5 Video Game Things I Learned | 2026 August 1 - August 7

Lots of business talk to start off August, 2026, partially thanks to 2026 Q2 reports coming out. We have the privatization of major publishers like Devolver Digital and Electronic Arts, as well as huge business moves by Netflix to insert themselves into the industry to hopefully re-spark interest in cloud gaming. GTA VI gets a couple of headlines this week, including some record-breaking pre-order numbers. Unity has historic figures of their own to share. Meanwhile, Roblox sinks to new lows as a public company.

Devolver Digital Goes Private (Maybe)

Devolver Digital’s short-lived stint as a publicly traded company could be coming to an end very soon with board members deciding it would be best to buy back the company. Shareholders will vote on the matter on September 8, 2026. Assuming the motion passes, Devolver Digital returns to private ownership on September 16, 2026.

While I’m not a business expert by any means, I personally applaud the board for coming to this decision. In the current landscape of video games, it’s hard to maintain growth, something that public companies are expected to do consistently and unwaveringly. However, I don’t need to be a business expert to tell you that growth isn’t always a reliable indicator of company success or health. The minds at Devolver apparently agree, with a spokesperson telling GamesIndustry.biz that “the requirements of the public market… have nothing to do with being a successful game publisher.” No dissent from me. While those two interests can no doubt intersect or even appear to correlate on occasion, I doubt any direct relationship or even consistent correlation can be derived.

I don’t think Devolver will have any trouble passing this motion seeing as the company’s stock is down the tubes. From the company’s initial public offering (IPO) in November of 2021 through July of 2026, the stock decreased in value roughly 91.5%. Its market cap has gone from $950 million down to $46.63 million.

However, to support my and Devolver’s aforementioned opinions on the needs of the public market vs. successful game publishing, since going public, Devolver has produced some quite popular indie games like Weird West, Card Shark, Cult of the Lamb, Return to Monkey Island, The Talos Principle 2, The Plucky Squire, Neva, Ball x Pit, and Skate Story. And this is just a small subset of their overall portfolio over that time.

The games I listed alone have an average Metacritic score of 83.5 and estimated cumulative gross Steam revenue (according to estimates on Gamalytic) of $116.4 million. Although, to be fair, Cult of the Lamb is doing a lot of the heavy lifting, accounting for over half of that gross revenue. However, I still feel it underscores the company’s ability to identify and market quality games. $116.4 million is just the estimated revenue from Steam for games I listed. In that time, Devolver of course continues to bring in revenue from other platforms, games in their portfolio from before going public, and more than 40 other games released since going public.

Devolver has was it takes to be a successful video game publishing company, and it’s proven that many times over the years. I think going private will only serve to further fuel that success.

Electronic Arts Goes Private

Sort of burying the lead here. I wanted to start with something a little further under the radar. This is the hot ticket item from this week, though. Electronic Arts is now privately owned as of close of trading on August 4, 2026 for the first time since March 26, 1990.

The deal, initially announced in September, 2025, sees Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners take private ownership of EA at stakes of 93.4%, 5.5%, and 1.1% respectively. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Silver Lake and Affinity Partners are essentially just kicking in money upfront and taking money as EA earns it. EA is now a Saudi Arabia-owned company.

It’s tremendously important to mention that this is a leveraged buyout. Reportedly, EA walks away from this with $18 billion in liabilities that it must repay, and repayments include an estimated $1.8 billion in interest per year. In order to pay these debts, EA plans to cut about $700 million per year of spending. Naturally, the biggest cost to any games organization is labor. This savings will almost certainly be accomplished by cutting jobs, and cutting $700 million worth of jobs is a volume on the level of entire projects or even studios.

Reports have sprung forth of EA naturally wanting to explore selling studios. Selling studios keeps some jobs intact while giving EA extra money in addition to its annual savings, so all sides are highly incentivized to drop studios through sales instead of closures. One studio in particular that is rumored to be for sale is BioWare, a studio that has underperformed consistently for nearly a decade and a half. EA could also look to sell individual IPs and franchises.

GTA VI Pre-Orders Going Better Than Expected

There’s truly not much to this story other than the fact that a Take-Two Interactive earnings call took place August 7, during which CEO Strauss Zelnick called the pre-order numbers for Grand Theft Auto VI “exceptional,” “astonishing,” and “unprecedented.” However, he refused to share actual numbers, stating that he and the company “just don’t know how it’ll translate into sales.” The idea is that it’s hard to pin down just how many of the potential week-one sales are contained in these pre-orders. Let’s say the game is already at 10 million pre-orders. Is that going to account for 80% of week-one sales? 50%? 10%? It’s just too hard to say.

