Acclaimed voice actor and screenwriter David Hayter opened up about his canceled Lost Planet movie adaptation, explaining why it never got off the ground in a throwaway tweet more than a decade after it was first confirmed.

Did you know that David Hayter, the voice of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear games, wrote the screenplay for a Lost Planet movie? I didn’t either, until he tweeted about it today — almost twenty years after the project fell through.

Hayter spoke up about the film on October 27, 2026, reminding fans that yes, he writes for movies, and one of those movies would have been an absolute dream for fans of Capcom’s long-forgotten sci-fi shooter series Lost Planet.

Fun Fact: I wrote a huge LOST PLANET movie for Warner Brothers in 2008, and then the entire financial world crashed, and that was the end of it.

— David Hayter (@DavidBHayter) October 27, 2026

“Fun Fact: I wrote a huge Lost Planet movie for Warner Brothers in 2008, and then the entire financial world crashed, and that was the end of it,” he wrote.

While Lost Planet’s demise has been thoroughly catalogued at this point — and it’s been so long that newer generations were completely unaware that it even existed, in the first place — this appears to be one of just a few times Hayter has spoken on the 2008 financial crisis playing a part in the project’s premature end.

Previously, Hayter said that internal company politics was to blame, telling MTV in 2010 that there were “some internal issues between a couple of the companies, which I think has caused a delay there.”

And in 2014, Hayter told IGN that the movie — which he described as a “Lawrence of Arabia on an ice planet” — was interrupted by the financial crisis. “Unfortunately, right about the time I was delivering the script, the financial crash hit, and it just devastated the business — in ways that I don't think people grasped. Like, I would get phone calls saying, ‘Well, Disney wants to do such-and-such, but they're out of money until August,’” he explained.

“I heard that about a number of studios. ‘Oh, they're out of money until January,’ or whatever, and I'd never heard that about a movie studio before. So in the midst of all of that turmoil, it just went away, as these things tend to do. So, you know, I guess Warners probably still owns it, and they have my script. I don't know if there are any plans to bring it back up or not. But that was just one of those Hollywood casualties, unfortunately.”

Hayter expounded on some details about his Lost Planet movie in his interview with MTV, saying it “had this incredible visual world. Great suits of armor, great creatures, and its story was about energy — the dwindling energy resources of the Earth and how we’re going to other planets to [solve that problem]. So I thought it was really timely and the world was beautiful. And the other thing that I really felt as a screenwriter made it ideal for adaptation was, the original story in the game was… not… great."

"It was sort of presented in a very Japanese storytelling fashion. It’s very elliptical and difficult to follow, and you’re not really sure who’s who. That’s fine in a game because… you’re really trying to get to the next level. It’s a great opportunity for me as a screenwriter to step in and infuse that incredible visual world with a really compelling — for lack of a better term — American-structured film."

For now, all fans can do is pine after what could have been… though, given Capcom’s renewed interest in “reactivating IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently," on top of its successful movie adaptations for Resident Evil and Street Fighter, it’s possible that Hayter’s long-awaited Lost Planet flick could come to light. (But maybe that’s just me trying to cope.)

An October 27 statement from employees of Don't Nod, the developer best known for making the original Life is Strange games, warn that the company is in danger of insolvency and layoffs, and accused its management of "illegal" practices that have caused staff "uncertainty and anxiety."

The damning statement comes from employees who are members of the French game industry union Le Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo, which revealed that Don’t Nod is currently under a safeguard to help protect itself from insolvency (meaning that the company wouldn’t be able to pay its debts).

The statement claims employees were approached by management and given “several financial scenarios” that could happen in the near future, both of which “included redundancies," with the worst case forecasting the “liquidation of the company through 2026.”

The message states that “nearly all of the non-managerial jobs” were cut at Don’t Nod, which reportedly included all animators, character artists, concept artists, associate producers, and most environmental artists, sound designers, level designers, programmers, QA testers, HR and developers. Half of its game designers were also laid off, according to the statement.

“Management is extremely clearly going for heavily individualized targeting and hasn’t been shy about their intent to keep selected people in rather than jobs, which is illegal,” the union wrote.

The statement goes on to claim that management is betting on outsourcing to take on the workload of these fired team members — a decision that the union feels is “out-of-touch.”

The letter then says Don't Nod employees have been “living on the edge, in uncertainty and anxiety” for the last two years, to the point where six workplace accidents occurred this year and an inquiry was recently launched into a “serious and immediate danger.” It also alleges that management “refused to let those who would be willing to leave earlier go through a voluntary leave plan,” saying they “do not care about the damage it deals to employees’ health.”

The statement ends on a striking note; a government agency that represents employees is set to make its ruling on November 3. After that, management will have 21 days to decide on a plan. If this plan is accepted by the government agency, it’s possible that employees could “get their firing letters on November 25.”

“If it were to be rejected however, management would have to go back to the drawing board and improvise because, as you might have gathered, planning for contingencies isn’t their forte,” the letter concludes.

This is the latest news to surface regarding Don’t Nod’s dire financial straits after it was warned by auditors in a financial report that it could run out of cash as early as November. Its latest game, Aphelion, was released earlier this year to middling reviews, and given this recent union tell-all, its next project could be in peril.

With Silent Hill 2’s remake selling 6 million copies, it’s no surprise Bloober Team and Konami would want to have another crack at things. Last year, the Polish developer and Japanese publisher confirmed they were doing just that with a remake of the first Silent Hill.

The 1999 PS1 horror game is getting the Bloober treatment, and a new leak from MP1ST suggests work has been underway since 2022 and the game is targeting a 2027 launch.

According to the report, the game cast its actors under the codename “Project Noise,” and features Gabrielle Fritz and Jade Matthew in major roles.

Fritz has worked in other games, from Battlefield 2042 to Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus, as well as a range of TV shows. Matthew is best known for British TV appearances.

While it isn’t clear what roles the two actors play in Silent Hill’s remake, the report speculated that police officer Cybil Bennett, nurse Lisa Garland, or primary antagonist Dahlia Gillespie would fit. There’s no word on who could play protagonist Harry Mason yet.

Bloober Team is also working on DLC for Cronos: The New Dawn, its multiplayer horror game, Saw: Genesis, and story-driven adventure Star Trek: Shadow Frontier.

The 2027 release window lines up with Konami’s recent spate of Silent Hill projects, with Townfall launching this year and Silent Hill f in 2025, giving us a new Silent Hill project each year. You can check out the games in order in our Silent Hill timeline.

Konami is planning "second and third waves" of new Silent Hill games, according to producer Motoi Okamoto, who pointed at Silent Hill 2 Remake, Silent Hill f, and Silent Hill: Townfall as the first wave.

That would make a remake of the first game the beginning of the second wave of new Silent Hill projects. It’ll be interesting to see what comes after.

I’m taking a look back at each of the core Grand Theft Auto games and replaying them in the lead-up to the arrival of Grand Theft Auto 6. What we’ll be putting together won’t be traditional re-reviews, and they won’t come with any new IGN score, but they will re-examine what made each GTA remarkable upon the time of its release. By the end of the project, using GTA’s previously six-star wanted level, you should be able to get an idea of where each of these games roughly rank in my long-term love for this series.

Our last stop in this series is Grand Theft Auto V: a game so nice, they released it thrice.

13 years. Three console generations. 230 million copies. Over $10 billion in revenue. The numbers that tell the story of Grand Theft Auto V’s longevity and success are wildly impressive and virtually unprecedented. The only other games even in the conversation are Minecraft or, depending on your criteria, about 200 different versions of Tetris. The numbers, however, don’t tell us why GTA V still sells more copies every few months than most games will ever total. They don’t tell us why people can’t get enough of it, and they don’t tell us why it’s special. So how did we get here? I guess it was the weather.

While GTA IV’s Liberty City sandbox was a dense, modestly-sized, and entirely urban environment, GTA V’s vision of the city of Los Santos was considerably more sprawling and varied. Yes, it retained a grid-like downtown district packed with tall buildings and a few particularly sizable skyscrapers, but Los Santos otherwise has a wholly different identity to that of Liberty City – and the map encompasses an area way beyond Los Santos itself.

