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 here with the scoop.
Mass Effect TV Show in the Works at Amazon
According to Variety.com, Amazon studios is developing a live action adaptation of the popular sci-fi video game series, Mass Effect.
Not much is known about the upcoming adaptation save for a few names attached to the developing series. The adaptation is being written and executive produced by Daniel Casey, who is best known as the writer for Fast and Furious 9. Other executive producers include Karim Zarek under his Cedar Tree Productions label (whose most notable work is the Netflix Daredevil adaptation), Borderlands film producer Ari Arad, and BioWare executive producer Michael Gamble.
Whether this new show will follow the adventures of Commander Shepard and his motley crew aboard the Normandy or follow an entirely different cast in some other corner of the universe is currently unknown. While Amazon has been in talks about a Mass Effect TV series since 2021, the company has played any plans for the adaptation close to the vest.
Massif Press Announces New TTRPG Set in the Lancer Universe
Massif Press is working with longtime community creator Katherine Stark to create a new TTRPG set in Lancer’s expansive universe, called Far Field.
Announced in the official Lancer discord server, Stark writes that, “Far Field is a game about teams of civilian scientists and explorers venturing out to the edges of known space – exploring the harsh, weird, and beautiful worlds of the galactic frontier. Out in the black, you and your fellow explorers will discover strange alien fauna and flora, contact diasporan peoples long-disconnected from Union, and encounter unexplained mysteries at the edges of human comprehension.”
Far Field will use an offshoot ruleset of the popular Forged in the Dark ruleset, which focuses on player flexibility in roleplaying scenarios. Much like Lancer, Far Field will be focused on completing missions that neatly take players from one scenario to the next, rather than a sprawling campaign system like dungeons and Dragons.
Far Field is currently in public beta, and can be downloaded for free from the Lancer Discord Server.
Developers for Marvel: Rising Arrested for Corruption
Several developers at NetEase were arrested last week as a part of an ongoing corruption investigation, which includes laundering over $130 million dollars.
NetEase, a Chinese game development company, enjoyed recent mainstream success with hero shooter Marvel: Rivals making a big stir when it was announced earlier this year.
While this was happening however, it seems at least two executives and seven other employees at the company were engaged in white collar crime schemes that involved 27 other external companies. The arrested NetEase employees are being charged with bribery and money laundering, with experts estimating that the implicated employees laundered the equivalent of $139 million.
Further details about this controversy, including the identities of the accused individuals, are currently unknown. It doesn’t seem like the development of Marvel: Rivals or any of the other games created by NetEase are directly tied to this illegal plot, so Galactica fans all over the world can rest easy knowing she’s probably still coming to a PC near you in the near future.
Warhammer: Underworlds Rules and Tournament Companion Available for Free Download
Last week, to promote the recent release of Embergard, Games Workshop put the rules for the current edition of Warhammer: Underworlds on it’s Warhammer Community website.
Like Games Workshop has done with it’s other major edition updates for its games, like Warhammer 40,000 or Age of Sigmar, these rules are available as a PDF on the Warhammer Community website as a free download. They include the basic rules for playing Warhammer: Underworlds, as well as the rulesets for the playable Warbands in the new edition. This includes warbands that are part of the current tournament legal rotation as well as legacy warbands.
Also included in the downloads for Underworlds are two documents focused on organized competitive play. The first of these, the Organized Play Guide, lays out the rules for the Rivals and Nemesis formats and what warbands and decks are currently matched play legal. The companion document fo the Organized Play Guide is the Tournament Companion, which has advice for organizers on how to run Underworlds events.
Additional FAQs and balance updates for Underworlds in the future will also be made free on the Warhammer Community page, bringing the game fully into the fold of GWs other mainstay tournament games.
Tabletop Gaming’s Largest Online Job Board is a Facebook Group; Holding First Job Fair in 2025
Two tabletop industry professionals created a Facebook group seven years ago that would swell to become the world’s largest jobs board for the tabletop industry, and now the duo is working on hosting an in-person industry networking event in 2025.
The group, called simply “Tabletop Game Jobs”, hosts industry jobs at all levels from countries all over the world. The group was founded by Ravensburger’s Social Media Coordinator Jessica Fisher and Asmodee’s Director of Marketing Ross Thompson when the pair came to realize that there was no place on the internet dedicated to professional networking in the tabletop space.
“I think the main way people used to get jobs was like, you just go to Gen Con and walk around and go, ‘Hey, I’m a game designer, I’m an artist, hire me’” Ross Thompson told BoardGameWire in an interview “So being able to have this online service has been good.”.
Now, the group’s founders are considering hosting an event of their own, according to reporting from boardgamewire. After Thompson made a post on social media musing about running an event, the team was approached by a group with a proposal on running an event for Tabletop Game Jobs in 2025, which the team is now working on to make a reality. The exact nature and location of this in person proposal is under wraps as of this writing, but the possibility of hosting a live tabletop networking event would be a major win for the grassroots group.
And that wraps it up for our Games Industry News Roundup this week! Join us again next week for more news about the tabletop games industry and related media.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
