Gaming, in brief

Google opened Playground on 7 October, a website where people make games by typing what they want, with no coding needed. [1][5]

For now it is open only to people aged 18 and over in the US, and Google says it plans to add other countries. [1][5]

A player can ask it to change a game's physics, rules, characters or setting, and then test the change straight away. [1][4]

A finished game can stay private, go to friends by link, or go into Playground's public gallery, which picks games to show using ratings and play activity. [1][5]

Making games uses up a weekly allowance of tokens, which are units of AI work. Free users get a few, and people who pay for Google One get more. [1][5]

Google says Playground runs on three of its own AI models, Gemini, Nano Banana and Lyria. [1]

Unity, one of the biggest makers of tools for building games, made a tool called Unity Spark for the site. [2][3]

Spark builds 3D games from typed requests and pulls in ready-made art from the Unity Asset Store, a shop where artists sell parts for games. [3][2]

At launch, games made in Spark cannot be sold or moved into Unity's full engine, and the price of its paid credits is not yet set. [3]

Spark opens as a closed test later this year, and a waiting list opened on 7 October. [1][3]

Unity's boss, Matt Bromberg, wrote that asking AI to repeat a game that already exists does not make anyone the next Hideo Kojima. [2]

Early games drew mockery: GameSpot found cover pictures that did not match the games, and Kotaku called Unity's own sample game, Space Corridor, generic and badly made. [6][7]

Meta and Roblox already let their users build games with AI, and Meta says those games can be recommended on Facebook and Instagram. [1][5]

Why it matters. Watch whether Google opens Playground outside the US, as it says it plans to, and whether Spark users are ever allowed to sell what they make. [5][3]

Astrocade, a free website where anyone can make games with AI and play other people's, says it now has 10 million users a month. [8] Its chief executive, Amir Sadeghian, told GamesBeat it had about 5 million four months ago. [8] Its games scroll past in an endless feed, like videos on TikTok, and the site pays more to makers of popular games. [8] Kotaku found that many of its top games copy Minecraft, Roblox hits or famous characters. [8] An iPhone app is next. [8]

Why it matters. Sadeghian says having the making, the playing and the recommending in one place gives Astrocade the data to train its AI on what players enjoy. [8] Google's Playground also lets people make games, play them and find them in one gallery. [1]

Skydance, the company formed when Paramount bought Warner Bros. Discovery, is merging Warner Bros. Games with its own Paramount Games Studio, Variety reported from a staff memo. [9] The new unit, called Games and Experiences, will be run by Tony Driscoll, who has worked at Epic Games, Warner Bros. and Disney. [12] It takes in the makers of Hogwarts Legacy, Mortal Kombat, the Batman Arkham games and the Lego games. [10][11] Skydance's boss, David Ellison, told staff the merger will mean 'difficult decisions'. [9]

Why it matters. Skydance wants more than $6bn of savings from the merger, much of it from technology, marketing and offices. [10] GameSpot says it is still unclear how hard the games unit will be hit by the cuts. [11]

Electronic Arts, one of the biggest game publishers, was bought in August by a group including Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. [13] They paid partly with $20bn borrowed from the bank JPMorgan, which EA itself must now pay back. [13] That much new debt may cost EA its 'investment grade' rating, the mark of a safe borrower. [13] One group of older lenders, holding $1.5bn of EA's bonds, is demanding 101% of its money back, The Wall Street Journal reported. [13]

Why it matters. A bond is a loan sold to investors, and the buyout's new debt makes EA a riskier borrower than the one these investors lent to. [13] EA is reworking its bonds to calm them, and the Journal says that may not end the fight. [13]

Bit Reactor, the studio that made Star Wars Zero Company with Respawn and EA, has started bringing back staff it sent home before launch. [14][16] It had furloughed about 80% of its people, which kept them as employees but with no pay or benefits. [14] Game File, a games news site, says the studio is now back to more than half its old size. [15][16] The research firm Alinea estimates the game has sold over a million copies. [16]

