Playing a Ubisoft game from Steam usually requires installing and running Ubisoft Connect, which is the publisher's own desktop launcher. It's annoying to use one launcher—Steam—to access another launcher—Ubisoft Connect—in order to play an Assassin's Creed game, but it's been that way for years, and Ubisoft isn't alone in insisting on it: EA and Rockstar both do it too.

But it looks like Ubisoft is changing tack: starting with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, for some reason, the publisher is "testing" doing away with the launcher altogether, though software will still run in the background for "cross-progression, cross-play, player safety, challenges and rewards" via a new Ubisoft Connect Services Steam tool.

"This first version is an initial step toward a smoother and more streamlined launch experience on Steam," the Steam announcement reads. "We will continue to iterate and improve Ubisoft Connect Services over time, with the goal of delivering the features and services players use and expect while making the Steam experience as seamless as possible."

I don't think this means you won't need a Ubisoft Connect account: It'll likely operate more like Diablo 4, which requires a Battle.net account but doesn't require launching the Battle.net application.

The post also promises that the new method will roll out to other Ubisoft games in the future. It'll be nice when it does: I've definitely resisted the spontaneous urge for a Rainbow Six Siege match due to the petty annoyance of getting it to open. When Robin Valentine rated all of PC gaming's launchers in 2024, Ubisoft's came in very close to the bottom.

"Another launcher only used under duress, Ubisoft Connect's most notable feature is adding even more things to earn and buy to Ubisoft's already overstuffed games," he wrote.

With Electronic Arts now almost fully owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, a Bloomberg report says the wealth fund is now giving thought to merging it with the PIF's other gaming crown jewel, Savvy Games Group.

No decisions have been made at this point, according to the report, which also says that any potential merger would likely wait until the completion of the PIF's acquisition of Chinese mobile gaming company Moonton for $6 billion, a deal that was announced in March. The proposed merger would also have to overcome various regulatory hurdles.

From the perspective of the PIF, and by extension Saudi Arabia—the fund's chairman is Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the nation—a merger would seem to make sense. Savvy Games Group is a behemoth in its own right, with subsidiaries including esports org ESL Faceit Group, Pokémon Go publisher Scopely, and—soon—Moonton. Bringing that and EA's own significant operations under one umbrella would presumably simplify the PIF's gaming strategy going forward.

The PIF may also be motivated to make a merger by the fact that money, even for the ever-flush Saudi kingdom, is getting a bit tight. Mergers typically result in the elimination of duplicated operations and services, and their related expenses. As we've seen many times in the past, that means layoffs: EA employees are already bracing for deep cuts as the company moves to take on the $18 billion debt load incurred as a result of the PIF's acquisition of the company earlier this year, and it's not unreasonable to think that the new Saudi owners would be looking for other ways to pare back costs.

How a proposed merger would fare under regulatory scrutiny is less clear. The resulting company would be a global powerhouse, effectively under the control of a single person—a person who's been credibly accused of ordering the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, don't forget.

That might seem like the sort of thing that's destined to run into roadblocks, but bin Salman is also close with current US president Donald Trump, while the PIF's acquisition of EA in the first place was facilitated in part by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Those connections may have helped the PIF avoid the aggressive (and ultimately futile) actions faced by Microsoft when it acquired Activision Blizzard, and they may prove useful again in the future too.

Electronic Arts declined to comment on the report. I've also reached out to the Public Investment Fund and Savvy Games Group for comment, and will update if I receive a reply.

Early access on Steam is a simple concept. You buy a game before it's finished, provide bug reports and feedback to developers, and help shape a project's direction and ambitions. Everybody wins: You get to play the game early, and developers earn money that helps them continue and finish their work. It's been a boon for numerous notable games over the years, including Baldur's Gate 3 and Palworld.

In an interview with GamesRadar, though, Pocketpair communications and publishing chief John Buckley said that proposition is becoming increasingly difficult for developers, because the whole idea of early access has "lost its meaning."

"Go back to the Steam Greenlight days, when Steam changed Greenlight to early access, there were a few years where it really was running and operating exactly the way I think Steam dreamed it," Buckley said.

"I think everyone knew what they were in for. The kind of people who were buying early access games knew what they were in for. They were the kind of gamers who want to be involved, they want to give feedback, they want to talk to devs. It was this really beautiful golden era."

Now, though, the rise of what Buckley called "hyper-casual mobile culture, and hyper-casual gaming culture, and live service gaming culture" has eroded that understanding, and the accord between developer and gamer that rose from it: "The culture has changed and early access, essentially, has lost its meaning. People just buy an early access game like they buy a normal game and treat it like that's the game."

There's no doubt some truth to that. Generally speaking, I subscribe to the principle that if a product is offered for sale, and people pay money for that product, they're well within their rights to expect that they're getting the product. But early access isn't quite so cut-and-dried: Steam Greenlight was a more cumbersome system, but it also clearly delineated between a work-in-progress and a final release, which early access releases often do not.

Dialed-in gamers, or those who are old enough to remember when beta testing was an actual phase of development rather than a promotional tool, may have a clearer idea of what to expect from early access games. But as gaming becomes more of a mainstream pastime it's reasonable to expect that an increasing percentage of the audience is going to neither know nor care about what early access: They just want to buy a game and play it.

Buckley doesn't believe that's necessarily a bad thing, but he did say "it's getting harder on Steam, sadly, because this culture has come through." And while he remains a believer, he also acknowledged that early access isn't ideal for every game, and that the system is "abused" by some developers.

"The biggest way it's abused now is just like, 'We'll release it now because we need money'," he said. "It's a way now to sidestep traditional funding means. It's almost become the new Kickstarter in some ways. Put out the build to get the money."

I'm not entirely sold on the idea that "put out the build to get the money" really qualifies as abuse—it is, after all, the whole basis for the early access system. But it can lead to trouble if early access sales aren't enough to support continued development, or simply through mismanaged expectations. The best thing developers who release into early access can do to avoid potential headaches, Buckley said, is to be clear about what's happening and, as much as possible, keep people fully informed.

"All we can do is try to softly educate people. I think we do an okay job. I think we try to be quite transparent. 'Hey guys, the next update's a while away. It's not going to be content-heavy, it's going to be QOL-heavy.' We try to balance it."

Pocketpair has indeed taken that approach with its fans: Buckley recently warned his followers not to expect too much from Palworld's 1.1 patch, saying it's "not planning to spend a year making a massive update."

Blizzard Entertainment's union—in conjunction with the Communications Workers of America (CWA)—has just signed a landmark contract with the studio to, among other things, force it to "discuss, evaluate, and bargain" any time it wants to introduce generative AI in the workplace.

As explained on the CWA website, this contract has been in the works for two years and impacts around 1900 workers from across the studio, including those working on World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, QA, Overwatch, and Diablo. The contract itself does a lot of good for these people, who are living in an era of uncertainty thanks to Xbox's 'reset' that has impacted over 1600 jobs and is soon to jeopardise 1600 more.

That good includes: "wage increases, grievance procedures, a three-day in-office hybrid workweek, 'just cause' protections, remote work, and disability accommodations". Most notably, however, is a stipulation that Blizzard needs to run any AI usage by the workplace first.

"The contracts now require Blizzard to discuss, evaluate, and bargain over the usage of artificial intelligence in the workplace," reads the announcement. Essentially, this means that Microsoft cannot simply top-down enforce AI usage as it's been known to do in the past in its software development divisions.

Regarding the hanging sword of Xbox's 2027 deadline for future layoffs, union workers will also be protected if it comes to it: "In an industry first, the new union contracts give workers the right to be 'recalled' into open positions across any Blizzard bargaining unit for 14 months from the date of their layoff announcement. Workers have also secured an extra 4 weeks of severance for union workers regardless of their tenure."

On the victory, QA worker and bargaining committee member Simon Hedrick says: "I believe that the positive change we have won will ripple out and help make the games industry as a whole a better place for workers and players alike. This contract is the start of something greater, and I urge everyone to remember: when we fight together, we win together."

It's a major victory for a studio that, like most others under Xbox's umbrella, has a vague and impending sense of doom following it. In a sane world, I'd say Blizzard makes enough bank to be safe, that's just not the kind of industry we live in. You can get valued at $68.7 billion by Microsoft and still lose.

Physint has been hyped as Kojima Productions' return to "tactical espionage action" or, in other words, Hideo Kojima's return to making stealth action games in the style of Metal Gear Solid. It's been a PlayStation exclusive since its reveal in 2024, but things have changed dramatically: after Sony tried to cancel the project entirely in June this year, Kojima has found refuge with Microsoft.

"In mid-June of this year, we unexpectedly received notice from PlayStation Studios that they would cancel the Physint project," Hideo Kojima wrote on X.

"Physint is an important project both to me personally and to Kojima Productions. Determined to keep the project alive, we have spent the last three months searching tirelessly for a new partner. In the course of seeking advice and pursuing negotiations with people across many fields, we found in Xbox a partner with whom we share a common vision for the future, and we have decided to team up with them once again.

"Please rest assured that development of Physint, our genre-defining action-espionage title, is ongoing and will continue moving forward."

In an exceedingly rare turn of events, Sony has even released its own statement, though it's unlikely to paper over the fact that the company tried to cancel a Hideo Kojima game.

"After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to step away from collaborating with Kojima Productions on its project Physint," the official PlayStation X account posted. "We continue to have great admiration for Hideo Kojima's vision for the game.

"Our relationship remains strong after three decades of industry-leading, genre-defining creative cooperation, and we look forward to continued close collaboration with Hideo Kojima and his award-winning independent studio in the future."

Xbox boss Asha Sharma, obviously chuffed, offers a more restrained missive: "Physint and OD!", she wrote. "Proud to build both with @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN in Japan. A big moment for Xbox."

In a seperate Xbox press release it's revealed that the relationship will "extend beyond games", with film and TV collaborations in the pipeline.

The change is unlikely to be entirely smooth: whether Physint will continue to use the Decima Engine—built by Guerrilla Games and owned by Sony—is yet to be seen. Physint also promises to be fairly unconventional: despite being marketed as "'tactical espionage action game", Kojima has also said the project will be "both a game and a movie at the same time". So Metal Gear Solid 4, then?

Physint doesn't have a release date but, as of last year, it was expected to release within six years. It'll follow OD, another Kojima Xbox exclusive, which according to Kojima himself, people at big companies told him he was "crazy" for making.

I'm looking forward to an expansion for a game from 2015 more than I am for pretty much any new game coming up. The Songs of the Past add-on for The Witcher 3, which will be out next year, promises to let us explore a whole new region and get to know Dandelion better than ever. I'm more interested in a brand new chunk of world than intimate moments with the bard, but more Witcher 3 is more Witcher 3 even if the focus isn't on everyone's actual favorite character. (Johnny the Godling, of course.)

Songs of the Past was shown off at Gamescom, where our Joshua Wolens had a peek and said it looked real good. The rest of us will have to wait for other opportunities, like the one that's been announced as part of the PAX Australia schedule reveal. On Saturday, October 11, attendees will be able to join members of CD Projekt and DLC developer Fool's Theory for a behind-closed-doors live demo of Songs of the Past, and a panel discussion to follow.

Other events planned for the three-day event include Storytime with World of Warcraft executive producer Holly Longdale, Final Fantasy 14 veterans Koji Fox and Toshio 'Foxclon' Murouchi suffering through a hot-sauce interview in "A Realm Reburned", and Saros' creative director Gregory Louden talking about a career that's included work on games like Control and Returnal.

The tabletop side of gaming will also be well covered with Jasmine 'ThatBronzeGirl' Bhullar, Dungeon Master of the official Dungeons & Dragons liveplay and Dimension 20's Coffin Run, talking about the art of storytelling, and fellow Dimension 20 alumnus Ify Nwadiwe taking part in a D&D one-shot with Deerstalker Pictures.

Other guests include composer Mick Gordon and fantasy author Isobelle Carmody. PAX Australia runs from October 9–11 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, and the full schedule is online at the PAX website now.

Valve rolled out 18+ age verification for Australian Steam users yesterday, which was inevitable: both PlayStation and Xbox have already done so and it is, after all, illegal not to, with fines up to AU$50 million at stake. But unlike PlayStation and Xbox, which offer a small handful of ways to verify one's adulthood, Valve has only one: you must own a credit card.

And no, your debit card won't work, or at least, mine doesn't. You'll need an actual credit card: a card that uses money you don't have, versus a card that uses money you do. It makes a bit of sense, because Australians need to be 18 to qualify for a credit card, whereas teenagers can own a debit card.

But there are other complications: You may be an adult and not qualify for a credit card because you don't earn enough money. You may not meet a particular bank's credit assessment criteria, as per CommBank. You may have a poor credit history. Or, you may simply not want to have a credit card because the prospect of spending money not in your possession is odd to you. If you fall under any of these categories—and I do the latter—then sorry: Valve won't sell you R18+ videogames.

It's not even possible to view the store page for an R18+ game. When I click on Doom 2016, I receive this message:

"Valve is required by the Age-Restricted Material App Distribution Services Code to verify that you are 18 or older before accessing mature content. If you wish to do so, please add a valid Australian credit card to your account and afterwards update the Mature Content Preferences."

As people online have pointed out, it's still possible to buy Steam keys for R18+ games from third-party sellers like Fanatical and Green Man Gaming, and then redeem them on Steam. So it's not a bullet proof answer, but then, few age verification methods are completely desirable. Third-party verification providers like Persona, for example, have raised serious privacy and information security concerns.

I've reached out to Valve to ask whether it intends to implement other age verification methods for Australian users and if so, when.

There once was a time in which, if you were a fan of a videogame, you might get asked which of said games in the series you had played. Now, I'm not saying we need to bring this era back—it was an obnoxious period full of gatekeepers—but Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi's recent words on the subject are a surprising sign of the times.

Speaking to Nikkei Gaming (thanks, IGN), Utsumi explains that (via machine translation): "For example, the 'Yakuza' series has been doing exceptionally well in merchandising, with 60-70% of its buyers being women. They've become fans of the 'Yakuza' world, story, and characters after watching our YouTube channel and popular YouTubers' streams. And among them are many people who have never actually played the game."

I'm assuming that Utsumi has stats to back that up, rather than just assuming that women don't play videogames (they do, I work with several of them), but it's indeed true that videogames have been enjoying a wider secondary audience thanks to let's players and streamers.

