The game whose full name I forget and have to copy-paste every time—here goes, it's called Rizz Dungeon: Skeleton Key to My Heart—was scheduled to release on September 17. It's been delayed until next year because developer Snoozy Kazoo's previous games—hang on, let me warm up Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V again—Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion and Turnip Boy Robs a Bank have sold better than expected. Now Snoozy Kazoo can afford to make Rizz Dungeon the game they really wanted it to be from the start.

"This delay allows us to both add more content and avoid crunch. As a tiny studio of five people, there were quite a few features (and Monster Girls!) we were cutting in order to hit this September 17th release date, and we were starting to crunch to ensure this game was something we were proud of," says Snoozy Kazoo's founder and director Yukon Wainczak. "While we understand the delay likely comes as a disappointment, we hope that you can be reassured by the fact that we are making a better—and healthier made—Rizz Dungeon with this delay."

Rizz Dungeon is an RPG about exploring a dungeon to get loot from a dragon, only the dragon is your ex-girlfriend and the loot is all the stuff she took. Also, you have put all your points into Charisma instead of combat stats and have to charm your way out of fights until you can recruit monster girls to handle the fighting for you. It sounds kind of like Pokémon if the creatures you were collecting were hot. (If you think Pokémon are hot already I don't want to know about it.)

Given that September still has—don't give up on me now, copy-paste friends—The Blood of Dawnwalker, Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Silent Hill: Townfall, and a bunch of other games coming out, and I'll probably still be playing Star Wars: Zero Company as well, it's going to be a busy month. Probably a good thing Dawn of War 4 has also shifted out of September, though presumably in that case it's not to add more monster girls. (If you think necrons are hot I don't want to know about that either.)

Full disclosure, here—Stars Reach is, in my humble opinion, a bit of a mess. It's an MMO headed up by Raph Koster, who knows what he's doing on account of his involvement in Ultima Online and, more relevant to the game at hand, Star Wars: Galaxies, and it released into early access this week to the price point of almost $30 (£28).

Stars Reach tries to follow in SWG's vein of being a socially-driven MMO with a huge array of skills you can train. The vision is a galactic society where being a dancer or a journalist is just as viable a playstyle as, say, going outdoors and gunning some beasties down.

I say the "vision", because Stars Reach isn't quite there yet. In fact, it makes a god-awful first impression, starting with a brief stint in a tutorial zone to get you accustomed to your tools—a terraformer, a scanner, a harvester, a gun, and a deeply janky grappling hook.

By far, the most interesting part of these mechanics is the terraformer—which lets you dig into the fully malleable earth and spit out the terrain you've mined. Everything else is deeply so-so. The scanner's a hot/cold beeping system to help build out your map, and the gunplay is… ah, you shoot things and they die. None of it feels particularly good.

The issue—aside from the raft of crusty UI issues and unfinished icons—is what the game does to you next. You're plonked on a rather bland-looking space station and encouraged to go and grab a few missions, of which you can only snap up a handful. These are randomly-generated and dull as driftwood, but they at least get you used to the core mechanics and how you could feasibly use them.

It's during one of these that I'm given a perfect encapsulation of why Stars Reach and its unfinished state is a problem. The first mission I took to dig my way to a drone was cut short, because I discovered that the ground I was mining was sandy, meaning that any hole I dug was immediately filled in by the small hill next to the area I was mining. To be clear, the terrain simulation going on here is actually really neat—if I was digging harder materials, I wouldn't be having the same problem.

'Cool!' I thought, and then I wondered if I could maybe work on some digging XP to outpace the landslides I was causing—only to find out that entire chunks of the mining tree, including mining speed upgrades, were slapped with a big "WIP" sticker.

This is a major problem for Stars Reach, because a lot of the more interesting skill trees (such as acting, dancing, politics, and journalism—yes, really) are still works in progress. That's not to say the systems underpinning them are absent entirely (more on that later), but in terms of first impressions, having only the brass tacks available for players to explore is a serious problem.

Then there's the way navigation works. If you want to explore other planets—which pop up and are culled based on whether or not anyone's maintaining them—you need to slowly float your space-suited self through a dull void to get there, as spaceships aren't in the game yet. And chances are (especially this early) that there won't be anything on said planets to begin with.

Meet with the Mayor

I was, legitimately, ready to turn up my nose and simply drop Stars Reach with the summation that it was released still in the cradle—and I almost did, were it not for vague recollections of Raph Koster telling me about the societies players had built during playtesting.

I hit up Discord, and eventually found this website from the in-game coalition Galactic Union of Natural Conservation, or GUNC. It pointed me in the direction of their chosen planet, and upon arriving, the actual juice behind Stars Reach unfolded in front of me.

I saw about a dozen players milling around a stack of crates, and—doing something very scary, I decided to walk up and start asking questions. It was then I had discovered that, eager to rebuild their society from earlier playtests, GUNC was laying the groundwork to do just that—ferrying a huge heap of supplies from other planets and allocating tasks to their little community.

This involved zoning a section of the planet and, moreover, organising the work needed to actually do its namesake mission of conserving creatures by electing its mayor—something you can already do in-game with something called a GovBot, despite the politics tree being under construction.

GUNC has to have trained xenobiologists go out and find Makers (which are typically-invisible servitors that spawn wildlife) and then lay claim to the land around them to protect them with the raw power of planet-side bureaucracy. As I needled the duly-elected mayor of planet GUNC with questions, I also noticed an emerging fashion trend of something called hive glasses, which the local tailor (also a player) was supplying them with.

This is where the friction in my heart comes in: Stars Reach is a deeply unfinished game that is, in my humble opinion, charging way too much for the janky first impression it makes—but the unfinished (yet intricate) web of systems that underpins it is clearly compelling, because otherwise GUNC wouldn't be there.

I genuinely felt like I'd played two separate games—one of them was an eerily lonely, aimless random mission generator, and the other was a jolly cooperative builder that did legitimately charm me, as the good mayor fielded my questions alongside someone roleplaying an ex-anarchist who just wanted to make friends, and a big, fluffy man in a silly hat who was politely asking where he could set up camp so he didn't interfere with GUNC's zoning plans.

The major issue? I had to go out of my way to find these people doing cool things—rifling through a Discord, going on a fanmade site—rather than organically being directed to these UGC zones through a better overworld system. If anything, the mission boards feel like a flat misstep that give players the wrong idea about what the game is trying to do.

Stars Reach should be doing everything in its power to bring you into contact with other players from the get-go—because that's clearly where its passionate and invested community finds its fun. What it's doing right now is asking you 30 whole bucks for access and punting you towards its least flattering, least finished parts.

I dearly hope it can manage a turnaround, because I want the idealised version of Stars Reach to exist—for the sake of its most invested players, more than anything. But it absolutely needs a ton of work before it gets there. And while there's a detailed and active roadmap on the game's site, right now? It's got too much space to grow.

GTA6 leaker Cyberleek is still at it, even as his digital wanted level is skyrocketing to never-before-seen heights. His latest, two-minute clip was shared to the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit. The post has already been removed, and, to keep my job, you've got to find the clip on your own. It shows protagonist Jason assaulting two gas station attendants before crashing a sports car.

I guess there's more to it than that: The clip shows the interface for filling up at a gas station. While the cars need gas now, refueling is a bit seamless and gamey⁠—it appears you just press a button at the pump and it's taken care of instantaneously, though the options are greyed out in this clip, perhaps because of Jason's wanted level. Multiple commenters also pointed out that GTA6 is boasting a shockingly lavish progressive damage system for vehicles.

Cyberleek then goes in the station and leaps behind the counter to brutalize and rob the attendant, incidentally demonstrating the swiftness of Florida justice as sheriff's deputies immediately rock up to ruin Jason's day⁠—though he did already have a two-star wanted rating before adding assault with a deadly weapon to his rap sheet, and the previous leak hinted that the car he stole may have a tracker in it. There's no stopping Jason, though, as he rockets away to do the same at another gas station before having a high-speed collision with a truck, which is shown in slow-motion.

In addition to Cyberleek's usual mascot watermark entreating viewers to "Show support, buy $Cyberleek," the anonymous leaker also has a watermark promising to show gameplay at a strip club if his cryptocurrency reaches a $3 million market cap. To tease this, the final shot of the video is a cut to Jason entering a grungy rural strip club.

And I gotta say: I'm a crypto and GTA hater, this is the first one of these I've watched, the vid is all washed out like the HDR settings are messed up, Cyberleek plays like a middle schooler whose parents aren't home, and the clip still got me weirdly excited for GTA6?

I think it's because the southern swamp chic of it all just reminds me of True Detective season one, the closest I'll get to a desolate, neo-noir Louisiana outside of Norco, and that's a very different sort of game. Jason isn't a nihilistic and off-putting supersleuth Matthew McConaughey, but I can squint and pretend. The "Sunday Bumday" poster outside the strip club really got to me: Rockstar's UK is showing, we don't call them that over here!

"Jesus Christ, I could write this shit:" The great Alan Moore once said that the sort of negative inspiration you get from reading drivel is even more fruitful for aspiring authors than the kind you get from reading the classics. Fallout co-creator and prolific video blogger Tim Cain took it a step further in a video he published Wednesday, saying everyone from bigwig publishers to the casual gamer could learn a thing or two from bad games.

Granted, he's not talking about irredeemable refuse like Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, but rather the "many" cases where "one game came out, it wasn't very good, and it was forgotten … you could learn a lot from games like that." You know, stuff like Viking: Battle for Asgard.

"For a publisher, their success is game sales. Because of that, they often don't learn from failure because they only look at the games that sold well," he said in the video. "Gamers will frequently point to popular games and say, 'we want more of that,' without necessarily knowing exactly what part of those games made them so good. If they do point to bad games, they tend to point to well-known bad games."

He likened the industry's tunnel vision on critical darlings, sales behemoths, and only the most prominent flops to survivorship bias. "In addition to looking for common features among games that sell well, you should look for common features among games that are considered unsuccessful."

If you can't tell the good from the bad in a good game, Cain reckoned "you will possibly miss out on why they are successful. This happens all the time in videogames, and everybody does it." While it's all subjective, Cain's point is ultimately that not every aspect of a good game is an equal part of why it's good—plenty of great games have "a low framerate, atrocious user interfaces, and crash bugs," he noted—and a reliable way to understand games more deeply is to sit with an unsuccessful one, curious about what went wrong.

You might have caught it in the news: Sony infuriated absolutely everyone recently with a single blog post (usually it's me who does that) announcing that, come the big year 2028, PlayStation owners can wave goodbye to physical media. It's the information superhighway or the, ah, highway from here on out—your games will be digital or they will be nothing at all.

The tide of anger at Sony was such that it was only temporarily diverted when Xbox CEO Asha Sharma spent a Monday marching from studio to studio with a chainsaw and a can-do attitude.

I suppose Sony's antics are old-hat to you and me. We are PC people; we have been de facto digital-only for over a decade at this point (almost two for me, to be honest: I made my Steam account in 2009). The last time I built a PC with a disc drive was back in 2015, and I didn't use it for anything but moving around photos.

Nevertheless, Sony's war on the physical realm got me thinking: what was the first big-box PC game I remember handling, back when I was a speck of a boy at a hulking Fujitsu desktop? Was it good? Was it an all-time classic, rightly embodied in unconquerable materiality?

Tunnel vision

No. It was Tunnel B1, a 1996 first-person shooter that asks 'What if a hovercraft had machine guns?' and which no one but me remembers. It's an odd thing—despite its year of release, it feels like a transitional fossil between dime-guzzling arcade shooters and something more modern, more narrative, more id-inflected.

It is a messy beast of a game that does not really have all that much going on, which I imagine is why its Wikipedia article cites contemporary GamePro reviewers Scary Larry and Dr Zombie as feeling pretty ho-hum about it. We should go back to being called things like Scary Larry. I'm just called Josh. It's terrible.

I was mesmerised by Tunnel B1 as a kid. I don't know how my household came to possess it or why, but I remember finding it parked in my dad's CD collection. Amid a stack of Sonic Youth and Butthole Surfers albums, there it was: a weird gold-ish box with a very startled guy in a gas mask on the front, making direct eye contact with me.

I remember turning it over in my hands, fascinated by the screenshots. What wonders were contained within? What could it be about? The box suggested speed, danger, maybe a hint of terror—the wide-eyed gas-mask guy was sure worried about something.

Long before I had put the disc in the drive (or made my dad put the disc in the drive—I couldn't reach it), I had an entire world of Tunnel B1 mapped out in my head. This was, doubtless, the greatest game ever made. It had action and drama, enormous guns and vehicles whose treads turned the whole world to mulch beneath them. I would emerge a different person from playing it, my life delineated into pre-B1 and post-B1 eras.

You can replicate the experience for yourself, if you like, thanks to the wonderful archive over at Big Box Collection (though my copy was not "Komplett in Deutsch").

I am focusing so much on the tactile and aesthetic experience of ol' B1 because my memory of actually playing it is, well, hazy. Far hazier than my memory of the fantasies I built up around it. So hazy, in fact, that I repurchased it on Steam (for £0.89, which I will absolutely be expensing).

The troubling news is that there's a reason my memories are muddy—Tunnel B1 is not the remarkable, life-altering game my six-year-old brain imagined. You race down a series of circuitous highways in your hoverthing, blasting enemy turrets and vehicles with your guns that you can upgrade by racing over pick-ups. Some levels are timed, in an attempt by the game's designers to sort of gesture vaguely at tension. It's all based heavily around attaining a spot on a scoreboard in that charming, videogames-of-old sort of way.

The levels are all essentially the same sickly green highway, challenging you on occasion to ram a button to open a door, and your weapons are limp and unspectacular—your machine guns sound like someone is crinkling tin foil in an adjacent room, your rockets spurt directionlessly from your nozzle. This is not Doom or Quake; the gunplay is geriatric.

Sometimes you will zoom over a new weapon or pick-up, and the estranged wife of Microsoft Sam will chime in to tell you what it was in a dazed, bored sort of way. "More. Energy" she says on a health pickup, maybe as a statement, maybe as a request.

The best part is that you really do move fast. Your hovercraft has two modes: stationary and practically out of control. You are more pinball than pilot, bouncing off walls and obstacles and Czech hedgehogs as you proceed in the vague direction of something that is very probably your goal.

In other words, it's not something I should remember. I played a lot of games as a kid, many of them bad, and all of them except Tunnel B1 appeared on our family computer courtesy of a family friend who knew how to do piracy in the mid-to-late '90s: digital distribution in an early skunkworks form. Those games—the bad ones? I've forgotten them all, but goddammit I remember Tunnel B1 like I was running my thumbs over its corners five seconds ago.

You see where I'm going with this. I might've made my peace with being a 21st century digital boy in my current PC videogame-playing career, but that doesn't mean I haven't lost anything, and it doesn't mean we don't all lose something when the entire concept of physical media goes away. And, yes, Sony says that—over in console land—it will keep selling codes in boxes at retailers, but we can all see the road they're headed down here, right?

I don't think it's pure boomer nostalgia to say that there was something a little magical about the videogame box, a physical vessel into which your child mind could pour all its energy, warping the actual game within into something far grander and stranger than it could ever be in practice.