Why it matters. Its boss, Greg Foertsch, blamed 'unexpected business developments' that he did not name. [14] Staff still away are unpaid, and nobody has said whether any of them will share in the game's profits. [15]

Gravity Well, an independent studio started by former developers at Respawn, the maker of Apex Legends, has let go of more than 40 people. [17] Its three leaders, Drew McCoy, Jon Shiring and Mon Saetern, said the studio lost its funding this summer and has not found a new backer. [17] A much smaller team will keep working, and the leaders called its future uncertain. [17] They asked other companies to hire the people affected. [17]

Why it matters. The leaders say staff knew for months that this could happen if no new money came. [17] They blamed the current state of the games business for the studio's uncertain future. [17]

Philip Holt runs Undead Labs, the State of Decay studio that left Xbox last month. [18] He told The Game Business that money for games is 'nervous', waiting for 'obvious slam dunks'. [18] He said investors questioned the cost of paying staff in Seattle, one of the dearest places to make games. [18] The buyer that pulled out of a deal for the studio was Splash Damage, a British studio owned by Tencent, the site reported. [18] Holt says State of Decay 3 needs 'some changes' after the layoffs, but it is still due in 2027. [19]

Why it matters. Holt says strong games now come from countries where wages are much lower, and he calls it a 'race to the bottom' on pay. [18] He says that, now it is independent, the studio will grow or shrink to match what its players will pay for. [18]

ReSkate, a free tool made by two modders, lets EA's skateboarding game Skate run without EA's servers, with private servers and custom maps. [20] Skate is free to play, online-only, and still in early access, an unfinished version that is already on sale. [20] ReSkate was downloaded more than 350,000 times in a few days. [20] Its makers say AI coding tools helped them take the game apart, work they say would probably have taken years without them. [20]

Why it matters. The makers say they will stop if EA's lawyers ask, but their code is public and already has more than 70 copies on GitHub. [20] EA has not commented. [20]

GoldHEN is the most used tool for running homemade software on a PlayStation 4, built over about five years by a developer called Sistro and other helpers. [21] Its code is kept private. [21] A developer called Zer0Day used AI to rebuild it and published the copy, saying 'code should not be a cage'. [21] Kotaku also counted about 1,840 copies, or forks, of three young PlayStation 5 emulator projects on GitHub, up from about 1,300 three days earlier, which it reads as a flood of AI-made clones. [21]

Why it matters. Sistro wrote that the code was made private because it had been abused when it was open. [21] An AI rebuild means keeping code private no longer stops someone copying it.

Jordan Juarez, a developer who worked on the virtual reality hit Gorilla Tag, has released a free mod that turns the shooter Titanfall 2 into a full VR game. [22] He built it alone in about a month. [22] The Verge's reviewer ranks it among the five best VR games he has played. [22] Juarez says AI helped most with reverse engineering, which means working out how a game's code works from the outside. [22]

Why it matters. Juarez says studios avoid big VR games because few people own headsets, and few people buy headsets because there are no big games. [22] He hopes mods like his can show studios how much fun large VR games can be. [22]

Double Counter, a bot that protects Discord chat servers from fake accounts and mass attacks, was hacked on 4 October. [23] The attackers got in through an old analytics tool and stayed for nearly six hours. [23] They copied about 1 million email addresses, and Discord IDs and usernames for about 28 million accounts. [23] The breach tracker Have I Been Pwned says 274,900 of the emails and usernames have been posted publicly. [23][24]

Why it matters. Discord itself was not broken into, but its users' data sat with an outside service. [24] It comes as Discord restarts its age checks, which it delayed this year over privacy worries. [23]

The Verge still reports that Xbox has a deal to stream Grand Theft Auto 6 from its own computers when the game comes out on 19 November. [25][26] It corrected one part: the deal is not exclusive, and Xbox's strategy chief Matthew Ball says the game will not stream to PCs. [25][26] The Verge reads that as streaming to Xbox consoles only. [25] Next month Xbox also starts selling cloud play in bundles of hours, without a Game Pass subscription. [25]