"Even people who have never played games are considered fans and 'gamers' by us," he adds, "transmedia's strength lies in increasing the entry points and contact points for people to become interested in IP. In some cases, their engagement is even higher than that of fans who actually play the games."

That buzzword—transmedia—essentially just means merchandise, movies, comics, and so on. Videogames might be a cornerstone for Sega, but it's using that as a foundation to build up a heap of other points of sale and advertising opportunities: "For example, if there are overseas users who are interested in the scene where a character eats a beef bowl in Yakuza, even a beef bowl can become merchandise. I think that's what merchandising is all about these days."

You heard it here first, folks—we're merchandising beef bowls, now. Maybe if it'd come out six years later, we'd be getting Ichiban-branded bread. It did look good for prison food.

Double Fine has ducked out of the way of Microsoft's falling axe, going independent after the new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced layoffs totalling 3,200 people earlier this year. The studio itself has had a bit of a troubled discography after the win of Psychonauts 2, with neither 2025's Keeper or 2026's Kiln doing much to move the needle.

Tim Schafer pretty much pins his studio's voluntary exile from Microsoft on Sharma in a conversation with Bloomberg, saying that the storm clouds first started gathering when she visited the studio in "listening mode"—but it was clear that, when she started talking about shifting Xbox's vision, it was bad news.

"We had a mutually beneficial mission," says Schafer, "Which is just to put great games on Game Pass, and then their mission changed. I can't imagine any amount of profitability—unless we had a breakout, Minecraft hit that year—would've saved us."

You're reading this article because Double Fine didn't do that, though Schafer doesn't seem to have any major hard feelings about it: "The games industry is full of terrible things, and I can't change most of them. It's like I'm a captain of a little fishing boat. And it's like worrying about whether the ocean is fair. Not much I can do about it. Just keep this little boat afloat, keep trying to see if that's a reef, or is that a bunch of fish? Is that money over there?"

As a matter of fact, Schafer seems galvanised by the whole process: "You're like, 'Wait a second, we're not going out like this.' Some people said: 'I'm checking out, this is one too many battles for me.' But for the rest of us, it's like a creative awakening."

That's not to say Double Fine came out unscathed. Just a few months after its departure, Schafer laid off 23 people to ensure "the survival of our studio". Mind, the attempt to keep those people employed for the three months beforehand—leaving the decision to let them go to fall squarely on Schafer's head—at least seems preferable to the brutal sweeping cuts from Microsoft.

That feeling of personal responsibility is expressed to Bloomberg in some lively terms: "No one puts Double Fine out of business except for me. Asha's not going to shoot my dog. I'm going to shoot it. But I'm not going to shoot it because it's going to do great. A lot of people want to walk the dog."

I'm not so sure about that last bit. While we rather quite liked Keeper, giving it a sterling 90 in our Keeper review, Kiln had an all-time peak of 193 players on SteamDB. There is, at the time of writing—and I swear I am not kidding—exactly one person playing it on Steam. Now, that's not indicative of the wider numbers, Kiln was a game pass joint, but still—Schafer stays optimistic.

"We never actively tried to make a game we thought was going to lose money. I think people would say, 'Oh, Keeper looks like this art house thing that no one expects to be a hit.' But to me it's the kind of game that someone who doesn't play games would love. I really think there's a mass market appeal to Keeper. If we could just get to those people, we could have them catch Lighthouse Fever."

Exophase, a site dedicated to tracking achievements for games across all major platforms including Steam, appears to have been flooded with a bunch of achievements lists it really shouldn't have yet. These include a huge—and importantly, yet to be unverified—list of major forthcoming games including Persona 6, Deus Ex Remastered, Horizon Hunters Gathering, Judas, Kingdom Hearts 4, and many more.

Among those, possibly the biggest surprise is Persona 6. It doesn't even have a release window yet, but its achievements list—assuming it's as legitimate as it looks—is rife with plausible spoilers. You have been warned: there is a lot in there, considering Atlus hasn't even shown gameplay footage yet.

Meanwhile, the achievements list for Kingdom Hearts 4 may reveal a lot about the 2027 instalment that Square Enix no doubt wants to keep under wraps. For example (huge spoilers ahead), Reddit fans have gleaned from the achievements which worlds from Disney's extended universe are most likely to appear, including the corroboration of a widely-believed rumor. Again, you've been warned.

The torrent of listings even includes Steam games that haven't been announced or named in Steam's backend yet. Among the more interesting examples are a possible Balatro follow-up (update: it's not a real one) and seemingly verified rumors that the forthcoming Thief: The Dark Project Remastered will come with a new campaign called The Tarnished Mirror.

It also looks like Squadron 42, the singleplayer campaign component of Star Citizen which was delayed to Q2 2027 last week, may make its way to Steam.

It certainly has the makings of a smaller version of the infamous 2021 Nvidia leak, if it's all actually real (and it appears to be). Other achievements leaked for known games include Attack on Titan 3, Kena: Scars of Kosmora, Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Stranger Than Heaven, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and Control Resonant.

I've reached out to Valve to see if they have a statement on the matter. This story is definitely developing: if the leaks are real, more titles are likely to come to light in the coming hours.

If you were alive and sentient in the nineties you probably harbour some fondness for the "big box" PC games of yore. Back then, rather than buy an ephemeral digital license for a game, you'd head to a store to buy a huge box bedecked in lavish art, inside which you'd find a handful of 3.5-inch floppy discs or a CD-ROM, usually a substantial glossy manual, and if you were lucky, maybe even some extras like stickers or drink coasters.

There's been renewed interest in the ye olde big box PC game, especially in the wake of Sony's announcement it will discontinue physical PlayStation games. Some proactive folk have gone viral for manufacturing their own physical Steam games. Now GOG has offered its own alternative: printable big boxes based on scans of real commercial packages from the golden era of game packaging.

In collaboration with Big Box Collection—which is a fan-operated trove of big box 3D scans—GOG is now offering those 3D scans with five entries in its GOG Preservation Program. These include the newly added Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Armikrog, while games already in the Preservation Program including Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, and Myst will also receive the treatment.

"We’re delivering flat, printable versions of the same box art, so you can cut, fold, and glue your own physical big box at home," reads GOG's announcement. "A proper papercraft project for anyone who misses shelves full of PC game boxes."

It's a neat idea for people who long for the days when they could display their collection on actual shelves. As the capriciousness of so-called digital ownership becomes clearer with time, and as streaming platforms become more cynical, exploitative and AI-flooded, people in their droves are returning to physical media. Revenue from CD sales, for instance, have jumped 58% in 2026 compared to 2025. That's a pretty good result for a format long considered dead.

The elephant in the room here is that obviously GOG isn't selling physical discs. But of all the major PC games platforms, it's best positioned to offer this service: GOG is DRM free, so there's nothing stopping you from burning the game files onto a CD or DVD, all the better to archive on your physical shelves.

One of the biggest videogames of 2025 was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a French JRPG that sold millions of copies, won armloads of awards, and earned not just one but two separate shout-outs from French President Emmanuel Macron. It must've made an even bigger impression on him than it first appeared, as over the weekend Macron announced a new "international videogame festival" that will take place in France.

Macron made the announcement during an address at the Lumiere Summit (via GamesRadar), a conference where governments, businesses, creators, and "cultural institutions" can collaborate on the future of "cinema and the moving image." I assume that last bit is a just-missed translation of "motion picture," because that's clearly what the conference is about, but regardless, Macron used the moment to reveal his ambitions for a related-but-different effort.

"I firmly believe that videogames are part of our culture," Macron said (Google translated), adding that games should be considered part of France's cultural heritage, just as movies and "other creative endeavors" already are.

"Therefore, we will create an international videogame festival conceived from the outset as a major global event for creativity, innovation, gamers, and the industry. The great global successes of French videogames remind us of the richness of this creative endeavor, this creativity, which is also an industry. We must further celebrate it and strive to gain everyone's support."

Macron didn't mention Clair Obscur by name, but that has to be at the top of his mind. There's really no bigger outwardly French videogame of the moment, and as I said, he's called it out publicly at least twice in the past.

But there are an awful lot of other really good made-in-France videogames out there. Ubisoft, headquartered in Saint-Mandé, France, makes quite a few of them, and there's also the Plague Tale series, Rematch, Jusant, Chants of Sennaar, Sifu, Stray, and casting a little further back, the biggest and best of them all (and this is not up for discussion), Another World.

Details of Macron's proposed new showcase weren't shared, but he did offer some insight into what he called "profound upheavals" in film, television, animation, and videogames, including artificial intelligence and the advent of platforms—I imagine a reference to things like Roblox, Netflix, and Paramount if it ever manages to complete the Warner acquisition—that "are transforming our habits."

"Faced with challenges that know no borders, no nation can act alone. That is why, in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France and South Korea—two great nations of creation committed to cultural diversity and their sovereignty—are bringing together those who create, produce, finance, distribute, innovate, and decide. Our ambition: to forge new alliances between creators and technologies, public and private actors, cinema, television, platforms, and video games. So that this revolution opens up new possibilities without homogenizing our imaginations."

France already has one big videogame festival, Paris Games Week, but it's possible Macron is envisioning something more in the way of a cultural exchange program rather than a business-oriented event. We'll have to wait and see for that, just as we're now waiting to see what Clair Obscur developer Sandfall Interactive gets up to next.

Don't Nod, best known as the developers of Life is Strange 1 and 2, has been having a rough go of it, lately. In 2024, its games Jusant and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden sold "well below expectations", causing it to pause development of two further games. Then, in 2025, it laid off several employees after Lost Records didn't quite make up the difference.

Based on this financial update (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz), its third-person adventure game Aphelion didn't pull things back from the brink, either. The developer reported a 56% decrease in operating revenue year-on-year, "amid systemic pressures in the video game industry, characterized by highly selective financing."

This also presented as a €3.5 million decline in sales in the first half of 2026, "driven primarily by sales and the recognition of a portion of PS+ and Game Pass revenue from Bloom and Rage, initial sales of Aphelion, and the back catalog", as well as an increase development costs to the tune of €2.6 million because of an as-yet-unannounced collaboration with Netflix for "a narrative game based on a major Netflix intellectual property."

This is a dire forecast, as it means there's a "material uncertainty regarding the company's ability to continue as a going concern beyond January 31, 2027." In other words, Don't Nod is running out of money, and fast.

As a result, the studio's looking to reduce the amount of plates it's currently spinning: "Don't Nod is refocusing its operations in France around a single production line, bringing together the expertise required to launch new projects before the completion of current productions."

To do this, it'll be undergoing a hefty restructure that may well lead to layoffs. Or, in corporate speak, a "workforce adjustment in France that may involve the reduction of up to 90 positions." The project to do so has already been approved by its board of directors, and negotiations are in place with its union.

Like a crack of thunder in a distant stormcloud, this is yet another grim piece of news after an already-severe year for the industry—one spearheaded in 2026 by Microsoft, which has laid off 1,600 workers and is soon to lay off 1,600 more. It is, as lead services programmer Chris Hayes at id Software put it, a sign that "there's something wrong."

When Cookie Clicker and Candy Box both released in quick succession in 2013, I remember them being received mostly as a joke, or else as an amusing parody of "watch numbers go up" RPG gameplay. Then something weird happened: all my colleagues became fixated on Cookie Clicker. So did I. Lots of people on the internet, on Twitter and in various forums like Reddit, confessed to having become addicted to it.

Cookie Clicker did have an antecedent in Ian Bogost's Cow Clicker, which was a very deliberate satire. But Cookie Clicker wasn't presented as satire. And yet, it was so transparently meaningless that people doubted it could be anything else. You click a cookie repeatedly to generate more cookies. Once you earn enough cookies, you can invest those cookies into various ways of expediting the cookie making process. You click and watch numbers go up. It's stupid.

Fast forward more than a decade later and idlers, also known as incremental games, are massive on Steam. Last week, 54 games with the tag "idler" released. In total, there are 4,314 games with that tag on Steam.

Some of these look pretty good as far as idlers go. Next Reign: Kingdom has pretty handmade pixel art, atmospheric music and strategic elements. We Need More Humans! Has a novel premise—you have to become increasingly proficient at abducting humans—and, as far as this genre goes, a distinctive art style. Zad Archery's art style, on the other hand, is very generic but it has nearly 700 "mostly positive" reviews, so it must be doing something right.

None of those listed above are likely to rival genre heavyweights like Bongo Cat (currently being played by 135,803 people), Task Bar Hero (66,292 people) and Banana (3,628). But they have at least managed to rise above the onslaught of idler AI slop. The vast majority of the idlers that released on Steam last week have an AI disclosure.

And many of them look oddly, almost uncannily similar. Compare the UIs in the gallery below:

There's a special fondness for a roughly similar shade of blue, isn't there? They are not pleasant UIs. What is going on here? Why do these games all look roughly the same?

A quick look at their AI disclosures may be telling. Vespera has "AI generated images and other AI made components". Nexus: "Some assets were created using AI. I'm not as [sic] artist lol." Brainrot Clicker, fittingly, has "some pre-generated visual assets, written content, and development-related creative work", while Path of the Idle Cultivator used AI "for UI and some translations".

These are just four examples: browse the raw unfiltered list of Steam idler games and you'll find many, many more examples of games with loosely the same approach to UI, both in terms of layout and that gravitation towards a dark blue background colour.

The amount of games bearing the idler tag spiked dramatically last year, according to SteamDB. In 2020 there were 100, in 2024 there were 647, last year there were 1033 and this year—so far!—there are 1811. There are 1119 coming soon and 380 "TBA".

I don't mean to be too dismissive of the idler as a genre: there are decent examples. But the whole situation feels almost implausibly silly: Steam is being flooded with thousands of mindless "numbers go up" games developed primarily with the aid of generative AI. It's got to be the quintessence of brainrot.

If you'd told me in 2013 as I dumbly clicked on cookies that this was the future of the idler genre, I wouldn't have believed you at first. Then, maybe five minutes later, after giving it some thought, I'd probably have to admit to the inevitability of it.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 25 - September 1)

Star Wars Zero Company tops the list, which wasn't necessarily guaranteed: yes, it's a Star Wars game, but it's also a strategy RPG in the style of XCOM. Unfortunately, the offices at Bit Reactor probably aren't thrumming with post-launch elation: 80 percent of its workforce has reportedly been furloughed.

