Games Industry News Roundup- February 17th, 2026

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 at the very real and cool Goonhammer newsdesk with the scoop.

Barcelona to Host the 2026 World Championships of Warhammer

Credit: Warhammer Community

After hosting the World Championships of Warhammer (WCW) in the United States since its inception in 2023, Games Workshop is taking the event to Europe, announcing that the 2026 WCW will take place in Barcelona, Spain.

“Taking place from the 3rd to the 6th of December, the World Championships of Warhammer will be hosted at the Fira de Barcelona right in the heart of the city,” writes the team on the Warhammer Community page announcing the event. “It’s an even bigger event hall than we’ve used in the past, perfect for the biggest World Championships that we’ve ever hosted.”

The Fire de Barcelona is a considerable upgrade from the previous venue at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta, boasting over 500,000 square meters of event space between it’s two main venue halls. To go along with the new venue, Games Workshop intends to extend more Golden Tickets out to qualifying events.

Alongside the country and venue change comes a date change for this year's WCW, which has traditionally been held during November. For 2026, the team at Games Workshop is pushing back the date to the first weekend of December, holding the WCW between December 3rd to December 6th.

Games Workshop does note that despite the WCW being held in Spain, the official language of the event will be English, writing “Don’t worry if you’re not up to speed on your Spanish – the official language for the events, announcements, and rules packs is English, to accommodate the largest number of players possible from across the globe.”

Last year, Spain tied for first place at the 2025 World Championships of Warhammer with the United States, and Spanish player (and Goonhammer Contributor!) Fernando “Ace” Marcos took home the gold for his home country in the Kill Team event.

At this time, Games Workshop has not made any announcements about any official hotel block plans for the participants in the 2026 WCW.

Highguard Developer Lets Go Most of Staff Weeks After Launch

Credit: Wildlight Games

A wise person once said that history is cyclical in nature, and doomed to repeat itself. As it turns out, history also unfortunately includes Concord, and its disastrous launch last year. Now, the struggling hero shooter curse has passed over to the team behind Highguard, which confirmed on its social media last week that it's laying off most of its staff mere weeks after launch.

“Today we made an incredibly difficult decision to part ways with a number of our team members while keeping a core group of developers to continue innovating on and supporting the game,” Wildlight Games, the development studio behind Highguard, posted to their social media. “We're proud of the team, talent, and the product we've created together. We're also grateful for players who gave the game a shot, and those who continue to be a part of our community.”

Highguard launched on January 26th, 2026, and was first announced at the 2025 Game Awards, with a cinematic trailer in a marquee spot at the end of the awards show. Since then, the game became a magnet for negative discourse online, with one former Wildlight developer, Josh Sobel, remarking on how taken aback he was by the vitriol in a now deleted social media post.

“The hate started immediately. In addition to dogpiling on the trailer, I personally came under fire due to my naïveté on Twitter, which almost all of my now-former coworkers had learned to avoid during their previous game launches. After setting my Twitter account to private to protect my sanity, many content creators made videos and posts about me and my cowardice, amassing millions of views and inadvertently sending hundreds of angry gamers into my replies.”

Sobel doesn’t entirely blame the gaming community at large for the limp launch of Highguard, but noted that “All products are at the whims of the consumers, and the consumers put absurd amounts of effort into slandering Highguard. And it worked.”

Wildlight has not confirmed the exact number of staff remaining to maintain Highguard, and to what extent any upcoming content has been axed for the game.

CMON Raises Much-Needed Capital for Game Development Through Share Sale

Credit: CMON Games

Hey look, some news about CMON that isn’t complete and total doom and gloom!

Following a, to put it mildly, turbulent 2025, CMON is finally making strides in a good direction with the announcement of a successful share sale on the Hong Kong Stock exchange.

The sale folds in six new major shareholders to CMON, with a net profit of around $1.2 million. According to the announcement, CMON intends to use at least half of this infusion of cash towards the development of future games, with another $300 thousand towards marketing and events, and around $150 thousand towards “"normal operation of its sales of board games, miniature war games, and other hobby product business."

The evaluation of CMONs net worth following the sale is also higher than expected, with the value of CMON sitting at around $7.5 million according to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This estimation is around 50% higher than the previous valuation of the company when it tried to unsuccessfully sell shares in 2025.

In its stock exchange statement, CMON did not comment if any of the funds would be used to help deliver on the multiple Kickstarter campaigns that are currently in crowdfunding limbo. CMON is obligated to report further on its financials at the end of this month with its annual financial report, which as of this writing there is no indication that this report will be late again. Last year’s delay in delivering that report was where much of CMON’s trouble began, with the company sending out a profit warning to shareholders that they may report a loss of millions that year, only for their final total to be even larger than the profit warning predicted and sending the company in a financial spiral.

Former SEGA President and Console Pioneer Passes Away

Credit: SEGA

One of video games most influential players and the champion of most of the company’s home console ventures, former SEGA president Hideki Sato, passed away last week.

Sato worked at Sega from 1971 to 2008, eventually stepping into the role as company president from 2001 to 2003. During his time at the company, Sato was placed in charge of SEGA’s research and development division. Though SEGA would bow out of the console wars following tepid releases that couldn’t keep up with Nintendo or Sony’s machines, Sato and his team were still the driving force behind classic home consoles like the SEGA Genesis, Saturn, and Dreamcast in the 1990s.

“His leadership helped lay the foundation of SEGA, and his contributions had a significant and lasting impact on the entire gaming industry,” SEGA wrote in a social media post commemorating the former company president. “We will always remember his contributions to our company, and all of us at SEGA extend our deepest condolences as we honor his memory.”

2025 Was Magic: The Gathering’s “Best Year Ever” According to Hasbro Financial Report

Credit: Wizards of the Coast/Nickelodeon

It’s no secret that 2025 was a banner year for Magic the Gathering, headlined by the release of the Final Fantasy crossover set that shattered sales records for the venerable card game. Hasbro’s annual financial report last week solidified just how wildly successful 2025 was Magic, reporting that the card game was firing on all cylinders in all areas, not just the Final Fantasy set.

According to the report, Magic experienced massive growth in 2025, with a value of $1.7 billion. Alongside the booming profits from Final Fantasy earlier this year, Magic closed out an extremely strong fourth quarter result, revenue figures for Q4 2025 doubling the revenue brought in for the same period in 2024. Much of this is due to the surprisingly strong sales from the Avatar: The Last Airbender crossover set, which Hasbro shared is now the third highest grossing Magic set of all time, behind the Lord of the Rings and Final Fantasy crossover sets.

Hasbro also reports that the strong sales figures correlates to an increase in the size of Magic’s playerbase around the globe, with a 22% increase in organized play attendance and a 20% increase in Wizards Play Network (WPN) partnered stores. Secret Lair also had a very strong year in sales, though exact numbers for this weren’t shared by Hasbro.

In the annual report presentation, COO Gina Goetter stated that she expects Magic to only continue to grow in 206, with a mid single digit profit revenue growth propelled by continued Magic releases, especially with the multiple Universes Beyond collaborations already announced for the year.

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