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Games Industry News Roundup: April 14th, 2026
That's why every week, we round up five of the biggest stories in the gaming sphere from the past week in the Games Industry News Roundup. Our trusty news boy, Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, is at the very real and cool Goonhammer newsdesk with the scoop.
NFT Games Developers Gunzilla Games Accused of Not Paying Staff
Credit: Gunzilla GamesGunzilla Games, a video game developer specializing in NFT video games, made headlines last year when the company announced that it had bought Game Informer and resurrected the magazine from the dead, bringing back most of its original editing staff to boot. Gunzilla’s second moment in the spotlight hasn’t been nearly as noble though, as multiple staff members have accused Gunzilla of failing to pay their salaries for several months.
Multiple employees at Gunzilla took to LinkedIn to share their frustration with Gunzilla leadership over withheld salaries. One of these team members, Antron Palii, a Senior QA Engineer, shared his own story, writing, “Five months without a paycheck. On top of that, at an in-person meeting, when the CEO heard that I wasn’t going to work for the sake of an idea and that I wanted proof that I would be paid, he promised in front of my colleagues to pay me everything and end our working relationship within a day. As you can imagine, they took away all my access and didn’t pay me.”
Gunzilla Games CEO, Vlad Korolev, has denied these accusations, writing that salary payments for staff have never been delayed for more than a week and that the narrative about Gunzilla not paying its staff is a narrative being pushed by “haters”. While Korolev claims that the loudest voices saying they weren't paid have since received payment, Korolev provides no proof in his statement that any other payment issues have been resolved, or addresses Palii’s firing by Gunzilla leadership.
Game Informer has not provided any updates regarding any of its team’s salaries being delayed or withheld as of this writing, nor has Gunzilla made any official statement outside of Korolev’s response on his social media.
Fantasy Flight Games Pulls Plug on Descent: Legends of the Dark
Credit: Fantasy Flight GamesFantasy Flight Games (FFG) announced last week that it’s made the decision to discontinue production for Descent: Legends of the Dark, citing “global economic shifts” leading to the game becoming impossible to produce at a profit.
Descent: Legends of the Dark released in 2021, and is a dungeon crawler game similar to other popular titles like Gloomhaven and Massive Darkness. The game is a follow up to Descent: Journeys in the Dark, which was released in 2005 and received a second edition in 2012. Since its release, FFG has added additional story content, called “Act II”, with plans to release additional Acts for players to run through.
“Simply put, the game is too expensive to make,” Fantasy Flight writes in a blog post regarding Descent: Legends of the Dark. “Between ever-increasing manufacturing costs, lengthy and pricey app development timelines, and global economic shifts making everything more expensive to produce, it became abundantly clear that continuing to make this game is just not feasible. This is far from the outcome we wanted—again, we all love this game and hoped to see it grow for years to come—but even if we were to sell every last copy, we would still ultimately be doing so at a loss.”
FFG also stated that the upcoming planned content expansion for Descent, Act III, has been cancelled as well, and no new content will be coming to the game. The company will continue to maintain the companion app for the game for the current two acts that have been released for those who already own a copy and still wish to play.
The cancellation of Descent: Legends of the Dark won’t affect the release of Descent’s upcoming video game adaptation, Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent, which is being developed by Artefacts Studio and Shine Group and scheduled to release later this spring.
While the company makes it clear that it won’t be returning to Legends of the Dark, it does hope to one day return to the Descent universe, writing “It would take a different form and would not be Legends of the Dark, but this game universe is near and dear to FFG’s heart. The future is always uncertain, and even though we have to close the book on Descent today, we hope that, someday, we’ll be able to dream big with it again.”
Mantic Games Launches Kings Of War: Champions on Its Digital App
Kings of War: Champions. Credit Mantic GamesMantic Games is rolling out the red carpet for its upcoming Spearhead competitor, Kings of War: Champions, announcing that the rules for the game are live in the Mantic Companion app for players to dig their teeth into.
