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Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy releases in January, leaving not very long to prepare for all the crunchy cRPG choices and secret wars it'll lob your way

Mark Warren — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 17:30:00 +0000

Oh shit, that's not too far away. Terrifyingly, that last sentence is now a thing I can accurately write about games coming out in January 2027. Warhammer 40,000: Dark Heresy has just been confirmed as one such game, with the cRPG's heresy investigation set to commence towards the end of the month.

Swarmbreaker is an uncommonly mesmerising tower defence game in which enemies "cluster, collide and flow like a fluid"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 17:05:10 +0000

It is said that King Canute once placed his throne on the shore and commanded the sea not to get his feet wet, thus proving to his flattering courtiers that only God Almighty holds sway over the elements. "But sire!" I would have told him, if I'd been one of the aforesaid lickspittles. "Why not lay down spike strips and park a couple of flamethrowers in the shallows?" I would have said this because I have just been playing Swarmbreaker, a tower defence game that aims to prove there is no fluid body so awe-inspiring that it cannot be machine-gunned into submission.

Cyberattack on Sega third-party newsletter distributor reportedly sees over two million email addresses leaked, but Sega accounts unaffected

Mark Warren — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Sega have revealed that over two million email addresses have leaked due to a cyberattack on Japanese email delivery provider Arara, whom the Like A Dragon and Sonic publishers use to distribute newsletters. Sega and Arara are currently busy investigating what happened in the breach, which doesn't appear to have affected the Sega accounts you can use receive in-game rewards and access a calendar which reminds you when it's Kazuma Kiryu's birthday. The companies have urged those who signed up for the affected newsletters to be wary of potential phishing attempts.

Microsoft workers accuse company of trying to get customers "addicted" to AI while forcing it on their own staff and making them party to "human rights violations"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 16:00:30 +0000

A group of "concerned Microsoft workers" have published an open letter criticising their employer's "speed-at-all-costs" approach to generative AI, which they argue is "harming our customers, colleagues, shareholders, vendors, and the planet". They accuse Microsoft leadership of trying to get people "addicted" to genAI, while making their own staff miserable by mandating AI usage.

Echoing the on-going BDS campaign against Microsoft's Xbox business, the writers contend that Microsoft have become party to "human rights violations" by selling generative AI technology to Israel's military during the latter's invasion of Gaza, which a UN commission has deemed a genocide. They're also critical of Microsoft's contracts with the USA's draconian Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. While seemingly not against generative AI in principle, they're organising against "the AI industry’s trajectory to continue to enrich AI’s powerful few", pointing out that AI companies now account for a terrifying share of the global stock market.

"The lesson learned is you can have both": Skyrim lead designer reckons there's merit in Baldur's Gate 3-style tough choices and Bethesda's do-anything approach

Mark Warren — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:30:40 +0000

Whether RPGs are better off prioritising player freedom or endeavouring to have several doors slam shut every time you put another foot forwards in order to encourage multiple runs with different characters is, to put it bluntly, something I reckon will still be a matter of debate in the year 4000. We'll all have evolved in non-corporeal beings floating in a galaxy that's been racked by such change that even the six million copies of The Elder Scrolls 5 we've littered the Earth with will have been swept away into the great recycling bin on the gods' desktop, and there'll still be sniping going on about whether it's ok that Skyrim lets you be a master thiefssassin who leads the companions, knows every spell under the sun, and slapped up a world-eating dragon for fun.

For what it's worth, the game's lead designer reckons both games that do and don't let you do that have their merits when executed well.

This week in PC games: solve the disappearance of 700 people, build a night market for spirits, and play chess on a board that disobeys physics

Julian Benson — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 14:00:00 +0000

I don't know what Edwin's been feeding the Maw in my off week, but when I entered its chambers this morning it had left game releases everywhere. Ceiling, walls, floor, they all glisten with games of every size and genre. Even after I hosed away the ones largely made with the assistance of generative AI, the sifting sieves fitted across the drains held a bounty of interesting releases.

Let's get to it, then, before the Maw wakes up and realises I've nabbed all its spoils.

"There is no excuse for what I did," Nvidia CEO says, as affair with an alleged Chinese spy makes the US-China AI race look even more ridiculous

James Archer — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 13:15:00 +0000

Ostensible graphics card company and definite AI giants Nvidia have commissioned an independent investigation into themselves, amid reports that CEO Jensen Huang had an extramarital affair with a suspected Chinese spy.

Per both the New York Times and Nvidia themselves, Nvidia offered to go under the microscope after US intelligence organisations elected to investigate Huang’s paramour, Chinese national Alice Huang (no, uh, relation, and also known as Huang Le), on suspicion of sharing sensitive information with Beijing. The Nvidia-running, leather-jacketed Huang has thus far only copped to an unspecified affair, admitting in an extraordinary public statement that he was "unfaithful to my wife." Still, the two investigations are likely to start a bizarre new leg in the alread-messy AI arms race that the US and China have been indulging in for years.

Rockstar were "definitely" thinking about giving a Japanese studio the keys to GTA, says former tech director - "I have a name, but I'm not gonna say it"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 12:41:00 +0000

Since time immemorial, North American and European publishers have racked their brains over ways to make their games sell in Japan, ancient heartland of mythical beings like Mario, Sonic, and Polaroid Pete. In the late noughties, Microsoft launched a big push to give Japanese youth the Xbox virus with such targeted console exclusives as Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. And Rockstar once dreamed of making a Grand Theft Auto game set in Tokyo.

Speaking to me last week, Rockstar North's former technical director Obbe Vermeij shared a little about the abandoned project. Emphasis on the "little" – it doesn't appear to have gotten very far, despite recently unearthed allusions to "Tokyo PS2" in GTA 5's source code.

Ahead of The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past, here's a "lore friendly unofficial expansion to Geralt's life in Toussaint" from a well-established quest modder

Mark Warren — Mon, 09 Nov 2026 11:25:50 +0000

While its remastered upgrade might have broken cover in late September, The Witcher 3's extra expansion isn't set to join it until next year. With 2027 still a month and a bit away, a modder's taken it upon themselves to add a few more adventures to Geralt's time in Toussaint, Blood and Wine's gorgeous French-ish duchy, before the bloke from the river heads off to Letten for Songs of the Past.

The Sunday Papers

Mark Warren — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for waking up covered in sand. The roof of your house is missing. A small man stands in the emptied bed of a dump truck. "You know, everybody's always asking about Elder Scrolls 6," he says. "You know, everybody's always asking about Elder Scrolls 6," he repeats. "You know, everybody's always asking about Elder Scrolls 6," he declares once again, beginning to move towards you this time. "You know, everybody's always asking about Elder Scrolls 6." You realise your hands are tied down. Oh no.

Is he about to sit on your face? WAIT, THAT'S NOW ILLEGAL HERE IN THE UK. NO, PLEASE, DON'T SIT ON MY-time seems to slow as the bare backside approaches your visage. As its cheeks prepare to become as sandy as yours, you hear its wielder say: "And we thought, hey, given the moment..."

Echoes of Mirror's Edge, Dishonored and a dream set in Italy I once had can be found in Boars in Rome, an expressive parkour platformer set in dystopian Rome

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 22:52:30 +0000

Years ago, I had this dream where I was parkouring through a greatly sunken version of Venice, no doubt sourced from the many hours I put into Assassin's Creed 2 as a teen who should have been studying for their GCSEs a lot more than they were. It's stuck with me after all this time mostly because of how much I wanted to capture that feeling again somehow, as the real Assassin's Creed didn't quite cut it. And lo and behold, there I was today browsing Bluesky when I came across Boars in Rome, a Mirror's Edge and Counter Strike Surf inspired parkour platformer set in a dystopian version of Rome.

County of Fortune, now out in early access, is a medieval city builder that asks, why limit yourself to just one city?

