer Relations Manager at Secret Mode…

Jobs ahoy

Sony Interactive Entertainment is hiring a Senior Director, Growth Marketing in London…Discord has an interesting opening for a Commercial Policy Lead, Brand Safety & Malware in its San Francisco base…Into Games is recruiting an Influencer Marketing Coordinator – Indie Gaming to support its not-for-profit work…Activision Blizzard needs a Senior Director, Digital Marketing in its Santa Monica office…And Epic Games has resumed its search for an Influencer Marketing Director…

Events and conferences

• Power Play promotional event, Edinburgh - 17th August

• gamescom, Cologne - 26th-30th August

• PAX West, Seattle - 4th-7th September

• Nexus Games Conference, Dublin - 23rd-26th September

• Melbourne International Games Week, Melbourne - 2nd-11th October

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Games of the week

• Pro Jank Footy - Bonkers but entertaining arcade spin on Aussie rules footy kicks its way onto all major platforms.

• Madden NFL 27 - First major sporting release of EA’s Saudi Arabian era aims to score a touchdown.

• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered - Bethesda’s classic fantasy RPG arrives on Nintendo Switch 2.

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Before you go…

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has praised the gamers for supposedly playing their part in filling an important skills gap in the country.

Duffy claimed that a Federal Aviation Administration campaign to recruit video game players as air traffic controllers had achieved “94% of its hiring goal”, recruiting 2000 staff in the process.

But are the new hires more Microsoft Flight Simulator than the 2009 mobile game Flight Control? Take a flight over the States soon to find out for yourself.

• PIF’s acquisition of EA nears completion, raising questions about what comes next

• Latvia bans Russian video games over propaganda fears

• Halo Campaign Evolved shoots its way onto devices in the week’s releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

Let’s start the newsletter with the most important news first.

There’s no VGIM next week because I’m on holiday. If you catch me writing a newsletter, checking my email, or doing any client work, you have permission to (gently) punch me in the head.

In a return to relentless self-promotion of my work, I was very happy to hear Craig Mazin of The Last of Us showrunning fame tip VGIM and Out Making Games’s Trapped in the Network report on his podcast. Listen to the relevant episode of Scriptnotes here.

I joined Myriam Francois on The Tea to talk about Power Play. If you’ve ever thought you’ve needed to watch a video where I’m described as a whistleblower and my knees are visible in multiple shots, watch it here.

I also made my first appearance in a Finnish media site. Uusi Juutu’s Matti Koskinen grabbed me for a chat about the book and what it tells us about the state of liberal democracy. You can read it behind a paywall here.

Andddd finally, I’ve got two more tour dates to tout. Join me in Battersea on Wednesday 12th August at Waterstones here, or come and see me speak at the Edinburgh Literature Festival on Monday 17th August by buying your ticket at this link.

The big read - Saudi Arabia, EA and digital sport’s soft power

Someone call Fabrizio Romano: The Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) acquisition of Electronic Arts is practically complete. The $55bn deal, which will see the PIF acquire 93.4% of the business alongside co-investors Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, passed regulatory scrutiny from the European Commission last week. The bloc cleared the deal of potential competition concerns under its Foreign Subsidies Regulation – removing the final regulatory hurdle likely to trip up the deal.

What comes next: Barring something utterly unforeseen, the PIF will own EA before the end of the year. But what will it do to the company? How does it fit into the country’s games strategy? And what does it say about Saudi Arabia’s soft power strategy in both our community and the sporting world? Some thoughts below.

Streamlining around the three ‘S’es

Record-breaking businesses: Much of the industry’s interest in the deal has focused on its status as the largest leveraged buyout in business history. The PIF needed $20bn of debt financing from J.P. Morgan to get the deal over the line, despite finding $30bn down the back of its metaphorical sofa to get the deal moving. At some point, the debt will need to be serviced. And Electronic Arts will be responsible for servicing it.

Ouch: The way EA is most likely to pay its dues is by restructuring its business. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier said in September 2025 that the company could consider “mass layoffs, more aggressive monetisation, and other big cost-cutting measures” to tackle its mountain of debt. Investor and board director Nick Button-Brown told GI Biz earlier this year that he believed a leveraged buyout would force it to funnel profits towards repaying its debts – reducing investment into its games in the process.

The three ‘S’es: To mitigate the effect of the debt on the company, we can assume that EA is likely to streamline its business to focus on the three ‘S’es capable of reaching big audiences in a repeatably sellable fashion. Sports will remain the heart of EA’s business, with money-spinners like EA Sports FC, Madden NFL and College Football likely to be less affected by restructuring. Service-based shooters like Battlefield 6 and Apex Legends will remain an important part of the business, especially if the former can continue its strong performance since launch last year. The Sims is the final ‘S’ that is likely to remain an important part of EA’s business, given its ability to reach audiences who may not be entirely into sports or shooters.

IP freely (sold off): That means that the most likely place where the axe will fall is in EA’s wider portfolio of intellectual property. The company has long resisted selling dormant or underused IP. Being told to deal with $20bn of debt could make it easier for the company to entertain offers to acquire properties such as Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space or Titanfall (or give its blessing to external development partners to bring new entries to life on a budget). BioWare’s position looks risky, with the value of IP like Dragon Age and Mass Effect set against the studio’s costly struggles over the past decade. EA’s acquisition by the PIF may have a knock-on effect on the publishing side of the business. EA Originals was able to pick up plucky independent success stories like Hazelight Studios – the creator of couch co-op games such as It Takes Two and Split Fiction – when it was publicly traded. Securing those deals when owned by a sovereign wealth fund representing an authoritarian state may be trickier in the future.

Demonstrating economic impact

Why, not what: The focus on what a leveraged buyout means for EA is understandable given the lay-offs, restructurings and closures that have blighted the industry. It has, however, obscured why the parties involved have pursued a leveraged buyout. J.P. Morgan is not in the habit of scurrying around to provide $20bn of debt financing. The trillion-dollar PIF has previously not had to ask for help to complete deals, something it has only recently started doing due to wild overspending on the NEOM line city project.

Long-term ROI: Unsurprisingly, one big reason for the deal is the likelihood that investors will get a return on investment. EA has recorded gross profits of $5.92bn and $5.94bn in its last two fiscal years. Obviously, tens of billions of debt is a lot for even the most successful business to eat. But the longevity of the business (it opened in 1982) and the success of its seemingly evergreen service games make EA one of the few companies likely to be able to wear it. This makes the deal appealing to the PIF, its investors and its bankers, all of whom are happier to wait for returns than jumpier public markets.

Strategic games: The acquisition also makes sound strategic sense in the context of Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman-approved video game strategy. The strategy aims to generate £10bn in economic value for the Saudi economy, support 39,000 jobs, lead to the creation of 30 globally recognised games and see the country rank in the top three for the number of professional esports athletes in the territory. Saudi Arabia has already done extensive work on this front via Savvy Games already (see Power Play for more details). Acquiring EA brings a publisher that already supports 15,000 jobs, has major games in its portfolio and strong esports credentials via its sports titles; giving Saudi Arabia’s national strategy a major boost in the process.

Opportunity knocks: The deal also makes sense because opportunism is sometimes the right strategy in the business world. It’s unlikely that EA would have been available to purchase if Jared Kushner, who founded Affinity Partners with cash from the PIF, hadn’t allegedly brokered the deal on Saudi Arabia’s behalf. In true ‘hate the game, not the player’ style, it’s reasonable to guess that a sale of a major American video game power to a Gulf state would be hard, if not impossible, under a President whose surname wasn’t Trump. Aiming to close the deal in September 2026 before the mid-terms suggests that everyone knows that a chance like this doesn’t come around too often.

A new sporting soft-power strategy

A change of emphasis: The political dimension to the deal is very much a feature of this acquisition, rather than a bug. What’s interesting is that the context of the deal has changed. When I wrote about it in Power Play last year, I said the video game strategy supplemented the country’s investment into sport. A year later, it’s become clear that I had it the wrong way round.

Snookered: Earlier this year, the PIF and the Saudi state retreated from several sporting investments. It ended its financial backing for breakaway golf league LIV Golf. It abandoned plans to host the Rugby World Cup. Toughest of all, it cancelled the Saudi Arabian Snooker Masters (sobs). The country’s support for football has also waned. It retained its sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup and funding for the recently introduced Club World Cup tournament. But its backing for football teams has reduced. PIF-owned Premier League club Newcastle United has seen its financial support reduce. The sovereign wealth fund has also sold a stake in Saudi Pro League club Al-Hilal, which it nationalised in 2023.

Qatar’s heroes: The sports strategy has been affected by the PIF’s aforementioned financial problems, reducing the state’s ability to fund unprofitable flights of sporting fancy. But there are other forces at play. In his book More than a Shirt, football journalist Joey D’Urso writes about the experience of another Gulf state shaping its reputation through sport. Qatar thought that hosting the 2022 World Cup would let it tell its story to the world. Instead, it realised that co-opting football’s biggest tournament invited enormous scrutiny of the country’s political system. By contrast, buying up Paris St-Germain and putting state-backed airline Qatar Airways on the shirt of the now Champions League-winning side has been seen by billions of people in sports stadia, on television and via social media. The value of soft power isn’t realised directly through the sport; it’s achieved by projecting into the information ecosystem that surrounds it.

Strengthening in esports: The PIF’s acquisition of EA allows it to project influence into two information ecosystems where sports and video games intersect. The first is esports. The country already has a formidable presence in the space. Saudi-backed Savvy Games owns tournament organisers ESL/Face-It. The Esports World Cup has become the de facto biggest esports competition in the world. Over half a billion people are already viewing content from Saudi-backed esports contests. Folding EA and its portfolio of esports-friendly shooter and sports games into its portfolio further strengthens the country’s reach in the space, helping it communicate with audiences for F1’s official sim racing tournament, the Apex Legends Global Series, or EA FC’s Pro tournaments.

Content driver: Importantly, there is another ecosystem that EA’s games influence: the sporting world. Saudi Arabia’s sporting ambitions slowed as the challenges of influencing entrenched sporting institutions became more obvious. But the one thing that the fans, teams and governing bodies behind popular sports do engage with is the video game based on the sport they love. A Premier League YouTube puff piece asking Manchester United captain Bruno Fernandes about his EA FC ratings reached nearly 2.8 million people last summer. A promotional clip for last year’s F1 game, which saw Lewis Hamilton teach French footballer Kylian M’Bappe how to drive a virtual racing car, received tens of thousands of likes on an unofficial TikTok cutdown from a racing fan account. The inclusion of Texas Tech’s Masked Rider mascot in EA’s College Football game was covered by news outlet ESPN and celebrated by the team via its official X account. There’s even a partnership between EA Sports and sports site The Athletic to include the latter’s content within a companion app for its games.

That’s the ball game: So when we return to the ‘why’ behind the deal, EA’s value to the PIF is not purely economic nor solely about delivering its video game strategy. It’s about owning a soft power asset that is quietly entrenched in the sporting community in a way that Saudi Arabia simply isn’t. If the PIF’s football strategy limited them to ownership of Newcastle United and some Saudi Pro League teams, owning EA hands them a relationship with the 20,000 players, 750 clubs and 35 leagues at the top of the professional game. And if those players, clubs, leagues and fandoms are playing the game, talking about it with friends and posting online to likely billions of fans, the Saudi project has the potential to reach more deeply into the world of football than ever before. Repeat this across other sports that EA also has a strong footprint in – NFL, NHL, F1 – and the reach grows ever bigger.

Reaching for glory: So, should we expect to see the Crown Prince on the front of EA Sports FC next year? Obviously not. The value of a soft power asset is in subtle attraction, not brute force – especially if the brutality damages an economically valuable asset that needs to rid itself of a whopping debt. What is clear is that a state seeking to shape perceptions now owns an asset with proven reach to billions of people. How it uses it in the years to come is something we should watch closely.

News in brief

Propaganda game over: Latvian lawmakers have banned the import of video games from Russia and Belarus as part of efforts to fight propaganda. The state has barred the sale of Russian-made games, books, newspapers and films over concerns that they have been weaponised to spread disinformation in the Baltic State.

Reporting for duty: Trust and Safety expert Rachel Kowert has done it again. This time, she’s written an extensive and fascinating newsletter about how inconsistent definitions of ‘harms’ in community standards governing games affect communities and what game companies need to do to develop effective standards, reporting flows and community norms.

More Xbox bad news: Xbox has apologised after an hours-long service outage on Monday. GI Biz reports that company CTO Scott Van Vliet said that the failure of an internal licensing service used across Microsoft had prevented players from launching games and wreaked havoc on publishing partners.

Luck of the Irish games industry: The EU has approved an expansion of Ireland’s video game tax credit. The Digital Game Tax Credit did not initially allow developers to claim relief for post-release content, worth up to 32% per qualifying game. But earlier this week, the European Commission approved a request from the Irish government to expand the release – meaning post-launch work will qualify for relief.

Ok then…: Finally, Atari has announced that it has signed a deal with Universal to allow it to develop movies based on ten of its intellectual properties. Deadline reports that Universal has already acquired one movie from the partnership, which allows it to develop films based on games such as Pong, Asteroids and Missile Command. I’ve yet to see anyone think this is a good idea, but I was wrong about the Minecraft movie, so…

Moving on

Lots of outs this week, kicking off with Xbox’s VP of Engineering Jared Palmer, who has left to work for Cognition AI… Ben Board is leaving his role at Unreal Engine after years of fantastic work heading up the engine’s biz dev team in Europe…John Hight is stepping down as President of Wizards of the Coast…Turning to some promotions and ins, Rob Leane’s been promoted to Head of Gaming at Radio Times…And Stephen Quinney has been appointed as Art Director at Playdemic…

Jobs ahoy

Epic Games is hiring a Partnerships Director - Talent in the States…Jagex has a post open for a Producer to support the Old School Runescape team…Criterion needs an Associate Games Designer…Virtous has a Head of Product, AI post open in Singapore…And IO Interactive has a Marketing Internship open in Malmo…

Events and conferences

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

• Serious Play, North Carolina - 5th-7th August

• gamescom, Cologne - 26th-30th August

• PAX West, Seattle - 4th-7th September

• Power Play book tour, Multiple Locations - Remainder of year

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Games of the week

• Halo: Campaign Evolved - Remake of the classic Combat Evolved campaign landed on Xbox and PC earlier this week.

• Company of Heroes 3: Final Stand - Standalone wave defence edition of Relic’s WWII military strategy game lands on Steam.

• Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Upgraded version of a classic Nintendo Switch RPG arrives on the Switch 2.

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Before you go…

Can’t get tickets to see The Odyssey in IMAX and need something to fill your time while you wait?

Barry O’Rourke of RTE has pulled together a list of games capable of fulfilling epic adventuring needs while you wait for the excitement around Christopher Nolan’s latest film to dissipate.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

• Xbox cuts 3,200 jobs in latest purge

• EA acquisition by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund gets EU go ahead

• Steam revenues hit a record $11bn in first half of 2026

Welcome back to The Debrief, the exclusive summary of the month in games for VGIM’s Insider members.

If you’d like to read the Debrief, access other exclusive content, get priority on event tickets and 10% off VGIM purchases, sign up as an Insider below for half-price before the end of July.

You can also read all the back issues of the free newsletter at www.videogamesindustrymemo.com if this isn’t the right time to join the Insider club.

The top stories

Microsoft lays off 3,200 Xbox workers

Read more

• Games for Change Festival brings powerful play to Mamdani’s city

• New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham puts the digital back in DCMS

• Splatoon Raiders fires its way onto Switch 2 in the week’s releases

Hello from North America, VGIM-ers.

It’s been a brilliant week on the East Coast. Power Play launched in North America. The weather has been fantastic. And I’ve eaten so much good food that I’m at risk of exploding.

I’m taking the rest of this week off to enjoy my time Stateside. So rather than relentlessly self-promote like I usually do, let’s dive straight into the newsletter.

The big read - Mirth and fun in New York

Hackneyed introduction: New York. The Big Apple. Other synonyms for America’s biggest city exist. But what doesn’t exist outside of its hallowed streets, hefty sidewalks and toasty Metro subway stations is the Games for Change Festival.

Explanatory spiel: The Festival celebrated its 23rd edition this week, with thousands of attendees from across the games industry, business and civil society gathering to understand the power of the medium to drive social good in areas as diverse as healthcare, the environment and urban planning.

Mirth and fun in New York: It’s the first time I’ve attended Games for Change in New York, which may be a surprise to some given my involvement in bringing a satellite summit to London earlier this year. But even back in April, I knew I had to make it out to this year’s festival because I thought it’d have its own distinct energy — some of which I captured during my two days at the event.

So fun they played it twice

Welcome to New York: The kind of community you get is so often shaped by where you convene it. New York feels like the place where positive, energetic change is possible. I landed in the city on Saturday evening, a little nervous about arriving in Donald Trump’s America. Once I was past the border, I realised I was in Zohran Mamdani’s New York. And that city is having a hell of a moment right now.

A gorgeous sign: The World Cup final added an extra swirl of internationalism to an already global city, with New Yorkers gleefully embracing it as part of a summer of sport shaped by Knicks in Five. Everyone you talk to feels like they have a spring in their step, whether they’re citizens proud to be surfing against a populist tide or city workers cheerily waving people into Flushing’s botanical gardens for a Spain vs Argentina viewing party. Even the most mundane things imaginable seem to have a little extra spark in them, such as the ‘Hello, gorgeous’ road sign next to the Brooklyn Bridge that has delighted the majority of New Yorkers.

Summer of games: Games for Change opened with a similar burst of civic pride. Alia Jones-Harvey, Associate Commissioner of Education and Workforce Development at the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), was the first speaker on stage. She proudly described Games for Change as “New York’s biggest video game event” before reeling off the MOME’s efforts to support the industry: a $2m investment into a digital game design course at City College of New York; support for local groups like New York’s Videogames Critics Circle and the local IGDA chapter; a reminder about the city’s ongoing Summer of Games, which started in May and stretches into September.

Playful Politics: Playfulness with purpose makes sense in Mamdani’s New York because it aligns with how he communicates with his city. In the conference’s opening keynote, Nick Fortugno, a game designer and professor, perfectly highlighted the effectiveness of an authentically joyous style. Whether it’s jumping in a pool in a suit to celebrate the arrival of New York’s swimming season or running a scavenger hunt during his mayoral campaign, “play is everywhere with Mamdani,” according to Fortugno. That’s a superpower for building a community, a “big we” in Fortugno’s words, capable of changing the mood and fortunes of an entire city.

Community channelled

A change-making community: Fortugno and Jones-Harvey’s talks gave a real sense of why New York is a natural home for the Games for Change community. The rest of my time at the conference showed me how naturally it coalesces together.

Robloxing clever: The playable games stretched out across the festival’s arcade area showed that there is a cross-section of game-changing creators across the games community. PlayStation’s Climate Station was sat on the show floor, allowing players to model the impact of climate change with a little help from a PS5 controller and leading climate science. South of Midnight by Compulsion Games was in the arcade and awarded game of the year, just weeks after regaining its independence from Microsoft. Interestingly, games on the arcade floor like Planet Planners (an immersive simulation game made for BBC Bitesize about geographical themes) and Gather-2-Gether (a cosy co-op game designed to encourage parents and children to play together) ran on Roblox. Minecraft’s reputation as the place where grassroots creators can make impactful, educational experiences looks under threat.

