Gaming, in brief

Garry Newman, who founded Facepunch, the studio behind the hit games Garry's Mod and Rust, says the launch of its new game s&box went badly. [1]

s&box is a platform where players make games and share them, like Roblox, and it has struggled through its first five months on sale. [1]

On 4 October Newman answered Eridium, a YouTuber who covers s&box, whose latest video said a free-to-play weekend was not enough to fix it. [1]

Newman wrote that both the launch and the free weekend failed, and that they turned many Garry's Mod players against s&box. [1]

Facepunch will drop the citizen, s&box's own character with no neck, and switch to human characters over the next month or so. [1]

Most players do not like the citizen, Newman says. Facepunch had already given it a neck on 29 September, because the complaint kept coming up in bad reviews. [1][2]

Newman says he kept the citizen partly because of the time already put into it, and he calls that a sunk cost fallacy. [1]

He says s&box has about 20 good games lost among 500 tech demos and clickers, meaning small test projects and simple clicking games. [1]

Facepunch will change Playfund, a scheme on s&box that Newman says has been encouraging those games. [1]

Instead of showing each player 200 games to pick from, s&box will move to a system where players subscribe to a game and install it. [1]

Newman said he will not hire Eridium, because the YouTuber is more useful to Facepunch as an outside critic. [1]

Facepunch's older game Rust got its October update on 1 October, adding cows and sheep. [3] PC Gamer notes that money from two earlier hits did not promise Facepunch a third. [1]

Why it matters. Watch whether the human characters and the change to Playfund, both promised within about a month, bring Garry's Mod players back to s&box. [1]

A modder called Mojso has cancelled an unofficial version of Grand Theft Auto 5 for Nintendo's Switch, days before it was due out. [4] Mojso says Take-Two, which owns Rockstar, the studio behind GTA, sent a letter demanding a stop. [4] Rockstar had recently changed its rules for fans to ban moving its games to other machines. [4] On 20 September Mojso replied on social media, "Try me, Rockstar." [4] The group behind the port closed on 3 October. [4]

Why it matters. Take-Two's letter came about a week after that challenge, and Mojso says he would most likely lose in court. [4] He says he cannot share the code either, because that could also bring a lawsuit. [4]

Call of Duty: Warzone, Activision's free battle game, will let players switch off character outfits, called skins, that come from other Call of Duty games. [5] It starts with the first season of Modern Warfare 4, which comes out on 23 October. [5] Since 2020 Warzone has collected hundreds of skins, including tie-ins with TV shows such as American Dad and The Boys. [5] The switch only changes what the person using it sees. [5]

Why it matters. A big reason people buy a skin is that other players see it, Eurogamer notes, which is why few expected a switch like this. [5] Nobody in a match can tell who has turned the skins off. [5]

Blizzard will not fix the biggest bug in Diablo 4's current season, which lets players wear one more powerful charm than the game allows. [6] The bug comes from a new item called the Hellfire Torch. [6] Design director Dan Tanguay said many players had spent a lot of time earning it and building characters around it. [6] Blizzard also sent a rare crafting item to players as an apology for a launch delayed by server problems. [7]

Why it matters. Changing a game in the middle of a season can wipe out hours players have already put in, so Blizzard waits. [6] Diablo 4 gets no more expansions as Blizzard moves to Diablo 5. [6]

Paradox, the Swedish maker of the war strategy game Hearts of Iron 4, is banning profile pictures of political or military figures born after 1800 on its Discord chat server. [8] It follows a row after a moderator banned someone for using a photo of Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey. [8] Paradox games then got a wave of angry Steam reviews. [8] Game director Laszlo Pieper wrote that Paradox handled the matter poorly. [8]

Why it matters. Pieper says a fixed date leaves moderators no room for judgement calls about any one figure. [8] He also says staff received open threats, and anyone banned for sending them will stay banned. [8]

A fan group called Luma's Workshop says it has fully decompiled Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo's 2007 game for the Wii. [9] Decompiling means working backwards from the finished game to rebuild its code, so it can run directly on a PC instead of in an emulator that pretends to be a Wii. [9] The group calls the project AstroCore and says a release is coming soon. [9] Its next target is Super Mario Galaxy 2. [9]

Why it matters. Nintendo now sells Super Mario Galaxy on its own Switch, so a free PC version would sit beside a game it still sells. [9] Fans have already done the same with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. [9]

Cody Conrod, a 21-year-old Fortnite player known as Clix, launched a company on Thursday with a fund to help young players afford gaming computers. [10] He has more than 8 million followers on Twitch, the live-streaming site. [10] Last December he gave away five custom PCs every day. [10] Over the weekend his team came fourth at the Fortnite Global Championship in Belgium and won $120,000. [10]

Why it matters. Computer parts are getting dearer because AI data centres are buying the same chips and memory. [10] Games researcher Joost van Dreunen says PCs under $500 are getting harder to find. [10]

The father behind Mighty Mike Plays, a Minecraft YouTube channel, says he has refunded everyone who bought his AI-designed T-shirts. [11] He had said his son spent $118,000 of a company card on video ads and that it cost him his job. [11] In a new video he said a contract between two companies had ended instead, and that he owns about 12 companies. [11] He said using AI for the shirts was a mistake. [11]

Why it matters. Millions of people watched a story the father now calls a simplified version of what happened. [11] He deleted his explanation video and posted it again on a new channel, Coffee Time with Dave. [11]

