Gaming, in brief

Discord, the chat app many players use while they play, began switching on age checks for users worldwide on 23 September. It says reaching every account will take a few days. [1]

The UK and Australia already had age checks. The new system covers every other country. [2][4]

Discord guesses each account's age group from signals: how old the account is, how active it is, and which servers and games it is connected to. [1][2]

Discord says the guess does not read messages, calls or anything users post. [1][4]

Every account goes into one of three groups: adult (18 and over), teen (13 to 17), or unconfirmed. [4]

Teens get safety settings by default. Sensitive images are blurred or blocked, message requests from strangers go to a separate inbox, and age-restricted servers are closed to them. [1]

Discord expects more than 90% of users will never be asked to prove their age. [1][3]

Adults put in the wrong group can prove their age with a credit card, Apple's or Google's app store, Google Wallet, or AgeKey, a proof saved on their own device. [1][2]

Discord says the checking companies must delete what a user uploads as soon as the age group is known. [1]

Discord's February plan offered only a face scan or an ID. Users objected, partly because hackers had stolen 70,000 users' IDs from a Discord supplier in 2025. [1]

Discord's co-founder Stanislav Vishnevskiy wrote that a worldwide method without face scans puts Discord ahead of laws that might demand something less private. [3][4]

Discord has already had to add checks in Texas, after a court order in July, and in Brazil. [1]

Why it matters. Watch whether Texas, Brazil and the European Union accept Discord's guess-first method, or still order a face scan or ID for everyone. [1][6]

World's Edge, the Microsoft team that looks after the Age of Empires strategy games, moved under Activision this week. [7] Its creative director, Adam Isgreen, wrote that he and many colleagues were among the 268 people Xbox cut. [7] A verified creative director at the studio posted that just under half of all staff were let go. [7] Senior engineer Andrew Martz wrote that the team's next project was shelved because of the move. [7]

Why it matters. World's Edge mostly steers the series, while outside studios such as Relic built recent games with it. [7] The series now sits with the Call of Duty publisher, run by a much smaller team, and the shelved project has not been named. [7]

Undead Labs, the studio behind the zombie game State of Decay, left Microsoft on 22 September and became owned by its own staff. [8] The same day it said it was saying goodbye to a significant number of colleagues. [8] One source told Kotaku up to 40 developers were affected. [8] Studios Xbox let go left with their games, their rights and some money to run on. [8] Undead Labs was one of five studios Xbox said it would let go, along with Double Fine and Ninja Theory. [22]

Why it matters. The staff now own the studio, but fewer of them work there. Studio head Philip Holt said State of Decay 3 stays on schedule, and its new publisher has not been named. [8]

Juan Vaca, story director on Gears of War: E-Day, said on LinkedIn he had been laid off in Xbox's latest cuts. [10] Five days earlier he had celebrated the game going gold, meaning it is finished and ready to be printed on discs. [10] He spent more than four years at The Coalition, the Xbox studio making it. [9] A Kotaku source says fewer than a handful of Coalition staff went, for reasons said to be separate from the wider cuts. [10]

Why it matters. The cuts reached a team two weeks before its game comes out on 6 October. [10] How many people The Coalition lost is not public. [10]

Obsidian, the studio behind Fallout: New Vegas, The Outer Worlds and Avowed, now reports to Bethesda, the Microsoft publisher that owns the Fallout series. [11][12] In a memo seen by IGN, Bethesda head Jill Braff called it mainly a change in who reports to whom. [11] She said Obsidian's own leaders stay in charge and no team's plans are being reset. [11] Bethesda Game Studios will keep leading Fallout, while Obsidian works on a new Fallout project. [11]

Why it matters. Some had worried Obsidian would become a helper studio for Fallout, IGN says. [11] The memo answers that in words, and no release window has been given for Obsidian's Fallout game. [11]

Joost van Dreunen, a professor at New York University's business school, called Xbox's changes a reverse acquisition in slow motion. [13] He means the publishers Microsoft paid a fortune for, such as Activision, are now taking over studios Xbox built itself. [13] Newzoo, a research firm, says grouping studios by type of game stops Microsoft's games competing for the same players. [13] Its data shows players of Obsidian's games were over three times as likely as average to also play Bethesda's. [13] Yet Obsidian's Avowed and Bethesda's Oblivion Remastered came out two months apart in 2025. [13]

Why it matters. Omdia analyst James McWhirter said Game Pass, Xbox's subscription, moved players' money from buying games to paying monthly. [13] Newzoo's Manu Rosier said a crowded market rewards fewer bets, each made by the most experienced team. [13]

Bonnie Ross, who led Halo at Microsoft for years, wrote that it was hard to wake up to news that Halo Studios had been essentially shut down. [14] Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto said he was shocked but not entirely surprised. [14] Former executive producer Kiki Wolfkill said she was gutted. [14] Kotaku reports the cuts included long-serving Halo staff and at least one person promoted the day before. [14]

