Gaming, in brief

Wildwood, a stop-motion film by the animation studio LAIKA, took $4.28 million in North America on Friday, its first day, and came third. [1][2]

Stop-motion means puppets are moved by hand a tiny bit for each frame, and LAIKA built 233 puppets and 132 sets for it. [3]

Estimates put its first weekend at about $11.2 million, from 2,942 cinemas. [1][2]

Wildwood cost $100 million and took 16 years to make. [1][5]

More than 1,000 people worked on it after filming began a little over five years ago. [3]

Its final battle alone runs to more than 400 shots, and the crew built 728 miniature trees for its forest. [3]

LAIKA released its earlier films through bigger distributors, Focus Features and United Artists. [3]

This time it chose Fathom, a company built around event screenings, and runs its own marketing. [3]

Before it opened, tracking pointed to a first weekend in the teens of millions, so $11.2 million is below that. [3][1]

Travis Knight, LAIKA's chief and the film's director, called it a grand experiment and said the studio might fall flat. [3]

LAIKA is independent, and Knight's father, Nike founder Phil Knight, took control of the studio it grew from. [3]

Its films earn over years: Coraline, its first, took more than $50 million worldwide on its return to cinemas in 2024. [3]

Why it matters. The next figures are the weekend's actual takings, which replace Sunday's estimate, and then the second weekend, which LAIKA's word-of-mouth films have needed to hold up. [1][3]

The Wall Street Journal reports that the film of Elden Ring, a 2022 fantasy game from the Japanese studio FromSoftware, has a budget of nearly $200 million, IGN says. [9] A24, the US company making it, is known for art films on small budgets. [9] Its most expensive film until now was Marty Supreme, at $70 million. [9] Earlier reports put Elden Ring at just over $100 million. [9] Alex Garland directs, filming ended in July, and it is due on 3 March 2028. [9]

Why it matters. If the figure is right, one film carries almost three times the money A24 has ever put into a single film. That money is spent years before anyone can buy a ticket.

Netflix held a two-day fan festival in Seoul on 24 and 25 October to mark ten years in South Korea. [10] Its co-chief executive, Ted Sarandos, gave dates for new Korean series, including Tantara on 11 December. [10] Netflix says Korean shows logged more than 12 billion viewing hours from April 2025 to March 2026, second only to US shows. [10] More than four in five of its subscribers have watched at least one Korean title. [10] To take its shows abroad, it works with 122 translation partners, 119 of them dubbing studios. [10]

Why it matters. From 2016 to 2025, Netflix worked with more than 80 Korean production companies employing over 20,000 actors and crew. [10] Those jobs now depend on viewers far outside Korea.

Hoichoi, a streaming service for shows in Bengali, a language of eastern India and Bangladesh, signed a deal with Netflix in Mumbai on Thursday. [11] Every series Hoichoi starts in the next two years will also appear on Netflix, the same day, in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. [11] Netflix will carry 14 older Hoichoi series, and the two will make new shows together. [11] The first new series, a folklore horror story, starts on 6 November. [11]

Why it matters. Netflix is buying more shows from outside makers, after similar deals with TF1 in France and Globo in Brazil. [11] For Hoichoi, a show made for Bengali speakers now reaches viewers across India who speak other languages.

The FBI, the US federal police, now leads the case of 6,451 graded trading cards stolen from a FedEx truck on 13 October. [12][13] PSA, a US company that checks cards and seals them in labelled cases, was sending them back to their owners from its offices in Santa Ana, California. [12] Police say the driver left the truck for 60 to 90 minutes. [12] PSA has published every card's ID number and switched those numbers off so the cards cannot easily be resold. [12][13]

Why it matters. Pokemon cards make up 2,978 of the stolen items, and One Piece cards another 898, by TheGamer's count. [13] Owners are paid market value only up to the insured value they chose before sending their cards. [12]

TOHO animation, the anime arm of the Japanese film company Toho, said on Saturday that the last part of its Kaiju No. 8 anime will be a cinema film in 2027. [14] It is called Kaiju No. 8: The Final Mission, and Production I.G, the studio behind the series, makes it with the same director. [14] The anime is based on a manga that ended in July 2025. [14] Its second TV season began that month and streamed on Crunchyroll, Sony's anime streaming service. [14]

