Skydance Merges Paramount Games Studio and Warner Bros. Games Into One Division

Skydance will merge Paramount Games Studio and Warner Bros. Games into a single games-and-experiences division, according to a staff memo sent the evening of October 6, 2026 and reported by Variety the next day. Tony Driscoll, who led Paramount Games Studio, is named president of games and experiences and keeps his role leading corporate strategy and development. GamesIndustry.biz and Shacknews reported the consolidated unit the same day. The decision arrived within hours of Paramount closing its roughly $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the deal that turned the combined company into Skydance.

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The two events are related but not the same. TechPastWeek covered the merger's close on October 5, while the deal was still expected, not yet closed. That article tracked the deal itself: the price, the state settlement, the streaming services, the leadership departures in film and television. This one tracks a decision made downstream, inside the company the deal created. A merger close transfers ownership of everything Warner Bros. Discovery held, including its game studios. The memo is the first public signal of how the buyer intends to organize that inheritance.

Two studios' developers, one owner

The division gathers studios that have shipped some of the industry's best-known licensed games. NetherRealm Studios makes Mortal Kombat. Rocksteady Studios made the Batman: Arkham games. Avalanche Software developed Hogwarts Legacy, and TT Games built the Lego titles. The WB Games teams in Montreal and Boston fold in beside them, along with Paramount Games Studio and Skydance's interactive and new-media teams. The Verge listed the roster, and the memo names Driscoll to lead the combined unit.

Driscoll previously ran Paramount Games Studio, which itself was assembled in June 2026 from Paramount and Skydance's gaming assets. The new structure repeats that consolidation at a larger scale, on both sides of the company this time rather than one. The teams being folded together sit in different countries and carry different histories, but they now report into a single leader with a single budget.

The teams also span several time zones. The memo points to staff in Los Angeles, London, Montreal and Tokyo, a spread that reflects how the two companies grew. A division that size has to decide where development leads sit and how the studios share technology and tools. The memo does not answer that, and the practical work of combining pipelines tends to take longer than the announcement that starts it.

Most of those studios work with characters owned by the same parent company. That arrangement has an obvious advantage: a new game carries a name players already recognize, which lowers the cost of explaining what it is. It also ties the division's fortunes to the franchises it is handed, and to scheduling decisions made in film and television offices outside it. A game that misses the release window of the film or show behind it loses some of the attention that window supplies.

The franchises behind the consolidation

Skydance says the merged team will oversee games based on both companies' catalogues. From Paramount's side it lists Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, SpongeBob SquarePants, South Park, Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Godfather. From Warner Bros. it lists Harry Potter, the DC Universe, Mortal Kombat, The Matrix, Rick and Morty and Game of Thrones, Inven Global reported.

Taken together, the two lists cover a wide range of audiences: children's animation, science fiction, superheroes, comedy and fantasy drama. Several already have games. Mortal Kombat and the Batman: Arkham series come from studios inside the division, and Hogwarts Legacy was developed by Avalanche Software, which is joining it too. The memo does not rank the franchises or say which ones will get new games.

Together the two lists are broad. A division holding science fiction, children's animation and superhero properties can spread development work across several releases and reuse tools between them. It could also decide where a franchise appears, though the reporting says nothing about platform strategy, and neither company has said whether it plans to withhold games from rival consoles or services.

Owning both the source material and the studio lets the division set its own timing. It can line a game up with a film or hold it back, and it does not have to renegotiate rights with an outside holder when a franchise changes hands. The trade-off runs the other way as well: a weak film can dull interest in the game built around it, and the two now rise or fall together.

The strategy puts games next to theme parks

Andy Gordon, the Skydance president who wrote the memo, framed the work as more than publishing games. He described games and experiences as "core pillars of our strategy to build engagement and fandom in both the physical and digital worlds," and added: "We want to meet consumers where they watch, play, and engage."

That wording explains why the division pairs games with experiences. Skydance holds interests that put a customer in a room, including theme parks, resorts, restaurants, retail and studio tours. Driscoll drew the comparison himself.

“We immerse our guests in theme parks, resorts, restaurants, retail, studio tours and more. We immerse our players in action, adventure, combat, competition and creativity, from ‘Batman’ to ‘SpongeBob.’” — Tony Driscoll, president of games and experiences, Skydance, October 2026

Read together, those statements describe a loop. A film or show introduces a character. A game lets a player spend time with it. A park, a restaurant or a store turns that attachment into a visit and a purchase. Each part feeds the others, which is one reason the company places its game studios in the same division as its attractions instead of leaving them as a standalone publisher.

The memo names the rest of the leadership around Driscoll. Josh Silverman is president of global products and publishing. Jose Turkienicz is president of global operations. Jim Sterner is chief people officer, and Jeff Silberman is chief of staff and executive vice president of corporate strategy.

Why one owner wants both halves

Games do different work for a media company than films or shows. A game can hold a franchise in front of players for years between releases, and a licensed game can reach an audience that never signs up for a streaming service. Owning the studio and the franchise together means one company decides which properties become games and when, instead of licensing those rights to an outside publisher. It is the same rationale that drove the media merger: keep more of the value chain under one roof.

Scale cuts both ways. Fewer independent buyers for licensed games can mean less competition for studios that pitch adaptations, and more titles competing for the same development budgets inside one company. The memo does not say how projects will be chosen or which studio will lead which franchise. It names a leader and an executive team and leaves the rest to the integration.

The two sides also arrive with work in motion. Paramount Games Studio shipped Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game in 2026 and announced Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra. Skydance Games continues to develop Marvel 1943. Neither the memo nor the coverage reviewed here says what the consolidated division will do with either project.

What the division still has to settle

The memo is short on operating detail, and several questions follow from that gap. One is how the two publishing operations will combine. Each side has its own release calendar and its own marketing team, and merging two schedules is a different task from merging two development studios. Another is whether the division keeps separate labels for the two companies or retires one name, as the parent company did when it adopted Skydance.

A third is mobile and live-service work, which the memo does not address. Those categories have different economics from a large single-player release: they earn over time, they depend on regular updates, and they need teams that stay with a game instead of moving to the next one. Whether the new division leans further into that model or stays with the studio-led releases its teams are known for is not stated.

None of that is unusual for a consolidation this new. The first memo tends to set leadership and reporting lines, and the harder choices arrive later.

Caveats

Three points belong beside this story.

First, the source is a memo, not an announcement. Variety obtained it, and the plan plus the leadership names rest on that document. Read the framing as the company's internal position, not a public commitment with terms attached.

Second, the $111 billion price is reported. That is the figure the companies and the press have used for Paramount's purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, and the memo does not restate it. Different counts of debt and adjustments move the total.

Third, the question studios care about is unanswered. The memo says nothing about layoffs, project cancellations or closures, and none have been announced. The reporting does not identify which teams might be affected, and any estimate would be speculation. This story does not make one.

What to watch

• Studio-level plans. The memo sets a leader and a structure. It does not say which studios will be merged, kept separate or reduced.
• Project status. No cancellations or delays were announced. Word on Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and other in-development titles will be the first test.
• Employment. No layoff figure is public. Any number that emerges during integration will be new information.
• The IP pipeline. Which franchises get games, and whether they arrive on the company's own platforms first, will show how tightly the division is wired into the wider business.
• Driscoll's listening tour. He said his first priority is meeting staff "from LA to London, Montreal to Tokyo," a sign that the division spans the two companies' existing hubs and several offices.

The combined company now has a games division and a leader for it. The studios inside are still waiting to learn what changes.

Cover image: "Warner Bros. Studios Water Tower 2020.jpg" by Chris Yarzab, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.