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A studio founded by the creator of State of Decay has closed, with its founder blaming leaks to the gaming press as the reason for its shuttering.
Jeff Strain, who started Possibility Space in 2021, told all staff last week that the studio was shutting down immediately. That is per an email obtained by Polygon labor reporter Nicole Carpenter, confirming an April 12 LinkedIn post from a studio employee saying it had been abruptly shuttered.
In his email to staff, Strain specifically named an inquiry from Ethan Gach, an investigative writer for Kotaku, as the first domino setting in motion the studio’s demise. Gach, says Strain, had reached out to talk about the end of Crop Circle Games, a sister studio to Possibility Space under the Prytania Media label that Strain founded with his wife, Annie Delisi Strain, also in 2021.
“I was stunned to see non-public information about Project Vonnegut,” Strain wrote, referencing the code name for a work in development, “disclosure of our publishing partner with details of our business and financial relationship, and details of internal [profit and loss] discussions and confidential all company meetings.” Gach, said Strain, said he received those documents from someone inside Possibility Space.
“To see internal team members under a confidentiality agreement engage in this was shocking,” Strain said. He flew to meet with Possibility Space’s publishing partners in person, during which he was told they would be unwilling “to invest the additional resources needed to complete the game, so we mutually agreed to cancel [project] Vonnegut.”
All Possibility Space employees were then fired, pursuant to labor laws in their jurisdictions. Strain said he had hired a law firm to “oversee the wind-down of the studio,” and whose representatives would be contacting workers to discuss Possibility Space’s remaining obligations to them.
Whatever Kotaku was working on, it has not published that story. Crop Circle Games was closed in February and its employees furloughed. The Verge reported that Annie Delisi Strain, in a statement posted to that studio’s website (since deleted) also referenced Gach’s reporting. “I stepped down as CEO this winter on a medical leave,” she said, “and while I don’t know the content of Mr. Gach’s article, I have no assurances that my personal health struggles as a rare female game industry CEO will not be covered in his article.”
In the email shutting down Possibility Space, Jeff Strain says he is “stepping away from the game industry to focus on my family and care for Annie.”
Some former employees pushed back against the Strains’ rapidly escalating version of events surrounding both Crop Circle and Possibility Space. In a LinkedIn post, Jennifer Klasing, formerly a content designer for that studio, called Jeff Strain a “grifter” and said the studio’s leadership “has failed us, morally, ethically, and financially.”
What was Possibility Space working on?
Possibility Space’s “Project Vonnegut” was never announced, so it’s hard to say. As Strain said in his email, it had a publishing arrangement in place, or at least some understanding with a publisher that was worth a drop-everything airline flight to try to repair a relationship. It is strange, however, that a studio executive would run out the door to perform damage control for a story that might describe that relationship and hadn’t yet published.
Jeff Strain co-founded ArenaNet, the maker of GuildWars, in 2000. He started Undead Labs in 2009, and that studio launched the zombie apocalypse survival adventure State of Decay in 2013. Undead Labs was acquired by Microsoft in 2018, about four months after State of Decay 2 launched. It has since become one of several design houses in the Xbox family, developing first-party titles to launch same-day on the console’s Xbox Game Pass service.
Featured image via Ideogram
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Sony on Monday published its regular look back at the most-downloaded video games to PlayStation for March, and it’s a good snapshot of what shaped video gaming’s conversation on the whole, not just for that console’s audience, over the preceding month. There are breakout hits alongside long-tail mainstays, with sports titles, as they always do, lurking at the edges.
Whether you were with the vanguard of one of these new releases or you were immersed in something else at the moment, here are the top seven games downloaded by the more than 100 million users of the PlayStation Network. The full list, broken down by platform and region, is here.

Helldivers 2
Helldivers 2 is the first breakout hit of 2024, launching in early February on PlayStation and PC and immediately facing server loads totaling hundreds of thousands of players in its first two weeks of release.
Helldivers 2 is a cooperative multiplayer-only game, markedly different from its predecessor, which was a top-down shooter that still drew a strong audience when it launched in 2015. The sequel takes the against-all-odds, tactically demanding setup of the first game and applies it in a more engaging and immersive third-person perspective. It’s more than just the most-downloaded PlayStation Network game, it’s also the biggest-ever Steam launch for a Sony-published title.

MLB The Show 24
MLB The Show 24, by SIE San Diego Studio, is a full-service baseball simulation that has been an annual winner among sports fans since its inception more than 15 years ago. That doesn’t mean its makers can rest on their laurels.
This year, MLB The Show 24 introduces women as playable stars in all modes, making a big play to expand their audience to those fans who have also dreamed about being big leaguers, even knowing they never had a chance at it. Women feature prominently in the Storylines mode that was introduced in 2023, a series of interactive vignettes which tell the lesser-known stories of professional players from baseball’s segregated era. They’re also present for Road to the Show, the game’s real jewel. It’s a rich, vicarious single-player fantasy in which users create their superstar and take them all the way to the Major Leagues.