The Blood of Dawnwalker and Onimusha both released after the period tracked by this chart, but for what it's worth—and perhaps that's not much—The Blood of Dawnwalker's pre-orders had it at 17, while Onimusha came in at 28. Given The Blood of Dawnwalker has already sold a million units just three days after release (across all platforms) but we don't know how Onimusha has done.

Elden Ring Tarnished Pack came in at 29, which is quite low considering it's Elden Ring DLC. Most reviews suggest it's not worth the $5: "Not worth the money," one Steam user wrote. "Should have been free as it is a very small update made to promote the launch of the game on the Switch." A lot of reviews are in agreement.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

One of the many things making this feel like a particularly dumb epoch to be living through is the way the US government has taken to using videogames as a tool for self-aggrandizement and disseminating its pro-war and anti-immigration messages. A bunch of people who usually argue politics should be kept out of videogames have suddenly found themselves defending the use of videogames in politics, and the rest of us are rendered stupider for having to pay attention to the circus.

As a reminder, we've seen the Department of Homeland Security make a Pokémon mashup about how they "gotta catch 'em all", the White House use AI to dress Trump up as Master Chief from Halo after which Homeland Security decided "Destroy the Flood" was an appropriate recruitment message, and then the US government started using Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto memes to promote its war in Iran.

Most recently, the White House launched an arcade section on its website containing terrible knock-offs of games like Flappy Bird, Snake, and Tetris. The Tetris game is particularly baffling. Reskinned as Build the Wall, it becomes a game of defeating a "zombie border siege" on the helpfully labeled "Southern Border" in case you missed the subtlety of its theming, where you stack up tetrominoes that never clear while zombies march toward the blocks.

The Tetris Company was motivated to respond. Posting on Instagram, it wrote, "At Tetris we believe in the power of connection and bringing people together, not dividing them. To our fans everywhere: we love you, we see you, and we're grateful to have you in our community."

This was accompanied by two clarifications. "P.S. The Tetris Company was not involved in the creation of 'Build the Wall'." And then, "P.P.S. We take copyright infringement very seriously."

They're not alone in being frustrated by this usurping of videogames to be used as propaganda tools by a conservative government, when it's usually the conservative position that culture, whether the "Hollywood liberals" or videogames with women in them, should stop being so goshdarn political. Halo's co-creator Marcus Lehto called the appropriation of his work "absolutely abhorrent", and The Pokémon Company has also pointed out "permission was not granted for the use of our intellectual property."

AI in gamedev is about as hot as hot topics get—the tech is polarizing for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is its environmental impact. The data centers AI relies on come with grave heat and water use concerns at a time when our species' ecological footprint is already leaning toward the catastrophic. Developers like Saber Interactive are still experimenting with the technology to make videogames, though CCO Tim Willits acknowledged the concerns to PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens at Gamescom 2026.

"Personally, you know, whenever I look something up that maybe my wife asked for, I'm like, 'oh man, I'm destroying the environment to answer this question,'" Willits said. "So yes, that is a real issue. I mean, as a society. Globally. Look at the disasters happening even this week. So yes, mankind, we need to figure that out."

As for how mankind might do that, Willits cited a suggestion from right-wing billionaire, Tesla CEO and Path of Exile 2 n00b Elon Musk: "Elon wants to put servers in space. That could be the answer, right? I mean, it's funny, but why not? Starlink is fast. I don't care if I have to wait a couple of extra seconds to get my silly AI picture. But it is a problem, I think."

Recently, Saber has caught flak for its use of AI in the upcoming Rideshare Stimulator—one former writer for the studio alleged she was replaced with ChatGPT during development. While Saber denied that specific claim, it stood by its decision to use AI for dialog (which was, at that point, undisclosed on the game's Steam page), saying "we are firm believers in using AI tools to improve or enhance gameplay experiences."

AI isn't the only hot topic Willits is tuned in to. He also spoke with us about the 'silo problem' facing huge triple-A studios, as well as that recent Rideshare Stimulator controversy—and despite it all, he believes it's a "great time" to be in the games industry.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens at this year's Gamescom, Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits admitted the studio's leadership had a reputation for saying precisely what it means—"sometimes we 'say what we mean' too much," he laughed. But when asked if recent controversies would change the studio's comms approach, he said "no."

"I've been in the industry for so long, and there's always some dust up," Willits explained. "People got mad at Saber because we put World War Z on Epic, and people were like, 'oh, Saber's destroying the industry.' Now 30 million people have played World War Z. And the games will speak for themselves, even in our experiment with Rideshare [Stimulator]."

If you haven't been keeping up with the latest drama Saber Interactive has courted, here's the skinny: former Saber Interactive writer Stella Sacco claimed she was fired and replaced with AI during the development of Rideshare Stimulator.

Saber's comms department initially put out a fairly benign statement disputing the details of the claim, but CEO Matt Karch subsequently issued a statement to This Week In Videogames that was both aggressively pro-AI, and personally insulting to Sacco.

Karch apologized privately to Sacco before releasing a statement reflecting on the incident which itself contained a targeted barb for a different games industry writer that has since been edited.

All that might sound like an avalanche of unforced errors on Saber's part, but Willits said Rideshare Stimulator will speak for itself regardless of any concerns about AI and Sacco's treatment. "I encourage people to check it out when it comes out, play it themselves," Willits said. "They may be like 'oh, this is cool! I like this,' you know. And if they don't like it, fine.

"We are going to stick to making the best games we can. Try to show them, give people an opportunity to play them, and have players make their own decisions because players are smart, you know. You make a good game, they'll find it and play it."

With mega-games like GTA 6 on the way, it's hard not to feel like games are always getting bigger—both the software itself, and the teams that make it (GTA 6 has an entire dedicated NPC team "art-directing" its every background character). But in an interview with PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens, Saber Interactive CCO Tim Willits said a reliance on games with huge scopes and highly specialized teams may be responsible for some of the industry's many, many woes.

"The industry always has some cycles, some ups and downs, and one of the things that we have done well to avoid some of the issues that other studios have had is we spread out our resources," Willits said. "We develop games that are across the scope spectrum, for lack of a better description." While games like Space Marine 2 and the upcoming Jurassic Park: Survival take a lot of manpower, the studio relies on remasters and smaller games to fund those "big bets."

"We have a culture where people can work on any game, and we can move resources around. So we avoid the 'silo problem' that you find with big studios," he continued. "Studios that have a couple hundred employees that work on one game are going to struggle. They're going to really struggle to survive. Because before a game hits a vertical slice, you do not need hundreds of people on that."

He noted that if there's a studio culture where nimble developers can realize smaller passion projects, those can then turn out to be big hits unexpectedly—an example he gave was SnowRunner, a "mega franchise" for Saber with over 46,000 user reviews on Steam. That started as "an experiment by one guy."

"So take some of these totally talented developers that maybe have lost their job or you don't know what to do with them, and put them on a project. You know, sell it for $5. Take a risk … we look at every project, no matter how big it is. If we have the resources and we can reliably make money from that project, why not do it?"

Willits said it's also a creative boon and morale-booster on top of the financial benefits. When asked if he'd turn the studio into a Rockstar-sized hitmaker if he could, he said no. "I have the best job in the world now," he explained. "I do feel that other people at Saber love [the variety of game we develop] as well. You know, you're not stuck working on one game for five six years. We just make so much, and everyone's involved in so many different things that it's fun."

All this being said, Willits also theorized the games industry's current woes right now aren't as bad as you might think in the first place: In the same interview, he said it's "actually, honestly, a good time" for the medium right now despite it all. As for AI's impact on all this, well, Willits said that's not so bad either—in fact, he argued that "of course" id Software would have used it back in the day—Willits himself was studio director at id from 1995 to 2019.

In 2021, as studio CEO Pete Parsons cited the company's recent "tremendous growth and opportunity," Bungie announced its plans for a massive expansion to its Bellevue, Washington headquarters. The campus embiggening, which internal sources have reportedly described as costing "hundreds of millions" of dollars, more than doubled the size of Bungie's offices from 84,000 square feet to just under 211,000.

Now, after five and a half years of spending sprees, publisher acquisitions, stumbling product launches, project cancellations, and repeated mass layoffs, Bungie appears to be seeking subletters for the goliath game development headquarters it's no longer capable of filling.

According to a 10-page leasing brochure reviewed by The Game Post, Bungie is seeking interested renters to sublease its expansive headquarters, listing its 210,984 square feet as a "turn-key" production facility. In addition to expected office fixtures, the listing also features a dedicated lobby, gym and exercise facilities (including a rock climbing wall), a motion-capture studio, a cafe, catering space, and a private exterior patio.

While the brochure didn't directly identify the studio, a statement provided to press verified that Bungie was actively pursuing a sublease.

"Bungie is exploring options to sublease its campus in Bellevue, Washington. The studio transitioned to a digital-first model several years ago, and this move reflects the team's evolving workplace needs and the effectiveness of its remote collaboration," Bungie said. "Bungie will continue to maintain a physical office presence in Bellevue."

Bungie formally adopted remote work eligibility for most of its roles in 2022, following the studio's shift to work-from-home development during the COVID-19 lockdown years—effectively defeating the purpose of its office expansion due to circumstances that would have been impossible to predict during its early planning stages.

Bungie wasn't the only games company to make ill-fated investments during the height of the pandemic: Analysts have repeatedly cited overly-ambitious expansions and acquisitions—propelled by the COVID era's low interests rates and explosion of at-home entertainment revenue—as one of the driving forces behind the games industry's brutal cost-cutting in the years that followed.

Bungie's overextension, however, was particularly drastic. After Sony purchased the studio for $3.6 billion in 2022, Bungie leadership embarked on a rampant hiring spree, adding hundreds of developers to the payroll to fill out development teams for a swath of simultaneous incubation projects—projects that would prove unsustainable as the impact of Covid waned and revenues started to tumble across the industry.

A mass layoff followed in October 2023, affecting roughly 100 employees. The next round cut 220 developers in July 2024 as fallout from Bungie leadership having reportedly "overstated their studio’s financial prospects to Sony," leading to a dire enough fiscal outlook that even the success of Destiny 2's Final Shape expansion couldn't salvage it. As Sony intensified its oversight amidst the mounting turmoil, Bungie's leadership began to abandon ship, culminating with Pete Parsons departing the studio in 2025—presumably in one of his vintage collector cars.

Bungie staff ultimately suffered another sweeping layoff in June 2026, with most of the Destiny team losing their jobs in the aftermath of Destiny 2's end of live service. At peak employment, Bungie's staff numbered over 1,600; in July 2024, Parsons said the studio numbered around 850. The WARN notice issued for this June's layoff indicated at least 292 jobs were affected.

In other words, if all of Bungie's remaining employees gathered in its office, there would be fewer than 600 people to fill its 211,000 square feet.

If you're interested, the master lease runs through September 30, 2035.

Last week, in the wake of a rash of developer hardware thefts at this year's Gamescom, the event's organizers provoked a wave of outcry by publishing a statement that many perceived as callously placing the blame on exhibitors who hadn't adequately insured their equipment.

Today, Gamescom released an additional statement on X, admitting that its initial response was inadequate and committing to improving the rigor of its security procedures with input from affected exhibitors.

"Over the past few days, we have received a great deal of criticism for the way we communicated about the theft of hardware belonging to several indie developers. That criticism is justified," Gamescom said. "Our first response did not strike the right tone, and it did not show the people affected the empathy they deserved. We are sorry."

After acknowledging the emotional, financial, and professional cost of the hardware thefts, Gamescom said it has "been moved by" and is "grateful for" the outpouring of support for affected exhibitors, which "says a great deal" about the industry and its consumers.

However, that generosity does not, it said, "relieve us, as the organizers, of our own responsibility to work together with our exhibitors and partners to create the best possible environment for everyone. We are therefore committed to jointly reviewing and further improving security."

In addition to its standard post-event assessment of exhibitor feedback, Gamescom said it's committing to both "a dedicated review of security for indie exhibitors" and to hosting a roundtable with indie booth organizers "so that we can develop concrete measures together." Gamescom also urged any additional exhibitors who suffered thefts during this year's show to report those incidents to both the event organizers and to police.

What the statement doesn't mention is any possibility of compensation for affected exhibitors. PC Gamer contacted Gamescom's organizers at Koelnmesse GmbH to ask how many incidents had been reported, whether any compensation has been investigated or offered to exhibitors whose equipment was stolen, and what forms of vetting and oversight Gamescom security staff are subject to. Gamescom PR offered no response beyond referring PC Gamer to its two published statements about the incidents.

"Our commitment has always been to keep making Gamescom better—together with the community, not just when things go well," Gamescom said in today's statement on X. "That is exactly what we will do here."

As Microsoft continues to flail for a remedy to the reputational damage it's incurred as a result of its repeated mass layoffs, bungled industry consolidation strategies, and partnership with Israeli surveillance agencies, its gaming division is returning to a favorite page from its playbook in recent years: Hiking service costs.

Today, Xbox announced that it will implement a monthly cap on Xbox Cloud Gaming hours for Game Pass subscribers. Previously, eligible Game Pass users could use the game streaming service without a time limit; Beginning in November, however, they'll need to purchase additional cloud playtime through the Xbox Store once they expend their allotted cloud gaming hours.

The Cloud Gaming hourly limits will be determined by Game Pass subscription tier:

• Game Pass Ultimate: 15 hours
• Game Pass Premium: 10 hours
• Game Pass Essential: 5 hours

Xbox acknowledged that the rollout of a monthly time limit on cloud gaming hours is "a meaningful change, particularly for players who regularly spend more time gaming through the cloud." But the company offered an estimate of the policy change's impact that suggests most Game Pass subscribers already aren't using cloud gaming much.

"We expect this upcoming change to impact 4% of Game Pass subscribers," Xbox said.

While it'll be rolling out the monthly cloud gaming cap for Game Pass subscribers, Microsoft will also be opening the service for players without Game Pass in November. Any users will be able to stream eligible games to supported devices after purchasing cloud gaming playtime through the Xbox Store.

Xbox didn't confirm how much cloud playtime will cost, but said it will provide "more information about pricing, purchasing additional hours, eligible games, market availability, and how players can check their remaining time" in November.

The changes to cloud gaming access, Xbox says, are a cost saving measure.

"We’re introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer," Xbox said. "Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost."