Those kinds of fantasies, pawing over game boxes my parents could not afford to buy me in shopping centres and second-hand stores, were a really vital part of me falling in love with videogames growing up. Can kids today feel the same way about a Steam page, an App Store download?

Well, maybe. I'm not one of them, and I might just be an old man waxing nostalgic for a world that—like all worlds—only existed for a brief moment in time. But I think something does get lost when you leave behind the material world, if only my moonstruck boyhood fantasies of whatever was in the box of Tunnel B1.

I find myself pretty gloomy about the shutdown of 2XKO—but not because I'll miss it on a personal level. I don't have the mental bandwidth to training-montage myself into a serious fighting game player other than a few stints with Guilty Gear: Strive, but I did have a reasonable time messing around with 2XKO during its beta. And while I'm aware my lack of continued playing makes me part of the problem, I genuinely felt a little sad to see it sink into the waves as Riot announced it was winding down development.

But I'm also feeling blue for another reason. While I don't necessarily blame Riot for not wasting money in this quarterly-results-driven culture of ours, I also really don't think this sort of attitude helps me believe in the vision of its upcoming MMO, whose details are wrapped in the mists of a development mirage.

Riot laid off most of its developers less than three weeks after 2XKO's release—roughly 80 people. People like Patrick Miller, an amazing steward of fighting games who's written a book on the genre. The fact it's shutting down the game less than a year after that "inspired" (these air quotes are so heavy) move speaks to me of a corporate impatience that MMOs seriously struggle to survive. As Raph Koster told me this year in our Terminally Online column, MMOs have become incredibly expensive.

MMOs are costly to run and take a long time to get cooking. The continued success of everything that isn't WoW (which found major success right away and sat fat and glad for years) isn't due to some goldrush mentality, but because they've been steadily sustained for over a decade—once you get a solid playerbase, an MMO will keep breadwinning for you for years to come. But they're a commitment.

And commitments are something Riot seems flighty about making. I couldn't tell you about the numbers behind the screen—we know that 2XKO was making "only a fraction of what it would take to trend toward sustainability"—but might that have had something to do with the 80 people punted from the project less than a month after launch?

Is there a world in which Riot Games didn't do that, and instead gave it a chance to grow its playerbase with a more active development team? Is there a world in which Riot—who let's not forget, was able to throw $250 million at Arcane—could have comfortably tanked those losses to give it a chance at success?

More importantly, is there a world in which an MMO survives without that patience? There's every chance I'm calling a shot long before it's made, mind. Fighting games are a bit of a niche genre due to their high skill floor and astronomical skill cieling—even my game of choice, Strive, has a 24-hour peak of 1,700 players on Steam, as does Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a game that's ostensibly new.

Which for the most part isn't a problem if you're building for it. Fighting games don't need high populations to stay "active" because they're 1v1 experiences—I've literally never had an issue finding ranked matches in Strive, for instance. But if you're Riot, and you're comparing every videogame you have to your League of Legends moonshot, I can imagine any number without several commas in it won't satisfy you.

Who knows. Riot's currently-unknown tolerance for mid-range hits might be perfectly comfortable if its MMO pulls in, say, a few hundred thousand players. The studio might also be betting far more money on its MMO's success, and thus be less likely to cut and run—but it's not as if MMOs are any less of a competitive or brutal market, with very few new entries in the past few years having the staying powers of their predecessors.

Even if Riot finds success, that's not an indicator it'll survive—take New World, which Amazon somehow managed to mess up despite having 10,000 concurrent players at the end of 2025. By live service standards, that's perfectly sustainable, but by MMO standards it clearly wasn't enough—which bodes ill. Consider me biting my nails.

It takes a brave soul to ask the question "What if Doom was an incredibly slow-moving tactical shooter?" In fact, it's not a question I ever thought I'd want an answer to—we aren't exactly short of grim-faced, hyper-lethal first-person shooters these days. But the most recent footage of Blackout has convinced me that tactical Doom might be a good idea, if only because its dark and dangerous demo looks so darned terrifying.

Blackout is a work-in-progress mod built for Doom source ports Zandronum and UZDoom, currently available in playable alpha. Created by modder PKmX, it's designed to provide "tactical military simulation-based gameplay that focuses on slow methodical clearing", according to a breakdown posted on the ZDoom forums, with players expected to "hide behind covers and execute proper breaching techniques to maximise chances of survival."

The mod makes several radical changes to Doom's basic playstyle. Movement is much slower, while your character is significantly more fragile. Weapons are based on real-life firearms that feature ADS and reloading, with damage and recoil that reflects their calibre, fire-rate, and so forth.

The enemies you face remain classic Doom monsters, but PKmX says their behaviours have been "tweaked to suit tactical gameplay". Attacks are deadlier but take longer to charge, and they can both suppress you and be suppressed by you. There's also a stealth and awareness system where gunfire draws monsters to your location, while remaining quiet may enable you to sneak past enemies unseen.

In motion, Blackout reminds me a lot of Stalker, with relatively slow movement but highly reactive (and vicious) gunplay. Surprisingly though, this isn't the inspiration that PKmX cites. Apparently, Blackout draws significantly from Crysis, right down to featuring an energy suit inspired by Crytek's nanosuit. Not only does this feature a damage-absorbing energy shield and an "adrenaline system" that provides a speed boost when near death, but it also includes a cloaking device which temporarily makes the player "almost undetectable" by enemies.

I think this goes a long way to explain why Blackout looks as good as it does. While Blackout is clearly a more methodical shooter than Doom, the emphasis remains on action and combat rather than the strategy and resource management layer of other tactical shooters. Indeed, a commenter on PKmX's video asks whether the game will feature magazine management, to which the modder responds "one of the goals of this mod is to avoid becoming an inventory simulator."

If you fancy giving Blackout a go yourself, you can download it via the Doomworld forums. PkmX also recommends several other mods to enhance the experience, including a palette mod to make levels darker, which certainly seems to fit with Blackout's tone.

Former Arkane Austin head Harvey Smith recently announced his new studio, Black Pony Immersive. As the name suggests will be dedicated to making immersive sims in the tradition of Deus Ex and System Shock. It's a commitment that I wholeheartedly support, though as is always the case with this genre, there's a concern over whether such a move is commercially viable.

As it turns out, however, this isn't the first time that Smith has bet the house on an immersive sim and come up trumps. That's exactly what happened with Dishonored—the game that cemented Arkane's reputation as the new guardian of this particular strand of RPG.

Speaking to The Game Business, Smith revealed that Dishonored was a ride or die project, a way out of a mire of fruitless contract work for other developers. "People would come tell us 'Man, to keep the business alive, you better take some contracts. You need to be working on whatever you can get.' And for a while we tried that, even though it felt wrong."

Despite some promising projects like a cancelled Half-Life 2 episode, Smith's fears proved justified: "There was a point in time when Arkane was about to go under. I think we had four months of money left. We were working on Boom Blox with EA. We were pitching to Ubisoft. We had a couple of guys on a zombie shooter. We were farming people out left and right. We were on nine projects at once."

Eventually, Arkane decided to stop simply taking on third-party projects just to survive and create what they wanted come hell or high water. "At some point, we realised this is not the way. We are here to do a very specific thing. Let's focus on that, and let's go under if that's what is going to happen. Instead, the result was Dishonored, which was one of the big turnarounds of my career."

This experience reinforced Smith's belief that the best chance of succeeding in the games industry is to make what you're truly passionate about. As such, Black Pony Immersive has already stated that it won't chase trends—attempting which produced Arkane's one true misfire Redfall—and ignore the fears of the wider industry that results in an aversion to creative risk.

Naturally, I can't wait to see what Smith's renewed commitment to immersive sims results in. Between this, New Blood's ongoing development of Gloomwood and Fallen Aces, and the unnamed first-person RPG from WolfEye studios—founded by Arkane's co-founder Raphaël Colantonio—we may finally be headed out of the 'it's so over' phase of the immersive sim's life-cycle.

As someone who grew up in the '90s and early '00s when cooperative games were scarce, I'm a big fan of this current era of cheap and cheerful experiences designed to play with your pals. I enjoy the knockabout vibe of games like Peak and R.E.P.O, which acknowledge their disposable nature and focus on being daft fun, rather than trying to engage you for weeks and months at a time as more traditional live service games do.

As such, I'm always interested to see what coop nonsense bubbles up to the surface of Steam's algorithm next, and it appears the catch of the day is How to Fish, a 1-4 player, physics- based fishing simulator where you subdue marine life in the most preposterous ways possible.

The premise sees you and your pals stranded on a barren, rocky islet after drunkenly crashing onto its shores. You start out surviving by picking clams off the rock, which offer meagre sustenance. But you can also sell the clams for cash (which you do in the traditional manner of shoving them into an old seadog's mouth) thus enabling you to buy a fishing rod and begin learning how to fish.

The fishing element of How to Fish is relatively simple. You cast your line, wait for something to take the bait, and reel it in. Where things get more interesting is in what happens after you've landed a catch. Fish and other sea-life don't just appear in your inventory: they will flop, scuttle or crawl around land until you've subdued them. Initially, you'll have naught but your fists to do this with, but over time, you can purchase knives, brass knuckles and even guns you can use to exact bloody vengeance on the ocean.

Needless to say, How to Fish is an extremely silly game. Not only can you launch fish into the air and then blast them with firearms Ridiculous Fishing-style, but you can also barbecue seagulls and gamble your catch on slot machines and roulette wheels for a chance to gain even more cash. That said, How to Fish isn't wholly devoid of structure. There are NPCs dotted about who will assign you quests, and there's a chain of islands to explore that yield bigger, more dangerous catches like sharks and king crabs.

Although How to Fish is clearly built for cooperative shenanigans, it can also be played single player. It may be worth bearing this in mind for the moment, as while most Steam reviews are positive, some players are reporting lax security at the backend, with random players able to drop into the game and cause a ruckus.

Nonetheless, if sniping fish from the sky sounds like your idea of a good time, you can currently pick up How to Fish at an introductory discount that brings the price down from $8 (£6.40) to $5 (£4). That discount ends on August 27.

Another seemingly legit GTA 6 video surfaced today via Cyberleek, this time showing a couple minutes of high-speed driving through Vice City. The clip (which we can't link here, but you can probably find it quickly with some web searches) begins with protagonist Jason ditching a pickup truck and carjacking a "Truffade Thrax," a fancy sportscar that just happens to already contain a driver.

After throwing the car's owner into the street, Jason speeds off, taking us from the Vice City airport through some busy streets downtown, onto the highway, and then into an industrial area. It's not the most eventful trip: the player has a wanted level for jacking the ride but isn't caught and barely even causes any damage along the route.

There also aren't a metric ton of new details to pore over, but we did spot a few interesting things to note.

Drivers struggle

You know the drill. Put your elbow through a car window, open the door, drag the driver out into the street, hop in, and speed away. But it looks like in GTA 6, drivers don't just passively let you gank their whips. In the leaked video, we see Jason struggle with the driver—with the leaker probably having to mash a button—before they can be liberated from their ride.

We noticed the new stamina system in the original leak video, and wrestling with drivers drains Jason's stamina meter—so it probably won't be a great idea to try it if you're fully depleted.

Traffic cameras

Good timing, with all the concern about Flock cameras. As Jason speeds away in the stolen car, there's an icon briefly shown in the middle of the highway: three small connected circles. He passes it, we see the HUD briefly indicate that it saw him, and he immediately enters a red zone and gains two wanted stars.

Gotta be a highway traffic camera identifying the stolen car. As soon as he's out of the red zone, the wanted stars vanish again.

Lojack

When Jason enters the stolen car, we see the gas and engine meters we first noticed in the earlier leak, but there's also a red pin icon. When the player stops the car for a few seconds, the pin begins to blink.

This looks like a vehicle recovery system like Lojack, so possibly if you steal a car with one of these devices and don't keep moving, cops might show up at your location, even if you don't currently have any wanted stars.

Rude business names confirmed

I was starting to think Rockstar has matured. In earlier GTA games it seemed like every business was a rude pun—STD Contractors, Spitroasters Meathouse, BJ's Market, Camel Towing, Gruppe Sechs, etc—but apart from a building in an earlier leak that had the word BALLER on the side, I hadn't seen any rude business names in these leaks. In this latest video, the driver speeds past a number of trucks, billboards, and signs, and they seem mostly restrained: Juice Loose, Mattress Madness, Juicy Joes.

But then I spotted a rental truck company called "Truck-U" and beverage truck for a drink called "Sitzpinkler," slang for someone who sits while peeing. The bus that passes early in the clip is also numbered "420." Same old Rockstar.

It's cool that the little road reflectors actually work

Rockstar gets made fun of for the Red Dead Redemption 2 reactive horse testicles thing, but I'm a sucker for finicky little details. Not specifically horse testicle related details: I am content with the reflectors that make it easier to see lanes at night actually reflecting your headlights in GTA 6. It's a little thing that does a lot to make the freeway driving look believable.

(Although if your local freeways are anything like mine, you might agree that the most believable thing would be for most of the reflectors to be missing for some reason, meaning that during a nighttime downpour half the cars in front of you are straddling lanes. GTA 6's roads might be a little too well-maintained.)

Bloomberg's Jason Schreier reports that some Rockstar employees are feeling "angry" and "frustrated" that, despite submitting to strict security measures following the 2022 hack that revealed Grand Theft Auto 6 to the world—namely the abolishment of remote work—a leak has once again sprung.

Someone going by the name "Cyberleek" has been posting new GTA 6 gameplay clips every day for the past few days. The leaker may even have access to a build of GTA 6, though it's unclear if it's the full game or only a portion.

Meanwhile, the official GTA 6 reveal is still scheduled for next week, and will still air exclusively on Netflix for the first six hours.

It's unlikely that the leaks will have any measurable impact on GTA 6's sales. It's already sold an "unprecedented" number of preorders, according to Take-Two. I doubt the Netflix reveal will be harmed, either: The circulating gameplay clips make it slightly less of an event, but the leaker's low-quality, watermarked videos have only whet my appetite for the proper reveal.

It's easy to find similar sentiments around the internet: "I was a little hyped for GTA 6 but after the leaks I'm even more hyped than ever and can't wait for the extended look," says one poster.

One thing I like about the existence of the leaked footage is that it offers a more realistic view of GTA 6 gameplay than we're likely to see during the highly-polished official reveal. The leaker's clips make the game look impressive, especially the flyover of Vice City, but the footage is the opposite of carefully-staged.

At one point, for example, the leaker momentarily struggles to exit a river, freestyle swimming into a concrete embankment for a few strokes before the walking animation kicks in. I don't know of any game that entirely avoids that kind of minor jank, but it's not something you're going to see on Netflix.

But I'd be frustrated too if my work were being shown off so shoddily, especially after jumping through hoops to satisfy corporate security measures.

Worse, Rockstar recently fired more than 30 employees on the basis that they were discussing work matters in a private Discord channel which they had been using for labor organizing. Whether that was a harsh reaction to a genuine security lapse or "one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry" will be argued in court next month.

There is nothing to connect those ex-employees to this week's leaks, and I can only imagine the nuclear-grade facepalming they've been doing as an anonymous leaker goes wild while they were fired for a private Discord conversation that didn't leak anything.

Which isn't to say that Cyberleek is likely to escape consequence: Rockstar is presently trying to track them down, and has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Discord related to the videos. One perpetrator of the 2022 Rockstar hack is currently in prison awaiting a retrial after being held in a secure hospital since 2023.

