Gaming, in brief

On 16 October, the number of games added to Steam in 2026 passed the total for all of 2025. [1]

Steam is Valve's online shop for PC games. [1] SteamDB, a site that tracks it, counts 21,388 games this year against 21,248 in the whole of 2025. [1]

That is about 66 new games a day, up from 55 a day last year. [1] SteamPageAnalyzer, another tracking site, expects at least 24,000 by the end of the year. [1]

The rise has run for years: 2025 added almost 3,000 more games than 2024, and 2024 added over 4,000 more than 2023. [1]

Kotaku links this year's jump to vibe coding, which means making a game by typing plain instructions to an AI tool. [1] It says Claude Opus 5.5, an AI from Anthropic, makes it easy to turn other developers' finished games back into code. [1][4]

To put a game on Steam, a maker pays a $100 fee and passes Valve's checks. [1] Players cannot hide games that say they used AI from the list of new releases. [1]

The same day, Alliance Arts cancelled the public demo of Drunken Goddess Reflux, its horror game about Russian roulette with a demon. [2][4] The demo was due on 19 October, during Steam Next Fest, a week of free demos. [4]

The studio said its demo could be used to copy the game's look and play quickly 'with AI or other tools', and the copies could come out before the real game. [2][3] A few players will now try it in closed online sessions instead. [3]

The studio also said its small team could not police a rule against streaming the demo. [3] The game is 65th on Steam's list of most-wished-for games, with over 25,000 followers. [4]

Copies have beaten originals before. [3] In March someone released a copy of a Japanese game, Typing Magician, made by feeding an AI videos of the original being built. [3] Needle in a Haystack drew several copies after its reveal in August. [2]

Rock Paper Shotgun points out that taking a stand against AI has also become a way to get attention. [3]

Konami, the Japanese maker of Silent Hill, says in its latest financial report that it does not expect AI to change the market much. [5] Its games boss, Hideki Hayakawa, says game engines and player-made games had already made it easy to start. [5]

Valve's answer so far is a front-page box of ten games picked for each player from their wishlist and the games they play. [1]

Why it matters. Watch Steam Next Fest from 19 October for other studios holding back their demos, and watch whether Valve adds a way to filter out games made with AI. [1][4]

Fishlabs, a German games studio, has announced job cuts in its development and support teams. [6] It did not say how many. [6] It blamed 'changing project requirements and the needs of our clients'. [6] Fishlabs builds games with and for other companies, and belongs to Plaion, part of the Embracer Group. [6] It last cut 50 jobs in 2023, during Embracer's big round of cost cuts. [6]

Why it matters. Fishlabs says it remains committed to the projects it makes with partners. [6] It is the second round of job losses at the studio in three years. [6]

CD Projekt, the Polish maker of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077, says its new game, codenamed Hadar, is its 'biggest project to date'. [7] Its joint boss Michal Nowakowski told the Polish business site PAP Biznes the team is only making small prototypes. [7] It has not even reached pre-production, the planning stage before full building. [7] Hadar had 33 people at the end of July, against 519 on The Witcher 4, which is aimed at 2028. [7]

Why it matters. Saber Interactive's Tim Willits has said a full team on an untested idea is 'burning money'. [10] Hadar was announced four years ago and still looks a long way off. [7]

CD Projekt is making a live-action Cyberpunk film with Paramount Pictures, a big US film studio. [8] Nowakowski says the film will tell a new story in the game's world, not copy the story of Cyberpunk 2077. [8][9] An earlier deal for the film, with the producer Anonymous Content, ran out without a film being made. [8] Rock Paper Shotgun checked the machine-translated quote with a Polish speaker before printing it. [9]

Why it matters. PC Gamer argues a new story avoids unflattering comparisons with a game millions have already played. [8] A second series of the Cyberpunk cartoon Edgerunners comes to Netflix on 20 October. [8]

Mark Darrah ran the teams behind Anthem and Dragon Age at BioWare, EA's role-playing studio. [10] In a new book from the makers of Red Rooster, he says big games are now so specialised that one change 'requires at least five people'. [10] He says a 500-person team that runs one month late adds $5 million to $10 million to the bill. [10] He says CD Projekt's games now need to sell 15 to 20 million copies to make money. [10]