Evidently, the company doesn't expect the ad-supported game streaming it began testing last month will sufficiently move the needle on that front. And that needle's got a lot of moving to do: In July, Microsoft's annual financial filings confirmed that Xbox revenue had fallen by $1.7 billion over the last year.

Whether "the practical result" of a higher cost on cloud streaming will actually deliver needed revenue gains for Xbox, however, is unclear. In June, new Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball said the company lost "millions" of Game Pass subscribers after the service's 2025 price hike.

In the meantime, Xbox says it will "listen closely to player feedback before and after the change takes effect and share any adjustments we make."

Nobody likes game delays. Sure, a delay is temporary and suck is forever, as Gabe Newell once said, but it still chafes. But sometimes a little extra development time can go a very long way. In a new interview with the NoClip podcast, immersive sim maestro Harvey Smith shared one such story about Deus Ex, explaining how it leveraged some extra post-production time to give a much bigger role to one of the game's most famous NPCs—and make it a much better game in the process.

Smith's tale actually followed a remark by Ben Horne, his co-founder at the new Black Pony Immersive studio, who said, "You can elevate a good immersive sim into a great immersive sim in a very short amount of time, a matter of months, if you just protect a post-production time."

Publishers generally don't want to hear that, Smith added—although he obviously agrees with the sentiment—and so 20-some years ago, when Ion Storm Austin asked Eidos for more time to tighten up Deus Ex, "We geared up for this giant fight." Instead, Eidos just said yes.

"They were so distracted by what was happening in Dallas with Daikatana and such that they were like, 'Sure, sure, sure. Take five more months, take six more, whatever you need.' And we were like, 'Oh, cool. Okay'."

What was happening in Dallas, as Smith put it, was essentially chaos, which you can dig into via our history of Ion Storm. But, as Smith has previously related, it was a useful distraction for Ion Storm Austin, which did indeed get the extra time it wanted to really nail down Deus Ex.

A focus of that extra dev time was one of the game's foremost NPCs, "this German guy with a skull gun" named Gunther Hermann—who, for the record, very much wanted a skull gun but as far as I know never actually got one despite filing the required paperwork. "He's kind of a big presence in a couple of missions, you go on a mission with him, and then he just vanishes," Smith said. "He has no closure. He's not even in the game.

"So, I literally said, I can drop him into Paris, a big fight in the cathedral, which is an empty building right now, and I can hide some triggers on the roof with data links, and if you're crawling around on the roof because you have 'super jump' or whatever, I'll have him say, 'I'm watching you, Denton, like an insect crawl around on the roof. I am watching you through the satellite, which I am linked to right now, Denton.' You know, so we do this kind of thing, and players go, 'Well fuck, somebody's watching me from a satellite.' It's like smoke and mirrors, and then you get in there and you fight it out with him.

"If you've been paying attention, you know that these earlier models, the cyborgs, they have kill phrases, him and Anna Navarre. And this was an idea that we took from Neil Stephenson or somewhere, so Denton can say this like long crazy kill phrase and Gunther just fucking dies, right? And it's a powerful moment. And we never would have had that in the game had we not gotten that extra time to just look at our game."

This is fascinating for me personally because I had that exact experience: Skulking around a Paris cathedral, quietly working my way inside, when all of a sudden Gunther busts in on the radio to let me know I'm not fooling anyone. Giving it even more weight, I discovered before our final confrontation that Gunther had been waiting for me for some time—and that MJ12 troopers had heard him quietly crying, probably because I'd previously killed Navarre, his cyborg partner and someone for whom he apparently had deeper feelings than were immediately apparent.

Making it even better (and I swear this is true), Gunther bugged out near the end of our fight and ended up running into a corner of the cathedral basement, where he stood, silent and unmoving. He looked like what he was—an utterly beaten, broken man, who'd had everything taken away from him—and I couldn't bring myself to kill him. At the time, I thought the option to show him mercy was intentional, like other hidden NPC choices in the game. (It didn't happen in subsequent playthroughs, though, and I've smoked ol' Gunther's ass every time since.)

It was a powerful moment, as Smith said, and it's kind of wild to imagine a version of Deus Ex where Gunther doesn't get his big finish—and what else might have been left on the cutting room floor besides. Something to keep in mind the next time you find yourself grinding your teeth over a delayed game.

Smith reiterated the importance of that point at the end of his story. "If you are listening to this right now and you fund games, give your team a post-production," he said. "Give them three to six extra months and you will win some awards and you will make a bunch of money, instead of leaving a crater in the ground."

Generative AI in videogame development, despite the looming potentiality of a bubble popping, has continued to be a hot-button topic pelted at developers during earning calls, despite most of them recognising that there's not much use for it beyond mundane busywork.

Sure, it's being used commonly, but rarely for the actual making of the videogame itself. Filling in the roles that procedural generation might or, like, resizing shoulderpads—or for "user preference analysis". Not exactly the kind of stuff that revolutionises an industry, and certainly not enough to justify reducing labour en masse.

This also seems to be the view of joint CD Projekt Red CEO Michał Nowakowski, who was asked such a question during an earnings conference yesterday, and once more found himself required to emphasise that they're using people to make videogames like The Witcher 4: "AI is definitely becoming a thing in games development as well. We are still predominantly using people and this is our plan—to make games where we're not walking away from that."

That's not to say that AI tools aren't being experimented with, they're just nowhere near a focal or vital part of development for the studio: "AI, if anything, is a tool like many others that's helping in places that can maybe become more helpful in the future but we're not planning to rely on AI making complete games."

Part of that, Nowakowski emphasises, is because the kind of games they make are so complex that it wouldn't make a lick of sense to leave the careful craftsmanship of them up to an LLM or vibe coding: "especially with very complex games like ours, I don't even think this is the right or ethical path to follow.

"So whether this is true for the whole industry, I'm not the person to make those statements. I think everybody has to make those judgments on their own."

Even if you scrap the general distaste for AI slop, it's not like going all-in on the tech is risk free. From a legal standpoint, anti-AI clauses are quickly becoming boilerplate for videogame publishers, at least when it comes to the creative work you'd need to prove you own in a court of law.

SteamDB is an excellent resource—as someone who occasionally has to pull up a game's concurrent numbers or pricing to make a point, I'd be lying if I said I haven't used it in a professional capacity. What's been more staggering is its status as a site run entirely on donations.

Well, that's ending soon. The site's founder, xPaw, has decided to move on due to a feeling of burnout. In their full statement, they write: "After Covid and with the rise of AI, the internet we once loved is gone, and with it my passion. I have started experiencing burnout with the project, but I powered through.

"A few years ago I tried to find someone to continue the project, but I couldn't find a team that I was confident in, so I decided to keep going by myself. Steam keeps growing, in terms of games, players, and the number of new features being added. It's hard to keep on top of this alone, and the mental load has only kept increasing, and in good conscience I cannot continue like this."

The buyers in question? NexusMods, which has its own sister announcement on its site that details its motivations, which are twofold. Firstly, having the information SteamDB has collated over the years is useful: "We have already started collecting Steam game data ourselves, but once an update is pushed, manifests and data for the old versions become much more difficult to access. SteamDB already does this far better than we can, and has a massive back-catalogue to draw from."

Another, the site says, is the fact that SteamDB's database can help its mod manager "better understand which version of the game you’re running, whether mods you’re installing were built for it, and whether an incoming game update is likely to cause issues.

"It could also make it possible for Collections and other mod lists to better specify the exact version of a game they were built for, rather than relying on someone finding that information buried in a description, comment, or forum post."

That's all in the future, though—one that looks good for xPaw, who will no longer be forced to shoulder the burden of running SteamDB on their own, but perhaps a big question mark for folks who actually use SteamDB. Primarily because it was a donation-fed project, and thus immune to the kind of unpleasantness that comes with sites that need to turn a profit.

In a FAQ, NexusMods cops to this being a consideration going forward: "We're going to be straight about this rather than dance around it: yes, SteamDB needs to make money. What xPaw has built—and kept running largely through personal dedication and community donations—is an extraordinary achievement.

"Giving it the team, infrastructure and long-term investment it deserves is how we protect that work and ensure SteamDB can thrive for the next decade and beyond."

That doesn't mean you're going to be flooded with ads, though, at least, that's the plan: "No. We don't have plans to introduce display or programmatic advertising on SteamDB. Over time, we may explore things like affiliate links and partnerships where they genuinely provide value to the user." Nexus Mods also plans to keep the site free: "nothing you know and use today is getting taken away and sold back to you."

Either way, it's the end of an era—the turning of a great free resource into one that, as Nexus Mods states, does need to make money now. xPaw says they have "full confidence the team will be able to continue improving the project for gamers, developers and publishers alike."

The PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct is back September 20, and PC Gamer is happy to announce the fantastic Frankie Ward will be hosting, making it her second PC Gaming Show of the year.

Frankie is a host and presenter with years of experience. She won presenter of the year at the 2018 inaugural UK Esports Awards, and she's hosted our own shows more times than I can count.

"We've got a seriously stacked show for you—lots of world premieres, brand-new trailers, reports direct from Tokyo Game Show and a whole load of exclusive treats in store," Frankie says. "Join me on September 20 as we dive into it all!"

The reports from the show floor will be coming from PC Gamer's Wesley Fenlon, who will be in Tokyo interviewing developers at their booths. As well as boots on the ground journalism, you can expect new trailers from over 35 games, including Stronghold 4—which we announced during the June show—and Virtue and a Sledgehammer, which just looks divine. What's not to love about smashing up the robots invading your hometown while you also relive traumatic memories?

If all that isn't enough, we'll also be bringing you a deep dive on Tenebris Somnia, a retro survival horror adventure with live-action cutscenes, plus a bunch more super secret stuff I can't share with you just yet. Luckily you've only got a few weeks to wait.

Tune into the show on X, Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook—basically anywhere you can host a video— Sunday, September 20, at 5 pm BST, 12 pm EDT, 9 am PDT. If you're a streamer who wants to get in on the action and co-stream the show, you can fill in this form.

If you want a refresher on some of the bangers we revealed back in June, check out our everything announced article.

The situation surrounding Doom: The Dark Ages – Revelations was already grim. Id Software put out a fantastic expansion that addressed many issues present in the (still pretty good) base game, placing it among the best works the FPS specialists have ever produced. The reward for many of The Dark Ages team was to be instantly laid off, as Xbox cut 136 members of the studio's workforce.

Now, it also appears that getting Revelations to the finish line was a punishing experience for those involved, at least according to former id Software producer Andrew Willis. Speaking on the Kiwi Talkz podcast for Insider Gaming, Willis revealed that the team experienced a gnarly level of crunch in the months leading up to Revelations' release.

"It was tight," Willis explained. "There were two months where I was working something like at least 12 hours every day. I know I hit 17 a couple of days." Willis goes on to describe the experience as "brutal" and says that most of the expansion was put together "in three or four months."

That's a ridiculously short turnaround for an expansion that's around six hours long, especially when you consider the main game—which runs at about 20 hours—took five years to build. Revelations' development timeframe was meant to be even shorter. But Willis says the expansion encountered feature-creep, with new elements being added as the DLC was built.

"There were days where I didn't get to see my son the whole day; multiple days of that that I sacrificed to get this out the door at the level of quality," Willis continues. He says that everybody on the team had a similar experience, and that even veteran designers from both the game and film industries were shocked by the level of crunch involved. "We had people that worked in Hollywood for 20 years and game development for 10 and said that this was the worst crunch they'd been a part of."

Willis makes clear that crunching was not mandated by id Software, but says that the amount of work they needed to do, combined with the timeframe the team was given to do it in, made the implication clear.

"You get loaded up with 60 hours of work in a week, and what do you do?" he says. "It's almost this thing like, at the level of quality that the players expect and that you expect from yourself, it's kind of like almost pseudo-induced crunch."

Willis was one of the many id Software devs laid off as part of Microsoft's massive cuts, in which it slashed 1,600 jobs (with another 1,600 being cut over the next fiscal year) and numerous studios like Compulsion Games and Double Fine were cut loose from Xbox Game Studios. Apparently, the Revelations team learned about the layoffs the day before the expansion was due to launch.

"You spend so much of your energy and hours of your life, and sacrifice a bunch of things to get something out of the door, and then they lay you off," Willis said. "It's such a wild feeling."

It all sounds pretty unpleasant, and it makes one wonder what the situation at id Software was like after The Dark Ages' release to make it so desperate to rush an expansion out of the door. Was this an internal decision? Or a consequence of pressure from the higher-ups at Xbox? Statistics suggest that The Dark Ages sold significantly fewer copies than 2020's Doom Eternal, though this was to be expected given that The Dark Ages released day one on Game Pass.

As for what's happening with id Software more broadly, Hugo Martin insisted that the studio is fine in the wake of Microsoft's layoffs.

Generally speaking, this is not a great time for the videogame industry. Developers are being chewed up and spit out at previously unseen rates, while the AI-driven RAMpocalypse is driving component prices sky-high, putting upgrades and new systems out of reach for many. Despite all that, Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits thinks the accessibility of platforms like Fortnite and mobile phones means this is "actually, honestly, a good time" for the industry.

"I've seen a lot of downturns. Remember the death of the consoles and no more PC gaming?" Willits said in a recent interview with PC Gamer. "You know, what's so amazing about our industry and the people that work in it is, we make art. We make something that no other industry can make: interactive entertainment. And great games will find a way."

Willits acknowledged that the industry is changing, saying that "where these games are made" may shift—a reference, perhaps, to the rise of China as a game development powerhouse. "But if there are a handful of talented individuals that have an idea, this is a great time to be in the industry because you can put a game on anything."

"You can put a game on your phone. You can make an independent game on any platform. You can make a Fortnite cloud game. You know, you can make a mega-hit. You can do so much. This is actually, honestly, a good time. Yes, RAM is expensive. Yes, GPUs are expensive. But your phone is—you already have your phone. Make a game there."

Willits had similar thoughts about the tens of thousands of game developers who have been put out of work over the past few years, an ugly trend that shows no sign of abating: Just keep making games anyway.

"It's always sad when you hear about [layoffs]. I mean, heck, I know some people that got caught up in that," Willits said. "But I do encourage them—and I know I'm maybe a half full kind of guy—but I do encourage them to find a handful of their friends and start working on something. There are so many tools out there, and it doesn't take a huge effort, doesn't take a huge development budget, and make something cool."

