THE DAILY DIGEST

by Purpose Made

Friday, 3 April 2026

Eidos Montréal has cancelled Wildlands, an open-world action-adventure game that has been in development since 2019, and laid off 124 employees. Studio head David Anfossi, a 19-year veteran, has also departed. The project, internally designated P11, had used four different game engines, suffered persistent narrative direction conflicts, and accumulated a budget in the hundreds of millions. According to Insider Gaming, the game was in its debugging phase with a tentative 2026 release window.

Wildlands was not killed because the idea failed. It was killed because Embracer decided the remaining cost to ship, market, and support it could not be justified against the return from a studio that has not shipped a game since Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021. In the five years since, Eidos cancelled a Legacy of Kain reboot, a Deus Ex game, and a point-and-click title. Every one of those cancellations fed resources into the project that just got cancelled itself.

I have sat in rooms where the pitch for an original IP begins with a slide showing how much catalogue revenue the studio is walking away from to fund it. I have sat in just as many where a new IP is projected against industry benchmarks in the niche it is targeting. The ones that work have a plan for both (today's revenue and tomorrow's bet) and a clear-eyed view of what happens when the new product cannibalises the old. That transition can work, but only when the vision survives contact with production. The cases that fail usually fail exactly the way this one reportedly did: direction conflict, repeated pivots, and a budget that keeps climbing while nobody calls time. An idea is only ever as strong as the vision behind it, and when that vision gets eroded by committee, by indecision, by one more pivot, the product will fail regardless of how talented the team is.

Building original IP is the highest-risk, highest-reward move in the industry. Doing it while cannibalising your proven catalogue is how studios end up with nothing. There are VCs out there looking for exactly the kind of original IP that just got shelved. One studio's write-off might be another's opportunity.

Sources: Insider Gaming, GameSpot, Kotaku, Push Square

Bethesda's Starfield launches on PlayStation 5 on 7 April, two and a half years after its Xbox and PC debut. The PS5 version ships alongside Free Lanes, the game's largest free update, and Terran Armada, a new paid story expansion. The base game is priced at $49.99.

Starfield was the single largest post-acquisition exclusive in Microsoft's gaming history. It was the game Sarah Bond stood on stage and called exclusive in 2021. It was the title that was supposed to justify the $7.5 billion ZeniMax acquisition to console buyers. Its arrival on PS5 at a lower price point than its original launch, bundled with two years of accumulated fixes and a major content overhaul, means PlayStation players are getting the definitive version of a game that was supposed to sell Xbox hardware. The exclusivity model that was meant to sell consoles has been replaced by a reach model designed to recover revenue.

Gears of War Reloaded is confirmed for PS5 this summer. Fable launches day-and-date on both platforms. Every decision since Sharma took the role points in the same direction. Any third-party publisher or studio evaluating an Xbox exclusivity deal should be modelling for a PlayStation release within eighteen months.

Sources: PlayStation Blog, Push Square, Variety, GameSpot

Indie.io has announced Indie Pass, a subscription platform exclusively for independent games, launching on PC on 13 April at $6.99 per month. The service opens with 70-plus titles and a non-exclusive participation model for developers. Revenue is distributed based on player time spent in each game. Indie.io claims a connected audience of more than 10 million monthly users across its publishing and community network.

The problem Indie Pass is trying to solve is real and getting worse. Steam released approximately 14,310 games in 2023. In 2024, that number jumped 32% to nearly 19,000. The volume of games entering the market is accelerating while the number finding an audience is essentially flat. For an indie developer launching into that environment, the challenge is existential.

Where the scrutiny belongs is in the revenue mechanics. Run the numbers on a simple scenario: Indie Pass signs 10,000 subscribers in its first quarter. That is $69,900 in monthly revenue before platform costs. Distribute that across 70 titles weighted by playtime, and even a game capturing 5% of total hours played is earning roughly $3,500 a month. For most solo developers or small studios, that does not move the needle. The comparison to other platform revenue shares is instructive. Apple takes 30% of every App Store transaction. Roblox historically retained around 75 cents of every dollar spent on the platform. Indie Pass calls its model egalitarian, and the intent deserves praise. The discoverability crisis is one of the most structurally damaging forces in independent development right now. But the history of subscription economics in creative industries suggests that the platforms tend to survive while the creators on them get thinner. Any indie studio considering participation should be modelling what their share of a $7 subscription looks like when it is split across 70 titles weighted by playtime, because the difference between a new revenue stream and a line on a spreadsheet is smaller than people may suggest.

Sources: indie.io, SteamDB, PC Gamer, Stuff, 80 Level

Coffee Stain Group has closed Coffee Stain Malmö, its mobile-focused development and publishing studio. The closure was confirmed on LinkedIn by studio head Daniel Persson, who described building the office from scratch as one of the most rewarding experiences of his career. The studio employed 17 people. It was founded in 2021 and was responsible for bringing Goat Simulator 3 to mobile, the mobile version of Songs of Conquest, and the integration of Smash Hit creators Mediocre into the Coffee Stain portfolio. Coffee Stain Group separated from Embracer Group in December 2025. Its most recent quarterly report showed a 25% revenue decline and a threefold reduction in net profit.

Seventeen people is a small number by industry standards, and that is precisely why this closure matters. Coffee Stain Malmö was not a bloated operation chasing a live-service moonshot. It was a focused mobile team doing exactly what a parent company with strong IP should want: extending proven franchises to new platforms at low cost. Goat Simulator has genuine brand recognition. Songs of Conquest has a dedicated audience. The Mediocre acquisition brought Smash Hit, a game with hundreds of millions of downloads. This was a team sized correctly for its mandate, working with IP that had demonstrated market fit, and it still was not enough to survive the financial pressure that followed Coffee Stain's separation from Embracer.

The post-Embracer landscape keeps producing the same pattern. Studios that were acquired during the 2021-2022 spending cycle, restructured under conglomerate ownership, and then spun out or sold are now discovering that the economics of independence look different when the safety net has been pulled. The closure says less about what the team did wrong and more about what the parent company can no longer afford to sustain while it works through the consequences of the restructuring.

Sources: Game Developer, MobileGamer.biz, GamesIndustry.biz

This is the last edition before the Easter break. The Daily Digest will be back the week of 20 April. If you have been reading along and getting something from these, subscribe and share it with someone who would find it useful. If you want to get in touch, have guest recommendations for the podcast, or want to talk about anything covered here, the best routes are purposemade.uk for work and purposemadepodcast.co.uk for the podcast.

As for now, I am taking the next couple of weeks off for a rare break. We are heading to Centre Parcs, that great British family institution, for my eldest son Albie's 6th birthday. To those of you with kids akin to our three, and about to embark on the Easter holidays: good luck and enjoy. Speak to you all again soon.

The Daily Digest by Purpose Made.

Entertainment intelligence for the people shaping the future of franchises.

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