The aesthetic shift is stark. Weather depending, the beating San Andreas sunshine gives vehicles a dazzling gleam, casts crisp shadows, and saturates the whole place with a sharp, sun-bleached vibe. It’s not the stylised orange tint that illustrated the oppressive heat of 1992 Los Santos in GTA: San Andreas, but it’s bright, effective, and a striking visual departure from the cold, drab, and gritty appearance of Liberty City.

It’s also such a different place to explore. The town is splintered into dozens of distinct districts that seamlessly blend from one to the next – from the affluent mansions of Vinewood Hills and Richman to the spectacle of Vinewood itself, glowing under a thin layer of grime and entertainment industry sleaze, and from the sun-kissed sand and beach bum backalleys of ageing Vespucci to the graffiti-tagged and struggling suburbs of South Los Santos.

Outside Los Santos, the countryside opens up to include desert, forest, mountains, and a handful of other small towns dotted around the map. It’s essentially a greatly expanded vision of the southern segment of GTA: San Andreas’ map – the section that features Los Santos, Mount Chiliad, and its immediate surroundings. It’s actually more than twice the size of GTA: San Andreas in its entirety, even if it doesn’t always feel that way, considering you can’t travel beyond the fringe of the county to find a fully-fledged San Fierro or Las Venturas. However, that’s more of a statement about how utterly special GTA: San Andreas’ map really is, rather than an indictment of GTA V in any real way.

That is, GTA V’s map remains a stunning achievement. It’s a world that – even after 13 years – I’m still spotting signs, storefronts, and subtleties that I don’t think I’ve overtly noticed before. Like all the best developers, Rockstar understands that true immersion emerges through accumulation: a single graffiti-tagged wall, bill-covered pole, or interesting piece of architecture might not be hugely remarkable on its own, but combined they become something else altogether. Funnily enough, a world full of thousands of such details can make an entire city so realistic you essentially stop noticing it. It’s almost counterintuitive; things don’t stand out, because they look so authentic, lived-in, and normal.

Streiht Up Menace

The smartest way Rockstar exploits this densely detailed map is through GTA V’s defining innovation: its trio of protagonists. You swap between Michael De Santa, a retired criminal becoming increasingly agitated at his otherwise comfortable suburban life; Franklin Clinton, an aspiring, small-time hustler looking for a real payday to get him out of his rundown neighbourhood; and Trevor Philips, a wildly volatile Canadian psychopath who was formerly partners with Michael.

The system is much more than a novelty. Switching between them allows Rockstar to prod us into different parts of the world to explore, without relying on a single character to experience everything. For a map this large, it makes a lot of sense.

For clarity, following the release of its single-player expansions The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony, GTA IV also ultimately featured three protagonists – and three different lenses through which we could view and interact with Liberty City. Similarly, it was a really smart way of squeezing more value out of the map, and drilling down on parts of it Niko Bellic’s story never really took him to. But while you could certainly regard this as a first draft of a multi-protagonist approach, you can’t switch between them in real time in GTA IV; you have to pause and load into the expansions separately.

In GTA V, the transition between characters is far, far more rapid, and occurs after just a brief zoom out and back in again, dropping you into Michael, Franklin, or Trevor’s life in the middle of whatever they happen to be doing at the time – which may well be dropping a man off a bridge. The transitions give the illusion that these guys continue to exist beyond the missions in which they appear.

Do It (’Til You’re Satisfied)

GTA V’s missions are typically far more varied and layered than those in GTA IV. After experimenting with it in The Ballad of Gay Tony, GTA V introduced mission checkpoints and finally shed what had arguably become the most frustrating characteristic of the series – the need to completely start from scratch after failing a mission.

This is what allows GTA V’s missions to be longer and regularly more wild than ever. With checkpoints as a safety net, Rockstar could really push the boat out with what it asked us to attempt – free from the sometimes debilitating concern that messing up at the last minute will result in a long drive and a lot of backtracking over things we’ve already done.

Of course, the highlight here is the focus on multilayed heists, taking the fan-favourite Three Leaf Clover bank robbery mission from GTA IV and blowing that concept out to make it the central pillar of GTA V’s campaign. There are multiple big scores that can be tackled in overtly different ways, something made easy to experiment with thanks to the ability to easily replay missions from a list of those you’ve previously completed. With the exception of The Ballad of Gay Tony, in past GTA games, the only way to play the missions again was to start over from the beginning.

The heists are where the three-character structure becomes most effective. We’re not just passengers on these huge marquee missions; rather, GTA V builds elaborate on ramps to these heists focused on planning and preparation which typically draw on the different skills and traits of Michael, Franklin, and Trevor. It gives the heists, and the campaign as a whole, a sense of scale and variety that would’ve been difficult to achieve through a single character.

Higher Love

Beyond the multiple protagonists and the escalation in mission variety, GTA V also made major changes to the car handling and significant refinements to the shooting. Vehicles are certainly more approachable to drive in GTA V than they are in GTA IV; they brake hard and respond sharply to steering input. The result isn’t superficial or overly light, but it does feel very grippy. It’s a handling model that I think is particularly suited to sure-footed sports cars, although I have to concede a part of me prefers the way older vehicles feel with the “slidey cars” cheat on. It’s just more drift-friendly.

In terms of vehicle variety, however, GTA V is very much a welcome shift back to the broad spectrum available in GTA: San Andreas after things were scaled back significantly in GTA IV. As a result, one minute you could be fanging an 18-wheeler down the freeway, and the next kicking tyres and lighting fires in a fighter jet. GTA V dialled things up rather than back, so go ahead: land that jumbo on the beach and escape via a jet ski. Why the hell not?

Combat was polished too, with more nimble movement and more dependable cover shooting. The highlight for me is the sound of firefights, as guns bark and bullets thunk into car panels. It’s brilliant stuff. The integration of the weapon wheel, which functions similarly to Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3, also means you can carry way more hardware – as well as multiple weapons within a single class. The weapon wheel stores all of the weapons you collect and you’ll never lose them, even if they run out of ammo or you get busted.

Party All The Time

When GTA V launched on Xbox 360 and PS3 in September 2013, both of those consoles were approaching the end of their lifespans. With the Xbox One and PS4 arriving in November that same year, you could probably make a strong case that GTA V felt like the last great statement of that generation. Many people did. However, I think there’s more to it than that.

A couple of weeks before its September 17 release, I was fortunate enough to conduct the world’s first hands-on with GTA V for IGN. Revisiting and playing it again so extensively this week has very effectively taken me back to how blown away I was in that moment. I was stunned by what I was playing, and utterly convinced GTA V was outright good enough to upstage both Microsoft and Sony’s new consoles. In fact, I wrote never mind November; the next generation will start when Rockstar says it does. In 2013, that was a comment reflective of just how ahead of its time I believed GTA V was; that it was simply streets ahead of its peers, squeezing next-generation scope and ambition out of a console that first launched in 2005. Simply put, it felt like a new benchmark for an era that hadn’t even officially arrived yet. On September 3, 2013 – two weeks before GTA V came out – maybe that’s a bold claim. But with new and improved versions of GTA V going on to loom large over the generation to follow, and then doing it all over again for the generation after that – all to the tune of 230 million copies – I don’t think it was ever an exaggeration.

Verdict

Grand Theft Auto V was a game so preposterously future-proof upon its 2013 launch on Xbox 360 and PS3 that its subsequent ports to modern machines remain the benchmark for open-world action-driving games. At the conclusion of this GTA Legacy Review project I find myself too emotionally attached to the PS2 pair of Vice City and San Andreas to push past my adoration for the style and soundtracks of those period piece classics and place anything above them but, make no mistake, there are very few games I’ve played more than GTA V. Combining an enormous and extraordinarily detailed world, three compelling protagonists, a thrilling set of varied missions and heists, and the foundation for a world of multiplayer that is simply a whole separate discussion, GTA V is the peak of the series. At least for the next few weeks, that is.

For more reflections on the incredible Grand Theft Auto series, you can read our new Legacy Reviews of Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto IV.

Games industry analysts told IGN that BioWare was likely doomed well before EA’s $55 billion acquisition, explaining that games like Mass Effect are now considered “prestige projects” for the company, and it’s unlikely the sci-fi franchise, nor BioWare’s other IPs, are sold off.