Why it matters. A new team at Activision will make the next main Halo game. [14] What remains of Halo Studios becomes a support team for the Halo games already on sale. [14]

Tim Schafer, who founded Double Fine, the studio behind Psychonauts, told the BBC on 23 September that he does not understand the economics of making games. [15] He used to expect layoffs to be followed by rehiring, but said the industry has been down for about four years. [15] He noted that people are still playing games and companies are still making money. [15] Double Fine left Xbox this year and is independent again. [15]

Why it matters. Schafer said staff at the biggest studios can be laid off as soon as they finish a game. [15] Small studios risk running out of money after they ship. [15]

Australia's new rules mean a buyer must show they are over 18 to buy games rated R18+. [5] PC Gamer's Australian editor got an email from Microsoft saying his account's long history showed he was an adult, so it was marked verified. [5] Steam, Valve's PC game store, asks only for an active credit card, even from accounts over 20 years old. [5] Very few Australians use credit cards, the magazine says. [5]

Why it matters. Two big stores face the same law and picked opposite checks. Microsoft asks long-time customers for nothing more, and Steam asks everyone for a card. [5]

Electronic Arts, maker of The Sims and EA Sports FC, was sold on 4 August for $55 billion to Saudi Arabia's national investment fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, the firm of Jared Kushner. [19] Kotaku's sources say executives told staff the next day that the new owners will not make creative decisions. [19] They say layoffs were not discussed. [19] EA carries $18 billion of debt and told lenders it would cut $170 million in costs, Bloomberg reported. [19]

Why it matters. Fans of series with gay and trans characters, such as Dragon Age and The Sims, worry because Saudi Arabia makes same-sex relationships a crime. [19] Staff outside EA's biggest series say they have waited a year to learn if their jobs will go. [19]

Some PlayStation Store buyers are getting $10 of store credit when they buy certain new games, Eurogamer reports. [18] One US buyer of The Blood of Dawnwalker got the credit after buying it, and the offer was marked as ending on 29 September. [18] Players have seen it on other recent games too, including Star Wars Zero Company. [18] Sony has not explained the offer, and it is not clear why only some players see it. [18]

Why it matters. Store credit can only be spent in the same store, and Microsoft has done the same on Xbox for years. [18] Eurogamer says it may be linked to Sony's tests of charging different customers different prices. [18]

Embark Studios' shooter Arc Raiders is replacing its free reward track with a Reward Pass in its Frozen Trail update. [16] Everyone who owns the game gets the free track, and a premium track costs 1,150 Raider Tokens, about $10. [16] The paid track holds only looks, and new weapons and gear stay on the free one. [16] Completing the pass returns 1,350 tokens, 200 of them from the free track. [16]

Why it matters. A pass is how many games keep charging after the first sale. Embark kept weapons on the free track, so paying buys looks, not an edge in a fight. [16]

Xbox has begun rolling out Mythic achievements, awarded when a player unlocks every other achievement in a game. [17] Asha Sharma, head of Xbox, teased them in August, and they are Xbox's version of PlayStation's Platinum trophies. [17] They are worth no Gamerscore, the points Xbox players collect, and add-on achievements do not count, TrueAchievements reports. [17] The unlock sound runs for nearly 15 seconds. [17]

Why it matters. Most players will rarely see one, because it needs every achievement in a game. [17] It arrived in the same week as Xbox's latest job cuts. [17]

Marvel Rivals, a superhero team shooter from the Chinese company NetEase, began its tenth season with a patch changing more than half its characters. [20] It was a hit at launch in December 2024. [20] In an opinion piece, IGN's Carlos Morales, who has played more than 1,000 hours, says players are leaving. [20] He blames repeated balance problems, unfair ranked matches, a shop pushing players to spend more, and rows over character costumes. [20]

Why it matters. NetEase is pushing the game into tournaments. [20] A new Avengers film due within months could bring a wave of new players, Morales notes. [20]

Aspyr, a company that brings older games to new machines, will release Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War on Nintendo's Switch 2 on 30 September. [21] The bundle costs $70, but is half price, $35, until 6 October. [21] Monolith Productions made both games, and Warner Bros Games closed that studio in 2025. [21] Aspyr re-released War in the North in August and plans more. [21]

Why it matters. The studio that made these games is closed, but the games are still being sold on a new machine. [21] New Lord of the Rings games are being made at Warhorse, the studio behind Kingdom Come. [21]

In mid-September Blizzard opened a public test of World of Warcraft: Forever, a new version of its 20-year-old online game. [23] Developer Josh Greenfield posted that the test had the craziest numbers he had seen in 17 years at Blizzard. [23] Producer Tom Ellis said the test servers were small, so players first met login queues and disconnections. [23] Blizzard fixed them the same day. [23]

Why it matters. Blizzard has published no player figures, so the size of the crowd rests on one developer's word. [23]