Gaming, in brief

Bungie, the American studio that makes the online shooter Destiny, said on 21 September that it will put back the parts of Destiny 2 it deleted. [2][3]

The deleting began in 2020 under a system Bungie called the content vault, and it took out campaigns, whole planets and raids that players had paid for. [2][3]

Among them is the Red War campaign, the story Destiny 2 launched with, which has been unplayable for more than six years. [2]

Bungie is owned by Sony, and in May the two said the June update would be Destiny 2's last big one. [6]

Sony then cut almost 300 Bungie staff in June, most of them from the Destiny team. [1]

Studio head Poria Torkan said the studio had lost trust, lost colleagues, and that its ambitions had stalled. [1]

Bungie's previous studio head, Justin Truman, stepped down over the summer after about a year in the job. [7]

Bungie says this is not a matter of restoring old files, because the game's lighting, enemies and combat were rebuilt after the 2020 Beyond Light expansion. [2][3]

Josh Deane, who made the promise, said he wished the studio could simply flip a switch to bring the content back. [5]

No date was given for any of it, and no Destiny 3 was announced. [3][4]

The same post admitted that Marathon, the new shooter Bungie's future was resting on, did not reach as many players as it had hoped. [3][4]

PC Gamer called the reversal a studio-saving emergency decision, on the grounds that Marathon updates alone were never going to be enough. [8]

Bungie credited the players who campaigned after the ending was announced, saying their voices mattered and their response made a real impact. [6][2]

Why it matters. Watch whether Bungie names a date for the first restored campaign; it says the lighting, the enemies and the combat all have to be redone first.

Hideo Kojima, the Japanese designer behind Metal Gear Solid, says Sony told him on a video call in June that it would stop paying for his spy game Physint. [9][12] He says his mind went blank and he cannot remember what was said. [10][11] Kojima Productions had hired staff for two games at once, so losing one contract put the whole studio at risk. [10] A bank loan taken after Death Stranding would also have been in trouble if the project were treated as cancelled. [10] Xbox agreed to publish the game three months later. [9][12]

Why it matters. Kojima is one of the most famous people in games, and his studio nearly went under the way much smaller ones do: one publisher's decision, then a scramble for cash. [10]

Activision, the American publisher of Call of Duty, has published figures on the business behind game cheats. [15] It cites an outside analysis putting cheat subscriptions across 15 games at about $3.5bn a year, and puts the wider trade at about $8.5bn once account sales, boosting and spoofing tools are counted. [14][15] A survey of 250 developers in the United States and Britain found 69% call cheating a significant problem, and 88% plan to spend more on stopping it next year. [14] Activision says it has disrupted more than 375 reseller operations. [14]

Why it matters. Cheats are sold as subscriptions, with resellers and excuses for downtime, so a studio is not chasing individuals but a supply chain. [14][15]

Microsoft has filed a patent for a system that would interrupt a game to show an advert. [16] The filing gives a game a credit of advert-free playing time when it starts. [16] Once that credit runs out, the next natural break, such as a loading screen or a pause, freezes the player's controls, plays an advert, hands control back and resets the credit. [16] A patent is not a product, and Microsoft has not said which games it would use this for. [16]

Why it matters. If it is ever used it lands on players mid-session, and Microsoft already dropped a plan to charge $80 for its games last year after complaints. [16]

Double Fine, the studio behind Psychonauts, was let go by Microsoft in July and went back to raising money from players. [17] Its Kickstarter asks backers to pick four of twelve game ideas to prototype, then vote again on which prototype becomes a small finished game. [17] It was fully funded in three days and passed $550,000 on day 19, when the studio announced the voice actor Erika Ishii would appear in the winning game. [17] Funding then fell to under $485,000 and Double Fine turned off comments on X. [17]

Why it matters. A crowdfunded studio can be paid and unpaid in the same week, because pledges can be withdrawn right up to the day the campaign closes. [17]

IO Interactive, the Danish studio behind Hitman, has pushed the Nintendo Switch 2 version of its James Bond game 007 First Light to March 2027. [18][19] It was meant to arrive this summer, and this is its second delay, after an April announcement moved it from May to this autumn. [19] On the same day, Cold Iron Studios said the Switch 2 version of Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 would move from this month to early 2027. [20] Both studios said the extra time is for performance on the hardware. [18][20]

Why it matters. Both games are already out on other machines, so what is late is the work of making them run on Nintendo's console. [18][20]

Blizzard, the American studio behind World of Warcraft, announced a new StarCraft game for 2030 at its own convention this month without saying where people could play it. [21] The only platform signal came from Xbox's British account, which promised an Xbox console release. [21] Asked by Kotaku, Blizzard would say only that StarCraft will not be exclusive, and added that it would ask for a correction if a story called it an Xbox exclusive. [21] It would not say whether that means PlayStation, Nintendo or only PC. [21]

Why it matters. Blizzard is owned by Microsoft, so a word about where its games appear is read as a signal about whether Xbox is going back to keeping games to itself. [21]

Blizzard announced Diablo 5 for spring 2029, which Kotaku reports leaves it alone on the release calendar for that year. [22] Executive producer Matt Zitterman said the confidence came from clarity about the creative plan and about what the team can do. [22] Blizzard president Johanna Faries told Bloomberg the company is going to ship, and ship on time. [22] Senior production director Tiffany Watt and art director John Mueller showed no concern about naming a date three years out. [22]