On October 21, EA announced a major shift in strategy and a significant internal restructuring that involved the cancellation of a number of projects, the closure of BioWare, and a reported 400 people losing their jobs. The Canadian studio, known for franchises like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, was shut down after more than 30 years of creating beloved role-playing games. Mass Effect fans must now consider that the franchise is dead — something the leaked internal trailer for Mass Effect Universe made all the more difficult to accept.

Needless to say, Mass Effect fans were gutted by the news, hoping against hope that EA might sell off BioWare’s IP rather than letting them languish in obscurity. But analysts have expressed doubt that outside companies will take on BioWare's franchises, even as EA faces down a massive debt incurred by its acquisition.

When asked about this possibility, industry analyst Joost van Dreunen said “maybe,” but explained that these IPs are likely far too costly — and far too time-consuming — for other developers to tackle.

“In many ways, BioWare's IP is in the same boat as some of the other studios we recently saw being divested. They are all well-known and too expensive for most buyers. Capable publishers like CD Projekt Red already have their hands full with their own projects,” he said. (He’s not wrong; CDPR certainly has a lot on its plate right now, what with The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 being in active development.)

The next Mass Effect was announced six years ago, at The Game Awards 2020, and this time last year Mike Gamble, now former executive producer of Mass Effect at BioWare, celebrated N7 Day to say the game was still in development. He even expressed excitement about the Amazon TV series (which IGN understands is currently still in the works), and insisted EA and BioWare "remain committed to telling more stories in this universe."

So what changed? Why cancel Mass Effect 5 now? Van Dreunen told us that, in EA’s eyes, legacy IPs like Mass Effect are likely being viewed as “prestige projects,” and the future looks grim for other development teams still underneath EA’s umbrella.

"Before its buyout, EA had been focusing on building recurring revenue streams, and the focus of its new owners is sports, live service, and new markets like Asia. Even if Mass Effect and Dragon Age were fantastically successful, corporate will insist on predictable cash flow. It makes franchises like Mass Effect a prestige project,” he continued.

“Considering the debt load, I'd expect to hear about more layoffs in the months to come. The memo already shrinks the skate. team and pauses a project for The Sims. I expect EA's town hall in November to bring more bad news."

Van Dreunen, along with fellow analyst Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere, considers BioWare’s closure an inevitable consequence of EA’s current business structure, calling it “entirely predictable and precisely what a leveraged buyout looks like once the deal closes.

“In this case, EA now carries roughly $18 billion in debt, which costs it about $1.8 billion a year in interest. That is more than its annual EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization] of around $1.5 billion. EA has told its lenders it will cut $700 million in annual costs to service the debt. In that context, a 50-person team working on a game that is years from launch is the easiest line to cut, regardless of its legacy,” van Dreunen said.

“This news is emotive for many adult gamers because of Bioware’s long history of delivering games with deep narratives that connect with audiences, meaning it has a large cultural footprint. It’s a name that has been around for 30 years, so seeing it close is a significant moment for the industry. In particular, the original Baldur’s Gate games, Neverwinter Nights, and KOTOR were genre defining, and the later Mass Effect titles also strongly resonated with audiences,” Harding-Rolls told us.

Harding-Rolls added that the commercial failure of BioWare's last game, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, played a part in BioWare's demise. And let's remember that 2017's Mass Effect: Andromeda and 2019's Anthem also failed to meet EA's expectations.

“Unfortunately, the studio’s recent big-budget releases have not performed well enough commercially," he said. "Ampere data shows that Bioware’s latest release at the end of 2024 — Dragon Age: The Veilguard — has sold an estimated 1.9 million units globally across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam up to the end of September, way below internal targets. The changing nature of high-end gaming and the need to cut costs means that it is likely that Bioware’s future was under discussion before EA was acquired by the PIF and its partners.”

It's a point backed up by MST Financial analyst David Gibson. “I think the closing is a combination of factors: EA going private and needing to improve returns and margins to fund large debt, high relative costs in the West (versus Asia, etc.) to develop AAA games, and role playing games like Mass Effect not doing enough sales to be profitable enough,” he explained.

“It appears there were many other games in development using IP which were also scrapped. I would hope a small and nimble studio would acquire some of the IP and make great games that users love and that contain innovation, rather than repeat the same stuff. EA has a history of making a series of games that are just not fun to play or contain innovation.”

Whether or not EA ends up selling off BioWare’s IP remains to be seen. Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah is more optimistic about this possibility than he was previously, but remains skeptical, saying EA could be just as likely to “forget they ever existed and bury them in the vault.”

We have much more on the dramatic news of BioWare's closure, including reaction from fans and the video game industry, and IGN's Ryan McCaffrey on why BioWare was the greatest RPG developer ever.

Former writers for the now-canceled Mass Effect 5 are speaking out on social media following news that BioWare, a beloved studio with more than 30 years of games under its belt, was shuttered by EA earlier today.

EA announced the news somewhat unceremoniously in a single paragraph tucked within a lengthy open letter on October 21, 2026. “As we focus on these larger opportunities, we've had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We've made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly,” the statement reads.

It’s safe to say that gamers were gutted by this announcement — as were the staff impacted by the closure, as we’ve now seen several writers who worked on Mass Effect 5 begin to discuss the situation online.

On Twitter/X, New York Times bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente responded to a post wherein a user said, “A game industry that cannot figure out how to make a sequel to the literal best game of all time is a game industry that is fundamentally broken,” speaking on the BioWare closure.

“We did figure it out. We were working on a great game. Just saying,” Valente retorted. In response to a different commenter, she revealed that she hadn’t contributed to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Mass Effect: Andromeda, or Anthem, clarifying that she is “not, in fact, the personification of BioWare."

Award-winning science fiction writer Derek Künsken also published a lengthy thread discussing his time working on Mass Effect 5 — a game that, most likely, we’ll never get to see. Künsken said he’d been contributing to the title “on and off” over the last five years, and said he’s only now allowed to speak about it given that the company behind the project is now nonexistent.

“Over the coming weeks, I'll get more clarity on what I can say about what I did and saw and learned. I hope it's more than nothing — what we were cooking was really cool,” he said. He went on to reveal that he’d worked with Valente on pitching “story, character, lore, and sci-fi wonder for this next chapter of the Mass Effect world,” calling it “the most energizing, in-the-zone collaboration I've ever had.”

For now, fans are left wondering what could have been, while equally hopeful that somehow, some way, EA might sell off BioWare’s IPs to another studio rather than letting them languish. Former BioWare executive producer Mark Darrah is expressing some caution around this particular idea, though he did theorize that it’s a bit more likely now, given that EA is possibly looking to offset its massive debt incurred by its eye-watering $55 billion acquisition to a private investment group earlier this year.

Oh well; at least we have the Prime Video series to look forward to, which was revealed to still be in active development in an exclusive statement to IGN.

BioWare is dead, and my feelings are a strange cocktail of anger, sadness, and Jack’s Complete Lack of Surprise. The legendary RPG studio was bought by a private investment group earlier this year, and history shows that venture capital frequently kills what it touches, extracting whatever value out of it that it can before moving onto the next victim. It’s a hell of a contrast to the beginning of BioWare, which started out as such a pure thing. Two practicing doctors, Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, quit medicine to pursue their dream of making computer role-playing games. Sure, the studio was bought and sold a couple of times between then and now, and yes, BioWare’s recent results haven’t lived up to its venerable past, but my goodness, what a legacy this studio leaves behind.

Everyone knows Baldur’s Gate now on account of Larian Studios’ Game of the Year-winning, 10 out of 10 Baldur’s Gate 3 from 2023, but what younger gamers might not know is that the first two Baldur’s Gate RPGs were built by BioWare in the late ‘90s. While they weren’t the studio’s first games – that honor goes to the 1996 mech action-sim Shattered Steel – they were the two that put BioWare on the map. Each was an incredibly deep and sprawling RPG based on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset that was good for upwards of 200 hours of gameplay. At the time, they reset the bar for what a CRPG could be. Let me put it this way: Baldur’s Gate 1 took home IGN’s Game of the Year award in 1998… over Half-Life. That’s how good Baldur’s Gate was.

