The business of games — studio finances, publisher strategy, funding, platform policy, labour conditions and regulation. This section explains why the industry behaves as it does, which is usually a better guide to what happens next than any individual announcement.
Games are made by people employed under particular conditions, funded on particular terms and distributed through platforms with their own incentives. Layoffs, studio closures, acquisitions and union drives are covered as the structural stories they are rather than as isolated news items.
Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo run three genuinely different playbooks — and the strategic choices behind their consoles reveal more about the industry…
Steam's dominance made PC digital distribution look settled — but a growing field of rival storefronts has turned "where you buy your…
Randomized in-game purchases turned into one of the medium's fiercest policy fights, drawing regulators, consumer advocates, and lawmakers into a debate about…
Long absent from a creative industry that prized passion over protection, organized labor has taken root in games — and it is…
Waves of studio layoffs have become a grim, recurring feature of the games business — and the causes run deeper than any…
Subscription services promised players a Netflix for games — but the bigger story is how the model is quietly rewiring the economics…
The fee platforms take on every digital sale sounds like an accounting footnote, but it has driven lawsuits, rival storefronts, and one…
The era of mega-acquisitions has redrawn the map of who owns which studios — and the consequences for players, developers, and competition…
Blockbuster games now cost as much as blockbuster films, and that budget math shapes everything from how risky a studio can be…
The business of games has quietly moved from selling a boxed product once to running services, storefronts, and recurring spend — and…