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PlayStation / Savage Game Studios: Managing director Michail Katkoff has announced on LinkedIn he is leaving Savage Game Studios. Katkoff said that head of technology Mike McManus and game director and cofounder Nadjim Adjir will now be taking the studio forwards and he’d be returning to his work as part of Deconstructor of Fun.
“I’d like to believe I’ve done my fair part in taking the company from zero to one,” Katkoff said on LinkedIn. “Now I’m eager to watch from the side as Nadjim and Mike take it from one to one hundred.”
“In the same breath, I wish nothing but the best to Olivier Courtemarche and Kris Davis who are leading PlayStation’s charge onto mobile. Can’t wait to play all the amazing games from all the fantastic developers!”
Katkoff leaves PlayStation a little under a year after he joined the platform holder, which acquired Savage Game Studios in August 2022. Head of mobile Nicola Sebastiani also recently departed the PlayStation mobile team.
Trailmix: Six new recruits at the London-based maker of Love and Pies this week. Abby Suckow joins as game economy manager, ex-GSN Games engineer Jorge Perez is now senior game developer and former Sports Interactive and Media Molecule staffer Daniel Hughes has been appointed QA Tester.
Joining from Zynga is Paul Mondal, who is now social media manager, Timofey Sugaipov joins as analytics engineer and former Googler and Meta data science manager Silvia Chen is now head of data.
Tinybuild: There have been several changes at the Hello Neighbor publisher after it released a financial update which saw its stock price tumble dramatically.
CFO Tony Assenza resigned from the company and the board with immediate effect, with Giasone ‘Jaz’ Salati replacing him in the role. He is also expected to join the board.
Michael Schauble, previously senior VP of business development, has been appointed chief commercial officer. Schauble is an ex-Microsoft staffer who worked on Game Pass, Microsoft AR/VR and backwards compatibility programmes.
King: Victor Gonzalez has been promoted to associate product director on Candy Crush Soda Saga, stepping up from the position of producer and product manager.
Activision Blizzard: Alex Horner is now senior director and global head of talent attraction, expanding role to lead the firm’s global talent sourcing teams plus its talent brand/marketing teams across Activision, Blizzard Entertainment and King.
Big Fish Games: EA veteran John Rosser has been appointed QA director at the Evermerge publisher. Rosser joins having served in various roles at EA in a nine-year spell at the publishing giant, most recently as development director. He has also previously worked at Activision as QA manager.
Transcend Fund: Sikander Singh Chahal has been promoted to principal at the investment firm, having joined 18 months ago. He has previously worked as a management consultant for Newzoo and as associate at London Venture Partners.
Formation Games: The maker of the forthcoming football management game Club has appointed a new senior advisory group.
It includes investor Nick Button-Brown, ex-Riot, Rockstar, Epic Games and Harmonix marketer Nikki Lewis, Wargaming chief corporate development officer and former Tencent exec Sean Lee, leadership coach Linda Fane and Sam Li, former vice president at the NBA and the ex-head of international operations for Sina Sports and Weibo Sports.
Scriptic: James Nicholls has joined the storytelling platform as studio director. He moves from Scopely’s Parallel studio, where he was production VP, and has previously served in senior roles at NaturalMotion, King and Codemasters.
Gamigo: The Hamburg-based firm has appointed Wolfgang Duhr as its new COO. He steps into the role after the departure of Marcus Behrens.
Pocket Gems: Crystal Martinez has been appointed writer at the War Dragons maker. Martinez was previously working as a visual storytelling scripter at Pocket Gems.
Moloco: Zain Haque has been promoted to new business sales director. He joined Moloco from MobileAction in December 2020.
