Daily Briefing, Monday 7th December 2020

Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of the Bellular Daily Briefing - your trusty source for industry news

Activision sue Netflix for poaching former CFO

Spencer Neumann left Activision amid unclear circumstances in December 2018 after just 18 months with the company, despite being contracted until at least April 2020 - he took up his post in Netflix a month later.

• Activision are accusing Netflix of intentionally influencing Neumann to break contract - and are seeking injunctive relief to prevent Netflix from poaching any more Activision staff. Netflix have a bit of a reputation for poaching talent, Fox and Viacom have both been rumbled, so it'll be interesting to see where this goes.

Neil Druckmann gets a promotion

The Last of Us writer and director has been promoted to co-president of Naughty Dog, having spent three years as vice president  - the promotion comes in recognition of the influence Druckmann has had on Naughty Dog's recent successes.

• A few other promotions were announced at the same company meeting - Alison Mori (formerly director of operations) and Christian Gyrling (formerly co-director of programming) have both been promoted to vice presidents of at the studio.

"Tremendous amount" of free content coming to Call of Duty

Activision have stated that Call of Duty recorded its strongest ever November this year, both in terms of monthly active players and hours played - net bookings are up over 80% and units sold are up over 40%

• With 200m registered players and $3bn in revenue over this past year Call of Duty is flying high and, to celebrate Activision have confirmed they're busy developing a "continuous pipeline featuring a tremendous amount of free, post-launch content and events across the franchise.

Starbreeze have paid off the bulk of their creditors

The Payday developer have paid most of their supplier creditors, as well as a chunk of money owed to financial services group Nordea. All that remains is the rest of that Nordea debt, as well the remnants of a convertible bond with Digital Bros.

• The embattled developer and publisher faced completed insolvency just two years ago and spent a year in reconstruction to reduce losses and debts - it's good to see Starbreeze starting to gain some momentum again.

Paradox CEO doesn't expect Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 any time soon

Paradox boss Ebba Ljungerud has said that the much-anticipated and much-delayed title likely won't release during the first half of 2021 - due to a combination of pandemic pressures, staff departures, and the decision to adapt the game for next-gen consoles.

• Bloodlines 2 has a turbulent time of it this year - suffering a number of delays this year and some very high-profile staff departures. Only time will tell whether we'll see the game at all next year.

That's everything for today - join us back here tomorrow for another does of daily news!