Dynasty Warriors 3, an action game first released 25 years ago, came back on 1 October in a remade edition for Switch 2, PC, PS5 and Xbox. [12][13] Its producer, Tomohiko Sho, told the Japanese site 4Gamer that remaking it was almost like making it again. [12] He said he is in his fifties and would rather spend his remaining years on new games and sequels. [12] More remasters depend on how this one sells. [12]

Why it matters. Sho said remaking his own game made him ask why he was doing it, and he may hand the next remaster to someone else on his team. [12] Steam reviews of this one are Very Positive so far. [12]

The National Videogame Museum in Sheffield has started a UK-wide survey called Behind the Screens. [14] It asks studios, former staff and collectors what they hold, from design papers and artwork to old machines and company files. [14] Ukie, the UK games trade body, is a partner, and the BFI, Britain's film institute, pays for it. [14] The museum opened in 2018 and holds close to 5,000 objects. [14]

Why it matters. John O'Shea, who co-runs the museum, says much of the UK's game history risks being lost unless someone works to keep it. [14] The results will guide how the country preserves it. [14]

Nintendo staff will hold an open breakfast session for developers and publishers on 15 October at Game Republic New Horizons, a games event in Middlesbrough in England. [15] Developers do not need to already work with Nintendo to attend. [15] They can ask about publishing, tools and support. [15] The event runs from 14 to 16 October and opens with a talk by Ken Kutaragi, who led the making of Sony's first PlayStation. [15]

Why it matters. Studios that have never shipped a game on a Nintendo console can ask Nintendo's own staff how to start. [15] The event also has talks from Housemarque, the PlayStation studio behind Saros, and from Bithell Games. [15]

Dressmaker, a game where players design and sew clothes, has climbed Steam's best-seller charts. [16] Players sketch dresses, choose fabrics such as silk, lace and velvet, then cut and sew the parts together. [17] PC Gamer calls it one of the most popular cosy games of 2026. [17] Players are sharing dresses based on Van Gogh paintings and game characters. [17]

Why it matters. A small game about one craft climbed the charts with no fighting in it at all. [16][17] Steam reviewers include boyfriends who bought it for a partner and got hooked themselves. [16]

A modder called Yui has released an early version of a mod that lets up to six people play Dark Souls 2 together from start to finish. [18] Yui made the same kind of mod for Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring and Armored Core. [18] Dark Souls 2 does have co-op, but with limits that keep breaking up a session. [18] The mod is free and still has bugs, such as enemies falling out of step. [18]

Why it matters. FromSoftware, the studio that made the game, never built this, and a fan did. [18] Dark Souls 2 was the last game in the trilogy without such a mod. [18]

Quake fans released Quake Rooftops Jam on Friday, a free pack of 19 new maps for id Software's 1996 shooter. [19] Every map is built around rooftops, which the original game rarely showed. [19] It is one of many fan packs this year, Quake's 30th, which also brought an official new campaign. [19] Quake Champions, the online spin-off, has stopped getting live updates. [19]

Why it matters. A 30-year-old game keeps getting new levels because its players make them. [19] The official online version has gone quiet while the fan maps keep coming. [19]

Lego and Nintendo will sell a 1,750-piece Lego set of Link riding his horse Epona from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. [20] It comes out in spring 2027, and its price is not yet known. [20] It marks Zelda's 40th anniversary and follows Nintendo's remake of the game, out on 5 November for Switch 2. [20] An earlier Ocarina set, The Final Battle, sold for $129.99. [20]

Why it matters. Ocarina of Time is now selling again, as a remake and as a run of Lego sets. [20] The bigger Deku Tree set sold out and is no longer made. [20]

Stellar Blade, an action game from the South Korean studio Shift Up, will get four outfits based on Bayonetta in its Switch 2 edition in November. [21] At the Tokyo Game Show, PlatinumGames boss Atsushi Inaba hinted he wants to do more with Bayonetta. [21] He did not confirm a new game. [21] Its creator, Hideki Kamiya, left PlatinumGames in 2023. [21]

Why it matters. A crossover keeps a character in front of players while no new Bayonetta game has been announced. [21] Bayonetta's Japanese voice actress, Atsuko Tanaka, died in 2024. [21]

People who mailed in the registration card for Cookie's Bustle, a surreal 1999 Japanese PC game, were invited to a secret party in Tokyo on Friday. [22] A Tokyo technology firm, QualityTime Consulting, held it. [22] The invitation said the game's "long hibernation" was ending, but guests reported no new release. [22] In March the Video Game History Foundation stopped a man who had been getting videos of the game taken down. [22]

Why it matters. Japanese PC games from the 1990s are hard to find today, and this one stayed known through a small group of devoted fans. [22] Who owns the game now is still unclear. [22]

A professional Tekken 8 player called SuperBrine climbed from the lowest rank to God of Destruction, one of the highest, while wearing a sleep mask. [23] He played across seven live streams starting in June, with the last in early October. [23] His eyes burned from being closed so long, and he had to take frequent breaks. [23] He told IGN the challenge was not meant as criticism of the game. [23]

Why it matters. SuperBrine credits the game's sound cues, which tell a player a lot without looking. [23] SuperBrine says such challenges help his plan to compete for a living. [23]

Mike Tomlin, who coached the Pittsburgh Steelers American football team until 2025, has shown a Minecraft city he has built since 2014. [24] He posted the first tour on YouTube on 30 September. [24] It has hotels, flats, pharmacies and sports grounds, built block by block. [24] He led the team for 19 seasons without a losing one. [24] His son Dino films the tours, and more are planned. [24]

Why it matters. Tomlin had little history with video games until his children showed him Minecraft. [24] He says building helped him step away from the pressure of his job. [24]