After another action-game pitstop in the form of 2000’s excellent MDK2, BioWare returned to role-playing with Neverwinter Nights, another CRPG that arguably brought video games closer to the pen-and-paper, pizza-party-at-your-best-friend/DM’s-house version of D&D than any game before it. It was the runner-up for IGN’s Best Role-Playing Game of 2002, finishing behind just one game: a little project you might have heard of called The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.

Up to this point, BioWare had primarily been known in PC circles as a prominent CRPG developer. And then Microsoft made a deal with the studio and LucasArts to develop an exclusive new Star Wars RPG for the fledgling Xbox console. You already know what the result was: the absolutely unimpeachable Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which happens to be my personal favorite role-playing game of all time. My biases aside, it is unquestionably one of the best RPGs ever made. It’s also a lock for top-3 Star Wars games of all-time, and it has a strong case for No. 1 on that list. It told an incredible story in Star Wars’s ancient past and truly let you embrace the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force. I went fully evil just because KOTOR let me do so! And not only that, it embraced those choices. At one point, I distinctly remember triple-crossing someone – double-crossing the guy that I’d already double-crossed. Its plot twist is legendary, and on the off chance that the long-in-development-hell remake ever comes out, I won’t spoil it for you here. But whether it was visiting plenty of planets (including Kashyyk!), bonding with your party members (shout-out to my favorite droid, HK-47!), or planning out my evil Force attacks by stacking up my attacks in the turn-based combat system, KOTOR was the ultimate pairing of a beloved IP and an industry-leading developer.

Another Xbox console exclusive followed, albeit from a different team within BioWare. While KOTOR director Casey Hudson was planning something even bigger for his team’s next project, another crew at BioWare delivered the sublime and historically underrated Jade Empire, which was steeped in Chinese mythology. IGN gave it a 9.9 out of 10 (on a 100-point scale!) back in 2005, and while it was nowhere near the commercial success KOTOR was, it was every bit as big a hit with critics and fans.

And then came Mass Effect. BioWare promised us a space opera – a trilogy in which our choices in each game would carry over to the next and ultimately affect the ending to the whole story. Microsoft had wisely signed it as a console exclusive, and boy oh boy did it pay off. Mass Effect was one of the core memories most people have about the Xbox 360. It was released in fall of 2007, the greatest stretch in Xbox and quite possibly gaming history – and it actually delivered on its space-opera promise. As your custom Commander Shepard, the first in the trilogy introduced us to the universe and humanity’s place within it – including Shepard’s path to becoming a galaxy-protecting Spectre. It introduced the Reapers, and so many phenomenal companion characters from Wrex to Garrus to Liara among many others. And like KOTOR, it too allowed you to be a Paragon of good or a Renegade of evil. (And yes, I once again tested the limits of how bad BioWare would allow me to be.)

The first is my personal favorite of the trilogy, but for many that honor goes to Mass Effect 2, which leveled up your relationship with Shepard’s companions and more or less built the entire campaign around them. As promised, your save file imported into the sequel, bringing with it your Shepard’s look and choices from the first game. It also evolved Mass Effect’s gameplay from light turn-based, semi-tactical combat to more of a pure third-person cover shooter while sacrificing none of its role-playing elements.

The controversial trilogy-capper is best remembered for its ending, which upset fans so much that BioWare tried to improve it in a post-launch patch. But forgotten alongside that is how great the rest of it was. It took the time to really let you – and your Shepard – say goodbye to the friends you’d made along the way (or at least, the ones you hadn’t chosen to kill or sacrifice), and its combat was improved further over Mass Effect 2, making Mass Effect 3 a truly world-class third-person shooter alongside its well-established role-playing bonafides.

Whatever your thoughts of Mass Effect 3’s ending, BioWare had done what they said they’d do: They built a three-game space opera that spanned more than 100 hours of gameplay over the course of the five years it took to get all three games out the door. We developed meaningful bonds with its characters, in part because they’d been written so well. It was a bold RPG experiment, and one that, for my money, hasn’t been replicated or even attempted since.

The Mass Effect trilogy was, in hindsight, probably BioWare’s peak by just about any measure, but the studio kept going. Another original IP, Dragon Age, saw four RPGs released over a decade and a half – with the third of those, 2014’s Dragon Age Inquisition, taking home IGN’s Game of the Year Award. Anthem was a bold but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to bring BioWare’s storytelling talents to the hot-at-the-time live-service space. The studio cleaned Mass Effect up nicely for an excellent remaster of the trilogy in 2021 after the BioWare Montreal team’s disappointing Mass Effect Andromeda in 2017. Heck, BioWare even made a full-blown RPG starring Sonic in a team-up with Sega in 2008’s Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood!

And after announcing a fifth Mass Effect game that fans hoped would redeem the series after Andromeda, that project is now canceled alongside the studio being shut down. As sad as this day is – for both fans and BioWare employees who were there at any point during its 31-year history – I am left with a fulfilling sense of gratitude to this studio for all of the memorable gaming experiences it’s given me. With respect to CD Projekt Red, Larian, and Bethesda Game Studios, there’s never been a better RPG developer over a longer period of time than BioWare. It won’t be forgotten.

Mark Darrah, who worked as an Executive Producer at BioWare from 1997–2021, shared his thoughts on the studio’s recent closure by EA and what he thinks might happen to its iconic IPs.

EA announced a major restructuring in a lengthy statement on October 21. Amid some exciting developments for Sims, Fight Night, and Star Wars fans came the devastating news that BioWare — the studio responsible for beloved series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age — was being shut down.

“As we focus on these larger opportunities, we've had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We've made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly,” EA’s statement said.

This news hit the gaming world hard, with fans taking to social media to mourn the developer and send fired staff their well-wishes. But one burning question has risen above the sadness: What does this mean for the future of BioWare’s IPs?

Some fans have urged EA to sell them off to other companies, with CD Projekt Red being a big favorite due to the two studios’ close relationship over the years. And while nothing is certain, Darrah shared some insight as to what’s possible for BioWare’s creations in the wake of this devastating development — and it’s cautiously optimistic.

“Remember BioWare is 100% owned by EA,” he said in a YouTube video. “EA owns all the IPs. They own Dragon Age, they own Mass Effect, they own Jade Empire. That doesn’t change the situation, really, at all. …Now, there’s nobody working on a [BioWare] game, or games, within the EA organization, and chances are there never will be, which might make them more likely to sell off those IPs. But it might also make them more likely to just try to forget that they ever existed and bury them in the vault.

“I think we still are gonna have to wait a little bit before we see if EA has any interest in selling off some of its dormant IPs. Right now, they seem to be in cost control mode. They might start into a revenue-generation mode where selling IPs might be more desirable.”

It’s worth mentioning that EA was acquired by a consortium of private investors back in August in a mind-boggling $55 billion deal. As part of this acquisition, the investment group was reportedly banking on the hope that artificial intelligence might help cut costs to help manage its debt.

Given the investment group’s massive debt, some fans are curious to know if this means selling off some of BioWare’s beloved IPs to other developers — or perhaps back to BioWare under a different brand. For now, nothing is certain, other than fans and fellow game developers are equally beside themselves as they grapple with the news that Mass Effect 5 might never get made.

This is an IGN opinion piece by Jackie Thomas, who has been playing and replaying Mass Effect for nearly 20 years now.

I'm the sort of person who replays my favorite games whenever there's a big gap between releases. And those favorites usually end up being from the Mass Effect series, whether it's just the first game or a run through the entire original trilogy. So, for me, a Mass Effect 5 that captured the magic of the first three games has been something I've been looking forward to since before it was even announced in 2020. Now, that game will never exist, thanks to EA closing down BioWare. And that f**king sucks.

When Mass Effect came out in 2007, I stood in line to get it on release night, and I played it incessently until I finished absolutely everything in it. I did the same thing when the second and third games came out, except I also played the previous games again ahead of time so everything would be fresh in my mind.

