Paramount Games Studio? What could go wrong?

Alright, let's go through this again.

Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle and sixth richest person in the world, is a colonizer, Zionist, Trump ally, and is 50 years older than his sixth wife. He once said, "citizens will be on their best behavior" when they're under constant state surveillance and … hold on. Let me just quote the last time I wrote about him:

But he’s not just a fan of surveillance abuses. He’s also been accused of insider trading, was an early investor in Theranos, owns a bunch of Tesla stock and was a board member for a few years, thinks that Marco Rubio is a centrist, is a 2020 election denier, is part of the definitely-not-a-scam Project Stargate, was sued as a conspirator in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (even before the current ethnic cleansing of Palestine), is buddies with war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, and owns 96% of the land on Hawaii’s Lānaʻi island.

Oh. He's also part owner of TikTok.

His children, Megan and David, each head their own media companies. Megan runs Annapurna — which came up in The Discourse™ around Mixtape — and David manages Paramount Skydance. I say manages because Larry holds the controlling interest in the company.

In 2025, Paramount paid (bribed) President Trump a settlement over a frivolous lawsuit and then, in a shocking twist, their merger with Skydance was approved by the Trump administration. Following the merger, Paramount Skydance fired Stephen Colbert, installed Bari Weiss as the head of CBS news, and, just this week, has been fucking with 60 Minutes. Paramount Skydance is still waiting for approval of its deal to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, which would mean that it also owns HBO, the DC Universe, and CNN.

And now today, just a couple hours before Summer Game Fest, Paramount Skydance announced the creation of Paramount Games Studio. A few hours later, they announced their first game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin — an action-adventure game based on the alternate future comic series of the same name.

This new studio merges Paramount's IP (like TMNT) with Skydance's two existing game studios — Skydance Interactive (which has put out … games?) and Skydance New Media (which has not). Along with The Last Ronin, Paramount Games Studios will continue working on those studios' upcoming games, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra (the trailer for which came out two years ago?) and an untitled Star Wars game.

Paramount Games Studio will be headed by Tony Driscoll, who's been running Corporate Strategy for Paramount for a while and worked at Epic Games running the Creator Economy in 2023 and 2024.

So what's the takeaway here? I mean, nothing good. The overarching story of the game industry this year is a bleak one. We've seen so, so many instances of billionaire owners using and abusing game developers, closing studios, scrapping games, and firing people. And this is just another billionaire owner who has already shown a disregard for people and institutions.

One family controls one of the largest social media apps, a television network, a movie company, a big chunk of AI and data center infrastructure, and, now, a game studio. They're friends with the Trump regime and have proud ties to Netanyahu's genocidal government in Israel and its apartheid economy. David Ellison has gutted a nationally respected newsroom. Paramount Skydance is in the middle of antitrust lawsuits over the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition.

Anyway, here's Jon Stewart on 60 Minutes 20 years ago. At one point, he says, "We're all gonna get fired by the same guy one day, and it's gonna be like a freaky—it's like a cross-breed genetic between like Dolly the Sheep and one of [Rupert] Murdoch's kids, and it'll just, rule—AOLTimeViacomWarner synergy."

He just got the billionaire wrong.