What You Missed This Week in Video Games

“Game On” is The Fly’s weekly recap of the stories powering up or beating down video game stocks.

NEW RELEASES: This week’s most notable release is Microsoft’s (MSFT) “Forza Motorsport,” a reboot of the long-running racing series. The game launches November 10 exclusively on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

UNITY CEO TO RETIRE: On Monday, Unity (U) announced that John Riccitiello will retire as President, CEO, Chairman and a member of the company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately. James M. Whitehurst has been appointed interim chief executive officer, President and a member of the board. Roelof Botha, lead independent director of the Unity board, has been appointed Chairman. Riccitiello will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition. The board will initiate a comprehensive search process, with the assistance of a leading executive search firm, to identify a permanent CEO. Along with the announcement, the company affirmed its Q3 guidance.

The news comes after Unity last month announced it would introduced runtime fees based on game installs, a move that received enormous backlash from game developers, many of whom turned off Unity Ads monetization across their projects or even pledged to no longer develop games on the engine. In late September, the company backtracked on its previous plan, saying that games with under $1M in sales would not be subject to any runtime fee, and that the new runtime fee policy would only apply beginning with the next version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond.

MICROSOFT/ACTIVISION: Last week, The Verge’s Tom Warren (ATVI) the following week. According to a source familiar with the plans, Microsoft is looking at Friday, October 13 as the closing date of the deal. A final decision from the U.K.’s CMA is expected next week, and barring any surprise last-minute changes, should allow Microsoft to close the deal, Warren noted.

Following the news, Activision Blizzard said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that it does not have plans to put “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III” or “Diablo IV” onto Xbox Game Pass this year once the deal closes, though it expects to start adding games into Game Pass in the course of the next year. “It’s awesome to see anticipation building for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III,” Activision Blizzard said. “As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal, we’ve been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass. While we do not have plans to put Modern Warfare(R) III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year, once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world. And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year.”

CD PROJEKT: During its Investor Day, CD Projekt (OTGLY) said it has spent over $120M on its role-playing game “Cyberpunk 2077” since its December 2020 release, accounting for updates, bug fixes, and the development and marketing of its “Phantom Liberty” expansion, which just recently came out, Gamesindustry.biz’s Sophie McEvoy reported. The company has invested $40M on the base game of “Cyberpunk,” while the “Phantom Liberty” downloadable content cost about $84M to make and promote, the author noted.

Meanwhile, Eurogamer’s Vikki Blake said over the weekend that workers at CD Projekt are joining with others in the Polish video game sector to unionize. The union was established after the “Cyberpunk 2077” maker announced a third wave of workforce reductions in as many months.

OTHER STORIES TO WATCH:

• Electronic Arts (EA) said that “EA Sports FC 24” drew 11.3M players in its first week (read more)
• BofA upgraded EA to Buy from Neutral (read more)
• Nintendo (NTDOY) will discontinue online services for 3DS and Wii U software in April 2024 (read more)