Why it matters. Rockstar has not announced a PC version, so people with only a PC still have no way to play it at launch. [27] PC Gamer notes that Rockstar has made money twice before, from players who bought the console game and then the PC one. [26]

Rockstar is selling a 350-pound ($400) Grand Theft Auto 6 collector's box of merchandise, with a hat, a bag, sunglasses and a figurine, but no copy of the game. [28] The game itself costs 70 pounds. [28] The Guardian's games newsletter compares it with Fallout 4's $120 collector's edition in 2015. [28] It cites Newzoo, a research firm, saying about 80% of the world's players play free or cheaply on phones. [28]

Why it matters. That leaves a smaller group on consoles and PCs paying for most of the expensive games, and boxes like this are aimed at them. [28]

About 30 people left at Halo Studios, the Xbox studio that made Halo for years, are working on a final free update for Halo: Campaign Evolved, the Halo reporter Rebs Gaming says. [29] The update may add Firefight, a mode where players fight waves of enemies. [29] After that, he expects the studio to close. [29] The next Halo is being made by a new team at Activision, and 268 Halo Studios staff were laid off. [30]

Why it matters. The studio has published concept art for a sequel that will now never be made, including the Endless, a planned new enemy race. [30][29] Activision's team is starting fresh, so fans face a long wait for a new game. [29]

Mike Crump, head of The Coalition, the Xbox studio behind Gears of War: E-Day, told the BBC the next Gears 'will not take nearly as long' as this one, which took seven years. [31] He was asked about a report that his staff fear layoffs now the game is out. [31] He did not say whether cuts are coming. [31] He said the team should 'focus on the things that we can control'. [31]

Why it matters. Xbox is still cutting jobs across its studios as it reorganises, Kotaku notes. [31] Crump stressed that his leadership team has worked together for about 20 years. [31]

Battlefield 6, the war shooter that was last year's best-selling game, joins Xbox Game Pass on 13 October, a year after it came out. [32][33] Game Pass is Microsoft's subscription for playing a library of games. [33] This month's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will not be on Game Pass at launch, because of Xbox's reorganisation, Kotaku says. [32] Gears of War: E-Day and Minecraft Dungeons 2 are already on the service. [33]

Why it matters. Call of Duty is made by Activision, which Microsoft bought in 2023. [12] So Xbox's own biggest game of the month will be sold first rather than included in its subscription at launch. [32]

Capcom's Monster Hunter Rise, which first came out on the Switch in 2021, has appeared on Apple and Android app stores for Netflix members only. [34] It runs on the phone itself, not as a stream. [34] The phone version unlocks quests that used to be paid extras, and adds touch controls. [34] Capcom said the day before that Rise has sold 20 million copies. [34]

Why it matters. For now, phone players can only get it by paying for Netflix. [34] It lands in the same month as Monster Hunter Outlanders, a separate phone game made with Tencent that launches on 29 October. [34]

billbil-kun, a leaker with a strong record, says Forza Horizon 6 reaches the PlayStation 5 on 26 January 2027, with a disc version in shops. [35][36] In September, Playground Games, the British studio behind it, said the PS5 version was still coming this year. [35] Microsoft has not announced any change. [36] The game came out on Xbox and PC in May and is one of the year's best-selling games. [35][36]

Why it matters. Forza Horizon 5 was a big hit when it reached PlayStation, Kotaku notes, which is why the delay surprised it. [36]

Sony is reported to be bringing back Ape Escape, a PlayStation series about catching escaped monkeys with gadgets. [37][38] The journalist Jeff Gerstmann said on his podcast that Evening Star, the studio that made Sonic Mania, is working on it, and the news site VGC said its own sources agree. [37][38] The last main game came out in 2005. [37] VGC says Sony wants outside studios to revive more of its old series, as Bandai Namco did with Everybody's Golf in 2025. [37][38]

Why it matters. Sony keeps the rights and has an outside studio make the game, instead of one of its own teams. [37] Sony has not confirmed any of it.

