⚠️ Major spoilers for Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 below.
Gaming Twitter/X did its thing yesterday and sent a rumor spiraling at lightning speed — and honestly, this one has enough credibility attached to it that it’s worth actually sitting down and unpacking what’s going on, who’s saying what, and why none of this is as simple as “Venom game canceled, move on.”
The short version: Miles Morales voice actor Nadji Jeter went on a podcast and dropped what he called an “exclusive,” saying an Insomniac Venom game was real, in development, and then scrapped after the death of Venom voice actor Tony Todd. Within roughly an hour, Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier showed up on ResetEra and simply wrote “This isn’t true.” And now the internet is arguing about what either of those statements actually means.
What Nadji Jeter Actually Said
Jeter appeared on the Love It Film YouTube podcast and, unprompted, decided to share some behind-the-scenes context about the Spider-Man universe’s future. The relevant part starts around the 31:30 mark.
“Let me give y’all an exclusive,” he said. “We were going to have a Venom game. Yeah, we were going to drop a Venom game and a Venom DLC, but we lost Tony Todd. They showed me how it was going to start. They showed me how everything was going to be. It was gonna be a Venom video game. Like, just straight Venom out.”
He went on to describe how everything was laid out and shown to him — implying he’d been briefed on the project in some capacity, likely because Miles Morales would have appeared in the game. He also referred to Todd as his “uncle,” speaking to a genuine personal connection that makes this feel less like a throwaway rumour and more like something Jeter experienced firsthand.
That’s a fairly substantial claim from someone with direct access to the Insomniac world. And for about an hour, “Venom game canceled” was all over social media.
Then Jason Schreier Said Three Words
Jason Schreier is one of the most reliably sourced journalists covering the gaming industry. When he shows up on a forum to weigh in on a rumor, people pay attention. His response on ResetEra to the Jeter story was brief to the point of being almost cryptic: “This isn’t true.”
That’s it. No elaboration, no follow-up, no clarification on what specifically isn’t true. Which — predictably — created its own argument about what he actually meant.
The two interpretations people are working with: either Schreier means the game hasn’t been canceled and is still in development, or he specifically means that Tony Todd’s death wasn’t the reason for a cancellation (while leaving open the possibility that the project was shelved for other reasons). The prevailing read from people who follow Schreier’s work closely is the former — that the Venom game is still alive — because he tends to be precise with his language and “this isn’t true” feels like a blanket denial rather than a nuanced correction.
Separately, a verified game developer commented on ResetEra adding another wrinkle: “Unless it was canceled in the past two or so weeks… this runs contradictory to what was being discussed at GDC. And Todd died way before GDC 2026.” The GDC (Game Developers Conference) reference is significant — it implies Venom was still actively being discussed as a project within the industry as recently as this month, which would be strange if it had already been shelved following Todd’s death back in November 2024.
The History of the Venom Game Rumor
This isn’t the first time a standalone Insomniac Venom game has come up. The whole thing originally surfaced from the massive Insomniac ransomware hack in late December 2023, which exposed a staggering amount of internal studio data including project roadmaps. Those leaked documents showed plans for a standalone Venom game that was, at one point, tentatively slated for a 2025 release. The idea was that it would serve as a bridge between Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3 — filling narrative gap between the two with an Eddie Brock-led story, with Carnage serving as the primary villain.
That 2025 window came and went. Wolverine became the clear priority, pushing everything else back. A more recent report from MP1st earlier this year claimed the Venom game was still quietly in development, with the symbiote now hosted by Eddie Brock in this version of the story. None of that was official — Insomniac has never formally announced a Venom game, not even a tease. Everything known about it comes from leaks and insider sourcing.
Why Tony Todd’s Death Makes This Complicated
Tony Todd was an absolute legend — best known as the original Candyman, but his Venom performance in Spider-Man 2 became one of the most praised voice acting turns in recent gaming memory. He passed away on November 6, 2024. The idea that his death would directly cause a game’s cancellation is the part most people are skeptical of — voice actors, as tragic as their loss is, can typically be recast. Games don’t get canned over it. Studios have done it before.
The more nuanced take from a lot of industry-watchers is that Todd’s death was probably a painful contributing factor that made an already-complicated project situation feel more definitive. If the game was already struggling — due to Insomniac’s bandwidth issues following layoffs, the demands of Wolverine, the general difficulties of running multiple major AAA titles simultaneously — Tony Todd’s passing may have functioned as the final push rather than the sole cause. “The straw that broke the camel’s back,” as one ResetEra user put it, rather than the primary reason.
Jeter clearly has an emotional connection to Todd and may have genuinely been told the project wasn’t moving forward, connecting that news to the loss of his late friend. That doesn’t mean his information is wrong — it might mean he was told the conclusion without the full context behind it.
What Is Insomniac Actually Working On?
Marvel’s Wolverine is the confirmed priority, arriving September 15, 2026 on PS5 — and that’s been absorbing the studio’s full attention for a while. Beyond that, everything is extrapolation from leaks and secondary sourcing. There’s strong evidence that Spider-Man 3 is in some stage of development — there was a post from Spider-Man’s face and voice actor doing mo-cap work recently, and the ending of Spider-Man 2 sets up enough threads to fill an entire game on its own. Cletus Kasady (Carnage) appeared in Spider-Man 2, and a new playable character was heavily teased in the ending.
The scale problem is real. Insomniac is thought to be somewhere in the 400–600 person range. For a studio that size, simultaneously running Wolverine, Spider-Man 3, a potential Venom game, a new Ratchet & Clank, and an original IP project is genuinely not feasible without something taking a back seat or getting shelved. Prioritization has to happen.
If Marvel’s Wolverine ships cleanly and well in September, the expectation from most observers is that whatever comes next — Venom, Spider-Man 3, or something else entirely — gets formally announced within the following six months or so. Wolverine’s storyline is also apparently setting the groundwork for X-Men related content down the line, so there’s a whole other franchise thread being pulled at the same time.
Where Does This Leave the Venom Game?
Genuinely unclear, which is an annoying conclusion but the honest one. What we can say with reasonable confidence: Jeter believes it was canceled, and had genuine access to information about the project. Schreier and at least one verified developer in the know both suggest otherwise — that the project was still being discussed as recently as GDC 2026, which was just weeks ago. Insomniac and Sony have said nothing.
It’s entirely possible both things are partially true — the project may have gone through a period where it looked dead, got quietly revived in some form, and Jeter simply has outdated information about its current status. These things happen. Game development is messy, priorities shift, and not everyone in the orbit of a project gets updated in real time.
The most pragmatic reading of the situation: treat Venom as on uncertain footing, not definitively dead. If Wolverine goes well, there’s a clearer path forward for Insomniac to address what’s next. Until then, the Carnage tease in Spider-Man 2 is sitting there, the Eddie Brock story thread is dangling, and fans are going to keep asking questions.
It’s been a wild week for gaming news broadly — Sony itself is in hot water over the PS4/PS5 DRM check-in controversy that blew up this week, while Final Fantasy 14’s Switch 2 subscription situation has gamers debating platform access and ownership all over again. And Star Wars: Galactic Racer accidentally leaked its October 6 release date on Steam, giving fall 2026 at least one more confirmed date to work with. The Venom situation will resolve itself eventually — probably right around the time Wolverine ships.
