Games Industry News Roundup- November 11th, 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 at the very real and cool Goonhammer newsdesk with the scoop.

Spain and US Teams Tie for Top Spot at World Championships of Warhammer 2025

Credit: Games Workshop

After several days of games between the best players from around the globe, the dust has finally settled, and from the haze not one, but two countries stand triumphant. In a remarkable tie, Team USA and Team Spain both claim the top overall spot for their countries at the 2025 World Championships of Warhammer.

The score for each country is calculated by the performance of the players from each country, accounting not just for best general (though this does weigh heavily into the result), but also awards such as best in faction, best painted, and best overall. In essence, it’s not as much a score of how many events your country podiumed, but a representation of how well its players performed overall, spread out between the 40k, AoS, Kill Team, and Underworlds tournaments. Once the math was done, USA and Spain tied for first with 39 points, France with 36, and Italy with 34.

That being said, both the United States and Spain took home the gold in one of the four events of the WCW. Richard Siegler claimed the top spot for the United States in the Warhammer 40,000 event, leading his Ad Mech to their biggest victory since Siegler's LVO win in 2021, which also clinched him the top spot for that year’s ITC rankings. Fernando Marcos, AKA “Ace”, won the top spot for Spain in Kill Team, leading his Mandrakes on an impressive dark horse run through a heavily Canoptek and Deathwatch meta.

While both Spain and the United States had strong showings for Age of Sigmar and Underworlds, the top spot for those events were claimed by other countries. Jean-Baptiste Aymes won the Age of Sigmar championship for France with his Hedonites of Slaanesh, propelling France into second place in the overall standings. Jaroslaw Kwasniewski took home the World Champion Crown for Denmark for Underworlds with his Wurmspat in a hotly contested title that saw multiple countries neck and neck going into the final day.

The conclusion of the WCW also kicks off the next season of the ITC, and opens up a fresh field of eager players to duke it out over the chance to win a Golden Ticket to next year's Warhammer World Championship, which will once again be held in Atlanta.

Square Enix Hits Western Offices with Massive Layoffs as it Touts Plans to Expand AI Use

I hope everyone had a nice time with that first story, because our second story is a hard left turn onto awful times avenue. Square Enix announced last Thursday that it plans to have most of its QA and debugging work handled by AI by the year 2027, while on the same day telling overseas staff in a video call that it would be undergoing major restructuring of its United States and European offices, constituting layoffs in “nearly all areas”.

According to a report published on the Square Enix website, the restructuring of the overseas offices aims to save the company around 3 billion yen, as well as streamline their development pipeline by centralizing a larger part of their HD game development in Japan. Square Enix laid off 180 workers in its western offices in 2024 to accomplish similar goals, though according to the presentation this first round of cuts did not go deep enough. While it’s currently unknown how many jobs will be at risk due to these layoffs, IGN reports that at least 137 jobs are immediately at risk in the UK based on the news.

“This was an extremely difficult decision, made following careful consideration and analysis by our leadership, in order to best position the Group’s long-term growth,” Square Enix told IGN. “We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the talented team members who will be departing the company for their significant contributions to Square Enix. During this period of transition, we remain committed to treating each individual with the utmost respect and providing extensive support throughout this process.”

This news comes in the same presentation that Square Enix spoke about its plans to partner with the University of Tokyo to utilize AI for 70% of its current QA testing needs by 2027. The initiative is being led by a ten-member team, with members from both Square Enix development staff and University of Tokyo researchers. The company claims that by leaning hard into AI, they will “improve the efficiency of QA operations and establish a competitive advantage in game development”.

Square Enix following through with these plans would be a bold leap forward for video games, as developers would be able to release games at levels of being broken and buggy once thought impossible by the wide-eyed common gamer.

Rockstar Delays GTA 6, Denies Claims of Union Busting

Credit: Rockstar Games/Take Two Interactive

Bad news for anyone who likes unions and also wants to play Grand Theft Auto VI anytime soon: Rockstar Games has doubled-down in its claim that its recent layoffs were not an act of union busting, and announced a delay to Grand Theft Auto VI into winter 2026.

According to leadership at Rockstar Games, the layoff of 30 employees (which we wrote about last week) was in no way related to their pro-union activities, but rather due to their distribution of confidential information online.

In a statement to Bloomberg, Rockstar wrote, “We took action against a small number of individuals who were found to be distributing and discussing confidential information in a public forum, a violation of our company policies. This was in no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.”

The Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), who have rallied around the fired employees, refute this, with one spokesperson telling The Independent that “They’ve been fired for exercising their legal rights to speak to each other about their pay and conditions, to build a union in their workplace, to build a fairer, better workplace where the people who build games have a voice in how they’re made.”

This coincided with Rockstar's announcement that Grand Theft Auto VI will be delayed, pushing the date from May 26th, 2026 to November 19th, citing the need to give the team additional time to make sure the game reaches a level of polish that fans “have come to expect and deserve”.

This is the second major delay for the much-anticipated game, which was initially slated to release in May of this year before being bumped back into 2026.

Funko Warns Investors of Potential Financial Ruin

Credit: Funko

Things appear to be grim over at the Funko offices, with their future potentially as dead as the eyes of their pop dolls. According to a recent earnings report given to investors, unless sales trends rapidly correct soon, the company may not have the funds to keep the lights on in the next twelve months.

Funko discloses in the report that they made an amendment on a loan the company took out with JP Morgan Chase bank in July, which waived much of the more stringent requirements on repaying the debt owed to the bank and gave Funko more room to breathe. However, CEO Josh Simon makes it clear the company is not out of the woods yet, and without a major sales increase Funko won’t have the money to pay all its debts over the following months.

Funko currently owes around $241 million in loan debt, and has seen sales of its ubiquitous Funko Pop vinyl collectibles sag over recent years. The kiss of death for Funko ultimately came from Trump’s Tariffs on imported goods, as Pops are largely manufactured overseas like many other toys.

According to the earnings report, Funko plans to increase sales by introducing mystery boxes with smaller Pop figures, called “Bitty Pops”, for purchase at major retail chains, as well as the expected shot in the arm from upcoming Stranger Things and Wicked tie-in Pop figures.

Catan Announces Partnership With Minnesota Timberwolves

Credit: Asmodee/Minnesota Timberwolves

This week’s roundup has been a little heavy, so let's send it off on a weird one.

It’s no secret that Asmodee’s current business strategy of acquisition and expansion is aggressive enough to make Napoleon blush, but even knowing this the company is still finding ways to make surprising deals in the name of pushing its brands. Asmodee revealed that Catan is crossing into a new frontier of board game partnership: professional sports teams.

Asmodee, whose global headquarters are located in Minnesota, announced that Catan is teaming up with the Minnesota Timberwolves, a major NBA team, to bring “interactive concourse activations” to Timberwolves home games. This season, Timberwolves fans will have the opportunity to participate in games and activities based on Catan at the Timberwolves stadium, with these games designed to reflect the spirit and strategy of their namesake game. These games will even have Catan based prizes for participants to take home with them.

The partnership will also focus on community outreach in Minnesota, though the specifics of these activities are still unknown.

The partnership with the Timberwolves is the most recent in Asmodee's push to expand Catan’s brand, with the company finalizing a deal with Netflix to create new TV shows and movies based on the board game IP.

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