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 21:30:50 +0000

I know what you want. The humble city builder isn't enough for you any more, is it? You need a cities builder, you can't just stop at one, but you don't want to build up an entirely different city on a new save file. If it were up to you, they'd all be on the same map, a motorway's worth of a drive away from each other. If we're talking contemporary cities, I can't help you, but if you can settle for numerous medieval towns across an entire county, then County of Fortune should do just fine.

"This trailer is my way of saying goodbye": Have a listen to the Mass Effect 5 score that could have been, courtesy of one of the original games' composers

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 19:49:20 +0000

By this point I'm probably safe in assuming that you all know EA are shutting down BioWare, and that Mass Effect 5 has been cancelled in turn. You may have also seen that an internal trailer for Mass Effect 5, or Universe as it was seemingly going to be called, was leaked not long after the news broke, and that Sam Hulick, one of the composers on the original trilogy of games, shared he was going to offer up his re-scored version of the trailer. Well, it's N7 Day, as rough as that will be for many of the developers on the game, but Hulick has stood by his word, and shared an oral glimpse at what the world of Mass Effect Universe could have sounded like.

Path of Exile 2's 1.0 version is out this year after all, arriving in December with a full campaign, two neat new classes, and more

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 18:00:40 +0000

About a year ago, the devs behind Path of Exile 2 delayed the game's 1.0 release to an unspecified point in time, only offering the hope that it wouldn't slip into 2027 (doing much the same about half a year later). But there's good news: it won't! As the action RPG now has a 1.0 release date locked in, alongside a look at what you can expect when it arrives.

"I feel that sense of responsibility more acutely": After BioWare's closure, the makers of a new Mass Effect 3 co-op remaster mod look to carry their legacy

James Archer — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 17:00:00 +0000

It appears I was premature in suggesting that the closure of BioWare might quickly spell an end for Mass Effect 3's strangely good, preposterously enduring co-op mode. I reinstalled and logged on just last week, and easily found a series of packed lobbies. Still, it was always regrettable that 2021's Mass Effect Legendary Edition opted not to remaster this multiplayer component alongside its dolled-up main trilogy, thus failing to introduce to a new generation the joys of performing teleporting psychic headbutts as a millennia-old bipedal frog.

After Star Wars Zero Company dev Bit Reactor brought back an unspecified number of furloughed devs, some of those who weren't have seemingly been laid off

Oisin Kuhnke — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 16:57:30 +0000

Early last month, Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor brought back a number of developers who had been furloughed before the game launched in August. At the time they did not specify how many devs were returning to the studio, with a separate report claiming more than half had become full time staffers again. Unfortunately, it does now seem like not everyone was able to be brought back, with a number of now former workers sharing word of having been laid off.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 07 Nov 2026 08:00:00 +0000

This is the last empty weekend before I go on holiday for a frankly indulgent three weeks. As such, it will likely be spent either remembering all the things my partner and I've not organised for the time we're away or racing to clear through the pile of things I've already remembered I've not organised for the holiday. Whatever the case, it shall not be restful.

Where am I going? Let's just say, I hope to return with some new pairs of glasses and a pair of trainers. If that doesn't give it away, I don't know what will.*

Real-time strategy game The Fertile Crescent 2 is an isometric odyssey inspired by Age of Empires, with the 1.0 release out now

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 17:20:50 +0000

Age of Empires-influenced real-time strategy game The Fertile Crescent 2: Collapse of the Bronze Age leaves early access today, publishers MicroProse have announced, with the 1.0 version adding the final chapters of the singleplayer story. You'll also get your grubby fingers on the very same map editor developers Wield Interactive used to design the campaign.

I'm new to The Fertile Crescent 2 myself. I do like the sound of a strategy sim in which you guide a fugitive community through the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The land has been thrown into turmoil by the arrival of the Sea People, this being a loose historical term for assorted ocean-going migrants who, I gather, are often blamed for the crumbling of the Hittites among other once-glorious Bronze Age powers. I don't have much scholarly insight to share - I thought the "Sea People" referred to expansionist mermaids, at first - but I do have a trailer.

I just found out you can use your Steam Wishlist to search for deals on games outside of Steam, saving my nephew more than £40 on Total War: Warhammer 3

Julian Benson — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 15:45:00 +0000

I may be very late to the party with this discovery, but I only just realised you can connect your Steam Wishlist to a third-party deals tracker. The beauty of which is that, once hooked up, you can see what games you've been pining for are going cheap not just on Steam but through any major shopfront across the internet.

I worry that I will be coming across as 'Use this one trick to save money – greengrocers hate it!', but it's already helped save my nephew more than £40. Even if it meant using a slightly underhand method.

Terrific fantasy RPG Queen's Domain gets first proper update, adding a new throwing weapon and options to make puzzles "less frustrating"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 14:58:30 +0000

Extremely good King's Field-style RPG Queen's Domain – or is it a Metroid Prime homage? Or a stealth Morrowind-up? We hacks simply cannot decide – has received its first proper patch, adding a hitherto "missing" throwing weapon, the Grave Knife, alongside a bunch of quality-of-life fixes.

They've stirred in the ability to disable screenshake, alongside some new icons to make status effects more obvious. They've also introduced "options to make some late game puzzles less frustrating", though they don't specify which. How frustrating! Still, it's a tidy overhaul for a game that has rapidly become one of my 2026 favourites.

Airframe Ultra's PS1 cyberpunk city is an amazing tribute to G-Police and WipEout, and I wish you people would slow down to appreciate it

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 14:00:00 +0000

I do not wish to "rule the streets" of Megacity West, dear creators of Airframe Ultra. I wish to be ravished by them, rubbing my face against the rusty corrugated metal of the shipping containers, and savouring the acid blue waters of the bay. I do not want to "become the one thing with freedom in a city of billions: A racer." I want to become the other thing with freedom in a city of billions: a person who slowly drives or – whisper it - walks around just looking at stuff, because gadzooks, this is one of the prettiest PS1 cyberpunk burgs I've laid eyes on.

Those eroded pastel chevrons. Those seductively wobbling vertices. That electric reef of a downtown backdrop, murderously luring your gaze from the on-coming trucks. That layer of invigorating crackle over everything. Every moment or so, I dismount from my hoverbike to inspect some concrete ruin I could swear I last saw in G-Police, or ponder the resemblance between a subway tunnel and WipEout 2097's Gare d'Europa. Then, somebody waps me in the skull with a stop sign at 300 kilometres an hour. But I was already stopped, frantic stranger! Your brutal poetic ironies are wasted on me.

Steam gets a boatload of restored Wing Commanders and Ultima ports after EA producer stumbles across cupboard of old tapes

Mark Warren — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 12:38:00 +0000

EA have stuck a bunch of restored versions and ports of classic games, on Steam, GOG and the EA App. 25 games in all, including multiple entries in the Wing Commander and Ultima series, are part of the haul. Why's this happening now? Well, an EA producer stumbled across a cupboard full of old tapes, film reels and CDs.

"It's a brave new world": GTA 6's PC port will release sooner than you think to avoid losing money to AI rip-offs, says former Rockstar tech director

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 11:09:10 +0000

GTA 6's PC release may come sooner than anticipated, according to former Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij, because Rockstar and publishers Take-Two will be concerned about losing money to unofficial generative AI clones of the PS5 version, once it launches on 19th November. In general, Vermeij thinks that how to avoid having your games duplicated by chatbot herders is "the big question" right now for devs and publishers, particularly those who don't have the means to enforce their intellectual property dominions as vehemently as Take-Two do for Grand Theft Auto.

Speaking to me during a wide-ranging chatathon, Vermeij reflected on the early days of Grand Theft Auto development at Rockstar North in the 90s, and how the Noel-and-Liam-Gallagher-esque relationship between PC and console gaming has evolved. He shared a sweary anecdote about the company's difficulties getting the original GTA 1 to look the business on Sony's PlayStation.