In the end, I expect that Cyberleek will determine that the clout and crypto gains were not worth it, but it remains to be seen how good they are at running from Rockstar's figurative black helicopters. (Or maybe literal black helicopters, knowing Rockstar.)

You might think that Grand Theft Auto 6 leaker Cyberleek, who is currently the target of what I'm sure is a five-alarm manhunt now being conducted by Take-Two and Rockstar, might want to step back into the shadows a bit—keep their head down and hope it all blows over, and all that. But no. In fact, they seem to be taking the opposite approach to their newfound notoriety, because they are now selling ads.

A new "contact" tab on the Cyberleek website says the leaker is "raising funds through community support and strategic partnerships." But not through a typical ransom demand, as is sometimes seen in these sorts of things: "Instead, Cyberleek offers premium advertising space and exclusive content opportunities."

From the website: "Sending a Monero payment enables secure contact via Session messenger for deal negotiations. Options include purchasing ad placements (such as video watermarks) or requesting custom-made gameplay footage tailored to specific brands (including sexual content). All pricing, terms, and deliverables are discussed privately over Session."

Credit to Cyberleek for having a pair, I guess, but this seems like a bad idea (for them) from at least a few angles. First, who's going to take them up on the offer? Slapping your product name on the next Grand Theft Auto 6 video leak is the equivalent of painting a shiny red target on your forehead: I am not a lawyer but there is zero doubt in my mind that people who are—and especially those who are the expensive sort of lawyer that Take-Two has on speed dial, in great numbers—could find a multitude of ways to turn that into some sort of accessory culpability. I can't imagine a faster or more effective way to turn your brand untouchably toxic than by connecting it to this gong show.

The price of the program is also astonishing. It costs a "donation" of 400 Monero XMR, which currently converts to, roughly, $164,730. That's right, one hundred sixty-four thousand, seven-hundred thirty dollars. And for that, you get not an ad, but a message from Cyberleek, which is presumably when the ad buy negotiation actually begins.

That really makes the whole thing feel like a lark, but as the saying goes, it's a crazy ol' world. If even one person decides they want to give this a shot, that's a pretty sweet payday.

On top of all that ridiculousness, this is also just a tremendously risky move for Cyberleek. Opening the door to external contact is begging for trouble. Remember when Valve tried to nail the hacker who made off with a pre-release copy by offering him a job? Selling ads is an invitation to exactly that sort of action on the part of Take-Two and/or any number of US law enforcement agencies, and while I'm sure Cyberleek thinks they're too smart to fall for that sort of thing, that's exactly what everyone thinks before they fall for it.

Not that I'm concerned about Cyberleek's welfare here. If anything, I'm fascinated by the sheer brashness of a guy who's going out of his way to rub his stuff in the face of one of the most powerful game publishers in the world, on the eve of its greatest triumph. I just feel compelled to say it as a matter of principle: This is a bad idea. But hey, if Cyberleek ends up getting busted because of it? I'm not gonna lie, it'll be pretty funny, too.

Arc Raiders' upcoming fifth Expedition will be its last for a good while, as developer Embark Studios is going to "pause" them until early 2027 so it can rework the whole thing.

Expeditions in Arc Raiders are a pretty big deal. Functionally, they're similar to prestiging in Call of Duty, giving high-level players a way to reset much of their character's progress in exchange for unique benefits. It's no small undertaking, and the Arc Raiders community hasn't been entirely happy with how it all works, particularly with regard to the grind.

Embark's been fiddling with Expeditions systems pretty much since they began, and following changes to the fourth Expedition announced in June, PC Gamer's Morgan Park predicted that a bigger overhaul was on the way. As usual, he was right on the money,

"We have been carefully reviewing your feedback on Expeditions," Embark wrote in today's update, "and while we've made ongoing improvements along the way, we've come to realize that some of the issues you've raised, like the tight departure windows, the reward structure, and accessibility for new players, need more than incremental fixes. They call for bigger changes.

"In order to address those concerns, we need to pause the Expeditions for a while. The fifth Expedition will be the last one until early 2027, when Expeditions will return with major improvements, tackling some of the biggest player pain points. So, if you’ve been on the fence about departing—now is the time! We will share more details on what those changes will look like in September."

Any consecutive buffs already earned will persist through the pause period so no progress is lost, while any partially completed Caravans will be replaced with Ermal Vouchers of equal value.

Reaction to the pause seems mixed: It's a bit more hostile on X than in the Arc Raiders subreddit, but nowhere is there what I would call a widespread sense of relief that big changes are coming. Instead, many players are taking a wait-and-see approach, acknowledging that Expeditions needs work while still harboring reservations about Embark's ability to actually get it right—a challenge complicated by the fact that some players are quite happy with the system as it is, and don't want it changed. Such is the way of things, alas.

Today's update also lays out the details on the fifth Expedition, including when the window opens (4 am PT/7 am ET on September 8), how to get in, and what you'll get for your troubles.

It's a bountiful weekend for the military FPS: two highly-anticipated military shooters are holding betas for those with a pre-order, and they couldn't be more different. One is, predictably, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, but the other is a new kid on the block: Wardogs, a 100-player milsim that recently surpassed one million wishlists.

The pair are currently the top two sellers on Steam overall. Call of Duty is number one—no surprise—but to see Wardogs, a totally new game from a relatively unknown studio, going toe-to-toe with Activision is surprising. Though its instant popularity won't surprise those who've been following the game: Wardogs has built up a ton of organic buzz throughout 2026 through closed playtest word-of-mouth. I played an alpha build a few weeks back, and honestly, it's something special.

Wardogs beta details

• 17:00 UTC August 21 to 02:00 August 24
• Pre-order access guaranteed
• Steam playtest requests open
• Refundable

Modern Warfare 4 beta details

• Pre-order beta (weekend 1): August 21 to August 25 10 AM PT
• Open beta (weekend 2): August 28 10:00 AM PT to September 1 10 AM PT

Modern Warfare 4, on the other hand, is more of a good thing. This is Infinity Ward's first at-bat since 2022, and I could tell from my first match this morning that the best Call of Duty developers are back. These games really excel at bottling up the aesthetics of reality—meticulous reload animations, ear-piercing thwips, the rattle of empty round casings—into an arcadey format that anyone can pick up. This year's beta also includes a campaign mission, which is fun.

Wardogs seeks to simulate a lot of that reality, too: Time-to-kill is short, headshots are extremely lethal, and reloading sometimes means loading individual bullets into magazines. Maps are gigantic, kilometers-wide regions that require dedicated player pilots to taxi soldiers to warzones. But Wardogs is also an outlier among milsims like Squad, Escape From Tarkov, and Arma for its arcadey concessions aimed at accessibility, like a killcam. Developer Bulkhead is building an on-ramp for folks who play mainstream shooters or battle royales to try something more complex. If you like Battlefield, Wardogs isn't a huge leap.

I'll be trying both this weekend, but if I could only play one, it'd be Wardogs. It's a $40 pre-order to get in, but the devs are encouraging folks to refund it if they don't like the beta. Unfortunately, nobody's been able to play enough to decide for themselves yet—Bulkhead is working through crippling server issues caused by higher-than-expected turnout (over 87,000 people as of writing). I guess I can level up my M4 in Modern Warfare while I wait.

I've been trying to convert Grand Theft Auto 5 into GTA 6 using mods for about a week now, and I've learnt a lot. For instance, most things will die if hit by a car at more than the speed of sound.

But I've also learned this: Los Santos is a lonely city. GTA 6's core is the Bonnie-and-Clyde love story of its protagonists, but Franklin, Michael and Trevor are insular men. They cruise the sun-drenched highways with no one in the passenger seat. I needed to change that. I needed to give them companions. I needed them to be the very best, like no one ever was.

I installed Pokémon Go GTA Edition.

Pokémon Go GTA Edition turns (stay with me) GTA 5 into Pokémon Go. The streets become denuded of people and filled with Geodudes, Charmandi, and Pikachu. Maybe. I never actually saw Pikachu. There was a Squirtle, though.

I'm fairly certain that only Trevor can do the Poke-hunting, or it is possible that some previously installed mod has broken this one. Either way, out he went on Franklin's motorbike, on the prowl for new best friends. In what news reporters might call 'drive-bys' I captured for myself a Geodude and a Squirtle.

But some Pokémon resist friendship. For instance, Charmander, who broke free of my pokeball and began to curse at me in a thick eastern European accent, just like in the anime. The unfortunate truth of the matter is that my encounter with Charmander was not a happy one. We came to blows in the road, and the last I left him he was burbling face-down in the tarmac having taken a powerful yet precise right hook to his snout. Don't worry everyone, he's just fainted.

As the Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks continue to flow, Take-Two Interactive has begun the hunt for the people behind them. A Kotaku report says the GTA publisher has filed subpoenas with Microsoft and Discord, requesting user data and records of accounts that were involved in sharing the leaks.

Take-Two "has submitted a sworn declaration confirming that the purpose for which the DMCA subpoena is sought is to obtain the identity of an alleged infringer or infringers," the filing states.

Both Microsoft and Discord have until September 4 to provide data including "business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft’s internal investigation of the ‘cyberleek’ persona sufficient to identify the user(s)," and on the Discord side, "all identifying information associated with all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s)" connected to the leaks.

Well, it was bound to happen. It's all fun and games until the lawyers show up, as the saying goes, and there was never any question that Take-Two was going to unleash its full range of resources on tracking down the leakers and inflicting whatever punishments our shareholder value-driven society will allow.

Leaking short bits of video from a game we all know is happening might seem like small potatoes compared to all the actual crimes that are happening around us every day, but have no doubt, this is serious. To paraphrase a well-known line from a popular show, you never mess with the money: Nintendo destroyed a man's life because he sold ROMs for the Switch, and it's reasonable to assume Take-Two will be at least that aggressive in protecting GTA 6. It does have a history of that sort of thing, after all.

I think the great likelihood is that Cyberleek's days of anonymity are numbered. PC Gamer editor Tyler Wilde dug up some clues about the leaker's identity shortly after the leaks began, and that's entirely without the weight of an expensive legal team and the US justice system behind him. Given the resources Take-Two can bring to bear, and the seeming brashness of the leaker, I wouldn't be surprised if this one is wrapped up relatively quickly.

For now, though, Cyberleek is still doing their thing. The latest GTA 6 leak landed earlier today, dispelling speculation that the leaker had already been caught and giving us two minutes of a supercar driving through the streets of Vice City. It's extremely impressive visually, but in terms of gameplay, well, it's definitely GTA.

Take-Two's market cap also took a $2.8 billion hit in the wake of the leaks, which sounds like a lot but really isn't: The company's total market cap currently sits around $45 billion, and the share price has bounced back to roughly where it was when all this started.

I roleplay in MMORPGs because I am a big, stinking nerd—I've written about the joy of such activities on this website before. But in case you're uninitiated, here's how it works: You and a group of your mates spend time "in character", roleplaying as one might at your average D&D table. Just swap out a defined ruleset for the background dressing of an MMO, and you get the general jist.

In Final Fantasy 14, I've easily spent several hundred of my 5,000 hours (don't look at me) milling about and telling stories with my friends—as do many others. This is a game bumping at all points with activity, everything from high-stakes plots to cosy cafes and… yes, nightclubs. But that's like its own subculture.

It's been a creative joy. A joy that I will now get to measurably feel self-conscious about, because one curious player has assembled a census specifically for giga-nerd writers like myself. The Crystal RP Census, put together by Reddit user CevicheLemon, is genuinely really fascinating.

It collects the information of over 10,000 roleplayers, painstakingly collated over the period of two months, and then scrambled for anonymity, and the findings are legitimately interesting—but before I put my analysis hat on, here's how basic I am.

My character, a male hyur born in Ul'dah that identifies with Limsa Lominsa more these days due to backstory reasons, is approximately the 2nd (most common) in terms of gender, 4th in terms of race, 11th in terms of origin, and 8th in terms of current faction association. Hey, not bad! I'm sorta kinda unique, maybe!

The most popular backstory for Warriors of Light is, if we smush all this data together, a female miqo'te from Ishgard who hasn't really gone elsewhere. The least popular Warrior of Light is a non-binary lalafell from the long-extinct magical empire of Mhach that's now slumming it with the Omicrons (I omitted the Omicron planet because it would've been impossible for a lalafell to get there).

These pictures aren't actually likely to bare out, though. Behold, my lore knowledge: miqo'te aren't all that common in Ishgard. They do, however, have tribes located all around the place. I'd take a guess that the 21.8% of miqo'te players are scattered all over the place in terms of origin, whereas Ishgard is instead over-represented by the elezen and hyur population.

This is in direct contrast to the Azim Steppe, which, lore-wise, would have to be the origin almost entirely taken up by the next-most popular race, Au Ra.

I'm genuinely fascinated that two people are just roleplaying Omicrons, a basically-extinct robot race from another planet—and that ten characters seem to be invested in them. I have basically never seen anyone doing this and I would like to know who they are so I can needle them with questions about their creations.

Another day has dawned, and the mutual embarrassment of the games industry and gameplaying public continues: The enigmatic Cyberleek has uploaded yet another short video of leaked GTA 6 gameplay, marking the fourth consecutive day of GTA 6 leak releases. And based on their latest threat, the cryptopeddling leaker intends to keep that streak going.

As for what the latest gameplay leak reveals: Well, it looks like Grand Theft Auto. Titled "hypercar.mp4," the video—which we won't be sharing, but can be sought out without much effort—consists of GTA 6 protagonist Jason jacking a high performance sports car and driving at high speeds along Vice City's surrounding highways for roughly two minutes.

The footage is fairly thin on new mechanical revelations: While carjacking, it seems like Jason has the ability to mash a button to more quickly and forcefully pull the driver from the vehicle in exchange for stamina—and, presumably, a higher chance of the crime being noticed. We also see further evidence of the visual ID mechanics present in earlier leaks, as icons appeared to indicate both the stolen vehicle and Jason's appearance were tied to his wanted level once the crime was reported.

Additionally, after escaping the wanted level he accrued with the car theft, we see a reappearance of a blue police awareness indicator as Jason passes a patrol car while speeding through traffic on the opposite side of the highway, reinforcing the sense that the player will more easily draw police attention based on how conspicuous their actions are.

Shortly afterwards, Jason drives through an area that's outlined with a red border on the minimap, immediately gaining a two-star wanted level. It's not clear why, and the wanted level drops as soon as he drives back out of it. We can only speculate, but it's possible the highway passed over some sort of high security area.

Otherwise, the footage isn't particularly remarkable. The driving physics seem like they'd be familiar to anyone who's spent time driving in GTA 5, though it's still not clear how recent of a game build these leaks are being captured from. The most striking thing on display is its demonstration of GTA 6's lighting tech: Throughout the video, the light cast by the hypercar's headlights reflects believably off puddles, roadsigns, and reflective markers, providing impressive contrast and visual texture as the landscape blurs by.

And, as we've come to expect, the video is also a vehicle for Cyberleek's cryptocurrency push, urging viewers to "show support" by buying their bespoke gamer currency. It remains unclear how, exactly, we're meant to believe that buying cryptocurrency empowers the fight for gamers' rights, but you can put whatever text on the internet you want, I suppose.

