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In This Edition,
- The troubled story of Samson
- We discover a cool card game for developers
- Plus, an abundance of news stories
Hello! And welcome back to The Game Business.
It’s a busy week for news. We’ve had Xbox price cuts, BAFTA winners (and losers), new game divisions, new title announcements, big sales numbers, more job cuts… a real mix. So, lots to go through.
Our guest is Christofer Sundberg. He is the head of Liquid Swords, the developer of Samson. The GTA-like game had a tough journey to launch, and its release has been marred by bugs and flaws. Sundberg tells us his story, and what to expect from the console launch in September.
Plus, I discovered a cool new card game aimed at video game studios.
You can watch all of this above, or read the key bits in the article below.
Enjoy!
Troubled Samson is being fixed and coming to PS5 and Xbox in September
GTA-style action game Samson will come to PS5 and Xbox in September, developer Liquid Swords told The Game Business.
The game launched earlier this month on PC, and has faced criticism for an abundance of bugs. The game’s current Steam rating is ‘mixed’.
“The launch has gone a bit so-so,” said Christofer Sundberg, founder and chief creative officer at Liquid Swords.
“The game suffered from way too many bugs and a lack of polish. We’re correcting it almost daily now. The reception is starting to become more positive. For us, it was just a must to get the game out. But any game released in this day and age is a success.”
Sundberg is a video game development veteran. He co-founded and was creative director at Avalanche, the developer behind Just Cause. He sold the company in 2018 and formed Liquid Swords in 2020. At that time, the studio had little trouble attracting investment, with NetEase backing the firm. But when it sought publisher funding in 2024 and 2025, the market had become more challenging.
“The publisher climate was terrible,” he explained. “We were quite far on in a number of discussions, but we felt that we couldn’t trust this game to be picked up. So, we decided to self-publish. We had quite a large budget ask as well.
“We had to adapt to the current state of the business. That led to lowering the ambition and cutting away at the meatier RPG aspect that we had.”
The firm also had to lower costs. The company had 96 staff working on the game, including contractors, and that dropped to just over 40 in February 2025.
“That was terrible,” Sundberg said. “Those were our friends, coworkers and great developers.”
With limited financial runway, Samson had to launch when it did. It was now a shorter, AA experience, and it wasn’t in a ready state.
“We’ve never pretended to be any bigger and better than we are,” Sundberg said. “We’ve been quite honest. It’s hard not to read all the comments. But what is heartwarming is that so many wanted it to be much bigger. They almost thought we were lying when we’ve been repeatedly saying, ‘this game is a bit rough around the edges. It’s not a 100-hour experience.’ But it’s almost like, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah. You keep on saying that. We know that it will be a new Just Cause in the end’.”
Liquid Swords is currently fixing those bugs on PC. And it’s also gearing up to release Samson on consoles.
“We are releasing new updates and patches weekly. It will be what most expected it to be. And we are releasing it on console in September. By that time, I don’t think we will have many new features, but we’ll definitely work on polishing.”
He added: “The plan from the very beginning was to deliver on PC and console simultaneously, but for financial reasons we couldn’t. We didn’t have the bandwidth. But now the game is out, we do. And the game is already running on consoles. It just needs to be optimized, and then we have to go through the submission”
The firm is targeting PS5 and Xbox, with no plans for a Nintendo Switch 2 version.
“It’s so graphics heavy that it wouldn’t run very well on Switch 2 without some serious compromises on the graphics side,” he told us.
“I don’t see GTA as a competitor, it’s like a phenomenon”
Crucially, the console version will arrive before Grand Theft Auto 6 in November.
“I don’t see GTA as a competitor, it’s like a phenomenon,” said Sundberg. “Everything in entertainment competes with it. The next Taylor Swift concert competes with GTA. The next big Netflix show. When a GTA releases, it’s just Christmas for everyone. With all that said, there will always be room for games aside from GTA.”
Beyond consoles, the plan is to develop more Samson games. And Sundberg still wants to realize the original vision for the game.
“I see this as a sort of an endurance race,” he explained. “I’m a retired endurance athlete. I’ve approached almost everything I do in this business on the long term, not just trying to make a lot of money and retire.”
“It was great when Notch sold Minecraft to Microsoft. But everyone was just setting the bar at that level, without realizing it was a very unique deal.”
He concluded: “I don’t have any rush or even a desire to sell Liquid Swords to someone. I’d rather see us be successful on our own. We’ve gone through highs and lows. We know what we have in the bank. We’ll just keep on doing the work and focusing, importantly, on significantly improving Samson. And then create stability for the company as well.”
Check out this game leadership card game
I hosted a number of on-stage interviews during London Game Festival last week, and one of those interviews was with Melissa Phillips, the director of Games Leadership.
