Playstack, the publisher of the popular indie game Balatro, is being acquired by VantageCo, a company owned by Integrated Media Company (IMC). IMC also owns Fandom and GameSpot. The deal values Playstack at around $169 million and awaits final shareholder approval. Playstack CEO Harvey Elliott said the acquisition is mainly a change in ownership and that the company’s plans and day-to-day operations are expected to remain the same. The news has sparked backlash because the same parent company will now own both a game publisher and major gaming media outlets.

PlayStation Network is currently experiencing issues, with many players unable to sign in, play online games, open the PlayStation Store, or access the digital games they paid for. Sony has confirmed problems with PSN services but hasn’t said what caused the outage yet. The last major PSN outage occurred in February 2025, when the network was down for almost a full day worldwide. Over the past year, PSN has had several outages.