Why it matters. A date announced years ahead is a promise made in public, and delays are common enough that Kotaku expected one. [22]

Microsoft's disc-to-digital feature lets an Xbox owner put a game disc in the console and get a download of it. [23] The Verge reports it works because Microsoft decided, before the Xbox One launched in 2013, to put a unique serial number on its discs. [23] That was part of a wider plan for digital ownership, including digital gifting and disc swaps in shops, which mostly never shipped. [23] Sony, which is ending PlayStation discs in 2028, did not add that identifier and would need another method. [23]

Why it matters. The cheapest moment to make something recoverable is before anyone needs it, and Microsoft paid that cost thirteen years before the feature existed. [23]

Playing for the Planet, the group that runs the Green Game Jam, has handed out this year's awards, which recognise studios that build environmental content into games people already play. [24] Northern Forge Studios won best small studio for Orna: The GPS RPG, and Runaway Play won best storytelling for Flutter: Butterfly Sanctuary. [24] CD Projekt Red, the Polish maker of The Witcher, took the changemaker award, and Rovio won best fundraising for two Angry Birds games. [24] This year's jam ran reef and rainforest themes, and an eighth is planned for 2027. [24]

Why it matters. The reach and the money here come from ordinary mobile games with very large player numbers, not from anything built for the purpose. [24]

Dan Clancy, who runs the game-streaming site Twitch, told Bloomberg that studios are right to keep their games away from Grand Theft Auto 6's launch in November. [25] He said he had talked to Rockstar Games about its plans and about how its creators could take part. [25] Clancy also said he expects a bigger moment next year, when the game's multiplayer part arrives. [25] Rockstar has neither confirmed nor dated that. [25]

Why it matters. One launch taking up all the attention for months decides when dozens of unrelated games can come out, which is a scheduling problem for studios with nothing to do with it. [25]

The Witcher 3 Remastered arrives on 29 September as a free upgrade for everyone who already owns the game on GOG, Steam, the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. [26] It brings better visuals, animation and combat, a reworked skill tree, cross-platform mod support and accessibility changes. [26] Owners of the original Switch version get the Switch 2 version free, and a new expansion called Songs of the Past is due in 2027. [26] CD Projekt Red is also selling it through Blizzard's shop, which unlocks a Geralt outfit in Diablo 4. [26]

Why it matters. CD Projekt Red is rebuilding the game and giving it to people who already bought it, rather than selling the remaster to them again. [26]

The PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct returned during Tokyo Game Show week with new details on 36 games and their add-ons, 13 of them shown for the first time. [27] Cairn, a climbing game, used it to date the first of its free expansions, On the Trail: Deep Water, for 29 October, with three new climbing areas and an indoor gym. [28] Let's Build a Dungeon, a game about making games, set an early access date of 11 February. [29] Every game shown was collected on a Steam list with demos to download. [27]

Why it matters. A showcase like this is how small PC studios reach players without paying for a stand, in the week the industry is already watching Japan. [27]

World of Warcraft: Forever is a version of Blizzard's long-running online game that brings back older rules. [30] In its test period players had to race each other to hit an enemy first for the kill to count towards a quest, a problem modern World of Warcraft removed. [30] Senior game designer Josh Greenfield said on X that this competition is extremely important and will not change, though Blizzard can reduce the frustration in other ways. [30] Players can still invite each other into a group so everyone gets credit. [30]

Why it matters. The friction is what is being sold here, so smoothing it would remove the thing players are paying to go back to. [30]

Deion Sanders, the American football coach at the University of Colorado, will appear in EA Sports College Football 27 after missing the first three editions. [31] EA told The Athletic that every coach and coordinator in the game is there on an unpaid licence. [31] Sanders said in July that if he was not in the game, it meant his team were not paid enough, and his business staff then approached EA. [31] Twelve coaches were missing at last year's launch and seven at this year's, two of them added later by download. [31]

Why it matters. The game needs real names to feel real, and the people whose names they are hand them over for nothing, which most of them notice only when left out. [31]

A YouTube channel called Mighty Mike Plays, which posted Minecraft and Roblox videos and described its owner as a nine-year-old, shut down on 14 September. [32] In the closing video the boy's father, who says he works in marketing, said his employer had called him in over a $118,000 hole in the company card, spent on YouTube advertising for the channel. [32] IGN reports the story reached millions of viewers in a week. [32] It also reports that not everyone accepts the account, and none of it has been confirmed. [32]

Why it matters. Every number here comes from one video, which is worth saying plainly while the story is being repeated as fact. [32]

Sony will sell a PlayStation 5 controller designed with Lisa, a member of the South Korean group Blackpink, for $85. [33] Preorders open on 2 October at Sony's own shop and reach other retailers from 30 October. [33] The design puts drawings of her fringe and eyes on the touchpad, with stars and her initials, and comes with matching T-shirts, hoodies, caps and keyrings. [33] Sony has run similar tie-ups with a comedian, an American footballer and a basketball player. [33]

Why it matters. GameSpot notes it arrives in a year of public complaints about PlayStation 5 price rises, and it sells to people who already own the console. [33]

Lemonade Apocalypse is a small PC game in which the player builds a lemonade stand into an empire. [34] It has a supply-and-demand system for the drink, more than 70 ingredients to combine, a presidential campaign, and a rival politician who watches what the player does. [34] It is listed on Steam. [34]

Why it matters. Business-simulation games are one of the cheapest things a tiny team can make, because the whole game is numbers rather than art. [34]