Gaming, in brief

Activision's game testers have voted to allow a strike. Testers play unfinished games to find faults before players do. [1][2]

Their union, Activision Quality Assurance United, formed in March 2024 and is represented by the Communications Workers of America, a large US union. [1][2]

It began with nearly 600 testers, many in Minnesota. Job cuts since then have left just over 400. [1]

After more than two years of talks there is still no first contract. The testers say Activision stalls on pay, accommodations, protection from layoffs, AI and the use of contractors. [1][2]

The vote does not start a strike. It clears the last step, so the union can call one at any time. [1]

Activision says it has made meaningful progress and has offered to meet on 21 and 22 October. It says it has plans so that players and new games are not disrupted. [1]

To help its purchase of Activision go through, Microsoft agreed to stay neutral on unions there. Testers say talks slowed after that agreement ended last autumn. [1]

Tester Emily Danko says testing needs human judgment that automated tools can miss. Testing is one of the jobs most often named as one AI could take over. [1]

Modern Warfare 4 opens its story mode to advance buyers on 16 October and its DMZ mode on 20 October. The full game arrives on 23 October on PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch 2. [5][7][8]

Activision's marketing chief Tyler Bahl says Call of Duty pays a 'Call of Duty tax' in reviews. Last year's Black Ops 7 scored 65 out of 100 on Metacritic, a review average. [3]

Ampere Analysis, a research firm, estimates monthly players fell to about 20 million over the summer, half the earlier figure. [3]

The game costs $70 to $100. It will not join Game Pass, Xbox's games subscription, until about the end of next year. [4]

Why it matters. Watch the 21-22 October talks: a deal there ends the threat, while no deal leaves the union free to strike during the game's first weeks, when fixes ship. [1]

Rockstar Games released a 90-second launch trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI on 15 October. [9] The game comes out on 19 November on PS5 and Xbox, 13 years after GTA V. [9] The music is a new song by Justice, a French electronic duo who wrote the game's score. [11] A giant GTA 6 banner on a Paris tower shows the cover art with two guns removed. [12] No date has been given for a PC version. [11] It came out in the same week as Rockstar's employment tribunal in Glasgow, Eurogamer notes. [10]

Why it matters. Activision's Tyler Bahl says GTA 6 will bring lapsed players back to their consoles, which could help other games. [6] PC players still do not know when they can buy it.

Games must be on sale by 20 November to compete at The Game Awards, the yearly prize show run by Geoff Keighley. [13] GTA 6 arrives on 19 November, one day inside the line. [13] GameSpot points out that the cut-off has fallen on the Friday before US Thanksgiving for years, and was 21 November last year. [14] The last Rockstar game, Red Dead Redemption 2, won four awards in 2018. [13]

Why it matters. Rockstar's date lets GTA 6 compete this year instead of waiting a whole year. The record to beat is nine wins, set by Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 last year. [13]

Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman from New York, plans to introduce the Power To The Players Act. [15][16] It would tell the Federal Trade Commission, the US consumer agency, to write rules so buyers own digital games, not a licence that can be taken away. [15] Online games would need an offline mode when their servers close. [16] Torres points to NBA 2K25, which leaves stores on 30 October and loses its servers in January. [17]

Why it matters. Most bills never reach a full vote, and Torres has not named any co-sponsors. [17] If it passed, publishers would have to plan for games outliving their servers.

Ubisoft is talking to the works council at its Dusseldorf, Berlin and Mainz studios about roughly 100 people leaving. [18] A works council is a group of staff elected to speak for workers with managers. [20] One payout idea is 1.5 months' pay for each year worked, but it is not agreed. [18] Mainz leads the Anno strategy games. [19] Kotaku says the target is about 100 of roughly 600 staff. [20]

Why it matters. It follows Ubisoft's plan to close RedLynx, its Finnish studio, and recent cuts in Singapore. [18] Rock Paper Shotgun links the voluntary approach to Germany's stronger labour laws. [19]

Sega and Creative Assembly launched Total War: Shogun 2 Complete Edition, a remake of a 2011 strategy game, on 13 October. [24][25] Players left thousands of negative Steam reviews over bugs and art that looked enlarged by AI. [22] Sega had also taken the original off sale and charged $40 for the new one. [24] Two days later it pulled the new edition and is putting the original back. [22][23]

Why it matters. Buyers keep the new edition, but Sega has not said how they get back to the original. [22] Its statement did not mention the AI complaints. [25]

House House, an Australian studio in Melbourne, says its co-op game Big Walk will not come to Xbox. [26] It is following the call by BDS, a Palestinian-led boycott movement, to boycott Microsoft. [26] It says coordinated action by many can stand up to even the most powerful companies. [26] BDS named Microsoft a priority target last year over its contracts with Israel's military and government. [29] Big Walk sold over a million copies in under a week after it came out on 4 August. [27]

