Chris Kerr
@kerrblimey
Award-winning reporter. Senior editor (news) at Game Developer. Previously seen in Edge, Stuff, and Wireframe. Tips: chris.kerr@ / chris.kerr.gd@protonmail.com / DMs open / Signal: kerrblimey.43
NEW: CWA union members have inflated a giant rat and deployed a wall of red flags representing laid off Xbox workers outside the Bethesda office in Rockville. The protest was timed to coincide with a visit from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who is apparently at the studio today.
Ah, I see GCAP has kicked off its 2026 marketing beat by Mike Wazowskying me. Props to @mariedeal.bsky.social for making the cut.
And wouldn't you know it—look who helped playtest Big Walk! bigwalk.game/credits/
C'mon. This tells us nothing other than GTA VI will definitely have 'cars' and apparently be 'rousing.'
Kinda interesting to see a big publicly-traded video game company come out and say 'you know what? we messed up BIG TIME by placing ourselves at the mercy of shareholders.'
An interesting note in Coffee Stain's latest fiscal report: Welcome to Bloxburg, a Roblox life simulator developed by Coffee Stain Gothenburg (and seemingly acquired by the publisher in 2022), made around $1.5M in Q1. There's gold in them there hills (and child safety lawsuits).
They even got Jared Kushner to comment on the deal. I understand that he part-owns EA now through Affinity, but this is definitely a *choice.*
Well, it looks like we won't be hearing more from the FTC on the EA-Saudi merger. For context, I asked whether it'd be able to outline why the deal was approved and what the FTC considered when assessing the merger. Who knows!
NEW: EA says all regulatory approvals required to complete its take-private merger with Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund and other investors have been obtained. Deal expected to close next week on August 4, 2026.
Turns out, Poinpy used to be called POINPEE and the name predates the game itself. Check out this wonderful concept art. It's like gazing into the eyes of god.
I've spent the past month publishing labour-focused reporting to ensure people don't forget where the blame lies, but sure, journalists like me are the problem.
As someone else put it to me earlier this year when discussing the Xbox layoffs, it's like picking away at the threads in a blanket until the whole thing unravels. www.gamedeveloper.com/production/-...
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, here's another zinger from @nicolecarpenter.bsky.social! This week, she looks at how institutional knowledge is being disregarded and undervalued across major game studios to the detriment of workers.
Maddening, isn't it? For $38M you could finance 190 indie games with a $200,000 budget, which is about how much Aggro Crab and Landfall spent on Peak.
I also learned that Wilson is currently chair of the board for the World Surf League. What a multitasker.
Sifting through the filing again this morning and did you know that Wilson received over $2.3M in additional compensation to cover the cost of private air travel? Apparently, an independent security assessment conducted in June 2025 recommended he only fly privately for personal and business trips.
Despite that success, EA still laid off a number of Battlefield developers earlier this year:
Here’s a page that shows how some executive bonuses were tied to the performance of key franchises. It seems many of EA’s biggest hitters performed well, with Battlefield 6 being lauded for ‘meeting all milestones for a high-quality launch.’
NEW: A 10K report filed by EA shows company CEO Andrew Wilson earned almost $38.7M in cash and stock awards during the 2026 fiscal year. That’s a significant bump on the $30.6M he netted during FY2025. For context, his base salary for the year was $1.3M.
I suspect anyone who's worked at a major studio in a full-time capacity has encountered these clauses, which seem oddly self-defeating in how they prevent employees from bettering themselves outside the confines of the workplace—and subsequently sharing that knowledge with their peers.