ByteAction - Issue 173
ByteAction is a newsletter for game developers and fans
Hello and welcome to the 173rd edition of the ByteAction newsletter!
It’s been a while since the last edition so I hope you’ve been well. The games industry has had another rollercoaster year, but from what I’ve been seeing and hearing I’m positive that the worse is in the past and we’re nearing this stage of stability.
As for what has happened in the games industry recently: Sports Interactive has signed a multi-year licensing agreement with FIFA that grants its upcoming Football Manager 26 game official rights to the 2026 World Cup, Women’s World Cup and Club World Cup tournaments, including branded kits and broadcast visuals.
In other news, a few weeks ago it was announced that UK studio Splash Damage had been acquired by private-equity investors, ending its ownership under Tencent, and would continue operating under its current leadership team. Shortly after the news followed that Splash Damage has begun a studio-wide consultation that will result in major layoffs…
Lastly, The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025 salary survey found that U.S.-based game professionals earn an average of $142 000, but 24% reported being laid off within the past two years.
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The Byte
The Action
Retro Byte
Studio Byte
Homa Games is a Paris-based mobile games company that evolved from a hyper-casual publisher into a full-stack game-creation platform offering developers data-driven tools, analytics, market insights, monetization tech, and publishing support to rapidly build and scale games. Founded in 2018, Homa has launched dozens of titles with over a billion downloads, powered by its proprietary Homa Lab, which enables fast prototyping, A/B testing, and optimization. Today the company positions itself less as a traditional publisher and more as an ecosystem that helps indie and small studios compete with major developers, while expanding beyond mobile into console and cross-platform opportunities.
Legal Stuff
Acquisitions/Investments
New Game Corner
Elden Ring Nightreign: The Forsaken Hollows - December 4th, 2025
The Forsaken Hollows — the upcoming DLC for Elden Ring Nightreign, drops on December 4, 2025 and adds substantial new content: 2 new playable Nightfarers (Scholar and Undertaker), 2 new bosses (including The Dreglord), and a new Shifting Earth environment dubbed The Great Hollow, along with additional locations, tougher foes, and fresh challenges.
Resource Byte
AI web/software builder - similar to Replit and Base44.
Who’s Hiring?
Senior Game Designer - Coffee Stain Studios - Gothenburg, Sweden
Technical Director - That’s No Moon - Los Angeles, CA
Associate Lead Engine Programmer - Larian Studios - Barcelona, Spain
Art Director - Homa - Remote, Europe
Senior Development Manager - Crytek - Frankfurt, Germany
Lead Animator - Rebellion - Oxford, UK
Design Director - Scopely - Culver City, CA
Render Engineer - Wargaming - Berlin, Germany
Head of Client Side - Zeptolab - Serbia
COO - Shiro Games - Bordeaux, France
Senior Combat Designer - Naughty Dog - Los Angeles, CA
Lead Developer (Unity) - Univrse - Barcelona, Spain
Art Director - Techland - Warsaw, Poland (Remote)
Interested in sharing your job posts here? Just click on the button below for more info and reach out to tomas@byteaction.co
Dev Talks
“Imagine if you had to buy a Sony CD player to listen to Sony music artists? I mean, it sounds absurd, but that’s where we kind of are in gaming. The hardware money is really juicy, and you’d be reluctant to give it up. I get that. But you can just go to a content strategy, rather than every six years fomenting around how much ray tracing and what does 200 frames per cycle look like — and just try to create”
Shawn Layden
Events
The Bilbao International Games Conference (BIG) is a major European video-games industry event, reconceived from the older Fun & Serious Game Festival to focus primarily on professionals — developers, indie studios, publishers, and industry stakeholders.