Gaming Lore
The stories behind the games.
Studio closures, cancelled projects, executive decisions, and the business moves that shaped the industry. We dig into the receipts — earnings calls, court filings, developer interviews — to tell the stories that corporate PR doesn't want you to read.
Bungie Just Cut Half Its Studio. 400 People Gone. What's Even Left?
Over 400 people on a single layoff call. Half the studio. Marathon can't hold an audience. Destiny is over. The studio that made Halo is heading toward extinction and nobody can explain what comes next.
Bungie Just Killed Destiny for a Game Nobody Wanted
Sony paid $3.6 billion. Destiny is dead. Destiny 3 doesn't exist. More layoffs are coming. And the developers who built the franchise are being funneled into a game that 10,000 people play.
Slay the Spire 2 Review Bomb: Stop Telling Consumers What Counts
Three review bombs in two months. 80,000 negative reviews. And the only debate anyone wants to have is whether or not it's fair. We're asking the wrong question.
Eidos Montreal Spent Hundreds of Millions on a Game Nobody Will Ever Play. Then They Fired 124 People.
Seven years. Four game engines. Hundreds of millions of dollars. A Deus Ex sequel killed to fund it. Then Embracer canceled Wildlands and fired 124 people. Full breakdown with receipts.
Epic Games Laid Off 1,000 People Five Days After Charging Fortnite Players More Money
The 14-day timeline that tells you everything about what is happening at Epic Games. V-Bucks shrinkflation, mass layoffs, and three game modes killed. All in two weeks.
One-Third of US Game Developers Were Laid Off in Two Years. The Industry Did This to Itself.
The GDC 2026 report surveyed 2,300 professionals and the numbers are devastating. 33% of US devs laid off, 74% of students afraid to enter the industry, and 82% want unions. Here's the full breakdown.
Crimson Desert Sold 2 Million Copies in 24 Hours. Wall Street Says It's a Failure.
EA Laid Off Battlefield 6 Devs After the Biggest Launch in Franchise History. Let That Sink In.
Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game in America. It dethroned Call of Duty for the first time in 23 years. And EA just laid off the developers who made it.
Highguard Is Dead. 45 Days. That's All It Got.
From secret Tencent funding to leadership hubris, how Wildlight's hero shooter went from 100K players to shutdown in 45 days.
Highguard Developers Are Missing the Point—And That's the Real Problem
Wildlight's Highguard collapsed in just 16 days—and now laid-off devs are blaming "gamer culture" for their failure. But when you dig into the actual criticism—performance issues on RTX 5080s, an art style so generic reviewers couldn't name the characters after 14 hours, and hero shooter fatigue that everyone saw coming—the real story is a lot less convenient.
How Blizzard Almost Made a Pokémon Killer
The untold story of Project Odyssey, Blizzard's ambitious attempt to dethrone Pokémon that was cancelled just months before announcement.