Why it matters. Ending in cinemas means fans pay for a ticket to see the finale, not only a monthly subscription. Crunchyroll and Sony already showed a film of the first season in US and Canadian cinemas in April 2025. [14]

The board of SAG-AFTRA, the US union for film, TV and voice actors, voted on Saturday to extend the contract of its national executive director, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. [15][16] It now runs to June 2032 instead of June 2028, and he becomes chief executive too. [15][16] The vote passed with 98.34% in favour. [15][16] He was paid $1.1 million for the 2026 financial year. [15] He has led the union's deals on AI, which aim to let performers share in AI's gains while stopping unauthorised copies of their likeness. [15]

Why it matters. The union's contract with the big studios ends in June 2030, so the same man will lead the next talks. [15] He says he will fight for members to control their image, likeness and voice, and to be paid fairly for them. [16]

Galleri5, an Indian company that makes films and series with AI tools, will work on stories from Indonesian myth and history, Variety reports. [17] It built the AI behind Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, an Indian TV series based on an ancient Hindu epic. [17] Its partners are Historyverse, part of the Indian talent firm Collective Artists Network, and Singhasari, a special economic zone in Indonesia. [17] The first project is a mythology adventure with the working title Echoes of Nusantara. [17]

Why it matters. The partners plan to get projects ready for money and release outside Indonesia, so the stories are shaped to travel from the start. [17] Indonesia's economy minister said the country did not want only to be a buyer of AI. [17]

Street Fighter, the film based on Capcom's fighting games, was fifth in North America on Friday with $2.34 million. [1] It was made by Legendary Entertainment and directed by Kitao Sakurai. [1] Variety expects it to add $8.4 million by Sunday, for a North American total of $46.7 million. [1] Clayface, a new DC film, and Wildwood both took more on Friday. [1]

Why it matters. Its running total is the clearest sign so far of how many people a game's name brings into cinemas. Like Wildwood's, the weekend figure is an estimate until the final count.

PC Gamer counted games that Steam users tag as cozy, meaning gentle games such as farming and tidying games. [18] From January to October, 1,341 new cozy-tagged games came out this year, against 468 in the same months of 2025, a rise of 186%. [18] Google searches for cozy games are twice what they were in 2023. [18] Emails to the writer using the word went from 15 in 2023 to 887 so far this year. [18]

Why it matters. The writer says a rise in cheap AI-made games adds to the count. [18] With so many sellers using the word, players have to work harder to find the games they want.

Users on Reddit say Claude Opus 5.5, an AI model from Anthropic, now stops mid-answer when asked to reverse-engineer software, Kotaku reports. [19] Reverse-engineering means turning a finished program back into code people can read. [19] Many fans credit the model for a wave of old games rebuilt to run in web browsers. [19] Anthropic has not announced a change, and some users say its safety check was always unpredictable. [19]

Why it matters. If the change is real, fans rebuilding old games lose a tool many of them leaned on. Kotaku says Anthropic often changes its models without telling users. [19]

Eiji Aonuma has helped make every main Legend of Zelda game for Nintendo since Ocarina of Time. [20] This week France made him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. [20] The culture minister, Catherine Pegard, gave him the medal at her ministry. [20] France announced the honour in 2023. [20] The manga artist Rumiko Takahashi, who created Ranma 1/2, is in the same group. [20] Shigeru Miyamoto got the same title in 2006. [20]

Why it matters. France also plans to give the title to Sandfall Interactive, the French studio behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. [20] It would be the first time a whole game studio shares it. [20]

Amazon MGM Studios will sell the first two seasons of The Rings of Power, its Lord of the Rings series, on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K disc from 3 November. [21] The third season starts on Prime Video, Amazon's streaming service, on 11 November, with episodes until 25 November. [21] Polygon says the series has had more than 185 million viewers. [21] Boxed sets sold only by Amazon follow on 1 December. [21]

Why it matters. Amazon is selling a show to people who want to own it, as well as showing it to people who pay to stream it. The discs arrive days before the new season.

