Games Industry News Roundup: Looking Back on 2025

Here at Goonhammer, we know that it’s hard to keep track of all the news happening all the time in the games industry. So much is always going on with games of all sorts, and their related media, it can be a real blink-and-you’ll miss it situation.

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 here with the scoop.

The end of the year is finally upon us, and to celebrate another successful trip through the Gregorian calendar, we’ve got a special edition of the roundup this week. Just like we did last year, rather than look at just the news from last week, we’re rounding up the biggest stories from all of 2025 and putting them all right here. The perfect one stop shop if you’ve spent the year living under a rock.

But enough stalling. It’s time for me to dramatically shuffle these papers, clear my throat, and get on with the thing you’re all here for: the scoop.

Tariffs Rock the Gaming World

The international import Tariffs placed by the Trump administration is far and away the most significant news story this year in the world of tabletop gaming, especially if you’re living in the United States.

For those who want a deep dive into the nature of these tariffs, and why they are so bad for the games industry, you can read more about all that right here on Goonhammer. In summary: these tariffs were levied by the administration with the idea that they would fix the “trade imbalance” that the United States has with many countries around the world by imposing a tax on all items brought in from those nations based on the size of the deficit. It would also, in theory, force companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States if they wanted to avoid taking a hit on their profits from tariffs.

None of this played out that way, of course. The United States is a consumer economy, despite its significant number of annual exports, meaning it’s almost certainly going to run a trade deficit. It also didn’t push large companies to open more American factories to avoid paying import taxes, they instead fixed the bottom line by passing those costs onto the consumer.

The most devastating of these tariffs were the tariffs put on Chinese imports, which was initially set at 54% of the cost of goods, before skyrocketing in the following weeks to 104%, 154%, and finally 254%. These eye watering numbers did not last very long, with the current tariff rate at 15%, with a 34% tariff scheduled to start in November of 2026.

These tariffs were apocalyptic for the board game industry at large, which primarily manufactures cardboard pieces and tokens for games in China. Companies who couldn’t afford to keep up with tariffs were were forced to shutter their doors almost immediately, such as Spirit Island developer Greater Than Games, or hit staff with layoffs to stay afloat, such as Wise Wizard Games. Gloomhaven Second Edition was briefly stuck in Chinese warehouses following the tariff implementations, as Cenophair Games couldn’t afford to ship the product to American markets.

“These tariffs are a doomsday scenario for the US board game industry,” Isaac Childres, Creator of Gloomhaven, told Polygon.

Outside the Chinese market, several companies were forced to increase their prices for goods on the American market, such as Mantic Games. Only Games Workshop was large enough to shrug and eat the costs from tariffs, but still increased pricing on their products this October.

Even as the dust has (mostly) settled, what is left after the spring tariff fiasco is a deeply scarred tabletop games industry, and consumers who are now having to pay more for products while receiving no real benefits from the taxes paid on them. It’s an everyone loses scenario, and sadly the administration is not likely to stop stunts like these in 2026.

The Fall of CMON and the Rise of Asmodee

Credit: CMON Games

Two game companies made headlines more than others this year, but for very different reasons. One was very good, and the other was shockingly, horribly bad.

Let’s start with the bad. The financial situation for CMON games could politely be described as “a complete dumpster fire.”

In spring of this year, CMON announced that there would be a delay in the release of its 2024 earnings report in March of this year, while also warning investors to expect a profit loss of anywhere between $1.4 to $2.1 million. When CMON finally posted the report in April, several weeks after the deadline, it’s profit loss was even higher than predicted, with the company losing $3 million in 2024.

Over the following months, CMON did whatever it could to bail water out of its rapidly sinking fiscal ship. CMON sold off the rights to multiple product lines, including its star IP Zombicide. Multiple high profile members of the CMON team left during this time as well, such as COO David Preti and CFO Koh Zheng Kai. Things still look grim for CMON though, as a mid-year report showed the company’s revenue from last year has dropped $12 million as its crowdfunding income has almost totally dried up.

While CMON’s star flames out, Asmodee’s star rose in 2025. The board game giant came into 2025 with great public uncertainty, considering the fallout of the Embracer Group split had left Asmodee with much of Embracer’s old debt. Asmodee took no time to lick its wounds, and entered the year with an aggressive acquisition strategy. Asmodee bought multiple IPs from CMON, such as Zombicide and Cthulhu: Death May Die, and pushed their brands outside the tabletop space, such as striking a deal with Netflix to make Catan content for the streaming giant.

For two of the biggest names in board games, 2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year. For CMON, it may be their last chance to escape their monetary death spiral before being forced to close their doors. For Asmodee, 2026 looks like it will be the prime time to capitalize on their momentum from 2025 to become even more dominant in the games space than they were before.

Another Solid Year for Warhammer

Saturnine Box Art - credit Warhammer Community

Meanwhile, in the world of tabletop Wargames, the folks over at Games Workshop had yet another solid year.

2025 saw the release of multiple new factions for their most popular games, Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar, alongside the release of a new edition for Horus Heresy. The release of this new edition as well as its starter box, Saturnine, was teased with the “Horus Hearsay” marketing campaign, where a special site gave hints about the new box in a conspiratorial style. Other major releases for 2025 included a new Warhammer quest, Darkwater, a new season for Kill Team, Tombworld, and the release of the very first Old World original faction, Grand Cathay.

