Weekend Highlights (June 6-7)

The online launch of Gothic 1 Remake on Steam surpassed 77,000 players, Metacore laid off more than half of its staff, and Paramount Skydance formed a new gaming division—here are the main events in the gaming industry over the past weekend.

A month ago, Metacore, the creator of the popular mobile puzzle game Merge Mansion, warned of potential mass layoffs in preparation for its sale to Supercell. Now, Metacore has confirmed that it is indeed forced to part with most of its staff. The studio announced it decided to lay off 159 employees in Finland and also close its branches in Germany and Sweden. The exact number of staff remaining at Metacore is unclear, but it's noted that prior to the layoffs, the company had roughly 280 employees in total across all its offices.
Paramount Skydance announced the launch of a new gaming division — Paramount Games Studio. It has brought together all the company’s gaming-focused studios, including Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media, under one roof. The division will be headed by Tony Driscoll, a veteran of Epic Games, Warner Bros., AT&T, and Disney. It is reported that Paramount Games Studio will focus primarily on the franchises "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," "SpongeBob SquarePants," "Star Trek," and "Avatar," though this list may grow in the future.
On the evening of June 5, the remake of the cult classic "Gothic" was released on PC and consoles. While the exact performance across all platforms is unknown, there is some data available from Steam. Specifically, the service SteamDB shows that by the evening of June 7, the number of simultaneous players in the Steam version of Gothic 1 Remake reached 77,731. This is the second-highest player count among THQ Nordic releases—only REMNANT II had a higher count on Steam, with 110,856 players. As for reviews, Gothic 1 Remake is performing well, holding a "Very Positive" rating (82%) on Steam based on 6,300 reviews.
CEO of IO Interactive, Hakan Abrak, in an interview with IGN, revealed that 007 First Light sold 3 million copies in less than two weeks after its release. According to him, the game exceeded the studio's expectations and was "damn successful in terms of all metrics." He acknowledged that 007 First Light has not yet broken even, but he expressed confidence that it will eventually turn a profit. Additionally, Abrak commented on the budget of 007 First Light; as previously reported by DR referencing Abrak himself, it reached 1.3 billion Danish kroner ($202 million). The IO Interactive chief explained that this amount covers not only the production of the game but also marketing and various expenditures, including bonuses paid to employees for meeting certain goals, so the actual production costs of 007 First Light were lower.
Atlus also shared news about sales. The company announced that the Persona series has collectively sold over 30 million copies to date. Currently, Atlus is working on two new projects in the universe: Persona 6 and Persona 4 Revival.