After taking over EA, Saudi Arabia and their private equity cronies have reportedly held talks about buying Unity

Mark Warren — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 10:25:10 +0000

Members of the consortium led by the Saudi Arabian government's Public Investment Fund and some private equity suits which took over EA this year in a leveraged buyout worth $55 billion reportedly have a new target in their sights. Unity, software company and makers of the game engine bearing the same name, have held talks with the consortium over a potential takeover, it's claimed.

Take on a time-manipulating corporation in the very Soul Eater meets Jet Set Radio action roguelite CHRONO PUNK

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 22:55:20 +0000

My favourite kind of game that's obviously going for the vibe of a particular era of gaming is one that doesn't look like it's trying to be any other game from said era, moreso if someone told me it was a PS2 or a Dreamcast game everyone forgot about I'd believe you. CHRONO PUNK fits that vibe quite well, an action roguelite that looks like it's taking some cues from those aforementioned consoles, alongside the likes of Soul Eater, Jet Set Radio, Devil May Cry, and Spider-Man.

BioWare are gone, but at least you'll be able to watch their final days in a documentary next year and oh wait that's really sad actually

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 21:32:00 +0000

It feels like every single week for the past few years has been the infinitely quotable 30 Rock quote on repeat. That feeling struck particularly last month when EA decided to shut down the iconic Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare. That obviously resulted in the cancellation of Mass Effect 5, of which a leaked trailer and some, now former, devs made sound pretty interesting. But hey! At least there's a documentary coming next year all about the studio that managed to capture the studio's last days! Yeah, I'm not so convinced by this upside either.

Ablahshikar is a maximalist, sickos only salvage-survival CRPG about ripping organs out of warships and pawning off strange goods that's now out in early access

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 19:00:00 +0000

Sometimes, you come across a game and instantly know it's for the sickos. Today that is Ablahshikar, a "turn-based salvage-survival CRPG adrift on the Candle Sea" where you rip out the organs of enemy warships to "rebuild your vessel into a doomed chimera," that is out now in early access. To be honest I could have just called it a CRPG and still labelled it as a game for sickos, yet everything that's going on here is obviously just doubling down on the sick factor.

After a 16-year long dev period, Faraway, a shooting star arcade game about siphoning the energy of other stars, is out now

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Lord almighty, video games take a while to make, 'ey? Especially if you're just one person working on it by yourself. Such is the case with Faraway, out today, an arcade game that reminds me of the early days of PS3 indies "about a shooting star that creates constellations to stay alive," all made single-handedly by creator of cult-classic mobile game Eliss, Steph Thirion. Did I mention that Faraway took 16 years to make? Like I said, game development is a lengthy process.

The Legend of Khiimori's Mongolian Expanse update brings in frosty mountains and scorching deserts that'll require a lot more than a fur coat and a sturdy horse

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 18:00:00 +0000

Another day, another opportunity for some horsing around! I'm being literal here, to be clear, as a new update for The Legend of Khiimori dropped yesterday. It's called The Mongolian Expanse, opening up the map a whole lot more and making a sweep of other additions to the game.

Apex Legends adds a grumpy, teamwiping Godzilla to its growing history of unappealing crossovers

James Archer — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 17:30:00 +0000

No doubt eager as peas to help pay off EA's billions in debt, battle royale shooter Apex Legends is set to run another of its intellectual propertytastic crossover events. This one, starting on November 10th, stars Godzilla, of Godzilla Minus Zero, Godzilla vs. Kong, Godzilla (1954), Godzilla 2000: Millennium, Godzilla (1998), Son of Godzilla, and Godzilla (2014). I might be missing some.

Nvidia ensure unboxing a ludicrously expensive new graphics card isn't limited to real life in these RAM crisis times by releasing a GeForce 8800 GTX unpacking sim

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 16:55:40 +0000

In what feels a fairly cheeky move during a time when memory shortages have infamously made it pretty much impossible to buy a decently powerful new graphics card without spending approximately a gazillion pounds/dollars/dollarpounds, Nvidia have decided to put out a Steam demo that allows folks to re-live the feeling of unboxing a ludicrously expensive graphics card in 2006.

Goddess of Victory: Nikke's PC launcher suffers potential malware infection, with its publishers suggesting folks who've booted since late September do a security check

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 15:43:10 +0000

Goddess of Victory: Nikke, a gacha shooter/RPG developed by Stellar Blade makers Shift Up, has suffered a "security incident" which has seen its PC launcher potentially be infected with third-party malware. Thankfully, it seems a patch to make the launcher safe again has been quickly dished out, but publishers Level Infinite are still advising players who've booted the game up since September 27th to do some security checks.

You can now play Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire with a controller on PC from start to finish, thanks to a new update open for testing

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 12:27:20 +0000

After gifting Pillars of Eternity a turn-based mode for its tenth anniversary, Obsidian have now rolled out full PC controller support for both the RPG and its younger sibling Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire. The support, along with some tweaks to Deadfire's turn-based mode, are currently out in public test form.

"BioWare's closure represents an immense loss to and possibly a targeted attack on Canada's cultural legacy" argues petition calling on Canadian government to step in

Mark Warren — Thu, 05 Nov 2026 10:51:50 +0000

Calls for the Canadian government to help ressurect recently shuttered RPG makers BioWare have progressed from a single post by a politician to a petition with enough signatures that it looks set to be presented to the Canadian House of Commons for an official response. So far, 1,662 people from the country of maple syrup and also other things have signed this call for their leaders to consider stepping in.

"Arkane is profitable," say Marvel's Blade developers in fiery new statement, "just not profitable enough for Microsoft"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 18:02:20 +0000

Unionised workers at Dishonored developers Arkane Lyon have published a fresh statement about the progress of negotiations with Microsoft over the studio's potential closure. Aside from calling on Xbox management to make a redundancy offer proportionate to Microsoft's colossal market value, they accuse the parent company of creating the very economic conditions cited as a reason for closing Arkane, and thereby "sabotaging" development of the forthcoming Marvel's Blade.

Oblivion and Skyrim’s gap was bridged by forward-looking books about a murderous floating island, so why is The Elder Scrolls 6 stuck reanimating a world that’s stood still since 2011

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 17:30:00 +0000

Long waits between mainline entries in a series aren’t a new phenomenon, if perhaps a bit more common nowadays due to big games' ballooning development cycles. It took about 23 years for BioWare’s Baldur's Gate 2 to be followed up by Larian’s Baldur’s Gate 3, though there were a decent amount of spin-offs and remasters peppered between the two.

The wait for The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel hasn’t stretched on that long quite yet, but as Bethesda finally revealed concrete details about it just in time for Skyrim's 15th birthday, it really hit home for me that TES VI will be tasked with restoring motion to a world where calendars have been stuck in the 201st year of the 4th era since 2011. Perhaps it’s because I’m still in my twenties and haven’t lived long enough to see that many things I like pause their forward march for this long before returning. There’s also a good chance my expectations of timelines rolling forward on a regular basis without the need for a whole new entry are coloured by the constant stream of new stuff fed into most games via updates and live service passes these days.

Rimworld-inspired colony sim Stardeus gets a huge update representing a year's worth of expansion and revision, with new tools for evil AI overlords

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 17:03:10 +0000

"Stardeus is in an early stage in terms of bulk and complexity, but it's already a pleasant blend of interesting ideas that generate a mostly relaxing vibe," wrote gallant star captain.exe Sin Vega in our 2022 analysis of Rimworld-influenced colony manager Stardeus. "One to watch for sure." Well, let it not be said that we weren't watching.

Fate of the Galaxy is a huge, fully-featured Star Wars space combat sim that, thanks to being a total conversion mod for Freespace Open, even runs on my rubbish laptop

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 13:15:44 +0000

Star Wars has been back in the news recently because, to cut a long story short, the US alt-right have decided that Darth Vader was actually the good guy. We are not here to indulge such buffoonery. We are here to talk about Fate of the Galaxy, a free unofficial space combat simulator set during the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, featuring several mission-based campaigns and a stable of Imperial and Rebel Alliance ships that ranges from the quad-blasting X-Wing to Boba Fett's Firespray 31. Also, Naboo starfighters, if you really must.