Overcoming parental panics: Gather-2-Gether’s parent focus premise leant into something else that I felt at the conference, which was intense discussion about how to lean into play to engage communities. For parents and carers, the launch of a new white paper written by Dr Rachel Kowert as part of the Tencent-backed Raising Good Gamers initiative sought to shift the conversation about games from irrational ‘panic’ towards a more grounded discussion about how families can make space for play. The eye-catching headline for me is that parents are five times as likely to see a negative news story about games, despite overall media coverage of the medium trending surprisingly neutrally – a useful opportunity to gently remind the industry of the importance of telling its story proactively.

Breaking down barriers: Beyond the focus on parenting, the community-led session that really stuck with me was Constance Steinkuehler’s research into the role that games can play in rehabilitating prisoners. Steinkuehler, a Professor of Informatics at UC Irvine, had almost entirely walked away from examining the value of play to communities after a depressing stint researching hate in online game communities. But in July 2024, she researched how games could reduce recidivism at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco after a group of prisoners who ran an internal ‘skunkworks’ to test ways to reduce reoffending experimented with playing Dungeons and Dragons together. Her research found that tabletop games cut across usual prison lines. Where groups would typically segregate themselves spatially and racially within the prison – sometimes leading to violence – games allowed prisoners to abandon division in favour of playing together around a shared table. The findings inspired further research, reinvigorating Steinkuehler’s faith in the power of play to bring communities together.

Setting standards: What was refreshing is that there was an opportunity to talk frankly about how to address some of the hateful behaviours that Steinkuehler had seen in video games. I was able to sit in on a topic table hosted by GamerSafer, who led a structured conversation improving player safety through our communities. Although I can’t report who was at the table, there was a welcome willingness from representatives of major game companies to suggest that we need to go beyond tools to keep players safe, that policies which tackle hate only work when they’re truly visible and that contesting hateful ideas is about assertively stating what you stand for (and what your community won’t tolerate). Being brave enough to stand up to hate on behalf of your community, to protect them from harm and to expect your participants to share those values wherever they are – whether in a game, in social media, or in the physical world – matters.

Change for Games

Networking opportunities: Games for Change works because it has created such a collegiate community that you can literally bump into people who can turn a neat idea into something genuinely transformative. I watched an expert in the use of video games in urban planning introduce themselves to a game jam organiser literally moments after saying they wanted to host a jam. I saw Robert Steen, founder of the Ibelin Award, meet a not-for-profit that I knew shared his perspective about the importance of curating prosocial game communities. I even had a similar moment myself when I met a researcher who has successfully convened a working group of industry stakeholders and regulators, who shared my opinion that games companies can run successful commercial businesses while maintaining the highest commitment to freedom of expression and assembly within their communities.

Money, money, money: It also works for another reason: money. I spoke to a British not-for-profit who was attending the event. Even in the current American political landscape where federal funding for an enormous range of initiatives has dried up, they noted that the amount of cash available through philanthropic means in the US – including the surprising amount of institutional capital available in places like museums, not-for-profits and cultural foundations – is enormous compared to what’s available back home. Games for Change has the necessary scale to plug game creators into sources of meaningful cash, providing much more capital to work with (even if it isn’t enough to fund every well-intentioned project).

Surprising constraints: Ironically, the only real complaint I heard from attendees was a lack of, or slightly unenthusiastic, games industry backing for the kind of games that could meaningfully change the perception of the medium. Several attendees told me that job and funding cuts across the industry had further eroded the sector’s already comparatively thin corporate social responsibility layer, meaning that support from businesses like Tencent, Lego and Roblox feels exceptional in the current landscape. Two other conference goers also raised a question of whether getting funding from the sector was a hindrance because of its caution, with creators theorising that taking smaller pots of cash from not-for-profits, social impact investors or public funding calls was a better option than “driving a car with a full tank of gas that is only allowed to go at 25.” Hearing this just days after I had written about how the UK industry’s cautious approach to building cultural capital harms its ability to influence felt apposite.

Time to mature: In contrast to the story that the sector tells itself, Games for Change shows that the transformative power of video games is widely understood. Game developers at all levels of the industry are motivated to create games with the power to change society. Civil society actors actively support and fund efforts to use play to tell stories, reach communities and change behaviour. Even political leaders realise that, to riff on Fortugno’s talk, “mirth and fun” hold genuine power. The question is whether games businesses can match the change with the energy, investment and openness capable of turning an economically mature sector into a culturally mature one too.

News in brief

Digital returns: Andy Burnham, the latest person to ride the bucking bronco known as being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has put the digital back into the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The new PM has returned some digital responsibilities to Lisa Nandy’s department following the abolition of the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology. What we don’t entirely know is what exactly has moved back there. We do know that artificial intelligence has moved into the Cabinet Office under newly appointed AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, Science has moved to the business department headed up by Football Manager fan Jonny Reynolds and that online safety looks to have landed back with Handy Nandy. But we’ll discover more specifics as the reorganisation beds in.

Fight, fight, fight: Nintendo has asked a court to dismiss a class action lawsuit that says it should pass on a recent refund on tariffs from the US government to consumers. Nintendo said that consumers received what they “bargained and paid for” when its consoles were subjected to tariffs. But the plaintiffs argue that the company received a double benefit from the refund, charging consumers more while receiving cash back when the Trump administration was forced to refund tariffed businesses.

Pre-order madness: Grand Theft Auto VI has generated $180m of digital pre-orders, according to analyst firm Newzoo. While the firm branded reports that the game had generated a billion dollars worth of up-front purchases as ‘absurd’, it has forecast that the game is likely to generate between $3.3bn and $5.2bn during launch week.

Don’t call it a census: 22% of the UK video games industry workforce has experienced a job loss, studio closure, or end of a fixed-term contract in the past three years, according to Ukie’s Games Industry Workforce Demographic Survey. The report found that women and non-binary workers were more likely to experience the loss of a role than men, with writers and artists bearing the brunt of job losses.

Third-party app store hard: Google Play has opened up to third-party app stores this week. Google and Epic Games had sought to adjust an order from Californian District Judge James Donato, which told Google to allow the introduction of rival stores on the Play Store via a ‘Registered App Store’ scheme. But both parties eventually agreed it was easier to go with the Judge’s original order rather than hashing out an alternative - leading to third-party stores arriving on Google Play in the US yesterday.

Moving on

Jonnie Bryant has joined Team 17 as Communications Director…Charlotte Willis is the new PR and Influencer Manager at Yogscast Games…Dan Hawkins has signed on as the Principal Talent Acquisition Partner and HR Operations at Build A Rocket Boy…Molly Shepherd-Boden is the new Technical Talent Acquisition Specialist at Side…And as reported in The Game Business, Glen Schofield, the creator of Dead Space, is retiring from the biz…

Jobs ahoy

Netflix is hiring a Principal Product Manager in its games and social team…Hasbro needs an Associate Producer to work in Renton…The Pokémon Company is hunting a Licensing Coordinator…King’s looking for a Game Designer to work out of its Stockholm office…And Ubisoft needs a Legal Counsel in its Montreal studio…

Events and conferences

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

• Serious Play, North Carolina - 5th-7th August

• gamescom, Cologne - 26th-30th August

• PAX West, Seattle - 4th-7th September

• Power Play book tour, Multiple Locations - Remainder of year

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Games of the week

• Splatoon Raiders - Single-player spin-off of Nintendo’s splat-tastic multiplayer octopus-based shooter drops on Switch 2.

• The Planet Crafter - Popular open-world survival sim set on an inhospitable planet ports its way to Xbox and PS5 after Steam success.

• Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game - Exceedingly mid-looking fighting game set in the Avatar universe reminds us all that we’re all about to enter the summer game drought.

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Before you go…

Remember at the start of the World Cup when we said that Electronic Arts was looking to extend its 16-year streak of forecasting the winner of the tournament just before the competition got underway?

Well, the run continues.

The company successfully predicted that Spain would win this year’s World Cup via an EA Sports FC 26 simulation - earning it at least 20 years of predictive glory ahead of the 2030 tournament.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

Good news, everybody! The North American edition of my debut non-fiction book Power Play: Video Games, Politics, and the Battle for Global Influence is out today.

The book, published by the wonderful team at Prometheus, is available in bookstores, online, or through your favourite audio platform.

It has been picked as one of its top non-fiction picks for the month by Amazon’s Editorial team.

It’s also received plenty of praise from North American writers, academics and video game experts.

Praise for Power Play: Video Games, Politics, and the Battle for Global Influence

“Power Play… is essential reading for anyone trying to understand where culture, technology, and power collide.” Dr Rachel Kowert, PhD, Founder of Psychgeist and Visiting Researcher at the University of Cambridge

“Power Play uncovers a hidden history of the contemporary world, showing the essential but often overlooked role of video games in shaping everything from the invention of the iPhone to the election of Donald Trump.” - Rollo Romig, New York Times Magazine and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author

“This is an urgent, fascinating read that will fundamentally change how you understand modern power.”- Kelly Clancy, Author, Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World

“George Osborn is perhaps the first to see with real clarity what almost everyone else has missed: that video games are the coffee houses of our age…He shows how this immense network became politically consequential, and how the right has been far quicker than the left to grasp and exploit its potential.” - Thomas Small, Co-Host of the Conflicted podcast

“George has captured one of the most important, and under-examined, dynamics driving international politics today: the way video games and the culture surrounding them are being used to influence our expectations of free speech and civil rights.” - Joshua Foust, Assistant Professor, Department of Public Relations, Syracuse University

Want to buy a copy of the book? There are two main ways to get your hands on one.

• Buy online through your favourite retailer - You can buy Power Play through Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, BooksAMillion and more by hitting this link.

• Buy it in person in New York this week - Or, you can buy the book in person in New York at the Games for Change Festival or the Thriving in Games Group’s Digital Salon. I’ll be signing copies at both events, so come along if you can.

Thanks again for supporting my work. Normal VGIM service will resume on Thursday.

• I argue that the UK games industry can do a lot more to grow its influence

• Ofcom warns businesses that it’s going to get tough on age assurance tech

• Mexico: A History by Paul Gillingham is my recommendation for the road

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Hello VGIM Insiders,

Thanks for your patience this month. Playing Politics is out a week later than usual due to book touring. I appreciate being given the time to write it.

I’ve made a slight change to the newsletter’s format. As per usual, there’s a big read and links to some interesting news stories about video games and the political road.

But I’ve also added a new ‘recommendation for the road’ section, so I can tip you off to something interesting I’ve experienced that might spark some political thinking.

VGIM Insiders can read Playing Politics right now. If you’re not a VGIM Insider and would like to read this newsletter, you can easily sign up as one.

Use the code POWERPLAY to score VGIM Insider membership – which lands you more newsletters, early access to events and a discount on VGIM purchases – for just £25 a year (or £3 per month).

Get 50% off forever

And with that self-promotion done, let’s talk industry influence.

Big Read - How to grow the UK video games industry’s influence

Read more

• Publishers share how to stand out from the crowd at the VGIM business breakfast

• The European Union takes big steps towards a social media ban

• Moss: The Forgotten Relic charms in this week’s big releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

The North American book launch of Power Play takes place on Tuesday 21st July, and you can celebrate it with me in the Big Apple on two special days.

First up, I’ll be at Games for Change New York on Wednesday 22nd July having a chat with Lucy Chow about building welcoming, inclusive and fair community spaces for people to play in. Get your tickets for the conference at this link.

Later that evening, I’ll be joining the Thriving in Games Group for its Digital Thriving Salon. Join an exclusive group of guests at Winnies between 6pm and 9pm by registering here.

And most importantly, there’ll be plenty of opportunities to buy the book. Grab a copy at either Games for Change or the Digital Thriving Salon.

And if you’re based anywhere else in North America, you can, of course, buy the book and have it delivered straight to your door next week. Pre-order here.

The big read - Beating the content crush

That’s a lotta games: There are an almost unfathomable number of video games available for people to play. In 2025, thousands of games were released on console, and nearly 20,000 video games were made available via Steam. Approximately 225,000 mobile games arrived on app stores. And on Roblox, the number of experiences released last year is expressed in millions — rather than mere thousands. Gulp.

Crushed: The glut of video game content has led to what analyst firm Omdia has dubbed a content crush. Developers and publishers are navigating a market where consumers are inundated with new releases, have accumulated a ‘pile of shame’ to play through, and have less cash – and often less time – to play with. This makes things pretty darn tricky for anyone trying to get their game picked up by a publisher, or sold to overstimulated players (i.e. a hella lot of people reading this newsletter).

Seamless transition: So how on earth are developers attracting cash in this market? What are they doing to stand out to both publishers and players? And how are publishers themselves staying visible in a remarkably noisy landscape? In an attempt to resolve the problem on behalf of everyone in the games industry, I collared experts from PQube, Hooded Horse and PlayStack at this year’s VGIM Business Breakfast, sponsored by PXN, to get some answers.

Some early optimism

Competitive advantages: The content crush is definitely A Real Thing. But early in the session, Harvey Elliott, Chief Executive at recently acquired publisher PlayStack, challenged just how crush-y the problem is. “There are 20,000 games each year [released on Steam], but we don’t remember 20,000 games,” he said. “There’s maybe 1,000 that could be interesting.” That still means there is a punchy rolling average of 20 decent video game releases per week. But compared to nearly 400 releases per week, Elliott’s estimate suggests that the competitive commercial video game market is narrower than expected.

RIP their inboxes: Publishers are also actively deploying cash to support those games. In contrast to some of the more doom-laden comments about there being no money for companies in the market, the two panellists who are in the business of signing games– Elliott and Ariel Pai (who is Senior Product Scout & Business Development Manager at PQube) – confirmed they were actively looking for games to add to their slates in 2027 and 2028. What’s changed is how much cash is available.

Ask, and you may receive: “I think for us because we’re still also indie scale, our basic budget isn’t mega high,” explains Pai. “So basically anything that is more than half a million dollars, that’s not really something that we will take forward.” This figure lines up with what I heard from publishers attending Florence’s First Playable - where publishing budgets ranged from a few hundred thousand to a couple of million dollars - suggesting developers can get cash, if they tweak expectations and budgets down from the highs of the Covid Bonanza Era.

Not on a wishlist and a prayer: And as for who gets cash, the panellists keenly slayed the idea that developers have to resolve the chicken/egg dilemma of trying to build a massive community before nabbing a publishing deal. “I think I can confidently say that we’ve never signed a game based on a Discord size or a specific social following,” said Joe Robinson, Communications Director at strategy-game publisher Hooded Horse. “I think devs being aware of the marketing and financial aspect is useful. But as a publisher, we know our audience, we know our market.”

Stay out of their marketing lane: This was echoed by other panellists, who saw their value to developers through the promotional work they can do on their behalf. “I feel like most indie devs come to publishers because they don’t know how to market games and they want publishers to help them reach a broader audience,” said Pai, who said she was happy to consider pitches from developers who had only lightly, but consistently, promoted their work online. Elliott agreed. “When we signed Balatro, it had four followers or something,” he said, suggesting that the perception that a developer must have tens of thousands of Discord followers or wishlists to pick up a publisher may be off the mark.

22 short stories about video games

Tell us a story: So, good news: there’s a little less competition, a little more cash and lower expectations on the community front for developers competing in the market. What is non-negotiable is that your game is 1) good (duh) and 2) has such clarity behind its pitch that publishers and players want to pick it up. “If you can’t explain your game to a friend in one sentence, then I think you’ve got some work to do,” said Olly McGowan, Chief Technology Officer at PXN. “There’s a really good book called The Story is the Deal, and it talks about the history of storytelling and how important it is. It’s so much easier to remember a story and pass it on. Balatro is a great example. It has an instantly understandable hook, it’s easy to remember, and I think that’s why its message was so clear and simple.”

Positive reviews: But outside of pointing excitedly at already popular video games that I’ve bored everyone with, what activates a publisher’s spidey-senses to say this game could stand out? In some cases, it’s something that’s able to get the publishers excited on your behalf. “Because we’re not a massive company of about maybe 40 people, we are quite hands-on when we work on games, when we look at games and new projects are coming in,” said Pai. “It’s quite important the review team are like ‘oh, this game is really, really fun.’ We want to look at games that excite us, so we want to move forward with the developers.”

Blended for your leisure: Publishers are also excited by games that find novelty by melding interesting ideas together. “We’re seeing a lot of people try to be really smart about the games they’re trying to make, more specifically when they’re genre blending,” explained Robinson, when discussing Hooded Horse’s recent pick-ups. Manor Lords, one of the publisher’s biggest breakout hits in the past few years, showed the benefits of genre-melding by merging city-building with real-time strategy to score over three million sales. Separately, the panel politely ignored my comment that compared this practice in games to the emergence of interdisciplinary research in academia. They were right to do so.

Guess who has spent too much time on Reels: Anyway, in great news for creative developers, genre mashups are one example of how being a bit weirder, wacky and creative will help games really stand out in the market. I asked whether video games will deliver an equivalent of Angine de Poitrine, the angular Québécois math rockers who’ve recently Gone Big On TikTok due to their funky rhythms and even funkier outfits. Our panel agreed that being distinctive has a place in an oversaturated market. “Those genre blends, those mashups of things really matter because they bring elements together and drive innovation,” explained Elliott. “Those 20,000 games could be 20,000 things people thought of that weren’t perhaps thought of before. That does give us hope.”

Resonate to accumulate

I suck at my job latest: The problem with running a half-hour breakfast conversation about video game publishing is that there’s so much more that could have been said. We didn’t have time to ask about how game developers can compete with publishers reaching into their back catalogues. There wasn’t enough time to dig deeper into Pai’s comments about expanding into Asia, or the possible benefits of having multilingual teams capable of really understanding developer pitches that might get lost in translation. Trying to talk about specific genres versus general lessons was impossible in the time. It’s always important to acknowledge your failures, dear readers.

Memorability, not just discoverability: But the last word on what’s important for standing out in a crowded landscape was one of the first things that McGowan said on the panel. “Discoverability is one challenge, but memorability I think is very important as well,” he said. “Discoverability gets you noticed, but you need really clear, concise messaging to make sure that it’s memorable because that’s how people are going to share your story.” Because in a market featuring hundreds of viable rivals, the great game that has what Elliott calls “resonance” will be best placed to clamber out from under the content crush.

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News in brief

EU too, Ursula?: The European Union has confirmed that it is moving towards implementing its own form of a social media ban for minors. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has said that there is a consensus for a “social media start date” for when it is safe for children to join platforms. Unlike other bans, the EU is proposing an approach whereby under-13s’ access to social media is limited without parental consent and that older teens will be given steady access to additional features. Importantly for VGIM readers, video games and video game-adjacent social media platforms will be included in this regulatory push.

Not O-SNK: Games Done Quick, the charity speedrunning event, has apologised for partnering with Saudi Arabian-owned games company SNK to host a livestreamed fundraising event. The group pulled the plug on an event featuring the game Metal Slug after its community criticised it for partnering with the studio, which is 96% owned by a subsidiary of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Misk Foundation.

Bad timing: Xbox chief exec Asha Sharma has been appointed by the US Federal Reserve to a task force helping it design its monetary policy. Sharma joins Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen and Horowitz, and Charles I. Jones, a Stanford University professor currently on leave from Anthropic, to advise the Fed’s productivity and jobs workstream. The announcement came just days after Sharma announced 3,200 layoffs across Xbox’s business.

Age ratings on Apple: Apps released on Apple’s App Store will now need to declare whether they include social media features as part of the store’s age rating questionnaire. Developers with apps that allow users to post, share and amplify user-generated content will need to disclose their presence so their products can receive a ‘social media’ descriptor. The aim is to strengthen parental controls to make it easier to limit time spent on social platforms.