The company has just developed a new card game called Studio Situations, which is designed to help developers prepare for challenging leadership situations. Players pick a job role, a seniority level, a situation, an incident and a resource, and have to role play the best approach to a specific challenge, which could range from the game being overrun with bugs, the original vision holder leaving, the team suffering burnout and many more. There are more unique ‘wildcard’ situations that can be applied, too.
“Research has shown that if we talk about issues before they happen, you’re more adaptable, you’re more flexible, you’re more resilient… but only if you have plans in place already,” Phillips told me. “This gives you a really safe way, before the pressure is added and you’re in the middle of game making, to find a situation and talk about it. So, if and when it happens, you’re more prepared.”
The Studio Situations card game is available to pre-order now from the Games Leadership website.
Meanwhile…
According to Circana, March US game revenue is up 8% thanks to strong sales of Crimson Desert, MLB The Show 26, WWE 2K26, Marathon and Pokémon Pokopia. Overall for the quarter, game spending is up 5% to $14.6 billion.
Meanwhile, Video game hardware spending was up 69% in March to $500 million. Switch 2 was the best-selling console for both March and the year-to-date, with PS5 in second place. Nintendo Switch 2 sales remain 12% ahead of Nintendo Switch launch aligned.Capcom’s new IP Pragmata has sold over one million copies in two days. The publisher said an early playable demo, plus releasing the game on Switch 2, helped achieve the milestone. It’s the second breakout success for Capcom this year following Resident Evil Requiem, which sold six million copies in less than a month.
Xbox has reduced the price of Game Pass Ultimate by over 23%, from $29.99 to $22.99 a month. It’s also reduced PC Game Pass from $16.49 to $13.99 a month. As a result, future Call of Duty games won’t be included in either service when they launch. New Call of Duty titles will now arrive in Game Pass roughly a year later.
Two new games divisions have been launched by large Japanese entertainment companies. First, Hello Kitty creator Sanrio has opened a self-published game brand called Sanrio Games. It plans to release ten games over the next three years. The first is Sanrio Party Land for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, which arrives in Autumn 2026.
Second, Toei has established an in-house publishing label called Toei Games. Toei Animation is known for Dragon Ball, One Piece, Sailor Moon and Digimon. Toei Games won’t actually work on those properties, and is instead focused on developing new IP.
Sticking with Japan, Koei Tecmo has raised its financial forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026 due to strong sales of Pokémon Pokopia and Nioh 3. The company now expects ordinary profit to increase from $232.2 million to $345.2 million (up 48%). Operating profit is now due to rise 16.1% to $225.9 million.
The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain is taking Mindseye developer Build a Rocket Boy to court over alleged data privacy violations. This follows the instillation of Teramind surveillance software onto employee PCs.
Video game media website Kotaku has hired Rebekah Valentine as its new senior reporter. Valentine is a highly regarded news journalist who joins from IGN. Prior to that, she worked on GamesIndustry.biz (with me). She has also been a guest on The Game Business Show. Kotaku says it’s recently doubled its traffic and is looking to grow again.
Nintendo has announced that single-player Splatoon spin-off, Splatoon Raiders, will release on July 23. This game has not featured in the Nintendo Direct broadcasts, and has instead been revealed via the Nintendo Today app.
The Elden Ring movie, directed by Alex Garland, will come out March 3 2028, with production beginning this spring. The cast includes Kit Connor, Ben Whishaw, Tom Burke, Jonathan Pryce, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Offerman, Ruby Cruz and Cailee Spaeny.
Iron Galaxy has had to lay off more staff. The studio is behind top remasters and remakes including the Metroid Prime remaster and last year’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. The company said on LinkedIn it had hoped the industry would ‘get back to normal’, but has now accepted that the current market conditions are permanent.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 picked up the big prize at the BAFTA video game awards. The RPG won Best Game, Debut Game, and Performer in a Leading Role for Jennifer English. Dispatch also won three awards, including Animation, Audio Achievement, and Performer in a Supporting Role for Jeffrey Wright. Ghost of Yōtei received two awards for Music and Technical Achievement. Other winners included Atomfall, Despelote, South of Midnight, Death Stranding 2: On The Beach, Blue Prince, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, No Man’s Sky, Arc Raiders and LEGO Party. Supercell CEO Ilkka Paananen won the fellowship award.
Sticking with BAFTA. Upcoming indie game The Quiet Things, from BAFTA breakthrough winner Alyx Jones, was supposed to receive a trailer during the awards ceremony last week. However, its appearance was cancelled 24 hours before the event. BAFTA said it felt the trailer might be triggering for some (the game deals with childhood trauma and abuse) and so made the decision not to show it. Jones was “devastated” by the call. The trailer is out now.
Oh and Apple is getting a new CEO. John Ternus will replace Tim Cook on September 1.
That’s it for today. If you’d love to come see us in person, and are in the LA area in early June, why not come and see us at The Game Business Live? You can find out more here.
Until next time, thank you for reading.