Why it matters. Darrah calls that 'a really dangerous place to be', since every game must sell that many to pay back. [10] He expects more small, focused teams like the roughly 40-person studio behind Clair Obscur. [10]

Fuse Games, a new UK studio, made Star Wars: Galactic Racer with a core team of 75 people, its boss Matt Webster told GamesIndustry.biz. [11] Other studios did whole pieces of the work, such as the photo mode. [11] Some outside teams sat in Fuse's own daily meetings and chat channels. [11] The game came out on 6 October and has a Metacritic score of 88 on PS5. [12] Webster says the Netflix series Drive to Survive, about Formula 1 drivers, inspired its off-track scenes. [12]

Why it matters. Webster says shrinking a team loses knowledge that is costly to win back, so Fuse chose not to grow and shrink. [11] He warns that every extra partner adds a bigger load on the core team. [11]

Rockstar is filling Miami with adverts for Grand Theft Auto 6, including GTA-style cars, a blimp and beach chairs. [15] The game is set in Vice City, a made-up Miami. [15] Some Miami-Dade County commissioners object to taking Rockstar's money, the Miami Herald reports. [15] 'We're depicting Miami like a murder capital,' said commissioner Rene Garcia. [15] The county mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, wants more deals at the airports and sea ports. [15]

Why it matters. The mayor can sign deals under $1 million alone, which is how a $975,000 deal for an arena sign went ahead without a vote. [15] Bigger deals need the commission, and it is not yet known whether it will approve the airport and port deals. [15]

Rockstar, the maker of Grand Theft Auto, says GTA 6 will not poke fun at Donald Trump's rise or the COVID-19 pandemic, Polygon reports. [16] Rob Nelson runs Rockstar North, one of its studios. [16] He says a game that takes years to make must avoid jokes that age fast. [16] 'We're not a TV show coming out every week or every month,' he told IGN. [16] GTA 6 comes out on 19 November for PS5 and Xbox. [16]

Why it matters. GTA has always mocked real US life, so this shows how a long build changes what a game can joke about. [16] Nelson says broader things are still fine to mock, and Polygon expects nods to the spread of conspiracy theories. [16]

Citi, a big US bank, told investors a new Red Dead game by 2027 or 2028 'may not be unreasonable', GameSpot reports. [17] Citi's guess rests on Rockstar saying GTA 6 did not cost $1.5 billion to make. [17] Rockstar's gaps have been long: Red Dead Redemption II came in 2018, five years after GTA 5. [17] Rockstar's offices now build one game together before starting the next. [17] Red Dead Redemption II has sold 87 million copies. [17]

Why it matters. Strauss Zelnick, boss of Take-Two, Rockstar's owner, says new technology may shorten some builds, without saying which. [17] GameSpot calls a new Red Dead by 2027 very unlikely, given Rockstar's past gaps. [17]

Bulkhead, the UK studio behind the war shooter Wardogs, gave extra cash and points to players on its Blue team when its second season began. [18][19] The aim was to help Blue, which had been losing most games. [19] The bonus was small, 5% more cash and 2.5% more points, but top players piled in and Blue won 'by far the most'. [18] 'We were wrong,' said boss Joe Brammer, and removed it. [18][21]

Why it matters. Players also left matches when Blue was full, so games took longer to start. [19] Bulkhead is banning fewer than 1,000 players for 24 hours for using a trick that unlocked tanks early. [20]

When Battlefield 6's fifth season began this week, players found they earned far fewer experience points, the score that unlocks new gear. [22] Some testing found a cap of about 300 a minute. [22] Battlefield Studios, EA's team behind the game, said two days later that the change was 'unintended' and undid it. [22] It came as EA began selling a $30 pack that unlocks every class, 28 weapons and eight vehicles at once. [22]

Why it matters. Players suspected the slowdown was there to sell the $30 pack, and the timing fed that. [22] The studio reversed changes to its point boosters twice before, both in June. [22]