As for developers who aren't fated to make the next big indie hit, Willits believes they'll eventually be "reabsorbed" by the industry: "Other developers and publishers and companies around the world are looking at these super talented people that are free, and I bet you'll see some news that will come out soon."

There will always be individual game devs who whip up a surprise banger like Balatro or Vampire Survivors, or find a comfortable, sustainable niche, as Jeff Vogel and Mariann Krizsan did with Spiderweb Software. But hobby development by people with day jobs is arguably irrelevant to the systemic problems facing the mainstream games industry.

GDC's 2026 State of the Game Industry Report indicates that one third of US games industry workers were laid off over the past two years, nearly half of whom had been unable to find new work in the industry. Meanwhile, the companies best positioned to reabsorb those people in meaningful numbers, including Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Saber's former parent company Embracer, have instead been relentlessly cutting their workforces, adding thousands more developers to an already overcrowded job market.

Dwarf Fortress has an endless capacity for telling stories. It's a game built on procedural generation, and any longtime player'll be able to spin up a dozen yarns about some absurd thing that happened to their gaggle of miners.

Just look at a headline from our own Lincoln Carpenter: "Dwarf Fortress forensic specialists blame mysterious case of spontaneous human combustion on a historical artifact that suddenly remembered it's four times hotter than the surface of the sun." What a beauty.

Anyway, this sort of puts the lie to the idea that generative AI will be the first advent of something that can tell infinite stories, always and forever—because Dwarf Fortress has been doing that without a single LLM for its entire existence. Point being, if you want something that can tell infinite stories, you're probably best off giving us the tools to do that, rather than the finished product itself.

Speaking to PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens at Gamescom 2026, co-creator Tarn Adams gets a little into it while talking about how they decide whether a simulation's worth it to layer on top of the game: "If you feel like you've played through it yourself a bunch, and you're like, 'oh, that was cool. That's a good beat,' and you're seeing a little narrative forming? Then you know it's going to work."

Adams talks about a hypothetical in which a meeting of dwarven barristers is interrupted by a very rude dog that comes in and bites someone—not even particularly strange, by Dwarf Fortress standards. Asking him as to why we find these emergent, mechanics-based stories so endearing (as opposed to AI slop, which hasn't yet produced a notable story people seem to like), Adams responds:

"Well, I mean, [you like human stories] because you're a human, and you resonate with things that other humans have done because there's a common experience at just the barest basic level.

"You can't always tell," Adams admits. "And that's part of the trick, right? That's what a Turing style test is, right? Can you tell the human spark that's in there? And when you fail a Turing Test as a human, meaning that you got confused by a robot … maybe that's credit to the robot, or maybe that's discredit to you. I don't know which one, but we're all going to be very sorely tested in the coming years as we're surrounded by such matter."

It's an interesting way to look at a Turing Test—not whether a computer can act as intelligently as a human, but whether a computer can replicate our "human spark". Which, at the risk of sounding sentimental, does feel like a vital part to actually enjoying art.

Speaking personally, a large part of why AI art or stories don't interest me isn't necessarily in the technical proficiency of what's happening—it's because I'm interested in learning about a person's worldview, their tastes, their likes and dislikes, their hopes for the future, and having those hopes stirred in myself. The fact a person made something causes it to be more interesting to me.

Which I suppose is why the proc-gen stories of Dwarf Fortress are interesting, because there's a human touch in how the random, computer-generated narratives are described. If you just rattled off a list of events, you'd bore me half to death. But phrase it like Lincoln did above, and I'm having a sensible guffaw—these silly little dwarves shall make writers out of us all.

The game industry is—to use the lightest possible language—in an interesting spot. While videogames are as profitable as ever on paper, we've had a few consecutive years of brutal layoffs and studio closures, as well as all of the knock-on impacts that the advent of generative AI (and the subsequent and boneheaded insistence that it's the future) has had. Billions in spending, skyrocketing hardware prices, the whole kit and caboodle.

Which, once more, has exhausted Dwarf Fortress' creator Tarn Adams, who spoke to PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens during Gamescom 2026: "They're trying to have a CEO press a button that makes a game, and then everyone else somehow buys it without a job. So I don't see that going anywhere sustainable, and I feel like there will simply be a pop and a reckoning and then [it's on repeat] unless people do something else."

Adams says it's not just games that've been suffering, either: "I mean, everyone I know, their bosses are slowly getting psychosis, right? They're just like, 'Yeah, but did you use AI on your commits?' And they're like, 'Oh well, I'm not happy with this guy,' you know. 'We'll probably have machines do the job'.

"It just reminds me of like a fucking Dead Kennedys song or something. It's just the same old shit. I mean, they laid off my dad from the sewage treatment plant because they didn't understand what his job was, and he was the computer guy there, and then they don't have a company anymore, so it's like it's the same shit."

He's not exactly wrong—it's not as if the current industry problems are unprecedented, or came out of nowhere. Since the advent of modern capitalism (and likely a long while before that), those in charge have often misunderstood, underestimated, or dismissed the hard work that goes into labour they don't understand.

It's become particularly nasty with generative AI, however, because now said CEOs can still see an end result that mimics the thing they don't understand—and are able to self-delude themselves into thinking it's replicable at scale, or that it's even producing the same quality as the product they've actually been selling.

After all, if actual studies are being done into AI-induced psychosis that's impacting us serfs, there's nothing to say the executive suite is immune, either. Especially given that a lot of them don't even understand why others are put off.

"It's been going on forever. That was before AI—or this form of AI," Adams says, before lamenting: "They took the letters from me! I have to talk about dwarf behavior now. I can't even talk about dwarf AI. It doesn't exist. It's dwarf behavior, and they misbehave sometimes."

The studio behind Star Wars Zero Company furloughed up to 80 percent of its staff in the lead up to the RPG's launch, a Game File report reveals. That means affected staff are technically still employed by the company, but will receive no wage during the furlough period.

A representative from Bit Reactor confirmed the furloughs to Game File, though didn't indicate how many employees are affected. The rep said uncertainty around the game's launch performance was to blame for the furloughs, and that they were Bit Reactor's decision and not EA or Disney's.

Other sources claim up to 80% of the studio has been impacted. According to the Bit Reactor rep, it is hoped that furloughed workers will be brought back with full pay.

A former Bit Reactor staffer, Zachariah Scott, who was let go by the studio earlier this year, addressed the furloughs on LinkedIn yesterday. "It is sick and weird to have all of these EA and Disney folks as well as Bitreactor Senior staff making all of these 10/10 posts about Star Wars Zero Company being such a huge success and praising the work of the team while seemingly concealing the fact that the team was furloughed weeks ago," Scott wrote.

He went on: "It is a gross but all too common sight to see, another corporate game hitting the top of Steam while the team is left looking for work and cut off from any possible profit sharing. It would be such a different story if they had been upfront about it earlier, and now it feels like they're trying to keep the team in a holding pattern with good vibes and more empty promises."

Star Wars Zero Company was released on August 28 to near unanimous critical praise, with Ted Litchfield calling it "a new all-timer Star Wars game and a stunning debut for Bit Reactor". The tactical RPG is currently the top selling game on Steam right now, and that's only a third of the story: the game released for PS5 and Xbox consoles too.

It paints a pretty bleak picture of where the industry is at present: even a studio that has just shipped a critically acclaimed, well-selling Star Wars game published by EA is showing severe symptoms of decline in the days after launch.

On Friday, August 28, indie developer Ryan Laley posted a video on X to say his Gamescom 2026 attendance was being cut short after discovering that all his team's laptops had been stolen from its booth during an alleged overnight theft. In the post, the visibly distraught dev called the incident "a huge blow financially and mentally," and confirmed that police reports had been filed.

Laley's post earned an outpouring of support on the platform from gamers and fellow developers—including Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red, which offered to "check the Arasaka hardware archives and see if we can send a few things your way." Laley, however, was just one of a number of developers and publishers that reported similar thefts over the weekend, generating concern about the efficacy of Gamescom security practices.

Just hours after Laley reported the theft of his team's laptops, fellow indie developer Tessera Studios made a similar post, saying that they had arrived at their Gamescom booth two days prior to find that their storage had been forced open and robbed of controllers, a Steam Deck, and two laptops which "contained not only our Gamescom demo, but also personal, company, and critical information."

"The damage that this caused to us was pretty huge," Tessera Studios co-founder Marcos Neila said in an uploaded video. "But as far as we know, there [is no] insurance from Gamescom, so we don't really know if we are going to get something in return."

Publisher iam8bit said they suffered another theft during the event, claiming that on Friday its staff "arrived to our station in the business area hall to discover that our two laptops had been stolen overnight, despite the presence of Koelnmesse security."

In addition to losing the stolen equipment, iam8bit said the theft could result in the leak of unfinished builds for Petal Runner and Escape Academy 2—the games it was presenting during the show.

"This is hugely disappointing for us and our development teams at Nano Park Studios and Coin Crew Games who worked tirelessly to prepare for this show," iam8bit said.

While sharing Laley's post on Friday, games marketing and PR firm Ukiyo Studios said on X that, of the more than 15 events the company attends each year, "Gamescom is the ONLY event we have a dedicated storage room" to protect its equipment after a PC was stolen from its booth in 2024.

"We've had something stolen at Gamescom each year. Always chalked it up as 'the cost of doing a show in Germany,'" Ukiyo Studios said in a follow-up post. "With all these others now reporting their thefts, hopefully Gamescom does a better job with security, but not really holding my breath."

The next day, Ukiyo Studios posted an update to say that "an Xbox controller, drinks, and food" had been stolen from their booth during the intervening hours.

Other attendees and developers have shared their own frustrations with Gamescom security. Dead by Daylight senior community director Eric Pope called the event's security "an absolute joke," claiming that a security guard "just walked away" after being asked about after-hours booth security.

"Security at this year's Gamescom was a farce," Insider Gaming senior editor Grant Taylor-Hill said. "Several times, I saw kids strolling into the business areas unchecked, waltzing past sensitive meetings and content without being pulled up. They obviously knew they shouldn't have been there."

Gamescom acknowledged the reported thefts in a statement shared via its official X account.

"We are aware of stolen hardware and take these reports very seriously and understand the frustration of affected exhibitors," Gamescom said.

According to Gamescom, "uniformed guards provide general security across the venue," while "individual stand security can be booked separately." Exhibitors, it said, "are advised to insure equipment against theft," which it says is noted in event terms and conditions.

"All cases have been reported to us and to the police, and investigations are already underway. We also want to ensure that the reported cases are individual cases, which we are very sorry to read," Gamescom said, "because security has one of the highest priorities to us as an event and to see that indie developers are affected makes us very sad.

"At an event of this size, however," the event organizers continued, "there will always be individuals attempting to take advantage of the situation. Our security measures are designed to minimize such risks as effectively as possible."

A ridiculous amount of games release on Steam every week and basically none of them make any money. It only takes a cursory browse of Steam's unfiltered new release list to understand why this is true.

But which genre is most likely to make money or be a hit? Ichiro Lambe, Matt Martindale and Dr. Tim Ermilov have collaborated on a Steam revenue report on weloveit.io and, as the name implies, the purpose of the site is to estimate the earnings of all Steam games, or at least, those with a price tag and at least one review.

The trio doesn't have access to Valve's internal sales data, so they rely on the Boxleiter method to estimate that data, which assumes that a games' review count is "roughly proportional of its sales, so multiplying reviews by a constant gives an estimated unit count." For a standard estimate (rather than a conservative or generous one) the multiplier is 35 times the amount of user reviews.

This may not provide exact figures, but as the site notes, it's a technique used by analysts and publishers and there aren't very many better ways to arrive at a sales estimate. And so, in the style of all great data enthusiasts, they've used the technique to map the success (or lack thereof) of over 100,000 Steam games in handy graph form.

Baldur's Gate 3 is estimated to have made $1,795,480,003 since its early access launch in late 2020. On the other hand Free Solo, a physics climbing game released in March, has made an estimated $34.

In the graph below every dot is an individual game (for a much better view of this graph you'll need to visit weloveit.io).

I was fascinated by the "genre economics" section, which uses user tags to get a sense of how genres rank on Steam. "A game counts towards a genre only when the tag is one of its six most popular tags," according to the study, so there needs to be pretty unanimous agreement among Steam users that the tag is accurate.

According to the data, sandbox games have the highest "hit rate" on Steam. Hit rate measures the amount of games with the tag that have made more than $100k. The sandbox tag has a 27.3% hit rate.

Of course,"sandbox" is unwieldy and impractical as a genre designation: the most popular games with the tag are unhelpfully different: Terraria, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Project Zomboid. But it does at least demonstrate that games promising some amount of freedom are preferred by Steam users, whether they be sloppy retail sims or $400 million cowboy adventures.

The next tag, FPS, is probably the "real" genre winner. It has a 21.6% hit rate, though keep in mind a lot of games that aren't strictly focused on shooting, like Schedule I or Portal 2, are tagged with FPS.

Here's the top 10 genres on Steam according to their hit rate:

There aren't a huge amount of surprises in that list. I guess I'm surprised to see visual novels rank so highly, though they are ubiquitous on Steam. Sports probably ranks highly because there are fewer games to which it applies compared to, say, "puzzle", a tag with a 9.5% hit rate.

The lowest ranking tags (according to report's list, at least) are probably more telling. Hidden Object games have a 5.4% hit rate, while 2D platformers have a 5.5% hit rate. Developing a game in either of those genres is thus, according to the study, risky business. Though they may also be cheaper to develop, and thus more common, and thus less likely to be discovered.

The full study is well worth browsing because it's full of great insights. For example: 2D platformers have severely dropped off in popularity since their heyday of 2016, but visual novels have remained almost consistently popular since 2014.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 18 - 25)

First of all, its worth noting that Star Wars Zero Company released on the 28th, and its review embargo lifted on the 26th, so next week's chart will better reflect its launch performance. It still came in at number 12, rising 12 positions for what must have been an eleventh hour rush on pre-orders (there were cosmetic pre-order incentives).

Based on the chart—which is, as always, a reflection of best performers by revenue and not necessarily by units sold—Mortal Shell 2 had a successful launch, but probably no where near as successful as How to Fish. The latter is a 1-4 player "physics-based fishing simulator, and while it looks like quintessential friendslop on the surface, it's a whole lot more violent than normal. It looks very fun.

The Wardogs beta obviously paid off as a taster for the full game, which releases next month. As for Stalker 2, it got a massive 2.0 update last week and a steep discount, hence its reappearance on the list.

