🎮 Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 New Trailer, NetEase Closes A Studio After 2 Years and No Just Cause 5...

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 New Trailer, NetEase Closes A Studio After 2 Years, No Just Cause 5, Saints Row Franchise Might Be Alive and more!

Hello friends,

Today is November 13th 2025 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌

In today’s news:

• 🎮 Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 New Trailer

• 🎮 NetEase Closes A Studio After 2 Years

• 🎮 No Just Cause 5

• 🎮 Saints Row Franchise Might Be Alive

• ⚡ Lightning Round!

• 🫡 True Tribute!

• 😄 Personal Update

All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️

Let’s dig in!

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🎮 Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 New Trailer

The biggest Black Ops game ever, or at least that’s how it’s being advertised by Activision, is about to hit the shelves, and the company shared a new launch trailer.

With the release date being set to tomorrow (Nov 14th), the newest entry to the franchise is putting a lot of eggs into the multiplayer basket. Aside from the new coop campaign and zombie mode, the game is set to have 18 different maps on the launch date. And of course, there is a lot of high-octane gameplay and a futuristic setting.

While it’s unclear how well this new entry is going to perform, some outlets and analysts are saying that this launch is going to be big. So big, in fact, that it’s going to surpass the highly successful Battlefield 6. It’s all conjecture at this point, but we’ll see how it unfolds very soon.

I’ve never been a fan of Black Ops, so I honestly couldn’t care less about the game itself. What I do care about, though, is whether the prediction of the analysts is true. Personally, I think they are a little bit too optimistic, and the audience of Call of Duty in general is not as huge as it once was, so that would be interesting to check whether I’m right or wrong 😅

Are you looking forward to playing the newest entry in the Black Ops franchise?

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🎮 NetEase Closes A Studio After 2 Years

Image: Fantastic Pixel Castle / NetEase

More and more companies are closing studios, and the latest one to do so is NetEase which decided to close Fantastic Pixel Castle after only a few years of operation.

The studio was formed in 2023 as a part of NetEase and was working on a triple-A fantasy MMO project codenamed “Ghost” with Greg Street, who was previously a Lead Systems Designer on World of Warcraft, as the head. Street announced the closure in a LinkedIn post some time ago, with a studio scheduled to be closed on November 17th:

Fantastic Pixel Castle will close its doors on Nov 17. While there is still a chance we can secure funding after that date, it will depend on how much of the team remains. While we’d love to make our game, our first priority is to help our developers find employment, whether that’s at indie studio Fantastic Pixel Castle 2.0, or at many of the other fine (and hopefully stable) game and tech companies out there.

Again, to our many playtesters and supporters, we are in your debt!

To the literally dozens of people who reached out trying to help us raise capital, or through introductions to people who could, you humble me. There is still a chance one of them works out, and it really only takes one.

I feel like I should offer a witty quote, and so...

“The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

It’s always sad to see a fresh venture shut down so early. And it’s quite unclear why NetEase decided to pull its funding after such a short span of time. Perhaps the team wasn’t performing at a pace that the publisher expected, or perhaps it’s another cost-saving “restructuring” effort. We’ll probably never know, so let’s just press F for people who now have to look for a new place to call home…

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🎮 No Just Cause 5

Image: Avalanche Studios / Square Enix

Speaking about projects that won’t happen, Avalanche Studios recently confirmed that we might never see the return of Just Cause.

In a recent discussion on X, the founder of Avalanche Studios and the creator of the franchise, Christofer Sundberg, shared that it’s very unlikely this game will ever happen with the current approach of the company. While talking with some of the fans about the cancelled Contraband, Sundberg mentioned the following:

Me and my team pitched Contraband back in 2017 to MSFT (and signed it). It’s changed quite a lot since then obviously, but it would have been fantastic to see it being released one day somehow. #JC5 would be a no-go since extremely few from the original team are there still.

[Talking about the current operating model of Avalanche] They need to find the fire again, take risks, piss people off and make games the rest said was impossible. I started Avalanche to break the mold, not to fit into one.

Note that it’s all speculations, of course, since Christofer Sundberg is no longer with the company, but it all sounds plausible. Unfortunate, but plausible.

And I think the same could be said about a lot of gamedev studios these days. If you go to the homepage of every studio, they all talk about how they are going to be “the most innovative there is”, “provide the best experience”, “break the mold” and all that. But at the end of it, only a handful of them are actually doing it, and not always successfully. And I think the problem is not with the studios, or not only with them, the publishers are also to blame for it as they’d rather go with something familiar and reduce as much risk as possible, even if it means that they are going to lose small in the end rather than try to win big. At least that’s my feeling.

