Pixel P&L: Esports Nations Cup Expands Ahead of 2026 Debut

Welcome to another Pixel P&L edition. This issue takes 5 minutes to read. If you only have one, here are the 5 most important things:

• Esports Nations Cup adds Chess.com, Moonton Games and SNK as publishing partners ahead of its 2026 Riyadh debut.

• Flutter Entertainment cuts 350 jobs at Junglee Games following India's real-money gaming ban.

• FX orders Far Cry series with Rob McElhenney and Noah Hawley bringing Ubisoft's franchise to streaming.

• Steam's top-selling games cluster below $25, challenging traditional AAA pricing strategies.

• Rockstar's mass firings reportedly stemmed from employees discussing Slack policy changes in external Discord.

Let's get into it.

Esports Nations Cup Adds Three Publishing Partners Ahead of 2026 Launch

The Esports World Cup Foundation announced Chess.com, Moonton Games and SNK as publishing partners for its inaugural Esports Nations Cup, joining founding partners Krafton, Electronic Arts, Tencent and Ubisoft.

The tournament, scheduled for November 2026 in Riyadh, will feature national teams competing across multiple games in both team and individual formats. Future editions will rotate host cities biennially.

All seven publishers will design qualification pathways and competition formats for their respective titles, while founding partners will help structure the overall tournament framework. The EWCF plans to release additional details in coming years.

The Nations Cup aims to complement the organization's flagship Esports World Cup by creating country-based competition and incentivizing organizations to develop national rosters. CEO Ralf Reichert said the publisher partnerships would create a "player-centric" event allowing competitors to represent their countries.

The foundation indicated the qualification system will provide broad participation opportunities across all featured games, with teams representing every major region eligible to compete.

Flutter Entertainment Cuts 350 Jobs at India's Junglee Games Following Real Money Gaming Ban

Flutter Entertainment laid off 350 employees at Junglee Games and redeployed 600 others following India's ban on online real-money gaming, the company told Moneycontrol.

The global firm is exploring opportunities to reassign affected employees to other regulated markets and developing alternative business models compliant with India's revised legal framework. A company spokesperson said impacted employees received generous severance packages.

Flutter took a $556 million impairment charge in Q3 2025 tied to Junglee Games halting its real-money gaming operations in August. The shutdown contributed to Flutter posting a $789 million net loss for the quarter, though overall revenue grew 17 percent to $3.79 billion. The company's Indian operations were projected to generate $200 million in revenue and $50 million in adjusted EBITDA for 2025.

Other real-money gaming operators including Gameskraft, Mobile Premier League and Games24x7 have announced similar workforce reductions following the regulatory changes.

⚡️Quick Bytes

FX Orders Far Cry Series With Rob McElhenney and Noah Hawley

FX ordered a Far Cry limited series to stream on Hulu domestically and Disney+ internationally, with Rob McElhenney starring and executive producing alongside Noah Hawley. The Ubisoft franchise adaptation will follow Far Cry's anthology format, featuring new settings and characters each season. McElhenney, Hawley and Ubisoft Film & Television previously collaborated on Apple TV+'s Mythic Quest. Far Cry has attracted over 100 million players since 2004.

Steam's Top-Selling Games Cluster Below $25 Price Point

Popular PC games are selling at significantly lower prices than console titles, according to data from GameDiscoverCo newsletter analyzing Steam sales from February 2023 onward. The median price for successful PC games fell between $10 and $20, while top revenue-generating titles clustered around $20 to $23, contrasting sharply with typical console AAA releases priced at $69.99. Recent hits follow this pattern: extraction shooter Arc Raiders launched at $39.99, narrative game Dispatch at $29.99, and mega-hit Peak at $7.99. Even anticipated sequel Hollow Knight: Silksong released at $19.99 despite extended development. GameDiscoverCo suggests games without established franchises struggle to compete above $25 on PC. The trend coincides with declining overall gaming spending since the pandemic, while console game prices continue rising toward potential $80-$100 price points.

Report: Rockstar Firings Stemmed From External Discussion of Slack Policy Changes

Rockstar Games' recent termination of 34 employees for "gross misconduct" was triggered by staff discussing Slack policy changes in an external Discord server, according to People Make Games. The Discord, created in 2022 for unionization discussions with Independent Workers of Great Britain representatives, was used to share internal emails about Slack channel closures after UK employees couldn't access work email remotely. An employee reportedly alerted management about the external discussions, prompting an investigation into the server.

⚔️Side Quest

🤣Laugh:

📺 Listen: GameMakers explores why most game validation either gets skipped or wastes resources on ineffective academic testing. The episode introduces the Pyramid Decision Model for balancing tastemaker vision against player data, covers five critical validation failures, and provides stage-specific frameworks from pre-production through launch to accelerate meaningful product decisions.

🎮 Play: Warhammer 40,000: Speed Freeks is pure chaos with near-perfect team-based combat racing. Easy to learn, hard to master, with stellar WH40K atmosphere and weapon sounds. Criminally underrated, absurdly fun, and authentically metal. Needs more players. 

📚 Read: ‘How to Market Games’ analyzes Steam's "Great Conjunction" cycle where explosive new genres create temporary indie opportunities before big studios dominate. Currently, friend-slop, horror variants, idle games, and simulators are in Phase 3 with audiences hungry for variants before polished competition arrives. Zukowski urges quick action, noting smaller devs can still define genre mechanics before market windows close within 6-12 months.

💡Did You Know

Blizzard was tricked into making StarCraft a AAA game. Originally planned as a modest project, StarCraft's development trajectory changed dramatically at E3 1996 when an impressive demo of competitor Dominion: Storm Over Gift 3 completely outshone it. Concerned about being overshadowed, Blizzard decided to overhaul StarCraft entirely, transforming it into a much larger, more ambitious production. The twist? Dominion's stunning demo was actually a pre-animated fake, not real gameplay. This deception inadvertently pushed Blizzard to create one of the most influential real-time strategy games in history, dominating esports for decades and defining the RTS genre.

📜 Quote of the Day

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