Last week's Steam deep cuts

You might think making one of the most influential games of this century would be a source of unending happiness for its creator. But for Dean 'Rocket' Hall, founder of RocketWerkz, the relationship with his most famous creation isn't that simple. "When DayZ happened, it was like dying," says Hall of the mod which, alongside Minecraft, helped establish survival games as a cornerstone of the medium. "It ended my old life. My relationship with everyone who I knew up to that point changed completely."

This isn't to say Hall doesn't recognise his good fortune: "It was obviously an amazing thing that happened to me," he stresses. But there is a sense that, while Hall gained much from the creation of DayZ—fame, respect, and to a certain extent, fortune—something was lost too. "I loved making the mod, and I loved that feeling, and I've been chasing it ever since."

Chasing the feeling of making DayZ has taken over a decade, sent Hall down numerous rabbit holes and even led his studio to the precipice of bankruptcy. After all that time, Hall still hasn't found what he is looking for and admits he may never find it. Yet as he continues his search, RocketWerkz is beginning to find success on its own terms.

Hall of fame

What is it, exactly, that would rekindle the feeling of making DayZ for Hall? Specifically, he says he's searching for a solution to a specific problem he sees in survival games. "You see it time [and] again. If you go see commentary on a survival game, people will say it gets boring, or the end game sucks," he says. "And it's such a hard problem, because what you do [to] solve it [is] brute force it with heaps of content."

It's not clear when exactly Hall identified this issue, but it was likely between RocketWerkz's first and second released games. When the DayZ mod launched, Hall was working at Bohemia Interactive, the creators of ArmA 2 which served as the original basis for DayZ.

This wasn't the first mod Hall had made for ArmA 2. Indeed, it was modding that landed Hall his job at Bohemia, after his co-op mod for ArmA 2 became the most popular mod on the defunct ArmA fansite Armaholic. Despite running a major video game developer, Hall still regularly makes mods today for games like RimWorld and Barotrauma.

"People think I'm a game developer who came up from [being] a modder, and I would say I'm a modder who makes games during the day," Hall explains. "I was born a modder and I will die a modder. And I think if there's a lesson out there for any aspiring game devs, I think it's mod games. You will learn even faster than making them."

DayZ's surging popularity led Bohemia Interactive to begin creating a commercial version of the mod. Hall initially led the project, but he left Bohemia in 2014, which is when he founded RocketWerkz and began work on a project called Ion.

Ion would later be cancelled, with RocketWerkz pivoting to Stationeers, a space-station construction and management game inspired by one of Hall's favourite games, Space Station 13. Yet when it was released in 2017, Stationeers received mixed reviews, and has struggled commercially throughout its existence. "It's built up about seven years of losses," Hall says, though he adds that in 2025 it "actually probably broke even."

Close to the sun

While well received by players, Stationeers struggled commercially and remains in Steam early access. Following Stationeers, RocketWerkz began developing Icarus, a free-to-play, online survival game with a run-based loop. Players would land on a planet, go through the basic survival loop while completing an objective, launch back into space, and begin another mission that would start the cycle again.

This was Hall's attempt to solve that problem of survival games running out of road. But there were two problems. First, players didn't like the loop, as they perceived it as losing progress. "It just didn't work. People didn't want it. It was hilarious, but that's life."

Second, on launch, Icarus was not the financial success that RocketWerkz needed it to be to survive. As such, RocketWerkz pivoted quickly, abandoning the free-to-play aspect and committing to a rigorous post-launch support scheme where it would release weekly updates like clockwork. "After the beta weekend, I levelled with the team. I was like 'We do this or it's over.' We might even do all this work and still go bankrupt, " he says. Hall is open about how gruelling a process this was. "The last couple of years, I've been enjoying it, but before that, I hated it, and we were looking at ruin, basically."

Nonetheless, Icarus has slowly established a trusting audience, one which RocketWerkz could then sell larger, paid expansions to. "Icarus, at times, we can have a 50% attachment rate to DLC at purchase," Hall explains. "I can tell you right now, the studio would be bankrupt if we didn't do that strategy."

Yet even here, the margins can be slim. "People will go and say: 'There's too many DLC, this is crazy'. And I'll post our financials. I'll be like 'Hey, a lot of our DLC, even on Icarus— which is really good—sometimes we'll only make $100,000 from it. It might have cost us $120,000 to make. So we're not printing money."

Indeed, Hall says that it's only in the last year that Icarus has really begun making money. "We've increased our revenue 80% in the last year," he says. "Our dream for a long time has been to make more per day than we spend, because as a game developer, you need to build a big cash reserve, especially now because there's no investment money out there."

Rocket purr-kz

The experience of making Icarus has taught Hall a lot. He says he's learned the value of community, how a relatively small audience can be more valuable than hundreds of thousands of players—provided the audience is dedicated enough. "My encouragement to devs is: focus on getting fans, not on selling product."

He also believes a small audience can be just as emotionally gratifying as a large one. "I think seeing that 100 people love what you do is chemically the same as 100,000 at least," Hall elaborates. "If you're a musician [like] Freddie Mercury and you pack out the Wembley Stadium, seeing 100,000 people right there waving lighters is probably insane. But as a Game Dev, I don't know whether there's as big a difference. So if I can make a mod that 100 people love, that's like crack cocaine to me."

It was this line of thinking that informed RocketWerkz' approach with Kitten Space Agency—the studio's freely available spiritual successor to Kerbal Space Program, a game which Hall personally adores. "With Kitten Space Agency, the game is completely free. It's funded entirely by contributions. So that really puts it in front of the gamer's face," he says. "If you want this game to exist, how much is it worth? Because it's all on you."

While letting players determine the value of a game has its own risks, Hall likes it as a funding model, saying it absolves him of the need to justify a price point, and allows him to focus on the creative aspect: "I think if I could, I would just do all my games for free, because it stops you having to be focused on dumb stuff, and allows you to focus on the good stuff, which is what you get to do for modding."

Beyond survival

One thing Hall is still yet to learn, however, is how to solve his perceived problem with survival games. Icarus ended up using the exact brute-forcing solution he wanted to avoid. "Make no mistake, that's all we ended up doing with Icarus. It's such a crude, basic way to make your game, is just to solve it with content, I am really proud of what we've done with that. But it's like banging a nail in with a rock."

What is the solution, then? One idea Hall has identified is "to layer pressures in that hit you at different points." He cites Valheim as an example. "It does it with these boss fights. And the fun part of the boss fights in Valheim is not the boss fights, it's preparing for the boss fights."

Another example Hall points to is EnviroMine, a mod for Minecraft that adds an insanity meter to the experience. "The more time you spent underground, you built up this insanity meter, and it was this weird extra pressure that I'd never considered, that just totally changed how you played the game," Hall explains. "It was one of those mechanics that made me go 'Oh, I wish I'd come up with that'".

Both examples suggest that survival games need to aspire to a higher level of experience to become self-sustaining. But Hall doesn't think either have landed on the perfect solution. In fact, he's not sure if anyone ever will, and that includes himself. "I think I am going to die without having solved it," he says.

But this won't stop Hall from trying. Now that RocketWerkz is solvent, he's putting every penny it earns into the pot for its next project—which he's described as a DayZ/ArmA style game. "I've never made any money from RocketWerkz. All the money goes back in," he says. "Our aim was to try to build money so we could make a big game, and that's really hard."

Generative AI is a hot-button topic in the industry, and for good reason—it's been kinda destructive, whether that's jacking up hardware prices or putting people out of a job—and while there have been some fairly mundane use cases that seem helpful, it's been hard to escape the sheer sense of mania that's built around its use. Or the bad PR, juiced out of the sheer exhaustion we've all had from executives promising the matrix or something.

So, naturally, it came up in a conversation with Tim Willits, the CCO of Saber Interactive and also the co-owner id Software from 1995-2019. Speaking to PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens at Gamescom 2026, he notes that: "As most people know, we are experimenting with AI in future games. We don't have it here right now, but we announced [Rideshare Simulator] and I want to clarify things because there's some misconceptions."

If you're wondering why we're talking about a Rideshare sim, here's some context: Saber landed in hot water earlier this month over it, because it seemingly delayed its AI disclosures on Steam for a while, and was exposed as using AI by a former writer who claims they were booted off the team in favour of it.

That same writer was badmouthed by Saber's CEO Matthew Karch, who later apologised. Willits says that Rideshare's main campaign mode and all of its side missions are written by humans, and the AI components are only used for an optional game mode called Free Ride: "We're going to use AI for the passengers, so we can deliver new stories.

"So that is only possible if we use AI for that—this is an experiment. We at Saber want to figure out how we can use this technology, so we're doing it at a small scale to try to learn. We're like everyone else, we're just trying to figure this out. But there is no generative AI in our big titles. No Hellraiser, no Turok, none in Stuntman."

I feel like an asterisk has to hang over that "only possible"—while, yes, churning an infinite stream of dialogue for an optional mode is only possible with generative AI, a free ride mode with enough conversations for it to not grow stale absolutely could've been cobbled together with actual writers and voice actors. Sure, you'd run out eventually, but I don't think anyone's hungry to make Rideshare Simulator their forever game.

Still, Willits emphasises: "We want to experiment, and I do believe that there will be a company—I don't know who—but some game development company will create a game that uses AI in such an amazing way that everyone will be like, 'That's it, that's what we need to do'." He then goes on to joke that "someone needs to come up with the 'Half Life 2 of AI', something that's so amazing that it just launches some type of killer app."

I remain characteristically unconvinced, though in fairness to Willits, I do at least think that—if generative AI does find a use as the core of a videogame—it'll probably be a new genre of its own, rather than trying to create an infinite RPG with infinite NPCs. An act which would just shake out to make something unappealing and meaningless.

The thing that makes me cynical is we keep watching money being burned and datacenters being built precisely because the tech doesn't really seem all that useful for anything other than busywork. When it takes centre-stage, it produces voice acting that's bland, writing that's terrible, and art devoid of direction or memorability, even as it gets more technically proficient.

I'll eat my artificially-generated hat with a side of humble pie if Willits' "Half-Life 2 of AI" game materialises, but a lot of people have swung at that ball and missed, and each time I feel like the bat is a little smaller. Still, Willits says that id Software probably would've used generative AI if it was a thing back in the day—because the studio was always at the cutting edge.

"Yes! Oh, of course. I mean, look at what [id Software] has done. In 1999, when we released Quake 3, it required a graphics card, and we got so much hate for that. People said we were going to ruin the industry. Nobody was going to spend $100 on a video card, and it was the dumbest thing that anyone ever did … I know for sure back in the day if it was available, John Carmack would be like making Skynet or something."

Still, to be fair to Willits, he seems to share my view that the game'll have to prove that generative AI can change the industry itself, rather than via the promises of a CEO somewhere: "The games will speak for themselves, even in our experiment with Rideshare, I encourage people to check it out when it comes out, play it themselves. They may be like 'oh, this is cool! I like this'. And if they don't like it? Fine. And but the games speak for themselves."

Panic has been able to share some really good news this week to its customers. Those who bought the handheld console and were charged extra for its tariffs will be getting a refund.

"There was a specific window of time this year where we charged tariffs to customers," Panic co-founder Cabel Sasser explains in an email to Game Developer. "We tried absorbing the cost for a while, but that was financially difficult for a small company like ours. We made the tariff a very obvious and clearly labeled line item on checkout for any customer affected."

The US tariffs had a devastating impact on all sorts of physical games from hardware like the Playdate to tabletop and board games. Costs on all sorts of products which were manufactured outside the US increased significantly. But some respite has been had for the companies that've managed to secure a tariff refund from the US government, including PC cooling company Arctic, and now Playdate.

"It's just not our money to keep, and it felt really good to give it back," Sasser says. "That's an easy way to know you made the right decision." But as with anything the US touches, it's not exactly a painless process.

"Still, it took a lot of work for us to file all the paperwork to get the refund from the government," Sasser adds. "It took work to build a little system to process the refund, and sometimes it felt like, wait, why are we seemingly doing more work than even gigantic companies are on this issue? That felt weird. But I guess it makes sense in a way, because our small size means we’re far more directly affected by something like a tariff."

Oh, to be at the whims of an administration that acts first and thinks only when they're legally forced to do so. It's clear that Sasser would've rather spent time on literally anything else: "From start to finish on this whole tariff whim, all I could think about is all the cool stuff we could be working on instead." But at least customers are getting some money back after the whole fiasco.

Tim Curry, the beloved English actor beloved for his pantheon of iconic, award-winning performances on stage, film, TV, and videogame screen, has died at the age of 80. First reported by TMZ, Curry died late Tuesday night at his home in Los Angeles.

Curry first carved his mark in the public consciousness as the cross-dressing pansexual mad scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, the 1975 film adaptation of which still maintains a cult following as a midnight movie phenomenon. From there, he secured a decades-long list of cherished roles—as Darkness in Legend and Wadsworth in Clue; in The Hunt for Red October, Home Alone 2, and Spamalot; as Pennywise in It and acting as a piratical foil to Kermit the Frog in Muppet Treasure Island.

Powerfully flamboyant, artfully unhinged, and charmingly insidious, Curry extended his talents to live action and vocal performances in videogames as well. He played the titular role in Sierra's first and third Gabriel Knight point-and-click adventures, and later voiced characters in Brütal Legend and Dragon Age: Origins.

But he reached the pinnacle of his powers as Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, where he delivered what may very well be the single most triumphant line read in the history of acting. Nobody had ever before conveyed such a captivatingly absurd cocktail of energies while saying the word "space," and it's likely that no one ever will again.

In a "Making of Gabriel Knight" feature included on the CD in 1993, Curry said it was "very exciting" to contribute his presence to videogames, because he welcomed "any new way to infiltrate myself into your minds." And we certainly welcomed it, too.

Curry's public presence receded as his health declined in recent years. He underwent brain surgery after suffering a major stroke in 2012, which left him partially paralyzed and affected his short term memory. But he was nonetheless welcomed by an adoring crowd at a 50th anniversary screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in October 2025—the same month he released Vagabond, his memoir chronicling his life and career.

In one of his last interviews, Curry told CBS News in 2025 that—while he wasn't "galloping towards" death—he wasn't afraid of it.

"I try to avoid it, as I think we all do," Curry said. "But I suspect that in the end, I will welcome it."

