Gaming, in brief

A leaker called Cyberleek posted an offer on its website on 10 October. [1] If its crypto coin reaches $30 million in total value, it says it will release a playable copy of Grand Theft Auto 6. [1][3]

It promises the full story mode, "played to the end, credits and all". [3][4]

It says Take-Two Interactive, the company that owns Rockstar, can stop this only by selling the game on discs and making a public apology. [1][2]

GTA 6 is Rockstar's next crime game, due on 19 November on PlayStation 5 and Xbox, 13 years after GTA 5. [3][8]

Boxed copies in shops will hold a download code, not a disc. [8]

Cyberleek's coin is a meme coin: a digital token of its own that fans buy, and spend to vote on what leaks next. [2]

Its total value, called the market cap, was $3.8 million on 10 October, after jumping to $5.7 million as news of the offer spread. [2]

Smaller leaks have their own prices: a clip of the character Lucia in a bikini at $2 million, and naked at $4 million. [2]

Two days earlier, Cyberleek posted a video of about 25 minutes with story scenes and the other lead character, Jason, naked. [6][7]

It called the video "An Extended Leek", mocking Rockstar's own 26-minute "Extended Look", first shown on Netflix. [10]

Earlier Cyberleek clips mostly avoided the story; this one gives parts of it away. [11]

In the video a tank appears in mid-air, which suggests Cyberleek can use a developer's menu inside a working copy of the game. [9][4]

The video sits on a file-sharing service with no central owner, so Rockstar cannot easily have it taken down. [9]

In August Cyberleek went quiet after taking about $250,000 out of the coin, and the coin's price crashed. [1]

Take-Two sought court orders in August making Discord and Microsoft hand over user records, and there has been no news since of what they gave. [1][7]

Why it matters. Watch whether the coin climbs anywhere near $30 million before 19 November, and whether Take-Two's court requests name the person behind Cyberleek first. [1][2]

Embark Studios will test a mode in its shooter Arc Raiders from 13 to 20 October where players cannot hurt each other. [12] Embark first planned the game as a team game against computer enemies, then rebuilt it around fights between players. [12] Its own data splits players three ways: 37% play friendly, 34% only fight other players, and 27% do both. [12] It says 51% of players it asked want a mode with no player fights, but the test is "not a promise". [12]

Why it matters. The test comes as players return: 166,670 were on at once on Steam after a big update and a free weekend, against about 10,000 in September. [13] If the mode stays, every match is filled from two smaller groups instead of one.

Deadlock, a team battle game Valve has run as an invite-only test for years, had 262,145 people playing at once on 9 October. [14] That beat the best day ever on Steam for Team Fortress 2, Valve's older team shooter, at 253,997. [14] The jump came with Solomon, a chess master who is one of six new characters. [14][15] Each time he reloads, his board shows a famous real chess game. [15]

Why it matters. Valve has made no money directly from Deadlock in all that testing. [14] PC Gamer's writer credits Steam's size: the store earns enough to pay for a test this long. [14]

Cloud Imperium Games has put Squadron 42 on the Steam store, with a release window of April to June 2027. [16][18] It is the single-player story game set in Star Citizen, an online space game the studio has worked on for 12 years. [17] Its cast includes Mark Hamill, Gary Oldman, Gillian Anderson and Henry Cavill. [17][18] In August, its director Chris Roberts moved it out of 2026 so it would not come out near GTA 6. [16][17]

Why it matters. Star Citizen passed $1 billion raised from players buying ships in May, and has raised $50 million more since, while it is still unfinished. [17] Squadron 42's release dates have moved so often that fans keep a web page listing them. [16]

A coder called Swordpdf released version 2.01 of PS5SX2, a program that makes a hacked PlayStation 5 act like a PlayStation 2. [19] Such a program is called an emulator, and "hacked" here means the owner has removed Sony's locks so the console runs unapproved software. [19] The new version reads a PS2 game straight from its disc and copies it to the console. [19] It cannot read the blue PS2 discs, which are CDs, because the PS5's drive cannot read CDs. [19]

Why it matters. Owners can now play their own old discs instead of downloading copies from websites. [19] Swordpdf says a PlayStation 3 version is in the works, and the project lists Claude, an AI, as one of its three contributors. [19]

Easy Fox, a team of four, says its free demo of Teach My Little Sister How To Drive costs more than $1,000 a day to run. [20] In the game an AI chatbot plays a learner driver who follows, or ignores, the player's instructions. [20][21] Every reply is a paid request to an AI company, and demo players grew more than twentyfold in a month. [21] The team took out a bank loan and may close the demo before launch. [20][21]

Why it matters. Most games cost almost nothing per extra player, so a free demo is cheap marketing. Here each extra player adds to a bill, and Easy Fox says the cost will go into the final price, with no separate charge per player. [21]

