The Main Events of the Weekend (May 8-11)

Tripledot Studios is acquiring gaming studios from AppLovin, media sources report, Zenless Zone Zero did not meet miHoYo's expectations, the head of Moon Studios stated that the studio might shut down due to review-bombing of No Rest for the Wicked, but later retracted his words. Here's a rundown of the main events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.

AppLovin confirmed that Tripledot Studios will become the new owner of its gaming studios. Under the agreement, Tripledot Studios will pay $400 million in cash and transfer 20% of its shares to AppLovin, valued at an additional $400 million. The deal is expected to close by the end of June.
The U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Microsoft over the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Although Microsoft completed the purchase back in October 2023, legal proceedings with the FTC persisted until now. The court did not agree with the FTC’s claims about the anti-competitive nature of the deal and did not prohibit it.
Chinese company miHoYo is facing challenges, reports Bloomberg. Despite the fact that its last three games — Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero — cumulatively earned over $8.4 billion on mobile devices alone, they are struggling to attract new audiences. The issue is that the games are cannibalizing each other — each new release attracts a significant portion of the previous games' audience, resulting in decreased revenue for the older games. This situation led to a 23% drop in miHoYo’s revenue in 2024 to $4.7 billion. Additionally, it was revealed that Zenless Zone Zero performed worse than the company expected. Currently, miHoYo is experimenting in hopes of turning things around. For example, they are working on a farm simulator and a GTA-style game, and they are also focusing heavily on AI.
Nintendo reported financial results for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025. Its revenue fell by 30.3% to 1.16 trillion yen ($7.97 billion), and net profit dropped by 43.2% to 278.8 billion yen ($1.91 billion). The company also cited a 31.2% decline in annual sales of Nintendo Switch consoles to 10.8 million units and a 22.2% decrease in game sales to 155.41 million copies. However, there were positive aspects in the report. Notably, Nintendo announced that it is counting on the successful launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. They predict selling 15 million of the new consoles within the year.
At PAX East, Randy Pitchford, head of Gearbox Entertainment, revealed that the production budget for Borderlands 4 is more than twice that of Borderlands 3. He did not provide specific numbers but mentioned that even he does not yet know the price at which the new game will be sold. According to him, pricing games is complicated. "There are people who don't want to see price increases — even among those who set prices. But there are others who understand that game budgets are rising, and retail tariffs are applied. [...] The price might be at the level recently set by Nintendo and Microsoft or possibly lower. The publisher will decide," said Pitchford.
On May 10, Thomas Mahler, head of Moon Studios, addressed players on Discord, urging them to leave positive reviews for No Rest for the Wicked. He explained that the game was recently subjected to review-bombing, which halted its sales and put the studio's future at risk. If the situation does not improve, Moon Studios may close within a few months. However, the next day, Mahler backtracked. In a post on X, he stated that Moon Studios is not facing serious financial problems. He added that some users are deliberately tarnishing No Rest for the Wicked's rating due to personal animosity toward him, and his appeal on Discord was meant to address this. It's worth noting that according to SteamDB, since Saturday, players submitted 2,900 positive reviews for the game on Steam.
A new union has formed at Activision Blizzard. It consists of 200 employees working on Overwatch 2, called the Overwatch Gamemakers Guild-CWA. It is reported that developers decided to form the union in response to widespread layoffs in the gaming industry. Microsoft management has already recognized the union.