Full Steam ahead: Steam, the PC games distribution channel of choice, generated a record $11.1bn in gross revenue in the first half of 2026 according to Alinea Analytics. The figure, which is up by 14.5% compared to H1 2025, has been powered by growth in sales in China, higher prices for new releases, the emergence of ‘viral’ low-cost hits like Mecha Chameleon and ever-effective back catalogue monetisation. Seems relevant given this week’s Big Read.

Moving on

Tom Orry and Alex Donaldson have launched video game media site Respec…Dylan Beale has been appointed Studio Head at Larian Studios in its Guildford office…Ben Tester has become the Senior Marketing and Release Manager at Wales Interactive…Marie Dealessandri has become the Editorial Strategy Manager for Critical Reflex…And John Kattenhorn has been promoted to Chief Technology Officer at Kwalee…

Jobs ahoy

HP wants a Gaming Partnership Specialist to join its team in Tustin…Wizards of the Coast is hiring a Play Content Manager…Rocksteady Studios is still on the hunt for an External Development Manager…Riot Games needs a Technical Art Manager for an unpublished R&D project based in Sydney…And Ubisoft is picking up an Esports Communications Manager for a six-month contract in Paris…

Events and conferences

• Games for Change, New York - 21st-22nd July

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

• Serious Play, North Carolina - 5th-7th August

• gamescom, Cologne - 26th-30th August

• Power Play book tour, Multiple Locations - Throughout 2026

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Games of the week

• Moss: The Forgotten Relic - Well-regarded VR adventure game is reimagined for console and PC, but retains cutesy mouse content.

• Heave Ho 2 - Sequel to arm-swinging party game favourite Heave Ho is dragged onto Steam with the help of Devolver Digital.

• D-topia - Gently paced puzzle adventure about keeping residents of a city happy with the help of an artificial intelligence hits PC and console.

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Before you go…

We headed to the Games Industry Biz party last night to meet the games business and, even more importantly, find out whether football would continue its orderly procession home.

Unfortunately, it didn’t. England threw away a 1-0 lead against Argentina to lose 2-1 in second-half stoppage time.

At least the free drinks tokens went down well with the crowd.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

• Xbox resets business, cuts 3,200 jobs and five companies along the way

• Sony’s decision to stop making physical discs annoys a French politician

• Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced yo-ho-hos onto devices in the week’s releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

This email comes slinging your way from Norwich, home of an excellent cathedral, a sometimes slightly mighty football team and Britain’s greatest fictional sports broadcaster.

I’m wending my way across the UK for the first chunk of Power Play tour dates. Join me in Cambridge tonight or in Hitchin on Saturday morning by grabbing your ticket here.

But even more importantly for you business types, I’m heading to Develop next week. And I want to see you at the VGIM Business Breakfast on Wednesday 15th July, which is sponsored by the fine folks at PXN.

Join me and reps from PlayStack, PQube, PXN and Hooded Horse for coffees, pastries and a chat about how to stand out in a crowded video game publishing landscape by getting your ticket here.

I also have a few final meeting slots to talk about a gamescom-related VGIM sponsorship offer and partnership opportunities for the AI and Games Conference.

Email george@videogamesindustrymemo.com if you’d like to talk.

The big read - Xbox presses reset

Ouch: It’s been a brutal week for Xbox. On Monday, Asha Sharma, the company’s Chief Executive Officer, sent a memo to employees to announce that it was cutting 3,200 jobs as part of a strategic reset. Half the layoffs are taking place this week, with RPG-maker Obsidian, Doom creator id Software and the team responsible for The Elder Scrolls Online badly hit. The second half of the layoffs will occur later this year.

Divest-a-thon: Sharma also announced a reorganisation of businesses within Xbox’s portfolio. Mojang, which makes Minecraft, and King, which created Candy Crush Saga, have moved under Sharma’s control. Five game businesses are being divested. Double Fine and Compulsion Games have been spun out as independent businesses under their founders. Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are being sold, although buyers have yet to be disclosed. Arkane Studios is also likely to be spun out, but the process is taking longer due to French labour laws.

Not enough in, too much out: Sharma’s rationale for change is simple enough: the company ain’t making enough cash to cover its hefty outgoings. In a note sent to employees, she stated that “our business today is not healthy.” She states that Xbox is operating at margins “that are 3-10x lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses.” She goes on to say that the business entered the current generation with a smaller install base and higher cost structure than rivals. Attempts to expand that audience by investing in games businesses have exacerbated the problem, with Sharma stating that Xbox has lost 64 cents on every dollar invested. Not enough money coming in and too much money going out is very much no bueno for any business. Xbox, it seems, is no different.

Game passing out

Netflix for games: The big thing that Sharma’s memo left unsaid is why Xbox is in this mess in the first place. The chief culprit internally is the failure of its big bet on Game Pass. The company’s strategy was to turn its brand into a Netflix-style content subscription service that would run across devices and generate persistent revenue to support a portfolio of world-class studios. The hope was to become a cross-platform service that would dominate the industry. This ambition was partly why the company’s stonking $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard attracted intense attention from competition regulators.

Notflix for games: Unfortunately, Game Pass didn’t work. The Wall Street Journal reported that subscriptions reached 30 million – well below the 70 million the company sought. Recurring revenue from subscribers was nowhere near enough to stop the service from cannibalising its core properties, most dramatically seen in the form of a $300m loss on the launch of Call of Duty as a Day One Game Pass release. Low hardware sales exacerbated the problem, with the Xbox Series S and X selling 35 million units compared to the PlayStation 5’s 94 million. Investing billions of dollars into studios to support the Game Pass strategy has proven unsustainable because it has failed to kickstart a flywheel of console purchases, subscription sign-ups and premium purchases capable of supporting that expenditure.

Artificial cost increases: However, Xbox’s position has been worsened by structural changes in Microsoft’s business that have made its commercial underperformance a big problem. Five years ago, when the company announced its intentions to buy Activision Blizzard, artificial intelligence was a glint in Microsoft’s eye. In 2026, it is a staggeringly costly part of its business. Tech Index reported in March 2026 that the business had earmarked over $150bn for capital investments in infrastructure such as data centres to support its AI strategy. In May 2026, The Next Web revealed that Microsoft was cutting swathes of its engineers off from using Claude Code because engineers were using the tool so frequently that it blew apart the company’s coding budget. The cost of an Xbox has also increased by $100 as a result of disruption in the AI economy, with the company saying that increases in the cost of memory – one of the main components of AI capital spend – forced the increases. The fact that the Xbox layoffs were accompanied by additional cuts across Microsoft suggests the commercial impact of AI on the business can’t be discounted.

Platform problems: Xbox, despite its size, is also subject to wider market forces that have crunched the rest of the industry. The console sector has reached maturity, meaning that the vertical’s growth rate struggles to tick above the rate of inflation each year. The emergence of games-as-a-platform such as Roblox and Fortnite has sucked millions of players to services that overcome the traditional console, PC and mobile divide. These have reduced available play time, player base and player spend within the market, reshaping the commercial landscape that Xbox operates in at the same time its big bet on Game Pass failed.

Triple A risk: Additionally, the company’s portfolio of Triple A studios has also been outmanoeuvred by nimbler studios capable of creating tighter, cost-effective games that get to market faster. Getting a return on a decade-long project like Starfield was hard enough in a market dominated by $60 releases. In a market where you can pick up throwaway fun for a few bucks (Mecha Chameleon), get a great indie game for the cost of your lunch (Balatro) or pay between $30 to $50 for a primo premium experience developed with more discipline and a tighter pitch to players (Helldivers 2, Split Fiction), Xbox’s bloated premium titles with enormous budgets became even riskier for the business.

The move to China: Finally, Xbox’s problems are compounded by a shift in the industry’s centre of gravity towards Asia. China’s $53bn consumer market is the centre of the global games economy, but Xbox’s presence is limited and unlikely to grow due to Microsoft’s often frosty relationship with the local government. The emergence of talented but cost-effective development hubs in South-East Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe has raised big questions about the affordability of game development in America and Western Europe. Given that these are the two regions where Xbox does most of its business and development, it’s a final additional headache for the business to deal with.

Ending on a flat note

A rough outline: Whether these cuts will arrest Xbox’s slide or simply slow its descent into irrelevance depends largely on the success of Sharma’s reset plan. We don’t have precise details of the strategy, but her memo gives us the gist of it. Rebuild Xbox around core franchises like Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga, which could reach a combined audience of a billion people by offering platform-style experiences à la Roblox. Reduce complexity by unifying operations and functions across the business to give the company a clearer direction. Create a flatter, less bureaucratic organisation to move quickly and more cost-effectively, including through the use of shared tools across the company. In short, Sharma wants to streamline Xbox, consolidate around its biggest IP and rebuild from there.

Practical problems: Unfortunately, Sharma’s plan works on paper, but collides awkwardly with the reality of Xbox’s current situation. How do you get studios using shared toolsets when you’ve built a portfolio of widely diverse businesses with differing needs? How does the company achieve Sharma’s goal of a ‘50% reduced vendor spend’ when it is cutting its in-house capacity and much of the industry is moving towards a ‘crewing up’ model reliant upon external support? And how on earth does the company believe it can reach an audience of a billion people through games when its flagship subscription product has failed, it is mostly locked out of the biggest market in the world and a hardware price crunch is pinching the market for players even further? Answering any of those questions successfully is hard. Answering them all, and the many more that I’ve left unsaid, feels impossible. Streamlining and succeeding is not as simple as Sharma’s memo suggests.

Changing dynamic: What we can say is that this round of cuts is particularly significant. Xbox has cut thousands of roles over the past few years, as laid out depressingly by Game Developer’s Chris Kerr. But these are the first cuts made by the company’s new leadership in service of their agenda. In the years ahead, the success or otherwise of Sharma’s strategy will determine whether Xbox lives on in Microsoft, spins out separately like LinkedIn, or is sold off for parts. This will be of little interest to those whose lives have been affected by the swingeing cuts. But for the rest of us, what comes next for Xbox will undoubtedly have a major effect on the shape of the global games industry for years to come.

News in brief

Taking the disc: Sony has confirmed that it will stop producing physical discs for new video game releases from January 2028. It said the move was a result of a “general preference for digital media” amongst consumers. The furious online backlash to the move, including from the leader of France’s left-leaning political party La France Insoumise, suggests that the word ‘preference’ may have been poorly chosen.

The Rest isn’t Video Game History: In the wake of Sony’s disc-sastrous news, the Video Game History Foundation has criticised the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the US’s video game trade association, for failing to offer a ‘meaningful alternative’ for legal video game preservation. Frank Cifaldi, director of the foundation, said that foundations had already been preparing for a discless future but that a lack of industry co-operation in the conservation cause is hampering its work.

Have I got news for EU: Nintendo has announced that players in the European Union will be able to buy a Switch 2 with a replaceable battery from early next year. The company has confirmed that the new version of its console will supersede its existing console from February 2027 to meet its requirements under the 2023 EU Batteries Legislation. The original Switch will be discontinued in the region to comply with the rules.

Y’all over age here, right?: The Supreme Court has paved the way for Texas to enact a law to force platforms to age verify its users. The court issued a temporary order to allow the state to continue to enact the order, following an emergency request from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and a group of students to suspend its deployment on free speech grounds. The order does not stop the law from being tested within the lower courts, where it is currently being challenged by the CCIA.

Niantic no more: The studio behind Pokémon Go and Pikmin Bloom has been rebranded as Scopely Explore. The company, which was acquired by Saudi-backed Scopely last year, will continue to sit within its parent as a “mission-driven” organisation dedicated to getting players outdoors. Those damn video games, making you exercise…

Moving on

Dave McCarthy is retiring from his role at XBOX as part of the company’s latest reset…Tobias Knoke is the new Head of Apps and Gaming Partnerships EMEA at Google…Najmah Salam is shortly starting as a Brand Manager at Team 17…And Iwo Zakowski has joined MTG as Chief Marketing Officer for its midcore division…

Jobs ahoy

Fight to become LEGO Group’s Vice President - Head of Game Development…Become the Senior Audio Producer at Games Workshop…Fusebox Games has an ad out for a Project Lead Writer…Discord is hiring a Regulatory Counsel, APAC…And consider becoming a Senior Communications Producer for Naughty Dog…

Events and conferences

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

• Games for Change, New York - 21st-22nd July

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

• Serious Play, North Carolina - 5th-7th August

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Games of the week

• Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced - It’s a return to the pirate’s life for the Assassin’s Creed series, with the long-awaited remake of fan favourite Black Flag releasing today.

• EA Sports College Football 27 - The latest entry in EA’s surprisingly lucrative student-powered sports game hits PlayStation, Xbox and PC this week.

• Backyard Baseball - Kid-friendly sports game that went unexpectedly viral on social media gets a lick of paint in this modern reboot.

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Before you go…

Ever wondered what it’s like to be England’s header-loving World Cup hero Dan Burn? I’ve got good news for you.

You can experience his many important defensive headers against Mexico from his perspective as a result of the BBC’s tie-up with Immersiv, which delivers its perspective-shifting magic with the help of video game-like technology.

Football really has come home.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

• I explore the state of play in the Italian video game industry

• UK PM-in-waiting Andy Burnham tips regional agenda that the local games biz will love

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 leads this week’s Steam releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

The UK book tour gets underway properly this week. I’ve got four formal events and an informal stop-off for you to say hello at.

On Saturday 4th July, I’m at the Bradford Literature Festival joining BAFTA longlisted short film-maker Dr Myriam François, academic Meshael Al-Mannai, and award-winning investigative journalist Dr Nafeez Ahmed for a session about how media shapes geopolitical power and who tells the stories that drive the world. Event tickets here.

Then on Sunday 5th July, I’m appearing at Sunday Papers Live just before Baroness Kidron, Ava Santina and Robin Ince to chatter all things Power Play. Tickets here.

I’ve then got two events at Waterstones in the East of England. I’ll stop off in Norwich on Wednesday 8th July from 6pm until 7:30pm. I’ll then pop over to Cambridge on Thursday 9th July for another talk and signing from 7pm onwards.

Finally, I’ll be signing some stock at Waterstones in Hitchin on Saturday 11th July. Once I’m done squiggling on books, I’ll pop over to the Sun Hotel between 10:30am and 12:00pm. Let me know if you’re coming along here.

The big read - Forza Italia’s games industry?

Tiny violins: Sometimes, the life of a writer is hard. Other times, it isn’t. And it’s fair to say that last month’s trip to First Playable in Florence was one of the less taxing research trips I’ve taken in my lifetime.

Boots on the ground: I had been invited to attend the event way back in the misty depths of time (April 2026) to talk about Power Play. But while there, I was presented with an excellent opportunity to learn about the Italian video game sector – a sector I knew comparatively little about. And after spending three days baking in the Tuscan sun chatting to industry figures both inside and outside the Italian game sector, I came to an interesting conclusion.

Something to build on: The country’s game sector is less developed and mature than many European rivals. But it has a rich seam of creative, punky talent in need of funding. And with international publishers already recognising the talent on display, some targeted public funding and business education schemes could power the sector forward.

An indie renaissance

Middle of the pack: Italy is a mid-ranking player in the European games market. IIDEA, the Italian video game trade association, reports that its consumer market is valued at €2.4bn. That’s roughly a quarter of the size of Germany’s market (€9.4bn) and less than half of France’s (€5.9bn). Its economic impact is also relatively small. IIDEA estimated that the sector generated between €180 million and €200 million for the Italian economy and supported 2400 employees in 2024. By contrast, Australia, a country with half the population of Italy, posted almost identical employment and economic impact figures that same year.

Physical problems: The Italian games industry’s lack of maturity is partly the result of a delayed transition from physical to digital distribution over a decade ago. Paolo Paglianti, Head of Communications at strategy game specialists Slitherine and former long-suffering game journalist, told me over a lunch of Pappardelle al Cinghiale that only a handful of Italian-founded games businesses (including the Guildford-headquartered business he worked for) rapidly changed their business models when Steam and the App Store changed the distribution game. A decade on, only a few major game companies remain in the country, including Milestone (the makers of the licensed Moto GP games), Ubisoft Milan (responsible for the Mario Rabbids game) and Nacon (whose Italian team worked on the surprisingly good Robocop: Rogue City). The rest withered away, leaving a wave of up-and-coming independents with little experience to make their way in an increasingly competitive video game market.

Growing up fast: However, those inexperienced businesses have steadily found their feet. Italy’s video game company count has grown significantly over the past decade and a half. In 2012, IIDEA reported that 48 video game companies were located in the country. In 2024, the company count had ballooned to over 200 developers. Hubs emerged in Turin and Milan in proximity to the country’s biggest developers, with 34BigThings, which recently regained independence from Embracer Group, based in the former and the likes of Nacon located in the latter. Bologna, meanwhile, has emerged as a thriving development hub with the help of an entrepreneurial game developer. Ivan Venturi, who has been developing games since the 1980s, was credited by three people at the conference as driving the creation of Emilia-Romagna’s Game Farm initiative in 2021 – accelerating growth of the industry in the city. And while the Italian sector has benefitted from trends like the democratisation of game development, Bologna’s growth as a cluster shows the increasing seriousness with which Italian game developers are handling the business of making games.

Under their wings: Intriguingly, these burgeoning game businesses are attracting a lot of interest from international publishers. Due to an outrageous stroke of luck when checking into my hotel, I was welcomed into the cadre of international publishers attending the event. And to my surprise, the group was massive. At one event I was invited along to, there were more than 30 publishers in attendance. This included reps from every major console platform, Europe’s best-known publishers and a couple of people representing publishers based as far afield as Korea and Australia.

Weirdly useful: Something was drawing all of these publishers together. And while the promise of three sunny days in one of the most beautiful cities on earth is undoubtedly part of First Playable’s appeal, the publishers I met told me that the up-and-coming Italian indie scene was full of a captivatingly weird creativity that could cut through in a content-stuffed market.

The Masters of Horror

Punk culture: “Italian game development is punk because the development happens without funding,” said Michael Orsini, a charming narrative game designer who shared the Italian indie experience while I quietly sweated my way through my second t-shirt of the trip during an outdoors coffee meeting. “It’s all roughed out. There are a lot of small indie games that talk about culture.”

Racing, horror, stories: According to Thalita Malagò, CEO at IIDEA, Italian game culture manifests in three preferred genres: one that aligns with mass cultural interests, the other two with its more artistic tendencies. “I would say there are three main lines. One is more traditional. Racing games are still an important part of our industry. We have Milestone and Kunos Simulazioni [creators of Assetto Corsa] that are working in this field and doing very well,” she explained. “We have a lot of horror games, and this is the second line. I would say that is also in common with the creative tradition of Italy because, for example, in the movie sector we have Dario Argento [a film director once described as the Master of Horror]. So that’s something else set in the culture. And I would mention a third line that is something more narrative and experimental, where we have a lot of developers that are trying to innovate on content or experiences.”

Horses ride in: Malagò’s third line is epitomised by Santa Ragione’s Horses. The narrative game, which was controversially pulled from both Steam and the Epic Games Store, won Outstanding Experience at the Italian Game Awards that I attended during the course of First Playable. The development team, consisting of Pietro Righi Riva, Nicolò Tedeschi and advisor Yves Hohler, encouraged the Italian sector to “resist the mainstream temptation and keep the subversive aspects of our industry”, indicative of Orsini’s point about the culture of the sector.

A buffet of nightmares: The games revealed during the awards with a Geoff Keighley-style ‘world premiere’ excitement showed how effectively Italian developers craft visually arresting horror games. Entalto Studio’s The Alighieri Circle: Dante’s Bloodline channelled the Divine Comedy through Amnesiac: The Dark Descent. Remothered: Red Nun’s Legacy, the third entry in a Sicilian-developed horror series, asked the question of what would happen if Resident Evil’s Mr X had served life in a convent. Wonderful Neoran Valley was the oddest game of this bunch, with the trailer shifting from cute Pokémon-style roguelite battling to footage of creepy monsters that caused brief flashbacks to clambering into the well in Ocarina of Time.