What is clear is that Cyberleek doesn't intend to stop: The trademark globs of roaming watermark text, URLs, and QR code that have graced each of these leaked videos now features the threat "HIGHER MARKETCAP = MORE LEEKS." While that's in line with the thin anti-corporate veneer that's accompanied Cyberleek's previous works, it's worth noting that Take-Two has actually lost roughly $2.8 billion in market cap this week as its share price has fallen over the last few days. Whatever gets more people looking at your coolguy onion mascot, I guess.

I grew up in a golden age of FPS games. With the likes of Modern Warfare 2, F.E.A.R., Halo: Reach, and Black Ops 2 all releasing back when I had no responsibilities and all the time in the world; I didn't know how good I had it.

Looking back on it now, it's clear to see that we had it so good because, well, excellence breeds excellence. There was no shortage of inspiration for devs to pull on back in the 2000's and early 2010's.

In fact, Halo: Reach's designer Niles Sankey has confirmed this by dropping by to tell fans just how much other releases of the era inspired Reach. "Modern Warfare 1 and 2 were huge influences on Halo Reach's campaign," Sankey says in a social media post. "The tonal execution in those games was (and still is) absolutely brilliant."

That's not to say that Halo at the time had absolutely nothing going for it. "We knew that Halo did some things better (AI combat, vehicles, etc)," Sankey says. "But we also knew the MW games were beating us in other departments."

One area which the Modern Warfare games had Halo beat was in inter-character relationships and, crucially, its ability to tell a gritty and rather depressing story. "Many of the moments in Reach were inspired by the brilliant work of Infinity Ward," Sankey continues. "Including the Nobel team squad interactions, and 'Objective Survive' was spiritually inspired by the Nuke sequence (in Modern Warfare 2). We just tried to push it one step further."

Reach's final Lone Wolf mission and Current Objective: Survive still haunts me. At the time I'd only just gotten over Loose Ends, and now my poor naive young self was faced with another previously implausible situation. I'd never considered the possibility of the character I'd play in a game, someone who was so clearly meant to be the hero, not making it out alive. I was all too familiar with important characters I liked kicking the bucket, but Reach's final objective did, and still does, hit different.

It's weird to say that FromSoftware, a studio previously known for its singleplayer gauntlets (and very good mech series), has made some of the decade's most solid middleweight multiplayer games. But given Elden Ring: Nightreign's success, and the fact that The Duskbloods is shaping up to be pretty solid—boo, Switch 2 exclusive, boo—it's a true statement.

You might be wondering, then, if the undisputed king of gritty singleplayer RPGs where you dodge roll sometimes has gone all live service on us. Not so, says president Hidetaka Miyazaki, the combo of Nightreign and Duskbloods is literally just a coincidence.

Speaking to IGN, Miyazaki says: "It's not necessarily some big reveal saying this is the direction we plan to go in moving forward. We still have a heavy focus on single-player content as well. This is just something that happened to work out the way it did. It's funny, because there was never really any big plan that these two games would both release next to each other."

That's not to say FromSoftware hasn't been enjoying itself, though—Miyazaki seems enthused by the opportunity to break from the formula every once in a while: "Personally, it's very fun to make a multiplayer game like this. It's not something we've done a lot and we're looking forward to seeing players' reactions and getting feedback."

But that enthusiasm doesn't override his love for what FromSoftware is provably good at: Making you throw your controller because goddamn Promised Consort Radahn's lazers keep filling up the goddamn screen and how am I supposed to dodge that, this is bullcrap. Ahem.

"If anything, it's like the more you work on something multiplayer for a long time it scratches that itch only to want to make something single-player again," Miyazaki concludes—which is great news for me, as I'm personally excited to get stuck into whatever the next Elden Ring is. Sekiro 2, maybe? A parry-loving cretin can only hope.

Stealth has changed.

It's no longer about avoidance, visibility, or tension. It's an endless series of "stealth action" games trivializing the uncertainty of sneaking and pushing players into open conflict. The age of camouflage has become the age of tall grass: stealth is no longer treated as a genre worthy of big budgets, but an optional feature of conventional action games. [Takes a long drag from a cigarette] Stealth has changed. And when the player's visibility is under total control… espionage becomes routine.

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was at the vanguard of the stealth action shift in 2008—but playing it today, the particular way it mixes mercurial stealth and heavy weaponry is anything but routine. Snake is outfitted with a tranq pistol, non-lethal CQC training, and the latest OctoCamo sneaking suit, an ingenious invention of espionage that automatically camouflages the user to their surroundings. In his other pocket are enough guns to arm a strike force—SMGs, shotguns, ARs, RPGs, a rail gun—customizable with Create-a-Class attachments.

OId Snake skulks through active battlefields, bewildered by the growing mundanity of war, as Kojima grapples with the undeniable appeal of getting in the shit. This is a stealth game that doesn't mind if you try to play it like Call of Duty, but going loud comes at the cost of stressing Snake the fuck out.

This Master Collection port, sold alone or alongside Peace Walker, is a genuinely thrilling object: proof that MGS4 wasn't a mass hallucination we all had in 2008, but a uniquely strange meditation on existential anxiety—of warmongering doomerism, automation, desensitized violence, and back pain—trapped for 18 years on a PlayStation 3. Konami has done good work here, though at times the bare minimum: you can now play MGS4 at 4K (yay!), but at a locked 60 fps (less yay).

Still, that's a lot better than the extremely unreliable 30 fps it once struggled to maintain, and the Master Collection launcher is less cumbersome now than when Volume 1 arrived on PC in 2023. Guns of the Patriots has gone so ignored for so long that it's hard to split hairs here—this is the new best way to play one of my favorites.

Naked sun

Man does it feel great to see Guns of the Patriots cleaned up. It's a special one for me: MGS4 landed just as I reached the age to enjoy games on a deeper level. It was also my first Metal Gear, which is a little hilarious in hindsight, given how obsessed the story is with its own past.

In 2026 I'm seriously charmed by the 2008-ness of this world: from the fully functional iPod (still intact here, but lacking Konami's official Metal Gear hype podcasts) to Kojima's infatuation with the XM8 and P90 (objectively the coolest guns ever made). Hindsight hasn't done wonders for its meandering plot and sometimes dull cutscenes, but Kojima's vision for a world consumed by greed and accelerated by decision-making AIs is uncomfortably spot-on. More than anything else though, MGS4's long exile has given me a new appreciation for its extremely balanced stealth.

Acts 1 and 2—where MGS4 really flexes its sneaking muscles—are the sort of triumphant stealth sandboxes that are quite rare these days. Maps are focused and linear, but brimming with options. Guards are reactive, consistent, emotive, and learnable. The years have gifted me patience for stillness, and MGS4 is most fun at a snail's pace. Slithering between guards six inches away from their boots camouflaged as a patch of dirt is a bigger thrill than crouching through tall grass in Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, or any modern Assassin's Creed.

I love that Kojima can't help but hand players a box of toys with hidden functions. I'm always picking up three times more gear than I'll ever use, which I've learned is a blessing, because every replay is an opportunity to get fixated on a tool. This time, I finally learned how useful Playboy magazines can be when you're trying to ghost an area. This is also the playthrough in which I remembered that the Mark 2 robot, a drivable drone with a cloak and stun prod, is very useful for covertly retrieving items in risky locations.

Tactical espionage action

Replaying Guns of the Patriots and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory in the same year is highlighting just how bland open worlds have made level design. I love MGS5, but its small Far Cry villages that have to be approachable from all angles are trounced by MGS4's busy battlefields. My favorite is the Act 2 raid on Liquid's mansion, where Snake has to bypass several active warzones either by choosing a side or concealing himself in the chaos.

In my first run through the forest, I crawled up the middle until I found a perfectly Snake-sized crevice in a berm that wrapped around the riskiest sightlines. After that I got caught, shot to death, and tried again, this time finding an alternate route by diving under a shallow river. These areas pack a lot of intentional, almost invisible routes in relatively small spaces, and they're patrolled by nuanced guards that inspire experimentation.

PMC troops can hear you but not see you, or see you but not clearly enough to investigate, or be prompted to investigate, but not be in a hurry about it. Their physical and verbal reactions communicate their alertness without today's explicit "detection meters," and Kojima's lack of restraint means there are like 12 different ways to knock one out. It's hard not to think Snake is the coolest spy in the world once you've gone the extra mile to understand MGS4's extra CQC moves—body slams, chokeholds, stun knife zap, disarms, and of course, holding a guy up at gunpoint, searching him for valuables, then squeezing his nuts until he passes out.

This is true of every Metal Gear, but it's so smart to have an "evasion" phase between "caution" and "alert" where guards frantically search the area expecting to find you. It makes stealth far less binary, and the unpredictability of search patterns in this state is a solid punishment for recklessness.

Movie mode

MGS4's enduring flaw is its second half, where it all-but abandons what it does best. Act 3 is a boring follow mission capped off by the greatest "turret sequence" ever conceived. Act 4 is a walk down memory lane that's more button pressing than sneaking, and Act 5 gets brilliant again, but ends too soon.

This sequel is famous for its long cutscenes, exposition dumps, and inscrutable proper nouns, but honestly, I love all that garbage. I'm the guy who finished MGS4 then returned to the launcher to read the MGS4 Database, a contained wikipedia for all things nanomachine. I have a high tolerance and admiration for Kojima's tastes and always find a lot to like about his characters and dramas, cringe be damned. Like how Meryl hates her dad Roy Campbell because she thought he was her uncle her entire life—forgot that bit until a database deep dive. And that weird hairless monkey that drinks cola and smokes cigs? Betcha didn't know his name is Little Gray, and that he only smokes because Snake made it look cool.

For the first half, MGS4 has a damn-near perfect balance of game and spectacle. Then the game parts get shorter and boring. From then on it only occasionally recovers its pulse with a cool boss fight, "holy shit" cinematic trick that other videogames just never even try, and a memorable finale. There is, weirdly, not enough filler. It's enough to make me wonder if MGS4 was squeezed for time and heavily cut in the same way that Phantom Pain would eventually release without a real ending.

I want more video settings in this PC port, that's for sure, but I appreciate the goodies that this Master Collection could've gotten away with skipping, like a digital art book, manual scan, and that sweet database app.

I also clocked some small touches that confirm Konami didn't just boost the resolution and call it a day: There's a late-game moment where you need to shake the PS3 controller that could've been replaced by a generic controller glyph, but instead it recognized I was on a Steam Deck and showed custom art for the machine. And the Codec call where Otacon jokes about putting in "disc two?" He now has new lines about being on the "PC platform, a digital title!" Nice one, Konami.

This game rocks. It's not a bulletproof recommendation given the slog of a back half, but in exchange you get some of the strongest stealth encounters in videogames and Kojima's signature goofy, genuine storytelling with all the glitz that a PS3 could muster (and, blessedly, none of the slowdown). There's still nothing like it 18 years later, and now I can easily revisit it whenever I want.

We've pulled lots of interesting little details out of the purported Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay clips being posted by "Cyberleek" this week. In the first couple we saw a possible morality system and stamina meter, and in the next two we got a better look at combat and spied some other Red Dead Redemption 2-like features.

My takeaway was that Grand Theft Auto 6 won't necessarily be a revolutionary new kind of game, but will be impressive for the same reason Rockstar games typically are: The absurd amount of effort and money the studio puts into making them as big and detailed as the mainstream hardware of the day can manage.

After seeing the latest leaked clip, which shows a biplane surveying the fictional state of Leonida and cruising over Vice City, my perspective hasn't really changed, but I'm definitely a lot more wowed than I was after seeing a bit of typical GTA carjacking.

The city, which is only a portion of GTA 6's full map, looks enormous from the air, and densely packed with detail. Across a couple minutes of video, we see what looks like a military base, small farms, dozens of mid- and high-rise apartments and office buildings, an arena, a construction site, grimier looking commercial districts, a huge marina and waterways running through the city, bridges, and tangled freeway interchanges. Phew.

Similar reactions are being shared in the Gaming Leaks and Rumors subreddit: "Yea this is the first clip out of all of these leaks that actually made me go 'holy shit,'" said one commenter.

The legitimacy of the footage is still an open question, but like the other videos, it is highly believable. It could be from an old or limited build of the game, but it does appear that the leaker is capturing the clips themselves: they concluded this latest clip with a video in which they write "LEEK" on a wall with bullet holes.

If you've been following this week's GTA 6 leaks saga, how are you feeling about the footage? (Of course, none of it changes the frustrating issue that Rockstar has not yet announced a PC release date. I'd like to see how it looks on one of our hardware team's test rigs.)

The US Army's 3rd Infantry Division has confirmed that it is indeed offering a four-day pass in November to soldiers who reenlist for at least two years, so they can play Grand Theft Auto 6 when it comes out.

The "Special Reenlistment Incentive" memo is dated July 28, and came to light via the US Army WTF! Moments account on Instagram. It states, quite explicitly, that "any soldier who signs a reenlistment contract between 1 August 2026 and 14 November 2026 will be authorized for a special four day pass. This special pass is specifically designated to coincide with the highly anticipated release of the videogame Grand Theft Auto 6."

As a lifelong civilian, that struck me as odd. I know the military has sometimes struggled to meet recruitment goals (although apparently it's doing pretty well these days, perhaps or perhaps not the sort of thing that happens when people can't afford groceries anymore), but would the Army really leverage GTA to convince its people to stick around for a few more years?

Well, yes. "The idea was to have a unique incentives program that connects to what soldiers are interested in," Lt. Col. Angel Tomko told me. "The command team, in conjunction with the career counselor, wanted to get soldiers excited to reenlist. The command team thinks eligible soldiers are more aware that they are in their window for reenlistment and engage their leadership and the career counselor earlier to see available opportunities.

"The battalion has a new career counselor who approached unit leadership with an idea for an updated creative incentives program to reach FY27 reenlistment goals. Eligible soldiers must reenlist for a minimum of two years, up to six years."

Tomko said the GTA 6 offer is not Army-wide, but rather a program unique to the 3rd Infantry Division, of which the 9th Brigade Engineer Battalion is a part. It also seems to be quite successful: Tomko said there are 130 soldiers in the battalion who are eligible for the incentive and so far 20 have chosen it.

And apparently, this is novel but not unusual. "Reenlistment incentives are routine for the US Army to reward our soldiers," Tomko said. "We want to retain the best talent and it’s a credit to the creativity of the career counselor within the organization to develop this unique opportunity surrounding the launch of this popular videogame."

Based on reactions to the report on social media, it's fair to say that some find the idea of using a popular videogame to keep the ranks filled a bit distasteful. And fairly so: Four days in exchange for two years (or more) hardly seems a good deal, especially during a time of what often feels like aimless American adventurism.

And it can feel downright predatory when taken in the context of, for example, this ABC report on military recruitment, which throws a disheartening light on the imbalance between high school kids with few opportunities and a massive, savvy organization who knows how to target them: "Among the recruits and prospective recruits interviewed, only two said they knew what a secretary of defense is, and neither could identify who currently holds the position."

At the same time, it's likely that at least some of those 20 who took advantage of the offer were planning to reenlist anyway, and are just opting for the GTA 6 pass because, hey, why not? More to the point, unlike the new recruits interviewed in that ABC report, soldiers eligible for the offer are already in the Army: They may not know who the secretary of defense is either, but they are at least hip to what's in store.