It's a total conversion of poor dead Volition's venerable dogfighter FreeSpace 2, running on the open source Free Space 2 Open engine via the popular Knossos launcher. You don't need a copy of FreeSpace 2 to play it. You also don't need to pay. And nor do you need a whizbang PC – this bucket of bolts hums along happily on my i5-1145G7 with no dedicated graphics card. As the Rancor said to the padawan: finally, some good food.

"Keep talking about it": Raw Power Games call for Wishlist aid as they, and their historical strategy sandbox Chronicles: Medieval, lose funding

James Archer — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:43:24 +0000

Raw Power Games, an independent studio comprising veteran developers of The Witcher 3, Total War: Three Kingdoms, and Crusader Kings III (among others), have called on players for support after losing their funding - an existential threat to both the organisation and to their debut, the still-in-development historical strategy game Chronicles: Medieval.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel already has a Nexus Mods page, so now all we have to do is wait

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 12:08:24 +0000

Aha. Here it is.

Freshly poked live and right on time.

Now, we wait for the inevitable flood of mods, like the ceaseless current of add-ons which still flows into Skyrim.

Smash hit cyberpunk storekeeper Probably Stolen was originally a different, non-cyberpunk game that seemed destined to sink without trace

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Space station trading game Probably Stolen – Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim has been doing rather well on Steam, attracting over 162,000 concurrent players last night. I've been feeling the urge to fire it up again myself, after my brief launch-day trawl through its quagmire of black market economics and factional rivalries.

The game's big numbers come as a shock given that it began life as another, non-cyberpunk kiosk job sim called Deepspace Emporium, which still has a Steam page as of writing. Deepspace Emporium seemed doomed to fizzle out in obscurity. But publisher tinyBuild got behind it regardless, working with developers Questing Goose to overhaul the art direction and lay on extra brainchips. The gamble paid off.

"An outright ban will not eliminate AI from the modding process," Nexus Mods say as they rule out barring generated creations from their site

Mark Warren — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 10:34:07 +0000

The owners of Nexus Mods have ruled out instituting an outright ban on AI-generated works being uploaded the site, instead opting to expand their current rules on modders disclosing how they've used AI in making their mods. This latest move to address the waves of AI-created or AI-thumbnailed mods now hitting Nexus Mods on a daily basis follows Nexus' modus operandi up to this point, which has been simply to try and ensure AI usage is clearly labelled so prospective downloaders can make informed decisions.

Ubisoft are reportedly tapped as one potential company that could acquire Arkane, though the Dishonored studio's own management may be in the running too

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 22:51:31 +0000

Things are potentially looking up for Arkane, depending on how you feel about Ubisoft (and depending on who actually ends up acquiring them). I mention the Assassin's Creed developer because, reportedly, they're interested in buying the studio from Microsoft, having even made a bid for it. I'll go out on a limb here and say it's the whole being French thing, but uh, I'd really rather someone else bought Arkane.

"Steam's review queue is clogged up by AI slop": Salacious Fire Emblem-ish Food Devils gets a delay because its devs think Valve is inundated with genAI games

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 21:41:08 +0000

You might have seen that for today's grub, Edwin decided to in part feed The Maw with Food Devils, an incredibly salacious, foodie take on Fire Emblem, as it was meant to release today. The only problem is, it's not actually out yet. That might prompt you to call Edwin a rotten liar and march up to his castle at the top of the hill on a dark and stormy night with pitchforks and torches, but I beseech you to wait, because it's actually Steam's fault. And potentially, it's the fault of all those awful AI games that have been flooding Steam recently.

The Citadel Project is a Thief-inspired dark fantasy, survival-horror lite stealth-em-up with some lovely shadows set in a medieval megastructure

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 20:10:03 +0000

You know, given the whole stealthy element of Thief-like immersive sims, I'm surprised there haven't been more of them with horror elements. There's Gloomwood, sure, but it's not as common as I'd like. That in turn then makes me curious about The Citadel Project, an immersive sim with some survival-horror elements set in a nasty, parasite-infected dark fantasy world, all apparently made by just one person.

Silica, an FPS and RTS hybrid that mixes a smidge of Dune and Helldivers together, has left early access and entered 1.0

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 19:00:00 +0000

The concept of fusing an RTS and an FPS always sounds like a fun one, and since 2023 Martin Melichárek has been trying to make a new take on the combination under the watchful eye of DayZ devs Bohemia Interactive through Silica. Today marks the day that Silica leaves early access and enters 1.0, fully fleshing out its hybrid and mish mash of Dune's Arrakis and Helldivers' Terminids.

Play as water and rain on wildfires in Atuel, a short, free game about the power and vulnerability of nature

James Archer — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 18:30:00 +0000

Well, have you played Atuel? If not, you can do so within the next hour - it's a tiny, free, 25-minute walking sim, albeit one with little actual walking on account of you playing most of it as a river. More of a running sim, really.

Frostpunk 2's The Surge DLC keeps the wintery apocalypse and adds in faction-clash-inducing electricity and sets a seasonally appropriate December release date

Oisin Kuhnke — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 18:00:00 +0000

For the time being, the world of Frostpunk remains a hypothetical, even if it's one that seems just that little bit more likely than I'd like it to be given who's in charge of the world. But at the very least, there are pockets of hope to be found in Frostpunk 2, namely with its newly revealed next bit of DLC, The Surge, a name that has been bequeathed to it for incredibly obvious reasons. Oh, you need me to explain them? Fiiiiine.

Venom-toothed Noxious Terminids are soon to infest Helldivers 2, and it's your noble job to sterilise the galaxy for Super Earth

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 17:25:23 +0000

Helldivers 2 isn't slowing down any time soon, and according to Edwin's recent interview with Arrowhead CCO Johan Pilestedt, it'll continue to be Arrowhead's main priority for the future. As if Helldivers 2 wasn't full of enough horrors for our brave Super Earth Helldivers to shoot at for the betterment of galactic democracy, its next update is due to add an entirely new Terminid subspecies, the Noxious Terminids.

Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 3 has been announced, marking another attempt at a free-to-play team game after Gundam Evolution's unfortunate fate

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:53:42 +0000

Bandai Namco have released the initial announcement trailer for Mobile Suit Gundam Battle Operation 3, a free-to-play team action game and a sequel to 2018's Battle Operation 2. The trailer is very, very pretty, showing off Gundam units clashing in large-scale battles and infantry fighting beneath the colossal mechas' feet (kinda like Titanfall, in having both human and mecha players in the same match). I'm sadly not yet enough of a true Gundam fan to recognise many of these units on sight other than the RX-78-2, but there's a real variety shown off here.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel teaser all but confirms Hammerfell setting and means we can finally stop using that eight year old header image with the hills

Mark Warren — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 16:09:52 +0000

Praise Talos and whatever other Elder Scrolls deities you might worship. We here at RPS and in the wider gaming press finally have new material to use when hunting for images to symbolise The Elder Scrolls 6. No more will we be limited to that shot of some hills from the 2018 teaser, because Bethesda have shown off an elder scroll covered in sand while revealing the new game's subtitle and all but locking in a setting. As a recent report from The Verge claimed, it's called The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel and looks to be set in Hammerfell.