Dragon’s Dogma 2
Dragon’s Dogma 2 is, as the title says, a sequel — to something published 12 years ago, but never forgotten by its cult audience. This open-world fantasy adventure is not exactly a Soulslike. Still, there’s little wonder that the fandom that has gathered for that sub-genre over the past decade, especially for games like 2022’s Elden Ring, would have a natural and fervent interest in this open-world epic.

WWE 2K24
WWE 2K24 has a tough task ahead of it every year, which is basically, “How do you simulate something that is, uh, fake?” Somehow, 2K Sports has pulled it off going back three years, presenting professional wrestling and all of its behind-the-scenes intrigue as movable pieces on a delightful chess board of mayhem, as if it was, ahem, a “real” sport.
The big showpieces this year include a 40-year retrospective on Wrestlemania. MyRise, the created-player career mode, once again delivers two unique storylines whether players choose to play as a female or male superstar. And those who enjoy the meta of pro wrestling — the angles, the matchings and the like that makes it such an athletic soap opera — will find plenty to love in a refined MyGM mode that doesn’t make huge changes, but knows how to dust up the successes of the past two games without turning over any teacups.

Madden NFL 24
Madden NFL 24 didn’t say goodbye when the last of Super Bowl LVIII’s confetti fell on the Kansas City Chiefs in early February. Thanks to the live service offerings of its Ultimate Team mode, Madden outdrew its basketball brethren in the first month of the sport’s offseason, at least on PlayStation. American football is a year-round sport, like it or not, and its video game always has something on offer in the Madden Ultimate Team live service suite.

Star Wars Battlefront Classic Collection
Few early-aughts console series are as beloved as Battlefront, and when you add the natural appeal of Star Wars, it’s easy to understand why this two-game bundle (comprising 2004’s Battlefront and 2005’s Battlefront II) would be such a hit among nostalgic fans. Both games were brought to modern hardware in 2019 and 2020. But this collection, if not actually a remake or a remaster, is still more than a straight port and promises the multiplayer action that made the first two such a long-playing hit on PlayStation 2.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege
Here’s a surprise. Rainbow Six Siege wasn’t in the top 20 of this list the previous month, but here it shows up outdrawing EA Sports FC 24, NBA 2K24, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. This is partly attributable to the March launch of Operation Deadly Omen, the first season of this live service game’s ninth year. And no, Rainbow Six Siege is still not a free-to-play game. Whether Fortnite is spinning up its latest celebrity crossover or Destiny 2 is waiting on its next big expansion, Siege always has your six covered.
Featured image: Helldivers 2 on Steam
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An early Bitcoin (BTC) miner has moved a significant amount of Bitcoin after years of inactivity. Data shows that the miner transferred 50 BTC, worth over $3 million as of Monday, to two wallets during Asian morning hours. Some of these Bitcoin were subsequently sent to the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, according to analysis from the crypto analytics firm Lookonchain.

A miner wallet woke up after being dormant for nearly 14 years and deposited 50 $BTC($3.28M) to #Coinbase 5 mins ago.
The miner earned 50 $BTC from mining on Apr 23, 2010, and has been holding it to this day.
Address:15sxzZ4QSaoiMo5KYH9ab4xQj34yeJmKgb pic.twitter.com/DRw9U5Xy8N
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 15, 2024

50 Bitcoin from the ‘Satoshi era’
The miner received the 50 Bitcoin as a reward in April 2010, just months after the Bitcoin network went live. At that time, the value of the token was only a few dollars. This period, when Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto was active on online forums, is commonly referred to as the “Satoshi era.”
The movement of Bitcoin from wallets associated with this early era is relatively rare. However, several such wallets have shown activity since the start of 2023. In July, a wallet that had been dormant for 11 years transferred $30 million worth of Bitcoin to other wallets.
Similarly, in August, another wallet transferred 1,005 BTC to a new address. In December, over 1,000 Bitcoins from an early miner were also moved to trading desks and custodian services after a 13-year dormancy.
The reactivation of these long-dormant wallets associated with the Satoshi era has drawn attention within the cryptocurrency community, as such movements can provide insights into the behavior and holdings of Bitcoin’s earliest users. The transfer of 50 Bitcoin from an early miner’s wallet, dormant for over 14 years, is a significant event in the history of the cryptocurrency.
These “Satoshi era” Bitcoins, mined shortly after the launch of the Bitcoin network when the token was worth only a few dollars, are considered to be among the oldest and most valuable holdings in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The reactivation of such long-dormant wallets associated with Bitcoin’s earliest days is closely watched, as it can provide insights into the behavior and investment strategies of the cryptocurrency’s pioneering users.
The report follows Chinese fund managers recently seeking Bitcoin and Ethereum spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval in Hong Kong. In the United States, the local regulators approved the Bitcoin spot ETF back in January after a prolonged fight by proponents. Those ETFs saw major outflows following a recent market setback after previously reporting over $1 billion of inflows in a single day back in mid-March.
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