Gaming

Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio behind Samson, is declared bankrupt after its staff went two months unpaid →

About 30 developers kept fixing Samson without pay since August, then asked a Stockholm court to bankrupt the studio; the game and studio are for sale until 21 October.

Steam has added more new games by mid-October than in all of 2025, and a studio cancels its public demo for fear AI tools will copy it first →

SteamDB counts 21,388 games added to Steam this year, about 66 a day, and Alliance Arts pulled its Steam Next Fest demo of Drunken Goddess Reflux. Elsewhere, Fishlabs cuts jobs, CD Projekt says its next new world is still a team of 33, Wardogs drops a team bonus after one day, and Miami officials push back on GTA 6 adverts.

Activision's 400 unionised Call of Duty testers vote to allow a strike, a week before Modern Warfare 4 launches →

After two years of talks with no contract, and a third of their members lost to job cuts, Activision's testers can now strike at any time. Elsewhere, Rockstar shows GTA 6's last trailer, a US congressman wants players to own the games they buy, Sega pulls a broken remaster, and a hobby community closes under a flood of AI-made copies.

Ubisoft proposes closing RedLynx, the Finnish maker of the Trials games, and cuts 70 jobs at Ubisoft Singapore after its pirate game sold 3 million in a week →

Ubisoft plans to shut RedLynx, a studio with no game to make, and cuts a fifth of the team behind Black Flag Resynced; Funcom cuts staff after its biggest launch, Xbox asks fans about exclusive games, and Nintendo's Ocarina remake drops the slow parts of a 1998 game.

Xbox sets up Xbox Labs to study fan-made ports that run old games in web browsers and on Macs, as its boss tells staff Xbox will not survive on old games alone →

Fans using AI coding tools have rebuilt old games to run on machines they were never made for. Xbox answered with a small team to study it, and its boss told staff the company needs new series as well as old ones.

Epic Games tells the team on its delayed Disney shooter, with Marvel and Star Wars characters, to go 'AI first': no more code written by hand →

Epic Games has delayed its Marvel and Star Wars shooter made with Disney, and told its makers to let AI write the code and make the art. Also today: Dragon Quest's creator makes a game in 30 minutes, console sales fall the most in two years, and Steam sets a record.

An EA producer finds 600 original video tapes of Wing Commander 3 and says a 30th-anniversary remaster is coming →

Jim Vessella, who has been copying EA's old video archive into digital files, told a retro games show that the 1994 space game will return with its filmed scenes restored, though no date or price has been given.

GTA 6 leaker Cyberleek says it will release the whole game if its crypto coin reaches $30 million →

Cyberleek, who has leaked footage of Grand Theft Auto 6 since August, set a price on 10 October: if its coin reaches $30 million in total value, the full story goes online. The coin was worth $3.8 million that day, and the game comes out on 19 November.

Gears of War: E-Day sold an estimated 230,000 copies in its first week, while 1.7 million people played it on Game Pass →

An analyst estimates that on Xbox, nearly 12 Game Pass members paid $30 for a five-day head start on Gears of War: E-Day for every one person who bought the game. Microsoft has not confirmed any figure.

Xbox forms XP, a division for films, TV, toys and theme parks built on its games, while it keeps cutting game-making jobs →

Xbox put its films, merchandise, sponsor deals and theme parks under one new division the same week its US console sales hit their lowest August since 2020, and Italy opened a probe into how Activision Blizzard, an Xbox company, sells to children.

Google opens Playground, a free site where people in the US make games by typing, and Unity builds its Spark tool for it →

Google's new Playground turns typed requests into games and shows them in its own gallery, while AI tools also let fans copy games their owners kept closed.

Skydance now owns Warner Bros.' game studios, the makers of Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat. The deal's written promises cover films, not games →

Paramount finished buying Warner Bros. Discovery and renamed itself Skydance. It owns Warner's game studios, plans $6bn of yearly savings, carries about $80bn of debt and put Activision's old boss on its board.

Ninja Theory starts letting staff go after two deals to sell it fell through →

Staff at Ninja Theory, the British studio behind Hellblade, say their jobs are at risk or gone, two weeks after Xbox gave up trying to sell it. Supermassive let more than 70 people go the same day.

Garry Newman says s&box's launch failed, and Facepunch will drop its no-neck character →

Facepunch's founder admits its game-making platform had a bad first five months, and says 20 good games are lost among 500 tech demos and clickers.

Jagex announces RuneScape 4, a new version of its 25-year-old online game, at RuneFest →

Jagex will run four RuneScape games at once and has not said how long the old ones last. Elsewhere, a used chip carried a cheater's ban, and Call of Duty and a US shop tied new rules to hardware and ID.

Fans use AI to copy and mix famous games in days, and Bethesda's owner orders an AI-made Fallout game offline →

A new AI model let fans pull famous games apart and stitch them together in days. ZeniMax took down a Fallout copy, a modder broke his own mod in protest, and Capcom said it will rebuild its game engine so AI can work inside it.

EU consumer watchdogs name nine game companies and say anything bought with coins must show its price in real money →

On 30 September the EU's network of national consumer authorities named Supercell, King, Mojang, Riot, Ubisoft and four others. It wants coin prices shown in money, and unspent coins refundable within two weeks.

Xbox's boss says Xbox is not for sale. It brings in about 6% of Microsoft's profits →

Asha Sharma told the New York Times on 30 September that Microsoft will not sell Xbox, after a year of job cuts and studios shut or sold. She left a spin-off or a partnership open.