I'm sad that the Like A Dragon creator's new studio is closing, but I wish their now-cancelled debut Gang of Dragon wasn't just LAD again

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 14:51:18 +0000

Less than a year after the announcement of their first game, and only four years after the studio's creation, Gang of Dragon developers Nagoshi Studio have been dissolved by a shareholders' resolution (thanks, Gematsu.) That also means a premature end for Gang of Dragon, which was announced at last year's Game Awards with a flashy trailer featuring Like a Dragon-esque realistic visuals, combat and exploration through Kabukicho, a couple new elements like actual gunplay and car chases, as well as the star power of actor Ma Dong-seok (a.k.a. Don Lee). Following reports in March that NetEase, the studio's source of funding, would be pulling said funding in May due to ballooning costs reaching around seven billion yen, the time has sadly come for Nagoshi Studio, having not found any alternative funding sources in the time since.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic's next DLC is set to expand the city building sim into the one place not corrupted by capitalism: SPACE

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 14:03:00 +0000

Following not the inherent liberal capitalistic framework of city builders like SimCity but instead a revolutionary (sorry) interpretation of planning and logistical simulation that prioritises centralisation and minute detail, Hooded Horse and 3DIVISION's Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic offers a tense, socialist look at what a citybuilder could be. Fellow contributor Sin Vega, in her 1.0 review, described it like this: "You have to build things to demolish things. That might be Workers & Resources in a nutshell. You're not managing budgets (money is exclusively for imports/exports), you're organising stuff." Now, having previously expanding out of the Soviet Republic and across the globe with the World Maps DLC, the next step for socialist citybuilding is, of course, space. Our Edwin outright predicted this two years ago, correctly calling that "the logical endgame here is to go to space." Good on him.

Arc Raiders devs Embark insist that using genAI for voice lines was necessary, as "actors would just go crazy if they had to read all of that"

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 12:32:19 +0000

Despite taking the voice performances of actors and feeding them into machines to spurt out AI-generated mimicry, Embark CCO Stefan Strandberg insists that "we are not in the industry of replacing actors." In a new video posted to the Arc Raiders channel focused on audio design, Strandberg refers back to the infamous use of genAI in Arc Raiders to generate voice lines based on real voice actors' performances, something which the game was heavily (and rightly) criticised for before and since its release.

In that linked piece (thanks Oisin!), CEO Patrick Söderlund stated that they have been replacing lines that were originally generated with actual recorded lines, presumably because Arc Raiders has made quite a bit of money and now they feel that they can continue paying actors to record more lines, rather than just scraping their talents and avoiding the dreaded fee of paying professionals for their work. This choice already came after their previous game, The Finals, was heavily criticised for the exact same thing, which is just a fascinating series of decisions to consider.

"There’s always a night when Rome burns": South Of Midnight director says that Xbox funding it was "unsustainable", at least in hindsight

Mark Warren — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 11:49:29 +0000

Compulsion Games parted ways with former owners Xbox, having landed on the long list of things Microsoft were determined to ditch as part of multi-round mass cuts this year. Now, South of Midnight creative director David Sears has suggested that an eventual pulling of the rug was something he feared throughout the game's development, to the point where he seemingly doesn't think he'd have funded it if he'd been in the shoes of Xbox execs.

itch.io will soon let you filter games with genAI disclosures out of your search results on the site, after admitting it was previously "critically lacking"

Ashley Schofield — Tue, 03 Nov 2026 10:12:22 +0000

itch.io has unfortunately, much like Steam, long had an issue with genAI content being uploaded in droves, drowning out perfectly good games made by human hands. The apparent standard method against this, voluntary genAI disclosure, has been itch's primary tool to combat this wave of low-quality slop, but hasn't worked out too well; itch revealed a few days ago that 'the number of game pages being created per-day has doubled in the past two months'. Now, in attempts to further combat this, beyond just game assets requiring a genAI disclosure to upload as they have for two years, itch will be expanding the mandatory disclosure to tabletop games, books, comics, and soundtracks, as well as adding a 'no AI' filter directly into the search function.

You can make a vampire hunter who's afraid of the dark, disease and small spaces in Hunter: The Reckoning - Deathwish, and that's surely the best way to play

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 19:00:00 +0000

A month or two back I penned a 1500 word whine about feeling too powerful in Blood of Dawnwalker. "Gimme a vampire sim in which I'm a pathetic vein-nibbling goblin," I wrote, using many more adjectives than that. Well, never let it be said that I'm biased against vampires, for I am equally keen to play an RPG in which I am the least capable vampire hunter in the universe. A vampire hunter who screams when he wakes up with his hair over his face. A vampire hunter who has to spray the vampires with antibac before staking them.

An RPG like Hunter: The Reckoning – Deathwish, perhaps, which presents you with a choice of Advantages and Flaws when creating a character. You have to balance these out on a gnarly weighing scale, before they'll let you through the game's front door. Here is a video showing all that off, together with a lot of sixpacks.

Fix up towering robots while battle rages outside in Bay 12: Mech Repair, a first-person job sim with some handsome heavy duty analog tech

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 17:30:00 +0000

The most important thing to know about Bay 12: Mech Repair is that these are mechs of the MechWarrior or possibly Patlabor school – that is, basically WW2 tanks on hydraulic legs, with cockpits full of switches and wireframe displays. Their bodies are assemblages of pistons and reactors. They are not biomechs like the ones in Evangelion. An Evangelion Repair game would be… different. Less industrial, more Oedipal. You would dread removing the smallest piece of housing.

Fewer genAI clones of "someone else's specific game" should flood the net going forwards, as Anthropic tell Claude to stop messing with some stuff other people own

Mark Warren — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 16:51:17 +0000

Anthropic have told their genAI tool Claude to start ducking requests from users to recreate or clone existing games, following a flood of folks using the tech to generate six-fingered remakes. Instead of risking infringing on the intellectual property of series or titles that companies which aren't Anthropic own, Claude will instead restrict itself to only generating "original" games slopped together based on whatever data it's drawing on.

This week in PC games: go helldiving in Gravhounds, wreck a hoverbike in Airframe Ultra, or feed humans to a cutaway spaceship in Hull Rupture

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 13:34:28 +0000

Recently, I managed to dupe that preposterous hack Julian into signing a form committing him to alternate weeks of Maw-feeding duty. How he whined last Monday, as we strapped him into his neoprene bodysuit. How he begged for mercy, as we handed him his 12-foot Gallium toasting fork and elbowed him out the airlock.

Delve into "a deep underground facility full of secrets and horrors" in the latest Fallout 4 quest mod from the Commonwealth Story Expansion Project

Mark Warren — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 12:36:42 +0000

After adding a whole new town to Fallout 4 last month, a group of modders have released another in their long string of extra quests for the RPG. This latest mission revolves around a dungeon delve in the Glowing Sea, where a mysterious bunker's just been unearthed.

Skyblivion modders reveal a former volunteer is "threatening to sue for damages upwards of €30,000" over work on the unofficial Oblivion remake project

Mark Warren — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 11:51:26 +0000

The team behind Oblivion remake mod Skyblivion are being threatened with legal action by a former volunteer on the project, according a video posted by current lead Kyle 'Rebelzize' Rebel. The situation looks like it'll need resolving before the mod, which was originally set to release last year, can finally make its way out of the Imperial City sewers.

As if the injury descriptions weren't already ghastly enough in Dwarf Fortress, the legendary outpost builder is getting a "meat biome"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 10:41:30 +0000

Legendary outpost builder Dwarf Fortress is getting a meat biome. A terrible netherworld of bone and artery. A sunken redoubt of gristle and gizzard. An appalling labyrinth of squirt and squelch. Honestly, the biggest shock here is that Dwarf Fortress doesn't appear to have a meat biome already. It certainly has plenty of florid descriptions of fatal injuries.

Gag Order is a co-op, SCP-ish horror shooter about surviving as best you can against some nasty, tentacle covered cephalopod creatures

Oisin Kuhnke — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 22:56:41 +0000

What makes Carrion interesting obviously lies in playing as the monster in a horror game rather than being the one chased down by it. The game's nasty tentacle monster still gives me the heebie jeebies, so I really would hate to be hunted by one. This is where I point you towards Gag Order, a shooter where you are in fact hunted by a disgusting cephalopod creature all while tracking down a distress signal.