Ever since Mass Effect 3 came out, I've replayed the original games maybe a dozen times. I don't even drastically change the way I play Mass Effect each time I play it. Even after nearly 20 years of experiencing the original game, I still play an Adept every time, because pistols are OP and biotics are cool. And I still ultimately do a paragon playthrough, even when I tell myself that I'm going to be bad and play renegade. Mass Effect has felt like home to me for years, and it became my ultimate comfort game.

But eventually, Mass Effect Andromeda came out, and even though I tried to power through it, I ultimately gave up after a deluge of bugs and weird writing turned me off. I still haven't gone back and finished that game, but I still find myself downloading and playing Mass Effect when I run out of other games to play. Hell, with the amount of times I've played the first game, I can probably navigate most of its empty optional planets with my eyes closed. After today's news, I might just download it and play it again in solidarity.

You'd think that after getting burned on Mass Effect Andromeda, I would've learned my lesson. But in the years since Bioware teased what should have the fifth Mass Effect game, I let myself hope that it would redeem the series once again and land in that annual ME replay rotation.

And I know that after Anthem, and Dragon Age: The Veilguard's weird shift to a straight-up action game, I didn't have much of a reason to believe that Mass Effect 5 would have been this magical return to form. But I think what's hitting me the hardest about BioWare's closure is that we'll never know whether or not Mass Effect 5 would have been good.

The truth is, we didn't know much about the next Mass Effect game at all. Hell, I don't even know if it would have been called Mass Effect 5, but that's just easier to say than 'the next Mass Effect game' over and over again. Ever since it was announced, BioWare had been pretty quiet about the project, only really speaking up to reassure fans that it was still in development. And look how that turned out.

But some of the things that popped up about the game over the years did look pretty cool. Bioware showed off some concept art late last year, showing a Krogan civil war with a properly grizzled Krogan leading a whole squad of the grumpy lizards in a fight. I want to play that game.

Likewise, in one of the only teasers we ever got, the camera zooms through the galaxy, past what looks like the ruins of the Citadel, until it finally shows an older Asari climbing up some snowy ruins. And we don't see her full face, but even from the side, it sure looked like Liara. And, again, I'd love to revisit her character after she fully becomes an Asari Matriarch. But again, that game will never exist.

But there is at least hope that some games that are at least similar to Mass Effect are on the horizon. Just last year, Mass Effect director Casey Hudson's new studio announced Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic. I'm a huge Star Wars fan, so when that game comes eventually comes out, I'm sure I'll burrow my way into it like a tick and not come out for a week. But, just like Mass Effect 5, there's not a lot we know about Fate of the Old Republic quite yet. But at least Hudson has come out and said that it won't take until 2030 to release, so maybe we'll get it in 2029.

The Expanse: Osiris Reborn is another one that I've had my eye on, and while I haven't really watched the show or read the books (even though both are on my list), I know that universe has a lot of potential for a Mass-Effect-Like. Then, there's Exodus, which is made by Wizards of the Coast of all companies, and has Mass Effect alumni working on it. The art style even makes it look like a Mass Effect game. Luckily, both of these titles seem like they're on track to actually come out next year, but only time will tell there.

As much as I'm earnestly looking forward to all three of those games, they're simply not Mass Effect. The aesthetics are there, the writing should be there, and it looks like the gameplay for Exodus at least is going to be quite good. And Fate of the Old Republic is a Star Wars game, and my love of Star Wars is what led me to play Mass Effect in the first place.

But no matter how good they end up being, I don't know if it's going to be as relaxing as hunting down all of the Keepers in the Citadel, and I probably won't be fighting a giant Reaper skeleton inside of a black hole. I am at least thankful that no matter how controversial Mass Effect 3's ending was, it was at least an ending. I would have loved another chapter and a chance to see whatever Bioware was cooking up with Mass Effect 5. But, at least I'll always have those first three games, and no amount of EA's mismanagement is going to take that away from me.

On October 21, EA announced a major restructuring of its development studios and current projects, which included the closure of BioWare and the cancellation of the next Mass Effect game.

This news hit fans like a truck, as many were excitedly waiting for the next installment in the beloved sci-fi role-playing series. BioWare created some of the most beloved and influential RPGs in history over the course of 30 years of existence, but its closure was relegated to just a single paragraph in EA's memo to staff on today's dramatic company changes.

“As we focus on these larger opportunities, we've had a small team at BioWare working on early-development for Mass Effect. We've made the decision not to move forward with this development, which means we’re closing the studio and our Edmonton workspace. BioWare is a legendary studio that helped define the role-playing genre, and we do not take this decision lightly,” Cam Weber, president and chief studios officer, and David Tinson, president and COO, said in the memo.

Needless to say, fans of BioWare games — particularly Mass Effect — were left devastated by this news. On social media, the prevailing sentiment seems to be one of anger and despair, with commenters venting their spleen at EA and the current state of the industry.

“I was so excited for N7 day. I was so excited for the next Mass Effect game. The Mass Effect trilogy is one of my favorite games of all time, and now it’s dead forever. I don’t even know what to think or say, everything feels unreal,” one fan wrote online.

“This is a f**king dagger in my heart. Thank you for being a huge part of my childhood,” another said.

“Please God, PLEASE sell your IPs to another company,” yet another urged. “Don't let the legacy of Mass Effect and Dragon Age die with these last gory gasps. Sell them to other companies that can continue telling the stories they can... Don't let EA hold these settings hostage.”

Prominent members of the video game development community also offered their thoughts. The co-CEO of The Witcher and Cyberpunk developer CD Projekt Red, Michal Nowakowski, weighed in with a statement honoring BioWare for its help and collaboration over the years.

“BioWare has been a massive part of CDPR history. We befriended them when localizing and selling Baldur’s Gate games in Poland, Czech, and Slovakia. And later, they were a great help when lending us their engine for Witcher 1, sharing their wisdom and even giving us a spot at their booth at E3. I had the pleasure to visit them a few times in Edmonton and also host them in our Warsaw office. Very sad for the people affected, but also sad to see a legendary brand go down. Not a great day in the games industry,” he wrote.

Paweł Sasko, associate game director on Cyberpunk 2, said BioWare's Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 "shaped my imagination and the desire to create games." He continued: "I would have never been here without BioWare igniting the fire in my heart. It inspired me, formed me, enriched my imagination, and for that I will be forever grateful. I will always remember you."

inXile boss Brian Fargo, who founded Interplay Entertainment, called it a "sad day indeed." "I remember when BioWare was a small studio that made Shattered Steel for us at Interplay," he said. "We saw the promise in what they could do, and they went on to create Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 and become legendary. A sad day indeed. My thoughts are with everyone there today."

Swen Vincke, boss of Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian, described BioWare's closure as "not something I ever expected to see."

"Larian and BioWare started their trajectories in the games industry at the same time and BioWare led the way in making RPGs big," he continued. "It's almost unimaginable that we're now entering an era were the name BioWare won't show up anymore when discussing upcoming RPGs. What a loss for all of us.

"Thank you for all the games. Thank you for the many hours of gameplay. Thank you for all the stories . You can be damned proud of what you achieved. I hope you all land well."

Thomas Puha, communications director at Alan Wake and Control developer Remedy, commented: "This was coming but so sad to read. The growing problem for large publishers is that smaller AAA games won’t bring enough money so can’t take the risk on them, but not doing original games? We need those, need new franchises."

Casey Hudson, the former BioWare GM, and director of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and the Mass Effect Trilogy, called it "sad news on multiple fronts - for those of us who worked there, for our friends and colleagues at BioWare who are impacted, and for fans who were looking forward to the next Mass Effect adventure.

"I started my career at BioWare and will forever be grateful to the founders, Greg and Ray, for inviting me to join in BioWare's legendary journey. Its legacy will live on through those who were part of it and continue to create games through a passion for unforgettable stories, worlds and characters."

Hudson is now CEO of Arcanaut Studios, which is developing a spiritual successor to KOTOR called Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic.

BioWare issued a statement of its own on social media, writing: “For more than 30 years, BioWare has been more than a studio. It has been a home for storytellers, developers, and the players who brought our worlds to life. Now, after more than three decades of shared adventures, BioWare is closing and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending.