Why it matters. House House says the game will not come to Xbox until Microsoft is off the boycott list. [28] Another studio, Speculative Agency, says joining would mean breaking a funding deal with Microsoft. [26]

decomp.dev, a site where hobbyists track projects that turn games back into readable code, is closing its main list. [30] Its admin says people use AI to grab other people's unfinished projects and rush out half-working ports. [30] New projects are now switched off. [30] Publishers are filing takedown notices against AI-made ports, and a former Take-Two AI chief expects more invasive copy protection in reply. [31]

Why it matters. Volunteers who did this slow work by hand lose the place they shared it. [30] Players may pay later through stricter protection on the games they buy. [31]

Dean Hall, who made the survival game DayZ, released Brutal, a free framework for building games and game engines. [32] It charges no royalties; studios only add a copyright line to the credits. [32] It already runs under Waylith, the new engine behind RimWorld. [32] Hall says studios have handed too much control to Unity and Unreal, and that AI will make it cheap to build alternatives. [32][33]

Why it matters. Hall asks what a studio can do when Epic or Unity changes its terms or adds a fee. [33] His own game Icarus stays on Unreal, because switching would disrupt its players. [33]

Remedy, the Finnish studio behind Alan Wake 2, says Control Resonant has sold one million copies in three weeks. [34] That makes it the fastest seller in Remedy's 31 years. [34] Alan Wake 2 took two months to reach a million, and over a year and two million copies to make a profit. [34] Remedy published this game itself. [34] Some fans on piracy forums said they would pay for it to help the studio. [35]

Why it matters. Remedy's new boss was hired to make it profitable, and the money picture comes on 3 November. [34]

Jagex, the maker of the online game RuneScape, has cancelled RuneScape Reignited less than two weeks after announcing it. [36] Reignited would have let new and returning players start fresh on separate servers with their own economy. [37][38] Long-time players objected to a split community and a separate subscription. [38] Jagex said it missed the mark and will not hurt its existing community. [36]

Why it matters. Jagex says the last time it ignored players, over a change to combat, it took more than a decade to recover. [37] A free ten-day trial from 2 December goes ahead. [36]

Battlefield 6's fifth season went on sale this week with new paid character outfits. [39] Players found one soldier carrying five pistols and a patch reading 'Secuty' instead of 'security'. [40] Many say the designs look made by AI. [40] Nothing has confirmed that. [39] IGN has asked EA, the game's publisher, for comment. [40] Kotaku says earlier outfits drew the same charge months after launch. [39]

Why it matters. Players are paying for these outfits through the season pass. [39] Kotaku links the slips to layoffs on the team earlier this year. [39]

Freehold Games will release Diaspora, the first expansion for its game Caves of Qud, in Steam early access in December. [41][42] Early access means buyers pay for a game still being built and help shape it. [41] It is the first add-on Steam has sold this way; Valve, which runs Steam, changed its systems to allow it. [41] Players will be able to play as animals and trees. [42]

Why it matters. Freehold says early-access money pays for the work as it happens, so it need not rush. [41] Other studios may copy the model for their own add-ons. [41]

The live-action Street Fighter film, based on Capcom's fighting games, opened on 16 October. [44] It scored 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, a site that collects reviews, below A Minecraft Movie. [44] Deadline's forecast, reported by GameSpot, puts its first weekend under $70 million worldwide. [43] It cost $82 million to make. [43] Capcom's Resident Evil film, by contrast, has taken $324 million since September. [43]

Why it matters. Game films have become a second business for publishers, and a weak opening makes the next one harder to fund. IGN's critic gave it 6 out of 10. [45]

Valve has added achievement sets to Steam, its PC game store. [46] Achievements are small goals that a player's profile records, like finishing a story. [47] Now a game's goals can be split, so new add-on goals no longer drop a finished game below 100%. [47] Sets for a season can be closed and archived. [46] Modern Warfare 4 and Forza Horizon 5 are among the first games to use them. [46]

Why it matters. It makes paid add-ons and seasons easier to track without spoiling a player's finished record. [47] Friends can also compare progress, three at a time. [47]

Epic Games says it used AI to rebuild its PC store app to be faster than Steam's. [48] Valve released a Steam update with faster start-up the same day. [48] PC Gamer timed both apps three times on one computer. [48] Steam took 9.32 seconds to show its store, and Epic's took 5.98 seconds. [48] The tester still prefers Steam, partly because Epic's app is harder to close fully. [48]

Why it matters. The test used one computer, and others have shown Steam opening its game library faster. [48] Speed alone did not change the tester's habit. [48]

Keen Games has released version 1.0 of Enshrouded, its survival game, after almost three years in early access. [49] The full map and the main story are now finished. [49] Characters can now reach level 50, and lore notes are voiced in English, German and Mandarin Chinese. [49] Players can also build and share their own adventures. [49]

Why it matters. Early access let players fund and test the game while it was built. This release turns that promise into a finished product.