High hit-rate: At the time, the impactfulness of distinctive peculiarity was slightly lost on me. Trying to follow an Italian language awards show that was live dubbed in English by what sounded like a 50-a-day-smoker was overwhelming. But the next day, when the bulk of publisher and developer meetings took place, multiple contacts confirmed that this punky, avant-garde and just-a-little-bit-weird style helped Italian indies to stand out. One publisher told me that the comparatively unconstrained creativity of local developers gave them an edge over international rivals because the distinctiveness gave publishers a much better chance of piquing audience interest. Another publisher, who receives thousands of game pitches per quarter, told me that they had seen multiple pitches in a single morning that were worthy of a follow-up meeting; a remarkably high hit rate for a developing cluster.

Excluding some interest: Of course, not every publisher found what they were looking for. Mobile publishers found little of what they wanted, given the indie nature of the local industry. Publishers looking for games outside of narrative and horror genres had a lower hit rate. But given the size of the Italian market, the predominantly positive reception to what Italian indies were offering was promising. The question is whether they’ll get enough domestic support to translate great ideas into games that sell across the world.

Taxing times

Tasty stew: The Italian games industry has the ingredients to form a successful game cluster. It has hubs and a few big developers to prop up emerging talent. It has an increasingly thriving indie scene. Publishers are willing to travel to check out what’s on offer (it is very hard spending three days in Italy in summer). And one contact who has had longer ties with the Italian industry told me that indies have organically sharpened their pitching skills over the past decade, improving the likelihood that someone picks their game up.

Light up: But despite its growth and the benefits of its punky vibes, successful Italian game developers are still stuck in hobbyist mode. Tiny Bull Studios, made up of Bruno Candita, Enrico Martina and Simone Ercole, won the best Italian Game Award for their release The Lonesome Guild. During their acceptance speech, the team shared that the game struggled to deliver commercially in a way that allowed them to comfortably focus on game development. “We’ve got to keep the light shining on Italy to keep making games that’ll change people’s lives”, they implored.

Managers needed: To some extent, Tiny Bull’s story is simply a reminder of the nature of the highly competitive nature of the games industry. But IIDEA recognises local developers need help developing the commercial and business savvy to turn creative thinking into financial success. “We have really a lot of excellent chefs, but we need to have the ones who manage the restaurant,” Malagò said, when I asked what expertise the Italian sector was currently missing. “That is probably as important as preparing the food.”

Learning on the game farm: On the skills side, the Italian industry is attempting to fill its commercial gap through collective industry and civil society action. Game Farm’s success in Bologna has sparked other accelerators like Slitherine’s Gecko Fork programme, which is offering Italian indies pro bono access to its proprietary strategy game development engine to make a vertical slice to pitch for funding. Talks and roundtables at First Playable’s conference focused on building business cases and stories worthy of turning a good idea into one that could be financed. I was also introduced to a local university asking whether it could support the industry by building courses for game business founders. I encouraged them to do so.

Business developing: On the business side, the Italian industry is working hard to build international relationships to power domestic growth. The hordes of publishers willing to decamp to Florence to take meetings undoubtedly boosted the confidence of Italian developers. Orsini told me that his belief that publishers were “big companies that look down on you and judge your game” was instantly dispelled by his one-to-one meetings with scouts. Other national trade associations came to the event to trade knowledge with the Italian industry, with Video Games Poland Association – the Polish trade body – sharing the growth stories of its sector and its developers during the first day of the conference. Funding from European institutions was also dangled in front of developers during a session run by InvestEU, an initiative from the European Investment Bank designed to boost sustainable investment in sectors like the ‘audio-visual’ industries (EU translation note: that means video games). It felt a little premature for a growing sector, but its presence was nevertheless welcomed with a room full of interested developers.

Capped impact: Undoubtedly the sector’s biggest concern is the comparative lack of public funding for local game developers from Italian policymakers. Italy does have a 25% tax credit for video game developers, which was introduced in 2021, but it is limited to €1 million per project and €12 million across the country per year. According to Malagò, the credit has supported 90 companies on 140 projects for €50 million. By comparison, the UK’s Video Game Expenditure Credit supported £327m of spend in just one tax year between March 2023 and March 2024. The restrictive nature of the cap limits the ambition of projects. The fact that tax relief may elapse entirely if Italian policymakers fail to extend it by renotifying the European Commission of its necessity by the end of the year — a necessary administrative step — is clearly frustrating for Malagò.

Missed opportunities: “I don’t think they are aware enough about what they are missing,” she replied when I asked her whether the cap on the national tax credit is capping ambitions in Italy. “They should invest within the creative and cultural industry. And unfortunately, at the moment, this is not happening for reasons that are not dependent on us.” Malagò also believes that winning this battle is necessary to open up room for the industry to lobby for prototype funding and grants that are “more accessible and more useful” to independent developers scrabbling for cash to get a game off the ground. But if the industry can’t expand, let alone keep, its current relief, the chances of getting additional useful public funding feel low.

Something to build on: Still, I left Florence with the feeling that something is brewing in the Italian video game industry. Its developers are comparatively inexperienced, there’s a skills gap on the business side, and the Italian government doesn’t have much of a game plan for the sector. But with publishers seemingly recognising that Italy is producing an intriguing crop of creative indie developers with well-made games, the sector has something to hold onto. And with a little bit of luck, the local industry continuing to pull together and some extra support from the country’s government, the Italian games sector could be on to a good thing.

VGIM’s flights and accommodation to First Playable were covered by the conference organisers.

News in brief

Burnham boosts the regions: Andy Burnham, the MP for Makerfield and Prime Minister-in-waiting, delivered his first setpiece speech outlining his vision for the UK economy. For wider politicos, Burnham’s assertion that Britain has been barely functional for the better part of twenty years and that the country needs a new direction caught the eye. For games companies, his focus on giving more powers to metro mayors, driving ‘growth in every postcode’ and some accidental hat tips to video game clusters like Dundee provides room for quiet optimism for a sector already spread across the country.

The Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act is alright (for now): Miranda Nazaaro of The Hill reports that the House comfortably passed the Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act (KIDS) in a vote earlier this week. Members voted 267-117 in favour of the act, which bundled together 14 digital safety bills covering hot video game industry regulatory topics like age verification and data protection duties. But KIDS does not include a ‘duty of care’ provision for tech platforms that was previously included in the Senate-backed Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) bill – setting up an almighty online safety scrap Stateside.

Steering to a conclusion: The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has launched two consultations asking developers for their opinion on a new Steering Conduct Requirement it plans to impose on Apple and Google’s App Stores. The requirement would mean that neither store could “prevent, restrict or limit a developer” from communicating with an end user (including via data generated through an app store download), or prevent a steered commercial transaction on another platform unless there was a legal reason to do so (e.g. preventing fraud). You’ve got until 28th July to respond, so get cracking.

DRAMatic development: Samsung, SK hynix and Micron have been sued in a class action lawsuit in Northern California, alleging that the companies have coordinated to artificially drive up the cost of DRAM components. 17 plaintiffs argue that “concerted anticompetitive behaviour by three Oligopolists” has caused DRAM prices to rise by 700% in four years, with the complaint arguing for injunctive relief and damages. One to keep an eye on, if only for the ongoing use of the phrase DRAM Oligopolists (which is an excellent band name, if you ask me).

Climate changing: And finally, some welcome news about the usefulness of video games in understanding public opinion about the climate. A new paper from the European Commission’s Research and Innovation team explores how PlanetPlay worked with Jane Yau, a researcher from the Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, to receive 200,000 responses from players to climate surveys embedded in games like Subway Surfers.

Moving on

Fateless has appointed Noam Sagie as Chief Marketing Officer…Meg Clarke has been appointed Head of Discovery at Critical Reflex…Austin Rathe has been appointed VP and Global Comms Lead at Unity…Jon Rissik has been named Chief Growth Officer at Everplay Group…And UK trade body TIGA has announced a new board featuring names such as Tim-Repa Davies, Gemma Brown and Marco Minoli. Intriguingly, neither of the Kingsley brothers — who head up Rebellion and have long been associated with TIGA — is on the board…

Jobs ahoy

Sony Interactive Entertainment is hiring a Director, Litigation to work across EMEA…Roblox needs a Developer Engagement Representative to help out with its events…Sega Europe is hiring a Head of Brand…Playground still needs a Senior Game Designer…And Supercell is hiring a Game Lead for Boom Beach…

Events and conferences

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

• Games for Change, New York - 21st-22nd July

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

• Serious Play, North Carolina - 5th-7th August

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Games of the week - Steam Summer Sale recommendations

It’s slim pickings on the week’s releases. That’s why I’m recommending a few picks from Steam’s summer sale to add to your libraries and never get round to playing.

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 - Spend dozens of hours and only £20 to live out your roleplaying dreams in 15th-century Czechia.

• Split Fiction - Get Hazelight’s latest, and some say greatest, split-screen co-op adventure for 35% off its usual £40 asking price.

• Dispatch - And get all the episodes of the superhero episodic narrative hit of last year for under twenty quid.

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Before you go…

We know that the video game hardware is going up in price. But if you’re a politician, try not to follow the example of Manuel Adorni in trying to overcome it.

Argentinian news outlet La Nacion alleges that Adorni, who is the cabinet chief to the country’s controversial President Javier Milei, used staffers’ credit cards to spend thousands of dollars on video game equipment.

No jokes about Adorni still not being able to afford a Steam Machine, please.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email us | Buy Power Play |

• Summer Game Fest once again announces more games than we can fathom

• Global games market crosses $200bn in 2025, says Newzoo

• The Guardian reveals the worst World Cup games of all time

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Good morning VGIM-ers,

Welcome back to The Debrief, your easy-to-read digest of all the important stuff that happened in vidya games over the past month.

VGIM Insiders can access exclusive newsletters like this, get first access to VGIM events and 10% off all purchases or sponsorships by becoming a paid subscriber.

Membership is just £3 per month (or £25 per year) at the moment to celebrate the launch of Power Play. Use the imaginatively invented code POWERPLAY to get 50% off Insider membership for a year below.

Get 50% off forever

Hundreds of video games unveiled during Summer Game Fest

Read more

• More in Common research explores how to help young male gamers deal with disinformation and misinformation

• Steam Machine $1000+ price point sparks conversation and controversy

• Star Fox swoops onto Switch 2 to save the day in the week’s release

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Hello VGIM-ers,

What do you do when you’ve announced a book in the UK? You do it all again in North America, of course.

Yes, the US and Canada launch of Power Play is taking place on 21st July. And you’re invited to join me at two fabulous events in the Big Apple to coincide with the launch.

First, I’ll be speaking at this year’s Games for Change Festival. We’re firming up the session title, but you’ll be able to hear me speak about the book and buy a copy in the Festival’s bookstore on 21st and 22nd July. Get your ticket here.

Second, I’ll be joining the Thriving in Games Group for an evening of networking, cocktails and chatter as part of its Digital Thriving Salon series on the evening of 22nd July. Sign up here, pending approval from the TIGG team.

And finally, my publisher is running a special pre-order promotion in the run-up to US launch day.

Head to Globe Pequot’s website and use the code Preorder20 to get 20% off the hardcover price.

The big read - Gamers are twice as likely to believe conspiracy theories

A concerning statistic: Young men in the UK who regularly play video games are twice as likely as the general population to believe conspiracy theories, according to a new report called On their terms: Countering disinformation through games from research firm More in Common and The AKO Storytelling Institute at the University of Arts London.

An unhealthy paradox: More in Common polled 2,000 Brits to unearth possible links between playing games and susceptibility to misinformation. Nearly two thirds (64%) of a segment of the sample dubbed ‘Sceptical Scrollers’ — packed with young men who love video games, but distrust the current political and news landscape — were inclined to believe conspiracy theories like “secret groups are controlling global events. This is despite stating that they were four times as confident as the average citizen to be able to spot misinformation.

Exclusive access: But who are these disaffected young male players? What about them makes them susceptible to misinformation and disinformation? And what can video game developers, influencers and communities do to strengthen their resilience in a complicated digital information environment? More in Common kindly gave me early access to its research findings and transcripts from four focus group interviews to find out more.

Meet the Sceptical Scrollers

Background information: More in Common and the AKO Storytelling Institute at the University of Arts London shared a common goal. They wanted to find novel, engaging ways to reach audiences vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation with effective interventions that address their needs. They identified that young men aged 16 to 24 were one of those groups. They had a strong hunch they loved games. And they thought they could be reached through them. But they needed some data to test their hypothesis before they set about designing games to try to influence them.

Defining the audience: To build an evidence base, More in Common polled 2,000 people and ran four focus groups recruited from one of the seven segments that it says shape British society today: Sceptical Scrollers. Accounting for 10% of the country’s population, Sceptical Scrollers are living a tough life. They are the lowest-income and lowest-wealth group identified by the research agency. They’re more likely to work second jobs, live in social housing, and be in debt than the rest of the population. They’re usually based in urban areas and are twice as likely to live less than two miles away from where they grew up. Importantly, 60% of Sceptical Scrollers are male and are, on average, six years younger than the UK as a whole – making them the perfect audience for this research.

Understanding the worldview: The group has a distrustful worldview. Sceptical Scrollers are more likely to say they have no trust in politicians and say that democracy is broken. They dislike discussing politics, with only 19% of the group saying they enjoy talking about it. They feel lonelier than any other group, with fewer friends to turn to in times of trouble. They also believe that the root of their problems is systemic, placing the blame for the circumstances they live in on society at large. “I quickly went off it [politics] when I saw how corrupt it was and how little, it’s sad, but how little influence that you had,” said Luke, a 28-year-old gamer recruited for one of the focus groups. “So now I try and stay away from it, if I’m honest.”

Alternative news sources: Despite Luke’s sincere dislike of politics, Sceptical Scrollers still get news. They just don’t get it in the places where we’d traditionally get information. The group is the least likely to watch terrestrial TV, listen to the radio or read a print or online newspaper, while also being the most likely to turn off if political news comes on air. They do, however, get information from people they trust on YouTube, via podcasts, or wider social media. And when these influencers speak about politics, Sceptical Scrollers end up listening to them.

The truth isn’t out there: Some of that news matches up with reality. One focus group participant called Daniel told a moderator that he had discovered that Donald Trump was planning to remove birthright citizenship in the United States via an executive order through his information ecosystem – something that is true. Others had to contend with falsehoods and conspiracy theories being shared within their digital networks by people they trusted. “My auntie thought the aliens were invading because of all the UFO sightings that were happening in the US,” said Shem, another participant. Realistic videos had convinced her that an X-Files-esque truth was out there. He had to try to convince her, and likely himself, otherwise whenever she phoned them up about it.

Play matters: Crucially, there’s one other digital medium that Sceptical Scrollers are more plugged into than the rest of society: video games. Of More in Common’s seven segments, people within the segment play more often than anyone else. They play for longer too, with 52% of the demographic playing for more than an hour at a time compared to 38% of the wider population. And they do so because games offer them something that their lives rarely do. The group, who are also the most likely segment of society to say they feel stressed, say they play games to disconnect, escape and relax. “You see how rich it is…you see the time and the effort…the heart that has been put into these games…,” says Jack, a 24-year-old Sceptical Scroller. “It gets you involved, it takes you off… even when you’re not playing the game, you are thinking about the game.”

The space between: So, Sceptical Scrollers play video games in large part because it allows them to escape the hardships of their day-to-day and immerse themselves in something else. But as we know from Power Play (what do you mean you haven’t read it all yet?!), video games sit at the heart of a thriving alternative information ecosystem that is largely unmonitored and uncontested by democratic actors. This allows a group already vulnerable to misinformation to be attacked via an entertainment medium intended for fun.

Influence games?

Lacking clarity: After polling 2,000 sceptical scrollers, More in Common discovered the alarming paradox that Sceptical Scrollers think they’re better at spotting misinformation while consistently falling for conspiracy theories. But how exactly do Sceptical Scrollers who love to play games end up in a place where they think they’re much better at spotting misinformation, while being significantly more likely to end up indulging in conspiratorial thinking? The answer, unfortunately, isn’t entirely clear.

Clash of ambitions: In the context of this research, which aims to help people who make games that teach players about misinformation do so more effectively, More in Common found a clash between a well-intentioned ambition and why Sceptical Scrollers play. “Many players value videogaming precisely because it is a space free of political ideology,” it argues. “Most treat games as an alternative to the moral, political and gritty reality they live in, and they want them to stay that way.”

Inconsistent outcomes: This means that efforts to educate directly through games can fall flat. More in Common tested two specially made games that teach players about misinformation through game mechanics: Solomon’s Secret, a narrative game about solving a mystery where your character is being manipulated, and Bezerkerz, a game that sought to teach players how their emotions could make them more susceptible to misinformation. The results were mixed. More in Common said that the games had “some success” with participants overall. But once the purpose of the game was explained to the groups, “a number of participants felt betrayed”. “I just don’t think gaming is a good medium to send that message,” said Gordon, one participant who reflected the group’s unease at games trying to influence their thinking.

Important insight: But while the games themselves didn’t land well, the transcripts of the focus groups show something I’ve written about for ages: how the digital information ecosystem surrounding someone who identifies as a gamer shapes their political world in a way that opens them up to influence. Luke, one of the participants mentioned earlier, produced a fascinating response to a question about being misinformed online by tying a reel he saw about supposed suppression of free speech in Germany back to content moderation policies in Call of Duty. “It’s an 18-plus, but you’re not allowed to swear and things like that. So it’s like, yes, alright, it’s not right to bully people online and so on. But I think instead of this police enforcement state online, which has a bit more, like, totalitarian aspects to it, there are other ways to do it.”

Leap of logic: He then jumps from being banned from swearing in a first-person shooter to the potential erosion of free expression. “And what if we want to show our political beliefs, but it goes against the mainstream media, then are we going to be punished for that? And what’s the next step once you start that ball rolling?” Luke’s next interjection, after a couple of comments from other attendees, was to question “the number of casualties from vaccines and stuff” in relation to the Covid pandemic: the kind of conspiratorial thinking identified by More in Common’s wider polling

Peeling the onion: Luke’s comments, I believe, give us a closer indication of how the inherent distrust and dissatisfaction of sceptical scrollers can be taken advantage of within the video game information ecosystem. Games themselves can shape how people think, provided they engage with them. But it’s the onion-like layers of social media platforms, in-game chat, and content wrapped around games that shape how this group sees the world they live in – both off and online.

Marinating in: And in the context of misinformation and disinformation, the ecosystem around games is, unfortunately, primed to weaken their defences. Much of ‘gamer’ culture amongst young men has marinated in conspiracy theories (e.g. the emergence of QAnon from the ashes of Gamergate), been shaped by actors in the far-right, or encouraged by political leaders whose populist narratives care more about stirring discontent than informing audiences (e.g. Adin Ross livestreaming with Donald Trump on Kick in 2024). This, I think, is why Sceptical Scrollers like Luke can make a quick jump from playing Call of Duty to sharing conspiracy theories and explains why the group may not respond well to games trying to inoculate them against misinformation risks.

Moving forward

Constructive solutions: More in Common’s research is disheartening to read at times, especially when I think about how the unhappiness of down-on-their-luck young men is being weaponised. Nevertheless, we should welcome the fact that research like this gets us much closer to understanding what’s going on in the lives of Sceptical Scrollers – especially when it gives us some hints on how to deal with it.

