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.
Unannounced Multiplayer FPS from Respawn Entertainment Canceled, Staff Laid Off
Respawn Entertainment was working on an unannounced multiplayer first person shooter project that was recently cancelled, according to posts made on LinkedIn by subsequently laid-off employees.
“According to the LinkedIn profile of Emilee Evans, former Executive Assistant/Production Coordinator at Respawn Entertainment, the studio had been working on an unannounced FPS title that has been canceled this week,” reported Muhammad Ali Bari for Twisted Voxel. “In her post, she mentioned that she had been a part of the incubation project for the past year. She now joins other talented people in the games industry who are searching for new roles.”
Follow-up reporting by Rebekah Valentine at IGN confirms the existence of the project and further that it was an attempt to spin off development of Respawn’s cancelled Star Wars first person shooter game into a secondary title. This continues a trend of quieter restructurings and less-obvious layoffs from parent company Electronic Arts, along with the BioWare reassignments and layoffs in February.
It’s been a bad couple years for the industry and the bad times show no sign of turning yet; with regards to Electronic Arts specifically, their next earnings call is set for May 6th.
Tariffs Throw Board Game Industry Into Chaos
President Donald Trump’s regime of sloppy, poorly-thought out and chaotically-applied tariffs have hurt all trade between the United States and the rest of the world, and board games are no exception. While Trump had promised a hazy, reflexive, punishment-based tariff regime during his campaign, the conventional wisdom was that the American president was simply lying about wanting to implement them, because the alternative was too disastrous to take seriously.
Well, the disaster is here. Per BoardGameWire: “The reality began to set in on February 4 when Trump imposed a 10% tariff on Chinese imports – a level already hugely problematic for an industry which traditionally works on razor-thin margins and has to work on a long supply chain. That tariff has now been doubled to 20%, and Trump has continually threatened further tariffs on countries he deems are being “unfair” to the US through international trade.”
At the moment of this writing, the president of the United States is threatening neighboring Canada with out-and-out economic war over reprisal tariffs on electricity that the eastern United States purchases from Ontario. It is impossible to say what American trade policy on any sector of the economy will be from day to day, save the general guidelines that can be inferred from the president’s unchecked behavior. Board games that viewed spring and summer 2025 as crucial to their rollout, at least, are in severe trouble; as the BoardGameWire piece explains at length, setting up new supply chains and reskilling labor and building new industrial capacity is hard enough in large, scaled-up industries like car manufacturing or steel, but it’s even more difficult in boutique, low-margin sectors like board game manufacture.
The only silver lining about a trade strategy so volatile and chaotic is that there is at least the theoretical possibility for things to randomly get better. That seems very unlikely, given the thunderclouds coming from Washington right now.
Defunct Videogame Publisher Acclaim “Returns”
Everything old is new again and there’s nothing old-new like IP bought for pennies on the dollar. Acclaim, whose logo you may remember from the intro screens of games like Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam — neither of which they made and neither of which they own, they just published them — is back, for certain definitions of “back.” Acclaim went out of business in the mid-2000s and had its bones picked clean of any interesting intellectual property rights by the end of the decade, with the trademark and logo rights kicking around a couple more times in the 2010s. Now a new group has the name and logo rights, and it seems little else of note.
Well, that might not entirely be fair. Per GamesIndustry.biz, with Sophie McEvoy reporting: “Led by CEO Alex Josef, former founder and CEO of Graffiti Games, the firm aims to provide resources including funding, marketing, and PR support to independent studios. It has curated an advisory board of industry leaders to support this endeavour, including Striker Entertainment founding partner Russell Binder, Ridge Partners founder Mark Caplan, and Global Force Entertainment founder and professional wrestler Jeff Jarrett. Acclaim’s growth strategy is further supported by VaynerFund partner Phil Toronto and Jet Management partner Eric Vogel.”
Josef is an industry veteran with a lot of savvy; there are a couple decently-big VC names in there to show that this new venture will at least at first have some money behind it. But wait, what’s that name in the middle there? Is that Jeff Jarrett? Double J? The man who held the NWA Cyberspace Heavyweight Championship for over 200 days?
Jarrett makes some claims in the press materials supporting Acclaim’s relaunch that coming from anyone other than a professional wrestler would invite significant journalistic scrutiny; he was in exactly one of Acclaim’s WWF offerings, 1999’s WWF Attitude, and in none of the 16-bit Super Nintendo/Super Famicom/Sega Genesis titles that are thought of as the Acclaim era of wrestling game publishing (and which he himself references); he says “TNA Wrestling services” because TNA only ever had one video game released for consoles (2008’s TNA Impact!, which ended up killing developer and publisher Midway) but did have a web of proto-mobile games associated with it. However, Jarrett has been involved in the video game business recently: He was associated with the WrestleQuest RPG that released back in 2023 and was heavily involved in its marketing and promotion. His current association with All Elite Wrestling might also be fortuitous for Acclaim, since AEW’s last go-round in the video game market, 2023’s AEW Fight Forever, wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped; they might be looking for new development and publishing partners.
At the very least, Jarrett’s presence on the new Acclaim board got us to write five paragraphs on it here instead of maybe finding something else to take this spot, and that’s probably the best value he’s going to add to the company. Because there really isn’t all that much to talk about, absent Double J. They don’t even have the rights to Extreme G anymore.
HeroForge Kicks Off New Custom Dice Kickstarter to Go with Custom Model Line
The popular custom miniatures company, HeroForge, is expanding out from the wonderful world of miniatures into the new and wonderful world of dice with its newest Kickstarter campaign.
The campaign, which began last week, aims to add the same kind of flexible customization that made the miniatures line so popular. The tool lets users create dice with a HeroForge miniature of their choice and design embedded inside of them, ranging from something as simple as a longsword to even a fully custom miniature of their favorite tabletop character. Users can select what kind of dice they would like to print, and the quantity, as well as the color, font, and size of the text on each dice.
HeroForge, which was founded in 2014, is electing to crowdfund this tool in order to elicit feedback from their considerable fanbase. “We’re a company fueled by the passion of our fans, and this is why we’re turning again to Kickstarter,” HeroForge writes on the Kickstarter campaign, “It’s been a vital platform to connect to tabletop and miniatures fans, hear your thoughts, and refine our vision with the features you’re most passionate about. Your backing not only helps us fund this project, but makes you an active participant in its creation.”
Though there is a paragraph in the campaign about using these dice for potential wargaming, the campaign price point is far more suited for ordering individual dice unless you’re willing to spend a pretty penny. Campaign backers who want their own custom dice as a pledge reward will need to spend $39 for one custom dice, with an XL dice option at $99 and a dice bundle backer tier of $199. Super fans can order a dice set with an ultra-HD miniature included for $500, or even design their own HeroForge outfit for the website for $1,750.
As of this writing, the campaign has raised just under $400 thousand with 25 days to go, quickly flying past its initial campaign ask of $117 thousand. Though there is no solid date for the dice to be shipped out according to the campaign, HeroForge estimates the custom dice will begin to roll out late summer 2025.
More Sony Layoffs
And, since no news update is complete without layoff news (though you can argue the cancelled Respawn FPS already took that spot), GamesIndustry.biz reports that Sony has laid off more people at their Visual Arts and PS Studios Malaysia first party studios. Not much to say here that hasn’t already been said; it’s bad all over.
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