Dune: Awakening's seasonally appropriate Blood and Ice expansion gets a December release date, and in a plus for preservation, an offline mode this month

Oisin Kuhnke — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 21:34:06 +0000

December is certainly going to be the month of Dune. The biggest Dune of Dunecember will obviously go to Dune: Part 3, which is Duen out December 18th. A little bit before that, however, is a well-timed free expansion coming to Dune: Awakening. It's called Blood and Ice, which sounds gross, but hey, I guess free blood and ice isn't entirely a bad thing?

What remains of canned Portal prequel white whale F-Stop is now fully playable thanks to modders and some big leaks

Oisin Kuhnke — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 19:08:44 +0000

If you're something of a Portal or Half-Life head, you'll probably already be familiar with F-Stop, an unreleased Portal prequel that remained quite mysterious for many years. Back in 2020, a much deeper look was revealed in a semi-official capacity, revealing a pretty neat concept (that isn't so dissimilar to that of Superliminal). Now, all these years later, assets and source code for the game has leaked, and what exists of F-Stop is fully playable.

Final Fantasy 14: Evercold sets itself a release date at the tail end of winter, alongside offering a look at its second, avian-inclined new job

Oisin Kuhnke — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 18:07:48 +0000

Let's start with the bad news: Final Fantasy 14: Evercold has been delayed. The good news, that doesn't matter all that much, as it's only a delay of roughly a month, and a release date has been set in stone too: February 23rd, 2027. It's cutting it a bit close to the seasons shifting towards spring, making the game seasonally inappropriate, but hey ho, February is still winter!

It looks like footage of a Persona 1 remake has leaked, and if it's legit I really hope you don't hate the colour purple

Oisin Kuhnke — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 17:17:15 +0000

In this genAI world, every single leak that makes its way out into the world should be seen as more of a "leak" until proven otherwise. With that said, it does kind of seem like a remake of the first Persona game is on the way, with some footage supposedly leaking and showing it in action.

The Sunday Papers

Julian Benson — Sun, 01 Nov 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Sundays are for looking upon my DIY works and despairing. Strewn sawdust, spilled paint, and hunks of broken MDF litter my living room kingdom. When will it be over? When will I be free? When will I be able to reassemble my sofa, sit down with a cup of tea in hand, and admire my books, unpacked and arranged on perfectly fitted alcove bookshelves?

"Today?" I whisper hopefully in response to a paragraph of rhetorical questions. "Probably not," snaps back Reality. Especially if I don't get out of bed soon. Still, here in bed I can read the best writing about and not about games from the past week.

Horror-steeped card game Forbidden Solitaire shows how a strong theme can elevate even decade-old mechanics

Julian Benson — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Like a tag team of oiled snakes that have entered a wrestling contest, theme is a difficult quality to pin down. A game can be well designed, but if it lacks a coherence between those mechanics and its appearance, narrative, and its framing, there is a dissonance that can be hard to ignore. I realise I've just stepped into an old argument by using the word 'dissonance', but Hocking was right, games that don't cohere can be jarring. A developer may desire that sensation of discomfort, but often it is accidental and unwanted.

(Much like opening an article with a simile about wrestling snakes when there is nothing connecting that image to a game about solitaire. It might be a good line, but it doesn't smoothly connect with the rest of the article to elevate its argument.)

Anyway, what does this all have to do with Forbidden Solitaire, a game in which you're delving deeper into a dungeon filled with horrors, progressing by clearing screens of cards? Well, it's an excellent example of how well-handled theming can raise a game into something more than its parts.

What are we all playing this weekend?

Julian Benson — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 09:45:21 +0000

My scares should have been reserved for today, what with it being All Hallows' Eve and all, but my fright came on Thursday.

Warframe's fantasy-pilled sister Soulframe finally goes open to all this November, though Digital Extremes are "nervous" about certain changes

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 20:30:00 +0000

Warframe creators Digital Extremes have announced that their free-to-play fantasy RPG Soulframe will be available for everyone to download on 6th November, after two years in closed alpha. Finally, you serfs without "prelude" keys will be able to fire up Soulframe.com and make sense of my ranting about the sleeping animals on the lobby screen.

The new "open prelude" will land shortly before the game's 17th major update, Verse of the Veilands, which lets you grow your Omen wolfpup allies into rideable adult wolves by finding the ingredients for a special biscuit. More importantly, prelude 17 violently rearranges the game's wistful world, adding an Ubisoft-esque region purging system that is designed to guide new players a bit more emphatically towards the game's "votives". Aka, missions. Yes, Digital Extremes sort of have a bespoke term for every game feature in Soulframe. I find this can be either charming or maddening, depending on how much sleep I've had.

Wooshy wuxia actioner Phantom Blade Zero is sharp enough on the Steam Machine, if blunted on the Steam Deck

James Archer — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 17:45:52 +0000

It would appear that Phantom Blade Zero (Phantom Blade 0? Zero? Let’s go with Zero) demanding more gigs than a mismanaged stadium is doing little to stop people playing the thing. It therefore stands to reason at least some folks will want to run S-Game Studio’s lightly Soulsy sword-em-up on the Steam Machine, so let us now examine how said GabeCube stands up to its effects-heavy martial artistry. With some settings proposals, natch.

EA execs choosing Star Wars Battlefront 3 over Mass Effect 5 was the main factor in BioWare's demise, according to report

Mark Warren — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0000

The postmortem on BioWare, following their shuttering by EA this month, points to the publisher's preference to back Star Wars Battlefront 3 over Mass Effect 5 as the main factor in the demise of the beloved RPG developer. That's according to Bloomberg, who also report that a couple of other factors likely also had some influence.

Splendid Junji Ito-inspired RPG World of Horror is now 20% more horrible, thanks to a free PC update with extra gods, locations, and wounds

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 15:29:54 +0000

Excellent apocalypse RPG World of Horror has just received a sizeable free update, As Below So Above, adding no less than two Old Godly invasions for you to identify and thwart. One of these additional cosmic disasters involves four cults summoning their fave abominations at the same time. I picture them forming a shaky barbershop quartet on the skyline, while stamping the streets to mush. Damn it, Ath-Yolazsth – you're leading again!

Also in As Below So Above: more "enemies, mysteries, characters, items, spells, curses, and injuries", together with "a large batch of quality-of-life features and bug fixes". I can only applaud the vicious disconnect of listing "injuries" alongside "quality-of-life". These will be the most polished and ergonomic grievous wounds you've ever had! The experience will flow like your gushing blood!

All the RPS Supporter rewards for October 2026: Hangout game angst, muddy RPGs, and one utterly useless butler

James Archer — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Thanks once again to everyone keeping our lights on, and our pantries full of Mini Cheddars, by being an RPS Supporter. The latest batch of subscription stats came in the other day and it’s been heartwarming, and more than a little humbling, to see new Supporters keep showing up. Rest assured that your backing does not go unappreciated, nor uninvested around the site.

To whit, we’ve been commissioning a particularly strong assortment of freelance-scribed pieces (for all readers), some of which – including Amity Gilmour’s fun history lesson on the MicroSoft SideWinder and Kaile 'No Escape' Hultner’s Control Resonant analysis – are already live. It’s been a pleasure to have Ashley Schofield joining us for Tuesday newshounding too, along with RPS regular Oisin. And, of course, we’re still bringing exclusive features to Premium Supporters twice every week. Like these ones, from throughout October:

Rockstar developer union could end up over 1,600 workers strong and encompass nearly all UK staff below senior management, IWGB claim

Mark Warren — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 13:30:00 +0000

As we've previously covered, a vote on recognition of a union made up of UK-based Rockstar Games devs is set to take place around GTA 6's console launch on November 19th. The Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB) union, whom the Rockstar staff are working with in their efforts to organise, have now revealed just how many workers the Rockstar could end up encompassing if the recognition vote is successful. It's not a small number.