Regardless of the reactions elsewhere, Tomko said the response to the incentive program among soldiers has been extremely positive.

"The heightened interest in the press does not change the purpose of the program: to reward dedicated soldiers for service to their nation," Tomko explained. "Every soldier who is eligible for this program is already serving, already trained, and already fully qualified. Reenlistment incentives are a longstanding part of Army retention, and units often tailor them to their formations in ways that build morale and spark early conversations about career options.

"Soldiers who reenlist often have multiple incentive options depending on their Military Occupational Specialty, service needs, and eligibility, and range from time off, to money or duty location of choice. This specific incentive is for all soldiers in 9th Engineer Battalion and is an administrative bonus layered on top of standard reenlistment incentives."

The US military has a history of using videogames as part of its recruitment efforts. The America's Army shooter series debuted in 2002, almost 25 years ago—perhaps not coincidentally, just months after the start of what's now referred to as the Global War on Terrorism. In 2018 the Army launched its own esports team, which operates as part of its "Marketing and Engagement Brigade based at Fort Knox," and in 2020 it began a Twitch channel for game streams. That endeavor had a rough start, but the Army's esports org remains active, and continues to stream.

You can't regularly queue up for combat until October, but a series of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 betas are a chance to try one upcoming campaign mission and several multiplayer maps before launch. Trying to decipher what happens when and how to register is super convoluted, so here's an info drop on the MW4 beta dates and what you'll need to get started.

Call of Duty MW4 beta dates

You've got two options for jumping into the MW4 beta: If you pre-order the game you can participate in the first round (early access beta), or you can wait and play for free in the second (open beta).

Call of Duty MW4 beta codes and registration

Some players need a MW4 beta code to participate in the early access weekend starting on August 21, but it all depends on how you've pre-ordered. The second period on August 28 doesn't require a purchase; it's open to anyone on Steam, Battle.net, or consoles.

The MW4 open beta weekend on August 28 does not require a pre-order or beta code to participate. Anyone can download the open beta build on any platform.

MW4 beta modes, maps, and more

The maps and modes available in both beta weekends

Most maps and modes are available in both MW4 betas, but features like Combat Outpost aren't available until the second weekend. A couple of maps are also limited to just one weekend, so I've put together those key differences in a table for reference

MW4 beta rewards

MW4 beta pre-loading

On August 18, an unidentified person or group going by the name "Cyberleek" began sharing what appeared to be Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay clips on the internet.

The internet was naturally skeptical, but the footage was hard to fault: It looked authentic, showing mundane GTA 6 gameplay featuring its male protagonist, Jason. In one clip the player shot a basketball outside of the same house we've seen in the trailers, and in another he did some typical GTA random-civilian-murdering.

A day later, Cyberleek dropped two more videos, both of which also looked legit. At the same time, the clips were being stricken from social media on copyright grounds—the only public response from Take-Two and Rockstar so far.

The fifth video Cyberleek released ended with a twist: the player writing the word "LEEK" into the side of a building with bullet holes. These are not, it turns out, clips taken by GTA 6 testers and found on an unsecured server, as many assumed. Cyberleek has (or had) access to a build of GTA 6, or a portion of it.

Here's what we know about the leaker who goes by Cyberleek.

The GTA 6 build they are using may not be complete, but is probably recent

We don't know exactly how Cyberleek is getting their clips. The footage of them shooting "LEEK" into a wall indicates they have or had access to a playable build, but it is not necessarily the full game. It's notable that GTA 6's other protagonist, Lucia, has not shown up in the clips.

It does seem that these clips are from a relatively recent build, however. In one of the clips, the in-game radio is playing "Sports Car" by Tate McRae, which released in January 2025.

They've got a manifesto

Cyberleek has made common consumer rights complaints their justification for the leaks: "Publishers sell licenses and call them purchases. They ship unfinished games and call them living services. They lock content on discs and call it DLC. They kill games and keep the money. Every year anti-consumerism tightens its grip, and every year gamers get less for what they pay."

Their demands for game publishers are a little odd

At a glance, Cyberleek's complaints seem typical, but two of the three demands they've put forward strike me as slightly strange choices.

The demands are: no more digital preorders, no more selling DLC already contained in the base game files, and mandatory "offline fallback states" for the singleplayer components of games.

The third demand is the most expected, and is similar though not identical to the demand of the Stop Killing Games movement (which has disavowed the leaker).

The other two, however, don't seem like the kind of core issues most people would choose if they were putting forward their three biggest gripes about the games industry in 2026.

On-disc DLC—where add-on content is included in the base game's files, but inaccessible without paying extra—was a big controversy around 10-15 years ago, but is much less relevant in today's mostly discless world.

The complaint that preorders don't really mean anything when you're not preordering an actual physical disc is also valid, but seems like a roundabout way to complain about the heart of the issue: The end of physical media, which has been a hot button topic following Sony's announcement that it will cease disc production.

I'm not sure you can rally a movement behind ending digital preorder bonuses and preloading: GTA 6 itself has already enjoyed an "unprecedented" number of preorders. You can definitely rally a movement behind seeing more GTA 6 leaks, though.

They're selling a crypto token

The leaker is promoting the $Cyberleek token alongside the leaks—the market cap is $1.1M at the time of writing—and claims that the funds will go toward "a secret project."

For now, the tokens are being used to vote in polls that determine the next clip to be released. The most recent clip, a flyover of Vice City, was the winner of a vote.

The timing of the leaks could suggest a European origin

The leaks have been dropping at around 9 am my time, in California, except for the most recent one which was posted in the vicinity of 2:30 am Pacific.

There's a good chance that Cyberleek does not keep a typical sleep schedule, so this speculation is a bit tenuous, but the timing could point to Europe. For someone nine hours ahead of me, the leaks would be dropping late morning or late afternoon, which seem like respectable hours for leaking videogame footage.

The reference to "living service" games in the manifesto may also point to someone who speaks English as a second language or is using machine translation, unless it was just a creative turn of phrase.

Some are pointing to old posts on a German cybersecurity forum

2018 posts from the user "Cyberleek" on German-language forum szenebox.org, which includes cybersecurity-related boards, as well as other archived internet evidence, suggest that the leaker could be a German or Swiss individual in their 30s. A detailed breakdown of that evidence can be found on this Github page created by software developer Zyre.

The leaker's website and two of its mirrors are also hosted by a German provider.

A little more speculation

Based on the above, I would wager that Cyberleek is not a Rockstar employee or contractor, and that their manifesto was written after they acquired the GTA 6 build or footage as a post-facto justification and framework for the $Cyberleek token.

The complaint about on-disc DLC sticks out to me as a suggestion that this isn't a teenager, but someone who was active in gaming discourse a decade ago.

Cyberleek could face serious repercussions if caught. The hacker responsible for the massive 2022 data dump that first revealed GTA 6 to the world certainly has, and the crypto token adds another vector by which authorities may track Cyberleek down.

That fact hasn't slowed them down: So far they've released six videos, and while fans are obviously excited to pore over the gameplay details, there's some concern that the leaker will resort to posting story spoilers if attention wanes.

Rockstar's official GTA 6 gameplay reveal is still scheduled for Thursday, August 27.

Six months after laying off approximately 80 developers because "overall momentum hasn't reached the level needed to support a team of this size long term," Riot Games has announced that it is ending development of its fighting game 2XKO. Servers for online play will remain available and the game is also playable offline, but "active development will conclude at the end of 2026."

"Over the last few months, we've been monitoring 2XKO's trajectory closely, and what we've seen is painting a clear, consistent picture: while a lot of you jumped in to try the game and there's an incredible community that plays every day, we haven't seen enough players stick with the game to get to a path toward sustainability," Riot wrote in today's update.

New content will continue to flow through the remainder of the year, including two new fighters, along with new bug fixes and "feature improvements" leading to a final bug fix patch in December. All fighters are being unlocked, and any money spent on the game "on or before August 20"—that's today—will be refunded.

PC Gamer's fighting game pro Mollie Taylor wrote in February, shortly after the layoffs, that she didn't understand what Riot wanted from 2XKO, a question today's end-of-development post tries to answer. The short version is that it wanted "to build a game that the fighting game community would love to play with their friends," addressing what it saw as shortcomings on both the technical and business fronts—and while the studio saw evidence of success, "it just wasn't happening enough. Even within the genre, diehard tag fighter players loved 2XKO, but most other fighting game players struggled to find reasons to stick with the game."

The bottom line is that while Riot's efforts through the first half of 2026 were well received, "we saw no meaningful, sustained change in 2XKO's trajectory; only a fraction of what it would take to trend toward sustainability." Thus, the plug is pulled.

A League of Legends fighting game might seem like an obvious idea, but it was something of a bold gambit. It was built to be a 2v2 "assist fighter" game right out of the box, and Riot poured years of work (and money) into getting it right: Speculation that it was working on a fighting game goes back to at least 2017, but it wasn't officially confirmed until 2019.

Two years and many iterations later, it finally got the 2XKO title, and went into full release in January 2026. 2XKO isn't on Steam so we don't have access to player numbers, but the dramatic reduction in the team size just a few weeks after release indicated that they were not up to Riot's expectations. The studio said in February that it was still "fully committed" to the game, but now it's seen enough.

The untimely end of 2XKO sucks, but Riot is at least trying to give players a soft landing: Today's announcement includes a roadmap for the remaining updates, and Riot said it's "figuring out what more we can do for players, TOs, competitors, and creators that have consistently shown up for the FGC through 2X."

Valve honcho Gabe Newell recorded a video to kick off The International 2026, the latest edition of Valve's annual Dota 2 championship tournament, and as noticed by GamesRadar, the reaction to it is pleasingly wholesome.

Plenty of esports fans are thrilled to see the return of one of the world's premiere tourneys, naturally, but in this case it's not just the excitement of elite competition that has everyone would up: An awful lot of folks seem to be more impressed by how good Gabe is looking these days.

Newell's video message was pretty standard fare for this sort of thing: Reminiscing about past Internationals, gazing into the future, and thanking the fans, players, and host city of Shanghai for making it all possible. But the reaction?

Well, this is the internet, after all.

"I’m so happy he lost all that weight," redditor TheMilkman1811 wrote in response to Newell's "Chad Gabe" look. "Probably bought another 10 to 15 years of life with us."

"Right? I'm just happy he looks healthy! More time among us," another replied. A third cut more directly to the point, referring to the Valve founder as "Babe Newell."

The cause of Newell's new svelte style came up for debate: Some believe his life-on-a-yacht lifestyle is the reason, others surmise it's medical intervention; redditor rice_goblin theorized that "he's slowly absorbing australian genes through osmosis due to living in new zealand for so long."

That theory is surprisingly popular, at least to the extent that people think (perhaps not entirely seriously) that Newell is becoming genetically Australian: No fewer than six redditors, and possibly more by the time you read this, say he's looking like Hugh Jackman (or, in one case, "Hugh Jackman's cool dad," although Jackman is only six years younger than Newell.)

Similar sentiments are being expressed in comments on YouTube, where pochix2 wrote, "Live long enough to see Lord Gaben turn to Russell Crowe, while real Russell Crowe becomes Gabe." But again, others are just happy to see Newell doing so well: "Lord Gaben is getting healthier, love to see it," NighthawK1911 wrote. "He looks slimmer than last year's announcement video."

Newell's lighter look is clearly a surprise for some Dota 2 fans, but the transformation has been underway for a while. He was, putting it gently, not a small man back in the potato phone days of 2022, but he's shed a lot of that poundage in more recent years—he was looking comparatively trim in his International 2025 appearance, although even there I don't think he looked quite as lean as he does here. And yeah, let's just put it out there, trimming the beard and getting a proper haircut sure didn't hurt either.

It is, admittedly, a bit weird to see this kind of adoration for a distant billionaire, especially given that the whole billionaire class isn't held in very high esteem these days (and rightly so). But Newell is somewhat unusual in that regard: He did something cool and lucrative, didn't sell it to the highest bidder at the first opportunity, and then quietly took his money and toddled off to the other side of the world to indulge a relatively harmless rich-guy passion. As billionaire outcomes go, that's not a bad one.

After closing out last year's Gamescom Opening Night Live with the surprise reveal of Black Myth: Zhong Kui, developer Game Science strongly implied there'd be a long wait before we'd see more of its follow-up to the global breakout success of Black Myth: Wukong—a success that was, nonetheless, dogged by the controversy surrounding its studio's sexist history.

Just under a year later, it turns out that wait wasn't so long after all. Earlier today, Game Science released a 15-minute gameplay trailer for Black Myth: Zhong Kui, providing our first look at its player character, how he fights, and what tapestry of foes inspired by Chinese mythology and folklore he'll face.

Embedded above, the trailer follows our hero: a dishevelled adventuring swordsman, whose dishevelled adventuring swordsman business sees him interrupting a wizened old man just as he's preparing to take a choice bite of chicken thigh. The two become companions across a montage of sipping creature barnacles, kicking logs, dropping torches into mysterious holes that spew geysers of paper talismans, and building rafts that are soon destroyed in a confrontation with a biblical-scale tidal wave.

As is often the case in a videogame, the wave deposits the pair on a beach where action happens. The second Black Myth is once again dabbling in a pseudo-soulslike combat space, with deliberate and committed attack animations, deflections, and parries. But compared with Wukong, there's a satisfying economy of motion and sense of confidence in the player character's movement: His dodges aren't always dramatic rolls or sidesteps; often, he simply turns aside just enough to let an incoming blow miss by narrow inches.

In combination with some of the more elaborate twirls and emphatic thrusts of his swordplay, it gives his martial artistry a striking affect—even if there's a bit of transitional ricketiness around the edges of the animations. But considering the four years that passed between Wukong's first gameplay footage and its 2024 launch, Game Science likely has plenty of time to tighten up some of that awkwardness.

The video gives an impression of the more unconventional options in the player's combat toolkit. When faced with a cluster of creatures emerging from an oily swamp, he flings a firebomb that ignites the enemies and their surroundings. Content to let the fire sort the creatures out, he uses the opportunity to magically channel the fire he'd just made into his sword, apparently imbuing it with temporary fire damage in his next fight.

Later, he charges his sword with lightning. He summons a spirit to fight alongside him—a hulking (tiger?) man with a massive curved sword who'll fight on his own, but who the player character can also project himself into and control directly.

Also, there's a boss fight against an oyster man. It doesn't go well for him, on account of the aforementioned sword and spirit stuff.

The trailer closes with another montage of fantastical scenes: The protagonist brushes shoulders with glowing mushroom men, buries some kind of demon alive with a shovel, gets an impressive faceful of makeup, and plays music with the coolest trio of skeletons I've ever seen. What's unclear, however, is whether or not the player character is Zhong Kui, the titular ghost-slaying Taoist deity who appeared in the reveal trailer and is once again seen riding his tiger mount at the very end of the latest showing.

That's information we'll likely still be waiting on for quite some time. According to Game Science, Black Myth: Zhong Kui "is still in early development."

Ahead of The Duskbloods' network test next week, veteran Soulsborne YouTubers VaatiVidya and Oroboro have uploaded long gameplay videos and explainers for the Switch 2 exclusive PvPvE game, while IGN and Automaton have published new interviews with project lead and Soulsborne commander-in-chief, Hidetaka Miyazaki.