Sony's games boss, Hideaki Nishino, said the PS5 home screen will get a Crunchyroll hub in spring 2027. [39] Crunchyroll is an anime streaming service that Sony bought for nearly $1.2bn in 2021. [39] The hub will gather anime, anime-style games and the Crunchyroll app in one place. [39] Sony had sold more than 92 million PS5s as of earlier this year. [39]

Why it matters. Sony owns both the console and the anime service, and Crunchyroll's president said the aim is to meet fans 'where they already are'. [39]

Paradox will release Cities: Skylines - Expanded Edition, a Switch 2 version of its 2015 city-building game, on 28 October. [40] It costs $49, includes 10 expansions and adds mouse controls and a map editor. [40] Owners of the Switch 1 version get 70% off. [40] Tantalus Media, which brought Zelda: Skyward Sword to the Switch, made it. [40]

Why it matters. Console versions of the sequel, Cities: Skylines 2, were first promised for 2023 and still have no date. [40]

Vanillaware and Marvelous will release Muramasa: Revenant Blades, a rebuilt version of the 2009 Wii sword-fighting game, on 4 February 2027. [41] It comes to the Switch, Switch 2, PS5 and PC, and it is Vanillaware's first game on PC. [41][42] It adds 4K pictures, a new English translation with voices, a training mode, and four extra heroes first added on the PlayStation Vita. [41][42]

Why it matters. Physical copies come for the PS5 and both Switches, and on the Switch 2 the whole game sits on the cartridge. [41]

Blood Bowl 3, a video game of Games Workshop's fantasy football board game, is being replaced by Warhammer Blood Bowl, now published by Slitherine. [43] Anyone who owns Blood Bowl 3 gets the new game free. [43] Slitherine told PC Gamer that cosmetics, teams and unspent Warpstone, the game's coin, carry over to the same account. [43] It is still deciding how new teams will be sold. [43]

Why it matters. Players had asked whether their unspent coins would vanish when the old game closed. [43] In Blood Bowl 2, extra teams were sold as paid add-ons, and that could return. [43]

The Outlast Trials, a horror game for up to four players from the studio Red Barrels, passed 120,000 players at once, three years after it first opened. [44] Its old record was 36,000, at its early-access launch in 2023. [44] Red Barrels says about half of the players are in China, where the game is growing fast. [44] It was on sale for $4 in Steam's autumn sale. [44]

Why it matters. Half of the record came from one country, China. [44] A Halloween event comes next, then a new season in December with another main villain. [44]

Mixtape, a music-filled coming-of-age game from the Melbourne studio Beethoven & Dinosaur, won Game of the Year at the 2026 Australian Game Developer Awards. [45] It also won the prizes for visual art and sound design. [45] Its soundtrack includes Devo, The Smashing Pumpkins and Silverchair. [45] Uppercut Games, from Canberra, was named Studio of the Year. [45]

Why it matters. The awards are part of Melbourne International Games Week, which ends with the PAX Aus show this weekend. [45]

Three 25-year-old promo cards from Pokemon's English Southern Islands set sold for nearly $1.2m together at auction. [46] A top-graded Mew went for $840,000, and only 20 copies at that grade exist. [46] A Togepi and a Marill went for $168,000 each. [46] Wizards of the Coast released the 18-card set in 2001, with pictures that join up into island scenes. [46]

Why it matters. Rare Pokemon cards have set record after record this year, Polygon says, as collectors bid on both old and new cards. [46]

Blizzard will redraw the Skyborne, new blue elves in World of Warcraft: Forever, to match the rougher look of the 2004 game. [47] Players in the test said they looked too modern beside the old characters. [47] It is also replacing the old race for player-versus-player ranks with points every player earns over a season. [48] Forever, a new version of the 2004 online game, comes out of its test on 4 November. [47]

Why it matters. Under the old system, players stayed up for days, or shared accounts, to hold their rank. [48] The Skyborne cost $30 to unlock, so their look matters to people who have already paid. [47]