Regardless, the numbers must be high, if Zelnick is to be believed. Take-Two and Rockstar are no strangers to the fact that this is the most anticipated video game release of all time. For Zelnick to use such surprised wording regarding the pre-orders can only indicate that we’re headed for unfathomable sales that will likely break first-week, first-month, and first-year records. As if GTA VI wasn’t already poised to do so.

Roblox Stock Drops 70%

Roblox has been through such a ride since I played it as a child: experiencing incredible growth through COVID along with the rest of the industry, going public in 2021, being at the forefront of controversies involving the company’s lack of protections for the minors who are the game’s primary audience, and criticism over the company’s approach to compensating creators on their platform. What once was a company beloved for its unique and fun social gameplay in my eyes is now a hotbed of greed and shady business practices.

And it now seems possible that Roblox shareholders were anxious for an excuse to drop the company. Q2 2026 reports for Roblox put the company’s bookings 2% lower than expected, and in response, between the end of trading on July 30, 2026 and 1 -2 hours following the start of trading on July 31, 2026, the company’s stock experienced a steep decline from roughly $48.50 per share to less than $35 per share. This culminated in a cumulative drop of roughly 70% in Roblox’s share prices compared to 2025’s peak.

According to Naveen Chopra, Roblox CFO, one of the contributing factors is a lack of viral games on its platform compared to 2025. More specifically, “We attribute the unforeseen monetization shortfall to a greater-than-expected shift of engagement from high monetizing 2025 vintage viral games to a combination of new and evergreen experiences with lower hourly monetization.“ Chopra calls out the “under 13 cohorts” as a particular demographic that Roblox had a harder time squeezing money out of this past quarter. Revenue for Q3 is expected to take an additional 14%-18% hit as well. Roblox’s daily active users are at about 123 million according to recently released numbers, a significant decrease from a 152 million-player peak in 2025.

Unity Has Best Quarter Ever

Quite the contrary to Roblox, Unity reported a record-breaking quarter. Since becoming a public company, no quarter at Unity has been better according to CEO Matt Bromberg who took over the position in May 2024. Year-over-year, revenue increased 24% to $546 million and net losses decreased by 78.5%. This was largely driven by Grow Solutions. Supposedly, Vector AI is to thank for this, an artificial intelligence agent built with the intention of “[connecting] the right players with the right games” through more accurate targeted advertising. The Vector AI page on the Unity website boasts “15-20% approsimate increase in installs,” and “up to 20% Increase in acquired players’ spend on in-app purchases.” However, it’s worth noting that this is based on March 2025 data that is specific to iOS.

It’s hard to know how I should feel about this. As a Unity developer, I enjoy when Unity succeeds as a company, furthering the company’s ability to improve its engine and maintain its strong place in the market. I don’t love the way it’s happened, though. It seems to me that this corporate success is coming via embracing some of the most hated things across the gaming community: microtransactions, intrusive advertising, and AI datacenters. It’s a similar dilemma that you face at the grocery store if you’ve ever desperately wanted to get some steak to cook up that night but had that nagging thought in the back of your mind wondering how well the cows were treated before being slaughtered. Do you simply put your head down and eat your steak, or do you take a moral stance at the expense of your favorite meal?

1-Up: Netflix Connects With Rockstar and Unity

Netflix has had a particularly interesting week. First, Unity announced that it would be bringing direct Netflix support to its engine. Then, we have Rockstar coming out and announcing that the next GTA VI trailer will release on August 27, 2026, at 3:00 PM EST… but there’s one catch: it will be exclusively available on Netflix for the first six hours.

Netflix is having a huge 2026 in video games.

It’s very clear now that Netflix and Unity struck up some kind of deal behind the scenes. Recently, Unhinged, a short horror game made by the developers of Oxenfree using Unity, was released exclusively to Netflix. Now, with Unity announcing its direct support for the platform, it’s hard to ignore.

Netflix and Rockstar also struck up a deal, and with this particular one, I personally think it’s pretty obvious which direction the money went. I don’t believe Rockstar stands to gain a lot by putting their GTA VI trailer on Netflix for its first six hours of existence. Especially because before Rockstar can do much about it, it’s going to appear on YouTube for anybody to watch a hundred times over. They might reach some more potential players, but I think that number is a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile, Netflix has everything to gain. Netflix so obviously wants to be a large player in the video game space, and by hosting the next trailer for the biggest video game release ever, they’re putting everyone on notice that Netflix is in the video game business. They also will be driving tons of players to their platform where many of them will be seeing ads, might decide to watch something else shortly after the trailer, and/or may be convinced to hold onto their subscriptions in anticipation of future video game trailer exclusive releases. I think Netflix is spending a lot of money this year to increase the awareness of their emerging place in the industry, and so far, I think it’s working.