Paramount Wins Warner Bros: What Happens to WB Games

Paramount Skydance won the fight for Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix, long seen as the favorite, walked away on February 26, 2026. The direct consequence for players: WB Games, the publisher behind Mortal Kombat, Hogwarts Legacy and several DC games, changes owners for the second time in under a year, without a single one of its studios getting a say.

kami-labs.fr had run this headline in December 2025: « Netflix buys WB Games: a marriage doomed to fail? (originally published in French)« . That marriage never happened. Netflix had agreed to acquire Warner’s studio and streaming divisions for about $72 billion, before pulling out three months later without a counteroffer. The group called the deal « no longer financially attractive », and Paramount took over.

There’s a more useful question than debating who owns a logo: what happens to WB Games while its parent company changes hands? The answer, for now, fits in one word: badly. Layoffs began before the deal even closed, and only a handful of franchises came out as priorities. The rest of the catalog is still waiting to learn its fate.

From Netflix to Paramount, No Stops Along the Way

The board of directors of Warner Bros. Discovery, the body that decides on behalf of shareholders, approved Paramount Skydance’s revised offer on February 26, 2026. It offered $31 per share (the stake each shareholder holds in the company), payable entirely in cash rather than in the buyer’s stock. Total amount: about $110.9 billion for the whole group.

Warner Bros. welcomed the deal without hesitation. The group said the sale to Paramount « will create tremendous value for shareholders ». A phrase that talks about money and stock, not about studios or developer jobs, but one that sets the tone for the whole affair: the decision came down to a price, not a detailed industrial plan for WB Games.

Netflix had actually made the first move. In December 2025, the streaming service committed to buying Warner’s studio and streaming divisions for about $72 billion, $82.7 billion including debt. Warner judged Paramount’s new offer superior, and Netflix, asked to counter, declined. Warner Bros. shareholders approved the sale to Paramount Skydance in April 2026. As of mid-August, the deal was still awaiting final approval, meaning the last regulatory sign-off that turns a signed agreement into effective ownership.

Date	Event
December 2025	Netflix agrees to acquire Warner’s studio and streaming divisions for about $72B
February 26, 2026	Netflix withdraws, Paramount Skydance wins at $110.9B
April 2026	Warner Bros. shareholders approve the sale to Paramount
August 2026	The deal remains pending finalization

WB Games Narrows Its Focus to Four Franchises

David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros., admitted that the games division was « substantially underperforming ». His response: focus WB Games on four franchises judged « strong and profitable », Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones and DC. Anything not on that list effectively lands in a budgetary gray zone.

That list of four names stands in contrast with the publisher’s actual, broader catalog, which also includes games outside those flagship franchises. No precise timeline has been given for the rest of the portfolio. Neither closures nor guarantees have been announced: Zaslav’s wording sets a priority, not an exhaustive list of what survives.

A studio working outside those four franchises feels very directly what this narrowing means. WB Games Montreal, the studio behind Gotham Knights, a DC property that’s supposedly protected, already went through layoffs in March 2026, without the number of cut positions being disclosed. More cuts are expected across the whole division once the deal closes.

Game Studios Are Already Paying for the Wait

Other publishers are going through the same pattern. Netflix shut down Night School Studio six weeks after its last game shipped. Supermassive Games, for its part, cut up to 75 jobs, in an industry where buyouts and restructurings follow one another with barely a pause between announcements.

What these cases have in common has less to do with who the buyer is than with timing. A company that’s up for sale, or in the middle of being acquired, rarely freezes its investments while the deal gets sorted out. Studios often learn about their new owner from the press, at the same time as the public. WB Games spent a year in that situation, first promised to Netflix, then to Paramount, with no team ever quite sure who it was working for from one season to the next.

What Paramount Has Planned for WB Games

Paramount Skydance didn’t stop at buying WB Games. The group also launched its own studio, Paramount Games Studio, bringing together Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media around its in-house properties. The coexistence of this new structure alongside a division already narrowed to four franchises raises a simple question: how many studios does Paramount actually plan to keep in the end?

According to press reports, Paramount plans budget cuts of more than $16 billion across the merged group, games included. Electronic Arts’ recent history gives an idea of the kind of tradeoffs that can follow such a takeover: bought out by Saudi funds, the publisher now owes $1.8 billion a year in interest, and had to announce $700 million in cuts to cope with its debt.

Nothing at this stage suggests that Mortal Kombat, Hogwarts Legacy or the DC games will be directly affected. The four franchises named by Zaslav remain, on paper, protected. But protecting a franchise doesn’t protect the teams that keep it alive, and WB Games’ recent history gives little reason for reassurance on that exact point. Once the merger closes, it will show what’s left of the rest of the catalog.