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Ubisoft has disclosed a valuable trade secret in its latest annual financial report. It appears that, if a developer takes a really long time to make a video game that isn't as bulletproof as GTA 6 , fans might stop caring.

The Far Cry creator identifies in its report , spotted by Game File , that "an inappropriate release schedule" can be grave for a video game business. Releasing slipshod games too early will never work, but "conversely, releasing a game too late – when market anticipation has waned and it no longer meets market standards in a highly competitive environment – can also hinder its success."

Ubisoft addresses the issue in only vague terms, but it still sounds like the company is making a quiet self-admonishment here. Ubisoft, which has disposed of over 2,000 workers in the past two years alongside a few passionate swears of loyalty to generative AI , is working with a clogged tank.

Fans of Ubisoft's big FPS series have been waiting on Far Cry 7 since 2021 . We can apparently expect to get more Ghost Recon at some point in the next three years , though it's been seven years since Breakpoint, and Ubisoft recently killed its developer Red Storm , laying off 105. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is now a legal adult – the sequel was first announced in 2008.

To that last point, Beyond Good and Evil 2 creative director Fawzi Mesmar said earlier this year that the action-adventure game's team is still committed to "delivering a remarkable game for our players to enjoy." When? That's classified.

Though, Ubisoft provides a sort of answer in its annual report, admitting that issues like an overly long release cycle can cause "damage to the game's reputation and brand image, loss of players (disappointment of players who would turn to the competition)." So the real reply to "When?" is actually, "It doesn't matter anymore."

After laying off thousands, Ubisoft says losing "key talents and skills" is a big danger for the company .

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Clouds formed from vaporized rock could create the ultimate thermal insulation on one of the most common types of exoplanets discovered so far — the sub-Neptunes — raising temperatures so high that these worlds' solid surfaces melt and turn into oceans of magma.

"This work takes us one step closer to answering the question of what these mysterious worlds are made from," said astronomer Luis Welbanks, of Arizona State University, in a statement .

Sub- Neptunes are planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. They are especially mysterious since we do not have a world of this type in our solar system . They are thought to contain a rocky core surrounded by a deep atmosphere, but not much else is known about their composition and structure. Their atmosphere could be hydrogen-rich like Jupiter 's, or it could be abundant with water vapor and carbon-based organic molecules. In some cases, they might even be habitable under the hycean world paradigm, wherein a thick hydrogen atmosphere encases a global ocean of liquid water.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is busy probing the atmosphere of several sub-Neptunes to try and learn more about their bulk composition because their atmosphere should be representative of what such planets are made from, but results so far have been inconclusive.

Atmospheres of sub-Neptunes are deep and dense, meaning crushing pressures close to the boundary between the atmosphere and the solid body of the world can turn minerals into vapor that forms clouds. These minerals include aluminium oxide, iron, magnesium silicate, manganese sulfide, potassium chloride, sodium sulfide and zinc sulfide.

Using detailed computer simulations, a team led by Sagnick Mukherjee of Arizona State University explored what effect these clouds could have on both the surface and atmosphere of a sub-Neptune.

They showed that when these mineral clouds form deep down, they act as efficient insulating blankets that trap heat (and lots of it) leaking out from the core of the planet.

"Among the sub-Neptunes currently being studied with JWST, we were amazed to find that cloud-driven heating can raise the temperature at the planet's atmosphere–interior boundary by roughly over 1,400 to 2,600 degrees Celsius [2,550–4,712 degrees Fahrenheit]," said Mukherjee.

At the same time, because heat is being prevented from escaping, the upper atmosphere cools noticeably.

With all that heat retained close to the surface, the rock begins to melt.

"For some of the planets we modeled, that extra heat is enough to melt the planet's surface, creating a magma ocean," said team-member Matthew Nixon of Arizona State University.

These potential magma planets include GJ 1214b, which orbits a red dwarf star 48 light-years away. At one time it was thought to be a cool water-world, but JWST's discovery in 2025 of metallic vapors and carbon-dioxide haze in GJ 1214b's atmosphere rule this out, and now it seems that its surface, undetectable beneath the thick atmosphere, could be completely molten.

However, the presence of magma oceans opens up possibilities for more complex atmospheric chemistry. Gas seeps out of the magma and diffuses into the atmosphere, in theory enriching it in oxygen, silicon hydride and silicon monoxide, while going the other way the magma absorbs ammonia, methane and water vapor from the atmosphere. In other words, the atmosphere becomes enriched by material from underground, while also becoming depleted in some gases that astronomers would expect to see in greater abundance.

This means that JWST's attempts to learn about the bulk composition of a sub-Neptune exoplanet from the spectrum of its atmosphere could be skewed by this exchange of gases between a magma ocean and the atmosphere. The extra heating deep down will also impact the future of these sub-Neptune planets, since the extra heat will keep their lower atmosphere bloated and prevent the planet from contracting over billions of years.

If the findings are correct, they could place a huge obstacle on sub-Neptunes being habitable. Even if the boundary between the atmosphere and solid body of the planet isn't hot enough to form magma, it would still render the surface too hot to support liquid water or life.

The findings were published on July 8 in Astrophysical Journal Letters .