Game on: Fundamentally, the research shows us that video games play a remarkably positive role in Sceptical Scrollers’ lives. In a world where they feel disempowered, lacking in agency and disconnected from society, video games, their communities, and the information ecosystem around the medium plug them into community. It empowers them in a way little else does. They also love games for the same reason so many of us do. This creates common ground and allows us to meet them on their terms, as the title of the More in Common report suggests.

Take games seriously: What we need to do is contest the video game information ecosystem to reconnect Sceptical Scrollers to society and restore their trust, rather than allow them to be subtly directed towards cranky conspiratorial thinking. The first way this can be done is to do what More in Common and AKO have done: take video games seriously as an information landscape. This creates the conditions in which a joined-up civil society effort can reach Sceptical Scrollers, while increasing the chances of reaching them with effectively designed campaigns.

Give out your Papers, Please: Next, we can use some of the lessons from the research to design games that effectively communicate the risks around misinformation. As seen above, direct educational games are not likely to reach the audience unless there’s an obvious reason why they’d choose to play something like that as a way of getting information (e.g. choosing between an educational disinformation game or doing a workbook exercise at school). But games that encourage critical thinking, media literacy and discerning truth without getting preachy can reach Sceptical Scrollers, provided they’re built from the ground up for fun first. Social deduction titles like Among Us or Lukas Pope’s Papers, Please, the Soviet Union border crossing guard simulator par excellence, were not designed to tackle misinformation. But their mechanics usefully align with techniques needed to critique incoming information. Empowering indie developers to create these games with public funding and support is one of the report’s key recommendations.

Don’t get played: Finally, and outside of the report’s remit, I think there’s a clear need to contest the information ecosystem from within. This isn’t easy to do, given the disparate nature of the video game information ecosystem. That said, creating a campaign to combat misinformation and disinformation in games that is supported by industry and creators organically could act as a meaningful counter. By leaning into the space to ask people whether they’re being ‘played’, we can raise awareness of misinformation amongst a digitally savvy group who could naturally gravitate towards creators or communities who authentically reinforce the wider message. This is seen in one snippet of the focus groups, where one participant praises the YouTuber Miniminuteman for his work debunking pseudoscience and conspiracy theories to an audience of millions of people.

Wider lens: More in Common’s research initially focused on creating effective educational games about misinformation and disinformation for UK audiences. But it significantly strengthens the argument that we must treat games as an influential information ecosystem and space where citizens live, talk and form identities wherever you are in the world. And if you’re interested in creating a healthy democratic discourse online, helping Sceptical Scrollers who love to play to move away from conspiratorial thinking could have a major ripple effect across the digital world.

Read More in Common’s findings on its website here.

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News in brief

Boiling price point: Valve has announced that its Steam Machine ‘don’t call it a Game Cube’ PC/Console thingy will retail for over $1000. The company said that the base retail price of $1049 is due to price volatility in the cost of memory and solid-state drives. It also said supply would be constrained, with devices dished out to consumers via a lottery. Thanks, AI industry.

Willing to take Less than Tencents: Bloomberg reports that Tencent is mulling multiple exits from Japanese studios such as Marvelous Inc. The Chinese giant is reportedly assessing whether to hold its minority stakes in a range of games businesses, with room to sell at a loss to management buyouts. The company’s focus is reportedly shifting towards user-generated content platforms and mobile investments made via MiniClip.

Cutting the Arabic chatter: Roblox has confirmed it plans to keep chat off in the majority of the Middle East until it improves its Arabic chat moderation. In an interview with Pocket Gamer Biz’s Isa Muhamed, Mohamed El Sheakh, General Manager for the region, said that efforts to moderate chat in Arabic fell well below the 98% accuracy rate recorded for English language moderation. The interview also covered Roblox’s potential economic impact on the region, while skirting a tricky question about lawsuits in America.

AppsFlyering-the flag: Interesting one this. Google, Unity, Meta and Moloco have teamed up to invest $1bn into AppsFlyer, a mobile marketing and attribution platform, at a valuation of $2.7bn. It is unusual to see rivals simultaneously invest in the same business. Eric Seufert explains lucidly why rivals have come together to back the business, preventing a crucial ‘neutral’ attribution technology from falling into private hands.

The Price is almost certainly right: And finally, Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders open today. Rockstar has confirmed that the game will sell for $80, rising to $100 for the Ultimate Edition. It also said that people who buy the physical edition will receive a code with the game, rather than a disc.

Moving on

Zoher Toutanji is the Chief Publishing Officer at Crytek…Gareth Jandrell has been promoted to Senior Programme Communications Officer at Ukie…Jonny Taylor has been made Director of New Business, Create at Keywords Studios…Newzoo has a new CEO with Joris Goossens replacing Michelle Van der Wilk-Rouhof…And we’d like to express our condolences to friends, family and colleagues of Ubisoft co-founder Claude Guillemot, who died in a plane crash last Friday…

Jobs ahoy

Twitch is hiring a Senior Label Relations Manager to work with the music biz in New York…Netflix is recruiting a Researcher in its games team in LA…Supercell needs a Feature Lead in its London office…Electronic Arts is hunting for an Associate Manager, Esports Brand Marketing to work in East London…And Kwalee is scouting for a Game Scout in Australia…

Events and conferences

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

• Games for Change, New York - 21st-22nd July

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

• Serious Play, North Carolina - 5th-7th August

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Games of the week

• Star Fox - Remake of the N64 classic with new-rootin’-tootin-scrollin’-space-shootin’ graphics takes off on Switch 2.

• Deltarune - Fifth chapter of Toby Fox’s thoughtful parallel story to Undertale arrives surprisingly promptly across all platforms.

• Dead or Alive 6 Last Round - Definitive version of a fighting game beloved by at least some people rounds off the week’s big releases.

Before you go…

So long, Sir Keir Starmer. Despite triumphantly winning a general election less than two years ago, Starmer has been putsched by his party.

Still, at least we have one final chance to see him in an environment he truly thrives in: a YouTube video about why SimCity doesn’t work properly when recreating UK cities.

…hang on.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

• UK social media ban says that it’s the children who are wrong, not the digital world they’re living in

• European Commission deals blow to Stop Killing Games

• EA’s UFC game lands just after idiocy in the White House in the week’s release round-up

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Hello VGIM-ers,

It’s finally here! Power Play: Video Games, Politics and the Battle for Global Influence is available to buy as a hardback, e-read or audiobook in the UK and Commonwealth territories today after literally years of teasing.

Instead of banging on about the book in this week’s newsletter, you can get your teaser on how video games have become a channel for geopolitical influence through:

• A print and digital interview with Chris Alnutt from the Financial Times.

• An episode of My Perfect Console with Simon Parkin.

• A chat with Arthur Snell on the Behind the Lines podcast.

• A check-in with the Good Game Club podcast.

• Today’s episode of Conflicted with Thomas Small, which should be in feeds right now.

Ready to buy Power Play? You can get it from many of your favourite online book stores, audiobook providers or indie favourites by hitting the button below.

Buy Power Play right now

And thank you all so much for the support over the past two and a half years. It’s a genuine privilege to have written the book, and I can’t wait for you to read it.

The big opinion - The UK social media ban punishes kids for our failure

I promise this introduction goes somewhere: Power Play is a book about taking the digital world seriously on its terms. It argues that the weaponisation of video game content, communities and the information ecosystem surrounding it is not evidence that the medium is inherently harmful. Instead, it’s a by-product of the disdain and disregard Western democracies have towards the digital world. By mocking digital culture, failing to take its influence on our reality seriously and taking no steps to bring the norms we value into the spaces and ecosystems we inhabit, the people within them can easily become disillusioned and disconnected from wider society. And unless we come up with serious, cross-society interventions that accept that standards are just as important as regulation, the influence of digital spaces won’t just disappear; it’ll continue to shift its centre of gravity towards states, groups and actors who can persuade disaffected players and people that they care about them. That leads to meaningful harm for our communities, who get dragged towards darker thinking, culture or ideologies without a democratic counter to defend them.

Don’t pull your punches: I mention this because the UK Government’s proposed social media ban for under-16s is precisely the wrong-headed, moral-panic-inflected policy that promises to make digital life much harder for young people and society at large. Rather than creating a digital world where young people can grow up in digital spaces with adequate protections from the platforms they use, the Government is instead setting up an easily hopped-over barbed-wire fence around spaces to pretend it is doing the hard work of cultivating our values within these digital environments. The result will almost certainly not be a safer online world for children and young people that respects their rights to express themselves, to talk and play. It’ll feel more transgressive and dangerous for them to enter, pushing them towards those darker spaces where hostile voices thrive in the process.

Rushing to conclusions

A quick rundown of the policy: The proposed social media ban is a blunt instrument that tries to keep teens safe by punting them out of most of the internet. The Government’s fact sheet supporting the announcement says that ‘under-16s will no longer be able to use certain social media.’ The government said that services like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and X will be affected by the ban, with messaging services like WhatsApp and Telegram excluded. It claimed ‘high-risk’ features like livestreaming and contacting strangers will be restricted for under-16s, including through unspecified gaming services. It also said that this’ll all be backed by stronger requirements for age checks on platforms, with Ofcom set to judge what forms of age assurance are effective before the ban comes into place in Spring 2027.

Making it up as they go along: You’d expect that a policy that bans 12m people from talking to friends, accessing information or building their communities in an important part of the world would be fully fleshed out before it’s announced. You’d be wrong. The loose list of platforms subject to a ban was immediately queried, with journalists left with vague answers over whether Roblox, Reddit or Telegram – a messaging service currently under investigation from Ofcom for allegedly failing to do enough to prevent the sharing of child sexual exploitation material – would be subject to it. The supposedly ‘harmful’ nature of features like livestreaming wasn’t defined, with the Government telling everyone to check back in with it in mid-July when it’s worked out what it is talking about. There’s also no timeline for the ban’s rollout, other than a handwavey reference to Spring 2027.

Alarmingly quick: The announcement felt hasty. And that’s because it was. The social media ban emerged from the government’s Growing up in an Online World Consultation. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) received a record 116,000 responses to its 54 questions before it closed on Tuesday 26th May. Typically, Cabinet Office says that government departments should respond to a consultation within 12 weeks of its closing. DSIT, by contrast, was given barely 12 working days to assess the findings and propose a policy solution in time for this week’s announcement. That’s not enough time to assess the evidence, let alone analyse it properly. This shows that the consultation was a farce and undermines confidence in its conclusions.

Legacy before policy: Of course, DSIT should not be blamed for delivering its analysis so promptly under pressure. Instead, we must criticise the crass political cynicism from our country’s leadership which forced them to rush the process. Last week, Politico reported that the Government wanted to announce a ban before the Makerfield by-election taking place later today. Was the government’s rush to announce the ban a reassuring move for the thousands of parents responding with concern to the consultation? Or was it because a dead-in-the-water Prime Minister wanted to announce a legacy-sealing policy before his main political rival could enter Parliament and sweep him out of power? It’s the latter, obviously. When it comes to regulating the spaces that shape our world, that just isn’t good enough. And the opinion that the ban is not the plan is shared more widely than you think.

Punishing kids for our bad choices

Not the usual suspects: Despite the social media ban’s popularity amongst parents, it’s gone down badly with groups and individuals who were firmly behind the passage of the UK’s monstrously sized Online Safety Act. Criticism of the social media ban has come from such noted firebrands as *checks notes* the NSPCC, the 5Rights Foundation, the Molly Rose Foundation, the UK Safer Internet Centre and dozens of other civil society organisations, who’ve claimed that bans are the ‘wrong solution’. Academia responded with a similar lack of enthusiasm, with the Science Media Centre compiling responses from dozens of bigwigs at universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Royal Holloway, and Nottingham who have raised serious objections and concerns about the ban.

Early numbers: For many, the expected criticism of a social media ban is that it is too easily circumvented. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner revealed earlier this year that 61% of teens remain on social media after the country barred access late last year. Advocates for a social media ban such as Ed Rith argue that this demonstrates the effectiveness of a ban, saying that a 40% drop in social media usage is huge in behavioural and cultural terms. Given the alleged harms within social media, which Rith compares to tobacco or alcohol, he argues that a ban is better than nothing and a valuable starting point for changing teens’ social media habits.

Interesting analogy: It’s not a bad argument if policymakers were seeking the answer to the question “what’s the best way to keep young people off social media?” The problem is that policymakers are answering a different question: “how do we keep young people safe online?” Regulation is part of that answer, including potentially limiting access to platforms, banning features or restricting access to content (e.g. pornography) to protect younger users where appropriate. But it goes much deeper than that, towards fostering behaviours, standards and cultures across society that allow children to interact with the digital world. If we want to respect the rights of children to relax, play, freely express themselves, form identities, and access information to participate in the world around them, we have to make sure they can access the digital world safely and freely. Otherwise, we’re failing to respect their rights and failing to prepare them for the world they’ll actually live in.

Digital natives: This brings us to the substance of the criticism of the social media ban. There’s extensive concern that children and young people’s voices about the importance of digital life haven’t been listened to. The consultation response showed that the opinions of youngsters differed from parents. But public polling from Savanta, which reached a representative sample of 9,000 parents and teens and was commissioned alongside the consultation, showed how important the digital world is to young people. Young people were nearly twice as likely to say that social media helps them feel connected (82%) or included (71%) than anxious (39%). They marginally said that the positives of social media outweigh the negatives (28% to 25%). And perhaps unexpectedly, the majority of children and young people wanted some limitations of social media use for under-16s without an outright ban. Kids and teens wanted help from policymakers, not to be cut off from their community.

The parents aren’t always right: A blanket ban on social media doesn’t just deny children their right to be listened to; it doesn’t align with what parents want either. Turning to Savanta’s data yet again, 16% of parents within its panel wanted a blanket ban on social media compared to 31% being in favour of restrictions to time spent on screens and minimum ages for most risky functions (44%). By contrast, the 116,000 consultation responses – which were self-selecting and featured 33,000 pro forma responses from a campaign group in favour of the ban - suggested that 63% of parents supported a ban. The government’s case for banning social media rested on conclusions from a dataset subjected to widespread lobbying, which tilted heavily in favour of a ban. But Savanta’s data found that a majority of parents and young people supported a graduated approach to accessing social media, bolstered by targeted restrictions, time-based controls and specific safeguards for AI features (e.g. chatbots). A fairer policy option to limit young people’s access to social media was on the table. The Government chose to ignore it, favouring an easy answer.

Not very informed voters: The decision to boot children and teens out of social media is inconsistent with efforts to build a generation of engaged, resilient young people ready to navigate the modern media landscape. At the same time that the government weighs up an 8:30 pm curfew for 16- 17-year-olds accessing social media, it is handing those same people the right to vote in a national election. If 57% of young people get their news from social media and 51% of adults do, excluding teens from platforms won’t mean that they’ll suddenly gravitate towards ‘proper’ news sources to get their information. It is much more likely that they won’t engage with that content at all, or they’ll access information secretly on social media. This is a recipe for creating a less informed, less digitally literate and less resilient cohort of voters, something that hostile actors will be delighted to hear.

Double standards: But most unforgivably, the implementation of the ban when the Government is failing to enact existing laws or set societal standards shifts the blame for online harms onto those suffering it. Nowhere is it clearer than the Government’s policy towards X. It is willing to ban teenagers from accessing it until 16 because of harms within the space, such as Grok’s brief phase generating child sexual exploitation material and the role the platform has played in fomenting riots in Southport, Belfast and Southampton. But despite the radicalisation of the space, Government departments, ministers and the Prime Minister keep giving X the thumbs up by posting directly into its information environment. Rather than enforce the Online Safety Act or lead from the front by exiting extreme spaces, the Government’s social media ban tells young people that hateful and harmful spaces are fine as long as you’re over the age of 16. That doesn’t make the online world safer. It makes it more dangerous, punishing young people for our timidity and complacency.

Unhappy times ahead

Wasy answers win: Will the misguided ban come into effect? Almost certainly. Despite the rush to announce the ban, the lack of meaningful thought behind it or even any certainty that the Prime Minister will be in post long enough to see it through, the direction of travel is set. In an age of utter political mediocrity within just about every British political party, the social media ban is exactly the kind of easy, popular answer to a complex problem that politicians love (without it delivering meaningful benefits to society at large). It is unlikely to be taken off the table from this point onwards.

There is a better option: Nevertheless, I hope that there is room to change direction in a way that brings together reasonable parental concern with respect for the rights of young people. There is room for regulation which allows young people to access more parts of social media with the help of parents, something that Roblox – of all platforms – has shown is possible with its multiple account layers for kids, teens and older players. We can support the development of the norms we want to see in digital spaces by funding public awareness campaigns, community initiatives and education programmes to help children grow into the citizens we want to see. And the Government still has a chance to lead from the front through its own communication channels to demonstrate the values it believes are important in our digital world. The Mayor of London’s ‘Build a Man’ campaign, which saw young men use video game character creators to create what they thought to be positive male role models for their communities, is a fantastic example of this.

One last warning: As it stands, we’re on the cusp of a major error. In an effort to give a lame duck Prime Minister a policy win before he’s booted out of office, we’re about to tell young people and teens that it’s their fault that the digital world we built for them doesn’t protect them well enough. And by kicking them out of it, we won’t make them safer. We’ll increase their disaffection and disappointment. We’ll make it more likely that they’ll disconnect from society, or go into the digital landscape undercover or underground to avoid censure. And in doing so, we’ll push them away from the mainstream towards darker spaces and communities — perpetuating harm, rather than trying to end it.

News in brief

Steadily Stopping Killing Games: The European Commission has dealt a blow to the Stop Killing Games campaign by saying that it cannot force video games to stay playable after they’ve been withdrawn from sale. In its response to a European Citizens’ Initiative about the campaign, the Commission said that it cannot propose a legal obligation due to copyright and intellectual property rules. It has committed to working with industry to draw up an industry code to manage the ‘end of life’ process for service games, while also working with consumer authorities to raise awareness of consumer rights with players.

Steaming up: Dutch not-for-profit group the Consumer Competition Claims Foundation has launched a campaign to cut the commission Steam takes from its store. The organisation is inviting players in the region to join its Game Claim campaign, with the initial aim of sitting down with Valve to discuss issues such as its 30% standard cut, its policies discouraging developers from releasing games on other platforms and geoblocking Steam keys bought in other EU nations. This paves the way for a possible class action claim in the country, akin to similar efforts currently underway in the UK and US.

Fake Act News: The US games industry is facing an unexpected challenge from a bill designed to stop AI-generated deepfakes in their tracks. The No Fakes Act aims to prevent the creation of ‘digital replicas’ for the purposes of attacking public figures, defining replicas as “a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual.” The lack of subtlety in the drafting has drawn concerns from the Entertainment Software Association, which notes the definition’s lack of distinction between carefully crafted digital game content and a deepfake of a person. Frankfurt Kurnit Klein + Selz breaks down the concerns.

Savvy sponsorship: Hat-tip to VGIM reader Mark who noticed that Savvy Games Group has been popping up on advertising hoardings as part of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The Saudi Arabian games publisher was announced as a sponsor of the event as part of the Public Investment Fund’s (PIF) support for the tournament. And to think I still remember the time when Savvy’s PR lines were that it was completely separate from the PIF…

Game jam today, tomorrow and yesterday: Finally, Playing for the Planet’s Green Game Jam is underway. 70 games including the likes of Subway Surfers, Just Dance and Magic: The Gathering Arena are facing off in a competitive campaign to raise funds for causes preserving rainforests or coral reefs. Content rolled out in the first games in time for World Environment Day a couple of weeks ago, but there’s still a week’s worth of competitive game-jamming to go.

