Investors are kinda sad about Ubisoft moves: when you cancel half of your games and move release dates of others by a year or two, it somehow NOT MAKING IT LOOK LIKE A PROFIT.

Shares lost over 30% today, 60% in one year and 95% in 5 years. Yes, kids, they are 95% less valuable than they used to be!

#Ubisoft@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Adobe stocks are in decline by 23% since the beginning of the year, over 18% in one month.

Their AI tools are not bringing more paid users to the ecosystem, then a lot of people left when they tried to discontinue Adobe Animate a week ago (and then placed it into low maintenance mode instead).

And if investors' panic over game companies and Ginie3 is foolish, the Adobe one may be reasonable: except for poorly executed AI plugins in Photoshop, the overall stack of tools stagnating for years.

DaVinci Resolve allows better video editing for free and even more impressive in paid tier. All in one app.

Blender advanced significantly in 2D animation and 3D compositing, Affinity now has free tier too, GIMP 3 is finally usable, and we can continue: https://github.com/KenneyNL/Adobe-Alternatives

#Adobe@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Since Nacon has no budget to burn, they moved the planned presentation two months forward. And promise to fix the budgeting issue.

They are the company behind Spiders, Daedalic, and dozens of other studios around the world. They unified over the years to be more resilient but it kinda didn't work out.

#Business@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Nacon@GameDEV

The creators of Crimson Desert lost about 30% of their market cap due to "negative reception from critics". Investors wanted to see The Witcher 3 and got Dragon's Dogma II.

#Finance@GameDEV

After their parent company Nacon admited they are out of money, their subordinates followed with the same legal request.

Paris-based studio Spiders is perhaps best known for working on the Greedfall franchise. Kylotonn has spent recent years overseeing the World Rally Championship series, while Cyanide has worked on franchises such as Styx and Blood Bowl (via).

#Nacon@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Warhorse/KCD/Mafia creator Daniel Vavra has Ubisoft shares in his stack. And with his usual attitude to everything and everyone, he's bitching about it.

#Ubisoft@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Investors: one ex developer said the game is bad, reviewers were unable to defeat the boss, whoa, drop the shares price!

The game actually sells, investors: whoa, raise the price! Congrats, that was the real traders strategy guide in 20 seconds.

#meme@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Since Nacon publishing has no more money and so are its studios, the company just secretly placed Spiders (Greedfall, Steelrising) on sale. If you're interested, here's the lot where you can buy the studio.

Nacon previously acquired Spiders in 2019 after the success of the original Greedfall. Now they forced the team to "make another game to raise their own price before sale". Something is in early development but sources say that the team is rather broken with all that, not inspired by the new chance.

In addition, according to Origami, Nacon Tech (motion capture studio) is also going to be sold. And all physical releases of Nacon games are canceled in North America.

#Nacon@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV

If you were curious about financial issues of literally every game and IT company out there: they all gambled on AI and got wrecked by it this specific quarter.

Microsoft is currently aiming for the worst quarter since 2008 and these results are not even caused by the war. And it's not the end of this downfall. NVIDIA is also in decline (as we mentioned before).

The craziest part is that even AI-fans among investors are selling Microsoft shares. They believe that the whole SaaS market will be pointless if AI Microsoft bet on will get more advanced. So Microsoft is ruining it's real business by betting on the virtual one.

#AI@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

FTC warned payment processing entities that if they will ever again apply unlawful regulations to payments, FTC will launch investigations. The same warnings were sent in several other regions too and Europe is building independent payment systems to counter it even as possibility.

Visa and MasterCard effectively dig it's own grave by joining the fight on the side of Aussie Mums (aka Collective Shout). Last year they forced Steam and ItchIO to stop selling tens of thousands of adult games and threatened to stop all payments for game stores if they will not comply.

#Laws@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

A Japanese crowdfunding platform sent less than a half of the money to the game developer. So he's suing them over it while they pretend "the money were accidentally wired to a wrong client". Then failed to prove it.

#Legal@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

That's curious. There was a huge attack on Rockstar recently and they confirmed it is true but said that GTA VI isn't affected. But some data started to show up from hackers:

This is, for example, GTA Online weekly profits with per-platform breakdown. We can notice that PC is behind every other platform. Which explains why GTA VI is not coming to PC right away.

It's crazy that almost $4.5m is coming weekly from PS5 alone. This also explains why they gave 0 fucks about DLCs for the main game.

#GTA@GameDEV
#Rockstar@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Nacon publishing house was unable to find anyone who can quickly acquire studio Spiders. It was placed on sale a month ago.

Now the company behind Technomancer, Greedfall, Bound by Flame, Of Orcs and Men, and Steelrising, is going to be fully closed. The DLCs are now going to be completed and released by Nacon themselves (no, apparently, they will not due to lack of funding).

Spiders existed for over 18 years and was making soulful AA RPGs. If you missed their games completely, they were similar to Piranha Bytes but from France.

#Nacon@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV
#LayOffs@GameDEV

EVE Online goes indie again. And it's price halved since the acquisition...

#Business@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

The last financial report from Sony states that Bungie lost the equivalent of $765m during the last year alone. That's 7 times the budget of GTA V, almost two Battlefields, or the equivalent cost of Call of Duty development.

Another curiosity: there's no mention of GTA VI for the upcoming financial year (which was supposed to be a driving force). Instead, only the PS5 hardware is expected to bring some revenue.

#Finance@GameDEV
#Bungie@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV

Not surprised but

The only companies who earn are hardware providers (led by NVIDIA with about $253B of net income).

#AI@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

The flagship Paris office of Don't Nod (Remember Me, Life is Strange, Vampyr, Banishers) is running out of funds. They will not have any money by November of 2026 and desperately looking for a publishing deal. Their biggest shareholder Tencent refused to cooperate further.

Semi-independent office in Montreal is a different entity sponsored by Netflix. Their partnership continues regardless.

#LayOffs@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#DontNod@GameDEV

Microsoft is losing 18% of its market value this month. The reason: AI spendings are not even remotely paying off and despite that going to grow even further. Investors don't believe that the revenue in that area as sustainable and so they are mostly focused on the upcoming loss.

All major tech giants will spend over $700B on AI infrastructure in 2026 alone, their available cash and dividends are shrinking radically.

#AI@GameDEV
#Microsoft@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

Devolver Digital is planning to leave the stock exchange via full buyback in September. If this move will be supported by 75% of the board.

The company is not doing so great and the mere idea of buyback dropped the price even further.

#Finance@GameDEV
#IndieGames@GameDEV

All major consoles makers got refunds from The US, their users will not though!

#Consoles@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV