A Financial Times report (via Reuters) says the US government is debating whether Tencent's holdings in US and Finnish videogame companies pose a national security risk, and whether it should be forced to divest them. Multiple sources said cabinet officials were scheduled to have a meeting on the matter earlier this week, ahead of US president Donald Trump's scheduled meeting with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, but the meeting was postponed due to scheduling conflicts.

Chinese conglomerate Tencent is a major player in the Western games market. It owns studios including Riot Games and Digital Extremes outright, and has significant holdings in Epic, Larian, FromSoft, Krafton, Ubisoft, Remedy, Inflexion, Supercell, and numerous others. The FT report says that's led to concern in the US government that Tencent could gain access to personal data of US citizens, something that's traditionally been reserved for the US government and companies. (Like here. And here, and here. Oh, and here.)

(And here.)

This process has been dragging on for a while now. The US government initially turned its attention to Tencent's gaming holdings in 2020 during the first Trump administration, eventually leading to negotiations that seemed to be successful, at least to the extent that Tencent wasn't forced to sell off its holdings—although in 2025, Tencent was declared a Chinese military company by the US Department of Defense.

The second Trump administration, which we are now just over a year into, has been much more overt in its corrupt, chaotic corporate dealings. In 2025, for instance, the US arm of TikTok was sold to a company whose "managing investors" include Oracle, owned by billionaire Trump supporter Larry Ellison, and Silver Lake, a private equity firm that joined with investment firm Affinity Partners, owned by Trump son-in-law Jared Kusher, to assist with Saudi Arabia's acquisition of Electronic Arts. Trump also weighed in on Netflix's attempted acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the proposed deal "could be a problem"; Netflix eventually bowed out and WBD went to Paramount, which is owned by Larry Ellison's son David, in a deal backed by—you guessed it—Saudi Arabia.

Chaos could also very easily be the result of forcing Tencent to pull out of the US games industry. Finding new money to fill the gaps left by Tencent would be a challenge to say the least, and I would guess that at least some of the larger companies involved would end up in the hands of private equity, much as TikTok did. Is that bad? Anything can happen, but this excerpt from PC Gamer's Lincoln Carpenter's outstanding breakdown of why the EA buyout has everyone nervous lays the reality out clearly:

"Private equity has maimed retail franchises like Party City. It has brutalized digital media outlets like the Gizmodo Media Group and demolished local news across the US. It's left hospitals full of bats and increased mortality in retirement homes. A report using S&P data found that in 2024, private equity-backed companies accounted for more than 10% of all corporate bankruptcies and over 50% of bankruptcies with over $500 million in liabilities—but "despite their role in precipitating bankruptcies, private equity firms often emerge financially unscathed."

It's not always like that, but often enough that a private equity buyout is generally not considered a desirable outcome, and given the precarious state of the games industry already I think I'd rather not tempt fate.

I've reached out to Tencent for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

As the free-to-play multiplayer shooter Highguard continues to sink, a new Bloomberg report based on interviews with 10 former employees of developer Wildlight Entertainment provides a closer look at where it all went so badly wrong.

The skeleton of the story is well known: A surprise reveal at the 2025 Game Awards that didn't make a universally great impression, followed by a growing sense of confusion among followers as the studio remained stubbornly silent in its wake. The launch on January 26 attracted nearly 100,000 players, but within a couple weeks, most of them had drifted away: As I write this, fewer than 400 people are playing.

Wildlight was formed by Respawn veterans who'd worked on Apex Legends, and the Bloomberg report says studio leadership was determined to recapture the magic of that game, which shadow-dropped in 2019 with no promotional buildup and became an immediate and enduring success.

That same run silent approach for Highguard prevented external testing, and so while internal feedback was apparently all thumbs-up, some issues that may have been evident to outsiders—particularly with regard to the game's complexity—went overlooked. Even after Highguard was revealed, the studio encouraged employees to stay quiet in the face of rising negativity and questions; instead of being actively and aggressively addressed, concerns were allowed to fester.

Highguard launched to big numbers but less than three weeks later, with roughly 90% of those players gone, Wildlight laid off most of its employees, and this is where it gets ugly. The Bloomberg report says staff thought there was enough funding to keep things going for at least a few months, giving them a chance to bounce back, and lead designer Mohammad Alavi had said ahead of Highguard's launch that it didn't need "super huge" player counts to be successful: "What we're really hoping for is a core group of fans that love us. That will allow us to grow."

On February 11, however, employees were told that Tencent, which had secretly financed the project, had ended funding—a reason apparently wasn't provided but the assumption is that continued funding was contingent upon achieving targets that Highguard never came close to—and the studio was out of money. Now, out of what was a team of 100, fewer than 20 remain.

Work is still continuing on Highguard: In fact, an update featuring a new 5v5 "Raid Rush" mode rolled out earlier today. But the response to it has been somewhat mixed because standard 3v3 raids have been disabled while the new mode is active.

Of course the bigger issue is declining player counts: As a free to play game, Highguard is dependent on players spending money on in-game items, and that is dependent on having a regular, returning player base—something it's so far failed to accrue. As its struggles worsen, it's only going to get tougher for Highguard to achieve that critical mass.

The legal dispute between Tencent and Sony over Tencent's Horizon-like survival game Light of Motiram appears to be over, as a new court filing (via The Verge) reveals the companies have reached a "confidential settlement."

The terms of the settlement weren't revealed (that's the whole "confidential" part) but the action has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning the dismissal is final and the case cannot be resumed at any point in the future. Light of Motiram store pages have been taken down, and Sony and Tencent have each agreed to cover their own legal fees.

“SIE and Tencent are pleased to have reached a confidential resolution and will have no further public comment on this matter," Tencent Americas head of communication Sean Durkin confirmed in a statement provided to PC Gamer. "SIE and Tencent look forward to working together in the future.”

Light of Motiram's more-than-passing similarity to Sony's Horizon games, Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, were immediately apparent when the game was revealed in 2024. I wondered at the time whether Sony would roll out the lawyers in response, and eventually it did, filing suit in July 2025. Tencent pushed back, calling Sony's lawsuit "an improper attempt to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture and declare it Sony’s exclusive domain," but it also hastily modified the Light of Motiram pages on Steam and the Epic Games Store, stripping them of their most overt Horizon-like images and references.

A settlement began to look likely earlier this month when lawyers for both sides reached an agreement to extend a filing deadline for responses to Sony's request for an injunction against Tencent's use of any material "copied or derived" from the Horizon games.

While the terms of the settlement were not revealed in the court filing, the Light of Motiram pages on both Steam and the Epic Games Store are now gone, although evidence of its existence remains on SteamDB. The Light of Motiram website is still up, however, as are its YouTube, Twitch, and various social media channels, so it is possible Light of Motiram will still see the light of day, just not as it was originally envisioned. I've reached out to Sony for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Way back in the mists of 2023, developer Alexandre Spindler and Drama Studios revealed Unrecord: an FPS with a striking bodycam perspective that almost instantly went viral, with the reveal video quickly amassing tens of millions of views. The illusion of photorealistic camera footage was so convincing at points that some even cried fake, and the studio had to release more to prove it wasn't.

After that Unrecord went underground, as the two-man team began work on turning what was then a prototype into a full game. Now Drama Studios has announced that the game's development is fully funded thanks to Chinese megacorp Tencent taking a minority stake in the studio.

"At the time of the trailer in 2023, we were just 2 bedroom programmers with no experience in the industry," reads Drama Studios' announcement on X. "The game was just 6 months old and exceeded all our expectations. With limited finances, we started from scratch, working sleepless nights and handling everything from business to creation. Two years later, we are 10 developers and we are still hiring."

The post goes on to say "we finally have the budget to make Unrecord and build the best game possible." The team also thanks investors, and says the studio is "now fully focused on production and avoiding revealing unfinished work in order to raise the bar even higher. Now that we have funding, we’ll finally share updates in 2026 that reflect our true final vision."

There's also a new screenshot which is nice and atmospheric but doesn't tell us much.

"We've been consistently impressed by the drive and dynamism of Drama Studios," Tencent's Mark Maslowicz told GI.biz, "and the remarkable progress it has made on Unrecord, especially with such a small team and limited resources. This investment will help the studio unlock their full potential and deliver the first of many outstanding games. We're excited to be part of Drama Studios journey."

“Despite its scale, Tencent has approached this partnership with humility, respect, and a real appreciation for our creative identity," added Drama Studios CEO Theo Hiribarne. "It believed in Unrecord early and has supported us at every stage of our growth. We’re confident this collaboration will help us reach our full potential.”

Drama Studios says it aims to "create one of the most immersive games ever", which may well reignite some of the initial debate over whether playing a cop blasting away at suspects is in the best taste, and says we'll see more of where the game's going in 2026.

This might seem kind of ironic, given that you're reading about it right here on the front page of PC Gamer, but Tencent has promised that it will not do any new promotions or marketing for its Horizon-like survival game Light of Motiram, nor will it move up the release window for the currently planned Q4 2027, until a judge has decided on Sony's request for a preliminary injunction against the game.

The promise came in a filing made on December 1 (via The Game Post), the latest step in the legal tussle between Tencent and Sony. Sony filed suit against Tencent earlier this year over Light of Motiram, a game revealed in late 2024 that looked a lot like Horizon Zero Dawn; Sony took that characterization a step further in its lawsuit, calling Light of Motiram a "slavish clone" of the Horizon games.

Tencent responded by purging the most egregious Horizon-like content from Light of Motiram's Steam page and bumping the release date from late 2025 to Q4 2027—a massive two-year delay, suggesting that Tencent figured it was going to get hammered if it didn't dramatically overhaul the game.

It was probably a good bet.

That didn't convince Sony to let off the gas, though, and in October it filed for a preliminary injunction against the use of any material "copied or derived" from the Horizon games in Light of Motiram. Sony also said it's "deeply skeptical" of the delayed release date, noting that the lawsuit will likely still be ongoing at the end of 2027—suggesting that without an injunction Tencent might just go ahead and push Light of Motiram out the door anyway, and then hope for the best.

Committing to no further public presence for Light of Motiram (aside from, you know, this) would presumably make an early release, or even one in the Q4 2027 window, less likely: Fair to say that Tencent probably isn't going to be eager to turn its big survival game investment loose on the public without any meaningful pre-release marketing.

But that promise also seems to point toward an out-of-court settlement in the making, as it comes as part of a joint filing in which lawyers for both sides agreed to give Tencent more time to file its response to Sony's request for an injunction, and then to subsequently allow Sony more time to file its own reply in support of the request.

As legal maneuvers go, this isn't exactly up there with "Did you order the code red?" but it does seem that wheels are turning. At this point I would not be at all surprised to see some kind of deal reached in the relatively near future—terms of settlement undisclosed, of course—and Light of Motiram drop as currently planned in the late '27 window, as a far more conventional, de-Horizoned survival game.

For now, though, the lawyers continue to throw hands: Under the newly agreed schedule, the hearing to determine the fate of Sony's request for a preliminary injunction will take place on January 29, 2026.

Tencent-owned Swedish developer Sharkmob, which announced in October that the supernatural battle royale Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt will be taken offline in April 2026, says it will lay off an unspecified number of employees as part of "planned changes to its organizational structure." The studio said Exoborne, the "tactical open world extraction shooter" announced during The Game Awards 2023, remains in development.

In a statement to GamesIndustry, Sharkmob said the layoffs will allow it to "sharpen our focus and align our efforts on the continued development of Exoborne and position us for sustainable growth." Exoborne held its first playtest in January and showed some promise, but a release date hasn't yet been announced.

The layoffs at Sharkmob come less than two months after deep cuts at Funcom, also owned by Tencent, which included the outright closure of Metal: Hellsinger developer The Outsiders.

Outsiders founder David Goldfarb reacted to the news in a wordless post on X:

Tencent vice president Yong-yi Zhu told GamesIndustry in September that the company has "no plans at the moment to pull out" of its significant investment in Western studios, which recently expanded to include a new joint venture with Ubisoft called Vantage Studios. But he also warned that "you may see a reduction in investment in certain places," which he said "is just the realities of the industry and the dynamics of the industry."

Tencent isn't the only Chinese game company to take that view: NetEase has ended funding for a half-dozen studios based in the US and Canada over the past year, just a few years after making major investments to increase its footprint in the region. In a February report, Niko Partners director of research and insights Daniel Ahmad attributed the NetEase cuts largely to the success of games like Black Myth: Wukong, Genshin Impact, Naraka: Bladepoint, and Wuthering Waves, which demonstrated that developers based in China could achieve results comparable to Western outfits at a fraction of the cost.

When Tencent unveiled its upcoming Light of Motiram survival game in late 2024, we (and a lot of other places and people) called out its many similarities to Sony's Horizon series, and idly wondered whether it was tempting fate and SIE's legal team.

The answer came in July 2025 when Sony filed suit, shortly after which Tencent did something unusual: It purged most of the Horizon-like content from the game's Steam page, and delayed its launch target from late 2025 to late 2027—all without saying a word about why, or even acknowledging it was being done at all.

The "why" seemed obvious enough: Light of Motiram really did look an awful lot like Horizon: Zero Dawn, in some very overt ways. Despite Tencent's lack of comment, I assumed the store page changes, and the huge two-year delay, represented a fairly complete walkback and rework. But it seems that Sony isn't buying it: As reported by Games Fray, Sony has now filed for a preliminary injunction against Tencent's use of any material "copied or derived" from the Horizon games.

That covers a lot of ground, but the filing focuses heavily on Tencent's use of a character in Light of Motiram promotional images who looks a lot like Aloy, the "iconic" protagonist in the Horizon games. How similar are they? Judge for yourself:

The filing also points out the "look-alike animal robot machines, look-alike tribes, and even a look-alike Focus device" in Light of Motiram's screenshots and trailers, and—I was not aware of this—alleges that "Tencent even hired a composer of the Horizon score to give its game trailer the same sound as Horizon."

There's a lot of that sort of thing going on. Also from the lawsuit:

Sony alleges that Tencent approached it in March 2024 seeking a license to do a Horizon game; Sony declined, but "Tencent went ahead with its plan to use the Horizon intellectual property" anyway, the filing claims, announcing "the upcoming release of an open-world survival game entitled Light of Motiram with a striking resemblance to the Horizon games." Sony says it tried to resolve the matter privately, because it and Tencent are "worldwide business partners," but Tencent's response was to ask again for a license. Sony again refused, so Tencent dropped a new Light of Motiram trailer and announced upcoming playtests, at which point Sony sued.

The Light of Motiram delay and changes to the Steam and Epic Store pages could be viewed as surrender to the inevitable, but Sony sees things differently: It alleges Tencent "has obfuscated its plans for releasing Light of Motiram and hid behind its opaque corporate structure," and says it's "deeply skeptical of Tencent's alteration of the purported release after SIE filed suit," noting that Q4 2027, while a couple years away, will still arrive before the likely conclusion of this lawsuit—which is why Sony is requesting the preliminary injunction now.

It brings to mind the FTC's legal challenge of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023: The FTC sought a preliminary injunction putting the deal on hold until its lawsuit was fully concluded, to ensure Microsoft didn't just do the deal anyway while that case was working its way through the courts. Which is what ultimately happened: The FTC's request for an injunction was denied, a few months later the UK's Competition and Market Authority dropped its objections, and the deal was done. A year and a half after that, the FTC added some insult to its injury and decided to throw in the towel on the whole thing, and, well, we all know what happened next.

Sony's request for a preliminary injunction has roughly the same aim: To prevent Tencent from using Horizon-styled material to promote Light of Motiram, thereby causing "consumer confusion" and "irreparable harm," until its lawsuit is fully settled. Which seems reasonable, especially since Tencent has at least superficially pulled back on that front anyway, but I am not a lawyer, as the saying goes, and so the likelihood of success is not something I'll speculate on. There is one other interesting parallel to the FTC-Microsoft situation, though: Sony's request is being heard by Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley, the same judge who rejected the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction against Microsoft.

OpenAI is a company that only ever seems to go big when it comes to matters of money, with the ChatGPT steward's latest valuation placing its estimated worth at $500 billion. That's a $200 billion jump up from its last valuation back in late March this year.

The latest valuation (via Reuters) follows on the heels of a deal in which current and former employees at the company sold about $6.6 billion worth of shares. According to an anonymous source that spoke to Reuters, these shares were sold to a number of interested investors at SoftBank, Abu Dhabi's MGX, Thrive Capital, T. Rowe Price and Dragoneer Investment Group.

SoftBank has previously invested about $22 billion into the company and last month, Nvidia also joined the AI investment feeding frenzy by signing a deal to ultimately send $100 billion OpenAI's way. This latest $500 billion valuation makes OpenAI the world's largest startup, according to Bloomberg, seeing the company outpace even Elon Musk's SpaceX and its own $400 billion valuation. Though at what point do these massive businesses stop being considered 'startups'? Seems kinda off to me.

And as for OpenAI's own financials? Well, back in September the company signed a deal with Oracle for $300 billion worth of computing power over the next five years. As for annual revenue though, the company is reluctant to confirm figures though some reports suggest it made as much as $12 billion in annualized revenue as of July this year. In fact, revenues haven't seemed to be outpacing expenses, meaning OpenAI has been making a loss.

Now, I only ever achieved a C grade in my Maths GCSE, but something about those numbers isn't adding up for me. OpenAI is now worth more than AMD, Coca-Cola, and General Electric, with even Sam Altman himself commenting back in August that the clamour over AI investment is a little bit "insane." Back then, Altman warned against investing off the back of absurdly high valuations for companies that amount to “three people and an idea.”

He went on to say, "Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money. We don’t know who, and a lot of people are going to make a phenomenal amount of money. My personal belief, although I may turn out to be wrong, is that, on the whole, this would be a huge net win for the economy.”

But is AI actually a bubble? James Anderson is a big tech investor who has previously backed the likes of Tesla, Amazon, and Tencent. He recently told the Guardian that such massive valuations are a cause for concern. He said, "I think one needs to be honest that those sudden increases [in valuation] that people were willing to place on OpenAI, Anthropic and the like were disconcerting. That scale of jump and the pace with which it happened did bother me.”

I personally got an uneasy feeling when I read that George Saravelos of Deutsche Bank wrote to clients last month to say, "AI machines—in quite a literal sense—appear to be saving the U.S. economy right now. In the absence of tech-related spending, the U.S. would be close to, or in, recession this year."

Saravelos also went on to say, "In order for the tech cycle to continue contributing to GDP growth, capital investment needs to remain parabolic." This is highly unlikely. Keyly, he also notes that "growth is not coming from AI itself, but from building the factories to generate AI capacity."

As such Bain & Company's annual global technology report suggests the industry will have to reckon with an estimated $800 billion annual revenue shortfall in order to "profitably fund the data centers of 2030." In other words, this report says that currently there's simply not enough money coming out of AI investments compared to what's going in for the industry to survive long term—and that sounds like a strained bubble to me.

The new thing being launched by Ubisoft and Tencent to take control of Ubi's biggest games now has a name: It's called Vantage Studios, and it's a "creative house" that will take responsibility for the future of Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six properties.

Vantage Studios is made up of "thousands of experienced developers" based in Ubisoft studios in Montreal, Quebec City, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona, and Sofia, and "represents a first step in Ubisoft's ongoing transformation," the company said in today's announcement. It will also apparently be the first of multiple such "creative houses," the overall goal of which "is to facilitate stronger and deeper connections between developers and players."

"This streamlined approach allows for both a higher level of autonomy for developers and a shorter pathway between gathering and implementing player feedback, while still offering the benefit of Ubisoft's expertise, services, tools, and tech," Ubisoft said.

There aren't any details on how all of this reorganizing will actually work, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't strike me as a little bit like the ol' deck chairs on the Titanic thing. The past several years have not been good for Ubisoft, which has seen its share price crater amidst workplace misconduct scandals, struggles to get games released, and too many misfires among new projects.

Tencent seemed eager to make a move on an easy target, but the founding Guillemot family has proven impressively determined not to relinquish control, just as it was 10 years ago when Vivendi tried to take over—which is what brought Tencent on the scene in the first place.

The deal between Tencent and Ubisoft that birthed Vantage Studios always struck me as kind of an odd compromise that didn't change much. As it was announced earlier this year, Tencent holds a roughly 25% stake in the new subsidiary, but Ubisoft retains full control: In fact, the co-CEO of Vantage is Charlie Guillemot, the son of Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot—his partner in the big office is Christophe Derennes, a Ubisoft veteran who's been with the company for more than 35 years.

So it's a name and not much more at this point, but hopefully we'll get more insight into how Ubisoft's operations will be impacted by this new operation soon: The company's H1 financial report, where I would expect Yves and co. to say something more substantial about it, is set for November 13.

Splash Damage, the studio known for its work on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Brink, Gears Tactics, and the cancelled Transformers: Reactivate, has parted ways with Tencent, and is now owned by private equity investors.

The studio confirmed the change in a statement provided to GamesIndustry, saying it will continue to operate under its current leadership team but would "not be providing further comment at this time."

Splash Damage has been around for nearly a quarter-century, having been founded by a group of mod makers in 2001. It debuted the following year with multiplayer maps for Return to Castle Wolfenstein—which, for the record, were excellent. That focus continued through projects including the Enemy Territory games, Brink, Dirty Bomb, and the multiplayer components of Gears of War 4 and Gears 5.

Chinese holding company Leyou acquired Splash Damage in 2016, and was then acquired itself by Tencent in 2020, which is how Splash Damage got there. But it hasn't had much success in the years since: Gears Tactics, released in 2020, was excellent but quickly forgotten, while Outcasters, also a 2020 release, was exclusive to Google Stadia and didn't survive that platform's shutdown.

The biggest blow came earlier this year, though, when Transformers: Reactivate, an online action game announced at the 2022 Game Awards, was cancelled. Splash Damage said at the time that layoffs were likely as a result of the cancellation. That was the last update on the studio's X feed until today, when it retweeted GameIndustry's coverage of the split from Tencent.

A struggling studio being shuffled off into the hands of private equity by a company famous for all the pies it has its fingers in might be seen as a bad sign, and, well, it is. But there is one X-factor hanging above it all. In 2023, Twitch streamers Mike "Shroud" Grzesiek and Chris "Sacriel" Ball announced that they were joining with Splash Damage to develop an open-world survival-shooter called Project Astrid. As far as I know, nothing's been heard of it since, but Ball still has the Project Astrid reveal pinned on his X profile, so presumably there's still movement on that front.

Project Spectrum is an upcoming "tactical thriller shooter" revealed tonight at Gamescom's Opening Night Live that sets players off into Ember Zones, where "unspeakable horrors await."

I'll cut right to the chase: There's not a whole lot to go on here. Project Spectrum is a "physiological horror PvEvP game, where you battle against monsters, other players, and your own sanity, as widespread anomalies twist around the world," ONL host Geoff Keighley said, and you can see that in the trailer: A special ops team descends into a haunted house of some sort, and after things go rather badly a lone survivor is asked, "What if you are the beast?"

An interesting proposition indeed, which takes us back to the house and a spooky transformation into some kind of interdimensional spider, which then seemingly gives the business to another spec ops guy. Why? It's hard to tell.

In a subsequent press release, developer Team Jade—the studio behind the Delta Force reboot—revealed a little bit more about the game, which takes place in a world devastated by a "radiant, reality-warping force" called the Ember.

"Everything it touches—cities, landscapes, even life itself—is transformed in unknowable ways, leaving behind dangerous regions called Ember Zones," the studio said. "Players take the role of an Operator, leading high-risk missions into Ember Zones—recruiting and managing a customizable squad of elite Agents, who they ultimately play as to obtain intelligence, neutralize threats, and uncover the secrets of the Ember.

"Every moment in the game is highly dynamic as players face monstrosities created by the Ember, other hostile Agents, and the psychological tolls imposed by the twisted environment. Players must fight back through building and customizing their Agents, utilizing coordinated team synergy, environmental awareness, and creative, improvised item crafting — all while remaining mindful of their Sanity, a crucial resource that depletes easily, and of Executioners roaming the world: powerful beings with unmatched agility and strength controlled by other players."

Project Spectrum isn't currently on Steam but there is a website up at spectrum-project, which unfortunately doesn't have much to see either. But I think Team Jade's participation makes it worth paying attention to. Delta Force has a "mixed" user rating on Steam, but it's also routinely pulling in well over 100,000 concurrent players every day, so it sure seems like the developers are doing something right. If they can bring that same magic to Project Spectrum, who knows? It could prove to be a surprise banger.

I don't think you can go by a nom-de-plume like "Soulframe" without really, really loving videogames.

More than a decade before Digital Extremes started cooking up its Warframe sequel, young Chinese architecture student Qiwei Liang came up with the name as his internet handle, and has been using it ever since. It lasted through his stint as a grad student at Yale and his return to China after his first game, built in RPG Maker, racked up four million downloads—enough to convince him maybe games were his future rather than architecture.

And he's still using the name today, even as the CEO of the 100-person dev studio making Phantom Blade Zero. I went to Beijing to play the game and speak with Liang about its development, which he said was "always the end goal" even as he started out with a tiny team making mobile games.

"When I finished my second RPG, I actually got an offer from an architecture office in New York, but I came back to China for a holiday and saw that there seemed to be a trend—the Chinese gaming industry was emerging," Liang said. "I felt that might be a big opportunity. Then I met my first investor, and they supported us to start a very small studio in China. So I had to reject my offer from the New York office, and packed overnight and flew back to China."

Liang's studio started with the sidescrolling action game Rain Blood Chronicles: Mirage before releasing the action RPG Phantom Blade: Executioners in China across PC, consoles, and mobile. But he said that making a big action game like Phantom Blade Zero was always the end goal. "That scale, sidescrolling and with kung fu movements and skills, while also cool, I would say was not enough," he said. "I am proud of them, but it's not enough to express my idea of building this Phantom world."

I told Liang that his comparison brought to mind Larian's trajectory from the Divinity: Original Sin games to Baldur's Gate 3, where the greater scope and production value with cutscenes and voice acting helped propel the studio to a new tier of success. He was nodding along as I spoke.

"Yeah—many people are making games for money, but we make money for games," he said with a chuckle. "We made money from the mobile market, and then we think, at first, that we'll have to make this game without any support from investors, so we put all of our money from the mobile games into Phantom Blade Zero."

In the hundreds of interviews I've done over the years, I don't think I can recall another time a big budget game developer—let alone a CEO—so casually said that the game matters more than the money. I don't think it's a rare sentiment, though: Game development is hard, and almost everyone who does it for a living is clearly driven by their love for games.

But every time another CEO or studio head of a profitable company justifies mass layoffs to "rationalize their pipeline" or "position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace" or whatever, I'll remember that there really are some people in charge of big games who don't think or talk that way.

After first expecting to entirely self-fund a smaller scale version of Phantom Blade Zero, S-Game later got an investment from Tencent to make it a bigger game, though the studio remains in control of both development and publishing. Liang also brought up this year's Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as an example of the kind of game he hopes to deliver himself.

"When I played Expedition 33, it reminded me of Final Fantasy 10, because I lived in that era," he said. "I always say I'd love to bring back some vibes from the PlayStation 1 and PlayStation 2 era, when games were not so big but were created by creative creators. These kinds of games are really rare nowadays, something like Expedition 33. We wish our game will also be something that can express our ideas and is well polished. It may not be the biggest game in the industry. Doesn't have to be. But I wish it can present our very honest heart."

We noted, when Light of Motiram was first unveiled in late 2024, that it looked a lot like Horizon: Zero Dawn—to the point that we also wondered whether it might earn the ire of Sony. It took the better part of a year, but sure enough, Sony eventually filed a lawsuit against Tencent, parent of Motiram studio Polaris Quest, calling the game a "slavish clone" of the hit Horizon games.

Tencent is a powerhouse and I'm sure it has at least a few lawyers on speed dial, but it's starting to look like it don't want Sony's smoke. As noticed by The Game Post, the Light of Motiram page on Steam has been dramatically updated over the past several days with new text and screenshots that make it look a whole lot less Horizon-like.

"In a world overrun by colossal machines, explore the vast open world, build your base of operations, advance technology, train Mechanimals, and take on formidable bosses," the Light of Motiram Steam page originally said (via the Internet Archive). "Starting from the primitive age, forge a new path of development. Defy the machination, survive with mechanimals."

Now, however, it sounds much more like a conventional survival game: "Make smart use of everything around you to stay alive and face off against formidable bosses, every step is fraught with danger and requires courage. Only by overcoming the challenges of survival can you carve out a place for yourself in this unforgiving land."

Similar changes have occurred further down the page. A section that previously described the game as taking place in "a mechanimal-ruled open world," where players will "discover unique Mechanimals and mysterious ruins in different regions, gradually uncovering the secrets of Motiram," has been removed completely. A reference to Light of Motiram's "mechanical wilderness" has also been edited to say simply "wilderness."

The announcement trailer that was present on the Steam page has also been removed, and is gone from the Light of Motiram YouTube page along with several other videos. The Light of Motiram icon on YouTube has also changed. Instead of this:

It's now this:

Here's the original 2024 reveal trailer, if you're curious:

Back on the Steam page, screenshots have also been changed up. A few from the original listing remain, but instead of leading with Horizon-like images of warriors wielding spears and bows in battles against giant machine dinosaurs:

The focus is now on idyllic shots of fantasy farm life:

All previously extant updates about the game have been removed from the Steam page, as have numerous animated images showcasing bits of combat against different sorts of mechanical creatures. Speaking of which, all references to "mechanimals"—a term used no fewer than eight times in the original Steam listing—are now gone.

One other big change: The key art. This image of maybe not legally distinct Aloy:

Has been replaced by Robo-Piglet and a Furby. Don't let Sony catch you calling them mechanimals.

You can dive into more details in the "history" section of the Light of Motiram page on SteamDB, but the bottom line is that this is a very thorough housecleaning, and I can't imagine Tencent would go to all that trouble without some serious motivation—like, for instance, a looming lawsuit it had no hope of winning.

One other point of note: Light of Motiram was set to come out in late 2025, but the Steam page now indicates it's coming in Q4 2027—more than two years down the road, and three years after it was first revealed. That's a big pushback, and makes me think it's not just the Steam page that's being significantly reworked.

I've reached out to Tencent for comment on the change and will update if I receive a reply.

When Ubisoft and Tencent announced the creation of a new company that will take control of Ubi's Big Three—Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six—the obvious question, for me at least, was, who's really going to be in charge here? Ubisoft has the games, yes, but Tencent has the money. Today we got our answer, and it turns out that it's not the games that really matter, but the name—and that name is Guillemot.

"Ubisoft announces the next step in the roadmap of its new subsidiary—introduced on March 27th—with the appointment of Christophe Derennes and Charlie Guillemot as co-CEOs," the company announced today. "With complementary backgrounds, Christophe Derennes and Charlie Guillemot bring strong industry expertise, deep knowledge of the Ubisoft ecosystem, and a shared culture of innovation."

That new subsidiary is the result of talks between Ubisoft and Tencent, spurred by Ubisoft's potentially existential struggles and Tencent's urge to own a piece of pretty much everything. Tencent is already Ubisoft's second-largest shareholder, but is restricted in how much influence it has over the company, which remains firmly under the control of the Guillemot family.

Charlie is not one of the five Guillemot brothers who founded Ubisoft—Christian, Claude, Gerard, Michel, and Yves—but rather the son of Yves, Ubisoft's longtime CEO. Here's what Ubisoft says Charlie brings to table, aside from being a nepo baby:

"Charlie Guillemot has built a hybrid career at the intersection of management and innovation. He brings an entrepreneurial perspective and a sharp understanding of evolving industry dynamics and players’ expectations, shaped by his experience in game development. With a strong product mindset, deep tech culture, and a passion for games, he represents a new generation of leadership focused on innovation, quality, and putting players at the centre of decision-making."

The press release doesn't mention any specific games Charlie has worked on previously, but he does have at least one credit to his name: Mobygames lists his as studio manager and creative director on Tom Clancy's Elite Squad, a mobile shooter best remembered for forcing an apology from Ubisoft over its "insensitive and harmful" use of imagery related to historically important movements including Black Lives Matter.

Ubisoft pulled the plug on Elite Squad in July 2021, less than a year after it launched; Charlie Guillemot had resigned from Ubisoft's Owlient studio, the game's developer, a couple months prior to that announcement. After leaving Ubisoft, he co-founded Unagi, a Web3 gaming, AI, and NFT company. And now he's in charge of Ubisoft's biggest properties.

Not alone, to be clear, and I don't mean to sell Christophe Derennes short in any way. Derennes has been with Ubisoft for more than 35 years, "launched and led" Ubisoft Montreal, served as managing director of Ubisoft's operations in North America, and has credits on dozens of Ubisoft games. He's clearly an experienced hand and has a long history with the games being taken over by this new entity.

That could lead one to wonder: Why does he need Charlie as co-CEO? It's possible that Ubisoft hopes the injection of (relatively) young blood with fresh perspectives will counterbalance any potential "stuck in his ways" approach of a guy who's been around for decades—a Chico Gonzalez to Derenne's Dirty Harry Callahan, if you will.

In fact, Ubisoft said as much in today's announcement: "Returning to Ubisoft in 2025 to join its internal transformation committee, Charlie has brought a fresh perspective, in-depth knowledge of the industry and a commitment to combining innovation with a player-first mindset."

So yeah, that might be it. Might be something else, too. His name just has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, doesn't it?

Whatever the reason for the pairing, Guillemot and Derennes "will lead the subsidiary in building evergreen, multi-platform game ecosystems and writing the next chapter of Ubisoft’s renowned franchises," Ubisoft said.

"Backed by growing investments and Tencent’s expertise as a core strategic partner, it will give development teams greater autonomy and agility to fully unlock the potential of these iconic games, while shaping the next generation of player experiences."

Tencent's investment in the new Ubisoft subsidiary is expected to be concluded by the end of 2025, but remains subject to regulatory approval.

I sat down for a demo of Chinese action game Phantom Blade Zero with two main curiosities. First was how its combat compares to last year's Black Myth: Wukong, and it turns out: pretty different. Second was the backstory of S-Game studio founder "Soulframe" Liang, who started his career with an RPG Maker game while studying architecture in college. Where did I go wrong in my life that I didn't end up adopting a pseudonym like Soulframe?

"Well, it was in high school—it was just some random idea," Liang told me in an interview after I'd played Phantom Blade Zero. "I just figured out something cool and not-so-usual, something fantasy and something solid coming together. Because my actual Chinese name is a little hard to pronounce in English."

Liang spent a lot of time online playing and making games in his teens and twenties, partially as a result of his unusual early career path for a game developer. "I had my undergrad in China, so I began making games in my last couple years in China and then I went to Yale for graduate school," he said. "When I first came to the country I didn't have many friends, so there were many free and boring nights. I had to find some ways to kill time. I think making games is the perfect way to kill time. In the several years I was at Yale, I was making games, and I also made some friends from drama school doing set designs. I was also a teaching assistant for interactive architecture, which is very close to games."

Liang had an internship at an architecture studio in the Netherlands, and when he finished grad school he got an offer to work at a firm in New York. It seemed like he was all set… but his game Rainblood: Town of Death had proven popular, and he opted for the far less certain option of moving back to China to start a small game studio. S-Game currently employs about 100 developers working on Phantom Blade Zero.

"In the very beginning it was just four [people]," he said. "I called some friends. We'd only met online, hadn't met in person, but I called and some of them quit their jobs and we did this thing together."

It turns out that the way you get (and keep) a nickname like Soulframe is pretty straightforward: Come up with it as a teenager, and then found a company with your internet friends who know you by that name. Oh, and also be extremely successful. S-Game released a trilogy of live service Phantom Blade games on mobile in China, each raking in more money than the last and allowing the studio to finance its upcoming big-budget action RPG.

Oh, and one other thing helps, it turns out: Trademarking your name.

"There is a game [called Soulframe] now," Liang said with a laugh, bringing up the Warframe sequel I was about to ask him about. "In China, this nickname—I actually registered as a trademark in China. So they were talking with me through Tencent, trying to buy the trademark, but I said 'this is a name we've been using for 15 years, so...'

Did Soulframe Liang really tell Digital Extremes, the makers of Warframe, and Tencent, the biggest Chinese game company, that they couldn't use his 2000s internet message board nickname for their next game?

"No, I'm not selling," he said, laughing again. "But they have figured it out. They have another Chinese name in China."

I did a little digging in a Chinese trademark database to try to confirm what, exactly, Soulframe (the game) is called in China, since the official website still shows the same name written in English. Best as I can tell, Digital Extreme's attempted trademarks were rejected, appealed, and rejected again, while the trademarks attributed to S-Game were approved without issue—truly a victory for '00s message board nerds everywhere.

Ubisoft and Tencent have announced a new "dedicated subsidiary" that will "will focus on building game ecosystems designed to become truly evergreen and multi-platform" in the Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six brands.

"As we accelerate the company’s transformation, this is a foundational step in changing Ubisoft’s operating model that will enable us to be both agile and ambitious," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said in a statement. "We are focused on building strong game ecosystems designed to become evergreen, growing high-performing brands and creating new IPs powered by cutting-edge and emerging technologies.

"With the creation of a dedicated subsidiary that will spearhead development for three of our largest franchises and the onboarding of Tencent as a minority investor, we are crystalizing the value of our assets, strengthening our balance sheet, and creating the best conditions for these franchises’ long-term growth and success. With its dedicated and autonomous leadership team, it will focus on transforming these three brands into unique ecosystems."

The announcement of the new subsidiary follows a review of the company's business strategy and negotiations with Tencent that began in 2024 and took shape earlier this month in rumors that the two were looking at forming a new business entity to manage Ubisoft's biggest properties. It will also seemingly leave the Guillemot family in control, which was reportedly a sticking point in negotiations: Tencent will hold a minority stake in the venture of roughly 25%, with an investment of €1.16 billion ($1.25 billion).

The subsidiary will have a "dedicated leadership team" and board of directors, "focused on enhancing creative vision and streamlining operations, with the authority to make swift, high-impact decisions across development, marketing, and distribution." It doesn't sound like OG Ubisoft is going completely hands-off, though: In a conference call, Ubisoft chief financial officer Frederick Duguet said the subsidiary's board "will be controlled by Ubisoft, so Ubisoft will continue controlling and consolidating this entity."

"We are excited to extend our longstanding partnership with Ubisoft through this investment, which reflects our continued confidence in Ubisoft’s creative vision and exceptional talent to drive sustained success in the industry," Tencent president Martin Lau said. "We see the immense potential for these franchises to evolve into long-term evergreen game platforms and create engaging new experiences for gamers."

Details on how exactly this will impact Ubisoft going forward haven't been revealed: The new subsidiary will include Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six development teams in Montreal, Quebec, Sherbrooke, Saguenay, Barcelona, and Sofia, for instance, but the number of employees who will transfer over to the new entityt—or, it must be said, be laid off—remains to be determined. Ubisoft said it will have more information to share "in the coming months." The agreement is also subject to regulatory approval: The announcement says the transaction is expected to be completed by the end of 2025.

A Bloomberg report says struggling publisher Ubisoft is looking for investors for a new business venture that will take control of some of its most valuable gaming properties, including Assassin's Creed. The report says Ubisoft has contacted potential investors including Tencent about acquiring a minority share in the new venture.

Nothing is finalized at this point, according to the report, but sources told the site Ubisoft has asked interested investors to make preliminary bids by the end of the month. Ubisoft may seek a higher valuation for the new entity than that of Ubisoft itself.

This is presumably the next step in a strategy that was first reported in January: Bloomberg said at the time that Ubisoft and Tencent were looking at creating a new venture that would take on some of Ubisoft's assets, which could in turn enable Tencent to have a more direct hand in how they're controlled. Tencent is Ubisoft's second-largest shareholder but has limited influence over the company, which is still more or less entirely under the control of the founding Guillemot family—and the Guillemots want to keep it that way.

Trouble for them is, Ubisoft is not doing well. The company's struggles are well publicized, its share price is a fraction of what it was just five years ago, and its recent high-profile games, most notably Star Wars: Outlaws and XDefiant, have not lived up to expectations. Ubisoft hasn't done itself any favors on the PR front, either. The delisting of The Crew in 2024 was a major self-inflicted wound, the Assassin's Creed: Shadows pre-release period has been marked by stumbles, and no, we still don't know where The Sands of Time is.

Reports of a possible buyout of Ubisoft first surfaced in October 2024, and when Assassin's Creed Shadows was delayed for a second time in January 2025 the company said it was "taking decisive steps to reshape" its business, and had "appointed leading advisors to review and pursue various transformational strategic and capitalistic options to extract the best value for stakeholders."

How that might take shape is anyone's guess but it seems clear that big moves are required: Just weeks after that announcement, Ubisoft closed its Leamington studio and made layoffs at the Düsseldorf, Stockholm, and Ubisoft Reflections studios; all of that happened little more than a month after the shutdown of Ubisoft's San Francisco and Osaka studios.

Ubisoft said in its third-quarter financial report in February that the review of its "strategic and capitalistic options" was ongoing, and referred back to that report in a statement provided to PC Gamer.

"As we mentioned during our Q3 sales, the review of various transformational strategic and capital-raising options is ongoing," a representative said. "The Board has established an ad-hoc independent Committee to oversee this formal and competitive process, so as to extract the best value from Ubisoft’s assets and franchises for all stakeholders. Ubisoft will inform the market in accordance with applicable regulations if and once a transaction materializes."

Earlier this week the US Department of Defense added a new batch of companies to its Chinese military companies blacklist. While inclusion on the list comes with no sanctions, it does have a reputational impact, and is designed to put off US investors. Tencent called the designation a "misunderstanding", and has since provided a full statement, noting its plans to "initiate a Reconsideration Process to correct this mistake".

Companies on the list are suspected of being controlled by the People's Liberation Army or providing it with support, but Tencent continues to refute this. "As the Company is neither a Chinese military company nor a military-civil fusion contributor to the Chinese defense industrial base, it believes that its inclusion in the CMC List is a mistake," the statement provided to PC Gamer, and posted on Tencent's website, reads.

While the list's origins stem from an executive order issued by Trump during his first term, which did result in US companies being blocked from investing in some Chinese companies, this specific list does not restrict anyone from doing business with Tencent outside of the DoD.

"Unlike other lists maintained by the US Government for sanctions or export control measures, inclusion in the CMC List relates only to US defense procurement, which does not affect the business of the Group," the statement notes. "The CMC List is also distinct from the Non-SDN Chinese Military-Industrial Complex List (NS-CMIC List) maintained by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, and inclusion in the CMC List will not prohibit any persons (other than the Department of Defense) from business dealings with the Company, including transacting in the securities of the Company."

After Tencent was added to the list, its stock fell by 7% in Hong Kong, however, so it has a demonstrable negative impact, thus Tencent wants its inclusion to be reconsidered, and it's willing to begin legal proceedings if the "mistake" is not corrected through the reconsideration process.

"During the process," Tencent says, "it will engage in discussions with the U.S. Department of Defense to resolve any misunderstanding, and if necessary, will undertake legal proceedings to remove the Company from the CMC List."

Other Chinese companies have successfully negotiated their removal from the list, including XIaomo Corporation, an electronics company best known for manufacturing smartphones, which was taken off the list in 2021.

As one of the largest companies in the world, and the biggest videogame publisher, Tencent does a great deal of business with both the US and globally. It owns Riot Games, Funcom and Grinding Gear Games, which just released Path of Exile 2 in early access in December. It also has stakes in Epic, Larian, FromSoftware, Paradox, Frontier, Roblox Corporation, Ubisoft—basically, if you're playing a game, there's a good chance Tencent has some involvement.

Tencent, one of the world's largest videogame publishers, is also a Chinese military company, the US Department of Defense claims. Which has come as something of a surprise to the conglomerate, which has called the designation a "misunderstanding".

The DoD's list of Chinese military companies is updated annually, and Tencent is among the new batch of additions for 2025. While this designation does not come with any sanctions, it demonstrably serves as a warning to US companies not to invest, and as a result Tencent's stock has taken a 7% hit in Hong Kong, as noted by Bloomberg's report.

The origins of the list go back to Trump's first reign, and with his imminent return to the White House, the relationship between China and the US is likely to become even more strained. But for Tencent specifically, a spokesperson claims that this designation won't have much of an impact, despite the effect on its stock.

"We are not a military company or supplier," they told Bloomberg. "Unlike sanctions or export controls, this listing has no impact on our business. We will nonetheless work with the Department of Defense to address any misunderstanding."

Companies included on the list can request to be removed, and this has precedent, so Tencent might be able to shake the new designation.

Chinese military companies are those either directly controlled by the People's Liberation Army or those providing it with support, but it's not clear what relationship the DoD believes Tencent has with the Chinese military. It does, however, have a close relationship with the Chinese Communist Party and has an in-house CCP branch—though this is not unusual in China, and indeed for any companies with multiple CCP members it's mandatory.

In a press briefing today, China's Foreign Ministry hit back against the DoD list. "We urge the US to immediately correct its wrongdoings and end the illegal unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction on Chinese companies."

It's worth noting that the US military has also had a long relationship with the videogame industry. Indeed, the US Army is a videogame developer and publisher, releasing several games in the America's Army FPS series since 2002. And in 2021 Microsoft signed a $22 billion deal to provide the US Army with AR headsets, designed to improve "situational awareness, target engagement, and informed decision-making". Sounds like a military company to me.

The US Army even sponsored Call of Duty League, and had planned an even larger campaign with Activision and Twitch streamers until the deal fell through due to sexual harassment allegations at the publisher.

More broadly, the US Army sees videogames as a recruitment tool, to the extent that it even created an esports team and tried to get into Twitch streaming (with hilarious results). And this has been going on since the 1980s. Shooters in particular are rife with jingoism, and military organisations the world over have long seen gamers as potential cannon fodder.

So if Tencent does have ties to the PLA, it's not doing anything that plenty of US-based companies haven't been openly doing for decades. But to be clear, it absolutely sucks whatever country it's happening in, and gamers shouldn't have to wonder if buying a game means they are indirectly supporting the military.

Yeah, I get it, we already know that Nvidia's sold a motherlode of chips and is laughing its way to the bank. But it hits a little differently to see the actual numbers.

As reported by the Financial Times, the tech consultancy Omdia estimates that Nvidia's biggest purchaser of Hopper chips in 2024 was Microsoft, who bought 485,000 of them, this being over twice as many as any other company. Meta, for example, bought 224,000 of them, Amazon bought 196,000, and Google bought 'just' 169,000.

Surprisingly, though, two of Nvidia's biggest customers were Chinese ones, these being ByteDance (of TikTok fame) and Tencent (of numerous videogames fame). According to Omdia, these each ordered about 230,000 Hopper chips. These won't have been the most powerful ones Nvidia has at its disposal, though, given US-China export restrictions.

In other words, despite export controls, Chinese companies received more Nvidia chips than companies such as Meta, Amazon, and Google this year.

Apart from all the China biz, there are two other things that strike me about these numbers. First, and very simply: Holy moly does Nvidia churn out a lot of a AI chips. Second: Holy moly does Microsoft buy a lot of them.

Nvidia's part kind of goes without saying. The company is firmly cemented as the king of the ever-expanding AI infrastructure castle. So much so, in fact, that the company's CEO, Jen-Hsun Huang, has the chutzpah to claim that "just like we generate electricity, we're now going to be generating AI" in "AI factories".

As far as Microsoft's concerned, while I'm a little surprised to find the company more than doubling the purchases of any other, it also makes sense, especially given the partnership with OpenAI.

The AI industry can seem a little confusing when you start to look into how all these different companies relate to each other. But we shouldn't forget that while OpenAI technically isn't the biggest company in the AI space, most of the companies that are bigger actually rely on OpenAI's software and models and have partnerships with the company. So much is true for now, at least—although newer entrants such as Anthropic and Musk's xAI could make inroads.

And if we're talking OpenAI partnerships, Microsoft's is the one. To date, Microsoft has apparently invested $13 billion into OpenAI and is the exclusive provider of the company's cloud computing services. This partnership grants Microsoft all kinds of benefits, such as OpenAI model integration with Bing, Microsoft 365, Copilot, and so on, not to mention the ability to rent OpenAI-clad Azure servers out to customers for private or bespoke AI research or services.

Oh, and there's the simple matter of monetary ROI. But it's surely crude to speak of such things (profit motives in such a civil society? I think not).

People want AI and OpenAI is the biggest software-level solution, so Microsoft heavily invests in and partners with OpenAI, and Nvidia sells Microsoft a sweet, sweet stack of silicone to get the job done. Simple.

But who's the real winner? The end-user, of course!

Just kidding, the real winner's Nvidia, of course and as always. As Baron Harkonnen of Frank Herbert's Dune tells us: "He who controls the spice controls the universe." And Hopper's the spiciest spice in town, right now.

Well, it'll be Blackwell, soon, but that's Nvidia, too. Huang probably made the right choice going into tech and ditching a promising table-tennis career.

Good news, everyone: You don't have to safely eject your USB drives before playing Delta Force, despite what the game might have told you earlier. In a message to PC Gamer, developer Team Jade clarified that the original post was just a "translation error," and that USB drives are fine—it's what you put on them that could get you banned.

"USB drives are absolutely fine!" said a Team Jade spokesperson, so long as you don't use "USB devices that enable certain macros, scripts etc" that could interfere with the game or give you access to certain advantages. So don't run cheats off a thumbstick, basically, and you'll be fine. The list of banned tech has been updated to read "Cheating USB tools" now, rather than "USB drives."

Which makes a lot more sense than the original list of banned tech Delta Force originally put up, which featured a lot of stuff you'd expect—don't use Cheat Engine, or Speed Wizard, or frame-capture software that the game might mistake for an aimbot—but also seemed to lay down a zero-tolerance ban on "USB drives" of any kind. Given how many of us have external hard drives and thumbsticks jammed into our machines at all times, it seemed an inexplicable and draconian ban.

But hey, it's not a ban at all, turns out, unless you happen to be hosting some kind of nefarious software on your sticks. Bear in mind that the rest of the forbidden software in Delta Force's list is still a strict no-no, though. Don't take this as a licence to go hog-wild with your virtual machines and emulation scripts.

It's good news, anyway, because I hear Delta Force can be quite good. PCG FPS connoisseur Jake Tucker wrote recently that the game's large-scale combat reminds him of "Battlefield's very best," and ranks as "the best large-scale multiplayer shooter I've played in years." High praise indeed, and now our Jake can rest assured he doesn't have to unplug his media library every time he fires the game up.

The possibility of some sort of major shakeup at Ubisoft grew a little more distinct today as Reuters reports that company shareholders are now looking at how to structure a buyout of the company that, ironically, would leave the founding Guillemot family in control.

The possibility of a buyout was first reported in October, although at that point it seemed more of a kick-around idea than anything else: Ubisoft is in trouble, and something—just about anything—needs to be done. This new report, citing two people "familiar with the matter," sounds like more of a concrete step forward, in the sense that there is an active push toward making it happen.

The sticking point, according to the report, appears to be over who's left in charge if a deal is done. Sources cited by Reuters say the Guillemot family, which founded Ubisoft in 1986, want to retain control of the company. Tencent, Ubisoft's second-largest shareholder and the Guillemot's presumptive partner in this boardroom boogie, wants more say in board-related matters, and is reportedly waiting for an agreement on that front—which, as I take it, essentially means capitulation—before committing to financing the deal.

It's an interesting spot for the Guillemots. Ubisoft fought a protracted war several years ago to maintain its independence from Vivendi, the French media conglomerate that launched a hostile takeover bid in 2016, and CEO Yves Guillemot has been clear in subsequent years that he has no interest in being acquired by anyone.

But Ubisoft is also struggling badly right now: Sales of Star Wars Outlaws, which should have been a sure-fire hit, were "softer than expected," and Assassin's Creed Shadows, the next addition to Ubisoft's biggest and most popular series, was delayed for three months at the last minute, from November 15 to February 14, 2025.

More recent news has not been better. Earlier this week, Ubisoft pulled the plug on XDefiant, its planned Call of Duty competitor—an especially ugly move because it happened less than three months after executive producer Mark Rubin insisted XDefiant "is absolutely not dying." The end of XDefiant also resulted in the layoff of up to 277 employees, and the closure of two production studios.

All of that is bad news for gamers, but the real issue is Ubisoft's financial position. The company's share price has slid from a high of more than $85 in early 2021 to just over $13 today. Whether anything ultimately comes from these negotiations is an open question for now, but pressure from shareholders is growing, and that puts a timer on things: If the Guillemots don't do something, they may soon find that something is done for (or to) them.

Tencent is getting into the open world survival game business with a new game called Light of Motiram, set in a verdant jungle world dominated by massive machine monsters called—wait for it—mechanimals.

First things first, yes, Light of Motiram has a very obvious Horizon Zero Dawn visual vibe going on. But on the gameplay side it also borrows heavily from Palworld, as players will be able to bond with numerous types of mechanimals, customize and level them up, and put them to work on various tasks—exploration, combat, or just gathering and building. There's a bit of Monster Hunter as well in the boss fights, each of which will unlock new crafting recipes and materials, and reveal more about the story of how the world of Motiram ended up in the state it's in.

Despite the fantastical setting, Tencent is leaning hard into the game's "realistic physics simulation," which encompasses everything from the individual materials in its "freeform building system" to weather: A falling tree will kill you quick, and metal armor is not recommended for use in the middle of a lightning storm.

I'm not sure we really need another open-world survival game, and the similarities to Horizon are not subtle. Even so, I think it looks potentially quite good, and Tencent making what appears to be a determined move into the genre is interesting in its own right. The Chinese conglomerate is a quiet superpower, and it can bring more or less unlimited resources to bear on the project. That's not a guarantee of success, but it sure doesn't hurt—and as we've seen with games like Palworld, originality isn't necessarily a vital part of a winning formula either.

And beyond all that, any game that asks "Why can't human beings kill God?" is going to immediately arouse my curiosity, especially when it's framed not as a rhetorical question but a practical one. Why indeed? I don't know that Light of Motiram will really clear that up for us, but it might be fun to see it try.

What might also be interesting is whether Light of Motiram arouses any interest from Sony. Numerous posts on Steam (where the game actually leaked yesterday) note the obvious inspiration (to put it mildly), and it's undeniably pretty blatant. But whether it will be enough to prompt any sort of action remains to be seen: When Nintendo sued Pocketpair, for instance, it didn't do so because Palworld looks like Pokemon, but over allegations of infringement of three specific patents. Tencent may not be setting any new standards for creativity here, but whether it's done anything legally actionable is an entirely different question.

Light of Motiram will support solo play or multiplayer, with cross-platform support across PC and consoles—and yes, it's free to play. A release date hasn't been announced but it's available for wishlisting now on Steam.

A new Bloomberg report says the Guillemot family and Tencent are exploring options for righting the Ubisoft ship, which could include buying out the company and taking it private.

Sources told the site that both groups have been speaking with advisers about possible ways forward, although it noted that everything is in an early stage at this point and there's no certainty a buyout will occur. 

Tencent currently holds just under a 10% share of Ubisoft net voting rights, while the Guillemot family holds around 20%, but the bulk of that share is held through Guillemot Brothers Ltd, a holding company in which Tencent has a 49.9% economic stake, but only 5% voting rights. It's complicated, but here's the report if you want to dive in.

What it all adds up to right now is, frankly, not much: Ubisoft's share price is in the crapper, it needs to do something about it, and at this point there are no bad ideas. Well, there might be one bad idea, at least from the Guillemot perspective: An outright takeover. 

In the past, Yves and the fam have steadfastly resisted any attempt to wrest control of Ubisoft from their hands. Several years ago they fought a long and bitter battle with multimedia conglomerate Vivendi, which was attempting a hostile takeover of the company. I thought the Guillemots were hosed but eventually Vivendi threw in the towel—which is when Tencent jumped in.

Tencent paid €66 per share when it made that first investment, and those shares recently hit their lowest price in more than a decade, sinking to under €10. That gives Tencent powerful incentive to move aggressively to turn things around, but the 2022 deal to increase its holding in the company left it with no operational control and limits what it can do directly. That's not an immutable situation, but it does complicate things somewhat for any Tencent ambitions toward a wholesale takeover.

But the report does point toward potentially big things happening in the not-too-distant future. Ubisoft is struggling: Its value has plummeted over the past four years, and its two big guns for 2024 have misfired. Sales of Star Wars Outlaws were "softer than expected," and in September Assassin's Creed Shadows was delayed at the last minute to February 14, 2025, pushing it out of the lucrative holiday season. To help staunch the bleeding, Ubisoft recently announced an internal review of its processes, and confirmed it will make a wholesale return to Steam in 2025 after years of rolling with the Epic Games Store.

But these are relatively minor moves in the grand scheme of things, and at this point it's reasonable to think that investors are looking for more comprehensive structural changes. That, like everything else, is reflected in Ubisoft's share price, which spiked sharply today following the Bloomberg report: A minor bump in the historical context and still below where the price even in August, but at least it's movement in the right direction.

Update: In a statement released on October 7, Ubisoft acknowledged but did not otherwise comment on the speculation. "Ubisoft has noted recent press speculation regarding potential interests around the company," it said. "It regularly reviews all its strategic options in the interest of its stakeholders and will inform the market if and when appropriate. 

"The company reiterates that management is currently focused on executing its strategy, centered on two core verticals—Open World Adventures and GaaS-native experiences."

Alan Wake and Control developer Remedy has entered into a convertible loan agreement with Chinese conglomerate Tencent, to the amount of €15 million/$16,761,075. This unsecured loan could later be converted into Remedy shares "under certain circumstances" on the third anniversary of the drawdown.

The deal has yet to be approved, and will be up for discussion during Remedy's Extraordinary General Meeting on October 24. 

"Part of Remedy's long-term strategy has been to strengthen our position in the value chain, to have more control over how our games are commercialized, and to grow our share of the value these games can create," Remedy CEO, Tero Virtala said in a press release. "As we move towards self-publishing, this financing will support us in developing and fully realizing the potential of the games we have in development and successfully carrying out the commercial activities of our next self-published games. Tencent's investment demonstrates strong confidence in Remedy's long-term vision and strategy."

If approved, the loan could eventually be converted into a maximum of around 811,100 Remedy shares, which amounts to around 5.98% of all Remedy shares. Tencent already has a stake in the Finnish developer, too. Back in '21, it acquired 3.8% of Remedy's shares, which it then increased earlier this year, to 14%. 

Remedy was also developing a free-to-play co-op game with Tencent, originally codenamed Vanguard. Remedy went back to the drawing board in 2023 to reboot the project as a premium title, codenamed Kestrel, but it was cancelled in May of this year so Remedy could "focus more on the other games in its portfolio". 

It makes sense that Remedy is going back to Tencent for more financial assistance. The studio's games ain't cheap, and they don't sell the kind of numbers that allow Remedy to recoup their costs quickly. By May of this year, it still hadn't made a profit on Alan Wake 2. Buying back Control 2 also cost it a pretty penny. Actually, it was just a bit more than the loan it's getting from Tencent. 

The European Consumer Organization, along with 22 member organizations from 17 countries, has filed a complaint with the authorities who enforce EU consumer protection laws accusing Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Ubisoft, and other major game companies of "purposefully tricking consumers" with in-game currencies that are "used to confuse and disconnect consumers from the real value of their in-game spending."

"In the past years, videogame companies have adopted business models relying significantly on in-game purchases made through premium virtual currencies purchased with euros (or other local currencies)," BEUC director general Agustín Reyna said in a letter sent to the CPC-Network (via Reuters). "Based on our analysis and the accompanying evidence (in attachments), we have strong reasons to believe that consumers may fall prey to several deceptive practices when buying premium virtual currencies, and that the latter are essentially used to confuse and disconnect consumers from the real value of their in-game spending.

"We therefore take the view that the concerned traders fail to provide consumers—and especially children—with safe online environments fully complying with EU consumer rules."

The complaint targets Microsoft-owned Activision Blizzard and Mojang Studios, Electronic Arts, Epic Games, Roblox Corporation, Tencent-owned Supercell, and Ubisoft. It also claims that the rising misuse of virtual currencies is "particularly worrying" because it's going beyond the boundaries of videogames and into social media platforms like TikTok and Twitch, and online marketplaces like Amazon.

The complaint turns on four major points:

• That consumers cannot see the real cost of in-game items, and are thus more prone to overspending
• That game companies' claims that consumers prefer virtual in-game currencies rather than real money are wrong
• That the use of premium currencies are sometimes tied to "unfair terms favoring game developers," which denies them their legal rights
• And that children are particularly vulnerable to "manipulative tactics" because they "have limited financial literacy and are easily swayed by virtual currencies."

"Gamers shouldn’t need to rely on a calculator anytime they want to make an informed decision on how much they want to spend," Reyna said in a separate statement. "The money they spend should be displayed in real money and deceptive practices must be stopped.

"Today, premium in-game currencies are purposefully tricking consumers and take a big toll on children. Companies are well aware of children’s vulnerability and use tricks to lure younger consumers into spending more."

Virtual currencies can obscure the real cost of in-game items in a number of ways, adding layers of "abstraction" to bundling bonus currency into higher-priced packages and actively encouraging overspending. A separate report filed today by the Norwegian Consumer Council, cited by BEUC, said a Fortnite battle pass costs 950 V-bucks, but the smallest bundle of V-bucks available for purchase is 1,000: "There are no in-game items that cost 50 V Bucks, so unless the player purchases additional bundles, they will not be able to spend the entirety of the purchased premium currency."

Aside from the general immorality of the whole thing, BEUC said in its letter that it suspects at least some of the virtual currency practices in videogames constitute "several widespread infringements" of EU directives, including the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Consumer Rights Directive, and the Unfair Contract Terms Directive, as well as various individual national regulations.

"We call on the CPC-Network to stop the unfair practices highlighted in this alert and to ensure that the rights of consumers—especially those of young ones—are fully respected," it said.

BEUC, whose acronym comes from the French name Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs, is an umbrella organization representing 44 consumer organizations from 31 European countries. Its work aims to ensure EU policies "improve the lives of consumers" in matters including "competition, consumer rights, digital rights, energy, redress and enforcement, financial services, food, health, safety, sustainability and trade policy."

Video Games Europe, a trade body representing the games industry in the EU, told PC Gamer that videogames with in-game purchases must display PEGI's [Pan-European Game Information] in-game purchases icon, ensure that the real-money cost of virtual currencies is clearly presented to consumers, and provide receipts or invoices when real-money purchases are made. It also said that a 2024 report on in-game spending by children found that most parents say their children don't spend any money at all on in-game items, and that among those who do, the vast majority have either agreements with their parents, or explicit limits, on how much they spend.

"The purchase of in-game currencies is a well-established practice, and well understood by players," Video Games Europe said. "Our members always respect European consumer laws in how they offer these purchases.

"Our industry offers a wide range of games that enable players to access a huge variety of genres and innovative new experiences across different services. Players can experience entire games without spending any money, giving them the opportunity to try games without any upfront cost or commitment.

"Video Games Europe and its members support and promote fair and transparent principles for purchases of in-game content, including for in-game currency. The PEGI Code of Conduct requires developers to ensure that the real-world cost is clear and unambiguous at the point of purchase of the in-game currency."

Epic Games declined to comment on the complaint. I've reached out to the other game companies named in the complaint and will update if I receive a reply.

Something has gone wrong. Actually, lots of somethings have gone wrong. My body is riddled with gunshot wounds, I'm lost, I am being pursued by an alligator that—in the spirit of all men being brothers—I resolutely refuse to shoot, and all I have to show for it is a heaving rucksack of forceps and exotic jams. Or nondescript fluids in jars, anyway. I prefer to think of them as jams.

But those are trifles, nothings, mere bagatelles compared to my most pressing issue: Every bone in my body has been shattered by gunfire. It is unfathomable that my $500,000 suit of heavy armour has somehow not crushed what remains of me into a puddle of inert goo. It is entirely predictable that the antibiotics I keep popping when I hit the 'medicine' key aren't helping at all.

In other words, I do not think I am very good at Delta Force: Hawk Ops, Tencent's emphatically free-to-play resurrection of the Delta Force military FPS series that got its last new entry in 2009. It's coming from the megacorp's TiMi Studio Group subsidiary (previously responsible for Call of Duty Mobile) and promises to revive the chaotic action that dominated Chinese internet cafes in the glory days of the late '90s and 2000s.

This means war

My adventures in antibiotics and bone-breakage took place in Delta Force's extraction shooter mode, but my intro to the game—Tencent flew me out to LA for a hands-on last week—came in the form of its more Battlefield-esque team-based multiplayer: Havoc Warfare.

This is a mode more similar to the ones that won the hearts and minds of Chinese gamers in the older Delta Force games. "Back then, Delta Force was one of the most popular games in net cafes in China," says publishing director Jessica Zhang, with legions of teens dropping a lot of kuai to play the game late into the night.

You know the drill here: Armies consisting of tens of players on each side are pitted against one another in "full scale warfare" to assault and defend control points. You choose from four characters to play as—your tank-y heavy weapons guy, a speedy lady with traps and bows, the guy with the medkits, and the jack-of-all-trades fella with an assault rifle—and off you go to war. At some point, you'll be able to doll them up with cosmetics, which will also be the only thing the game will let you spend real-life money on.

It's pretty good fun, although it all feels quite familiar. The guns go thunk-thunk pleasingly, the battles themselves are hectic and chaotic, and I suspect that if I had a bit more time with the game than the single round I got a hands-on with, my strategies for the classes' special abilities might amount to more than 'random flailing'. Although I was pretty okay at using the Engineer's rocket launcher, my attempts to make good use of the Recon class' enemy-paralysing drone only succeeded in paralysing a lot of empty space where enemies used to be.

Fair's fair: My round of the team-based multiplayer mode consisted entirely of bots, and there are some parts of the game, like vehicles, that I just didn't get any time with. Still, I never found a part of the mode to really sink my teeth into, something that made it feel markedly different from similar military FPSes I've played before. That doesn't doom the game—the fundamentals are in place for TiMi to build something interesting as development goes on—but it does mean I'm more interested in what its standard multiplayer mode could be than I am in what it is.

Lethal extract

If, like me, you're still wearing your mourning attire for Call of Duty's neglected DMZ mode, then Delta Force's other half will likely be of more interest to you. The other half I played, anyway. TiMi is also working on a singleplayer and co-op mode based on Black Hawk Down (yes, as in the 2001 movie), but I didn't get a chance to try that.

What I did get to play is a full-fledged extraction shooter mode called Hazard Operations, where you and some friends drop into a map, gather loot, avoid or fight other players, and contend against multiple factions of AI enemies.

In other words, DMZ is risen, and now it comes with the tantalising possibility of injury and disease. Like I mentioned up top, Delta Force's extraction mode comes with a wide array of debuffs to make your life harder: broken limbs, poisons and what-have-you.

Where recovering from a battle in CoD is a matter of ducking behind waist-high walls for long enough that your health regenerates, your adventures in Delta Force are a bit more hardcore, a bit more Escape From Tarkov. They can easily become a matter of limping along, scavenging every nook and cranny to heal what ails you. That's pretty much what happened to me.

Unlike DMZ, where getting out would pretty much always get you something, Delta Force introduces the potential to operate at a running loss. Before I headed into the mode, I dropped serious (in-game) cash to kit myself out in the most expensive gear there was. Remember that bit in Frasier where Niles—utterly clueless about an upcoming fishing trip—tries to make up for his ignorance by buying all the most expensive gear possible? That was me.

Which, admittedly, probably saved my life given how many bullets I ended up taking, but also meant I lumbered across the map at a snail's pace, was easily overencumbered, and ultimately ended up making about 10% of the money I'd spent back in the loot I managed to cart home. 

When I eventually made it home, anyway. Some of the 'random' extraction points that aren't at the edge of the map might be non-functional decoys, which I found out to my chagrin when I tried to get out using the one nearest to me. That means choosing which extraction to go for is a bit of a gamble when you're weighed down with loot and looking to get out before someone can rob you.

But hey, at least the people robbing you won't be your teammates. Zhang explained to me that the devs "really believe that our game is about working together," which means there aren't opportunities for you to suddenly turn your rifle on your teammates at the extraction point and snag all the loot. "We built our gameplay around how a team works the best when you play as a team," said Zhang, which means that you can't hurt your squadmates and that the devs are ready to come down on anyone trying to troll their team. "If you really want to backstab everyone, come play solo."

It all amounts to a mode that feels fairly distinct in its blend of CoD-esque aesthetics and gameplay with Tarkov-style debuffs. It's the mode most likely to grab my attention when Delta Force drops in earnest. I've always had a soft spot for games that make my life unnecessarily complicated, creating the room for chaotic and strange stories to emerge in a way that just doesn't happen in more straightforward FPSes. I guess I won't be able to shoot a dear friend of ten years just before we extract so I can steal his forceps and exotic jams, but you can't have everything.

Delta Force: Hawk Ops doesn't have a release date just yet, but you can keep track of its progress on its official website.

After more than two years of work and a complete reboot that brought with it a whole new codename, Remedy has announced that Project Kestrel, being developed in partnership with Tencent, has been cancelled so the studio can "focus more on the other games in its portfolio."

Originally known as Codename Vanguard, the game was announced in December 2021 as "a free-to-play cooperative adventure" that "marks Remedy’s first entry into Games-as-a-Service business model," CEO Tero Virtala said at the time. "We are building something new and exciting for co-operative multiplayer space, on top of Remedy’s strengths."

Despite the support of Tencent, which was co-financing Vanguard and meant to localize and publish it in Asia, the project never really got off the ground. In October 2023, Virtala said Remedy hoped to complete the proof-of-concept stage of work on the game by the end of that year, but just two weeks later the studio decided to completely reboot the whole thing as a premium game, codenamed Kestrel.

But that apparently didn't work out either. In an announcement made last week, Virtala said Kestrel had still not moved beyond the "early concept stage," and with Remedy's other projects picking up steam, it's decided to put the priority on that work.

"We can reallocate talented Kestrel developers to these other game projects, and many of our support functions get additional focus on their operations," Virtala said. "This is yet another means to ensure that our game projects continue advancing well." He added that while Remedy has opted to cancel Kestrel, "our team has done good work and provided us with valuable learnings."

I'm a little bummed out that we won't get to see what Remedy had cooking for its first-ever live game, but the studio does have an awful lot on the go including the Max Payne remakes, Control 2, the multiplayer Control spin-off, and the Alan Wake 2 expansions, two of which are currently in development. 

Nier: Automata is one of those games where the legend keeps growing, and deservedly so. The series began with a flawed 2010 RPG that seemed destined for obscurity, before publisher Square Enix made the wise decision to co-develop sequel Nier: Automata with action specialists PlatinumGames. What resulted remains unique in its looping structure, top-tier customisable combat, unforgettable vistas, and the immaculate vibes at the world's end.

Nier: Automata recently celebrated the seventh anniversary of its Japanese release, and Platinum used the occasion to announce a new sales milestone, and share a bunch of new art from the studio's staff:

"Released in Japan on 23 February 2017, NieR:Automata celebrates its 7th anniversary with the amazing news that it has sold a whopping 8 million copies across the globe!"

Platinum adds that Nier: Automata "shows no sign of slowing down", mentioning the orchestral tour, anime adaptation, and of course nothing at all about a sequel. Which is all that anyone wants to know about, really. 

Don't take my word for it: people love these games and pine for a new Nier to this day, to the extent that everyone got obsessed with an in-game church in 2022. something of which series creator Yoko Taro is all-too-aware. The creator made an appearance at the recent London orchestral shows, told the crowd to cheer the Square Enix president (who was there) so he knew there was an appetite for an Automata sequel, and then the big tease (as reported by one attendee on resetera): the word "repent" was flashed up repeatedly, with the final appearance altering the spelling to "r3pent". 

Obviously, people reacted with restraint. Following a rash of reports that suggested he'd been teasing a third game, Taro subsequently took to social media and had this to say: "r3incarnationan" [sic]. The '3' will instantly have Nier fans haring off like they're long-term followers of Valve, but Taro's point seems to be that talking about a third entry in the series ignores the 2021 mobile title Nier: Reincarnation (on which he served as creative director).

And Taro may be in even more of a funk than usual, because one future path for the series was recently shut off. At the start of February Reuters reported on the cancellation of a Nier mobile game that had been in development at Tencent. The game had apparently been in the works for almost two years, with a playable demo shared internally, before Tencent got concerned about the monetisation and licensing fees (Nier is owned by Square Enix). The project was cancelled in December 2023.

Wait… there's a "3" in there. Rejoice! I jest of course, but what a grab-bag of Nier news this is: an outstanding 8 million copies sold of a game many might file under cult classic, some teases about possible futures, and one project cancelled for sure. "R3pent" may seem like a smoking gun, but looking for straight answers here is a fool's errand, and that may well be Taro's point when invoking Reincarnation. People say they want Nier: Automata 2, in other words, but when has this series ever delivered what people wanted?

Dungeons & Dragons is in a bizarre place right now—it's on the verge of the totally-not-a-new-edition ruleset revamp and an in-development virtual tabletop project, riding high off the back of Baldur's Gate 3. But Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has also suffered from a massive round of layoffs, and the bruises of the catastrophic OGL fiasco a year ago are still smarting.  

This has laid the groundwork for a swarm of rumours regarding a potential sale to Tencent—a massive conglomerate and holding company with its fingers in dozens of different pies including Remedy Entertainment, Paradox Interactive, FromSoftware, Epic Games and (most importantly to the matter at hand) Larian Studios.

Said whispers began when the Chinese news outlet Speed Daily (as translated by Pan Daily) reported that WotC parent company Hasbro was "seeking to sell its well-known IP 'Dungeons & Dragons'", citing Hasbro's "financial crisis" as a reason for the speculation. That's despite D&D being a huge earner for Hasbro, achieving record years (as per a financial report last October) for the company. 

Shucking D&D as a property entirely would be like throwing a crate of diamonds overboard to stop your ship from sinking—not something you'd do unless you were definitely about to drown. Which isn't completely out of the question. That same report noted Hasbro's total revenue was down "13-15%", and repeatedly cites a difficult situation for toys across the board. Still, I'm not sure if things are dire enough for a spontaneous bout of violin-playing. That's been confirmed in a comment provided to Dicebreaker, where Wizards of the Coast writes the following:

"We regularly talk to Tencent and enjoy multiple partnerships with them across a number of our IPs. We don’t make a habit of commenting on internet rumours, but to be clear: we are not looking to sell our D&D IP. We will keep talking to partners about how we bring the best digital experiences to our fans. We won't comment any further on speculation or rumours about potential [mergers and acquisitions] or licensing deals."

So there you have it: D&D isn't being sold to anyone. What's more likely is that Tencent—which owns a 30% stake in Larian Studios—might be thinking about pouring money into another D&D game. That should surprise nobody, considering the meteoric success of Baldur's Gate 3. Another licensing deal isn't just 'not out of the question', it's a plain good idea.

Under any other circumstances I'm not sure any of this would've made waves in forums and headlines. But the environment surrounding D&D at the moment is, understandably, one of fear. Hasbro's layoffs included several senior members of staff. Game designers, art directors, and Liz Schuch—the company's former Head of Publishing and Licensing, who was with Wizards of the Coast for 28 whole years. 

There's a bordering-on-zero percent chance something like this would actually happen, but the background radiation of 'strange times' has a lot of TTRPG fans without a fuller scope of the situation willing to buy into speculative panic, and I can't say I necessarily blame them.

The behemoth that is Tencent is one of the most dominant players in the game industry, but CEO and co-founder Pony Ma recently acknowledged that the competition is catching up and that recent game launches haven't lived up to expectations.

Chinese outlet Jiemian (via Reuters) reports that Ma spoke about the threat from other Chinese gaming companies, which, like miHoYo and its global hits Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, have seen greater success than Tencent's offerings. 

Speaking during Tencent's annual meeting on Monday, Ma told attendees "gaming is our flagship business," but that it had "faced significant challenges" over the last year. "We have found ourselves at a loss," he added, "as our competitors continue to produce new products". This has resulted in Tencent feeling like it has "achieved nothing". 

It's worth noting, however, that as well as publishing games through its Tencent Games subdivision (and Level Infinite internationally), Tencent is also an investor in plenty of other studios and publishers. It owns a minority stake in Epic Games, for instance, as well as Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, and holds majority stakes in developers like Techland. So it still maintains a great deal of influence, even if its recent publishing efforts haven't quite paid off. 

This influence has a knock-on effect when it comes to its competitors, too. Back in 2022, Xbox's Phil Spencer discussed Microsoft's acquisition strategy, stating that "This is such a competitive market, I don't think we get to press pause on anything. Tencent is the largest gaming company on the planet today, and they continue to heavily invest in gaming content and game creators."

Few tears will be shed over Tencent's loosening grip, as there are understandable fears over one company having so much influence over the industry, though generally it tends to remain hands-off when it comes to the companies it's invested in—at least publicly. It does, however, have a reputation for going very hard with microtransactions, particularly when it comes to mobile games. There are also concerns over its relationship with the CCP, which maintains a lot of influence over Chinese businesses. 

Elsewhere in the speech, Ma touched on the subject of AI, claiming that Tencent has caught up with "first-tier companies". Its focus is on integrating its Hunyuan AI model to improve the efficiency of its various businesses, however, rather than developing and selling AI products. It's not clear how this will impact its gaming division, but it's not hard to imagine this big AI push resulting in developers being gently encouraged to explore how AI could be integrated into games. 

China may be walking back a series of sweeping new restrictions on gaming that were announced in December 2023, as a Reuters report says the country's gaming regulator has removed the proposed rule changes from the National Press and Publication Administration website entirely.

The proposed changes, which apparently appeared without warning to gaming companies, included requiring:

• Publishers to have their servers located in China
• The imposition of spending limits in online game
• A ban on daily login rewards
• A ban on "live-streaming of heavy tipping within games"
• A ban on offering "probability-based luck draw features" to minors (so, loot boxes)

The extent and suddenness of the proposal hammered Chinese gaming companies like TenCent and NetEase, both of which saw an immediate, sharp drop in their share prices, and suffered a market value loss of nearly $80 billion between them. 

A couple weeks later the Chinese government indicated it was prepared to ease off a bit, saying "it would improve the rules by 'earnestly studying' public views," and reportedly removed the official who was responsible for proposing the changes.

But now the new rules are gone entirely, and in their place stands a 404 error. That's unusual, according to the Reuters report. "It seems officials were caught off guard by the overwhelming negative reaction from investors, businesses, and the public," 86Research analyst Charlie Chai said.

The removal of the proposed changes from the National Press and Publication Administration's website doesn't necessarily mean they're being dropped completely. Haitong Securities analyst Xiaoyue Hu said the removal of the page could signal that "further changes" to the proposed rules are in the works. 

But Hu added that previous proposed regulatory changes typically remained on the government's website even after the period of public consultation had changed, which is what makes this takedown notable.

Whatever the reason for the removal or the ultimate outcome to the proposed rule changes, the money people are at least cautiously happy: The share price of both Tencent and NetEase jumped up sharply immediately after the page was taken down.

The Chinese Communist Party—who had taken aim at free-to-play monetisation schemes just before the holidays—softened its stance. This was after "nearly $80 billion in market value" bled from Tencent (League of Legends) and NetEase (Diablo: Immortal). 

The draft rules intended to target the live service giant's favourite toys (such as daily login bonuses) while also threatening a core species of player—the deep-pocketed 'whale'—completely extinct, with harsh spending limits. While I'm sure us players are tired of these systems, they aren't so easily toppled. The market panic was inevitable, in hindsight.

Despite analyst's insistence that the draft rules wouldn't be changed, adjustments were announced later in the month, according to a report from Reuters: "China's video game regulator—the National Press and Publication Administration—has struck a more conciliatory tone, saying it would improve the rules by 'earnestly studying' public views."

The report goes on to state that shares in Tencent proceeded to climb 5% (after a 12% dip), while NetEase's shares rose 10% (after a 25% fall) after morning trades on Wednesday December 24. There are also reports that NetEase is in talks with Blizzard again—that's after a spat saw the company dramatically smashing up a statue of Gorehowl early 2023. Maybe because it literally destroyed its axe to grind, who knows.

Furthermore, the CCP has also reportedly removed an official by the name of Feng Shixin, according to a Reuters follow-up. Shixin was head of the Communist Party's Publicity Department, which oversees the country's gaming industry via the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA). 

The report cites five sources which all believe Shixin's removal were related to the draft regulations and the disastrous stock plummets that followed—though it also states they "declined to be identified as authorities had yet to officially announce Feng's departure". Shixin has led the charge on similar regulations before, representing the (NPPA) at several events related to the government's handling of its gaming industry.

Speaking with Bloomberg, a market strategist from Hong Kong's Saxo Capital Markets said the official's removal would help ease investor scepticism: "If the story is accurate, it will send a signal that what happened was not a reversal of policy direction … but overall, investors are still sceptical. The news is positive but is not big enough to move the needle."

It's noteworthy that the market response was so dramatic, seemingly causing the CPP to think twice. Especially since the digital curfews for gaming youngsters employed in 2021 were severe—even using facial recognition tech to enforce them.

Regulators of the Chinese Communist Party have come down hard on several key pieces in the live service model, leading to spiralling shares for major players in the market as investors scramble to assess the damage.

According to a Reuters report, "nearly $80 billion in market value" has sloughed off Tencent Games and NetEase Games: "Shares in Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), the world's biggest gaming company, tumbled as much as 16% at one point, while those of its closest rival, NetEase (9999.HK), plunged as much as 25% after the National Press and Publication Administrations published the new draft rules."

Tencent Games is the parent company of studios like Riot Studios (League of Legends) and Fatshark (Warhammer 40k: Darktide). Meanwhile, NetEase has played a hand in games like Diablo: Immortal and Dead By Daylight mobile. MiHoYo (the company behind popular gacha games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail) is also based in China.

The tech correspondent for Reuters Josh Ye has shared the full list of draft rules on Twitter. These included requirements for publishers to store their servers in China, preventing "luck-based draw features" offered to minors, enforcing spending limits, and stopping daily log-in rewards.

As shared in Bloomberg's report, a senior analyst at Forsyth Barr Asia Ltd (a financial advisory company based in Hong Kong) describes a dejected atmosphere: "It caught people off guard, right before the holiday … It feels disheartening as well for this to happen after a year that is already so difficult for the market." Meanwhile, the Financial Times describes a stunned trading desk head at an investment bank: "This was supposed to be a quiet day before Christmas … I haven’t seen moves like this in these names before."  

These rules—which an analyst from 86Research maintains will not likely see "major changes"—are disastrous for these games' monetisation models. Login rewards are a blow, sure, but capping spending limits could gut the entire scheme. Free-to-play games often target "whales"—players with either the willingness (or expendable income) to drop thousands of dollars. 

This isn't some industry secret. A co-founder of HoYoverse straight up told the press in 2020 that Genshin Impact targets "otakus" who were willing to "pay for love." Granted, Otaku's a Japanese term—and it's unlikely that the Chinese Communist Party cares how gaming companies monetise foreign countries. Especially considering these regulations seem more like cultural browbeating than financial plays.

In 2021 laws were enforced in China to prevent gamers under the age of 18 from playing games outside the hours of 8-9PM on weekdays, even using facial recognition technology to enforce said rules. The government also extended its reach towards gender expression and "gay love", including "unhealthy tendencies, such as money-worship and effeminacy". This aversion towards queerness had been impacting character designs in the Chinese version of League for a while, as PC Gamer's Andy Chalk observes—but it's a first for official policy. There's also its recent crack-down on crypto currency, though I imagine that's less of a concern for gaming companies with their roots firmly in legal tender.

This is all in spite of the fact that earlier this year, a study found "No evidence that Chinese playtime mandates reduced heavy gaming" based on data provided by Unity Technologies. Granted, the study targeted gaming in the country as a whole rather than "young people specifically"—nonetheless, it found that the policy had been ineffective in its stated goals.

Vanguard, Remedy's mysterious multiplayer game, is being rebooted. Just a couple weeks after saying that it hoped to have the game's "proof-of-concept" finished by the end of the year, the studio announced today that it's decided to take the project in a whole new direction, with a whole new codename.

We never really learned anything about what Remedy originally had in mind for Vanguard, except that it was meant to be a "multiplayer live game" developed in Unreal Engine 4. The now-removed Vanguard website (via the Wayback Machine) says only that "the Vanguard team’s mission will be to challenge conventions and create a new breed of social, multiplayer Remedy experiences," which isn't a whole lot to go on.

But it doesn't matter now, because that plan is off. Remedy said the decision to reboot the game, made after discussions with publisher Tencent, came as a result of "uncertainties in creating a successful game [due] to the rapidly changing free-to-play market and associated risks." Instead of free-to-play, Vanguard—now codenamed Kestrel—will be a premium game, although it will retain "a strong, cooperative multiplayer component."

"We have made some great strides in free-to-play and multiplayer development in Vanguard," Remedy CEO Tero Virtala said. "After a lot of careful consideration, we believe that taking on a new direction where the game will be built more around Remedy’s core competences is the right way to go. We are creating another distinct Remedy game with Tencent’s continued support in making a great cooperative multiplayer experience."

The reboot means the project will be returned to the "concept phase" of development. Part of the team that was working on Vanguard will be moved to other Remedy games, "while the core leadership and select members of the development team of Kestrel will focus on the project’s new direction."

Virtala warned during an investors Q&A in October that the success of Alan Wake 2 could throw its planned schedules for future game releases off track. That happened with Control in 2019: It took longer than Remedy expected to start work on Control 2 because interest in the original persisted beyond what the studio had expected. "[Alan Wake 2 is] an opportunity that we now need to keep an eye on, and then evaluate if it will have some effect on some of the schedules that we have," Virtala said.

By all appearances Alan Wake 2 is a major success for Remedy, although there's no indication that was a factor in the decision to change direction with Vanguard. Whatever the case, it seems that we'll never really know what Remedy was aiming for with it—and we'll have to start the waiting-game clock all over again for Kestrel.

Techland has released the Summertime update for Dying Light 2: Stay Human, which comes with the kind of sunshine news every player loves to hear about: the game's added a premium currency. Yay! Microtransactions are not new to Dying Light, with the first game offering several bundles over the course of its long and well-supported life, but these have previously been purchasable via online stores and the trusty method of the US dollar (or whatever your local currency may be).

So clearly Techland wants a bigger slice of the pie. The developer has posted an FAQ about DL Points which claims they are "a straightforward way for you to buy bundles without the need to leave the game [and] also make our lives easier, because we won’t have to set up the bundles on multiple outside stores." For the moment, players can still buy stuff in the old way, but Techland's intent is clearly to phase this out, with the FAQ saying this will remain an option "for now" (outside of the PlayStation Store, from which it is removing all existing bundles.)

The announcement comes with 500 DL Points for existing players (which need to be redeemed before October 7), though it doesn't appear that this bonanza is actually enough to buy anything decent. This is one of the big problems for players: you can buy 500 points for $5, but most bundles cost 550 points. Previously you could buy that bundle with real money for $6 or whatever the case may be, but now you'll have to spend $10 to get 1,100 DL Points and basically put more money into game upfront. The biggest bundle offered is 6,500 DL points for $50.

Reaction has been what you'd expect. Players don't like this and, among the usual calls to boycott the game and refuse to buy any of its DLC, many are drawing a link to Techland's recent acquisition by Tencent. Techland itself addresses this in the FAQ, saying "these events are not connected at all", and that probably is the case: the acquisition only went through in July this year.

More notably, this has been put in the context of previous and well-liked community manager Uncy leaving, and his replacement saying on the game's Discord that players who have an issue with this should "play something else." For his part, Uncy seems to regard DL Points as a bad thing and has made this clear publicly.

You already know what happened next, and the Steam review bombing campaign is ongoing in earnest. The game still holds a "mostly positive" rating for now but around 2000 recent reviews are "mixed". User cryocore is fairly typical of the sentiment among the negatives, saying Techland "just took a massive dump on the game and their reputation."

Techland has kinda-semi-addressed this in an update that hasn't done much to quell the ravenous hordes. "As far as we understand, a big part of the frustration stems from the pricing of the bundles and the resulting leftover DL Points," says the studio, "[...] we’ve already started working on a couple of solutions proposed by the community." These include basically re-jigging the bundles and making items purchasable individually but "that will not happen overnight, as it’ll take the devs some time to rework the system."

So: the backlash is real, but it seems certain Techland is simply going to bunker down, do a little bit of fiddling with what it offers for DL Points, but more-or-less stay on the same course. It also seems extraordinarily unlikely that it would back down on a system that integrates its cosmetic offerings into the game and gives it more of the proceeds. People may be angry, but change here feels unlikely.

In terms of the game itself the news is better, with the update bringing some reasons to be cheerful. An addition that will make Steam Deck players happy is in-game integration of mod.io, which as with the desktop version, will provide easy access to community maps. A crossover with Payday will see infected robbers appearing, who can be killed for special loot in an event that runs until September 21.

A previous update, Gut Feeling, made the game much gorier, which Techland belatedly realised "could impact the streaming experience." Now the game allows players to select between Full, Limited, and Minimum brutality settings in preferences. There's also now an option to skip to prologue and start the game directly, which is mainly targeted at NG+ players and allowing easier access to co-op mode.

The update also comes with a huge list of bug fixes, among which the highlights include "Volatiles jump-scared some players by spawning right in front of them", which they will no longer do, and "Biters bounce off correctly after being thrown into a wall."

Remember the Delta Force games? It's okay if you don't: It was a reasonably popular shooter series that debuted in the late 1990s, but the last addition to the lineup, Delta Force: Xtreme 2, came out back in 2009, and wasn't very good. The last we heard from it was in 2016, when THQ Nordic picked up developer NovaLogic and all its games. Seven years later, Delta Force is finally making a comeback, with a brand-new game being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group.

The new game will feature a singleplayer campaign based on the movie Black Hawk Down, producer Shadow Guo told IGN, but it will also feature "large-scale multiplayer PvP," a central component of the original game.

"Our game designers chose to build an immersive multiplayer battleground that could accommodate even larger-scale PVP than the previous 32-player limit," Guo said. "To create a grand atmosphere of combat on ground, sea, and air, we designed a variety of methods for engagement and maps that integrate diverse terrain features such as vertical height differences and caves, as well as different vehicle routes.

"We also created unique, technologically advanced vehicles that players can use in the game, including assault vehicles, helicopters, armored vehicles, attack boats, terrain vehicles, jeeps, pickups, fighter jets, and drones. These vehicles add to the gameplay experience of large-scale PVP."

I can't help wondering, with all due respect, why TiMi Studio has chosen to resurrect this particular military shooter. Not that there's anything in particular wrong with Delta Force, it just doesn't strike me as especially laden with the power of brand recognition, and that 40% Metacritic score for the most recent game in the series isn't the sort of thing that's likely to inspire great interest among potential new fans of the series. The timing of the reveal is also interesting, given that Activision just flipped the switch on the marketing machine for a new Call of Duty.

It also wasn't initially clear why a Tencent studio is handling this reboot, rather than a THQ Nordic outfit, but a rep confirmed that TiMi Studio Group has purchased the Delta Force franchise from THQ, and now owns the rights to the old games and any future releases.

The new Delta Force will be fully revealed during Gamescom's Opening Night Live event, which gets underway at 11 am PT/2 pm ET on August 23.

Dying Light developer Techland raised the Tencent flag today, announcing that the Chinese gaming conglomerate Tencent will soon become the company's biggest shareholder.

"Today I am happy to announce the partnership with Tencent who are in the process of becoming Techland's majority shareholder," Techland CEO Pawel Marchewka said. "Teaming up with Tencent will allow us to move full speed ahead with the execution of the vision for our games. We have chosen an ally who has already partnered with some of the world's finest videogame companies and helped them reach new heights while respecting their ways of doing things."

Marchewka described Tencent as "like-minded friends and strong partners, who share the same vision, passion, and have the willingness to back it up with their knowledge, experience, and capabilities." The goal of the deal, he said, is to help ensure that the open-world ARPG Techland has in development "will live up to the expectations for our first new IP in almost a decade."

"We will retain full ownership of our IPs, maintain creative freedom, and continue to operate the way we believe is right," Marchewka said. He'll also be staying on as Techland's CEO.

We've said it before but it's worth repeating for emphasis: Tencent is a huge player in the global gaming industry, with investments in (or outright ownership of) Riot Games, Epic, Grinding Gear, Supercell, Yager, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, Fatshark, Turtle Rock, Remedy, Klei, and others. But publicly, at least, it seems to have taken a largely hands-off approach with all of them, and assuming that pattern continues it means that fans of Techland and its work shouldn't have to worry too much about any abrupt, unexpected changes in direction. 

Tencent is one of China's biggest tech companies but it suffered a real downturn in fortunes through 2022, wrought by a combination of the country's crackdown on the tech industry, strict Covid-19 restrictions, and an overall economic slowdown. Its share price has bounced back considerably since then, though—not to where it was during the heady days of early 2021, but close to double what it was in late 2022—and a new investment in a Western studio could be seen as a signal that Tencent is at least starting to return to form and action. 

Techland declined to comment further on the specifics of the deal.

Lightspeed Studios, best known for co-developing PUBG Mobile, and Will Smith, best known for slapping comedian Chris Rock on live television, have teamed up for a free-to-play open world survival shooter called Undawn.

Jokes aside, Will Smith is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, an Academy Award winner (and 4-time nominee) whose films have earned nearly $9 billion worldwide. Except for a Fortnite skin, this appears to be Smith's first real videogame role, and if I were to picture him as the face of a game I guess it would be something a little more grand—like Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077, or Liam Neeson in Fallout 3, or one of the many Hollywood actors who have performed in the Call of Duty series.

Instead, Will Smith is now the face of a free-to-play mobile shooter that's also coming to Steam. So, yeah, I'm as confused as you are. Go ahead and watch the star of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air wordlessly deliver a smackdown on some monsters making trouble in his neighborhood in the trailer above.

We first heard about Undawn in 2019 (it was originally called Dawn Awakening) but it's finally on the brink of release: the free-to-play multiplayer survival game launches on June 15 for mobile devices and on PC. If you need a refresher on what it is, exactly, read on:

"In the post-apocalyptic world of Undawn, survivors have split into different factions each with their own rules of survival," reads a press release sent to PC Gamer (which, no joke, contained the words "Get Jiggy" in the subject line). "During their daring adventure, players will encounter legendary survivor Trey Jones played by global movie star Will Smith. Trey will act as a guide to help other survivors navigate the world four years after a global disaster." 

It's a little hard to say what's in the actual game—the official site immediately gets busy tantalizing you with a list of rewards you get for pre-registering, like consumables and several different types of in-game currency. The Steam page is a little more to the point, showing off shooting, monsters, resource gathering, base building, and vehicles. It also shows a very cluttered mobile game HUD, so I'm not super optimistic it'll be enjoyable on PC.

As for Will Smith, he does fit into the world of Undawn pretty well, though mostly because he looks quite a lot like his character Robert Neville from 2007 zombie apocalypse film I Am Legend. I'm a little suspicious that Smith's character doesn't talk in the trailer, or even make noises like "ugh" or "uff" while running, sliding, and bashing monsters. Did he just lend his looks, and not his voice, to the game? I guess we'll find out on June 15.

China might finally be relaxing its tech crackdown, but the government isn't stepping away from the sector entirely. Rather than the strict approach that saw Alibaba fined billions, tech CEO Jack Ma temporarily disappear from the public eye, and game approvals slow to a trickle, the Financial Times reports that the government is switching tack, and moving to take "special management shares"—or "golden shares"—in many of China's leading tech companies, including Tencent.

These golden shares are relatively tiny—around 1% ordinarily—but confer rights over particular business decisions and appointments made at the companies in which they're taken. The golden share that the government is hoping to take in Tencent is still being discussed, but sources spoken to by the FT understand that it will involve a stake in one of the company's main Chinese subsidiaries, and that Tencent was pushing for a state entity based in Shenzhen—its home—to take the share rather than a Beijing-based one.

We don't know what powers this share deal would eventually confer, but we can look to other, similar deals to get an idea. For example, when a state entity took a golden share in TikTok owner ByteDance, it gained the power to nominate one of the company's three directors. The government opted to nominate an official named Wu Shugang, who could then exert some measure of influence over the company's business strategy and, crucially, gained the ability to appoint the editor in chief of ByteDance's media platforms: A significant measure of power over content that would be shown on those platforms.

So it looks like China's government is relaxing its grip, but keeping its hand firmly on the tiller when it comes to the nation's tech and games sector. It's also, weirdly, probably great news for the country's embattled investors and CEOs, who have had to watch in horror as their stock prices were buffeted by the intense scrutiny of the Chinese state for the last three years. It seems unlikely that the state will do anything as drastic and public as its Didi ban in the near future when it has its own people in company boardrooms: It would risk a PR blowback for the government as well as the company being targeted.

Plus, Tencent kicked out over a hundred corrupt staff in the last year alone, and even reported some of them to local police. You've got to imagine the company earned some breathing room from the government with that one.

The golden shares arrangement feels primed to affect content in China more than the stuff it exports overseas, but it might actually end up dampening the rapid expansion of Chinese companies into non-Chinese markets in the short-term. A report from Barron's last year highlighted the extent to which a lot of overseas expansion by companies like Tencent had been driven by the fact that the government had effectively cut them off from the domestic Chinese market. If the state really is relaxing its grip, those companies might choose to start eating at home rather than going out for it.

Riot Games is filing lawsuits against publisher NetEase over its 5v5 mobile shooter Hyper Front, which Riot's lawyers allege is a clone of their shooter Valorant. Riot's filed suits in several countries' legal systems, including the United Kingdom, Germany, Brazil, and Singapore, seeking to stop NetEase from distributing Hyper Front and asking for monetary damages.

Valorant has an in-development mobile version of its own, though no release date has yet been announced. Rumors have said 2024, though no evidence for that has been forthcoming.

Speaking with Polygon, a lawyer for Riot Games said that “All of our creative choices are mirrored in NetEase’s game" and that "“We don’t think that changing the color of a character ability or slightly modifying the visual appearance changes the fact that it’s copyright infringement."

Riot's no stranger to copyright lawsuits. It has previously sued over alleged clones, ripoffs, and knockoffs of both League of Legends and spinoff Teamfight Tactics. Its parent company Tencent has also won lawsuits in China around League of Legends copies. It's embroiled in one right now, in fact—a US judge just told them to take it to the Chinese court system.

The comparisons Riot makes in the UK lawsuit documents are extensive, including screenshots of maps, characters, weapon skins, and other trinkets. There are even comparisons of in-game weapon statistics and performance. Riot says that an initial complain prompted some changes by NetEase, but did not go far enough.

Riot's lawyers emphasized the global nature of the games industry in justifying the several lawsuits across multiple countries.

Riot Games is owned by Tencent, a somewhat-larger and more far more well-known Chinese media company, and users on social media were quick to accuse Tencent of hypocrisy. Tencent's own Ace Force, for example, was accused of copying Overwatch's aesthetics and gameplay when it launched in 2019, while Tencent's geolocation-based mobile game Let's Hunt Monsters was accused of being a clone of Pokemon Go.

The legal outcome here is very much unclear: Don't count NetEase out though. It's a big tech company and includes lots of divisions not just in East Asian countries, but recently expanded into Europe and America with the acquisition of Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream.

A US judge has dismissed Riot Games' lawsuit against Shanghai Moonton over the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang mobile game, saying the dispute between the two companies should be resolved in China.

The order to dismiss the case was granted following the filing of a forum non conveniens motion by Shanghai Moonton—effectively a request to have the case moved to a more appropriate court. Riot opposed the motion on three separate points, including China's "evidentiary and Covid-19 travel restrictions," but the judge in the case rejected all three arguments. 

Noting that Riot is fully owned by Chinese conglomerate Tencent, which is not taking part in this case but pursuing a separate legal action against Shanghai Moonton in China, the court said it would be "unfair to allow Riot and Tencent to bring a two-front war against Moonton unless and until Tencent decides to show up on both battlefield."

Riot's complaints about the more restrictive discovery rules in China, which is says will unfairly advantage Shanghai Moonton, also failed to hold sway: The lawsuit was dismissed without prejudice, and the ruling states that "if the evidentiary hurdles in China genuinely prove fatal to certain of Riot's claims (ie., regarding those removed [Mobile Legends: Bang Bang] promotional trailers), Riot can bring an action specifically regarding those claims in this court."

The dispute between Riot and Shanghai Moonton actually goes back years, and includes two other games called Mobile Legends: 5v5 MOBA and Magic Rush: Heroes. Riot said in a 2017 lawsuit that Moonton "developed and distributed a succession of mobile games designed to trade off Riot’s well-known and valuable intellectual property," and that when Riot complained about the infringement, Moonton removed the game from distribution but then re-released it, with some "modest changes," as Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. That case was also dismissed for the same reason as this one, a decision referenced by the judge in this ruling.

"The question is whether circumstances have truly changed from those that existed in 2017 or whether Riot simply seeks a second bite at the apple, unhappy with the progress (or lack thereof) in the still on-going, parallel China litigation," the ruling states. "The Court deems the latter to be the case."

"For years, the parties have been litigating highly related copyright claims in China that raise many of the same issues that Riot is now trying to re-raise in the US," said Ajay Krishnan, a partner at Moonton's legal firm Keker, Van Nest & Peters. "It would have been duplicative, inefficient, and wholly unfair to proceed with this case in the U.S., where Moonton would lack access to key evidence and witnesses."

Riot, of course, feels very differently about the ruling, and said it is considering its options.

"We strongly disagree with the court's decision and especially its worrying conclusion that China is an 'adequate alternative forum' for a US company to pursue its claims of copyright infringement that occurred in the US," a company representative said in an email sent to PC Gamer. "The idea of having US citizens apply for M5 visas to fly overseas in order to ask a Chinese court for relief concerning works that were both created and infringed in the US—defies common sense. On top of that, Moonton’s knock-off game isn't even available in China. We are exploring all possible options, including an appeal."

Tencent, the Chinese tech and gaming colossus that you'll know for owning a slice of seemingly everything in the games industry, is no longer China's most valuable company. Bloomberg reports that Tencent's stock price has hit a five-year low, and its overall market capitalisation was overtaken late last month by—of all things—Kweichow Moutai, a Guizhou-based firm specialising in the production of Maotai rice wine. At time of writing, Kweichow Moutai had a $235 million lead over Tencent's market cap.

This would have been unthinkable just last year, when Tencent was trading at between $50 and $90 per share and was easily the most valuable company in China, but Tencent's fortunes have been brought low by the increasingly hostile domestic environment. A combination of China's tech crackdown, strict COVID policies, and generally flagging economic growth have made it hard for Tencent—and plenty of other Chinese companies—to do business. Tencent has wiped $650 billion off its market cap since the beginning of 2021.

The downturn in its fortunes has led Tencent to pursue a strategy of downsizing, imposing a wave of firings in departments across China in an effort to make up for its losses. The frosty Chinese market even partially explains Tencent's ever-growing presence in the western games market: it's been buying up non-Chinese companies precisely because it's currently so tough to do business at home.

The struggle shows no sign of letting up. Tencent got its first game approval from the Chinese government in over a year this September, and it's not like COVID is going anywhere any time soon. We can probably expect the company to continue cutting back at home and expanding abroad in the foreseeable future. Kweichow Moutai, on the other hand, stands to benefit from promised government support for "consumer-driven" sectors. Maybe Tencent should just pivot into liquor production.

This is far from the end of the road for a company as massive as Tencent, but it is a stark illustration of how bleak things are looking for Chinese tech companies at the minute. Nevertheless, Tencent still has fingers in plenty of pies: aside from its stock woes, Tencent has most recently been in the news for penning deals with Ubisoft, trying and failing to make a Lord of the Rings MMO with Amazon, and opening up an AI-governed nightmare hotel in Hangzhou. Not bad for what is now only China's second most valuable company.

The Taliban has announced that a much-discussed ban on PUBG: Battlegrounds—for "promoting violence" and "misleading youth"—will take effect in Afghanistan within three months, Khaama Press reports. The decision was announced following a recent meeting between Afghanistan's Ministry of Telecommunications, a Sharia law enforcement official, and security representatives.

The Taliban actually ordered this PUBG ban back in April this year, but the details and timeline of its implementation have only just been worked out and announced. Afghan telecommunications companies and internet service providers have 90 days to put the ban into action. The ban is focused on PUBG's mobile version and will also affect TikTok, which companies will have one month to block. 

PUBG has been singled out for its violent content, but both apps are charged with "misleading the younger generation" and "wasting people's time". I guess I can't argue with that last one.

PUBG has been a runaway success in Afghanistan. At the beginning of 2021, the game was swallowing up big chunks of the country's mobile internet traffic at peak times, when it was attracting somewhere in the vicinity of 100,000 Afghan players at once. It's been a source of national moral panic for about the same length of time. Still, given its popularity, you can't help but wonder if some enterprising soul will give the game a makeover and a new version for the Afghan market, much like the "patriotic version" PUBG got in China.

The ban is part of a rolling tide of repression that the Taliban has implemented since returning to power in Afghanistan in August last year. The group has also banned over 23 million websites for "immoral content". Of course, as Khaama Press' original report points out, Afghan internet users can get their hands on VPNs without much hassle. If the Taliban really wants to cleanse the scourge of PUBG from Afghanistan, it's probably going to have to try harder.

Tencent is China's largest tech company and has long had its sights set on Ubisoft. It's not alone in this: as the industry consolidates, the French publisher is one of the largest and most attractive targets out there, with a public valuation of roughly $5.3 billion and globally recognised brands like Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and the Tom Clancy games.

In June Tencent looked to increase its existing 4.5% stake by making a megabucks offer to Ubisoft shareholders of $101.84 per share: a price that represented a huge premium over stock that so far this year has averaged a price of less than half that. In other words, this is the kind of corporate aggression that won't take 'no' for an answer.

A complicated element, however, is that Ubisoft is a public company but remains under the control of the Guillemot family, who founded the publisher and through a holding company own a 16% stake in Ubisoft that comes with unique voting rights. That is, the Guillemots own approximately 1/6th of Ubisoft economically, but have a much bigger say in how the company is run than such a stake would otherwise have.

Tencent and the Guillemots reportedly sat down in May to talk turkey, with an insider telling Reuters that "Tencent is very determined to nail down the deal as Ubisoft is such an important strategic asset for Tencent".

The Guillemot family has previously shown it wants to retain control of Ubisoft, most notably in fighting tooth-and-nail to stop a hostile takeover from Vivendi (which eventually gave up and sold all of its Ubisoft shares back to the publisher). The Guillemot fightback against this deal was helped by investments from, among others, Tencent.

Now Tencent has announced a large investment in the Guillemot holding company, Guillemot Brothers Limited, of €300 million (€200 million in exchange for shares, and €100 million capital), which values Ubisoft at €80 per share. The Euro and the Dollar are currently more-or-less 1:1 in value.

But of course it's not that simple. The press release announcing the deal goes to great lengths to emphasise the limits that Tencent has accepted in order to make this investment. "Guillemot Brothers Limited remains exclusively controlled by the Guillemot family. Tencent will not be represented on its Board of Directors and will not obtain any consent or veto rights over the business."

The deal comes with an allowance that the Guillemots and Tencent may increase their joint stake in Ubisoft to 29.9%, and Ubisoft's board has authorised Tencent to increase its stake from 4.5% to 9.99%. However Tencent is not able to sell these shares for five years, and if it chooses to do so at a later date has to give first refusal to the Guillemots, and cannot go beyond that upper stake of 9.99% for eight years. 

To put it in plain language: the Guillemots have taken Tencent's money, but with conditions that for now put any kind of takeover on the back-burner. In fact this arguably insulates Ubisoft from takeover for the next decade: any company interested in acquiring it will, if you'll excuse the turn of phrase, have to go through Tencent first.

Most importantly from the Guillemot perspective, "As a result of this transaction, Ubisoft's governance will remain unchanged and Tencent will not have any operational veto rights."

Tencent's games industry holdings are enormous and, amidst a giant tech crackdown in China, it is explicitly looking to expand its international appeal. The company has stakes in the likes of Epic Games, Riot, Supercell, and Frontier, and owns studios including Sumo, Turtle Rock, Playtonic, and Digital Extremes. Ubisoft is now on that list, though arguably in a much smaller manner than the Chinese corporation would like. For now.

What happens when you give one of the world's biggest licences to two of the world's biggest companies? One of them takes its ball and goes home, it turns out. When Amazon's Lord Of The Rings MMO was suddenly cancelled last year, we were left wondering what it was that had caused the talks between Amazon and Tencent to break down after what felt like a significant amount of hype for the game.

In an interview with Gamespot, Amazon Games president Christoph Hartmann revealed that the game's development got so complicated after the involvement of Tencent—the Chinese tech giant with investments all over the world—that Amazon decided it would rather drop the whole thing. Hartmann said the companies "maybe could have worked together" on a different project, but they were "too big as companies to really turn into partners" on the MMO. So Amazon walked.

Amazon's initial deal regarding its LOTR MMO was with the Hong Kong company Leyou, a firm that was practically microscopic compared to the gargantuan bulk of Amazon and Tencent. Things were proceeding relatively well until Tencent acquired Leyou in December of 2020. That put a spanner in the works: Middle-earth Enterprises—the LOTR rights holder—terminated the MMO's rights to the LOTR licence and made it necessary to hash out a new deal.

Negotiations dragged on, but it seems that Tencent and Amazon just couldn't come to terms on how the Tolkienian pie would be divided. Hartmann makes it sound like the disagreement stemmed from a dispute over which megacorporation would have control over the relevant rights. He mentions that a situation in which Tencent owned the licence and Amazon developed the game was not acceptable, so Amazon decided to bail.

It doesn't seem to have worked out too badly for either company. Tencent continues to pull companies into its orbit with slow-burning inevitability, while Amazon has a couple of successful MMOs on its hands in the form of Lost Ark and New World. "I want to keep on investing in that," says Hartmann somewhat hopefully. "I know, it's not going to be Lord of the Rings, but we have our own fantasy; why not keep building on that."

As Amazon releases its Rings Of Power series to great fanfare, you've got to wonder if some small part of the company wishes it had a lucrative, Middle Earth MMO to show off to its new viewers.

Fans of the series have the upcoming Gollum game and a project from Take Two's Private Division to look forward to, but after that any future Lord of the Rings games will be coming from Embracer Group, which recently acquired the rights to adapt the series. Tencent and Amazon are giants but Embracer's been on an acquisition spree itself, clearly has money to burn, and didn't buy those rights for nothing.

FromSoftware parent company Kadokawa Corporation has announced that it's issuing 3179 new FromSoft shares to Sixjoy Hong Kong and Sony Interactive Entertainment. Sixjoy is a subsidiary brand of Tencent, whom you'll know from having a slice of seemingly every pie known to humankind, and Sony Interactive Entertainment is, well, Sony.

Once the shares are issued, Sixjoy will own 16.25% of FromSoft and Sony 14.09%. Kadokawa Corporation will remain the controller and majority owner of the company by a wide margin: it owns the full 69.66% of remaining shares.

A slight increase in share amount for two companies—even if they are Tencent and Sony—that confers no extra power or rights may not seem enormously interesting, but it's not necessarily the shares that are important here. Kadokawa and FromSoft are acquiring 36,399,550,000 yen (that's £225,677,210 or $262,268,221) off the back of this deal, which they intend to put to good use. In the release announcing the share allotment, Kadokawa says that the reason for the share sale is to use the funds for "the expansion of the scope of [FromSoft's] own publishing in the significantly growing global market".

In other words, the share allotment is all in service of gathering the funds FromSoft needs to start self-publishing its games across the world. FromSoft already publishes its own titles in Japan, but seeks out partners to help it publish in overseas territories. Kadokawa clearly thinks FromSoft has outgrown that kind of arrangement, pointing specifically to the success of games like Sekiro and Elden Ring as reasons that FromSoft is ready to branch out and start self-publishing in countries other than Japan.

The news will be of especial interest to Bandai Namco, which has enjoyed a fruitful partnership with the developer but crucially also has IP rights to certain FromSoft titles. The Souls series and particularly Elden Ring have been smash hits, and Bandai Namco will be looking at this wondering if the studio's next game will be called Aged Loop and cut it out completely.

As for Sony and Tencent (or Sixjoy), all they get from this deal are the potential (and significant) rewards of an investment in a games company that's going from strength to strength. The number of shares they own is still far too small to give them anything like a controlling say in how either Kadokawa or FromSoft do business, although it'll probably make any future discussions between the companies that little bit warmer. Regardless, despite appearances, it's still too early to file this one under the ever-expanding bracket of "videogame industry consolidation".

The missing in action System Shock 3 is still entirely in the hands of Tencent. That's according to Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick, who in an an interview with VGC said that the rights to make System Shock 3, originally licensed to OtherSide Entertainment, had been sold on to and remain with Tencent.

"They then subsequently sold their rights to Tencent," Kick explained. "So Tencent currently has the rights to the third game, and we have the rights to do the remake of the first game and potentially a remake of the second game. That’s pretty much where it stands right now."

Tencent hasn't said anything since the rights acquisition. It was unclear if OtherSide was working alongside Tencent for a bit, but we learned this year that System Shock creator Warren Spector's OtherSide entertainment hasn't worked on System Shock 3 since 2019.

"So Tencent currently has the rights to the third game, and we have the rights to do the remake of the first game and potentially a remake of the second game. That’s pretty much where it stands right now," said Kick. "I think they technically could do 4 and 5 as well, but they’d have to do 3 first. So, we’ll see."

Nightdive, meanwhile, is still cracking along on its remake of System Shock. They dropped a new trailer this week, and a build is playable at Gamescom. Kick also said  at Gamescom that System Shock creators Warren Spector and Paul Neurath have been providing feedback on Nightdive's game builds throughout development.

Tencent is partnering with Ouyu Technology to open an esports hotel in Hangzhou, China later this month. It's stuffed to the gills gaming hardware and rooms themed after esports leagues, and its guests will all be watched over by the all-seeing eye of VEEGY, a virtual hotel manager pulled from the blackest depths of the uncanny valley.

Appropriately, the video above makes the whole experience look a lot like spending a night inside a coruscating gaming PC, and the Chinese press release makes it sound more like a kind of esports-themed theme park ride and boot camp than an actual hotel for sleeping in.

Guests are urged to partake in a range of esports-themed activities, including five "esport talent tests," evaluating things like eyesight, reaction time, and strategy, allowing them to "experience the training methods of esports players in an immersive way," presumably without the gruelling hours-long training sessions.

But the real centrepiece of the whole experience is VEEGY, the establishment's discomfiting digital overseer who's part manager, part coach. The hotel's many features are all accessed "under the guidance of VEEGY."

Guests can undergo the aforementioned esport talent tests, access up-to-date esport team rankings, and get "intelligent" viewing recommendations from her vast library of esports vids, among other things. From the looks of it, she's present throughout the hotel and in every room, like a creepier but less threatening SHODAN.

If the thought of spending a night all watched over by a machine of loving grace appeals, VEEGY is more than happy to configure a room to your liking. Once you've decided whether to spring for one of the hotel's five themed rooms (each of which corresponds to a particular esports league, like King Pro or Peacekeeper Elite), you can choose to load it with your own selection of esports hardware, ranging from mobile phones to elaborate gaming PC setups.

Tencent and Ouyu say the aim of the project is to break down the divide between 'esports content' and 'hotel atmosphere' that exists in other esports hotels across Asia, and boy does it look like they've done that. By making every part of the hotel mediated by their digital assistant, they've made it hard to tell where the esports end and the hotel begins.

It sounds exhausting to an old man like me, but if you're looking for a spot to spend the night in Hangzhou, VEEGY is opening for business later this month.

A Reuters report says Tencent, China's largest tech company and an absolute gaming behemoth, has its sights set on Ubisoft. Tencent already has a 5% stake in Ubisoft, acquired in 2018, and is apparently looking to gobble up some of the 16% stake held by the Guillemot family, who co-founded and still run the business. Tencent's goal is to become the single largest shareholder in the publisher.

Ubisoft is currently valued at around $5.3 billion, and Tencent is looking to buy at a price of $101.84 per share (its 2018 stake was bought at roughly $67 dollars per share). This is a massive offer: Ubisoft's stock price has averaged around $45 per share so far this year, while its highest-ever valuation was around $110 in 2018.

80% of Ubisoft is publicly owned, and Tencent is also looking to acquire shares from elsewhere as well as the Guillemots. With an offer price like that, it probably won't be hard.

Ubisoft shares went up 15% following Reuters report about Tencent, which certainly shows that shareholders like the sound of money, while the Guillemot family company (which holds their shares) also rose 7% in value. It's unclear how far along any projected deal is, with Reuters' sources saying no deal is finalised, though Tencent executives met the Guillemots in May and have submitted an offer with the company's high price. 

Neither Tencent nor Ubisoft has commented on the report. One insider did say: "Tencent is very determined to nail down the deal as Ubisoft is such an important strategic asset for Tencent".

Tencent's holdings are legion and, while China is in the midst of a giant tech crackdown, it's looking to increase its international appeal. It already has stakes in the likes of Epic Games, Riot, Supercell, and Frontier, while outright acquiring studios including Sumo, Turtle Rock, Playtonic, and Digital Extremes. It's actually pretty dizzying just how much of the gaming industry Tencent owns.

This is not a done deal: the Guillemot family has previously shown it wants to retain control of Ubisoft, and most notably fought off a takeover from Vivendi (which eventually sold all of its acquired shares back to the publisher). The Guillemots managed to fight Vivendi off at the time thanks to investments from, among others, Tencent: oops!