🍪 Return to Office, Loot Boxes, Xbox Doubts

Hello there, exhausted developers, platform skeptics, and people still trying to believe the industry learned something from the last two years.

Today’s stories aren’t isolated. They’re symptoms. Different companies, different headlines, same tension underneath. Control, trust, and who actually pays the price when decisions go wrong.

Let’s get into it.

Ubisoft’s RTO crackdown and the cost of speaking out

Ubisoft Montréal team lead David Michaud-Cromp says he was suspended for three days without pay after publicly criticizing the company’s new return-to-office mandate. Thirteen years at Ubisoft, and the issue wasn’t performance, but an alleged breach of “duty of loyalty.”

His comments weren’t extreme. He didn’t reject in-person work outright. He questioned timing, transparency, and context. Especially for developers who were hired under remote or hybrid assumptions and built their lives around them.

Ubisoft’s response followed the familiar script. Collaboration. Knowledge sharing. Creativity. Efficiency. All announced alongside restructuring, cost-cutting, and studio closures.

🦊 Kiki: I’ve watched this exact situation play out before. The moment “collaboration” shows up in the same sentence as layoffs, I stop listening. If you tell people for years that remote work is fine, then flip the table and punish anyone who says that feels off, you’re not fixing culture. You’re training people to keep their mouths shut. And yeah, the seniors always leave first. They have options. The rest are stuck holding the mess.

🍪 Chip looks at an empty office chair. Doesn’t move.

FIFA loot boxes dodge gambling, but the issue isn’t going away

Austria’s Supreme Court ruled that FIFA Ultimate Team loot boxes are not gambling because they require “some skill.” The case was brought against Electronic Arts (EA) and Sony by players who spent a combined €20,000.

EA welcomed the ruling, calling it much-needed clarity. Legal researchers were less convinced. Gambling laws were never written with loot boxes in mind, and consumer law enforcement continues to lag behind how these systems actually work.

Other courts in other countries have ruled differently. More cases are still pending.

🦊 Kiki: Every time this comes up, it feels like everyone’s pretending to be relieved. Publishers smile. Lawyers nod. Players are still uncomfortable. You can feel it. Nobody actually thinks this conversation is over. It just keeps getting kicked down the road until the next court, the next country, the next headline.

🍪 Chip shakes a mystery pack. Doesn’t open it.

Is there still a future for Xbox as a platform?

Microsoft’s latest financials paint a rough picture. Gaming revenue down. Software and services down. Hardware revenue down 32 percent year over year.

The shift toward Game Pass and cross-platform services was meant to offset that decline. So far, it hasn’t. Subscriber numbers haven’t been publicly updated since early 2024. Instead, Microsoft highlights softer metrics like “PC players” and “paid streaming hours.”

The uncomfortable question is whether Xbox is drifting toward being a major publisher with a logo, rather than a platform with real gravitational pull.

🦊 Kiki: When companies stop showing the numbers everyone actually cares about and start flexing the ones that sound nice on a slide, that tells you plenty. I don’t think Xbox disappears overnight. But the confidence isn’t there anymore. And once players start feeling that hesitation, it spreads fast.

🍪 Chip stares at a controller. Puts it down.

Split Fiction gets a script, but adaptations still live in limbo

Hazelight Studios’s Split Fiction now has a completed film script, with Sydney Sweeney attached and Deadpool’s writers handling the adaptation.

Studio head Josef Fares says he’s seen the script, but remains cautious. Production timelines are unclear. This also isn’t Hazelight’s first adaptation stuck between announcement and reality. It Takes Two remains in limbo.

🦊 Kiki: I like Hazelight. I want this to land. But I’ve been around long enough to know how this usually goes. Announcements are easy. Scripts are easy. Until cameras roll and dates exist, it’s all just vibes and meetings.

🍪 Chip peeks behind the curtain. Nothing there.

One in four developers laid off, and nobody’s pretending it’s over

The 2026 State of the Game Industry report shows that 28 percent of developers were laid off over the past two years. In the U.S., that number reaches 33 percent. Nearly half of those affected are still looking for work.

Employers cite restructuring, market conditions, and project cancellations. Developers point to leadership that chased pandemic-era growth and is now cutting deep to satisfy investors.

🦊 Kiki: This is the part that keeps me up. You can rebrand this however you want, but when it keeps happening year after year, people notice. Experience walks out the door. Teams hollow out. And the people making the calls rarely feel the fallout themselves.

🍪 Chip counts empty desks. Stops.

Stay accountable. When return-to-office mandates come with punishment instead of dialogue, something’s broken.
Keep scrutinizing. Courts, players, and workers are all pulling at the same unanswered questions.
And remember. Trust is easier to lose than rebuild, and no amount of PR can fake it once it’s gone.

🦊 Kiki · 🍪 Chip · ⭐ Byte · 🦁 Leo