Resident Evil fans rejoice; we're going to get even more screentime with Leon Kennedy and Grace Ashcroft's actors thanks to the Future Games Show at Gamescom 2026 which airs tomorrow, Wednesday August 26 at 10 am PDT/1 pm EDT/6 pm BST.

Players can expect to see over 40 games, including 13 world premieres, exclusive reveals, and developer deep dives during the showcase. A couple of games I'm looking forward to seeing more of include Tides of Annihilation from Eclipse Glow Games,which we'll be getting a behind-the-scenes look at, and a closer peek at Onimusha: Way of the Sword from Capcom.

But there's also some other breakouts which will be gracing our screens. This includes a new trailer for the viral comedy adventure game Trees Hate You, alongside a developer diary from Maverick Games for its new open-world action-driving game Clutch. So needless to say there's quite a bit to look forward to.

How to watch the Future Games Show at Gamescom 2026 showcase

You'll be able to watch the Future Games Show at Gamescom 2026 just about everywhere. It'll stream internationally on Twitch, YouTube, Steam, X, GamesRadar+, PCGamer, Gamespot, ESR Gaming Network. Fans in the UK will also be able to watch on Ginx TV, and Chinese viewers on Bilibili, KuaiShou, WeChat, Weibo, Huya, Douyin, Zhihu, and Poizon.

There'll also be plenty of coverage and announcements concerning the showcase which you can follow via GamesRadar+, X, Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

FGS Live from Gamescom will follow on directly from the showcase and will be hosted by FGS channel presenters Nathan and Jules. This is set to bring even more premieres and exclusive content direct from the Koelnmesse convention centre, including Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 and Nivalis Nights. Then, FGS Best of Gamescom will return on Sunday, August 30 at 10 am PDT / 1 pm EDT / 6 pm BST. It'll recap all of the week's biggest announcements.

It's often said that time comes for us all—and while it may not yet be at the doorstep of one Hideo Kojima, he's grown introspective about the prospect on social media after turning 63 over the weekend. In case you've somehow not heard of the man, he's the mind behind the Metal Gear series and Death Stranding.

"I've turned 63," Kojima posted to X. "As I get older, the things I 'have to do' and the things I 'want to do' keep increasing. On the other hand, the 'time I have' decreases. I need to constantly scrutinize how I use my time and how I live my life."

It's a particularly nostalgic date for Kojima, however, as 2026 also "marks the 40th anniversary of when I started making games, and the 10th anniversary of Kojima Productions." To celebrate, he intends to hold an exhibition at Tokyo's Azabudai Hills Gallery starting at the end of October and lasting until the end of the year.

To those fearing his flooded schedule and nostalgic thoughts might precede a retirement from games, though, rest easy. Kojima's flooded schedule is more of a motivator than a detractor: "With all the opportunities and offers I'm receiving, I want to continue to focus on making games. Thank you for your continued support."

Which, hey, is a relief even as someone not particularly attached to either of his flagship franchises—not for purposes of taste, mind. With an industry where big-budget games are coming out with increasingly bland, characterless stories, I'm charmed pink whenever I see some out-of-context Death Stranding cutscene where Tommie Earl Jenkins breaks out into song, or Troy Baker plays guitar while dressed up like a cyberpunk Joker.

It's hard to imagine an industry without Kojima, though it'll happen someday. At which point he'll apparently be watching movie trailers.

The official end of the summer isn't back-to-school day. It's not Labor Day. Nope, it's Gamescom Opening Night Live day, the second Geoff Keighley-hosted world premieres showcase of each year that kicks off the gaming trade event in Cologne, Germany which signals the end of the Gregorian Calendar's videogame 'announcements season' and the beginning of traditional 'release season,' to those who observe the old ways. It's live during German hours, though, so here's when to watch Opening Night Live if you hail from some other slice of the globe.

How to watch Gamescom Opening Night Live

Gamescom Opening Night Live premieres at 11 am Pacific / 8 pm CEST on Tuesday, August 25 on YouTube. Here's when Gamescom ONL premieres in other timezones:

• 11 am (Los Angeles)
• 2 pm EDT (New York)
• 3 pm BRT (São Paulo)
• 7 pm BST (London)
• 8 pm CEST (Cologne)
• 4 am, August 26 AEST (Sydney)
• 6 am, August 26 NZST (Auckland)

What's confirmed for Opening Night Live?

As always, ONL host Geoff Keighley has already confirmed (some of) the games that will be in the show. We don't always know what each one is planning to announce—though sometimes it's easy to guess—just who's on the call sheet. Here's what he's revealed ahead of time:

• The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past (the new DLC)
• Final Fantasy 7 Revelation (part three of the FF7 remake)
• Gears of War: E-Day (Gears prequel)
• Ananta (the "anime GTA" game)
• Tides of Annihilation (a sci-fi Arthurian legend Soulslike)
• Metro 2039 (the newest mainline Metro since Exodus)
• Game of Thrones: War for Westeros (GoT RTS)
• Warlock: Dungeons and Dragons (an open world action-adventure)

Vapor World: Over The Mind is a Soulslike Metroidvania with an evocative, painterly art style reminiscent of Lies of P and the narrative platformers of Playdead. According to Korean studio Alive Inc, the game had 100,000 wishlists just before its early access launch on August 19, mostly on the strength of a demo available since January 2025.

But what should have been a triumphant early access launch went pear shaped very quickly. At launch, few talked about the quite distinctive worldbuilding or the parry-heavy combat. Instead, all focus was trained entirely on something absent from the popular demo: very obvious AI use.

"Saw the very first cutscene, before any gameplay, and how the generative AI they used couldn't even keep the main character's model consistent," reads the "most helpful" Steam review for Vapor World. "From the trailers the gameplay looked pretty fun [but] unfortunately I support people not robots. If the look you want to go for is beyond the scope you can achieve right now then I suggest you change it or wait until you can produce the art and style you want with people doing it."

That's pretty representative of the Steam reviews at the moment: Vapor World is currently sitting on 64 "mostly negative" reviews.

It's undoubtedly a disappointing result for Alive Inc, whose headcount is "about five" according to the studio. It's also possible the studio was blindsided by the backlash: this Pew Research Center survey places South Korea as the least AI sceptical nation among 25 countries surveyed, including the US, the UK, Australia and India. According to MIT Technology Review, the South Korean government has overwhelmingly embraced AI. It even tried to roll out AI-powered school textbooks (which failed).

Half (or in some cases, slightly less) of those surveyed in the US, Italy, Australia and Brazil are "more concerned than excited" by AI use in daily life. In South Korea, those "more concerned than excited" by AI make up only 16 percent.

There's a trace of surprise in the inevitable statement made by studio director Young Kim, who promised the AI-generated cutscenes would be replaced "by this weekend" (this has already happened).

"If someone asked me what I think about using AI, the honest answer is that I would have to think about it for a long time," the director wrote. "The reason I chose AI was that I believed it could reach a level of expression our existing resources could not, and that it would let us focus more on the game itself, outside of story and cinematics."

He continued: "That was a hasty judgment on my part. Unless AI takes one more leap and reaches a point where no one can tell the difference, what I believed was still closer to an ideal than a reality. I expected some of you would be disappointed by our use of AI. I did not expect it to become this big."

The statement then hits upon a question that will be raised again and again in the coming months and years concerning creative work: if AI can do it better, why not? In this instance, it unambiguously could not: the cutscenes, and I've seen them, are quintessential slop, and compare very unfavourably to the in-game art. Young Kim says the studio originally composed the cutscenes in-engine, but later replaced them with AI. Somehow, his team didn't detect this chasm.

"The truth is, we spent a long time trying to tell this game's story with cutscenes made entirely by our own hands," the statement goes on. "The results were devastating every time. We came to believe we could not properly deliver this game's complex, difficult narrative that way, and that is why we turned to AI. But if that choice hurt your experience, the fault is not in the tool. It is in our own shortcomings."

Alive Inc joins a long list of studios who have reneged on AI use after extreme public backlash, including Larian Studios and Sandfall Interactive. Vapor World isn't wholesale slop—the studio worked hard on the core game and it shows—but the outcry surrounding its launch does show that using generative AI to cut corners isn't, for now, something audiences are willing to tolerate.

Top Steam games by revenue (August 11 - 18)

Overall a pretty unremarkable week for the top ten. Kingdom Hearts is there because Square Enix hosted a sale. Phantom Blade Zero pre-orders opened.

The top 11-20 part of the list is arguably more interesting: Mortal Shell 2 debuted at number 12, Wardogs pre-orders catapulted it to number 13 (though its current beta is apparently blowing up, with an all-time concurrent players peak of 105,774), and the Lord of the Rings: War in the North reissue has sold decently enough to help it reach number 17.

As for Wardogs: expect it to factor heavily into the charts in the coming weeks ahead of its September 11 release date.

Curiously, Star Wars Zero Company pre-orders debuted at number 24, way below Phantom Blade Zero and Wardogs pre-orders. Star Wars fatigue perhaps?

Last week's Steam deep cuts

Steam review of the week

"If you Spam Punch the Dude in the start of the game you Can level your unarm to level 100.

10/10 Broken just like Morrowind"

Skybob, on The Lantern of the Laughless Saint, who I'm sure is also relentlessly bunnyhopping to increase Acrobatics.

Last week, the Communications Workers of America and the Bethesda Game Studios OneBGS union took part in the Save Our Devs rally across the United States and Canada (and on Twitch) "to call out layoffs and corporate greed across the industry and to demand fair first contracts across Microsoft’s gaming studios." Speaking to Kotaku, Bethesda artist Alex Nguyen talked about how things changed after Bethesda was acquired by the tech giant.

"Since we’ve been under Microsoft… it feels like something has changed. We didn’t have layoffs before, and now all of a sudden we have yearly layoffs," he told Kotaku, saying teams were feeling the effects of cuts which eroded institutional knowledge. “If only five people knew how this thing worked and you let all five of them go, that’s a morale killer because it’s like we already knew this, and now we have to learn it again.”

According to that article, Nguyen pointed out that fixer-uppers like Fallout 76 and Elder Scrolls Online don't get a chance to bloom into successful fan favorites without sufficient labor and time. He also noted that there used to be a shared sense of long-term commitment among the staff at Zenimax and Bethesda—a commitment being smothered by Microsoft's current corporate tactics.

“That’s why a lot of people had such a long tenure here," Nguyen told Kotaku. "And they were like, ‘yeah, this is the place I’m gonna retire at,’ or ‘this is the place where I’m gonna finish out,’ or ‘I love being here because I want to stay in the industry for a long time.’ That was basically one of the benefits of being at Bethesda or a Zenimax studio in general.”

Last year, ex-Xbox head Phil Spencer said that "nurturing and protecting creative teams that want to go take risks" was of the utmost importance less than two years after Xbox's acquisition of Blizzard called for 1,900 layoffs. Current Xbox head Asha Sharma has sung a similar tune so far, suggesting that Xbox ought to be entertaining over a billion people each day while also announcing the "reset" necessitating 3,200 job cuts in the very same blog post. It's plain to see why workers might balk at conditions that continue to raise the bar for achievement while more and more developers lose their livelihoods.

Aw dang we cropped out my favorite sign from the Minnesota rally

— @mouseatreides.bsky.social (@mouseatreides.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-08-23T16:43:09.232Z

Ray Chase's first encounter with PC gaming was on an old DOS computer from his father's accounting job. He grew up on a digital diet of shareware demos from PC gaming's golden era. "My grandfather gave me this basket of shareware games, and we played them nonstop for years," Chase recalls. "There was Duke Nukem 1 and 2. There was Ken's Labyrinth. Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. There was Wolfenstein 3D, of course. Jack Pack was one of my favourites because it had a level editor."

A voice actor since the early 2000s, Chase has appeared in hundreds of games, films and TV shows. He played the lead character Noctis in Final Fantasy 15, and currently voices Cyclops in X-Men '97, which just aired season two and is in the process of recording season four: "The stuff that's going on in the seasons we're recording now, I guess we'll see in a couple of years, but it's really cool, man."

Chase is also the co-founder of Sassy Chap Games, developer of 2025's Date Everything. A dating sim where players can romance dozens of anthropomorphised household objects, Date Everything was designed to be a celebration of voice acting talent. "We just finished our big update for Date Everything and we are working hard on the next chapter of our story," Chase says. "We're in the pitching process for that now."

Chase took a break from designing romanceable soft furnishings to show me around the hunk-strewn household of his Steam library. Gather round for a tale of perfumed peasants, disordered dungeons, and plane potatoes.

What game are you currently playing?

I'm currently playing Deltarune Chapter 5, but not [for] super long. The other one that I have is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It's the eternal game. I'm doing all of the things. It'll be a few hundred hours. But it's the perfect encapsulation of what a roleplaying game should be.

I played one [campaign] all the way through. The [most recent] one I've made, I'm doing a smell build where your character smells and looks so good and fancy that it actually works as armour. And so I wear perfumes and walk into battle with my fancy boy outfit. And my enemies are too stunned.

I'm always laundering my clothes. It's the best. I just fucking love that game.

What was the previous game you played, and is it still installed?

I played Mina the Hollower. I love that game, my God. Jay Kaufman's music is astounding. I played that one out of order because I saw you could do that, and I really liked the challenge. So I did the dungeons all in the wrong order. I really enjoyed the feeling of doing a really hard dungeon and then going back and then saying "Oh, this is now very easy" going through it.

I also love that [Mina is] middle aged like me, and after she completes a dungeon she goes to sleep. She takes a nap, which I think is great.

I'm not a secret ending kind of guy. I'm whatever my percentage is when I complete the game. That's what I live with, and that's it. I never go back and play games. [With] Disco Elysium, the best thing about it is the cryptozoologist thing, the cryptid comes at the end and says something incredible. But I [failed the roll]. And so I will never know what it is. I'm never going to go back and play it, and I won't look it up either.

I think that's part of the fun, living with the consequences.

What is the oldest game (by release date) currently installed on your PC?

I've got Brotato here. I have very little on my PC, that's the problem. I love Brotato. It's one of my favourites. It's because it's so lightweight. It's great for planes, and you don't need a controller to play. I end up playing on my laptop on planes more than anything.

Anything that's super lightweight, I'll always have [installed]. So it's going to be Brotato. I 100%-ed it before the newest DLC, which makes it really hard.