The rules for Kings of War: Champions went live on the Mantic Companion App on April 10th, with differing levels of access depending on subscription level. Non-suscribers have access to the full core rules for Champions, which includes a getting started guide that gives player the rules for basic games. The free tier also includes a PDF with printable tokens and terrain features for use in games of Champions. Subscribers on the paid tiers will have access to the Core rules and terrain/token PDF, as well as full Unit Cards and Stats for all of the factions currently supported in Champions.
As of this writing, three dedicated Kings of War: Champions boxes are currently available for alongside the release of the Champions rules: the Empire warriors following Allanus, the Infernal demons commanded by the Bloody Cardinal, and the veteran Xirkaali trackers led by Xorxoi. Mantic is also releasing a physical getting started bundle for Champions, featuring a playmat, terrain, and core rulebook with tokens. Mantic plans to add additional champion bundles for the other factions of Kings of War in the near future.
Dark Horse Comics Set to Bring the Octopath Traveler TTRPG to the West
Credit: Square EnixDark Horse Comics is partnering with Square Enix to release an English language version of the Octopath Traveler TTRPG later this year, according to a press release.
Octopath Traveler was a video game published for the Nintendo Switch by Square Enix in 2018, and received a warm critical and fan reception. Its sequel was met with a similar positive response when it came out five years later. The TTRPG adaptation for Octopath Traveler was released locally in Japan in 2022, and was designed by Yura Kubota. The game uses a 2d6 system to best imitate the gameplay of Octopath Traveler, which itself is a love letter to the classic JRPG gameplay of early Final Fantasy Games.
Dark Horse Comics share their excitement for the project on their website, writing, “New and old fans of Octopath Traveler can now personally experience the expansive land of Orsterra, with detailed instructions, game sheets, and lore from the world of Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent!”
The Dark Horse release of the game will include the 328 page full color rulebook for the Octopath Traveler TTRPG, alongside a starter adventure and premade character for players who are new to tabletop games and want to jump right into the journey with their friends.
This isn’t Dark Horse’s first foray into the world of tabletop roleplaying games, as the company partnered with Massif Press and Tom Bloom to publish physical copies of the hit mecha RPG, Lancer. Dark Horse has not made any announcements yet as to a specific date for when the game will be released, outside of saying the game is scheduled for October, nor has made any statement on who will be doing the translation work.
Veteran Black Library Author Ian Watson Passes Away
One of the earliest contributors to the Black Library catalogue, Ian Watson, passed away on Monday at the age of 82 at his home in Spain, surrounded by family and loved ones. We’re joined this week by Lenoon to memorialize Watson and his work.
Lenoon: So, sadly, it's goodbye to Ian Watson, one of British Scifi's last standing masters of eclectic, wide-ranging scifi. You probably know his work with Warhammer 40k, producing some of the weirdest and (arguably) best 40k books in the Inquisition War trilogy and Space Marine. Watson was handed the keys to 40k and given virtual carte blanche, and took the novels further and stranger than anyone had anticipated.
Outside of 40k, he was a very successful and widely known Science Fiction author, coming to prominence with 1973's The Embedding, a high concept take on language, knowledge and transcendence. His work was enormously varied, usually pretty depressing and occasionally uncomfortably horny, ranging from the strange sex satire Orgasmachine through to chess-based fantasy in QueenMagic/Kingmagic and flat out horror in Meat. Adding to the incredible variety and depth of his output was the screenplay for AI, and a series of highly readable and absolutely fascinating discussions of what scifi is and does that have hugely informed the discussions around speculative fiction. Watson was an author who liked to poke at a single idea in a dizzying variety of ways, and one where reading one of his works would give you absolutely no inkling as to the tone and shape of the next. His books aren't always exactly fun reads, but they're always thought provoking and searching, and his oevre will stand with the greats of 20th century scifi forever. If you'd like to know more about his work and approach, his fantastic blog has decades of his ruminations on scifi and the wider world - https://www.ianwatson.info/.
According to Watson’s obituary, he is survived by his wife: Cristina Macía; daughters: Jessica Black and Laura Watson; son-in-law: Kris Black; and other relatives, readers and friends. He was buried on April 14th, and his family requested that those who wished to pay respects send books rather than flowers.
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