“There is nothing easy about writing those words. Our focus right now is on our incredibly talented team who put their hearts into these games, and supporting one another through this transition. What generations of BioWare built together is something to celebrate and remember. These games became so much more because you played them, debated your choices, fell in love with the characters, and made these worlds your own. From all of us at BioWare, thank you for being the most meaningful part of our story.”

Mike Gamble, executive producer of Mass Effect at BioWare, told fans in a social media post: "Your support has meant everything to me over the past 17 years at BioWare."

It’s been a tumultuous year for EA; in August, the company went private in a $55 billion acquisition to an investor group comprised of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners. The Financial Times reported that this deal hinged on the hope that AI would “significantly” cut EA’s operating costs, helping the consortium of private investors to better manage the debt they piled onto the game company.

Humble Bundle has dropped an exciting new game bundle focused on Double Fine, and it's stacked with 11 great games to add to your Steam library. For as low as $8, you'll get beloved titles like Psychonauts, Brutal Legend, and Broken Age to boot up on your PC, which is an incredible deal when you take into account the bundle has a $146 value overall. That's some seriously huge savings.

The bundle won't be available for very long, though. From the time of writing, there's just over 16 days left to grab it, so keep that in mind if you want to mull it over before buying. Below, you can get a good look at all of the games included in this bundle before picking it up.

Humble Bundle – Double Fine Publisher Bundle

Electronic Arts created social media accounts for its long-dormant boxing sim franchise Fight Night and the first post was exactly what fans wanted to hear: Fight Night is coming back.

The full post reads, "To everyone who stayed in our corner: Fight Night is coming back." And there's an image of a pair of boxing gloves hanging over a boxing ring with the caption, "The fight is never over." There are no additional details as of now, such as who's developing the project (the original and most recent two were built by EA Canada in Vancouver, while Fight Night Round 2 and Round 3 were developed by the now-shuttered EA Chicago), whether it's even a new game at all or potentially a remaster or remake – which I find unlikely given all of the licensing involved in these games; odds are it's a new entry – or a release window. Or, heck, if it's even targeting the current generation of consoles.

Regardless, the return of Fight Night should be welcome news to a lot of gamers, myself included. In the run-up to next month's 25th anniversary of Xbox, I've been writing a series of retrospective pieces about Xbox games I have fond memories of over the past quarter-century. One of those pieces was about Fight Night Round 3, which was, in my humble opinion, the first "holy sh*t!" game of the HD Era, graphically speaking.

While Fight Night has been dormant, EA has shifted its resources to the UFC game franchise, whose most recent entry, UFC 6, was released earlier this year and our reviewer thought it was great.

A brand-new ID@Xbox Showcase Presented by IGN has arrived, and it was filled with exciting upcoming games you won't want to miss. From remasters/director's cuts of Shrek 2, The Wolf Among Us, and Zero Parades to games about shredding paper (Paper Shredder!), tongue-grappling and pinball-bouncing (Croak), and digging holes (A Game About Digging a Hole Together), there it a lot to look forward to.

To ensure you don't miss a thing, we've gathered all the announcements and reveals in one place for you to check out! Let us know which was your favorite!

Shrek 2 Remastered Brings Everyone's Favorite Ogre Back to the Spotlight

Shrek 2 Remastered is bringing our favorite ogre back to the spotlight, and it will allow players to relive iconic moments and visit memorable locations from the film. Enjoy new graphics, new features, and more when Shrek 2 Remastered launches on November 10, 2026, on Xbox Series X/S.

The Big Bad Wolf Is Back in The Wolf Among Us Remastered

The Big Bad Wolf is back in The Wolf Among Us Remastered, and you can check how this new version of the 2013 classic looks in action. The remaster comes with enhances visuals, upgraded animation and audio, an all-new Noir Mode, behind-the-scenes content, playable deleted scenes, a redesigned werewolf form for Bigby, and more.

The Wolf Among Us Remastered will be released on October 29, 2026.

Zero Parades: Director's Cut Arrives Next Month

Zero Parades: Director's Cut will be released on November 3, 2026, on Xbox Series X/S and PC, and this new trailer features gameplay from the espionage RPG developed by ZA/UM. It's almost time to face you one final mission and all the trials and tribulations that come with it.

Travel to a Harsh, Remote Exoplanet in Magenta Down

Check out the reveal trailer for Magenta Down, a sci-fi atmospheric adventure game where players must traverse a harsh, remote exoplanet to endure injury and radiation exposure with scarce supplies.

Magenta Down will be released on Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2027.

Tongue-Grapple and Pinball-Bounce as a Frog Prince in Croak

Tongue-grapple and pinball-bounce to your heart's content in Croak, an upcoming hand-drawn 2D precision platformer game coming to PC and Xbox Series X/S in March 2027. Players become a frog prince and aim to reach the Witch's Banquet, fighting bosses, finding collectibles, and more along the way.

Transcend Through Music in Mr. Records

Feast your eyes on the Shine Level of Mr. Records to see more of George's upcoming adventure. Who is George? An old dreamer with an extraordinary gift that lets him transcend through music.

Mr. Records will be released on PC and Xbox Series X/S in Spring 2027.

See Both Worlds of Chronoscript: The Endless End In This New Trailer

Bosses and gameplay from Chronoscript: The Endless End take center stage in this new trailer that showcases the upcoming exploration-based action-adventure game comprised of two worlds: a 3D-rendered grand residence littered with thousands of manuscript pages, and the 2D pen-and-ink illustrated worlds within them.

Chronoscript: The Endless End will be released on Xbox Series X/S and PC in early summer 2027. It is also coming to PS5.

Love Is A Roguelite (LIAR) Mixes Turn-Based Tactics, Deck-Building, and Dating

Say hello to Love Is A Roguelite (or LIAR for short), an upcoming game that mixes turn-based tactics, deck-building, and dating, all set within a procedurally generated Love Story. Your choices matter thanks to the proprietary LoveSync system, so choose wisely!

Love Is A Roguelite launches in Fall 2027 on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Protect What's Yours in Drill Keeper

New gameplay has been revealed for Drill Keeper, the upcoming deck-building roguelike siege defense game that see players traversing the galaxy to secure vital resources for their people. Protect your mining operations, design labyrinthine pathways and traps to halt your foes, and more.

Drill Keep will be released on PC Game Pass in summer 2027.

Push Your Luck in Mr. Magpie's Harmless Card Game

Mr. Magpie's Harmless Card Game received a new trailer and gave a new glimpse at the sinister roguelike deckbuilding where you'll "build your deck, push your luck, and combine powerful synergies to tip the odds in your favour.

Mr. Magpie's Harmless Card Game Xbox Series X/S and PC in early 2027.

Craft, Battle, Make Friends, Explore, and More in Waveling Island

Waveling Island is an upcoming cozy creature-collecting game that features hand-drawn pixel-art and an island filled with mysterious creatures.

Waveling Island is headed to Xbox Series X/S and PC soon.

A Game About Digging a Hole Together Proves Things Are Always More Fun With Friends

It's always more fun with friends, especially when digging a hole! In A Game About Digging a Hole Together, you'll be able to dig a hole at a beach with your friends. Dig together, collect resources, sell them, upgrade your equipment, and search for the promised buried treasure.

A Game About Digging a Hole Together will be available on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox on PC on December 4, 2026, and PC via Steam, PS5, Nintendo Switch 2 at a later date.

Scramble Knights Online Gets a Release Date Trailer

Scramble Knights Online is coming to Xbox Series X/S and PC on October 26, 2026, and to celebrate the release date, a new trailer was released that showed off new gameplay for the MMO-lite action RPG. Get ready to step into the kingdom of Terracott as a knight-in-training and embark on a grand adventure.

Shred, Sweep, Upgrade, and Cut Down Tower-High Piles of Confidential Records in Paper Shredder

Paper Shredded is an incremental game where players need to shred their company's paperwork to earn a $1,000,000 payout. Shred, sweep, upgrade, and cut down tower-high piles of confidential records to uncover what's hidden below.

Paper Shredder will be released on Xbox Series X/S and PC in winter 2026.

Wield a Sealed Blade and Rise in Rebellion in Vanran

Embark on an adventure in Vanran, an upcoming dark fantasy action RPG where a human slave in the Demon Realm wields a sealed blade and rises in rebellion.