Dave Oshry, head of New Blood Interactive, a small US games publisher, told PC Gamer that immersive sim is a bad name to sell games with. [22] The term means games like Deus Ex and Dishonored, where players solve problems in many ways. [22] New Blood has spent years on two such games, Gloomwood and Fallen Aces, still in early access. [22] It sells them with a third game as the stealth trilogy instead. [22]

Why it matters. Oshry says people who know the term were going to buy anyway, while everyone else is puzzled by it. [22] Arkane's Prey spent effort explaining the idea, and its weak sales led its publisher to set the studio on a different game. [22]

Valve, which runs Steam, the biggest shop for PC games, has made its Personal Calendar a full part of the store, Rock Paper Shotgun reports. [23] The calendar shows new and coming games picked for each player. [23] Valve says it finds people with similar playtime and shows what they added to wishlists or played. [23] It refreshes daily and looks eight weeks ahead. [23]

Why it matters. On a store with thousands of new games, a list built from similar players decides which ones a player even sees. Valve also made its homepage discounts more algorithm-based last month. [23]

Star Wars Galaxies Restoration, a free fan project that keeps Sony Online Entertainment's 2003 online game running, released an update called A New Dawn. [24] It adds modern graphics support, rebuilds the Wookiee home planet and adds fighting from mounts. [24] The team says it has added 13 new members. [24] The game is free to download from the project's website. [24]

Why it matters. Volunteers, not the companies that own Star Wars, are adding to a game that is more than 20 years old. Players get it for nothing.

The makers of Paralives, a life-simulation game in early access since May, said its first major update will come next year, not at the end of 2026. [25] Early access means players buy a game while it is still being made. [25] The update will improve relationships, add skills and jobs, and fix bugs in building. [25] It will also widen the body shapes players can make. [25]

Why it matters. In early access, players have paid for work that is still to come. A later date means they wait longer for part of what they bought.

PlayStation Asia's account on X posted details of update 2.1 for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl before its makers announced it, Eurogamer reports. [26] The post said the free update was out now, but it is reportedly due next week. [26] It lists longer sight range for computer-run characters, combat changes and fast travel with squad leaders. [26] The post was still up when Eurogamer wrote about it. [26]

Why it matters. Platform owners plan their posts with a game's maker. A post that goes up early tells players what the studio had not yet said.

The author nigozyu said The Detective Is Already Dead, a series of illustrated Japanese novels, will end in its 15th volume. [27] Kadokawa, a big Japanese publisher, put out the 14th volume on Friday. [27] Yen Press publishes the books in English. [27] The anime's second season began on 7 October and streams on Crunchyroll as it airs. [27]

Why it matters. The books feed an anime, a finished manga and a spinoff novel. Their end sets how much story is left for all of them. [27]

The Indian Game Developers Conference, run by the Game Developer Association of India, takes place in Chennai from 28 to 31 October. [28] It expects more than 10,000 visitors and over 90 speakers. [28] Nazara Technologies, Krafton India and Tencent back it. [28] A meeting service will connect Indian studios with 32 publishers and investors, including Devolver Digital, Miniclip and Krafton. [28]

Why it matters. Sixty Indian independent studios will show their games, and the last two days are open to players. [28] For small studios, a meeting there can be the first step to a publisher's money.

Crunchyroll began English dubs or named the dub casts for four anime that started in Japan this autumn. [29][30] Tougen Anki's new arc got its dub on Saturday, about three weeks after it began on Japanese TV on 2 October. [29] The series streams outside Japan on more than 25 services, including Netflix and Prime Video. [29] The others are The Prince of Tennis II, The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World II and Full Clearing Another World. [30]

Why it matters. A dub made while a season is still airing lets one series reach English speakers while it is new. The same show then earns on many services at once. [29]

The Center for Scholars & Storytellers, a research group at the University of California, Los Angeles, runs a yearly survey of how young Americans like their stories. [31] This year it asked more than 1,500 people aged 10 to 24, Euronews reports. [31] YouTube came first: 72.9% named it a favourite way to get stories. [31] TV shows (70.3%), films (70.2%) and video games (68.5%) came close behind. [31] Asked about AI, 28.2% said they were fascinated and 22% said they felt doomed. [31]

Why it matters. The youngest group, aged 10 to 13, was the keenest, with 44.2% calling shows about AI fascinating. [31] The group's founder, Yalda T. Uhls, said young people now decide for themselves what they watch. [31]