Moving on

Craig Duncan, Head of Xbox Games Studio, has stepped down from his post. Louise O’Connor, who was Duncan’s Chief of Staff, is also out as part of a reset…Kelsey Medeiros has started a new role as Content Creator at Sega of America…Rohan Jain is the new Head of Corporate Development at Lego Digital Play…And congrats to Liz Prince from Amiqus, who was named an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours…

Jobs ahoy

Kojima Productions is looking for a Social Media Manager based in Tokyo…Rocksteady Studios is hiring an External Development Manager…Playground Games is hunting for a new Senior Producer…Epic Games needs a Social Media and Content Ops Director in the States…And Hasbro is hiring a Director, Studio Operations in Montreal…

Events and conferences

• Serious Play Europe, Mainz - 18th-19th June

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

• Games for Change, New York - 21st-22nd July

• ChinaJoy, Shanghai - 31st July-3rd August

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Games of the week

• EA Sports UFC 6 - Recreate the stupidity of what happened in the White House last week with the latest entry in the UFC fighting series.

• R-Type Tactics I.II Cosmos - Remakes of two strategy games based on classic shmup R-Type arrive on all platforms this week.

• The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales - JRPG from the makers of Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default with ‘stunning HD-2D visuals’ lands for your role-playing pleasure.

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Before you go…

I’m also happy to celebrate the launch by unveiling the snazzy Power Play Up, an asset designed by the wonderful Anna Hollinrake.

Get in touch if you’d like to include it in your game.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

Good morning VGIM Insiders,

Welcome to a special edition of Playing Politics.

Rather than run the usual newsletter, I’m giving VGIM Insiders a special treat: an early preview of a small part of Power Play’s audiobook.

At the end of April, I spent four days in a studio in London reading my book from cover to cover. Many cups of tea and biscuits were devoured in the process.

The audio was eventually whittled down into 12 and a half hours of content, eventually becoming the audiobook that’ll be available via Audible, Spotify and your favourite indie audio storefronts on Thursday.

But I know that a lot of you are interested in finding out what Power Play is really about and discovering whether my plummy British accent is perfect for narration.

So rather than make you wait until Thursday to judge book/me, I’m sharing a 14-minute extract from the audiobook exclusively for VGIM Insiders so you can listen to it before launch.

I’ll tell you a little bit more about what’s contained within shortly. But if you want to listen to the extract, you’ll need to sign up as a VGIM Insider to tune in.

Use the code POWERPLAY to get an Insider membership for £25 per year or £3 per month by hitting the button below.

Get 50% off forever

And if you’re not a VGIM Insider, you can check out my interview with the Financial Times that went out yesterday. Read it here.

The Other Putin

The audio extract you’re about to listen to is taken from Chapter 6 of Power Play, called Nothing is True and Everything is Playable.

Read more

This week’s Video Games Industry Memo is sponsored by Moore Kingston Smith

Advising businesses across the video games industry, with a full range of commercial and financial services.

• VGIM publishes 12,000-word report exploring LGBTQ+ censorship in games

• Summer Game Fest’s biggest announcements dominate the news

• NBA’s new 3 versus 3 multiplayer game tops the week’s releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

I’m writing to you this morning from First Playable in Florence, where I’m here promoting Power Play and writing about the Italian games biz (more on that later this month).

Before we get into today’s newsletter, it’s one week to go until Power Play launches. And a few people have asked me how best to support the book before it lands on Thursday 18th June in the UK.

The simplest answer is to pre-order it. Whether you want to buy the hardback or listen to the audiobook, getting your order in now helps rack up first-week sales, increases visibility on platforms and encourages bookstore owners to invite me to more events. You can get your pre-order in here, via your favoured bookseller or audiobook distributor.

The next best thing is to tell people about Power Play. Word of mouth is just as big a deal in selling books as it is with games.

If you’re excited to read the book, want to share how it looks in your hands when it arrives next week or want to be kind about the quality of my audiobook narration, tell your friends about it in person or share on social media. Use the link above to make sharing easy.

Finally, you can support the event by attending one of the events on my book tour.

I’ve just added Sunday Papers Live to my tour schedule on 5th July, but I have dates in London, Bradford, Cambridge, Norwich and New York coming up (and more to announce next week too). Get a ticket to one of the events here.

And with that done, let’s get into the newsletter.

The big read - How LGBTQ+ video game content is censored across the world

Some context: Over the past year, VGIM has reported on the rising censorship of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexual orientations and genders (LGBTQ+) content in video games. We’ve examined how Russia’s censorship agencies work with storefronts like Steam to chastise developers for creating queer games. We’ve unpicked Steam and itch.io’s blunt censorship of LGBTQ+ titles due to a botched response to an international pressure campaign. We’ve also highlighted concerns over game companies rolling back support for Pride, as part of wider fears about industry self-censorship.

A really big read: But I felt that there was a lot more to say on this topic. That’s why VGIM has produced its first report called Trapped in the Network. Funded by industry advocacy group Out Making Games, it explores why LGBTQ+ communities are targets for oppression across the world, why digital censorship plays a role in silencing their voices, and how video game content has become a prime target for states and non-state groups seeking to suppress the community.

Grab it now (or read on for the summary): You can read the full 12,000-word report by downloading it using the button below. But if you want a quick summary before you dive in, then read on.

Read Trapped in the Network

How we got here

Quick précis: The report opens by explaining how censorship evolved in a digital age, why LGBTQ+ communities have been censored generally and why video games have increasingly attracted the attention of censors.

The three ‘fs’: Before the arrival of the internet, censorship was a predominantly centralised process governed by states through fear and good ol’ fashioned physical violence. Three decades on from the rollout of the net, it has decentralised enormously. Whereas censorship used to be all about creating fear from the top-down, this is much harder to do in a digital landscape when content is easily created and shared by individuals. So, modern censors changed approach. They impose friction on users by making it harder to access content online through filters, blocks and other technological means. They flood the online conversation using friendly media, supporters or bots to dilute real voices. And by imposing punishments publicly and loudly against hand-picked targets, authorities can project fear more effectively than ever through digital channels. This encourages people and communities to self-censor; silencing targeted groups in a way that makes the rest of the population feel like nothing is going on.

Four actors: This decentralised censorship landscape is shaped by actors across society, who work in tandem — whether deliberately or organically — to chill free expression. States continue to set the rules for censoring content, setting out punishments for breaking them and deploying resources to enforce them. Platforms increasingly act as an indirect policer of these rules, trading ongoing access to a market in return for operating on behalf of censors. Businesses and institutions end up self-censoring content to try to meet the demands of platforms, as much as to stay on the right side of the state. And in a flattened digital landscape, groups or individuals who lobby noisily can impose further fear on creators through grassroots pressure campaigns – deepening self-censorship by engendering fear, or helping states identify content or creators who may have slipped its net.

Wedge issue: LGBTQ+ communities are a target for oppression because typically censorious actors like authoritarian governments, religious regimes and populist groups seek to ‘other’ queer communities to divide and conquer their populations. Censorship (or self-censorship of) LGBTQ+ content and communities is invaluable because it suppresses stories that could push back against the prevailing narrative. The enforced silence also allows dominant powers to spread false or malicious narratives about the community unchallenged, deepening control and strengthening oppression simultaneously.

Commercial censorship: Trapped in the Network shows that censorship of LGBTQ+ content within video games has occurred for decades. Initially, it was driven less by state censorship and more by prudish attitudes towards the community in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Games such as Caper in the Castro, Final Fight and even Super Mario Bros 2 each made adjustments to queer-coded games to secure publishing deals or certification to release as a by-product of moral panics around sexuality.

The emergence of an inclusive playerbase: However, censorship of LGBTQ+ games in the past decade has deepened because, somewhat ironically, queer games and communities became a major part of the industry. Games like The Last of Us, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Stardew Valley demonstrated the cultural and commercial value of representing queer experiences. Workforce surveys such as Ukie’s census showed that the UK industry workforce was twice as likely to be LGBTQ+ as the general population. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) identified a similar rainbow dollar trend in the player base in the US, reporting that 17% of the country’s players identified as LGBTQ+.

An authoritarian counterattack: However, the prominence of LGBTQ+ content and communities in games occurred just as the political environment surrounding the industry became more authoritarian. The rise of China as the biggest consumer market, Saudi Arabia as a major investor and the outright hostility of the modern US political right to LGBTQ+ has centred the industry around territories which, for varying reasons, suppress queer voices. Online safety laws designed to rightfully protect children and individuals from sexual exploitation online have been maliciously weaponised to conflate LGBTQ+ content with inappropriate or illegal sexual content. And the industry’s failure to combat misogynistic hate movements such as 2014’s has empowered pressure groups to attack creators from minority backgrounds, including the LGBTQ+ community. This created the conditions for censorship and self-censorship of game content to rise worldwide.

How censorship of LGBTQ+ games actually works

Onto the practicalities: After explaining how censorship of LGBTQ+ games and communities has evolved, Trapped in the Network explains how it happens via the four main actors propping up modern decentralised digital censorship.

Rules of the censorship game: At a state level, countries continue to set the rules of censorship and create the enforcement structures to suppress LGBTQ+ content. Regulators in states like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia set vague but flexible rules banning game content which promotes ‘non-traditional’ genders or sexuality (e.g. Russia) or ‘effeminate’ masculinity (eg. China) to give them maximum discretion to ban content they don’t like. They use regulatory bodies like content rating agencies, culture ministries or the state’s official censorship body to stop LGBTQ+ content getting into the market (e.g. Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Media Regulation). These enforcement bodies then enact those deliberately vague laws to empower them to take action against queer content, such as ordering stores to delist titles that get past the censorship process or removing market access for businesses that are seen to support queer content when politically convenient (e.g. Russia’s decision to ban Roblox in part for featuring LGBTQ+ experiences and content). This creates fear for communities and creators in the country, as well as market entrants.

Providing a platform: Platforms and storefronts are the next layer of censorship because they work — whether willingly or not — with regulators who enforce censorship to maintain market access. Many do this by responding to content takedown requests directly to take down LGBTQ+ video game content on request. But platforms often inadvertently expand censorship through poor moderation strategies, or by allowing inadequacies in their infrastructure to be weaponised by states or pressure groups to affect queer creators operating outside censored territories. Steam and itch.io’s response to Collective Shout’s campaign to convince payment providers to withdraw support for each store is a prime example of this in action. Because neither store had an effective content rating or moderation process to protect legitimate free expression, the blunt removal of thousands of games with ‘sexual’ content caught many that simply featured LGBTQ+ themes. This imposes friction on queer content, reducing discoverability, damaging commercial viability and diminishing voices.

Censoring the self: Beyond platforms, game developers and publishers have contributed to the problem through self-censorship. Whether through fear of harm or through desperation to enter a market, decisions by developers to tone down — or reduce — LGBTQ+ content within their games contribute to a chilling of free expression. Removing support for queer communities within titles that previously backed them publicly (e.g. Jagex’s rollback of Pride content in Runescape) or ‘straight-washing’ content to gain entry to markets (e.g. Riot’s decision to remove K’Sante’s LGBTQ+ identity in League of Legends to enter markets like China and Turkey) are prime examples of self-censorship. This shows how fear quietens the community’s voice, often where it is most needed.

Pressure groups attack: Finally, the report shows how groups and individuals can apply pressure from the bottom up to deepen censorship of LGBTQ+ content and other minority groups. The most prominent example in the past few years was the concerted attack on narrative consultancy Sweet Baby Inc. What started as an unfounded attack against a business providing much-needed sensitivity services for game developers, including when writing LGBTQ+ stories effectively, turned into a hate campaign that seeks to harass developers creating games which promote the “avoidance of traditional male and female terminology” in their content. But it goes beyond this too, with creators on Steam being targeted by ‘No Woke’ campaigns for featuring queer content and 52% of LGBTQ+ players reporting to GLAAD that they have received hate online. This floods the information environment with an inaccurate perception of what players think about LGBTQ+ content, dissuading developers from supporting the community and strengthening actors willing to politicise the debate (e.g. Elon Musk suggesting Sweet Baby Inc was at the centre of Gamergate 2).

The contagion effect: The biggest problem with increasing censorship of queer content is that it does not confine itself to borders. With games plugged deeply into digital infrastructure and reliant upon selling globally, the values transmitted from markets like the United States and China – as well as from investment hubs like Saudi Arabia – often spread to the rest of the world. This risks turning localised censorship efforts into globalised norms.

How to fight back

Bravery needed: So, what can be done about it all? The report rounds off with a range of conclusions, primarily targeted at different groups across the censorship net. But the primary conclusion is that the best way to begin to solve the problem of censoring LGBTQ+ content is, bluntly, to be braver about protecting freedom of speech, creativity and expression within games.

Take action: Democracies need to be much punchier about protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ communities to exist, while also teaching the public through digital literacy programmes how authoritarian groups and populists deliberately target minorities to sow division. Platforms need to evolve much more sophisticated approaches to moderating game content on their platform to stop malicious efforts to conflate queer content with illegal sexual content (and, in the process, prevent brute force attacks from pressure groups who attack payment infrastructure or review bomb to distort the discourse). Developers and publishers need to recognise the value of LGBTQ+ communities to the games market, maintain – rather than roll back – support for them within their titles, and give greater agency to players in areas like character creation screens to allow them to make ‘ambiguous’ content that acts as an invaluable source of safe self-expression. Preventing aggressive groups and individuals from dominating the discourse by taking strong stances against blatantly hostile campaigns, stamping out hate speech, and supporting staff who face abuse on the social media frontlines is key.

Freedom at stake: But to do this, we need to accept two things. There is a rising tide of censorship of LGBTQ+ content in games, and there needs to be a joined-up whole-of-society approach to tackling the problem within liberal democracies. Otherwise, we won’t just see LGBTQ+ communities silenced and suppressed in an increasingly authoritarian digital landscape. All voices will be diminished.

Read Trapped in the network: the rise of LGBTQ+ censorship in games and what we can do about it here.

News in brief - Summer Game Fest round-up edition

The main event: Ah, Summer Game Fest. The bafflingly busy week where the game industry announces everything at once has pretty much wrapped up. And the reviews are that it was alright, y’know. Geoff Keighley and Lucy James announced the third entry in the Final Fantasy VII remake series (and its subtitle of Revelation), another Resi reboot in the form of Code Veronica and a new Cuphead game to get excited about. Eurogamer has a full list of everything else announced, which you can find in the link above.

Having a Laufey: Geoff’s gun was technically jumped by PlayStation. Sony rushed out of the blocks with a State of Play that revealed the next chapter in the Until Dawn horror series, an extended look at the forthcoming Wolverine action game and Dave the Diver spinoff Bancho the Chef. Eyebrows were raised during the announcement of God of War: Laufey, a new entry in the franchise that explores what happens when Kratos’s wife heads into the afterlife. And the reason why eyebrows headed north was the presence of a gelatinous cube, played by actor Jack Quaid, as Laufey’s sidekick. Each to their own, I guess.

Back in its XBOX: Last Sunday’s XBOX showcase told us a lot about the company’s likely strategy under Asha Sharma’s leadership. It announced a return to console exclusivities with news on Gears of War: E-Day and Clockwork Revolution, notably keeping the word ‘PC’ out of executive mouths while doing so. It kept its cross-platform options open for multiplayer games like Forza and Call of Duty, where user counts are king. Less strategically, Sharma ended the event by going full Oprah, by effectively shouting “and you get an XBOX” at the showcase’s many attendees. A nice touch, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Ninten-do what you feel like: As someone rushing to get a lot of this newsletter written before I flew to Florence, I was obviously delighted when Nintendo slipped an under-the-radar Direct into the calendar on Tuesday 9th June. The company briefly baffled fans when it dedicated five minutes of the Direct to showing Yoshiaki Koizumi lose a thumb-wrestling match in the soon-to-be-released Nintendo Switch Sports Resort. But the announcement of a closed network test for From Software’s multiplayer game Duskbloods, a release date for Deltarune Chapter 5, a new Kingdom Hearts game and the first look at the long-teased Ocarina of Time remake won them over again.

PC Gaming Show Mastered the Race (for releases): But if you asked me to pick the showcase that I enjoyed the most, it was the PC Gaming Show. Sure, it had an advantage over the others because I was deeply interested in finding out more about the new Warhammer 40k Total War game. But chuck in the reveal of a definitive edition of WW2 strategy game Company of Heroes, a follow-up to the criminally underrated Cassette Beasts and a deeper look at Control Resonant and I was a very happy man indeed.

Moving on

Sam Hilary has been appointed Brand Director at Team 17…Mark Nolan is the new Head of Marketing at GamerSafer…George Corner has been appointed Commercial Director at The Game Business…And Side has been busy hiring lots of people, with Sijo Jose arriving as Chief Services Officer and Kaley Hurst becoming Chief Marketing Officer…

Jobs ahoy

Google DeepMind is hiring a Game Designer in its London office…LEGO Digital Play is looking for a Lead Engineer for its mobile games team…SEGA Europe needs a Paid Influencer Manager (presumably because an unpaid one would get it in trouble with the law)...Nintendo needs a Manager for its eShop, dealing with those pesky publisher/developer relations…And if you fancy a stint in Tokyo, Ubisoft is hiring a Communications and Content Specialist…

Events and conferences

• Power Play in conversation with Keith Stuart, London - 16th June

• Serious Play Europe, Mainz - 18th-19th June

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

• Games for Change, New York - 21st-22nd July

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Games of the week

• NBA: The Run - Three vs three basketball in the style of Rematch and Rocket League? Put me in, coach.

• Unrailed 2: Back on Track - It’s a co-op railroad digging game that’s best played with friends, so expect Transport Tycoon with a side-helping of Overcooked.

• Voidling Bound - It’s a third-person shooting game that’s a little bit like Palworld and a little bit like Helldivers, if that sounds like your cup of tea.

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Before you go…

The World Cup kicks off today, but who is going to win it? Electronic Arts has predicted that Spain will emerge as winners, according to SportBible.

Sure, EA’s football game has successfully predicted the past four winners of the tournament. But can the game’s predictive powers win me over like Paul the Octopus, the football result-predicting cephalopod, did?

Of course not.

This week’s Video Games Industry Memo is sponsored by First Playable

The gateway to the Italian video game industry.

• Europe’s games industry tries to strike a balance in Brussels

• UK online safety minister suggests games should be included in social media ban

• We tip our hat to three video game showcases for Summer Game Fest week

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Hello VGIM-ers,

Tick tock, it’s book tour o’clock.

After kickstarting the Power Play book tour last week, I’m very pleased to announce a swathe of dates in the UK and beyond.

You can see me discuss the book in the following places:

• First Playable, Florence: Wednesday 12th June

• Backstory, Balham: Tuesday 16th June

• Bradford Literature Festival, Bradford: Saturday 4th July

• A soon-to-be-announced event, London: Sunday 5th July

• Waterstones Norwich: Wednesday 8th July

• Waterstones Cambridge: Thursday 9th July

• Waterstones Hitchin (morning book signing): Saturday 11th July

• Games for Change Festival, New York: Tuesday 21st July

I’ve added links to all the currently online ticketed events on the Power Play Linktree. Hit this link to access it.

And if you’d like me to come to your town, city or event to talk about the book, get in touch. We’re taking bookings through to the Autumn.

P.S. Power Play releases two weeks today. Pre-order it here.

The big read - The European games biz goes lobbying

Not quite as sunny: It’s that time of year. Games journalists and influencers from across the world have clambered into trains, planes and automobiles to attend the hottest video game event of the year. But whereas the vast majority of the video game media ended up in Los Angeles for Summer Game Fest, I travelled to Brussels – a city just about as glamorous as LA – to attend an event with distinctly fewer must-see video game trailers on show.