Ken Kutaragi, who led the making of Sony's first PlayStation, says ending game discs makes sense. [23] Sony plans to stop supporting discs for PS5 games in 2028. [23] 'I don't think it's economically reasonable' to keep them, he told the site VGC. [24] He said people expect to keep their games on a phone without any disc. [24] CD Projekt says that if a console maker stops discs, boxed copies of its games simply will not exist. [7]

Why it matters. In some countries more than half of new PS5 games are still sold on disc, so many buyers lose an option. [23] Nintendo says it has no plans to drop boxed games. [23]

Alinea Analytics, a firm that estimates game sales, says Ghost of Yotei has sold about 5.4 million copies in its first year. [25] It puts the takings at $407 million. [25] The first game, Ghost of Tsushima, had sold nearly 7 million at the same point, for $418 million. [25] Yotei costs $70 and has rarely been discounted, against Tsushima's $60. [25] Sony has not confirmed the figures. [25]

Why it matters. Sony is selling fewer copies at a higher price and earning nearly the same, which Alinea calls Sony's aim of more money per player. [25] Alinea's analyst says Yotei's sales are flattening, and new PS5 buyers arriving for GTA 6 may slow that. [25]

Masako Nozawa, the 89-year-old Japanese actor who voices Goku in Dragon Ball, called AI videos using her voice 'theft' on Japan's broadcaster NHK. [26] She is vice-chair of the Japan Actors Union, which set out its first rules on AI voices on 15 October. [26] On 30 September a Tokyo court ruled that using someone's voice without permission breaks their rights. [26] It came after the voice actor Kenjiro Tsuda sued TikTok over a video that copied his voice. [26]

Why it matters. A union leader says the biggest fear is actors losing work. [26] The union wants its rules to lead, in time, to a law. [26]

Pierre-Louis Biojout, who runs the AI start-up NanoCorp, made a web game in a weekend with AI tools. [27] In it players shoot 'zombies' in the Tenderloin, a poor San Francisco district known for homelessness and drug use. [27] He said it had already earned $300 from adverts. [27] The city's Coalition on Homelessness said it made a game out of pretend-killing the area's poorest people. [27] The game has since been taken off his company's site. [27]

Why it matters. It took one weekend and AI tools to go from an idea to a public game earning money from adverts. [27] Biojout told the San Francisco Chronicle he did not mean to show real people being shot. [27]

Footage of a cancelled Assassin's Creed game set in ancient China has appeared, found in developers' online portfolios by the site MP1st. [28][29] It was reportedly called Assassin's Creed Destiny and made with TiMi, a studio owned by China's Tencent. [28] Tencent owns a quarter of Vantage Studios, the Ubisoft company that runs the series. [29] It reportedly ended when Tencent scaled back work on big Western series that pay fees to other firms. [28]

Why it matters. A separate phone game set in the same years, Assassin's Creed Jade, still has no release date. [28] Both reports call the footage alleged, and it comes only from developers' portfolios. [28][29]

Xbox's online store briefly showed a page for Shrek 2: Remastered, a new version of the 2004 game based on the film. [30][31] It promises sharper pictures, 4K and play for up to four people together, at home or online. [30] Aspyr, a company that brings old games to new machines, is making it. [30] The page gave no date or price before it was taken down. [30][31]

Why it matters. Kotaku expects it is timed for Shrek 5, the next film, due next year. [31] Activision published the original game in 2004. [30]

Analogue, a US firm that makes consoles for old game cartridges, announced new versions of its Super Nt and Mega Sg on 16 October. [32][33] They play original Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive cartridges using a chip built to work exactly like the old machines. [32] They add wireless controllers and a USB-C plug. [32] Each costs $219.99, with orders from 19 October and shipping in December. [33]

Why it matters. They let people play cartridges they already own on modern TVs. [33] The Super Nt+ plays over 2,200 Super Nintendo games. [33]

Anbernic, a Chinese maker of cheap handhelds that run old games, showed a video of its new two-screen RG DDS. [34] It shaped the screens to match Nintendo's 3DS, without the 3D effect. [34] The video shows it running 3DS, Xbox and PS3 games by emulation, software that copies an old console. [34] Anbernic has not said what it will charge for the RG DDS. [34] Its smaller two-screen models start under $100. [34]

