Here at Goonhammer, we know that it’s hard to keep track of all the news happening all the time in the games industry. So much is always going on with games of all sorts, and their related media, it can be a real blink-and-you’ll miss it situation.
That’s why every week, we round up five of the biggest stories in the gaming sphere from the past week in the Games Industry News Roundup. Our trusty news boy, Dan “Swiftblade” Richardson, is at the very real and cool Goonhammer newsdesk with the scoop.
CMON Sells Two IPs It Purchased in 2024
Another week, another new development in the CMON saga.
After reporting losses of nearly $7 million in the first half of 2025, the very troubled Board Game publisher is selling off two IPs, Hel and Anastyr, after only acquiring them 18 months prior from their previous owner.
CMON bought the two IPS in January of 2024 from Mythic Games, after Mythic announced that it could not fulfill the Kickstarter campaigns for either game due to internal financial troubles. At the time of the sale, the games had raised a combined $3.2 million on the platform. At the time, CMON stated that the games needed a considerable playtesting and redesign process before fulfillment could begin, as the games were “not ready for publication in their current state and will require substantial effort to complete them,” according to a spokesperson from CMON. CMON did offer backers free digital rules for the games they supported, but the physical products they backed would not be deliverable.
Now, it looks like CMON is stuck in the same fiscal nightmare Mythic was, and has sold both IPs to Don’t Panic Games.
“Don’t Panic everyone! We have an important and exciting update on Hel: The Last Saga and Anastyr,” states the CMON press release. “The great team over at Don’t Panic Games have acquired both IPs and will take over the projects from this point forward. We’re confident that they’ll take great care of future development, and look forward to seeing them make these games a reality. Stay tuned on their social media channels for more information soon!”
Don’t Panic Games is primarily known for the French localizations of several popular games, such as Final Girl, Champions of Midgard and Fantasy Realms, as well as publishing a mix of licensed and original games.
Don’t Panic shared its excitement about the acquisition in a statement, writing, “We always had a special fondness for these two exceptional titles, and we were already collaborating with some of the original creators, hence the fact that we have decided to take over these highly anticipated games and make sure they come to existence.”
Don’t Panic has not made any statement about any timeline for the release of these two titles, or the price it paid to buy these two games from CMON.
Sean Astin Elected President of Actors Union
You let him play a guy who plays one down of Notre Dame football, and look what happens. While “Sean! Sean! Sean!” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, one can only imagine that’s the chant the crowd erupted in as Sean Astin was elected as the new President of SAG-AFTRA.
“Now is a time for optimism and creativity,” Astin said in a press release. “I am thrilled that the members have allowed me to lead our storied organization out of this challenging moment and into a future defined by confidence, progress and fierce advocacy.”
Astin won the election with 79% of the vote, according to reporting from AP, defeating his opponent Chuck Slavin. Astin’s running mate, Michelle Hurd, becomes the new secretary-treasurer of the union. Astin is the second member of his family to take on this role, as his mother, Patty Duke, served as the president of the union from 1985 to 1988.
Astin takes the reins of SAG-AFTRA following a very active period for the union. His predecessor Fran Drescher oversaw two separate actors strikes during her term, from the wide scale strike of actors in 2023 to the smaller but still-impactful voice actors strike that began in 2024 and ended this summer. Both of these strikes placed the role of AI technology in the acting world front and center, and it’s very likely that this will continue to be a major issue Astin will need to grapple with in the coming years.
SCP Board Game Returns to Kickstarter After 2021 Cancellation
It’s rare that a game, or any crowdfunding endeavor, gets a second chance after a failed kickstarter, but it looks like SCP The Boardgame: Confidential Crisis is getting a new campaign on Gamefound following its cancellation in 2021.
The game is based on the SCP wiki, a collaborative universe that details the efforts of a secret organization’s efforts to document and contain various anomalous entities that tend to be very dangerous to the health and wellbeing of anyone who comes in contact with them. Since the SCP wiki is not owned by a singular person or company, but is instead open for anyone to contribute to, fans have adapted the stories to various forms of media outside the original website. Most notable of these is the video game Containment Breach, which is directly based on the SCP universe and quickly became a hit on Steam in the years since its 2012 release.