Helldivers 2 boss can "absolutely see" making a game parody of generative AI, but it would need to be "quirky" rather than "doom-laden"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 12:58:41 +0000

Arrowhead's chief creative officer Johan Pilestedt can well imagine the Helldivers studio developing a videogame that satirises or parodies today's generative AI technology. The game in question wouldn't be a Helldivers project, however, and Pilestedt says it would need to be relatively upbeat, rather than an exercise in feverish despair. This seems like a tall order right now, at least while Tim Sweeney still has access to Twitter.

There are no more Assassin's Creed remakes in development, because Ubisoft are focused on Hexe, Invictus and "projects you haven't heard about yet"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Ubisoft have announced that they aren't working on any more Assassin's Creed remakes for the moment, despite learning a "tremendous amount" from Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced. Instead, it's all shoulders to the wheel for a thrilling future that contains witches, a stronger sense of narrative cohesion, and possibly some kind of Assassin's Creed Smash Bros equivalent. In the shorter term, Ubisoft are still adding things to both Resynced and Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

Baldur's Gate 3 custom campaign mod channels World of Warcraft with an adventure about undead former slaves fighting to reclaim a kingdom

Mark Warren — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 10:33:55 +0000

The opening act of a Baldur's Gate 3 custom campaign mod which injects an adventure set in the World of Warcraft universe into Larian's RPG has been released. The mod, Forsaken, is another ambitious bit of work from a modder who recently expanded the second act of BG3's main story with a new region to explore before you head into the final chapter. This time, they've abandoned the D&Dverse for a tale of undead slaves rising up after being freed from serving a Lich King.

Mouthwashing is getting a feature film adaptation from Sony and I need all of you to be normal about it whenever it comes out

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:53:00 +0000

I quite liked that there video game Mouthwashing. It had a lot to say about how corporations take advantage of their workers, it played around with character perspective to let you in on certain narrative threads and withhold others until they're taut enough to snap, and was short enough so that its misery didn't outstay its welcome. What I wasn't so fond of was much of the fandom response that came afterwards, which is why I am quite scared to say that it's getting a movie from Sony.

Phantom Blade Zero kicks off its launch with a day one patch that offers improvements to ray tracing and some bug fixes to boot

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 21:27:20 +0000

If you've been hankering for some video gamey wuxia shenanigans, today seems like a good day for it, given that Phantom Blade Zero has now been released unto the world (with a 145GB install size that's technically actually 300GB but only for a bit). And like many big games before it, it comes not quite finished, as a day one patch attends to some of the action game's issues… I think, anyway, there's been a promise of a day one patch but no clear indicator if it's actually arrived or not. I don't own it either, so I can't check. At least I can tell you what's in it!

"We didn't want the brooding hero out for revenge": How quiet lulls and a bird-sketching lead make Control Resonant a more introspective kind of action game

Kaile Hultner — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:30:00 +0000

Like the repeating pattern effect afflicting its warped Manhattan, Control Resonant threw me for a loop. One minute I would be brutally slashing and smashing my way through hordes of inhuman enemies, enacting a never-ending chain combo of bellowing violence with my Aberrant, and the next minute I would be scanning nearby rooftops for signs of a squeaking purple dragon plushie to give to a very wiggly dog (who, I was pretty sure, could teleport). Combat often felt desperate and bloody; knockdown-and-drag-out brawls that had me limping away like John Wick after a particularly messy gunkata affair. Still, these fights all ended eventually, and in their place was not always more action-RPG battling but, more often, an odd sense of melancholic peace and quiet. It’s a strange dichotomy I’ve been thinking about nearly nonstop since I finished my first playthrough.

Spoilers/Revelations for Control Resonant ahead. Don’t say we didn’t warn/notify you.

After the rough start that was last year's entry, Football Manager 27 is looking to bring you in with a few free days of play before the game's even out

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 19:56:12 +0000

Football Manager 27 is still a good week and ahead out from launch, but if you're quick you can already get to playing it. That's because developer Sports Interactive have released a Launch Preview version of the game that lets you take it for a kickabout before it comes out in earnest.

It sounds like you shouldn't expect Destiny 2's campaign unvaulting to be ready until 2028, as Bungie tease their plans for the future of the series

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 18:42:15 +0000

When Bungie announced that they would be ceasing to work on major updates for Destiny 2 earlier this year, it obviously felt like that was the end of that, and any future games were not guaranteed whatsoever. Then last month, they announced that they'll be bringing back all of the shooter's vaulted campaigns, which is obviously a lot of work! Now, in a blog post, the developer has outlined where they're at with this process, offering up a timeline of when to expect the unvaulted campaigns, what will be included with them, and light teases for whatever comes after that.

The Elder Scrolls 6: Sentinel will be an Elder Scrolls game about the infinite mysteries of the Elder Scrolls, report with some plot hintage claims

Mark Warren — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 18:09:29 +0000

As Xbox's execs continue to pine for game-related announcements to fill in the gaps between their rounds of mass layoffs, The Elder Scrolls 6 is reportedly set to gain the subtitle Sentinel soon. That's according to a report which also includes some details of where the game that's long been a twinkle in the eye of Skyrim's dad will be set and what its plot will involve.

Celeste and TowerFall have been removed from the Xbox store in a move to "support the BDS boycott" against Microsoft

Oisin Kuhnke — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 17:49:39 +0000

It's a good day to love Celeste! Earlier today it was discovered that Celeste had been removed from the Xbox Store while it remained on the PlayStation and Nintendo digital storefronts. Now, as shared by the game's co-creator Maddy Thorson, it's been confirmed that both Celeste and TowerFall were removed from store expressly in support of the BDS called boycott against Xbox over Microsoft providing support to the Israeli military as it enacts its genocide of the Palestinian people.

Queen's Domain is a brilliant King's Field-alike RPG that forces you to walk so you can learn to fly

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 17:09:23 +0000

FromSoftware's elderly King's Field games aren't really celebrated for their feeling of agility. They are glorious first-person trudgefests, a treacle-thick waltz of swinging and spellcraft, with players wobbling in and out of attack range like British men who aren't sure whether the other man wants a hug. Unlike in the later Dark Souls action-RPGs, to which King's Field owes some of its retrospective popularity, there's no dodge-roll to grease the wheels.

Out this week on Steam, Queen's Domain is often as ponderous as King's Field, but it's also an exercise in steady, triumphant acceleration. Ultimately, it wants you to fly. To this end, it equips you - well, once you've boshed a huge skeleton sentinel - with a fancy windblade that lets you perform an aerial dash, speeding your manouevres while allowing you to reach new areas.

Don't worry, GTA 6's cars can drive for ages before their fuel tanks need refilling, leaving me wondering why this motor management's been added at all

Mark Warren — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:10:58 +0000

Right, before you groan too hard, I promise that after I write this I'll take a break of indeterminate length from writing articles which amount to wondering aloud why a thing that's in GTA 6 is in GTA 6. Cars which need refuelling. It's not an addition there'd not been any hint was coming before today, as with the smell reaction system, leaks having hinted at fuel management all the way back in August.

Since that point, it's been confirmed as in the version of the game Rockstar will be shipping to consoles (boo) next month and PC at some point after that. Edge's GTA 6 long read notes the existence of fuel gauges and engine health readouts, but it also caveats them in what seems an insistence from Rockstar that the first of these features isn't designed to make filling up something the player necessarily has to do often or spend much time on when they do.

Atmosfar is a giddy aerial exploration game after the heart of No Man's Sky, but I'm already trying to escape it

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Oh hi there! Why yes, I am free to chat. Please excuse the wind noise, I'm currently tumbling to my doom in Atmosfar, after getting lost in a cloud bank and exhausting my fuel. This kind of thing happens to me regularly in Atmosfar - an open world survival game that plays out across clusters of floating islands, with players scooting about in adorable, propellor-powered airships.

