Pixel P&L: Riot restructures VALORANT Champions Tour with 16-city circuit from 2027

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:

• Riot Games is overhauling the VALORANT Champions Tour from 2027, replacing fixed leagues with a 16-city, 20-event circuit.

• Hazelight Studios crosses 50 million total sales, with It Takes Two alone hitting 30 million.

• Sony quietly pulled titles from three more publishers off the PlayStation Store, following similar removals two weeks prior.

• Gunzilla Games staff allege unpaid salaries going back to October 2025, five months without pay for some.

• An Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake is reportedly days away from announcement, with a summer release window.

Let's get into it.

Riot Overhauls VCT Structure for 2027, Opens Partner Applications

Riot Games will restructure the VALORANT Champions Tour beginning in 2027, replacing its fixed league format with a tournament-based circuit spanning 16 cities and more than 20 events annually. The company opened applications Wednesday for a new two-year partnership cycle.

The revamped system introduces open qualification for Masters and Champions, giving any team a performance-based path to global events regardless of partner status. Regional "Cups" will replace traditional seasonal splits as the primary qualification rounds, with competition rotating across cities rather than anchored to fixed hubs like Los Angeles.

Riot is retaining a partner tier with guaranteed payments, performance bonuses, and digital goods revenue. The company said it distributed over $86 million to partner teams in 2025. Non-partnered teams can exceed partner earnings through prize pools, which will total more than $6 million annually.

Leo Faria, Riot's global head of VALORANT esports, said the changes are intended to make competition less predictable and accessible to more organizations worldwide.

It Takes Two Drives Hazelight Studios Past 50 Million Sales

Hazelight Studios, the Swedish developer behind local co-op titles A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction, has surpassed 50 million total game sales across its catalog.

The breakdown tells the more interesting story. Split Fiction, released last year, accounts for 7 million copies. A Way Out, the studio's 2018 debut, has sold 13 million. But It Takes Two, the 2021 co-op platformer, leads by a wide margin at 30 million copies sold, comparable to Pokémon Scarlet & Violet's roughly 28 million and Elden Ring's 30 million.

The figures exclude Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, directed by Hazelight founder Josef Fares at Starbreeze Studios before Hazelight was established, though the studio lists it on its site given staff overlap.

"Your love and support keeps us going and we can't wait to show you our fourth game," the studio said on X. Hazelight confirmed earlier this year that a new project is in development; details have not been disclosed.

⚡️Quick Bytes

Sony Removes More Publishers from PlayStation Store

Sony has pulled all titles from GOGAME Console Publisher, VRCFORGE Studios, and Welding Byte from the PlayStation Store, PSNProfiles forum users first reported. The removals, effective April 2, follow similar delistings of Nostra Games and CGI LAB two weeks prior. Affected titles include Jesus Simulator, Cat Life Simulator, and I Am Busy Digging a Hole. Most remain available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

MLB The Show 26 Tops US Downloads; Crimson Desert Leads Europe

MLB The Show 26 led PS5 downloads in the US and Canada in March, while Crimson Desert claimed the top spot in Europe and placed in the top three stateside. Resident Evil Requiem, WWE 2K26, and ARC Raiders featured prominently across both regions. The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin topped free-to-play charts in the US and EU. Beat Saber led PS VR2 downloads in both regions.

Gunzilla Games Employees Allege Months of Unpaid Wages

Current and former Gunzilla Games staff have taken to LinkedIn alleging unpaid salaries stretching back as far as October 2025. One senior QA engineer claims five months without pay, with the CEO reportedly promising payment before cutting his access without settling the debt. The studio, which makes the free-to-play battle royale Off the Grid, has conducted multiple layoffs over the past year amid financial difficulties.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Remake Reportedly Set for April 16 Announcement

Ubisoft is expected to announce Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced on April 16, according to Insider Gaming. Internal documentation seen by the outlet places the game's release in Q2 FY2027, spanning June through August, with some sources pointing to July. Ubisoft is counting on Black Flag Resynced and an upcoming Ghost Recon title to stabilize its finances this fiscal year.

⚔️Side Quest

🤣Laugh:

📺 Watch: Flat2VR CEO Jasmine Uniza on why porting existing flat-screen games to VR makes more financial sense than building from scratch, and what that looks like in practice. She also has the clearest breakdown you'll hear of the three VR platforms right now: Meta is saturated and unpredictable, Steam shows up hard for the right game and ignores everything else, and PSVR2 has a smaller but unusually vocal and loyal audience that actually follows through on purchases.

🎮 Play: TR-49 is a text-based puzzler that sits closer to Her Story than Obra Dinn: no logical leaps required, just careful reading and cross-referencing scraps of information through a notebook interface that takes some getting used to. The story is strange enough to keep you digging. If you want something that rewards patience and attention over cleverness, this scratches that itch without overstaying its welcome.

📚 Read: Deconstructor of Fun breaks down what actually drives success on Roblox, using WonderWorks as the case study.

💡Did You Know

Nintendo Switch cartridges are deliberately coated to taste terrible? When the Switch launched in 2017, players quickly discovered the cartridges had a sharp, lingering bitterness after a wave of curiosity-licking spread online. The culprit is Denatonium Benzoate, a non-toxic compound Nintendo confirmed applying to discourage children from swallowing them. History is now repeating itself after a Japanese user compared Switch 2 cartridges to cherry blossom buds currently in season, sending curious players straight to their game libraries for a taste test. The verdict, predictably, was the same: pure disgust.

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