Pixel P&L: NODWIN Gaming Seeks $100M Pre-IPO Round

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:

• NODWIN Gaming is raising $100 million pre-IPO as it pivots from esports operator to youth media business.

• S8UL and GodLike join the Esports World Cup 2026's $20 million Club Partner Program, making GodLike the second Indian org at EWC.

• Disney executives are pushing to fully acquire Epic Games following Fortnite's rough 2025.

• TSMC is booked out through 2028, with AI giants crowding out GPU capacity.

• France's largest consumer group is suing Ubisoft over The Crew shutdown, and a 1.3 million-signature petition is backing them up.

Let's get into it.

NODWIN Gaming Seeks $100 Million Pre-IPO Raise as It Repositions Beyond Esports

NODWIN Gaming is raising approximately $100 million in a pre-IPO round as the company repositions itself from an esports operator to a youth media business, cofounder Akshat Rathee told Inc42.

The capital will go toward IP expansion and monetisation rather than geographic growth. NODWIN already operates in over 22 countries, with a concentration across the Global South.

The company reported revenue of Rs. 261 crore ($30.4 million) in Q3 FY26, up 1.6x year-on-year, and swung to a INR 40 crore profit from a Rs. 8.3 crore loss a year earlier. It is targeting EBITDA-level profitability by FY26 close.

NODWIN's IPO timeline remains open. Rathee said the company is working through readiness tracks covering financials, governance, board composition, and investor demand simultaneously. "If it takes three months, it takes three months. If it takes eleven, so be it," he said.

S8UL, GodLike Join Esports World Cup 2026's $20 Million Club Partner Program

S8UL and GodLike Esports have been selected for the Esports Foundation's 2026 Club Partner Program, making GodLike the second Indian organization to join the initiative after S8UL debuted in it last year. The two clubs are among 40 selected globally for the $20 million annual program, which offers individual clubs up to $1 million in funding alongside marketing and strategic support ahead of the Esports World Cup 2026.

The program, now in its third year, has distributed over $100 million across clubs since its 2023 launch. In 2025, participating clubs generated 330 million campaign views and engaged 10 million fans across 370 initiatives.

EWC 2026 runs in Riyadh from July 6 to August 23, featuring a $75 million prize pool across 24 titles with over 2,000 players and 200 clubs. The Club Championship alone carries a $30 million purse.

S8UL competed at EWC 2025 in Apex Legends, Chess, and EA FC. GodLike, built primarily on mobile esports, will make its EWC debut this year.

⚡️Quick Bytes

Disney Eyes Full Acquisition of Epic Games as Fortnite Stumbles

Senior Disney executives are pushing to acquire Fortnite developer Epic Games, according to tech reporter Alex Heath (via IGN), following the company's $1.5 billion investment in Epic. The interest comes as Epic laid off 1,000 staff last week after a sustained drop in Fortnite engagement through 2025. New CEO Josh D'Amaro is expected to move aggressively on gaming this year.

TSMC Sold Out Through 2028, With Future Fabs Already Booked

Nvidia's next-generation GPUs face a capacity crunch after TSMC booked out its entire order schedule through 2028. AI customers including Google and Amazon have crowded out available capacity on the N2 node, with reservations for TSMC's fourth Arizona plant closed before construction has begun. Cheaper graphics cards are unlikely anytime soon.

FTC Warns Payment Giants Over Debanking Practices

The Federal Trade Commission warned Mastercard, Visa, PayPal, and Stripe that denying customers access to financial services could trigger federal investigations. The move follows a 2025 dispute in which payment processors cited Mastercard policy to force Valve to remove adult games from Steam. The FTC's letter specifically told Mastercard it cannot allow its network members to enforce such removals.

Warhorse Studios Reportedly Working on Lord of the Rings Game

Warhorse Studios, maker of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, may be developing a new Lord of the Rings open-world RPG, according to claims from a Polish industry veteran on a recent podcast. The project, reportedly codenamed "Revenge Studios," is said to be backed by roughly $100 million from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office.

France's UFC-Que Choisir Sues Ubisoft Over The Crew Shutdown

France's largest consumer association filed suit against Ubisoft for permanently disabling The Crew after server shutdown in March 2024, leaving paying customers with an unplayable product and no refund. The case is backed by Stop Killing Games, a European consumer movement that submitted over 1.3 million signatures to the European Commission last month.

⚔️Side Quest

🤣Laugh:

📺 Watch: The founders of Dispatch on the Game Business podcast is a great post-mortem on how a game actually gets made and sold against every piece of conventional wisdom. Michael Trong and Nick Herman spent seven years being told comedies don't sell in games, episodic formats are dead, and that two writers and two directors founding a studio is a non-starter. Four million copies and nine BAFTA nominations later, they explain how they self-published with no prior experience, why they'd never go back to a traditional publisher, and how seven years of conference attendance and relationship-building turned out to be the actual infrastructure that made it work.

🎮 Play: After one world of Super Meat Boy 3D, it's already clear this is much better than Super Meat Boy Forever. The levels are short and tight, the bandage locations actually feel worth hunting, and the jump to 3D doesn't break what made the originals work. 

📚 Read: Solo developer James Patton broke down the first month of Duskpunk. 1,500 units, 91% positive, and a break-even point he won't hit for two years. The most useful part is his conclusion on whether the Citizen Sleeper-like is a viable genre: yes, but only if a grant, publisher, or existing audience is covering the gap between what these games cost and what Steam will naturally push them to.

💡Did You Know

Activision's cofounders once made a game where the entire objective was raising and lowering Venetian blinds. Built for the Atari 2600, the joke title was a dig at Atari, which had sued Activision over its use of the "Venetian blind" coding technique, a method that alternated which objects were drawn each frame to squeeze more sprites onto screen than the hardware officially supported. Activision's founders, several of whom had left Atari before starting the company, responded with a playable punchline. The lawsuit itself was part of a broader legal battle over whether game developers could publish independently of console manufacturers.

📜 Quote of the Day

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