The Witcher 3 gets a free rebuild 11 years on, and more people play it on Steam at once than ever before →

CD Projekt Red gave everyone who owns its 2015 game a free remastered version on 29 September. On Steam the count passed 120,000 players at once, beating the 2020 record of 103,329.

NIS America says it is talking to Sony about the end of PlayStation discs. About 30 in 100 PS5 copies of Resident Evil Requiem were sold on disc →

Sony plans to stop making discs for new PlayStation games in 2028. The head of NIS America, a publisher of boxed editions, says his company is in talks with Sony, and a YouTube host says Sony has surveyed developers too.

Meta shows off $1,299 VR glasses mostly as a screen for films, sport and work. Every game made for its Quest headsets still runs on them →

Meta showed its VR Glasses at Meta Connect on 23 September. They weigh about 100 grams and go on sale in spring 2027, and most of their launch was about films, live sport and extra work screens.

Minecraft adds its first new world in over 14 years. Players reach it first in a spin-off that goes on sale on 29 September →

At its Minecraft LIVE show on Saturday, Mojang said the Sift, the world at the heart of Minecraft Dungeons 2, joins Minecraft itself in 2027. Xbox says 300,000 people start playing Minecraft every day.

King, the Candy Crush studio, signs a union deal the day before its strike was due to start →

King told its staff in August that its own benefits beat a union contract. Five Swedish unions set a strike for 25 September, and King signed on the 24th.

A judge orders a Reddit moderator to pay Nintendo $4.5 million. That is $150,000 for each of 30 Switch games. →

Nintendo won by default against James Williams, a moderator of a forum about copied Switch games, who never answered the case. A Dutch group sues Epic over Fortnite's shop, Control Resonant launches and leaks, and Quake Champions stops being free.

Discord now guesses the age of every user outside the UK and Australia. It says 9 in 10 will never be asked for proof. →

Discord, the chat app many players use while they play, began age checks worldwide on 23 September. It guesses age from account history, and says it is moving before laws make it use face scans. At Xbox, the studios Microsoft moved or let go kept shrinking.

Xbox gives Halo to Activision and moves to close Ninja Theory, the Hellblade studio. 268 more jobs go. →

Microsoft's games business moved its most famous series to the Call of Duty publisher, merged several studios and began consultation on closing Ninja Theory after two deals to sell it fell through.

Bungie deleted years of Destiny 2 in 2020. It now says it will build it all again and hand it back. →

Bungie said on 21 September that it will restore the Destiny 2 campaigns, planets and raids it removed six years ago. It gave no date, because the game was rebuilt around the gap and the old content no longer fits it.

Europe's draft child-safety law covers online games, and its wording reaches a single-player game you bought on Steam →

The European Commission wants game shops to check a buyer's age before a download. The draft's own definition of an online game leaves out only games sold on a disc with no online part at all.

Nintendo, Konami and Capcom kept 97 in 100 staff. In 2026, 96 of every 100 games jobs lost went in North America and Europe. →

A tracker kept since 2022 counts 57,628 games jobs gone. An interview published this week says 96 of every 100 of this year's losses were in North America and Europe.

Remedy's Control Resonant scores 84 with critics, six days before it goes on sale. It swaps the heroine for her brother, and the gun for close fighting. →

Reviews for Remedy's Control sequel landed on 18 September and split sharply, from 9 out of 10 to 2 out of 5, while Sony's Wolverine sold 1.9 million copies despite weak reviews and a Shanghai court made a company pay for copying 63 Genshin Impact voices with AI.

Kojima names Physint's star on Xbox's stage in Tokyo. PlayStation had dropped the game in June. →

Xbox's Tokyo Game Show broadcast ended with Hideo Kojima casting Bill Skarsgard in Physint, the spy game PlayStation cancelled in June, and opened the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 campaign.

MindsEye's studio raised 233 million pounds from investors. Its last staff are now being let go. →

Build a Rocket Boy, the Edinburgh studio behind MindsEye, is closing after spending investors' money on a game players rejected. The same day, Heart Machine laid off nearly everyone when a publisher pulled out.

A colleague told Rockstar the union was 12 members short. Twelve days after it crossed the line, 34 people were fired. →

Opening papers at the Glasgow tribunal say Rockstar's HR manager had been getting reports from inside the union's private chat since February 2024.

Valve's new headset costs $1,059. Valve had planned for it to cost less than its old $999 one. →

Valve priced its Steam Frame headset at $1,059 on Monday, during a shortage of memory chips. IGN and the worker-owned studio KO_OP cut jobs, and three older games sold again after new add-ons.

Blizzard names 2029 for Diablo 5 and 2030 for a StarCraft shooter. Xbox is cutting 1,600 more jobs over the next year. →

At BlizzCon, its first fan show since 2023, Blizzard put release years on two games that are three and four years away, and said the dates are there to prove it can ship on time.

VR headset shipments fell 18% in a year after Meta raised prices. Valve is about to sell a new one into that market. →

Counterpoint Research counted 18% fewer VR headsets shipped in the second quarter than a year earlier, and says Meta's Quest price rises added pressure to a market that was already cooling. Meta holds 54% of it outside China. The studio behind Moss closed this week, and a lottery for Valve's Steam Frame is already sitting in Steam's backend.