IO Interactive, the Danish studio that makes Hitman, will release its James Bond game 007 First Light on Switch 2 on 18 March 2027. [50] It was first due in May 2026, alongside the other versions. [51] IO says it needs time to make the game run well on Nintendo's machine. [50] The game has sold more than four million copies elsewhere. [51] Switch 2 buyers who order early get Pierce Brosnan's GoldenEye suit. [51]

Why it matters. Big games keep arriving late on Switch 2 as studios work to make them run well. [50] Capcom called its own Switch 2 work painstaking. [50]

Capcom is releasing a free Prologue demo of Monster Hunter Wilds on Switch 2 on 19 October. [52] The full game arrives on that console on 4 December. [52] The demo covers the start of the story and all 14 weapon types. [52] Saved progress carries into the full game, and nearby Switch 2 owners can play together. [52]

Why it matters. The game had performance trouble when it launched on other machines, so a demo lets players check it first. [52]

Offworld Industries is bringing Squad, its PC war shooter from 2020, to PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. [53] Matches put up to 100 players on one map in two teams of 50. [53] PS5 players can try a test version from 16 to 25 October. [53] No release date has been set. [53]

Why it matters. A test before launch lets the studio see how a large PC game runs on consoles before it sells it.

Nintendo has released a $34.99 expansion pass for Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave, its strategy game. [54] It arrives in three parts: weapons now, outfits and three new allies this holiday season, and new stories in 2027. [54] Kotaku says the stories cover four main characters the game was meant to include. [55]

Why it matters. Selling the extra stories later keeps the game earning, and gives new buyers a moment to join. [54]

4J Studios will open a closed, invitation-only test of its survival game Reforj on PC in early 2027. [56] It announced the plan at Game Republic New Horizons, an industry event. [56] Early testers already play it on Xbox. [56] Joseph Garrett, known as Stampy, says the studio showed it nine months into development, when it was only a building world. [56] The team reads player feedback every week and often changes the game the next week. [56]

Why it matters. Showing a game so early lets players shape it before launch. [56] 4J chose Xbox first, it says, so early bug reports came from one machine. [56]

Code Valve published for its Steam Frame headset mentions a second version with OLED screens. [57][58] One of the code branches was updated on 2 October, weeks after the current Frame opened for orders. [58] It suggests a much sharper screen, refreshing 90 times a second. [58] It is a few lines of code, not an announcement. [57]

Why it matters. Some people with orders now wonder whether to wait. [57] RPS says it would fix a small weakness and none of the big ones. [58]

Intel has released a new driver, the software that runs its graphics chips. [59] It claims up to 31% more frames a second in Resident Evil Requiem on laptops with its Lunar Lake chips. [59] Assassin's Creed Shadows gains 18%. [59] Intel's own graphics cards gain about 6% in two games. [59]

Why it matters. Intel's graphics get far less attention than AMD's and Nvidia's, PC Gamer says. [59] The figures are Intel's own claims, from its release notes. [59]

Asus has a new version of its Xbox-branded handheld PC, the ROG Xbox Ally X20. [62] It adds an OLED screen, better sticks and cooling. [62] It costs $300 more than the Xbox Ally X, which has the same chip. [63] PC Gamer says rising memory prices have pushed up the cost of all gaming hardware. [62]

Why it matters. PC Gamer calls it the best ROG Ally on sale but not the best value. [62] In the UK the plain Xbox Ally X costs 400 pounds less. [63]

Nuengnara Teeramahanon, a professional Dota 2 player known as 23savage, says police raided his team's training house in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, this week. [60] He says players were handcuffed and questioned about whether they were really professionals. [60] He then played a full match in front of the officers, scoring 32 kills, and the team was let go. [60]

Why it matters. The account is his own, from a Facebook post, and IGN reports it as a claim. [60] Xipto eSports, his team, was in the city for a training camp. [60]

Dan Houser, a Rockstar co-founder, has explained why Agent never came out. [61] Sony announced the open-world spy game as a PlayStation exclusive in 2009. [61] Houser told IGN that two or three teams tried and could not get it right. [61] He said a spy story needs travel around the world, which an open world does not suit. [61]

Why it matters. Even a studio as big as Rockstar drops games after years of work. Blizzard has said it cancels half the games it starts. [61]