Vanran will be released on Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2027.

Survive a Slum Inhabited by Infected Outcasts Suffering from Cognitive Decline in Rustown

Rustown, the upcoming story-driven action-adventure game, has been given a release date of June 30, 2027, on PC and Xbox Series X/S. Check out this new trailer to see the game in action, which happens to be set in a slum inhabited by infected outcasts suffering from cognitive decline. Avoid danger without fighting, uncover clues, and try to find your missing father.

Say Hello to the Recently Resurrected Fritz and the Team in this Red Fritz Trailer

Vampire spy house leader Daddy introduces us to the recently resurrected Fritz and the team you'll lead in this latest trailer for Red Kiss. From developer Wispfire, Red Kiss is a tactical narrative RPG where you'll have to dispatch a team of vampire spies through the tense and fractured streets of Cold War Berlin.

Red Fritz will be released on Xbox Series X/S and PC in 2027.

Solve the Case in Graytail

Get ready to solve the case in Graytail, an upcoming mystery action-adventure title set within a 2.5D pixel-art world. After a famous pilot vanishes over the Pacific, a detective with a headache that never stops embarks on a journey to find them with the pilot's daughter in tow.

Graytail will be released on Xbox Series X/S and PC in November 2027.

Arctic Eggs, Mouthwashing, and No, I'm Not Human Sizzle Reel

Check out this sizzle reel to learn about three exciting upcoming games - Arctic Eggs, Mouthwashing, and No, I'm Not Human.

Arctic (October 20, 2026) has you frying eggs on Mount Everest, Mouthwashing (October 29, 2026) has you taking responsibility for a dying crew of a shipwrecked space freighter, and No, I'm Not Human (2027) has your interrogating door-knocking strangers to spot deadly shape-shifting imposters.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

A bunch of games, including GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, are about to be pulled from the PlayStation Plus' catalog.

Next month, players will be losing some games that have been included with their PlayStation Plus Extra or Premium subscription. These are games that are currently available through Sony's Game Pass-like catalog of titles, so you're not being stripped of any games you own or are entitled to. However, if you've been waiting to play GTA 5 or Red Dead Redemption 2, you should move quickly, as those games amongst others will be removed from the service starting on November 17.

You can view the full list of games being removed below.

Games Being Removed from PS Plus Extra and Premium

• Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4)
• Football Manager 26 (PS5)
• GTA 5 (PS4, PS5)
• The Talos Principle 2 (PS5)
• Cricket 24 (PS4, PS5)
• Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (PS4, PS5)
• Hotshot Racing (PS4)
• Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break (PS4)
• Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair (PS4)
• Rapala Fishing Pro Series (PS4)
• Yet Another Zombie Defense HD (PS4)

Of course, GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 are being removed just two days before the launch of GTA 6. This is as good a time as any to catch up or revisit these titles if you're trying to build some extra hype for Rockstar's latest game. If you're not interested in an open world experience, The Talos Principle 2 is a fantastic first-person puzzle title that is absolutely worth playing before it leaves the service.

If you don't manage to play these games by November 17, they will become unplayable, even if they are downloaded to your machine, unless you purchase them. So, act quickly! If you do miss these titles, PlayStation recently added a bunch of other great games available through the service, including Mafia: The Old Country and Horizon Forbidden West.

Strauss Zelnick and Hiroki Totoki, the heads of Take-Two Interactive and Sony Group Corporation, agreed that AI won’t replace humans in the entertainment business during a talk at the Paley International Summit in New York City on Tuesday morning. They did, however, explain that they do see the technology as a valuable tool.

“I don’t think an AI could replace humans because, particularly in the entertainment field, I think creativity is quite important. Creativity is for humans, not AI,” Totoki said. “How to use the technology profile is important. Of course, I encourage my people to use AI in a certain manner, but at [the] same time we try to keep the rights and rights holders and creators and artists.”

“One of our division heads has said to his team, ‘You’re not gonna be replaced by AI, but if you’re not careful you’ll be replaced by someone who knows how to use AI,’” Zelnick said. “I’m fond of saying AI is a collection of datasets, compute, and large language models. That’s what it is. And datasets, by definition, are backward looking. That’s all they are. And creativity, at its best, is forward looking. [...]"

“When the first Grand Theft Auto was created, we thought the phrase ‘Grand Theft Auto’ wouldn't turn into what it’s turned into today,” Zelnick continued, then launching into an anecdote of his stint as president and chief operating officer of 20th Century Fox (now called 20th Century Studios).

“One of the biggest movies I was responsible for, Home Alone — it was completely unexpected. It went into production at Warner Bros. and they put it into turnaround four days into production, which [...] never happens. [...] Everyone thought it was a disaster. And It turned out to be the highest grossing comedy of all time. So if hits are unexpected, data sets aren’t gonna get you there, no matter how fluent they are.”

AI use in the production pipeline for games, movies, and TV is a hot-button issue. Just this week, a business strategist at Xbox posted (and then deleted) the "truth that nobody wants you to know" about how "gaming is the only industry pretending not to use AI," and Steam users implored the company to ban AI slop from the next Steam Next Fest. Last week, Epic Games revealed that its new store launcher was vibe coded. But Biddy Blas? AI could never.

A former Call of Duty designer has argued that developers should get royalties when older games are ported to new systems, saying it's "hard to watch" Xbox make money from the recently released and hugely successful Black Ops 1 and 2 ports on PlayStation.

Former Treyarch level designer Gavin Goslin took to LinkedIn to discuss the PS5 and PS4 re-releases, which he said amounted to Microsoft and Activision "printing money off of work completed over a decade ago."

The pair of games reportedly sold 11.2 million copies combined in July, earning around $435 million in one month, according to estimates from Alinea Analytics (thanks, VGC). “The recent Black Ops 1 and Black Ops 2 digital drops on PlayStation proved a couple of things,” Goslin said. “First, today’s gaming landscape is starved for the tight, high-quality experiences we used to get. Second, these legacy titles are still massive money-makers for Activision and Microsoft.

“Despite being basic $40 digital re-releases with zero new features, both titles immediately shot into the Circana U.S. Top 10 for weekly active users. They are printing money off of work completed over a decade ago.

“As a developer who actually worked on both Black Ops and Black Ops 2, seeing these charts is bittersweet. I poured my life into those games, spending countless, brutal hours in crunch alongside an incredibly talented team to make sure they were perfect.

“Seeing our blood, sweat, and tears still dominating the charts in 2026 is amazing, but its (sic) hard to watch the suits rake in giant financial windfalls from our old code while the actual creators don’t see a dime of it.”

Goslin went on to argue that the wealth should be distributed and developers who worked on the original games should get royalty payments, like in books, movies, and music. “If executives are getting massive bonuses off the longevity of these classics, that wealth needs to be shared retroactively. Legacy revenue should mean legacy rewards for the devs who survived the crunch to build them,” Goslin said.

There is no indication that Xbox will create a royalty payment system video games, but Goslin's post is well-timed, as it comes amid a surge in AI-generated ports of classic games on browsers. Indeed, Microsoft itself has appeared to take notice, announcing the Xbox Labs project in acknowledgement of the explosion in AI ports that have emerged in recent weeks.

Given the success of Black Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation this summer, Activision will be keen to double down on similar re-releases. Chief marketing officer Tyler Bahl recently told The Game Business that the publisher had learnt a valuable lesson.

"We are definitely leaning into the nostalgia of playing with your friends,” Bahl said. “The Black Ops ports were huge successes. We thought they would do well, we didn’t think they would do that well. But you can see that pent-up demand of being able to get back to the good old days of playing with your friends on a Friday night and having fun. MW4 does that.

"We took a lot of learnings from [those ports] and are starting to apply them to not only this game, but future games."

In the shorter term, Modern Warfare 4, which closes out the rebooted Modern Warfare saga, comes out October 23. Will Activision release ports of the classic Modern Warfare games next summer, ahead of the next mainline entry in the franchise?

God of War's Kratos almost went by a different name, but developers at Santa Monica Studio made too many Domino's pizza jokes. David Jaffe, the director of the original God of War trilogy, recently put out a video explaining the deep dish issue.

