Shinji Mikami will receive the Hall of Fame Award at the 30th annual DICE Awards on February 18 of next year, AIAS announced. The current creative director and CEO of Unbound is being honored for a game industry career spanning over 30 years, with Goichi Suda (Suda 51) presenting the award. Mikami founded and led Tango Gameworks before establishing Unbound toward the end of 2022, which Shift Up acquired earlier this year for an undisclosed fee.
UK studio Criterion was officially brought under the EA Entertainment banner in 2023 specifically to work on Battlefield, while the Need for Speed franchise is currently dormant. Producer Stefan Wittelsbürger says Criterion is "a Battlefield studio" and was heavily involved in Battlefield 6's single-player, particularly its last two missions, plus core systems such as destruction, guns and vehicle handling. Director of operations Amy Pejic says the Burnout "Criterion fingerprint" — minute-to-minute feel, player momentum, controlled chaos and spectacle — still runs through what the studio delivers now.
Bohemia Interactive has acquired an undisclosed minority stake in Polish developer Enjoy Studio, becoming a co-owner of the studio in its first investment in a Polish developer. Enjoy Studio will keep its identity and creative independence, and its co-op FPS survival RPG Everwind entered early access on Steam in March 2026 with over 300,000 copies sold. The studio joined Bohemia Interactive's Incubator program in 2024.
Level-5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino confirmed that generative AI was used in the studio's recent digital showcase and apologized for it. He said AI was used experimentally to make the presentation more spectacular, after viewers suspected some footage was AI-generated, and stressed the games themselves are not AI-made. Hino said AI at the studio is mostly for efficiency, such as converting artwork into polygons, partly to help cut development time on major releases from five years to two.
Rockstar and the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain have set out their arguments at an ongoing employment tribunal expected to run until October 16. Rockstar dismissed 34 staff last year citing gross misconduct and a leak of confidential information, while the claimants say they were dismissed over union activities. Legal filings obtained by Game Developer say the claimants allege a mole inside the union's Discord server fed information to HR manager and co-studio operations director Charlie Kinloch from as early as February 2024, flagging a rise in union recruitment in October 2025 before membership crossed the 10% threshold for UK statutory recognition. Rockstar disputes this, saying past leaks of unfinished GTA 6 footage require stronger protection of confidential information, describing the union's Discord server as three rooms of increasing size and openness, the largest with roughly 350 members by October 2025, and saying the dismissals stemmed from an irretrievable breakdown in trust and confidence rather than union organizing.
Moss developer Polyarc Games has announced it is shutting down and winding down active development after nearly 12 years in operation. The Seattle-based studio shared the news on LinkedIn and posted a recruiting spreadsheet for affected staff. Founded in 2015 by former Bungie developers, Polyarc released the VR puzzle game Moss in 2018 and a sequel in 2022, and earlier this year laid off 30 employees after failing to secure funding following the cancellation of a major project.
Polyarc, the developer behind the Moss series, has announced it is closing its doors after nearly 12 years. In a LinkedIn post, the studio said it is winding down active development and saying farewell to its team, ending with a reverse recruiting spreadsheet of employee contact information. Polyarc released Moss in 2018, Moss: Book II in 2022, and Moss: The Forgotten Relic this July.
Unionisation in the games industry has grown rapidly over the past decade, with workers in more than 130 distinct groups and unions across over 15 countries organising together, according to IWGB Game Workers co-founder Austin Kelmore. Microsoft agreed a contract this week with 1,900 Blizzard workers covering hybrid work and AI protections, recall rights, minimum severance above industry standard and up to 34% wage increases. The Polish Gamedev Workers Union is officially established within ten Polish studios, though Poland's legal framework for unions still favours employers.
Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits said the company has "no real development in North America any more," with its headquarters and publishing team still in the US but game development spread across 15 studios worldwide. Willits criticized wasteful spending at big North American studios, noting SnowRunner cost $6 million to make while Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 cost a third of a major game from a big North American studio and sold 11 million more copies.
Lego Digital Play has acquired Offroad Games, a UK mobile studio founded in March 2025 by former Space Ape Games employees. Offroad announced the deal in a LinkedIn post, calling it "an incredibly exciting new chapter," and said financial terms were not disclosed. The studio gave no detail on how it will operate within Lego Digital Play going forward.