High stakes lobbying: Video Games Europe (VGE) and the European Games Developer Federation (EGDF) host an annual event to bring together the games business with EU policymakers and officials to talk shop. These mini-conferences are an important opportunity for the European industry to talk to a crowd of Brussels bigwigs about what it’s up to. But this year’s event is particularly high stakes. The forthcoming Digital Fairness Act (DFA), the ongoing controversy over the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network’s in-game currencies principles, the persistence of Stop Killing Games and worldwide moves to ban social media have put the industry under genuine pressure to tell its story – or be hit by a powerful regulatory wave.

Regulatory surf’s up: VGE’s event was a rare opportunity for the industry to share its side of the story with members of the regulatory elite. And somewhat interestingly, the story that emerged was not one of a sector swimming into a wave. Instead, the games sector is trying to find its balance so it can ride the incoming wave as effectively as possible; a strategy that makes a lot of sense, but one that feels fraught with risk given some obvious scepticism from the bloc’s regulators.

It’s the mobile game economy, stupid

Euros and cents: Before the event started, King fired the first salvo on behalf of the European industry. The mobile game giant responsible for Candy Crush Saga released a new report called Mobile Matters: The Impact of Mobile Games on Europe that made one strident argument to policymakers not to over-regulate the sector: it’s gonna cost you.

Don’t mention the B word: Drawing on research from Nordicity, considered to be the gold standard of industry economic reporting within government circles, the report found that the European mobile games biz contributes €5.89bn in gross value-add to the continent’s economy and supports over 63,000 jobs across the region. Within the EU, the sector has provided a particular boost to Finland, Sweden, Spain and Ireland. But across the continent as a whole, King’s paper found that mobile has also supported growth in non-EU states such as Serbia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom *sobs gently*.

Mobile first: The report is well worth a read on its own terms because it offers a rare insight into the specific impact of mobile games on economic growth. Most of the research about the economic impact of games has either assessed the value of the whole sector on a country or region (e.g. BFI Screen Business Report) or on a single game (e.g. Roblox and the US). Taking a deep dive into a sector that has typically been ignored outside of mobile-first territories is exciting stuff for nerdy industry watchers like me (if not for anybody else).

Reading the subtext: Launching a document like this just before a big lobbying event means that it, inevitably, has a subtext. In this case, the argument is a very friendly exhortation to regulators to tread carefully when writing rules for the games business. In the introductory spiel from King bigwig Todd Green, the report notes that “China and Turkey are building highly competitive and technology-driven mobile games ecosystems and competing for talent, investment and audiences.” This, he continues, means that policymakers who are thinking about digital regulation in Europe have “an opportunity to support one of the region’s most dynamic creative and digital sectors”. He goes on to say that “getting the balance right” on regulation will be key to maintaining the industry’s strength.

Avoiding damage: Green’s introduction is diplomatically written, but the message rings out when set alongside the wider regulatory chat in Europe. The CPC Principles jabbing at in-game purchases and the DFA’s ambition to target loosely defined dark patterns in video games may be well-intentioned, but they will almost inevitably hit a sector contributing high-value jobs across the bloc. And with economic growth in Europe overall struggling to breach 1.5% per year as inflation bites due to Trump’s misadventure in the Straits of Hormuz, the industry is trying to politely say that it might be a mistake to go too hard right now.

Minor protection argument

More valuable than money: However, the argument of “don’t regulate us because it might cost you money” can’t work by itself. Games, whether fairly or not, have been lumped in with Big Tech’s social media platforms as a potential source of harm online. Arguing against regulation solely on economic terms won’t wash in a world where politicians, officials and the public are justifiably i) concerned and ii) pissed off by platforms that they believe are causing social harm.

F*** those guys: This is why the industry is intensifying its efforts to draw a dividing line between itself and social media, particularly when it comes to protecting youngsters who play video games. I chaired a panel at the event about minor protection featuring reps from age-rating bodies, a major Triple A game publisher and a senior figure at the directorate general overseeing the game biz, where the main aim of the game (ha!) was to clarify the difference between the two.

Good news: The event was hosted under the Chatham House rule, so I can’t report exactly what was said. What I can say is that efforts to build a firewall between video games and social media didn’t exactly go to plan. The conversation did recognise differences between the two. It noted that games do function meaningfully differently to social media platforms. It suggested that the industry’s self-regulatory framework and co-regulatory approach have broadly worked. Efforts to strengthen that framework further through changes to age rating systems, which now recognise in-game spend and communication features as something that could bump up the rating of a game, and by boosting technological features like parental controls were welcomed.

Ratings regulation incoming?: But while the industry mostly won the meat of the argument on social media, it was dead clear that there is appetite for strengthening regulation further. This included a pretty punchy chat about the importance of bringing self-regulatory work through age ratings systems into the formal regulatory tent to show that the sector really does approach things differently to social media. For an industry looking to steer policymakers away from hammering it too hard with the incoming Digital Fairness Act, suggesting that age ratings should be a legal requirement across the EU — rather than a nice-to-have self-regulatory extra — might be a necessary concession.

There may be troubles ahead

More contentious: The rest of the event offered variations on the themes above. The standout moment was a disagreement between industry reps and officials over the possible impact of the much-mentioned CPC principles on games. Designers argued that implementing the CPC’s rules would lead to players being interrupted by approximately 30 pop-up messages during a short mobile game session, with players constantly disrupted with messages reminding them of their consumer rights to meet the CPC’s recommendations. Without wanting to oversimplify too much, the official response was to say that the sector was wrong. Okey-dokey.

Less contentious: The final session about the potential of games as a source of growth and innovation in Europe took a primarily positive position on the full value of the sector across supply chains, including through multi-purpose technologies like game engines. It also noted rising global competition from countries like China was eating the EU’s lunch and that a lack of a continent-wide strategy for games was holding the bloc back from competing.

Difficult circumstances: Did the event show that the industry in Europe is successfully riding the regulatory wave? The answer isn’t clear. The tone of the event was polite, cordial and constructive. But the reality is that the regulatory environment feels fraught and unpredictable. Even in a setting where game developers had a chance to shape the message, the pushback against Big Tech, social media and historic negative perceptions of games feels like the public policy equivalent of wandering into a riptide. Everything increases the risk of the business getting pulled under the water.

Mature expectations: So, we’re in a curious place. The industry is telling its wider story more effectively than ever before. It has deeper engagement with political officials and elected representatives, allowing it to reach the people who matter with those messages. But with the industry maturing socially, culturally and economically, it’s clear that in Europe there is an expectation that it must demonstrate that its maturity strengthens – rather than weakens – rights and opportunities across the EU. And while it feels like the sector has successfully pulled itself upright and is currently riding the European regulatory surf, don’t be surprised if a crashing wave rises up and knocks us off the board at some point soon.

News in brief

Won’t somebody please think of the children, latest: Speaking of lobbying, UK video games trade body Ukie said in its response to the social media ban consultation last week that video games shouldn’t be treated similarly to social media. This week, The Sunday Times reports that Kanishka Narayan, the online safety minister, and Dame Rachel De Souza, the Children’s Commissioner, have both called for young people’s access to online games to be restricted – citing fears over stranger pairing (i.e. all multiplayer matchmaking) and the fact that boys spend a lot of time playing video games. Delightful news for all, I’m sure.

Hasan’s trip is sPiker-ed: Political commentator and video game streamer Hasan Piker, known as HasanAbi on Twitch, has been banned from entering the UK because his “presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good.” Piker was due to appear at SXSW London and make a series of appearances with left-wing political figures like former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, but was denied access to the country seemingly due to public support for Hamas. Lewis Goodall, co-host of the popular News Agents podcast, warned that the ban on Piker, and left-wing commentator Cenk Uygur, was “counterproductive, authoritarian and chilling” on free speech grounds. Commentator James Austin believes that it is justified based on the supportive comments he made for proscribed terror organisations.

Not stopping Stop Killing Games: Stop Killing Games has scored a first victory of sorts in the US. California’s State Assembly passed a vote on the Protect Our Games Act, which would require game developers to provide 60 days’ notice of video game shutdowns in the state and offer access to content offline if it did (or provide a refund to players). Despite major questions about the act remaining (why aren’t free-to-play games included, what happens if a game flops straight out of the gate, would refunds apply for titles players had happily enjoyed for years, etc), the bill received enough votes to pass to the Senate. It is due to be debated further next month, with the campaign hoping to pass it in time for January 2027.

Ever Greater Unions: In the biggest “what are you going to do, start your own casino” news of the week, Rockstar employees have unionised as the Rockstar Game Workers Union. Sitting within the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, which is currently leading a claim against the studio for allegedly dismissing dozens of employees for union busting, its formation has certainly shown Rockstar (that at least 10% of its workforce has the appetite to join a union).

Bordering on problematic: Finally, the new Call of Duty game is courting controversy by making the central conflict of the game focus on a hot war between North and South Korea. Modern Warfare 4 will partly follow battles on the frontline between soldiers on both sides of the divide. But given that games that have depicted war between the two countries have previously been banned in the country and the South Korean state has rules against games that might damage the reputation of the republic, Activision really needs to handle this with care.

Moving on

Tekken 8’s director Kohei Ikeda has left Bandai Namco…Lauren Roberts has been promoted to Director at PR firm Premier…Dr Dylan Poulus has become the Global Lead, Esports and Gaming at Movember…Cassandra Villareal has been hired by Supercell to become its Senior Corporate Brand and Communications Manager…Mariam Ahmad is the new Editorial Director - Events for Pocket Gamer Connects…And friend-of-VGIM Lucy James has departed GameSpot to launch Looking For Game, a weekly PC game discovery newsletter backed by Big Geoff Keighley…

Jobs ahoy

Sega Europe wants a ship-sharp Copywriter in London…Cloud Imperium is hunting down a Senior Producer…TripleDot is looking for a Creative Producer down under…Flavour of the month IO Interactive wants you to join its team in Malmo as Platform Development Manager…Nintendo is hiring an Influencer Marketing Manager in Redmond…And Newzoo is hiring an Editorial and Publishing Specialist based out of its Amsterdam HQ…

Events and conferences

• Summer Game Fest, Los Angeles - 5th-8th June

• First Playable, Florence - 10th-12th June

• Power Play in conversation with Keith Stuart, London - 16th June

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

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Games of the week - Summer Game Fest showcases edition

There’s the sum total of bugger all releasing this week due to Summer Game Fest. So, here are three virtual events for you to check out instead.

• Summer Game Fest - The headline showcase for the industry’s forthcoming relentless promotion of itself kicks off on Friday with Geoff Keighley and Lucy James (of the jobs section fame) on hosting duties.

• The PC Gaming Show - The PC games showcase from, erm, PC Gamer hits virtual screens on Sunday 7th June, with a sneak peek at the Warhammer 40k version of Total War.

• The XBOX Games Showcase - And finally, it’s probably worth tuning into the Xbox (sorry *inhales and shouts* XBOX) Games Showcase on the same day to see what the heck is going on over there given everything that’s been happening with it over the past year.

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Before you go…

Don’t forget: I’ve got two signed copies of Power Play up for grabs in the first ever Video Games Industry Memo reader competition.

Everyone who is subscribed to the newsletter by Wednesday 10th June will be entered into a draw to win one copy.

And every VGIM Insider will be eligible to take part in a separate additional competition, running alongside the free-to-enter contest.

Want to join the contest? Sign up as a VGIM subscriber for free here to enter the main competition.

You can also use the code POWERPLAY to become an Insider for just £25 a year (or £3 a month) to secure entry into the second contest.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

• Switch 2 prices hike as RAMaggedon hits the industry

• CCP rebrands as Fenris Creations, with a little help from DeepMind

• Secret Handshake’s arcade pop-up leads the critical chatter

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Good morning VGIM Insiders,

Welcome back to The Debrief, the monthly summary of the big news, deals, data and cultural commentary shaping the global games biz.

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Sign up as an Insider using the code POWERPLAY to receive an Insider membership for £3 per month or £25 per year.

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And if you sign up before Friday 12th June, you’ll be entered into an exclusive Insider-only prize draw to receive a signed hardback copy of Power Play before its launch on 18th June. Neat, eh?

The top stories

RAMaggedon hits Switch 2, pushing up prices

Read more

• We ask the Esports Foundation why it moved the Esports World Cup to Paris

• Ukie distances games from social media in UK ban consultation response

• IO Interactive has not gotten Bond wrong in the week’s release

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Hello VGIM-ers,

I’m hitting send on this morning’s newsletter from Hay-on-Wye.

The first date of the Power Play book tour kicked off with a great chat with Robert Nisbet at the Hay Festival yesterday.

Thank you to everyone who made it along and bought the first copies of the book in the wild.

In further exciting news, I’m very pleased to be kicking off the first-ever Video Games Industry Memo competition.

I’m offering two readers the chance to win a signed copy of Power Play from my special stock of author copies.

There are two ways to enter the competition. The first is to subscribe to VGIM for free. I’ll pick one lucky winner from the list of circa 7500 free subs on Wednesday 10th June.

And the second is to subscribe as a VGIM Insider. They’ll be entered into the main draw and a special, separate draw exclusively for paid subscribers, giving them two chances to win.

Want to win a copy? You can sign up as a free VGIM subscriber here.

You can also become a VGIM Insider for £3 a month or £25 per year if you use the code POWERPLAY at the checkout before the end of July.

Get 50% off Insider membership

Winners will be emailed on Friday 12th June, with the aim of getting you the book in time for launch day (postal services permitting).

The big read - Why has the Esports World Cup moved to Paris?

Flashback: Last year, I had a chat with Mike McCabe, the Chief Operating Officer at what is now known as the Esports Foundation. I interviewed him for VGIM and Power Play about the Esports World Cup, the foundation’s flagship event, to understand its role within Saudi Arabia’s soft power strategy.

Lines to take: During our chat, I asked him whether the foundation would consider moving the tournament to another country or whether it was locked to Riyadh in an effort to entice tourists into town. The answer was a nuanced no. “Everything is possible from our perspective,” he said. “But it will be here this year [referring to 2025] and likely next year [discussing 2026 plans].”

Change of plans: So naturally, my interest was piqued by the announcement last week that the Esports World Cup was not returning to Riyadh in 2026. The tentpole event at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s esports strategy was instead moving to Paris from 6th July, drawing its dozens of video game tournaments, enticing thousands of players and lugging its $75m prize pot to the French capital.

It goes Macron and on and on: What’s behind the move? Why was France’s President Emmanuel Macron splattered all over the announcement images? And what does the move tell us about the future of the tournament and Saudi Arabia’s video game strategy? I caught up with Fabian Scheuermann, Chief Games Officer for the Esports Foundation, and a couple of VGIM-adjacent journalists to understand what this all means.

Avoiding a Strait answer

Getting on with it: At the start of the call, Scheuermann told me how unbelievably busy his year had been as a result of the move. So to spare his diary, I cut to the chase. Why was the Esports World Cup (also EWC for short) moving to Paris this year, ahead of the timeline seemingly outlined by McCabe last year?

Sticking to the plan? “As Mike rightfully said, the intent was always to travel”, Scheuermann started. “EWC is a platform. And we want to grow this platform not only from a regional perspective, but from a truly global perspective. That means we want to make sure that fans, publishers, and players can use this platform to the best extent. And we can do this only if we’re also rotating EWC. So, we were not looking to rotate this year already. But due to the regional situation, we accelerated that path. And Paris, specifically with the institutional support, was the perfect spot to go to.”

Safety first: ‘Regional situation’ clanged with me as soon as it was said. It was the same language used in the EWC’s press release to justify the move, a phrase designed to carefully ignore the impact of Donald Trump’s war against Iran on the region. I asked Scheuermann to clarify whether the move was related to the ongoing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz. “It is the general situation in the region, and we want to make sure that fans feel safe, and don’t even have to worry about it,” he said. “So, while Saudi Arabia is still very safe, we want to make sure that the fans – especially if they’re international – feel safe in that region.”

Subtext alert: Scheuermann was obviously seeking to be diplomatic over the ongoing situation, especially when the country’s head of state, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS, for short), is on the board of trustees. But for James Montague, sports journalist and author of Engulfed: How Saudi Arabia Bought Sport, and The World, the tournament’s relocation to Paris is inextricably linked to the aftershocks of the conflict and the uneasy ceasefire that followed.

Awkward truths: “The war with Iran has made Saudi Arabia, and to a certain extent the other Gulf states as well, rethink what their soft power investments are and what they hope to achieve,” he explained. “It was about creating a different story around their countries and nation-building projects in many ways and about attracting investment, attention and visitors. The war has really focused minds to say that you can have all of those things, but it is still a very dangerous neighbourhood. No matter what you invest in, no matter how many Formula 1 Grands Prix or Esports World Cups you host, you can’t change your geography.”

Macron has entered the lobby

Lobbying win: So with a Riyadh-based EWC being just a short drone flight away from an exceptionally narked off regional rival who deeply dislikes Saudi Arabia’s major military ally, the tournament had to move. But why Paris? Emmanuel Macron’s public backing for the esports industry put the French capital in pole position to snap up the tournament.

Pole position: “In 2022, Macron said esports is on their [the French government’s radar. And they have shown repeatedly that they support global tournaments and the best tournaments coming to Paris”, said Scheuermann. “When we were looking at different regions to pull off the EWC in a rotation, Paris very, very quickly was the favourite candidate, because the government instantly said, ' Look, we will help and support with all the important things.” This included practicalities like managing visa applications, a considerable burden for a tournament bringing thousands of athletes to a city for six weeks, and providing wider infrastructure support for the tournament. Scheuermann described the package provided by the French government as “unmatchable from our perspective.”

Esports Capital of the World: Paris’s strengths as a home for the EWC stretched beyond institutional support. “Within the esports community, it developed as the esports capital of Europe,” he said. “We have so many tournaments there. The Rocket League major just last weekend, we had Counter-Strike there, and Call of Duty is coming with a major. And it’s just a very esports-proven, very international city.” Scheuermann highlighted its wider strengths as a city, including its transport infrastructure, myriad event venues and ample accommodation for tourists, as further reasons for its selection.

On the ground reporting: VGIM received separate confirmation of Paris’s readiness as a host city for a major esports tournament from our freelancing friend Tom Regan. I DM’d him on Instagram after spotting that he had popped along to the Rocket League Major that Scheuermann referenced in our chat. He reported that the 25,000-seat venue for the major, which had been re-specced to hold 15,000 spectators to support a glitzy show, delivered a “very impressive” production. The ease with which he got to the venue, whisked across France via rail with nary a care in the world, contrasts with the challenge of coaxing journalists to Riyadh in the middle of Summer.

London calling?: And while Scheuermann sang Paris’s praises, he also indicated that it is unlikely to be the last time the cup is contested on foreign shores. “We want to make sure that the cities or the countries can actually achieve what we need to make this platform grow, and it doesn’t need to be a single location,” Scheuermann said, opening up the possibility of joint hosts of the cup. “But what we ultimately want is that we can achieve our targets of making this platform grow. So, yes, it could be multiple cities, it could be rotating. I wouldn’t say we have any restrictions to that, as long as the infrastructure and the operations and the fandom can be built.“ Could we see it hosted in a city like London or Shanghai? “Absolutely,” Scheuermann replied.

Soft power-ly does it

More questions: On this occasion, shifting the Esports World Cup to Paris made sense from both a safety perspective and on the basis that it could relatively easily – and incredibly willingly – put on a show. But does moving the Esports World Cup to Paris change its role within the esports ecosystem? And does its move from Riyadh say anything about Saudi Arabia’s appetite for backing big digital sporting events, or for its wider video game strategy?