Many of the islands are quite large, with proper landing pads and bases set up by NPC scavengers. Many of them teem with non-human life: rainforests full of nectar droplets and carnivorous plants, meadows of ponderous honking lizards, and mossy grottos where you'll find caches of batteries and possibly get eaten by mantids. It's important to make the most of these larger islands, gathering materials for crafting at your deployable campsite (which straps pleasingly to the back of your whirring fly-mobile). It's particularly important to mine hydrogen crystals you can refine into fuel.

Can the SideWinder Game Pad, Microsoft's first game controller, work on modern PCs? I bought three of them to find out

Amity Gilmour — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 13:13:35 +0000

1996 gave us two incredible gifts. The first was me. The second, arguably more impactful on the course of human civilisation, was the Microsoft SideWinder Game Pad 1.0.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 intro cinematic is "not intended to reference or trivialise" real-world South Korean crowd crush, Activision say amid reported backlash

Mark Warren — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 12:34:09 +0000

Update: The BBC report that Activision have issued a statement apologising to the victims of the Itaewon crowd crush and confirmed that the news footage from the disaster in Modern Warfare 4's intro cinematic will be removed. An update coming to the shooter on November 12th will do the deed.

The 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association have welcomed Activision's decision to pull the footage, according to the BBC, but also said they hadn't received a direct apology from the Call of Duty publishers.

Original story follows:

The intro cinematic of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, this year's Activision mil-shooter, has reportedly caused controversy in South Korea due to the use of some real world news footage from a 2022 crowd crush in Seoul's Itaewon district which killed around 150 people. Activision have now issued a response to the situation, in which they state the intro is "not intended to reference or trivialise the Itaewon disaster or any other real-world tragedy".

GTA 6 has a smell reaction system, which immediately joins Red Dead Redemption 2's dynamically shrinking horse balls on Rockstar's list of immersive symbols of excess

Mark Warren — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 11:12:20 +0000

Any reminder of Red Dead Redemption 2's temperature sensitive horse testicles brings a smile to my face. In truth, I can't say I've ever zoomed in close enough to properly take in the spectacle of Arthur Morgan's mount having its nuts dynamically expand and contract based on whether he's riding through snowy mountains or across baking plains, but I do always get a kick out of knowing such a thing's happening as I play. To this point, the horse balls have been the most infamous or meme-worthy example of Rockstar's obsession with going all-in on realistic detail to an arguably unnecessary degree, one that borders on overindulgence which players could conceivably never notice if they weren't expressly told about it.

That philosophy's gone nowhere, so GTA 6 was always going to have a feature that'd become as much of a metaphor for excess as those beloved balls. It may well be the smell reaction system revealed in Edge's long read on the game.

Cyberpunk trading sim Probably Stolen is about running a kiosk in a space station full of gangs, megacorps, and secret rogue cyborgs

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:29:10 +0000

I have so far not been shivved, shanked, brain fried, hazed, wasted, ironed, short-circed, flat-lined or even complained at in Probably Stolen - Cyberpunk Shopkeeper Sim, but I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

In this neuromantic kiosk game from Questing Goose Studio, you're a new store owner aboard a backwater space station. Each day, you roll up the shutter and do business with a procession of shady types, ranging from janitors with unappetising beards to sexy cowled folk with Main Character tattoos. The basics are simple enough, for all the overwhelmingly menu-led presentation: buy what you can afford, according to your instinct for the wider market, sell what you can fit into the customer's budget. But things quickly get complicated.

Company of Heroes 3's Operation Torch DLC ships off to North Africa in November, for new missions based around the Allied landings

Mark Warren — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Atten-shun! Company Of Heroes 3's got new single-player missions inbound via a DLC set during the Allies' 1942 invasion of North Africa. You'll take charge of American forces through a campaign steeped in second world war history that's designed to test your tactical nous and ability to upgrade fighting units to come out on top.It's out on November 25th.

"We are more concerned about the risks of moving too slowly": Epic get more specific about genAI use in Unreal Engine and Fortnite development

Mark Warren — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:49:39 +0000

Epic Games are, dunno if you've heard, on a bit of a genAI kick at the moment. It's been tough to notice unless you listen very hard. Tim Sweeney's lips have been sealed and no reports have spewed forth.

Sark aside, to this point Epic have had far more provocative soundbites and weird marketing lingo to offer than specific detail about how they're using genAI in different parts of their business.

Subnautica 2 dev thinks early access teams should worry less about adding features that are "very ugly, incomplete, or prototype"

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:40:46 +0000

Subnautica 2 creative director Anthony Gallegos has spoken about what Unknown Worlds have learned over their many years working in Steam early access, exhorting other devs to add new features "as soon as possible" and experiment with them right under the flared nostrils of players. Damn the torpedoes, etcetera.

The original Subnautica is one of the oldest Steam early access success stories, launching in 2014 a month or so after the program went live. Many of the final version's better qualities, including the pivot to horror epitomised by the spectacle of a Reaper grabbing your submarine's face, reflect observation of players and streamers in the wilds.

Hot Wax sets fire to the Tetris playbook with slow-burn puzzle mechanics and a dollop of eldritch menace

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been conscious of an eerie background humming and hissing. For a while I thought it was just tinnitus, brought on by one too many listens of Control's Ashtray Maze OST, but then I realised that it was actually RPS regular quasiotter whispering in my ear about Hot Wax, which launches on Steam this week after a spell of Itch.io exclusivity.

It's the new arcade puzzler from PUNKCAKE Délicieux, otherwise known for inflicting shotguns on chess and forcing the alphabet to wear trousers in the name of archaeology, somehow. Hot Wax is actually quite straightforward by PUNKCAKE standards. It's Tetris, but all the blocks are candles, and rather than filling a line on the grid to clear blocks, you have to plant unpredictably dropped flames on wicks to slowly sizzle the mass away. Relatively straightforward, yes, but fiddly in practice. Did I mention that you're doing all this in a temple, under the eye of a "not unfriendly" eldritch god?

"We basically rewrote the entire State of Decay game": Undead Labs spent years trying to make State of Decay 3 into a full-blown zombie apocalypse MMO

Julian Benson — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 12:30:00 +0000

State of Decay 3 was announced with a snazzy cinematic trailer all the way back in 2020. The open-world zombie game was due to move to colder climes, where you would face undead deer and survive the frigid elements. We've since learned that the teaser bore very little resemblance to what was actually being worked on, and was pushed out the door to plump up a Microsoft showcase.

However, what the teaser also didn't reveal was that Undead Labs' ideas for the game were much larger in scope than the two survival games that came before. For several years they were trying to make State of Decay 3 into an MMO that captured the scale of a global zombie apocalypse.

"Creation without a creator": Pathologic 3's devs have refused to patch an invisible apple tree, and for a blissful moment, I thought they were lying to poison Google's AI

Edwin Evans-Thirlwell — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:40:49 +0000

Magnificent, depressing plague colony fable Pathologic 3 has received a sizeable game update that adds some new difficulty modes, a photo feature, and some new, worryingly folkloric methods of defeating a murky embodiment of disease. Developers Ice Pick Lodge have also staunchly refused to remove an invisible apple tree, describing this apparently "famous" bug as a hallmark of a game whose "symbolic nature has almost overtaken its function as a product". This appears to be the last major update for Pathologic 3, so that invisible apple tree is staying in the game forever.

I confess, when I first read the Steam blog in question, I doubted. The thing about invisible apple trees is that they are quite easy to confuse with apple trees that are simply not there. Pathologic in general is a house of lies: as Quintin Smith (RPS in peace) put it in his legendary Butchering Pathologic trilogy, "absolutely everybody has an angle, everyone's bending the truth and trying to twist you round their fingers." Pathologic 3 especially is a purgatorial time travel story that must be continually rewritten, a crock of festering rumours enclosed by an enormous, phantom theatre. As such, I read Ice-Pick's typically professorial account of the "invisible apple tree" with intense suspicion.