2025 was more than just a big year for tabletop releases though, as several developments on the licensing front made big headlines. Games Workshop made waves at the end of last year with confirmation that a deal had been finalized with Amazon to produce shows and movies based in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and this momentum was bolstered by the high profile announcement of two new big budget 40k video games: Dawn of War 4 and Total War: Warhammer 40,000.

With the strong financial results from 2024-2025 continuing to rise, it looks like the only thing that can slow down GW’s continued rise is very small mammals. As told in the 2024-2025 Annual Report, the company dealt with a major issue this year with the construction delay of a parking complex on their Nottingham headquarters when a protected Bat species was found to have made its nest in the area. Until this bat finds a new home, GW cannot make any additional progress on the lot.

Games Workshop looks like it’s well-set to have yet another excellent year in 2026, and it seems like the company may have captured lightning in a bottle with their continued success. One is left to wonder how long before GW experiences an inevitable financial stumble, but it looks very unlikely that will happen anytime soon.

Buyouts and Layoffs Dominate Video Game World (Again)

Credit: Electronic Arts

In what is probably the least surprising news of this whole roundup, it was a nightmare year for working in the video game industry.

While some excellent games did come out this year, especially from AA developers with hits like Hades 2, Clair Obsur: Expedition 33, and Silksong, working in the video game industry in 2025 was once again defined by mass layoffs, as well as some troubling buyouts of major companies in the gaming space.

Though layoff figures are down this year by about a third from 2024, the number of folks who lost their job is still staggering. All told, a little over 9,000 people were laid off or forced to find new work when their studio closed. Several high profile developers went under this year, such as Monolith Games, who shut their doors for good in February. Microsoft continued its long and painful layoff march in 2025, reducing its workforce by around 4% globally over the summer.

Layoffs aren’t the only concerning thing happening in the world of video games in 2025, as a massive buyout of Electronic Arts by Saudi Arabian investors and Jared Kushner's private equity firm, which is a nightmare duo if I have ever heard one. The massive deal cost over $50 million, and will almost certainly require regulatory approval, but if this isn’t busted up it would be a dramatic (and probably very, very bad) shakeup of the gaming landscape as we know it.

With all this in mind, its hard to stay positive about the future of video games. As the industry has rapidly grown in the past few years, it looks like making the biggest profit possible has eclipsed the goal of making the best game possible in the AAA space. Hopefully, this pessimism is unfounded, and 2026 is the year that the industry rights the ship, but that seems increasingly unlikely.

Final Fantasy Limit Breaks Sales Records, eBay Union Battles, and Other Big Stories from 2025

Credit: Square Enix/Wizards of the Coast

To close us out, here’s some snippets of other big stories that hit the Goonhammer Newsdesk in 2025.

The Universes Beyond Final Fantasy collaboration shattered sales records, even before it released, becoming the highest selling set in Magic history. It was so popular, in fact, it made the same amount of money that the Lord of the Rings UB set did in six months (about $200 million) in a single day of sales.
Mantic announced a new edition for Kings of War, bringing in exciting changes to the game, with help from Games Workshop legend Alessio Cavatore. The new edition is expected to launch early in 2026.
Steamforged launched the Warmachine Digital, which focuses on releasing STL files for alternate sculpts and legends armies to a subscription service in partnership with MyMiniFactory. The service quickly became the most popular subscription on the site following release.
The founder of Wargames Atlantic, Hudson Adams, came clean about their identity, revealing that their real name is Thomas Reidy had a major role in the failed defiance games kickstarter that left backers high and dry. Reidy apologized to the public for the deception, and promised to pay back anyone who could prove that they had put money into the Kickstarter.
The collapse of Diamond Comics caused a messy bidding war for its games distribution subsidiary, Alliance Games Distribution, with companies claiming that the winning bid was rigged and attempting to take AGD and Diamond Comics to court over the matter.

Credit: Factory Fortress Inc

Following their own massive crowd funding success last year, Trench Crusade released it’s very first hard plastic miniature set, the Prussian Stosstruppen, the first announced kit following the campaign as well as the first Trench Crusade box to be made available at local game stores.
Multiple high profile union wins happened in 2025, with members of the Diablo dev team and ID software both passing unions votes in their workplaces, and Kickstarter workers successfully negotiating their union contract following a strike.
Speaking of Unions, Rockstar Games faced community backlash after firing multiple employees, with said employees claiming it was due to their union ties. Rockstar denies that this was the case, but workers rights groups have described the firings as blatant union busting.

Credit: Valve Corp.
Steam and itch.io had a massive takedown of adult content from their web platforms following changes to their content agreements that give payment processors a greater degree of say over what does and does not go on their storefronts. This change prompted worry about giving payment processor companies large scale such a high degree of influence over deciding what content is and is not indecent for the massive distribution platforms.
Warner Bros is being bought out by Netflix, which cannot be good.

And thats all for the last News Roundup of 2025! Its been a wild year, but despite the high chaos of almost every part of the games industry, its been nothing but a pleasure rounding it up for all of you each week here on Goonhammer. I’m looking forward to more Industry News in 2026, and telling you all about it right here from the very cool and real Goonhammer Newsdesk.

Goodnight, dear readers, and good luck.

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