🎮 Clair Obscure is Officially a Franchise, Layoffs at Crystal Dynamics and CDPR is Hiring More People...
Clair Obscure is Officially a Franchise, Layoffs at Crystal Dynamics, CDPR is Hiring More People for Upcoming Games, Atari Now Owns 5 Ubisoft Titles and more!
Hello friends,
Today is September 4th 2025 and I hope you’ve had a great week 🙌
In today’s news:
🎮 Clair Obscure is Officially a Franchise
🎮 Layoffs at Crystal Dynamics
🎮 CDPR is Hiring More People for Upcoming Games
🎮 Atari Now Owns 5 Ubisoft Titles
⚡ Lightning Round!
🫡 True Tribute!
😄 Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ⏲️
Let’s dig in!
🎮 Clair Obscure is Officially a Franchise
In a recent YouTube interview with MrMattyPlays, Sandfall Interactive’s Game Director Guillaume Broche shared a lot of thoughts on the success of the game as well as confirmed that this title is now officially a franchise.
Of course, it’s too soon to draw any conclusions when it comes to the sequel, but during an interview, Broche did say that we could return to Expedition 33, alongside new stories.
Clair Obscur is the franchise name. Expedition 33 is one of the stories that we want to tell in this franchise. Exactly what it will look like and what the concept will be is still too soon to announce, but what is sure is that this is not the end of the Clair Obscur franchise.
If you want to know more, I definitely recommend watching the entire thing; it’s quite interesting and also contains a bunch of speculations as to what those new games will look like.
I mean, we all knew this was coming, right? I can’t imagine any studio, especially in our time, having this much success with their first title and not turning it into a money-printing machine. Don’t get me wrong, both the game and the studio totally deserve it, and I can’t wait to see the next chapter!
🎮 Layoffs at Crystal Dynamics
And not a day goes by without us talking about layoffs. This time, they hit the developers behind all the recent Tomb Raider games and co-developer of the recently cancelled reboot of Perfect Dark, Crystal Dynamics.
According to a LinkedIn post, the company recently made this difficult decision, but vows that this is not going to affect any upcoming projects:
Today we made the very difficult decision to part ways with a number of our talented colleagues as the result of evolving business conditions. This decision was not made lightly. It was necessary, however, to ensure the long-term health of our studio and core creative priorities in a continually shifting market.
To those impacted - we recognize and thank you for your hard work, talent, and passion. We are committed to offering the full extent of support and resources at our disposal during this transition.
To our teams, players, and partners, thank you for your continued support as we build a creative, sustainable, and resilient tomorrow together. This includes the future of Tomb Raider, which remains unaffected by this decision.
I’m not sure about Perfect Dark, but I personally really enjoyed those Tomb Raider games, even though they started to blur together after the second one and used pretty much the same formula. But hey, so were the other games during mid 2010s. My hopes are that all those people would find a safe haven sometime soon.
🎮 CDPR is Hiring More People for Upcoming Games
And while a lot of studios and projects are experiencing more and more layoffs, CDPR seems to be doing extremely well. In fact, the company hired 69 new employees between April 30 and July 31.
According to the recent H1 2025 Earnings Report, the company is hiring well and most of the people hired are either joining The Witcher 4 team (the biggest one), Cyberpunk 2 or shared services, which includes Localisation, Quality Assurance, Data, Insights & Experiences, Artificial Intelligence and similar disciplines.
In our current climate, I think almost every company dreams to be in the same place financially as CDPR, especially considering that the last game they released was some time ago, excluding Phantom Liberty, which probably almost deserves to be its own game 😅
Way to go, guys!
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🎮 Atari Now Owns 5 Ubisoft Titles
And while Ubisoft sleeps on most of the old IPs, Atari decided to make a move and formed a strategic IP agreement with Ubisoft to bring some of them back to life.
According to Insider Gaming, Atari bought the rights for Cold Fear, I Am Alive, Child of Eden, Grow Home and Grow Up and plans to re-release those games as their new publisher. With that deal in place, Ubisoft’s Deborah Papiernik, VP of New Business, shared the following statement:
Millions of players have experienced these worlds over the years, and this will open the door for long time players to revisit those memories while inviting new audiences to discover them for the first time.
Atari has a rich gaming legacy and deep appreciation for these classic titles, we’re excited to see how they’ll evolve and connect with players in fresh, meaningful ways.
And Wade Rosen, CEO of Atari, decided to say a few things as well:
Ubisoft and Atari both have a legacy of crafting worlds that players can fall in love with — games that resonate with generations of players not just for how they played, but for how they made us feel.
We’re excited to reintroduce these titles while also exploring ways to expand and evolve these franchises.
Honestly, the only name I’m familiar with is Cold Fear. As far as I know, none of these games were universally praised by any stretch of the imagination, but I like Cold Fear. It was a decent game for its time, and I think it’s great that in times when their own creators forsake them, those games are still not forgotten.
I think they all deserve a second chance, right?
⚡ Lightning Round!
1…2…3…Go!
🎮 Paramount Wants to Make a COD Movie
Call of Duty is one of the biggest franchises that’s still going strong (I think?), and because of that, the movie industry wants a piece of the pie as well.
A rumour started going around recently from Puck News that Paramount wants to acquire the rights to make a movie out of these games, and, apparently, this idea is on the high-priority list for the leadership team of the movie giant.
I have only one wish: make a movie out of the original plot of Modern Warfare, not those remakes, please. 😅
🎮 Escape from Tarkov is Coming to Steam After All
And since we talked about earlier this week about Escape from Tarkov hitting its long-awaited 1.0 mark, it looks like it might be coming to Steam as well.
At least that’s what people are making of a cryptic post on X from Nikita Buyanov, arguably the face of Escape from Tarkov, who decided to post a gif with, well, steam…
If that’s the case, it will be the most hilarious announcement ever 😆
🎬 Return To Silent Hill Gets a Teaser
And while we were on the subject of movies, a film adaptation of Silent Hill 2 recently got a new teaser!
The only thing we know so far is that this movie is scheduled to hit the theatres in January, but this is the first time we can actually see something concrete. And by the looks of it, it might not be a direct adaptation, but rather a reimagination of the game.
Of course, nothing is set in stone yet, and we’ll see what’s what when the first details start to come in closer to the release date.
🫡 True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
and !
I think it’s great that more and more creators are starting to utilise all these amazing features on Substack! Besides hosting an amazing podcast,
now also makes videos. Great job, and I think you should keep at it! Also, Crysis 2 is definitely a good game. I’m still waiting for Crytek to bring it back to life 😅😄 Personal Update
If you are wondering, my vacation is going great! I’ve had some time to reflect on everything that’s been going on these past months and made some decisions regarding this newsletter.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the time off, and I’m going through both parts of The Last of Us. That’s something I’ve been wanting to get back to for a while, and I have to say, the new remasters are great, as well as the new roguelike mode in Part 2.
But I can already feel that my vacation is coming to an end already and there’s so much stuff to do, so I’m back at it!
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! 🙌
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
Can I get a hell yeah for Clair Obscur? I kinda hope that it becomes a franchise like Final Fantasy in the sense that all the games can share similar lore but not connected. I'm okay with the next games to take place in the same universe but I think I would love it more if they took place in different universes like Final Fantasy.
Always grateful for the shoutout! Appreciate you <3