Why it matters. The Verge pitches it at people whose old Nintendo 3DS is wearing out. [34] Ayaneo, a rival, sells a two-screen model from $579. [34]

Sony has filed a US patent for a way to make extra frames, the still pictures that make up moving video. [35] Its system guesses the next picture between two real ones, as Nvidia's DLSS already does on PCs. [35] Sony's version also reads the player's controller to guess where they will move next. [35] IGN expects it in the PlayStation 6. [35] Sony has shipped over 95 million PS5s so far. [44]

Why it matters. IGN worries studios could lean on it to hide slow games, at the cost of lag. [35] A patent is not a product, and IGN notes it may never ship. [35]

Blizzard will let anyone play World of Warcraft: Forever, its new version of its old online game, for free on 19 October. [36] Players usually pay $60 for the early test. [36] The free window is a stress test, a run meant to find server problems before launch. [36] Blizzard says it lasts only a few hours and may end early or run late. [36]

Why it matters. Blizzard says the players will help it find problems that would otherwise have hit on launch day, 4 November. [36] Characters made during the test will be deleted. [36]

DeNA, the company that makes the phone game Pokemon TCG Pocket, will release new card sets about every six weeks instead of every four. [37] It said players found the number of new cards made collecting too hard. [37] It is adding a way to earn the rarest moving cards through missions, rather than only by luck. [37] Trading will now show what friends are missing. [37]

Why it matters. Kotaku says the game has lost half its players since launch. [37] It turns two years old at the end of October. [37]

Jason Zimmerman, a famous Super Smash Bros. player known as Mew2King, was barred from this weekend's Xtreme Fighters Showdown tournament. [38] He had posted photos of swollen hands and bites he blamed on bugs in his home. [38] The organisers cited his 'self-reported health concern' and the safety of other players. [38] He has since deleted the posts. [38]

Why it matters. Fans worried he could carry bed bugs to the event. [38] In September, a Pokemon champion complained that an opponent's smell cost him a match. [38]

Peter Molyneux, the British designer behind the Black and White 'god games', told PC Gamer why a third game was never made. [39] In god games, players rule a world from above. [39] PC Gamer reads his answer as publishers seeing them as a small market. [39] He also said he thinks a remaster of Black and White is in the works. [39] He no longer owns the series and is not involved. [39]

Why it matters. PC Gamer notes big publishers have bet on a few kinds of game, such as always-online shooters. [39] Black and White tops GOG's list of most-wanted remasters, a sign of interest. [39]

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's story mode opened on 16 October to people who ordered it early, a week before its 23 October launch. [40] It is also the first main Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since 2013. [42] IGN found the Switch 2 version smooth at 30 frames a second, though less detailed. [42] PC Gamer calls the six-hour story, led by young South Korean marines, the most fun Call of Duty story in years. [41]

Why it matters. Nintendo owners get the series back after 13 years, which widens its market. [42] Activision calls the game the end of the Modern Warfare story begun in 2019. [40]

Carson Oliver, the new head of Apple's App Store, gave his first interview to Polygon after an indie games week on iPhones. [43] He says more paid games came to the App Store this year than last. [43] Polygon notes Steam is so crowded that games struggle to be seen, and Apple answers with editors who pick games by hand. [43] Apple does not publish player numbers. [43]

Why it matters. Oliver says a whole generation started playing on an iPhone, not a console. [43] Without player numbers, nobody outside Apple can check how well its push works. [43]

Game Republic New Horizons, a games business event in Middlesbrough, in north-east England, drew 461 people this week, up from 259 last year. [13] Meetings between developers, publishers and investors rose from 100 to 257. [13] Nintendo ran a breakfast for developers who want to make games for its consoles. [13] The local mayor, Ben Houchen, pointed to a 160 million pound fund for digital firms. [13]

Why it matters. Small regional studios meet publishers and investors at events like this, which is how their next game gets paid for. [13] Fuse Games' boss gave his Galactic Racer interview there. [11]