As a veteran Souls sicko, here are my biggest takeaways from the footage and conversations around the game, which we'll surely get on PC eventually, right?

It's structured like Nightreign

Instanced, run-based gameplay. A timer ticking down as the difficulty/stakes increase. Characters with set fantasies/abilities (maybe even equipment?). While the objectives and specifics may differ, Duskbloods' overall structure feels like an evolution of Nightreign's. Out of the gate, though, Duskbloods will have three maps⁠—one more than Nightreign even after its Deathly Forsaken Hollows DLC.

It's more PvP-focused than Nightreign, but has options for PvE-likers

Rather than hunting down your fellow players like in Tarkov or Marathon, a Duskbloods match sees you trying to complete more PvE objectives than the other players in your lobby. Objective completion raises your "Virtue" score, and the high scorers at the end of each timed round survive to the next. It looks like there are PvP map events and optional objectives, and the default final battle is a PvP slugfest between the players who made it to the end.

Vaati mentioned, though, that there's an unlockable option to make the final battle a co-op PvE boss instead, more akin to Nightreign's Nightlords. On the opposite end, there's an item to heighten the PvP focus, giving you Virtue for hunting down and killing another player in the lobby.

The Bloodborne (and Souls) of it all

It wouldn't be FromSoft if we didn't see returning motifs and designs in a new context. It's been part of the conversation from the beginning, but Duskbloods really does look like a Bloodborne sequel:

• Those hooded ogre guys sure do look like the Church Giants from Bloodborne.
• The map shown in the preview screams Yharnam, particularly the scenic view of the clock tower.
• There's a cathedral roof boss whose arena bears a striking resemblance to the Dark Souls Gargoyles or Bloodborne's Martyr Logarius.
• I spy Elden Ring/Bloodborne whirly saw weapons.
• There's a cathedral interior straight out of Upper Cathedral Ward.
• Gotta have a fight in a field of white flowers.

Shadow of the Erdtree vertical design is the future

Rather than the sprawl of Elden Ring's Limgrave/Limveld, Duskbloods' one revealed map has the breathtaking vertical density of the Land of Shadow from SotE, or Nightreign's Great Hollow. The former is, I think, the best level design we've yet seen out of FromSoftware. The latter, unfortunately, is a great zone let down by Nightreign's frantic time restrictions. We'll see soon how well this style of level design fits The Duskbloods.

What about sustain and follow-through? What about singleplayer? What about PC?

FromSoft has a poor track record of support and balance for its multiplayer. This has been less of an issue⁠—or at least, easier for me to forgive⁠—when this multiplayer is supplemented to some of the best singleplayer action-RPGs in the industry. But less so with, say, Nightreign feeling like a dead game just over a year after launch.

I once again find myself hoping, praying, crying, pissing, and shitting for the next Big Thing, Complete Package from FromSoft, be it an Elden Ring sequel, Armored Core expansion, or secret third thing. Surely there's something closer to completion than not that we can see soon?

And, of course, the Switch 2 elephant in the room: Whatever Nintendo offered to sweeten the pot, this game would find its truest home on PC. I hope we see that version soon, rather than Duskbloods imitating Bloodborne in the worst way possible. Whatever comes next, stay tuned for our coverage of Duskbloods' upcoming network test.

You ever think about how weird cars are, as a concept? It's like sharing public space with enormous bullets piloted by random members of the public. If our car-centric urban world did not exist and you tried to pitch it, whole-cloth, you'd probably be laughed out of the room. You want to give people their own ballistic missiles, are you mad?

This is what I thought as I pulled the trigger on a pump-action shotgun and sent a mid-size family sedan careening into the side of a police helicopter.

Today's GTA 5 mod—installed in an attempt to either turn the game into a PC version of GTA 6 or break it entirely—is Vehicle Cannon, which turns whatever gun you are wielding into a horrible nozzle of limitless automobiles. In place of bullets, guns now emit vehicles at speed, bringing great devastation to the land and possibly crashing your PC.

Combined with a mod menu that I forget the provenance of, which lets me float from location to location like a militarised Christmas spirit, it makes you, more or less, god. There's probably a part in the Bible where god shoots cars at people. I don't know.

I'll be honest, I'm still working on justifying how this will make GTA 5 more like GTA 6.

But you gotta give me this: it's very fun. The unparalleled chaos of launching a freeway's-worth of cars into the streets of Los Santos is tremendous. It also makes you something like a single-person artillery unit wreaking havoc on your foes at great distance. It makes me a little nostalgic for the days when Rockstar leant deeper into the potential for havoc that its open worlds embodied. Alas, now its protagonists are all egos and emotions.

The great Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks continued today with a new video from Leek, and this one is particularly impressive, and damaging, because now it looks like the leaker really does have access to a playable build of the game.

The bulk of the video shows a blue and yellow biplane flying over Vice City, and even as someone who's not a GTA fan I have to agree with posters on Reddit that it looks very impressive: Massive, detailed, and almost shockingly realistic.

Cars can be seen moving on the streets and freeways below, even at great distances; you can't judge too much from a relatively low-resolution video posted on social media, but it looks smooth and steady, and there's virtually no discernable texture pop.

There's also a few seconds spent with the in-game radio, a vital part of any GTA experience. I was a little disappointed that V-Rock got passed over (you never say "no" to Stevie Nicks) but there looks to be a nice variety of tunes on tap, as you'd expect.

The kicker, though, comes at the end. Having exited his plane, our hero Jason takes a rifle and shoots the word "LEEK" into a wall. This is meaningful: While previous clips could have come from someone flipping off an NDA from a Rockstar presentation—possibly from the upcoming Netflix showcase, although most of the clips look like unedited randomness and not the sort of thing you'd use to show off your game on national television—this bit of shooting is far too bespoke for anything but actions specifically taken by the leaker.

It's not absolute confirmation that Leek has a playable build of GTA 6. It's possible they used generative AI to create the sequence and then appended it to the flyover segment—some have speculated that some or all of the leaked clips have been AI generated, although the speed with which they've been struck down pretty strongly suggests they're legit.

That makes it very likely that Leek really does have a playable GTA 6 build on his hands, or at least had access to one at some point. And if that's the case, with three months left before GTA 6 debuts on consoles, Rockstar and Take-Two have serious headaches on their hands.

Last week, Pocketpair head of publishing and communications John "Bucky" Buckley addressed a bubbling conversation about the developer's Palworld collaboration strategy, informing players that they "simply do not realize the sheer number of collabs we’ve rejected or scrapped" over a perceived mismatch.

That exchange with the Palworld fanbase seems to have gotten the attention of No Man's Sky developer Hello Games, intensifying a flirtatious game of crossover footsie that's been ongoing between the two studios' public figureheads for months.

After noticing the discourse, Hello Games founder Sean Murray quoted a post discussing the issue to tag the Pocketpair comms head with an emphatic "Bro @Bucky_cm bro @Bucky_cm brooooooooooo ❤️."

It's the most Murray has acknowledged a will-they-won't-they romance arc that's gone on for over a year. While the two had previously been friendly on the platform, Buckley has repeatedly indicated Pocketpair's interest in a No Man's Sky collaboration on X after Murray professed adoration for the announcement of Palworld's Terraria crossover content in June 2025. In response to Murray's heart-eyes emoji, Buckley posted an all-caps "SEAN!"—which I think we can all agree was, at the very least, emotionally charged.

The tension simmered until April 2026, when the flirtation became more explicit. After Murray offered cryptic hints that No Man's Sky's was joining Palworld in the ranks of Pokémon-likes with its then-upcoming creature battling update, Buckley replied to urge the Hello Games head to "email me, my man," as "it seems there could be a FUN COLLAB IDEA."

As far as the X-going public can tell, that overture went unacknowledged. When Murray posted the full reveal for No Man's Sky's Xeno Arena update later that morning, Buckley put on a brave face. By which I mean he deployed another all-caps "S E A N" and posted a picture of that one silly prehistoric fish that looks so surprised.

While Hello Games would continue to celebrate Palworld's 1.0 release date announcement in June and its successful launch in July, Pocketpair's collab advances would remain unrequited—until the "bro's" Murray deployed earlier this week.

Since then, things have—impossibly—gotten cornier.

Replying to that long-awaited acknowledgment, Buckley quoted lyrics from Eminem's Stan, a song about an adoring fan who becomes progressively more unhinged, to say, "Dear @NoMansSky, I wrote you, but you still ain't callin'... I left my cell, my pager, and my home phone at the bottom… I sent two letters back in autumn, you must not've got 'em."

Murray continued in kind, quoting the song's closing lyrics: "Come to think about it, his name was… it was you," he posted. "Damn…"

Even if it's easy to imagine a fitting collaboration between the two games—a few Palworld-themed cosmetics or decorations in No Man's Sky, some No Man's Sky creatures in a collab-themed Palworld dungeon—I think I speak for all of us when I say: Get a room. Just let us know when you finally pull the trigger.

In case you were wondering what Kintsugiyama's upcoming open world survival multiplayer game was all about, Jeff Kaplan has sat down and gone through 213 rapid-fire questions via an interview with MinnMax and boy, do I know a lot about cowboys in California now.

For those who don't know The Legend of California is Kaplan's next big game, set in gold-rush-era California (1849-ish). It's an open world survival game (not really a sim, to be clear) which is also definitely "not an MMO" but is "definitely an FPS". So that should clear it up.

It's an open sandbox world where you can do whatever you think a cowboy should be doing, whether that be trading with fellow players, fishing, mining, riding around on your horse, becoming an unofficial sheriff, or just tinkering around with your ranch, which you can set up anywhere and then build on.

There'll also be private servers, and "yes you can customise your server to be PvE only," according to Kaplan. Which is helpful, because it sounds like anything goes on the 100-player public servers. Players can kill each other or their horses, so no one's safe. The only exception to the violence seems to be buildings: "Players cannot destroy each others' stuff, unfortunately." Kaplan says unfortunately because, as he keenly reminds everyone, "I'm a Rust player so I like destroying other people's stuff."

To keep things fresh "server resets are going to happen every month," Kaplan explains. "California retains its shape, but the points of interest that we call 'strongholds', they move around. Company and ranch progress resets, and your gear resets, but any unlocks are persistent."

As for things that Kaplan wishes were in The Legend of California, there's a long list. Apparently, holiday events, pets, and horse breeding are all on the table for future patches. Toys to life (think Spyro and friends) are even on the table, there's just one small hitch: "I would love that but we're cheap and poor, so not at launch."

It sounds like there'll be plenty of time for all these wonderful features to make their way into the game, as Kaplan believes "we could make this game to infinity, this is the dream game." But again there's a catch: "We will be supporting the game with live updates, but live service has a bad connotation so I'll act like it's not live service for now." It's not like any of this is pressing news, though. The Legend of California apparently has "at least two more alphas" until it's ready for early access, and there's no indication of exactly how long that'll take.

The new Festival Playlist update is well underway with the Horizon Mascot Party in Forza Horizon 6, and as with the usual weekly updates, we've got a new photo challenge. This one involves finding Mascot City's Tokyo City Dango area and it'll give you both the Dango Outfit, plus progress towards the Summer Season, inching you closer to the Exomotive Exocet Sport and the Datsun 2000 Roadster.

Forza Horizon 6 Mascot City's Tokyo City Dango area location

This week's photo challenge is super easy, you just need to head to the giant stadium in the south of the Shimanoyama region, on the west side of the map. This stadium is marked as the Horizon Mascot Party location, though it's somewhat confusing that the instructions direct us to Tokyo City, when it's not in that region at all.

Once you arrive, park anywhere inside, and follow these instructions to get your driver out of their car:

1. Press up on the D-pad to activate photo mode when your car is stationary
2. Press Y for effects
3. Scroll down to character
4. Cycle along until they appear outside your car
5. Press Y to close the effects menu
6. Take your snap

This will earn you the Dango Outfit plus some progress towards those special Summer Season cars. Make sure to also complete the new collectible and weekly challenge if you want to maximise your point gains.

Good news everyone: we've got even more Silent Hill: Townfall to help fill the void until its release. But instead of a short story or teaser trailer, we have 18 minutes of poor old Simon Ordell wandering around the abandoned (and increasingly hostile) town of St. Amelia.

It's the first extended cut of playthrough we've seen for Townfall, and it did not disappoint. The vibes, setting, and grotesque monsters all seem on point for a Silent Hill game, with the small exception of the game's firearms.

I don't think Simon's handling of the revolver was particularly disastrous. But after enjoying Silent Hill f, which had no guns, seeing Simon execute monsters in seconds reminded me why I prefer good old-fashioned melee fights.

I like suffering in Silent Hill games. I like being pushed to my limits, being put in almost impossible situations, and having to get up close and personal with the disgusting things I find wandering around in the fog. While there are never usually a lot of guns to be found, I still think they give players an easy way out of combat that can ruin the tension and fear from being constantly on the backfoot.

I can only think of one horror game that manages to stay terrifying while also giving its protagonist access to a gun—Amnesia: The Bunker—and even then I felt infinitely more confident when I managed to scrounge up more ammo. That doesn't mean games can't still be stressful. There's few things worse than firing at an enemy which is getting closer, only to run out of bullets before you manage to down it, but it's a different kind of fear, one that I'm more used to seeing in series like Resident Evil rather than Silent Hill.

It'll also be interesting to see how Simon gets his hands on firearms in Townfall. While the game is set a year before the handgun ban, St. Amelia is still just a small town in Scotland, there won't just be a guns lying around in a random appartments—this isn't the U.S. Hopefully, there'll only be minimal firearms and more melee combat and stealth for players to torment themselves with.

Guns aside, the rest of the trailer looked very good. I try to not get my hopes up too high before I've played a game, but I am truly morbidly excited to explore the town of St. Amelia, especially after seeing its blood red fog and strangely nostalgic streets.

The developers at Guerilla Games are making a last-minute pivot for their live service co-op game set in the Horizon universe after receiving negative player feedback during recent playtests, Bloomberg reports.

Horizon Hunters Gathering was supposed to be a live service co-op action game where you group up as a team of animated heroes and fight mechanical beasts. Players reacted poorly to it over the three playtests earlier this year—one of which had to compete with Marathon's server slam weekend that was going on at the same time.

Instead of pulling the plug on it, like Sony has done to several live service games, it gave the studio several months to reboot it into a regular co-op game with a story and a smaller scope. According to Bloomberg's sources, Sony told the team earlier today that it will need to impress executives with their next milestone in December.

If it fails to wow anyone by then, Horizon Hunters Gathering might join the graveyard of canceled live service Sony games. The company has been on a streak of canning in-development live service projects in the last few years: Popular franchises like God of War, The Last of Us, and Spider-Man had their live service spinoffs killed before they saw the light of day.

Bloomberg says most of the developers on Horizon Hunters Gathering have been moved to a different project and that a small team within Guerilla Games is currently working on the next singleplayer Horizon game.

After the disaster that was Concord, and forcibly putting an end to Destiny 2 as we know it, Sony seems to be getting as far away from live service games as possible. Helldivers 2 and MLB The Show are the only games in that category that seem to be doing well (sorry, Marathon) and that's probably because one of them is made by a third-party studio and the other is a successful sports series that it can keep releasing year in and year out.