What do you think about innovation in the game development industry?

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🎮 Saints Row Franchise Might Be Alive

Image: Deep Silver / Volition / Embracer Group

Some good news for the Saints Row fans, even with Volition being closed, there might still be hope for the franchise.

In a recent post on Reddit, Chris Stockman, Design Director of the most recent Saints Row 1, shared that he has been approached “to create a pitch for a Saints Row reboot”:

I’ve been asked to a create a pitch for a Saints Row prequel!

Guys and Gals, I have hopeful news!

I’ve been asked to create a pitch for a Saints Row reboot!

I can’t say anything more than that but my dreams for this game just became a little more than just dreams!

Update: it won’t be a VR game. I’m really going back to my roots!

This might be the hope that fans of the series have been waiting for ever since the release of Saints Row 1, which was mediocre at best. Honestly, I replayed Saints Row 3 and 4 a year or so ago, and I would be down to see a new game, but it has to align with all the current expectations from players around the world. I feel like the demand for games like this is there, but the expectations are definitely high, and it has to have the right systems to succeed, which would require a lot of time and resources that not a lot of publishers would be willing to invest.

What do you think about Saints Row games?

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⚡ Lightning Round!

1…2…3…Go!

🎮 EA Says It Will Keep Creative Control After Saudi Deal

Image: EA Games

After the EA’s announcement that the company is being bought and going private, there has been a lot of speculation about what will happen to it and how much control the company will have over its franchises.

According to an SEC filing, EA will still maintain creative control and “committed to their mission to players and fans around the world”:

Will our culture change as a result of this deal?

● Our mission, values, and commitment to players and fans around the world remain unchanged.

● We will continue to be guided by our cultural values of creativity, pioneering, passion, determination, learning, and teamwork.

● The Consortium is supportive of and committed to investing in our exceptional employees and our strong culture.

● The Consortium believes in our vision, our leadership and the strength of our teams. They are investing in EA because they believe we are uniquely positioned to lead the future of entertainment.

● EA will maintain creative control and our track record of creative freedom and player-first values will remain intact.

I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

🎮 Cyberpunk Creator Wants Keanu Back For The Sequel

Image: CD Projekt RED

There has been a lot of talk about a potential return of Keanu Reeves to the Cyberpunk universe, but it’s unclear how that's possible, considering all the endings of the game.

In a recent stream from CD Projekt Red, Mike Pondsmith, the TTRPG creator, joined the crew to discuss Cyberpunk 2077 and shared that he “has ways” to bring him back:

Not that long ago, I saw that Keanu would like to find a way to come back from the dead and play Johnny again. I have ways to do that, Keanu, contact me.

Maybe another prequel/flashback? Or a copy of Johny’s engram?

🎮 Battlefield Reportedly Sold 10 Million Copies

Image: Battlefield Studios / EA Games

Despite somewhat of a troubled launch of Season 1, by the looks of it, Battlefield 6 is doing great and has surpassed 10 million copies sold at the time of writing.

According to Rhys Elliott at Alinea Analytics and his firm, when talking about the upcoming Black Ops 7 and the comparison with Battlefied, the game has now passed 10 million copies sold across all platforms, and it seems to have won over the core PC audience.

So far, according to them, the game managed to secure a huge amount of “goodwill” from the community, and it’s now officially the biggest launch in the series’ history. However, Battlefield Studios has to tread carefully with the inclusion of cosmetics and features, as this trust can go away very easily.

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🫡 True Tribute!

Today I wanted to salute

Maurice Klimek

and

The Solo Gamedev

!

The advantage of doing the same thing over and over again

Another great piece, this time about how doing the same thing over and over is not necessarily a bad thing. I like the example of Hades and Supergiant Games in general. The second part of Hades looks very similar to the first game, but it has improved tremendously and feels different. If you already have a recipe for a great game or you are doing something that’s already working, you don’t need to get out of your way to do something new. You still have room to innovate and offer a unique experience.

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😄 Personal Update

I have a new project that I started working on and ideating with my partner.

This is something else and in a completely different direction from what I’m doing here, so maybe it won’t be as interesting to you guys, but I’m kind of excited. I’ll probably be sharing more about it as we start fleshing things out, but TLDR, we want to launch a new publication on Substack in the Arts & Illustration category (plus something extra from yours truly 😅).

And suddenly I have a lot of vacation plans 😬

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This is all the news I have for you folks today.

Thanks for making it this far! 🙌

If you feel like supporting me and my work, consider Powering-Up GameDev Relay 🎮

Have a great week!

Alex from Gamedev Relay.