YouTube permanently removed the channel of J0nathan, a French creator with 190,000 subscribers, over a video of the horror game Hellraiser: Revival. [22][23] The game, from Saber Interactive, opens with an explicit sex scene. [22][24] He had covered the nudity with black boxes and marked the video not for children, but did not age-restrict it. [22] YouTube cited its sex and nudity rules, and his first appeal was turned down within minutes. [22]

Why it matters. He says he lost 10 years of work, more than 3,000 videos and his main income, while uncensored videos of the same scene stay up. [22] Saber had told creators before launch to use age limits, because the game has no streamer mode. [22]

Bokeh Game Studio is hiring actors for a new, untitled horror game, the site MP1st reports. [25] Bokeh was founded by Keiichiro Toyama, who directed the first Silent Hill and created Gravity Rush. [25] The casting sheet lists seven named characters and an eight-year-old girl. [25] It describes drug use, abuse and grief, and people who change into creatures, much like Bokeh's 2024 game Slitterhead. [25]

Why it matters. Slitterhead did not sell strongly, Eurogamer notes, yet Bokeh is making another game in the same vein. [25] The studio itself has announced nothing.

The FBI arrested Edward Frith, 29, of Alabama, after Epic Games reported threats he made in Fortnite's voice chat. [26] He had said he wanted to kill someone and would shoot FBI agents who came to his door. [26] Epic sent the FBI a recording and a written copy of what he said. [26] He was charged on 23 September, pleaded not guilty, and is held until trial. [26]

Why it matters. Epic only receives a voice recording when a player in the chat reports it, and then it gets the last five minutes. [26] So what reaches the police starts with another player pressing report.

A Japanese player called BTEST4HE has found eight hidden codes in F-Zero GX, Nintendo's 2003 racing game. [27] They unlock the "Gold Parts", car parts that could only be won at promotional events in Japan when the game came out. [27] The codes work on the original GameCube, the Wii and the Nintendo Classics service on Switch 2. [27] Five of the eight must be typed on four controllers at once. [27]

Why it matters. Prizes tied to a one-off event usually vanish when the event ends. These were inside every copy all along, so every player can now reach them. [27]

Hangar 13, the studio behind the crime game Mafia 3, released an update for it this week, ten years after it came out. [28] It fixes missions where players got stuck and could not go on, including the game's ending. [28] It also fixes characters behaving oddly and achievement tracking. [28] PC Gamer scored the game 54% in 2016. [28]

Why it matters. The update is on Steam, where the game's Definitive Edition is still sold. [28] Players who gave up at a broken mission can now finish it.

Mike Lacher has made Triple-A Minesweeper, a five-minute joke version of the old puzzle game. [29] It mocks habits of big-budget games: logos you cannot skip, a yellow marker showing where to click, and characters who keep saying what to do. [29] Hitting a mine does not end the game. [29] PC Gamer links it to yellow paint on ledges in Stellar Blade and to hints in God of War Ragnarok. [29]

Why it matters. Big studios add this help because they fear players getting stuck. [29] PC Gamer says the help is usually well meant, and the trouble is that it is not subtle enough. [29]

Medium Rare, a horror dungeon game due in 2027, makes its pictures from stock photos edited in Photoshop. [30] Its artist, Giovanni Fim, says a game has to look unlike others to be noticed on Steam. [30] The game is about rescuing someone from a factory that turns people into food. [30] A free demo is on Steam now. [30]

Why it matters. Fim says a game on Steam has to do something few others do, to rise above the mass of look-alike games. [30] Rock Paper Shotgun says the look, more than the rules, is what drew its writer in. [30]

Militsioner, a game about a town ruled by one giant police officer, now has a free demo on Steam. [31] Players try to escape the town while keeping the officer calm, because an angry officer takes freedoms away. [31] Each task can be done in several ways, and some fail for good if you break things. [31] The full game is due in 2027. [31]

Why it matters. A demo lets a small studio collect wishlists, the saved interest that Steam uses to show a game to more people at launch.

Heathen, a dungeon game made by one developer, Yabsley, has a new trailer. [32] It plays like Diablo, the famous loot-hunting game, but seen through the hero's own eyes. [32] Enemies can be cut apart, and their heads kicked at other monsters. [32] Yabsley says playing Diablo with his mother as a child inspired it, and it will have online co-op. [32]

Why it matters. No release date is set. It will launch in early access, where players pay to play an unfinished game while one person finishes it. [32]

Thomas Welsh, lead writer of Nivalis Nights, told PC Gamer the game is not cosy, even though it has no dying, shooting or boss fights. [33][34] It is a life game set in a crowded future city, where players run a shop and build a life. [33] Steam players have tagged it "relaxing", and many fans of gentle games have it on their wishlists. [33] Welsh says its first hours are meant to feel overwhelming. [33][34]

Why it matters. Steam lets players tag games, and those tags help decide who sees a game in the store. Here the maker is telling buyers in advance that the tag gets the game wrong. [33]