Here at Goonhammer, we know that it’s hard to keep track of all the news happening all the time in the games industry. So much is always going on with games of all sorts, and their related media, it can be a real blink-and-you’ll miss it situation.
That’s why every week, we round up five of the biggest stories in the gaming sphere from the past week in the Games Industry News Roundup. Our trusty news boy, Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, is at the very real and cool Goonhammer newsdesk with the scoop.
Games Workshop Ushers in New ITC Season with Big Changes
With the Las Vegas Open in the rearview mirror, the competitive communities in several of Games Workshop’s systems are looking ahead to the next season of the International Tournament Circuit, or ITC. When Games Workshop acquired the ITC last year, it did so without making very many fundamental changes to how it operated. With time and experience under its belt, GW announced that the company is making major shakeups for the upcoming 2025 season.
One of the most major of these changes comes as little surprise: LVO will no longer serve the capstone event of the ITC. Instead, the grand finale of the ITC season will be the World Championships of Warhammer, with the new season starting immediately following. To avoid any confusion and to make sure the scoring window for the ITC is not diminished by the shorter turnaround between LVO and WCW, the 2025 season is being backdated to start at the end of the 2024 WCW. Events that happened between the 2024 WCW and 2025 LVO will count for both 2024 and 2025 scoring.
Games Workshop is also changing the regional and local rankings and scoring for ITC events, with a focus on smaller communities in underrepresented areas. Event valuation weight will be increased for events of 20-64 players, as well as 128-256 players, and a more robust regional ranking system will allow for participants in Warhammer Organized play to better see how they rank against other members of their community. For those with aspirations to compete in the WCW, players who are top ranked in each region for their game that do not have golden tickets to the WCW will be given invitations to participate at the event.
Best Coast Pairings, the app most Warhammer organized events are run through, is receiving a few new quality of life features with the new season. For event organizers that are members of Games Workshop’s Approved TO program, Token Submissions for their events will be automatically approved for ITC scoring tracking. Additionally, players and organizers will be able to link their MyWarhammer account to BCP, which provides Approved TO’s with a small boost to point evaluation for their events.
Overall, it’s a slew of positive changes for the ITC, which prior to GW’s buyout was more than happy to rest on its laurels as the go-to for Warhammer organized play. These adjustments show GW’s willingness to improve the ITC each year, but it’s very clear that the once independent ITC is now thoroughly a Games Workshop operation.
Black Library Announces 2025 Open Submissions
The fiction publishing arm of Warhammer, Black Library, is hosting its annual Open Submissions event for those aspiring writers who want to create stories in the worlds of Warhammer.
The event is running from the 22nd of February to the 9th of March. For the open submissions, entrants are asked to write a scene no longer than 500 words that takes place in either the setting of Warhammer 40,000 or Age of Sigmar, based on a prompt provided by Black Library. For this year, the prompt is “Clash”, where the scene must feature a showdown between two established characters from the selected setting.
Interestingly, this year’s submissions also require the story be written in one of a handful of locations, which could possibly give some insight as to where the stories of each game may take us. Some selections are no surprise, like Vigilus and Armaggedon for 40k, and Hammerhal and the Eightpoints for Age of Sigmar. Each setting does have a very interesting curveball choice, with the Drukhari home of Commoragh for 40k and the OG Underworlds setting of Shadespire for AoS. It’s uncertain at the time of this writing whether the idea of these settings being major points of the story for each game is just wishful thinking of a longtime Drukhari fan or not, but it’s an exciting thought nonetheless.
The submissions do include a terms and conditions page, which has a few important notes. While the page makes a point that all unsuccessful entries will be deleted from the companies records, Games Workshop does note that successful entries will belong to the company to be used as they see fit. On a brighter note, Games Workshop does clearly state that AI generated entries are not allowed, and will be disqualified and disregarded immediately.
Past writers who have joined the Black Library through the Open Submissions include Robert Rath, Denny Flowers, and Rob Young. Successful entries selected by the Black Library editing team will be invited to make formal pitches for their story.
Mantic’s New Kickstarter Brings Holiday Cheer in February
Mantic Game’s annual tradition of doing an advent calendar for its games is not just coming early this year, but this time it’s even bigger, doubling in size from 2024 to include 4 different advent calendars to choose from.
This year, the fantasy themed Bar Brawl and sci-fi Pest Control calendars are being joined by a calendar based on a tabletop adaptation of the Worms video game series, as well as a calendar for Mantic’s The Walking Dead game. Each of these calendars are designed to be inclusive miniatures games in their own right, featuring miniatures to be revealed over the course of 24 days.
The campaign is currently live on Kickstarter as of this writing, and is fully funded with over $22,000 raised of its $12,000 dollar goal. Early backers who pledge at the highest level get all four advent calendars, as well as an additional calendar full of terrain pieces to be used for the games. For those who want to know exactly what their money is getting them, the campaign shows off all the components from each game. For those who want to be surprised, simply pledge and wait for the holiday season to start digging into their calendar of goodies.
Wizards of the Coast Announces Avatar: The Last Airbender Magic Set
MagicCon Chicago came to a close this past weekend, with its fair share of major announcements and releases, as well as all the Magic: The Gathering one’s heart could hope for. The biggest talking point coming out of this year’s event is the reveal of the final Universes Beyond set of 2025. In a big surprise, the final Universes Beyond Set for this year will be based on the Avatar: The Last Airbender series.
At first, it’s an oddball choice to go with A:TLA. The series premiered on Nickelodeon over twenty years ago, and it’s maintained a dedicated fanbase and spawned a successful sequel series (and two less successful live action attempts). While this fanbase has kept the series in the minds eye of pop culture since its premiere, likely the biggest contributing factor to the decision for a A:TLA magic set is Nickelodeon’s surge of Avatar content for the show’s 20th anniversary this past Friday. During this, Nickelodeon announced a new series set in the Avatar universe, titled Avatar: Seventh Haven, as well as sequel full length films to the original series set to premiere in 2026.
For the Avatar set itself, it’s notable that the set will be Standard legal, and will follow the Spiderman Universes Beyond set in Q4 of this year. The set is currently planned for release on November 21st.
NetEase Lays Off American Teams
Okay, yes, I know this was the biggest piece of news from the gaming sphere last week. Fine. You got me, I’ll talk about the layoffs. The never ending nightmare of the modern video game industry continues to, in fact, never end.
Last week, Thaddeus Sasser posted on his LinkedIn page that he’s been let go from NetEase Games, as well as the other members of the Seattle offices for the studio. Sassler and his team had been part of the development behind the current cultural zeitgeist game, Marvel Rivals, which averaged between 200 to 400 thousand concurrent players on steam this month alone. Marvel Rivals has been, and still is, a runaway success for NetEase financially as well, generating over $200 million in revenue despite its free to play status.
According to a report by Bloomberg, being a wildly successful game isn’t enough for NetEase. According to the article, letting go of the Seattle wing of the company is part of a larger shrinking of the company set to occur over the next few months as NetEase’s release strategy shifts. “Sales potential is a top priority,” Bloomberg News writes, “As he (NetEase CEO William Ding) now deems any game unlikely to generate hundreds of millions of dollars per year unworthy of pursuing”. The most dire news from recent days is NetEase’s plans to divest itself from any overseas companies it has stake in, which includes a number of major developers that the company has acquired in recent years like Quantic Dream and Grasshopper Roots.
While it’s paradoxical to say that the company behind one of 2025’s biggest hits might also be the main character for industry layoffs and studio closures for the year, like Embracer Group was for 2024. These are truly strange times we live in, where developing a blockbuster hit video game can get you fired.
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