There's so many different potatoes you can be. There's so many different playstyles. I'll take whatever comes my way. It's never old. Same with Slay the Spire … there's always something different, always something new to learn, and I absolutely adore it.

Oh, maybe Slay the Spire is older than Brotato. So then, that's my answer.

What is the highest number of hours you have in any given game, according to Steam?

It's Slay the Spire for sure. It is something like 600 hours. But then I've got it on mobile too, and I also got all the way to the end with all characters.

I got into it very early on. I went to a gathering and some guy was like "There's this early access game named Slay the Spire, you should give it a shot." There was only Ironclad and Silent at the time. I don't know if it was [in] early access then, or if it was just a demo version. But I was there from almost the very, very beginning.

I'd never played a deckbuilder before, and it was the best. I played it all the way through to release to Watcher, 1,000 freaking hours in that thing. And it's easy to 100% that game. The achievements are not very difficult, but I do love Ascension, getting Ascension on all characters and then beating it on Ascension 20. That to me is the correct difficulty.

What game will you never, ever uninstall?

Brotato or Slay the Spire. They're just always there, for when I'm on the plane and I'll be able to give it a quick spin.

What's a piece of non-gaming software installed on your PC that you simply couldn't live without?

My voice recording software for sure. That's pretty simple.

I use Reaper and Audacity, [they] are my two favourites. And I absolutely could not live without voice recording software.

That would be impossible.

How tidy is your desktop screen?

Extremely tidy. There's almost nothing on it. It's just the audio that I recorded this morning before coming into this interview, and then my Recycle Bin. And that's it, it's empty. I don't like having a bunch of stuff that I don't know where the hell it is.

[I'm a] one-screen guy. Sometimes I have my second screen up here when I'm recording, but today it's just my laptop and nothing else fancy. This laptop is the laptop I developed Date Everything on.

Back in February Epic Games told us about its plan to overhaul the Epic launcher, with an update in June mentioning it would start up five times faster on average. That technical overhaul will apparently be accompanied by changes to the storefront including personalized game recommendations, quick-access categories, and patch notes right there on the shop. All stuff that would have been nice to have at the end of 2018 when the Epic launcher arrived, but is it too late for a recovery? I asked Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at industry analysts Newzoo.

"I don't really see how they can turn that around," Rosier says, "because Steam has become so inevitable. The Epic Games Store, they get players by giving free games, but people just go, they log in, they get the free games, they don't even play them. You know, it's almost like collecting games rather than actually playing them."

On a sample size of one I am the person who actually plays some of the free games I've been given by Epic over the years, and without that program I probably wouldn't have tried Guardians of the Galaxy, Ghostwire: Tokyo, Vampyr, Control, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, or Kardboard Kings. But whether most people play them or not, it's telling that a free giveaway can actually boost sales on Steam, as it did for Blood West, thanks to players not wanting to split their library.

"The challenge I think Epic is facing is that they try to win everywhere in the past few years," Rosier says. "They try to win against Steam, they try to win against Apple, against Google Play, and probably they run out of steam on where they cannot fight all these battles at the same time."

Rosier is more positive about the outlook for Epic as a game developer than as a storefront. "They probably need to focus on what really matters," he says, "which I think is Fortnite. You can see they put a lot of thought in Fortnite right now. They are doing everything they can, and I think it's working better when you look at the state of Fortnite today compared to six months or one year ago."

One shift in Fortnite has been a bigger push to incorporate cosmetics based on other companies' videogames. While Epic's own games and those of games that launched as exclusives like Borderlands 3 have a history of showing up in Fortnite, now you look at the current season and see Sonic the Hedgehog, Pac-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Mega Man have joined the roster alongside Sora from Kingdom Hearts and Joker from Persona 5.

"I think that's an important trend I see with Fortnite," Rosier says, "they are not afraid of other games." If it continues, expect to see less popstars and more platformer mascots. "It's funny because it's a gaming platform that's not even competing any more with other games. Because if you are launching a game, it makes sense to do some marketing within Fortnite. I was thinking, I'm almost surprised that GTA 6 is not doing an event in Fortnite to show the trailer, you know? Why not at this point?"

Rosier's also positive about recent additions to Fortnite like the collectible "sprites" that give players something else to do ("It's not about winning that much; it's about completing your collection of sprites," he says), but remains less optimistic about Epic's future as a competitor to Steam. "If you look at the Epic Games Store, I don't see how they can recover at this point."

South of Midnight was one of 2025's seemingly innumerable highlights—in their 83% review, evergreen writer Andrea Shearon called it "a Deep South delight drenched in superstition and pain." If you've been holding off but nonetheless rooting for the award-winning studio behind it, Compulsion Games, now's a great time to dive in: it's independent again after a lengthy stay under the Xbox Game Studios banner.

After rumors of closure came in the wake of Xbox's most recent layoffs, Compulsion announced it'd be leaving Microsoft instead and pursuing other partnerships. On Thursday, CEO Guillaume Provost explained to GamesBeat that "the management buyout is complete and that it owns its original intellectual property games again, as Microsoft has transferred the IP back to Compulsion Games," according to the article. "Provost said management has acquired the studio and staff as well."

Granted, if you happened to be avoiding games by Microsoft-owned studios because of the BDS boycott protesting the roles of various corporations in Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians, this particular game and others like it were already excepted by some advocates. No Games For Genocide named it as a possible exception due to its indie-like production scale and "themes of black liberation" in its FAQ, saying "it’s worth putting our time, energy and efforts into building mass boycotts for the larger titles."

Still, if you've been holding out, the studio now gets a bigger cut of the money when you buy the game now and Microsoft gets none, assuming you don't buy it through the Xbox digital storefront. And regardless of any of that, it's still noteworthy as a critical time for the studio also behind We Happy Few and 2013's Contrast. Sustainably cutting ties with such a huge publisher is no easy feat, and the turmoil at Xbox already had Compulsion devs looking for new jobs before the infamous "reset" even took place.

Double Fine has fully transitioned into an independent studio after leaving Xbox earlier this year. The studio now has full publishing rights to the games it made under Microsoft and earns all the revenue when you buy them, CEO Tim Schafer confirmed on the Kinda Funny podcast.

"Everything we got back, the transfer of the IP came back to us, and we got the publishing rights back for all our games," he said. Steam still lists the publisher as Xbox Game Studios for games like Psychonauts 2 and Keeper, but that's because it "takes a while for all of that to process," he said. "When people buy our games it helps support the studio."

Later this month, the studio will start a Kickstarter campaign based around its annual Amnesia Fortnight game jam, which is the same game jam where some of its previous games, like Costume Quest and Stacking, were born. The entire thing will be filmed and turned into a documentary, and backers of the campaign will help choose which idea gets made into a small game.

Schafer said the Kickstarter campaign and the revenue from its games will help the studio "have as much runway as possible" as it works on pitching other projects to publishers.

Double Fine laid off 23 members of its staff last month to become "a size that we can sustain," Schafer wrote in a statement at the time. The news came less than a month after Microsoft allowed it to go independent as it began a major restructuring at Xbox and laid off 3,200 people.

South of Midnight developer Compulsion Games, the other studio Microsoft cut loose, recently announced it too has full publishing rights to its games and that buying them will directly support the studio as it figures out what's next.

In addition to promoting the Kickstarter, Schafer teased a major update with new maps and modes and a price drop coming next week to Kiln, the studio's recently released pottery brawler multiplayer game. And I'll add that if you're not a PvPer, you should check out Double Fine's adventure game starring a sentient lighthouse and a bird called Keeper. As I said in the Keeper review, it's easily one of the most gorgeous games I've ever played.

One of the biggest stories this week has been of the enigmatic, self-described consumer hero Cyberleek, who's also using this whole debacle as a way to advertise and pay for their cryptocurrency. Which is probably fine and normal and not at all a concerning spectre lingering around one of the biggest games of the year.

Anyway, you'd think Take-Two and Strauss Zelnick might be feeling hot under the collar about all of this, and you'd be partially right. As spotted by Insider Gaming, Take-Two's market price (the price of one share) was around $248 before the leaks. Fast-forward a couple of days, and that same market price dropped to a low of $233.

This hit Take-Two's market cap (share price, times the amount of shares) to the tune of billions—around $2.83 billion in two days. An astronomical amount of money by any stretch of the imagination, a huge devaluation that's… actually not even much of a sweat, really.

See, Take-Two's overall market cap was still over $43 billion and, by virtue of how stock markets tend to shift and fluctuate, not even that much of a rare occurrence. On August 6, the market price dropped to a measly $229, for instance, before spiking back up to $242 the next day.

And while the overall market price between August 18 and 20 does trend downwards, it's already rising back up. At the time of writing, said market price has recovered to $241, with the market cap rising from that $43 billion total to almost $44.9 billion—just $1 billion within its previous number.

Look, while I don't think anyone at Take-Two's exactly happy to be losing a couple billion dollars in market cap to some guy peddling cryptocurrency with a full copy of their next big thing, what feels more noteworthy is the fact that a leak of this scale has mostly just pinged off the videogame giant's armour.

It's a humbling reminder of the sheer amount of money that gets poured into videogames at this scale—humbling or perhaps distressing, given the size of the industry tracks precious little to its security.

One tragedy about the fall of Arkane Austin—aside from Microsoft's seeming unwillingness to give studios a chance beyond the next quarter—is the pervasive feeling that the studio, whose devs were previously known for their immersive sims, was forced to make something way outside of their wheelhouse. Redfall was a live service shooter, and a pretty cruddy one at that.

So it might be buoying news to hear that Dishonored co-creator Harvey Smith and seasoned Arkane vet Ben Horne's new studio isn't going to try and chase down trends. In an interview with The Game Business, Horne and Smith were asked if they thought the immersive sim (which Black Pony Immersive has been strangely careful to talk around), is a dead or dying genre.

"If you look back through those games," says Smith, "There are a lot of titles that people still talk about 10 or 20 years later. They have a lot of cultural cachet. And there are a few, if you look at BioShock or Deus Ex or Dishonored, that make a lot of money."

Part of the issue, as many developers have outlined, is the general ballooning budgets in the industry itself: "If you look at Dishonored, for instance, the budget that we were working with was… I wouldn't say tiny, many triple-I developers would envy that budget, but it was very reasonable. And our [return on investment] was four or five times the total spend."

For Horne's part, one of the mission statements of Black Pony Immersive is to get away from tend chasing—which Arkane was clearly and famously bad at—and just make stuff its developers would like to play:

"The industry is growing in such a way that there are a large amount of players with a really varied appetite. We don't really know what turn the industry might take, and we're probably not going to be very good at trend chasing. And so, our best shot is to rally around a creative vision that excites us as developers. It excites the audience that we know wants to play this kind-of game. That's the best chance of making something great."

Smith concurs, outlining the (understandably cynical) perspective that, hey, he's heard a lot of these promises from big executives before: "Very well-paid people say things to me, going way back now, like, 'First-person games don't sell,' or, 'RPGs are a niche market,' 'If you're not working on a free-to-play game now, in five years you'll be out of a job,' 'MMOs are the future,' 'In the future, games will have live motion video sections with Hollywood actors in them."

If we skim through that list, we can see a lot of nonsense. First-person games have continued to sell, one of the most successful games of the decade was an RPG based on Dungeons & Dragons, and live-service free to play games have been an absolute trashfire for some publishers, even with deep wallets. And while Hollywood actors are in videogames now, they're not in live action.

"I've heard smart, good people," Smith continues, "friends of mine in executive positions, say these things over the years, and sometimes they're right. But what Ben said, going back to what you love with a strong vision, that often comes through for us, so that's what we have got to do."

Redfall is one of the biggest industry disasters in recent memory—coming from Arkane Austin, a studio known for an all-time classic in Prey, the game was panned both critically and commercially. Even we, at PC Gamer, dubbed it the "first Arkane game we don't like".

It also served as the death knell for the studio as, one year later, studio owner Microsoft announced it'd be shutting Arkane Austin down. The narrative paints itself, especially given Microsoft's utterly brutal behaviour in following years. The big bad M forced Arkane Austin, king of the immersive sim, to make a crummy live-service glob.

And that's sort of the truth—it is, after all, why the studio founder left—but it's not entirely Microsoft's fault. The studio director at the time, Harvey Smith, tells The Game Business in a recent interview that it wasn't just corporate which became swept up by the live service fugue.

"Arkane is very specialized, but the industry is growing, and there’s always more mouths to feed. And it’s great when you can reach a wider audience. We got swept up in the games-as-a-service thing, and I had the foolish chutzpah to assume that it always works out for us."

Smith describes a sort of naive optimism that Arkane could nail the same live service successes elsewhere in the industry: "We can do this. Let’s take what we love, and mix it with [games-as-a-service]. And do different mechanics by day and night. And have character classes.

"Then in the middle of all that, Covid happened. We also had the great resignation where everybody went remote and started changing jobs." Later in the chat, Smith describes a deeply chaotic development cycle, plagued by all sorts of baffling occurrences: "There were fires. The government announced aliens at some point. There was a swarm of murder hornets coming toward Texas. We had an ice storm that put power and water out for like two weeks for some people. It was crazy. That development cycle."

And, listen—I think it's clear in hindsight that Smith was wrong to be optimistic, but it's also clear that he did genuinely care about Redfall, even if it came out a mess. So much so, in fact, that Smith reveals he pleaded with Microsoft to allow himself and other employees to come back into the office and finish the game's 1.4 patch.

"We finished the game and it was very poorly received. We then worked on it for a year. We patched thousands of bugs. We then got laid off, but we had in the pipe version 1.4. It was the one that fixed tons of stuff. So, we went to Microsoft and said, ‘I know we don’t work here anymore, but can we please release this?’

"And to their credit, they did not say no. They let six or seven of us sign forms that we could come back in the building. After being fired, we released 1.4, which I think if we had that on day one, it wouldn’t have set the world on fire, but it was a much, much better game."

Ben Horne, who was the production director at the time, chimes in: "It feels like an achievement unlocked for me in my career, to release something after I’ve been fired and the studio closed down."

Patch 1.4 wouldn't necessarily save Redfall from obscurity. PC Contributor Rick Lane went back to it, writing: "still isn't the game it needs to be, or the one Arkane Austin could have made. Nonetheless, I think the update shows that Arkane could have redeemed it in the long run." The tragedy, I suppose, is that we'll never know whether 1.5, 1.6, or 1.7 would've finally turned it into Smith and Horne's vision.