About this episode

The episode discusses major developments in the gaming industry, including acquisitions, layoffs, and the decline of VC funding.

Supercell absorbs Merge Mansion, Xbox fires its veterans and hires from Instacart, and the math behind gaming's VC collapse finally gets laid out in full. In this episode of TWIG, Mishka is joined by Josh Chandley, John Wright, and Ethan Levy to break down the biggest moves in games this week, from Finland's most beloved merge studio quietly running out of road to why gaming VC funding has dropped 95% since 2021. Topics Covered: ● Supercell acquires Metacore and why a profitable $30M a month game still couldn't survive ● What the 70% layoffs tell us about liveops competition and the limits of celebrity UA campaigns ● Xbox replaces 24-year veterans with Instacart execs, and whether growth engineering can fix a content problem ● GameStop bids for eBay with no synergy pitch and why the meme stock era never really ended ● Roblox voluntarily takes a billion dollar hit on bookings and why it might be the smartest long-term bet in the room ● The math that broke gaming VC funding, from $12.5B in 2021 to $627M in H1 2025 and what founders should do instead CHAPTERS: 00:00 Cold Open Jail Joke 00:11 Meet the Hosts 01:47 Episode Headlines 02:21 Theme Park Mario Talk 03:13 Line Monetization…

People in this episode

Host: Mishka

Guests: Josh Chandley, John Wright, Ethan Levy

Topics covered

• gaming acquisitions
• layoffs in gaming
• gaming VC funding
• Xbox leadership changes
• Roblox financial strategies
• liveops competition

Keywords

• Merge Mansion
• Supercell
• Xbox layoffs
• gaming VC
• Roblox bookings
• GameStop
• Instacart

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Supercell, Merge Mansion, Xbox, Instacart, GameStop, eBay, Roblox, Metacore

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