Tourist destination: Scheuermann told me that the Foundation remains confident that the EWC will remain the central event in the global esports calendar in a new location. “While we already had a lot of global fans coming to Riyadh, of course, with Paris and a lot of tourists there are a lot of tourists there, especially in the July-August time. We’re expecting a very high diversity of fans coming to see the different tournaments.”

Centre of gravity: His confidence has been boosted by the reception to the global Road to the EWC tournament series, which puts leading esports teams into competitions in regions like Eastern Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia alongside traditional esports hubs. The tournament’s wider gravitational pull, powered by its $75m prize pool, the downstream support for hundreds of esports organisations through Foundation initiatives, and the ability to apply pressure on publishers to support competitive play due to the critical mass of the event, makes the EWC durable wherever it is hosted.

A genuine return on investment: Interestingly, Montague agrees that the competition is sustainable irrespective of the mood. In fact, he told me that the tournament’s move to Paris is not a sign of esports becoming a victim of growing Saudi disinterest in its sport strategy; it’s an attempt to retain its value. “The issue here is that esports isn’t like the other things we’ve seen [within Saudi Arabia’s sports portfolio],” he said. “LIV Golf, for instance, Saudi Arabia spent $5bn at least on something that wasn’t a success and didn’t achieve any of the aims of Vision 2030. These things were nebulous at best when it came to Vision 2030 and doesn’t move the needle when compared to Saudi GDP.”

Presidential Power Plays: ”Esports is different. It clearly does. It brings investment, it brings jobs for young Saudi people, and more was invested in the infrastructure around games than was made in all of its sports investments combined,” Montague continued. “The issue here was, can you really host an event when there is such instability in the Middle East. I don’t think you can. I think it’s an issue of safety for this year; Paris makes sense. But the fact that it was President Macron negotiating directly with MbS, who is a digital native and gamer, shows that it isn’t trying to downgrade the investment in esports; it’s actually trying to save it. It’s saying ok, this is going to Paris but we are very much still involved in this space.”

A durable soft power asset: So even though the Esports World Cup’s first foreign move may have happened earlier than expected, its success, or otherwise, is loaded with significance for Saudi Arabia’s soft power strategy. And with the country’s wider sporting endeavours crumbling away, a successful international EWC – backed by the French President, no less – would likely make it the central pillar of the country’s reputation-building project. That raises big questions now, and likely some even larger ones in the future if the French expedition proves to be a hit.

News in brief

Game on(line): Ukie has released a statement confirming it has submitted to the UK government’s consultation exploring the possibility of a social media ban for teens. In a LinkedIn post, the trade association stated that “video games are not social media. It went on to say that they “differ fundamentally in purpose, design, and impact”, that games “offer real, well-evidenced social and developmental benefit”, and that conflation with social media “inadvertently harms one of the UK’s most important creative industries.” Games definitely aren’t social media. But as one of the engines that drives it, the industry will need to show how effectively it is moderating its spaces to avoid getting hit in social media’s regulatory blowback.

Ball’s in motion: In a rare ‘not including this in the Moving On’ section, Xbox has hired Matthew Ball of That PowerPoint Presentation We All Read And Talk About At The Start Of The Year fame to head up its publishing push. It’s an eye-catching hire, which puts one of the industry’s biggest thinkers towards the top of one of its biggest companies.

Broaden your Horizon: The European Game Developer Federation has published a lengthy and handy guide to a series of European funding calls through Creative Europe and the Horizon research programme. Creative Europe has funding open for narrative game projects, something that can be tapped by companies based in EU member states or a surprisingly broad list of partners (hello, Armenia). Perhaps more interestingly, Horizon Europe has funding open for video game researchers thinking about issues like media literacy, protecting democracy and fostering creative alliances. That funding should be open to researchers in the UK following its return to the programme earlier this year.

That’s a big number: HoYoVerse, creators of Genshin Impact, is reportedly set to invest *checks notes* $14.6bn into artificial intelligence tooling over the next three years. A report in the Chinese outlet Gamelook, which has also been written up on GI Biz, said that the company’s founder Liu Wei outlined the vision, detailing plans to build its own AI infrastructure from scratch to avoid leaning on external models. VGIM says: That’s a lorra money, lads.

Unfortunate Destiny: And finally, the last rites are being read for Destiny 2 as it prepares to shuffle off this mortal (live-service-led) coil from the beginning of next month. Dom Peppiatt at Eurogamer has written an excellent eulogy for the shooter, charting its unsteady start as a full-blown Destiny sequel, its sudden ascent to the heights of multiplayer shootybang action, and its steady decline as community goodwill evaporated in the face of strange corporate decisions.

Moving on

Caroline Miller is stepping back from frontline operations at UK PR firm Indigo Pearl as it merges with Fortyseven Communications. Craig Sinel has relocated to London to lead the new 47 office, with Anita Wong stepping into Caroline’s formidable (and fabulous) shoes…Aisha Ahmed has been appointed Influencer Marketing Manager at FORMAT Group…And we missed this a couple of weeks ago, but Maarten de Koning was appointed Chief Commercial Officer at People Can Fly…

Jobs ahoy

Great Ormond Street is hiring a Senior Gaming Manager to support its fundraising efforts…Hangar 13 has a post open for a Lead Producer…The NFL has a post for Senior Manager, International Game Development open in London…Nintendo is hiring a Senior Manager, Central Communications, in its office in Richmond…And intriguingly, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has a post open for a Serious Game and Policy Game Specialist…

Events and conferences

• Power Play Book Tour, UK - Multiple dates, May-July

• Games Industry Law Summit, Berlin - 2nd-4th June

• Summer Games Fest, Los Angeles - 5th-8th June

• Develop, Brighton - 14th-16th July

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

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Games of the week

• 007: First Light - Be stirred (not shaken) by IO Interactive’s twist on the James Bond formula, available across all platforms.

• Crashout Crew - Co-op forklifting party game from the team behind Peak crashes onto Steam today.

• Pictonico - Nintendo’s Wario Ware-esque party game that uses your photos to power the play lands somewhat intriguingly on app stores this week.

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Before you go…

Could political instability in the UK cause problems for the video game industry? Mickey Carroll from Sky News asked the question.

Your humble writer did his best to answer it.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

• The Anti-Defamation League discusses tackling anti-semitism in games

• China bans latest Nvidia gaming chip during Trump’s state visit

• Forza Horizon 6 screeches its way to the top of the week’s releases

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Hello VGIM-ers,

Welcome to you from noisy North London. It turns out that when Arsenal win the Premier League A LOT of people honk horns in Wood Green.

Anyway, I have a smidge of news about South London book events that I think you’ll like.

I’m heading to Backstory in Balham on Tuesday 16th June to chat about Power Play. And I’m being interviewed by a very special guest.

Keith Stuart, gaming correspondent at The Guardian and thoroughly brilliant author, will be politely questioning/grilling me about all things video games and geopolitics.

Tickets to the event are £15 or £35 if you want to throw in a hardback copy of the book.

You can join us for our chit-chat here.

The big read - Combatting antisemitism in games

Grim statistics: Antisemitic hate and violence have been rising around the world. In December 2025, 15 people were murdered in Sydney in an anti-semitic attack. In London, there have been arson attacks on ambulances owned by a Jewish charity and stabbings in Golders Green – an area considered home to a large amount of the capital’s Jewish population. Antisemitic assaults also reached a record high stateside in 2025.

Hate within game spaces: Hate has also, unfortunately, found its way into video game ecosystems. In 2024, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed that Steam was hosting 1.8 million unique instances of hateful content across its platform. This included thousands of groups, millions of avatars and user profiles containing references to Nazism, approving of ‘white power’ or glorifying violent extremists. The ADL criticised Valve for ‘failing to systematically address the issue of extremism and hate on the platform.’

A new tool: After publishing its research, the ADL began to build a tool to assess games and game platforms for hateful content. This resulted in the creation of the Online Gaming Leaderboard, a resource which rates 10 popular games for how their policies and tools handle antisemitic hate. It then pops out a rating and report card to alert the company about the issues identified by the organisation, and to provide parents and players with information about the game they’re playing. Big winners included Call of Duty, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto Online. Counter-Strike 2 and PUBG, by comparison, scored poorly.

Pertinent questions: What goes into the rating system that the ADL has created? What has the leaderboard taught us about the approach of leading developers towards antisemitic and extremist content? And where does it go from here? I chatted with Daniel Kelley, Senior Director, Center for Technology and Society at the Anti-Defamation League, to find out more.

How the system works

Filling a gap: The ADL created its Online Gaming Leaderboard to transparently assess how games handle antisemitic and hateful content. “There was previously no robust public-facing resource to evaluate the safety of online multiplayer games as digital social spaces,” says Kelley. “The leaderboard is the first-ever comprehensive public evaluation of how leading video game companies address antisemitism and hate in their online multiplayer games.”

Assessing social spaces: The leaderboard is designed to inform people about the nature of the online spaces they’re about to play in. “Our goal is to measure the efforts of video game companies to make their online multiplayer games safe, especially in terms of the social aspect of these spaces,” he said. In parlance that’ll be familiar to British readers, it’s about rating the atmosphere in the pub rather than what’s on the telly.

Lost to the ether: The ADL found it hard to measure exactly what was going on via in-game communication because of its ephemeral nature. “Most online game spaces are not persistent in the way that traditional social media is — when a match of Fortnite ends, for example, all of the interactions that happened during that match are no longer visible to anyone, including researchers,” explained Kelley. This led to it focusing on the framework and technologies used by developers to police hate instead.

Points on the board: Its scoring system reflected this focus. “Games were evaluated on criteria in two broad categories: policies to prevent antisemitism and hate and in-game tooling to prevent antisemitism and hate,” Kelley told me. Titles were assessed by eight core criteria, divided into four in each category. On the policy front, the leaderboard awards different levels of points for policies countering antisemitism and hate, policies expressly forbidding terrorist or extremist content, whether it displays an in-game code of conduct and if the company has documented plans on when it escalates to law enforcement. In-game moderation tools, meanwhile, were rated on their effectiveness in filtering out antisemitic or violent anti-Israel usernames. The ADL also assessed how well blocking, muting and reporting worked within games. It also applied demerits to games where it identified a disconnect between policies and user reality, such as the presence of antisemitic experiences on a user-generated content platform.

An important clarification: At this point, I paused to check with Kelley how the ADL defined ‘violent anti-Israel usernames’ in its testing process to determine whether it risked eliminating critical free speech of Israeli leadership (e.g. I hate Netanyahu) or implied criticism of its policies (e.g. a phrase like Save Gaza). Kelley told me that the two terms they tested were “Killzionists” and “murderIsraelis”. This provided meaningful clarification that satisfied me that the system was focused on hate and wouldn’t inadvertently suppress reasonable freedom of expression (whether knowingly or otherwise).

Procedure generated: With the system in place, the ADL picked its ten titles to measure, created its report and produced a scorecard for each game. It then contacted games companies ahead of publication to offer them a chance to correct elements of the organisation’s rating system, or engage on areas of concern identified.

Lessons learned

And the scores are in: I headed to the ADL’s leaderboard to check the ratings of the 10 games it investigated. In its traffic light scoring system, four games achieved a green Advanced Protections rating (Fortnite, Call of Duty, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto Online), four games reached a middling Moderate Protections amber score (Roblox, Madden NFL, Valorant and Clash Royale), and two came out with red Limited Protections ratings next to their names (Counter-Strike 2 and PUBG).

Defying expectations: One of the things that immediately stood out to the ADL was the fact that games with violent content or reputations were often better at protecting players from hate. “A game’s public reputation regarding content does not necessarily mirror its commitment to safety,” Kelley said. “For example, two of our top-rated games are Grand Theft Auto Online and Call of Duty. Both of these games deal with adult content — crime and war — so it may seem strange that these are “safe” online games to play. But what we found is that both companies that make these games have done a significant amount of work to create robust policies and user tools, possibly because of the nature of the content of their games.” This contrasted with a platform like Roblox, which Kelley said, “only had moderate protections according to our evaluation.”

Constructive conversation: Kelley also told me that game companies were often more responsive to concerns raised via the leaderboard than they expected them to be. “Prior to launch, we met with almost all of the video game companies whose games we were rating,” Kelley said “In the conversations, we wanted to ensure that our ratings were accurate and to advocate for them to do better in terms of the gaps we pointed out. Notably, EA and Take Two acted based on our first round of engagement prior to launch in fairly significant ways.”

Raising the bar: Although the industry has engaged with the issue, the ADL did find other companies to be less responsive. Kelley wants to see more support for people in the biz who are pushing for concerted efforts to counter hate. “While reviewing the criteria for the leaderboard with experts in the field, we heard broadly that these were an effective baseline of expectations for online multiplayer games, but that in the future, we should raise the bar,” he argued.

Ahead of the social media game: However, Kelley was also keen to speak favourably of the industry’s overall approach – especially in comparison to social media businesses who are quietly backsliding on addressing hate on their platforms. “In the past, I have said that the game industry is behind social media in terms of its maturity in dealing with these issues”, Kelley said “Given the game industry’s continued commitment to leaning in on these issues, and the huge steps back traditional social media companies like Meta and others are taking around hate, I would reverse that perspective: the game industry is actually being a lot more thoughtful and forward looking on these issues at present.”

On the board

Building on the foundation: According to Kelley, “the launch of the leaderboard is just the beginning” for the project. Kelley told me that the ADL plans to assess more games against its criteria, update its report cards for the 10 games that it has rated so far, and check how useful it is for the leaderboard’s main audiences as it moves out of beta testing.

Widening the net: My feeling is that the ADL’s work is a useful starting point for a much bigger conversation about how we cultivate safe digital spaces in general. Its overall approach towards countering antisemitism and hate is understandable given the organisation’s focus. But with other specific forms of hate, such as misogyny, racism and homophobia measurably making spaces more dangerous – and building pathways to radicalisation or violence in the process – the initiative feels like one piece in the puzzle rather than the full jigsaw.

Serious games: Still, one of the central conclusions of Power Play is that civil society doesn’t take the power of video games as a digital third place capable of influencing reality seriously enough. This is, at the very least, an expression of what happens when an organisation does. And if that can meaningfully reduce hate online and harm in our streets, I’d like to see the approach rolled out more widely in the future.

News in brief

Huangway or another: An FT exclusive reveals that Beijing banned Nvidia gaming chips during Jensen Huang’s visit. Last week, Huang hopped onto Air Force One to join Donald Trump’s trip to China, and the People’s Republic responded by quietly adding the RTX 5090D V22 chip to their customs list of banned goods. As both countries battle it out for AI domination, China is loading up on chips from domestic companies Huawei and Cambricon. While the tech CEO is betting that the “market will open” after the US thumbs up licenses to sell H200 chips to China, no chips have actually been shipped due to regulatory hiccups.

Victory Royale?: David smashed Goliath, Muhammad Ali knocked out Frazier, and now Fortnite shimmies its way back into Apple’s app story everywhere – except Australia. Epic Games and Apple have been hashing it out since 2020, when the latter removed Fortnite from app stores for bypassing platform fees and offering their own in-app payments. Epic parried by accusing the company of forcing “junk fees” and anticompetitive practices. Now the game is back, so long as Apple holds up their end of the bargain and publicly discloses its fee structure…

Pirating players: Hackers broke into a podcaster’s PlayStation Network account, locking him out of hundreds of digital games. Colin Moriarty, host of Sacred Symbol and ex-editor for IGN, posted about the cyberattack on X. Despite Sony fixing the issue swiftly, the attack shows how surprisingly easy it is for hackers to take over PSN accounts. Last year, a French journalist was hacked and realised that cybercriminals could bypass 2FA and reset access simply by phoning up customer service, handing over the account username and reading out an old transaction number. Sony has said diddly squat about the whole hoo-haa, so keep an eye out for any irregular transactions on your account. As the pirated profile warned, “you’re next.”

OKRE’s Computing: Ukie teamed up with OKRE and BFI to publish a report on video game impact. Turns out, we don’t know all that much about games, neither on their “economic value” nor their social and cultural influence. Mostly, this is down to a lack of accessible industry data. “As a result, decisions about and within the sector are based on a limited, partial view,” they claimed. It’s ok, guys, we just need to lock in.

Game guides for everyone: Discord has dropped a shiny new Player’s Guide, complete with Wellbeing Principles. This library of resources is there to help navigate digital discourse, online relationships and empathy through handy tip sheets. Plus, they’re thrown in a course on empathetic communication, which has tips like saying “mh-hmm” during calls and actually helpful stuff for navigating suicidal chat. Built with Crisis Text Line, ECPAT (a global charity for child safety), The Christchurch Call and Gamersafer, among others, the guide hopes to make online chat friendlier.

Moving on

Luella Moore has started as the Senior Producer for Melbourne International Games Week...Rob Vicars now has the title Director, Global Gaming and Creative Sync at Warner Music Group…Ana Vasquez is the EMEA Communications Manager for Niantic, working on Pokémon Go…And John Ciancutti is Roblox’s brand new Chief Growth Officer…

Jobs ahoy

Soul Assembly has an Executive Producer gig in Leamington Spa…Miniclip has reposted its opening for a Senior Legal Counsel, Product & Regulatory…Roblox is hunting for a Senior Manager Policy Comms on a short-term contract…Discord wants a Director of Product Communications in its SF office…And Take-Two still has a Director, Global Affairs (Europe) post open…

Events and conferences

• Power Play Book Tour, UK - Multiple dates, May-July

• BitSummit, Tokyo - 22nd-24th May

• Games Industry Law Summit, Berlin - 2nd-4th June

• Summer Games Fest, Los Angeles - 5th-8th June

• VGIM Business Breakfast, Brighton - 15th July

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Games of the week

• Forza Horizon 6 - Power slide around an open-world version of Japan in the latest entry in Playground Games’ ever-popular racing series.

• LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight - Watch Traveller’s Tales develop the DC game Rocksteady probably should have made next, but with a lot more LEGO involved.

• Yoshi and the Mysterious Book - Flip through this puzzle-packed, family-friendly adventure with more than a hint of Yoshi’s Island on the Switch 2.

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Before you go…

Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse Studios has confirmed that it is working on a brand new role-playing game set in Middle-earth.

VGIM can confirm that we’re already excited at the prospect of sacking off its world-defining main storyline to spend hours manually sharpening virtual swords at a nearby blacksmith.

Keep up with VGIM: | Linkedin | Bluesky | Email | Power Play |

Thanks to Anna Mahtani for scribbling the news, checking for typos and constantly topping up our water cups in the office this week.

• We assess what UK political chaos means for the industry’s prospects

• Roblox signs education-focused MoU with Saudi-backed Savvy Games

• I’m hunting for meetings in Brussels next month

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Good morning VGIM Insiders,

Another paid subscriber-only email on Sunday? What’s going on? The answer is a long-term scheduling change.

I’ve decided to shift the distribution day for paid VGIM newsletters from Friday to Sunday.

The move helps me with my production schedule, it fits nicely with the ‘longer view’ that this paid content takes, and it gives each newsletter a bit more room to breathe in a busy media schedule.

I’ve also found out that plenty of my readers save VGIM for a quiet moment on the weekend, so why not lean into that, eh?

If you’d like to read this newsletter, get access to extra content, receive early access to VGIM events and score 10% off all VGIM stuff, including sponsorships, then you’ll need to sign up as an Insider below.

But with all that admin done, we can now get on with this month’s big read.

The big read - What does the Labour leadership crisis mean for the UK games biz?

Blimey: What on earth is happening in British politics? And how’s that going to affect video game lobbying efforts? In an attempt to keep the UK and international video game industry commenteriat informed of what the heck is going on, I decided to dive in and give you our lowdown.

Read more