Gaming
Call of Duty: Mobile goes gothic for Halloween with WWE crossover
MUMBAI: Nothing says Halloween quite like watching Undertaker suplex a zombie on a haunted Mexican estate at midnight. Welcome to Call of Duty: Mobile’s latest update.
Season 9—Midnight Rumble—launches today with a hefty serving of Halloween content, including the return of fan-favourite modes like Attack of the Undead and Hordepoint. The update introduces night mode on the Isolated map for the first time since 2020, forcing players to adjust their tactics in near-darkness. Hacienda returns as Haunted Hacienda, complete with ghost ships, jack-o’-lanterns and creatures lurking in the shadows.
The headline addition is a limited-time WWE collaboration that lets players fight as wrestling legends including Undertaker. Players start matches with boxing gloves and can transform into WWE operators on winning streaks, gaining enhanced health and signature finishing moves that work from any direction. It’s an unlikely crossover that signals the game’s confidence in experimenting beyond military realism.
The Halloween update kicks off a three-season arc dubbed Black & Gold that will run until the game’s sixth anniversary in Season 11. The campaign starts with Black, bringing back the most popular maps, modes, operators and weapons from the game’s history. Season 10 will flip to Gold with fresh content before the anniversary finale.
Beyond the WWE mode, players can earn free legendary weapons through seasonal events, including the FFAR—Shredder and RPD—Road Mongrel. The battle pass introduces the Sten submachine gun, widely used by British forces in the Second World War, alongside Halloween-themed operator skins like Ajax—Insanely Jacked and Seraph—Witch’s Holiday.
The store update includes a new Mythic weapon draw featuring the Type 25—Deepstar Piercer, two WWE-themed draws for Alexa Bliss and Undertaker, and returning Halloween weapon blueprints in a series armoury. Two previous battle passes—Graveyard Shift and Winter War—are also returning to the vault.
For a mobile game competing against console-quality shooters and battle royales, the strategy is clear: pile on the content, embrace the absurd, and keep players engaged with constant variety. Whether that approach sustains momentum through to the sixth anniversary remains to be seen, but Activision is betting that zombies and wrestlers make a winning combination.
Gaming
Dream Sports sees 100 plus exits after gaming ban forces overhaul
Company splits into eight units as real money gaming law hits revenue.
MUMBAI: For a company built on fantasy leagues, reality has suddenly rewritten the rulebook. More than 100 employees have exited Dream Sports, the parent of Dream11, after the company reorganised its operations following India’s ban on real money online gaming. The shake up came after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 came into force in August 2025, prohibiting games where users deposit money expecting winnings. The regulation struck at the heart of the fantasy gaming industry and dramatically affected Dream Sports’ core business, wiping out about 95 percent of its revenue and all of its profits.
In response, the Mumbai based company shifted into what chief executive officer Harsh Jain described as “startup mode”, splitting its operations into eight independent business units in December.
Around 700 employees were reassigned across these newly formed ventures based on their experience and interests. However, roughly 15 percent opted to leave the company.
A spokesperson for Dream Sports said many of those who exited were experienced professionals accustomed to running scaled businesses rather than early stage ventures.
“Since some of these employees were experienced with running high scale businesses and not startups, around 15 percent chose to leave and join other scaled companies or start ventures of their own,” the spokesperson said.
Despite the departures, the company noted that the attrition rate is only slightly higher than its earlier level of around 10 percent before the ban. Dream Sports now has close to 950 employees and is not currently hiring, choosing instead to focus on stabilising its existing workforce.
The restructuring has transformed Dream Sports from a fantasy gaming company into a broader sports entertainment platform. The eight units now operate independently, each focusing on different segments of the sports and technology ecosystem.
These include Dream11, sports streaming platform Fancode, sports travel service DreamSetGo, mobile game Dream Cricket and artificial intelligence initiative Dream Sports AI, which includes sports analytics platform Dream Play.
Other ventures include fintech product Dream Money, open source initiative Dream Horizon and the philanthropic arm Dream Sports Foundation.
As part of cost saving efforts, Dream Sports also relocated its headquarters from Bandra Kurla Complex to Worli earlier this year. The new office, called Dream Sports Stadium, brings teams from its various brands together under one roof to improve collaboration and operational efficiency.
Jain had earlier said the company removed bonus lock in timelines for employees hired in recent years, allowing those who wished to leave to exit with pro rata payouts.
“We want people who are fully into the startup mode and willing to work for it, and we will share that reward if it comes,” he said.
Founded in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports was last valued at 8 billion dollars after raising 840 million dollars in 2021 from investors including Falcon Edge Capital, DST Global, D1 Capital Partners, RedBird Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, TPG and Footpath Ventures.
The new gaming law has forced several companies in the fantasy gaming sector to either shut down or pivot their business models, signalling a significant reset for one of India’s fastest growing digital entertainment industries.