In Confidential Crisis, players will take the role of high ranking members of the SCP organization after one of their research sites has been breached by an unknown entity. The council of players must then work together to identify the threat and find the best way to stop it, while dealing with the damage and potential released SCPs that it causes.
Confidential Crisis will be the first SCP board game if it releases, though that road has been a rocky one. The game, by the Hong Kong based DigDeep, first came to Kickstarter in 2021 to quick success, raising over $10 thousand with a stated goal of $1.2 thousand. However, the campaign was cancelled by DigDeep following criticism from backers, with the promise of a later relaunch.
The new campaign for Confidential Crisis took to Gamefound instead of Kickstarter, and has already raised nearly $80 thousand at time of writing.
Ghost of Yotei Developer Fired for Social Media Post
According to reporting from Kotaku, online harassment from right wing groups online recently resulted in the firing of a Sucker Punch employee from the Ghosts of Yotei team.
The employee, Drew Harrison, made a joke on her social media page regarding the death of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk, writing, “I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back.” This post quickly generated traction and heat in right wing circles online, launching a large-scale campaign to have her fired for her remarks. According to Harrison, Sucker Punch was inundated with emails and phone calls demanding that she be fired for her remarks. 24 hours after the campaign started, Sony made the decision to fire her from Sucker Punch.
Sony declined to provide any additional details regarding Harrison’s firing to Kotaku when pressed, only stating that, “Drew Harrison is no longer an employee of Sucker Punch Productions.”
Ghosts of Yotei has long been the target for hate online, with the game drawing extreme heat from the worst people you know when it announced its female protagonist would be voiced by Erika Ishii. Since then it’s been a lightning rod for hate campaigns and anti-DEI groups, who claim the game is already “woke” and should be boycotted. Harrison being removed from the company by Sony is the first time that these efforts have resulted in the loss of someone’s job however, and sets a troubling precedent for the already tenuous job security employees in the games industry.
Nintendo Patents Summoning Creatures to Battle
Nintendo’s legal team is, to put it mildly, notoriously aggressive when it comes to copyright and the protection of its own IP, though its most recent copyright is bizarre even by those standards. According to reporting from Games Fray, Nintendo has filed patent 12,403,397 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the concept of game characters summoning other characters to fight for them in battle.
This patent, which went into effect at midnight on September 9th, specifically aims to patent the model for summoning creatures for battle as seen in Pokemon, one of Nintendo’s flagship game series. The wording of the patent itself however allows for Nintendo to potentially litigate a wide number of games that use mechanics even remotely similar to the ones seen in Pokemon, such as summoning skeletons with magic in an RPG or using summons in a Final Fantasy game.
Games Fray breaks down what could constitute a violation of this patent, writing that “So, step by step, if a game does all of the following, then Nintendo could start an infringement lawsuit (whether they would win is another question, but it’s bad enough that they would have a starting point for it):
(1) There must be a PC, console or other computing device and the game is stored on a drive or similar storage medium.
(2) You can move a character in a virtual space.
(3) You must be able to summon a character. They call it a “sub character” by which they mean it’s not the player character, but, for example, a little monster such as a Pokémon that the player character has at its disposal.
Then the logic branches out, with items (4) and (5) being mutually exclusive scenarios, before reuniting again in item (6):
(4) This is about summoning the “sub character” in a place where there already is another character that it will then (when instructed to do so) fight.
(5) This alternative scenario is about summoning the “sub character” at a position where there is no other character to fight immediately.
(6) This final step is about sending the “sub character” in a direction and then letting an automatic battle ensue with another character. It is not clear whether this is even needed if one previously executed step (4) where the “sub character” will basically be thrown at another character.”
While there’s no official confirmation as per the reasoning behind this patent, it’s very likely that Nintendo took this legal action to further its litigation against Palworld, the popular game that uses many of the same mechanics and styles as Pokemon does. What this new patent means for the future of Palworld is currently unclear, as Nintendo has yet to use it in any official way against Pocketpair.
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