Maria Angelidou-Smith becomes CEO of Mojang and Minecraft on October 19th, reporting directly to Xbox leadership and arriving from a one-year stint as chief product officer at Reddit. The appointment anchors a month of senior personnel changes across Mojang, Xbox, Scopely, Ukie, Skydance and multiple mobile-first studios.

What changes at Mojang and Xbox?

Angelidou-Smith brings product experience from Meta, where she led Facebook Groups, a product used by more than 1.8 billion people per month, and worked across events, creators, search and monetisation. Xbox expects her to apply that product-building background to Minecraft's continued development.

Kayleen Walters joins her at the division level: Xbox has appointed her president of XP by Xbox, a new division focused on expanding Xbox franchises beyond games. Walters moves from Mojang, where she helped grow consumer products into a multibillion-dollar business and served as executive producer of the 2025 film A Minecraft Movie. She previously spent 13 years at Lucasfilm working on Star Wars across films, products and partnerships.

Xbox announced both appointments together as part of its Creator and Connection plans. Two product-led executives now sit at the top of Microsoft's Minecraft business and its transmedia expansion unit.

Who now leads Ukie and Devolver Digital's platform work?

Playstack CEO Harvey Elliott is the new chair of Ukie, the UK games industry trade body, after joining its board in 2025. He succeeds Maria Sayans following her two years in the role, and will focus on supporting the next generation of UK games talent, with particular attention to independent and mid-market companies.

"We have extraordinary creative and technical talent, globally recognised studios and a long history of producing games and intellectual property that reach audiences around the world," Elliott said. "We are also at an inflexion point. The industry has changed in the last few years and we have a real opportunity to build on the strengths that have made the UK a world leader, while ensuring the next generation for games businesses can thrive."

Chloé Giusti has joined Devolver Digital as head of platform relations, based in the US, after more than six years at Microsoft. She joined Microsoft in 2020 focused on North and South America and rose to ID@Xbox senior lead, Americas and ANZ. She previously worked in business development at Steel Media, Pocket Gamer's parent company, growing the brand in North America.

What do the Scopely and Skydance moves signal?

Scopely has promoted Katerina Sotiropoulou to director, people business partner for Monopoly Go. She has spent almost three years at the studio in various people business partner roles, with expertise in organisational development, talent management and HR business partnering, and previously worked at Persado, MR HealthTech and Intralot, where she spent nine years.

"Feeling very grateful for the opportunity to work with such an amazing group of people every day. Looking forward to this next chapter," Sotiropoulou posted on LinkedIn.

Tony Driscoll, formerly president at Paramount Games, is now president of games and experiences at Skydance. The expanded conglomerate includes Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery following the completed acquisition earlier this month, a $111 billion deal merging the film and television studios. That combination brought together CBS, CNN, MTV, HBO Max and Paramount+, and folded Discovery's games division into the fold, including Rocksteady, NetherRealm, TT Games, Avalanche Software and WB Games Montreal. Driscoll now oversees games strategy across one of the largest IP portfolios in entertainment.

Which studios made quieter hires?

• Eren Trabzon, product specialist, Rollic
• Mario Giampaolo, global head of content distribution, Mattel Studios
• José Manuel Fernández Agulló, senior software engineer, King
• Nur Ugurlu, revenue lead in Türkiye, Metica
• Delanie Wiedrich, producer, Epic Games
• Yiğit Cem Sarıoğ, product manager, Loom Games
• Joe Cullen, principal data engineer, and Eskopekka Javanainen, senior content designer, Trailmix
• Vicky Wheeler, project lead writer, Fusebox Games
• Diogo da Rocha Pereira, creator and influencer manager, Supercell

Which promotions stand out?

Scopely promoted Jamie Hegarty to associate technical director and Jesse Kroon to lead game designer, both on Monopoly Go. Riot Games promoted Jenny Kim to senior principal game producer, her seventh promotion in 15 years at the studio. Luke O'Leary is now chief operating officer at BisectHosting after seven years with the company, aiming to build closer integrations with game studios and modding platforms. Kabam promoted Tyler Thomson to director, live service.

Angelidou-Smith's October 19th start date is the first concrete marker to watch: her early product decisions at Minecraft will indicate how Xbox's Creator and Connection strategy translates into shipped changes.