Originally, Kratos was called “Dominus,” which Jaffe liked because it made him sound dominant and strong. Unfortunately, it also made him sound like a chain of pizza restaurants.

“The people on the team started making Domino’s Pizza jokes,” Jaffe said. “Every single time someone said Dominus, someone inevitably would yell out, ‘30 minutes or free,’ or, ‘Get the door, it’s Dominus.’

“After about the 50th time, the writing was on the wall. Dominus was dead and we needed a new name for our hero.”

Someone at the studio printed out a big list of Ancient Greek baby names and Jaffe went through with a yellow highlighter marking the best ones. “The names that I highlighted were not great,” he said, pointing at Julius, Parthenius, and Maksym as examples.

“Nothing felt just right. Eventually, our marketing lead, Susan Panico, was the one who came up with the name Kratos. She pitched it and we loved it, and it stuck.”

Jaffe found the list of highlighted baby names among his old design documents last year. On the sheet, hidden among the names, unhighlighted, there it was: Kratos.

“We had Sony’s biggest franchise hero in our hands the entire time and we didn’t even know it,” he said. “Which I guess goes to show you how much of success in games is just luck, timing, and, in this case, marketing.”

Jaffe has previously talked about Dominus and the creation of Kratos, but he’s never gone into this much detail about the process. He previously just said that marketing didn’t like Dominus, but the pizza stuff is certainly a new development.

God of War's first release was the 2005 PS2 game of the same name. It was a big hit, spawning a franchise that has seen significant success over the past 20 years. The next game in the series, God of War: Laufey, is due out on PS5 in February 2027. Santa Monica Studio head of creative Cory Barlog has confirmed that an untitled new God of War game with Kratos back as the protagonist is also in development.

Two weeks ago, a Tekken player created a mod that allowed users to play the game online with rollback netcode, sparking a community-wide debate between Western players and competitors based in Japan and Korea.

The mod, recompiled to play natively on Windows by a community member named Yuzinator with rollback netcode and servers added by Ekspym, became an instant hit among Tekken players, reaching more than 10,000 players as of October 17 and a recorded 4,547 downloads as of October 15. Players can duke it out in online matches and create lobbies, and the story mode is also playable. The mod's readme states that the package "contains neither the PS3 firmware nor the game,” so you'll need your own disc image of the game to play.

It sparked a viral conversation regarding the current state of Tekken 8 (with many players seeming to prefer Tekken 6 out of the two games), but perhaps more surprisingly, received massive pushback from players in Japan and Korea.

One of the loudest voices speaking out against this mod was celebrated fighting game pro Dogura. “The pirated version of Tekken 6? That thing crosses the line way too much, and I'm horrified that no one overseas is raising negative voices about it,” he wrote in a post on Twitter/X. “When our fundamental values and sense of morality differ this much, we probably can't even have a conversation. I'm praying that the right response is taken.”

Another Japanese user named Higemura also had a viral take on the situation, worrying that the Tekken series might end due to mods such as this one. “It seems like you're running the Tekken 6 service without permission, but the people doing it should really think about what they're actually up to. If the population flows over there and money stops going to the official service, the Tekken series will come to an end, right?” they wrote.

“I totally get having an attachment to Tekken 6, since I love the bound system and move balance too, but if that's the case, you should develop a new fighting game that's Tekken 6-like. The way things are going now, you're just infringing on rights and gobbling up Bandai Namco's assets and potential customers without permission.”

Overall, it seems that Japanese players take copyright very seriously and consider such mods to be outright theft. This attitude is also reflected from some players based in Korea, with one Korean user likening it to sexual assault. (Another Japanese player even compared it to necrophilia, while another made a baffling comparison to the Civil Rights Movement.)

This, of course, prompted a massive discussion that has taken hold of the broader fighting game community. The attitudes toward such mods are far more lenient among Western players, with one writing, “Please tell me how I am supposed to ‘properly’ support the game when I cannot even buy it here? If I take a broken old bike out of the trash and repair it, why are you saying I am stealing from the bike corporation? It was trash. There was no way to buy it!”

“Explain why it is more morally righteous to demand people to pay for used copies of an old game on the secondhand market that the developers won't see any money from,” another said.

Ekspym’s Tekken 6 mod is still alive and well, and has not yet received any pushback from Bandai Namco — though it has, inadvertently, exposed a very intriguing difference in opinions about emulation and modding between Western fighting game players and those based in East Asia.

(It is worth noting, though, that some Japanese players are pushing back against this mindset, with one even pointing out a pro player using a cracked arcade cabinet in response to Dogura's initial tweet.)

This is the latest Tekken-related news to go viral after Baki’s Yujiro Hanma was finally shown off at Evo France, and he’s just as terrifying as we expected him to be.

Google researchers have released a paper claiming that four Google Gemini 4 Argon AI agents just beat Minecraft without any help from humans. It took them just over 27 hours to take down the Ender Dragon in what is believed to be a world first.

Of course, it’s not as simple as just turning up and firing arrows at the thing. To reach The End and defeat the Ender Dragon in Minecraft, there are a series of trials you have to complete.

You have to get Ender Pearls, Ender Rods, and craft Eyes of Ender, before tracking down a Stronghold and completing a puzzle. This takes a fair bit of farming and requires you to work up through the basic Minecraft tools.

To start the test, Google placed a team of four agents into a random Minecraft seed with a goal of defeating the Ender Dragon. According to Google, the agents used in-game chat to coordinate but otherwise had no strategy assigned going in — just a goal.

"Each agent controlled a player via an open-source library called Mineflayer and coordinated with its teammates through in-game chat and shared memory," the researchers said. "No one assigned roles or wrote game logic. The agents planned, wrote, and debugged every program themselves. Researchers could watch the run on a live dashboard and pause or stop it at any time, but they had no cause to intervene."

The agents settled into roles quickly, with some building Enderman shelters for farming materials, others gathering food, and others focusing on exploration. They shared combat tips and helped each other recover lost gear when they died.

Over the playthrough, the four agents exchanged 229 messages, ran 2,783 programs, and died 605 times, which suggests worse performance than my kid when he was five. A fifth agent oversaw the process to make sure the other bots weren’t cheating, but you can tell they weren’t by how many times they died anyway.

It took around 13.5 hours to reach The End, and the remaining time was spent trying to kill the final boss (and dying a lot). The current Minecraft speedrun record is six minutes and 36 seconds, so the AI agents won’t be breaking any records any time soon. The agents used 1.35 billion input tokens, which would cost a normal user around $1,620. That’s $60 per hour, which works out at $15 an hour per agent. Not a bad salary for a group of computer ghosts who don’t need sustenance.

"To our knowledge, this is the first end-to-end autonomous completion of Minecraft by AI agents, achieved using only the standard Mineflayer library without pre-scouted seeds or other game-specific tools written by humans," the team wrote in a paper, via Engadget. "Winning required the agents to keep a coherent plan across thousands of dependent steps for more than a day."

What is the point of all this? The researchers said they wanted to study how teams of agents coordinate in a setting where every step is visible to help understand such systems before they are trusted with real-world tasks. "The skills required to solve Minecraft such as coordinating a team, recovering from failure, and pursuing a goal for more than a day, are also what agents need to work reliably alongside people," they said.

As part of IGN Fan Fest: Fall Edition 2026, we were able to exclusively reveal a first look at the officially licensed Fallout Power Fist 1:1 Scale Replica, a perfect addition to the collection of those with fond memories of their visits to that iconic post-apocalyptic wasteland.

This Power Fist replica is "faithful to every brutal, pneumatic detail," and even includes the beloved in-game sound activation that "lets you announce your presence the old-fashioned way."

Weighing in at 4.6 lbs and stretching 17 inches long, this replica is forged from premium PVC, ABS, and alloy materials. It also comes with an instruction manual because "even apex wasteland survivors read the fine print."

With Fallout 5 and Season 3 of Prime Video's Fallout series on the way, there couldn't be a better time to start stocking up on items like these. And hey, if we ever do enter into a post-apocalyptic future, you'll already be prepared!

For more from IGN Fan Fest: Fall Edition 2026, check out our roundup of the biggest moments, including from VisionQuest, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, Whalefall, and more!

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.