That leaves us with Fairgames, an upcoming live service heist game that we haven't heard anything about officially since 2023. Insider Gaming reported in April that the developers were struggling to "find the fun" with a pre-alpha version of the game, so who knows what will come of that.

Grab a bucket, because GTA 6 is springing leaks in every direction. A group (individual?) called Cyberleek has been publishing seemingly genuine clips from Rockstar's latest for two days now, giving us our first glimpses of gameplay a week ahead of the big Netflix reveal happening on August 27.

There's electricity in the air around GTA 6—easily the most anticipated game in history—but I wasn't actually excited to play it until yesterday, when one of the leaked clips (which we won't be linking here, but isn't difficult to find) showed Jason, one of the game's dual protagonists, climbing into a car.

As he takes control, the UI shows what seems to be status symbols for the vehicle: its HP and its current gas.

Heeeelllllll yea. I hope you actually have to pull up to a gas pump and remember which side the tank is on. I hope you can stash a spare canister in the trunk, and I hope that canister will violently explode if it eats a bullet.

Systems. Simulations! This is exactly the stuff that GTA needs to meaningfully evolve.

I loved all the crunchy little details of Red Dead Redemption 2 that inched it toward a proper life sim—eating, drinking, bathing, and camping under the stars. I was worried Rockstar would pull away from this kind of thinking after some folks complained endlessly about crafting bullets one at a time, only holding two guns, or how long it took to loot bodies.

The point was to introduce meaningful choices to Rockstar's low-friction power fantasies: Do I have time to loot bodies before the law shows up? How badly do I want better ammo? It doesn't seem like GTA 6 will be nearly as methodical, but I'm glad to recognize some of Arthur Morgan in Jason Duval.

Elsewhere in the leaks, we see options to "greet" or "taunt" locals. When the cops are called, we're told how much information they actually have about the player: face, clothes, and vehicle. That's interesting: Will cop chases amount to more than outrunning slower cars and avoiding vision cones? Maybe if you're in a personal vehicle (like Aruthur's horse), you can swap outfits, ditch the car, then lose the cops in plain sight. That would instantly become the coolest thing I've done in a GTA game.

It's about time GTA's worlds are as reactive as they are visually convincing. Rockstar's lavishly-crafted distractions tend to ring hollow—it's nice that GTA 5 lets you play golf and run a triathlon, but how many times did you actually do that?

If the point is to be immersed, I want reasons to live a convincing life in Vice City. Give me a hunger meter, make me better at punching if I work out (San Andreas-style), add stakes to my crime fantasy with debts to manage and a mortgage to pay monthly. Give me relationships to nurture and meaningful choices to make—preferably ones other than "kill this guy or don't."

My strongest memories of the week I locked myself in a room to play RDR2 were the quiet moments between shootouts: helping strangers on a trail, getting sidetracked by rabbit hunts, browsing for horse treats in a general store. Getting from A to B in Rockstar's Old West generated stories, and for all its good qualities, GTA has never been good at this. The story of a journey in GTA is usually "I beelined to a waypoint in a very fast car, maybe buying a new gun on the way."

The flip side of introducing complexity to GTA is that some folks will be caught off guard (or put off) by new points of friction. I can see the "Why the hell do I need to worry about gas in GTA?!" posts coming from a mile away, but ya know, Rockstar is capable of accomodation. Maybe a batch of good ol' cheats will let folks put up all the guardrails, if that's their thing. Or wait for the inevitable PC version and mod it up.

A manifesto shared yesterday by the people responsible for the big Grand Theft Auto 6 leak contains a lot of language that will be familiar to anyone following the Stop Killing Games campaign, most notably a demand that any game with singleplayer content have an "offline fallback state" ensuring that games remain playable when their external server support has ended. In response, Stop Killing Games has now issued a statement disavowing the whole thing and urging its followers to "not participate or engage with these kinds of actions."

Stop Killing Games said the leaks appear genuine, noting the speed with which GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive has been issuing copyright strikes against them. Be that as it may, it also pointed out that the leaker is using the leak to promote a memecoin, "attaching crypto links and QR codes to the footage and asking people to pay for more."

"Do not send these people your money, no matter how much sympathy you may feel for their actions," Stop Killing Games said in a statement posted on Reddit. "This is illegal, and frankly, we feel for everyone at Rockstar having to go through this ordeal again, especially just over a week before Rockstar’s own official 'Extended Look' premieres.

"Using illegal means to make a point is unacceptable to us and does nothing to protect our right to keep using what we paid for. No matter how strongly you disagree with the decisions of upper management at these companies, there are still thousands of developers who worked hard on this project, and they’re the ones being hit the hardest."

That's the tipping point for a lot of people, myself included I love a good leak, but there's a world of difference between, say, Sony accidentally blasting an entire Destiny 2 expansion all over the internet days before it was meant to, and someone making an effort to acquire and share unreleased information.

How the leakers came across these GTA 6 clips, whether it was an actual 'hack' or just someone egregiously violating an NDA (which, despite the prevalence of Hackerman drama in popular media, is so often the case), isn't currently known, but it's also immaterial here: This is the kind of leak that will be aggressively pursued and punished by Rockstar, Take-Two, and the US government, and it's entirely unsurprising that Stop Killing Games, which has built up significant political momentum over the past couple years, would want to distance itself as much as possible.

SKG also noted the likelihood of a bad outcome for the GTA 6 leaker, writing in its statement that "the last person who did this to Rockstar, back in 2022, ended up with an indefinite hospital order." (That person, Arion Kurtaj, is now out of hospital and in prison, awaiting a retrial for his role in a 2022 hack that revealed GTA 6 to the world more than a year ahead of its official announcement.) It urged followers to channel their frustration into "something constructive" instead, adding that leaks like this "risks tarnishing the reputation of our communities and our chances to make change."

"We are expecting for this to go on, and it is already being mentioned in our discussions with lawmakers, negatively. Do not participate or engage with these kinds of actions.'

The leaks have indeed continued: At least two more purported GTA 6 videos have surfaced today. The official GTA 6 reveal is set to take place on August 27, initially on Netflix and then six hours later for everyone else.

Alright class, I've graded your last test, and there's no need to even grade on a curve. My first pixel art quiz was too easy, so I plan to step it up.

Instead of challenging the lot of you smartypants with zoomed-in screenshots, I've changed my approach. Once again, I'll ask you to identify the name of the game based on a screenshot, but most of these are more distorted than usual.

I've tossed a few gimmes in the mix, but there's also plenty that I've turned into a blurry mess (or clipped smaller samples of). Any game with interesting sprites or detailed pixely environments is enough to get me to bite, even if I'm not traditionally a fan of its respective genre, so you won't see any themes between how the answers play. We're just going back to the same ol' general question for round two:

How many of these games with pixel art styles can you identify? You've got six minutes to name as many of the 15 games as you can.

When you're done, let me know how you did in the comments. Which did you hang up on? Still too easy, or did this one make you try a little harder?

Two legit-looking Grand Theft Auto 6 video clips were posted online yesterday by a person or group going by "Cyberleek," and now the same leaker has posted another two clips and the DMCA takedown notices are flying once again.

The first of the new clips shows a player stealing a cop's motorcycle, driving it into a river, and then casually murdering the inhabitants of an encampment under a freeway. The other clip shows a nighttime raid on an "Allied Crystal" refinery in which the player uses a taser to take out site security before jacking a truck. Like in the other clips, the player is controlling GTA 6's male lead, Jason.

Yesterday, we catalogued 15 interesting details from the first two clips, including a fuel meter and a possible morality system. These new clips have given us more to chew on, and we've collected more notable details from them below.

The leaker responsible for sharing these videos has promised to continue posting clips, so we may well be back with more new details tomorrow. Stay vigilant, though: Alongside these legit-looking (but unconfirmed) leaks, there are also what appear to be AI-generated fakes out there, a problem which will probably only worsen until Rockstar finally hits us with the official reveal, which is scheduled for next Thursday, August 27. The studio has not commented on the source or legitimacy of the leaked videos.

Cloning car keys

When Jason gets close to a car that's not his, there's an option to "Smash Window" (the traditional GTA car-stealing move) or to "Clone Key," which is new. That'd allow players to more quietly steal cars, though it's not shown in the leaked video how it works.

Aim changes

In the clip taken during nighttime, we see Jason steal and use a taser gun. This is our first look at what might be a big change to GTA's combat—the aiming reticle stays on screen at all times while Jason has the gun equipped, ready to fire seemingly without aiming first. Does this mean you can hipfire? Maybe Rockstar wants this GTA to feel genuinely snappy as a cover shooter. If that's the case, maybe sprinting won't require mashing a button anymore.

Greet or taunt?

GTA 5 let you tap a button to make a comment to strangers, but you never really knew what sort of greeting it would be. Something pleasant? Something rude? Probably something rude. The leaked video shows Jason approaching some NPCs under a bridge, and the player can choose to "greet" them or "taunt" them, more in line with the system from RDR2 or Bully. (In the leaked video, the player chooses to stab them to death.)

Looting

Jason loots some bodies during his senseless rampage. You do have to take a moment to reach down toward the body, but it's a much faster animation than in RDR2, where Arthur Morgan would take his sweet time lifting the body and rummaging through pockets. There also appears to be a dedicated item wheel separate from the weapon selection wheel, which would be another RDR2 carryover.

What's up with the dead birds?

Sometimes people wonder, "If cities are full of pigeons, how come we don't see more dead pigeons lying around?" One answer, I've been told, is that the bodies just decompose quite quickly. The other answer is that if you live in an urban area, you do see dead pigeons lying around. I do, at least.

What I have yet to see, however, is a bird drop out of the sky and plop onto the ground in front of me, and then a second bird do the same thing moments later, which happens to Jason as he walks under a freeway in one of the clips. What is going on with the birds?

Zombix

The player uses what appears to be a healing item called "Zombix" and is warned that "repeated use of Zombix will temporarily have a weaker effect on your health."

Grand Theft Auto 6 will, I am assured, have the greatest NPCs of all time. They will be perfect human simulacra, indistinguishable from the meaty lifeforms behind the controller.

My goal: to make GTA 5's barely-living NPCs an approximation of that. So I installed two mods: NPC Check On Player and NPCs Get Wanted Stars. The former makes the citizens of Los Santos more polite—they will get out of their cars and check you are okay if they run you over. The latter makes them punishable when they are impolite—when they commit crimes, they will earn their own wanted stars, and find themselves pursued by cops.

I'll be honest, I mostly installed the NPC Check mod because I hoped it would compel them to stand still when they got wanted stars from hurting me, but hey, it does what it says on the tin. Get pancaked by a car and the driver will screech to a halt, get out, and walk over to check if you're okay.

The problem is that you can only say 'Yes, I'm fine,' which is not really what I want to say to a guy who has just run me over. Plus, the key to say you are fine is Y, which is also the key to go to sleep in my already-installed Roleplay Alone mod. I am constantly getting hit by cars, then falling asleep in the middle of the road as I try to convince the drivers I am okay, which I guess is good enough for them, as they immediately hop back in their rides and drive off.

NPCs Get Wanted Stars, though, is a bit more dramatic. Admittedly, GTA 5's non-playable inhabitants aren't exactly prone to random criminal acts, so you do have to bait them into it.

My advice? Run into them at a full sprint over and over again, until they (unreasonably) get mad enough to throw a punch at you. Ideally, do this in front of a police station, then sit back and smirk as the 5-0 chase down their perp, cuff them, and stand around rather confused about what, exactly, to do next, as if they've not been trained for outcomes that don't involve a bullet-riddled suspect.

The realism is off the charts.

Overwatch season 4 introduced a rank reset and you know what that means, it's every cat, hog, and retired sniper for themselves as players desperately try to claw back to where they finished last season. As if that isn't stressful enough, we've also got a new rank on our hands.

Slotted between ranks Platinum and Diamond you can now find Emerald, the answer to the growing skill disparity between Plat and Diamond players. "As we've shown in the past, the majority of our players are in Gold and Platinum," the patch notes read. "So adding a new rank closer to the middle of the skill curve gives many players a better sense of rank identity, a new goal to achieve, and increases fidelity in assessing skill for many players."

Season 4 is full of really smart changes, and this new rank is one of them. I completely agree that there needed to be a buffer between Plat and Diamond, as high plat and low diamond increasingly became a frantic free-for-all with players who had vastly different skills far too frequently grouped together. But the tradeoff seems to be that all this chaos is now neatly packed into Emerald.

I only played in a few Emerald games when I was placing all my roles, as I soon pushed past into Diamond and above, and all I can say is: thank god. Because I wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time there.

The games felt frantic, with players on both sides oscillating between making smart plays and really basic mistakes—I could never predict which way a team fight was going to go. Now, this makes sense when you think about the kind of players meant to be in Emerald: better than average but perhaps not quite equipped for the kind of teamwork and restraint you find in higher elos. But that doesn't make it any less frustrating. If I had a nickel for every unnecessary flank, panic ult, or repeated stagger I saw in those games, I wouldn't have to write about them anymore.

Then there's the people.

This could just be my bad luck, but I saw a noticeable drop off in toxicity once I cleared Emerald. Now, this isn't everyone in a game, but there'd often be one person who just complained and whined the whole time, blaming everyone for their misfortunes instead of looking in the mirror.

I get that sometimes you can play the best game of your life and still not win, because at the end of the day Overwatch is a team game. If your team isn't up to it, there's only so far you can carry them, and that can be annoying. But also, the only person you have control over is yourself, and knowing that is half the battle in Overwatch.

Let's say you have a tank who is constantly in the enemy backline despite not having a dive team, for example. It's definitely frustrating, especially when they have no clue about any line of sight angles, but you gotta work with what you have. So if I have a tank like that, you best believe I'm switching to dive, and more often than not changing to better fit the team around you instead of just whining will lead to a win.

It seems simple, but I was surprised to see how few people were willing to make that change, compromise, or admit that perhaps they're just not as good at a particular hero than they think they are.

Emerald has certainly made a name for itself in just a short time since its addition. Hopefully, the rank will mellow out as the season goes on, a rank reset always ushers in at least a little disorder, but that doesn't mean I don't feel bad for the players who are stuck in Emerald. From my experience, and from what I've heard from friends, it's a pretty dicey place to be right now, so god speed to anyone still in those mines. But rest assured, it's only up (or down) from there.

Here follows a transcript of every conversation I have had with another human being about Stalker 2 since I scored it 83% in our Stalker 2 review, back in 2024:

SOME GUY: I'm kind of curious about Stalker 2, but I'm wary. I've heard that game is really buggy.
JOSH: It's gotten a lot better since the review period! GSC has put out a lot of patches and ironed out loads of the kinks. And even back when it was ultra-buggy, I still really liked it.
SG: Hm, but it's a little janky, right? Isn't there some big update that's in the pipe?
JOSH: Well, it's Stalker. Jank is part of its beautiful, simulation-y package. But yes, GSC is working on literally overhauling the game's entire Unreal Engine 5 implementation in its 2.0 update.
SG: So I should wait for that?
JOSH: You don't have to! The game is good!
SG: I'm going to wait for that.

And so, I remain the only person in human history who has ever actually played Stalker 2.

But good news: the Stalker 2 2.0 update that everyone I know has been waiting for—including at least one person I know who paid full price for the game at launch—is out tomorrow, alongside the new Cost of Hope expansion, and I'm forced to admit that, damn, maybe you were right to wait.

I should note that, though I've dipped in a few times, I've not seriously played Stalker 2 since a few months after it first released. Many of the changes I'm noticing could well be a product of previous patches rather than the 2.0 update.

But one thing is indisputable: Stalker 2, as of 2.0, runs better and smoother than it has done throughout its entire history. Compared to the thing I first played during its ramshackle, chaotic review period, it might as well be an entirely different game.

I booted into a pre-2.0 version of the game to check and, roaming around Garbage, I still ran into little performance stutters and hitches. It wasn't unbearable, but it was noticeable. In 2.0 it's silky smooth. There are still times, running around out in the open world on Epic graphics settings, that I will encounter just a hint of slowdown, but it really is a stark difference compared to, well, the various forms of Stalker 2 we've gotten before.

It looks rather nice, too. The Zone's never been ugly in Stalker 2—even when it was peopled with those distended flesh sculptures—but it's prettier than ever now. In particular, interior areas with contrast between light and shadow (of which there are many in the Zone) pop more than they did before.

It's good, is what I'm saying, and I get the impression it's the version of Stalker 2 that GSC would have liked to put out two years ago, if it had its druthers. You can officially stop waiting. Go play Stalker 2.

I'm not sure there's been a better invention for multiplayer games than proximity chat. Whether it be friends screaming vengeance down the side of a mountain after you abandon them in Peak, or the wails of one of your fellow workers fall suspiciously silent in Lethal Company. Proximity chat offers up fertile ground for hilariously wacky and memorable multiplayer moments, so you can imagine my excitement when I found out it's coming to Subnautica 2.

"This is going to let you have an in-game voice chat option that you can do with your friends," Anthony Gallegos, creative director, says in a dev diary. "You'll be able to talk locally with each other and then as you get further away you'll hear a switch to sort of a radio-sounding voice, and you'll progressively break up as you get further away, up until a certain point where you can almost not hear me at all."

Now, you can use your friends as a canary, sending them down into dark caves and listening to see if anything's amiss. At the very least, Gallegos believes it will "definitely add to the tension of" exploring the formidable alien ocean.

But that's not all being added to Subnautica 2 in its next update. The whole patch seems friend-focused. There's player emotes that will "let you roll through a bunch of different emotions, so you can cheer on your friends, clap at them to tell them that you're happy with them, or maybe that you're a little annoyed with them, and you can also show that you're frustrated.

"The thing that I think is the most exciting about these is actually the ways that people will use them out of context that I think will make for some really fun moments."

Players can also look forward to better inventory sharing, which means you won't have to go searching for discarded loot that your friends leave behind. Instead, all you have to do now is go up behind your pal and access their stash from their backpack—quick and efficient. Although, thieves-be-warned, "the person whose inventory is being accessed will get a little notification" so pickpocketing is out of the question, unless you have an especially unobservant friend.

The last major feature coming with 1.2 will be player revives. Now, if you're playing with a group and get lost, or get too hungry and pass out, your friends will have a short amount of time to swim over to you, share their oxygen, and revive you back to the world of the living. It's such a helpful feature that I'm honestly pretty surprised Subnautica 2 didn't have it before.

All in all, update 1.2 seems like a helpful pitstop on the way to more significant changes: "Alongside all of this we're continuing work on the Early Access 2 update that's going to add the new region with the new story, and the new progression, and the new vehicles, all those things."

The exciting thing about Rockstar games is not that they have the most advanced technology behind them, the best stories, or the most avant-garde game systems. It's the extraordinary amount of work the studio invests into the little details that make up its big worlds. Red Dead Redemption's dynamic horse testicles (they shrink when it's cold) are a frequently-cited example of that commitment to the particulars.

A pair of videos purported to be leaked GTA 6 gameplay surfaced online today, and if they are legit (the immediate copyright takedowns suggest as much), they seem to confirm that GTA 6 is more of the same. The short clips obviously can't express the full scope of Rockstar's designs—and we don't know how recent they are—but there's nothing in them to indicate that GTA 6 will reinvent the open-world crime spree.

In one, the player shoots some hoops as protagonist Jason. It's cool that a basketball on the ground and a hoop nailed to the side of your house are not just static props. There's a system in place for shooting accurately, and the game tracks the number of shots made.

The other clip is a very typical GTA scene: The player makes a reckless turn in a car, gets clipped by a delivery truck, beats the delivery truck driver to death, and then goes on the run from incoming police.

It's possible that Rockstar has an ace up its sleeve, some new innovation that it's managed to keep a secret all these years. We still don't know what's going on with GTA Online or what the GTA roleplaying mod creators that Rockstar hired have been up to.

For now, though, my expectation is that GTA 6's appeal will again be the scale and concentration of detail that only budgets and timelines like Rockstar's can achieve: A bigger, higher-fidelity city with more possibilities, more consequences, more simulation.

That's enough to make me curious, but I wonder how next week's official GTA 6 gameplay reveal will be received if that's the case. This is the most anticipated game of all time. If it isn't transformative in some heretofore unknown way that is somehow both radically new and familiar to GTA fans, will it register as a disappointment to the "unprecedented" number of people who've already preordered it?

If you've peeped that leaked footage, what's your take on it? And if you haven't seen the footage, which has been removed on copyright grounds everywhere we've seen it, here are 15 details we noticed.

Cyberleek, the group or person (it's not clear which) behind today's big Grand Theft Auto 6 leak, claims it's not just doing it for the lulz. In a manifesto calling out industry practices it finds objectionable, Cyberleek warned that it will continue targeting publishers who violate its edicts.

"Publishers sell licenses and call them purchases," the document states. "They ship unfinished games and call them living services. They lock content on discs and call it DLC. They kill games and keep the money. Every year anti-consumerism tightens its grip, and every year gamers get less for what they pay."

Cyberleek said it's "raising funds for a secret project," presumably through the sale of a memecoin—of course there's a memecoin—which will be "directed toward the infrastructure needed to strike, as well as the security and protection required to withstand the inevitable corporate counterattacks."

They also listed three "commandments" in the manifesto—no digital preorders, no "fake" (ie, already part of the game data) singleplayer DLC, and mandatory "offline fallback states" for singleplayer games—and warned that publishers who violate them will be subject to sanction: "Cyberleek will not stop until they issue a public statement and apology with a concrete commitment to be better. Words are not enough; restitution is mandatory."

It's all very dramatic in a "Remember, remember" way, and certainly overegged; there's also an irony, perhaps unintentional, in holding forth on consumer rights while pumping crypto. Regardless of motivations, though, this is surely a headache Rockstar and Take-Two could do without. There's been no public comment yet, but copyright strikes against the leaks have been flying fast and furious, rather strongly suggesting that these leaks are legit.

Cyberleek's bravado may be its undoing (because isn't that always the way) and its ability to follow through on its threats is obviously a big question. But with Grand Theft Auto 6 now just three months away from release on consoles—and the big Netflix reveal coming next week—it might be able to do some real damage before the curtain falls.

I've reached out to Take-Two and Rockstar for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

A pair of clips purportedly showing Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay footage have appeared online, along with several images of an in-game map of Leonida, the Florida-inspired state where GTA 6 takes place.

Rockstar has not confirmed whether or not the clips are genuine, but they look legit to our eyes, with the caveat that even if they are, they could come from an outdated build of the game. Both clips look like the kind of thing a tester would capture, in that they're relatively mundane gameplay scenes, not the type of stuff you'd see in a trailer.

In both clips, the player is controlling Jason, one of GTA 6's two protagonists. In one clip, the player shoots a basketball outside Jason's dilapidated waterfront home. In the other, their car gets clipped by a delivery truck, and then they go full road rage homicide on the poor delivery driver before scrambling to get away from incoming police. The clip ends just as the player drives up to a helicopter that looks ripe for stealing.

The clips are circulating through the usual social media channels, and some reuploads have already been taken down. We're not posting them here, but they're out there for the curious to find.

With the caveat again that we don't know the exact provenance or recency of these clips—a group called "Cyberleek" has taken credit for posting them—we've picked out the most notable details here. Our first official look at GTA 6 gameplay is scheduled to arrive next week, first on Netflix.

Wanted level

The wanted level can reach six stars: that's one more than in GTA 5! It appears beating a delivery driver to death with a pipe wrench will get you a mere two stars.

Police ID

When you commit a crime and the cops are after you, they ID you with three categories, as seen in the top right corner of the screen: your clothing (an icon shows a hanger), possibly your face or hair color (shown with a blank face icon), and your car (a car icon). Presumably changing your clothing or car (or repainting it as in other GTA games) while wanted can help you escape.

Stamina

From the moment Jason starts throwing punches at that angry delivery driver what appears to be a stamina meter starts depleting. When he starts beating him to death with a wrench, the stamina depletes all the way to zero. The edges of the screen start to vignette, and I'd wager no stamina means some sort of movement penalty.

Stealth

The cops pull up after Jason beats the Scoop driver to death, and we see something new to GTA here: a blue stealth indicator arrow that tracks how close the cops are to noticing the player. Based on how brazen the player is being, the time it takes to fully alert law enforcement seems pretty generous—maybe you can play GTA 6 stealthily, if you choose?

Focus

It looks like we'll be improving the traits of Jason and Lucia just like we did with Arthur Morgan in RDR2. We see Jason sink a basketball and gain +2% Focus. Called shot, but I'm guessing that trait has something to do with slo-mo bullet time.

Hoops

Speaking of basketball, when Jason is shooting hoops in his driveway, he uses a simple "press the button when the rings overlap" system.

Negative karma

GTA 6 might judge you for your actions in a similar way to Red Dead Redemption 2's karma system. As Jason pummels the delivery driver, we see a little devil icon on the right with a minus symbol. Sure looks like the evil side of a karma system. Interestingly, the symbol doesn't appear until he starts beating the unconscious man—perhaps the game won't judge you for starting fights with locals, but it will for senseless murder?

Cars have a gas and engine meter

Fill 'er up! Looks like you'll need to monitor your vehicle's gas level (a popular mod for GTA 5 lets you do this, so I guess Rockstar incorporated it fully into GTA 6) and engine condition. The trunk and bed of the car also shows "loadout" and "storage 0/4" menu options.

Money and budget

In the hoops clip, we see Jason has two dollar amounts shown in the upper right corner: $39 (presumably his cash on hand) and $1,643 next to a house icon. The circle around the house is filled only a tiny bit, so that could indicate that he's got rent due, or perhaps that's how much money he's got stashed in the bank (similar to how it works in GTA Online).

Fake brands spotted

Sea Shark (jetski), Scoop (delivery company), 24/7 Supermarket, Arrow (gas station), Hamilton Private Health Clinic (last word is blurry, but "clinic" fits), Fast Pass EMS (on an ambulance).

Tunes

The song in the second clip is Impact by SG Lewis, Robin, and Channel Tres—pretty apropos for slamming a car into a delivery truck. You can listen to it on YouTube.

Player character locations shown

The map image leak shows a car icon with a "J" over it. It appears this image was taken while the player was inhabiting Lucia (the arrow indicating the player location is over the water, so Lucia might be on a boat or aircraft), and the map shows the location of Jason elsewhere in Leonida. This is a change from GTA 5, where you didn't know where the other playable characters were on the map unless you swapped into them or happened to run into them.

Racetracks

The map leak shows what looks like several small race tracks across Leonida: racing cars could be an activity or a way to make money.

Jason's house location

Jason's house is shown on the map, too: it's in southern Leonida on one of the islands of the Keys.

Military base

I'm wondering if the airport shown at the very end of the Keys is the military base. There's a large airport shown in Vice City, so this smaller airport could be the place to steal fighter jets: though it'd be quite a long drive if you wanted to take a tank into downtown Vice City.

According to former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida, turn-based RPGs, particularly JRPGs, were so unpopular several years ago that he would tell indie developers to avoid using the term altogether in their marketing—even for a game like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Yoshida recalled giving the Clair Obscur developers this advice during a lecture at the Busan Indie Connect Festival 2026 (via Automaton). He was impressed by a demo he played a couple of years before the game was out, particularly its similarities to The Legend of Dragoon, a game he produced, but recommended the developers at Sandfall Interactive find alternative ways to describe its combat.

"It's incredibly well-made, but it would be better not to call it a turn-based RPG," he said. "That alone might cause players to overlook it."

Sandfall listened and started describing Clair Obscur's combat as "reactive turn-based battles" in its marketing. It's hard to tell if that actually had an impact on the breakout success of the game, but it probably didn't hurt.

Even if you set aside the supposed genre stigma, I think calling Clair Obscur a turn-based RPG does undercut how active the combat actually feels. It isn't the kind of game where you can get up and grab a snack in between turns. You're encouraged to study how enemies move so you can time all your dodges and parries, as if you're playing a soulslike.

Did adding a single word before "turn-based" change everything? I'm not convinced it was the sole reason the game caught people's attention when it already looked fast-paced in trailers. But it does speak to the tendency for many games in the genre to only appeal to people who grew up with them, and the number of people who fall asleep when threatened with having to take turns during the action.

Thankfully, Clair Obscur has helped make turn-based games cool again. It sold 3.3 million copies in the first month and has since surpassed eight million copies as of April. Yoshida believes Clair Obscur is a great example of why chasing industry trends isn't always the right move. He also said that publishers have started to see a slew of turn-based games pitched to them in the wake of Clair Obscur's explosive success.

Chromite isn't actually rare in Palworld, but you've got to have a specific tool (or pal) to mine it, which is different from most other resources. To save you from the guesswork, I'll show you how to use a metal detector to get Chromite initially and also a passive farming solution for bigger hauls so you're set up to make your first batch of Hexolite when you're ready.

Palworld Chromite location

The Metal Detector is easy to use and automatically scans the soil around you as you explore. If you use Smokie's partner skill you've got to spam it by pressing the E key while you walk around instead. When either method detects Chromite, a rocky node (highlighted by a blue beacon) sprouts from the ground. Harvest it with a pickaxe, just like you would any other ore.

Easy Chromite farm

Two seemingly genuine Grand Theft Auto 6 gameplay clips are making the rounds online.

The first, a minute-long clip originally posted by a group or individual named "Cyberleek", is already being reposted in multiple places, but we first noticed it via gaming forum ResetEra. As of writing, the clip already has more than 100,000 views.

In the clip, we see protagonist Jason Duval at an oceanside house—the same one that we've seen in trailers. The player jumps over his deck and onto the driveway, where he picks up a basketball and shoots some hoops. For sinking a basket, the player increases their "Focus" by 2%. We see two cash totals listed in the HUD—presumably one for their on-hand cash, and one for their bank.

Another clip, posted almost an hour later, shows the player driving around a beat-up car, crashing into a delivery truck, and then attacking the driver.

Elsewhere, Cyberleek has also published supposed screenshots of the in-game map, though art has appears too simple to be how it will actually look in the game. Below one image is a message from Cyberleek, which claims that the leaks are motivated by Rockstar's decision not to release a physical version of GTA 6. The image also includes links to various websites where it asks for money, though I wouldn't rush to visit them.

The apparent leak comes in the final days before GTA 6's proper gameplay reveal, which is going down August 27 exclusively on Netflix for the first six hours.