Gaming - Page 106

NetEase has shuttered another Western video game studio in a bid to cut costs, this time affecting a group led by The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel.

Chinese games giant NetEase has shut down T-Minus Zero Entertainment, a studio that it helped open in 2023, in a bid to avoid risk and save money. T-Minus was led by Rich Vogel, who served as executive producer on BioWare's Star Wars The Old Republic MMORPG. The group had been developing a third-person sci-fi online project before NetEase pulled funding for the studio.

T-Minus Zero developed a playable demo of their game while under NetEase. Reports indicate that the sci-fi game was enjoyed by NetEase executives, with one essentially saying that it delivered a very distinct Godzilla-esque fantasy where players could take on hulking monsters in epic, city-destroying battles.

Konami could be ready to continue the Metal Gear Solid series without Hideo Kojima at the helm, but exact details on what's next remain unclear.

It's been 10 years since Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain was released, and since then, Konami hasn't made a sequel or carried the main franchise forward. Instead of immediately focusing on Metal Gear 6 when Hideo Kojima left in 2015, Konami shrugged off expensive AAA budgets and coasted on mainstay franchises like eFootball/PES and Yu-Gi-Oh. Then in 2020, Konami ramped up a new internal game dev team specifically focused on console games, a new report from Bloomberg reveals.

After five years of development, this dev team has just released the fruits of their labor and intensive efforts, showing that they have the ability to make new Metal Gear games--at least production-wise (it'll be hard to match Kojima's eclectic touch). Konami recently launched Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, a remake of the original Metal Gear Solid 3 released on PlayStation 3, to high acclaim. This has emboldened the Japanese games-maker, who now says they have a team that's capable of making new mainline Metal Gear sequels.

Pearl weapons are coming back to Borderlands 4, but they won't be available in time for the game's September launch.

In a bit of exciting news, Gearbox has confirmed that the ultra-unique pearlescent weapon rarity will return to the franchise. Pearls will be re-introduced via a new Borderlands 4 content drop as part of a robust post-launch content roadmap. Gearbox revealed its plans, confirming that pearl weapons will be added into the game in the first quarter of 2026 (Jan - Mar) as a free update.

The decision is part of the developer's frenzied focus on serving players as many features as possible. Borderlands 4 opens up gameplay in new ways, adding in a grappling hook and even a double jump for the first time in the series, while iterating upon tried-and-true mechanics to create something new like the cross-license weapon crafting system.

"Nobody has a human right to simulate and enact fantasies of rape and extreme violence against women," Caitlin Roper, the Campaigns Manager at Collective Shout, explained in a recent email interview with me. "Not being able to access rape games from popular gaming platforms is a minor inconvenience, not a violation of a person's rights. Payment processors get to determine if they do not want to host illegal content, including rape, sexual violence, incest, child sexual abuse and exploitation, and bestiality."

Collective Shout, a small group from Australia, created a stir within the PC gaming community when it targeted Steam, the biggest storefront and platform, with a campaign that resulted in payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard threatening to pull their service from the platform if Valve didn't remove games depicting sexual violence against women.

Valve was forced to comply with the demands of the payment providers and changed Steam's policy to reflect the new changes. The response from the gaming community was nothing short of an uproar, with thousands raising concerns that a new precedent has been set - Valve having to bend the knee to payment providers and ban games that weren't previously against the platform's terms of service.

The Battlefield 6 Open Beta was a huge success for the company, with millions of gamers jumping into the battlefield, and a "substantial number" of them were on, or below minimum PC specs.

In a new interview with Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl and Eurogamer, we're learning that out of the first initial waves of PC gamers who played the Battlefield 6 Open Beta, most of them were on lower-end PC hardware. Buhl discussed the work that Battlefield Studios and EA did to make sure Battlefield 6 was optimized for older, lower-end hardware.

Buhl explained: "We built maps, and had to go to our artists and tech artists to adjust these maps so they were more performant. We've put in a lot of effort across the board to make sure these performance targets were set, and whether you're on min spec or ultra spec you're going to get the experience we're targeting".

Yoshi-P weighs in on the current Final Fantasy XIV mod fiasco and explains his stance on how mods can be used in the game.

A bit ago, Square Enix sent a cease and desist order to the creator of the Mare Synchronos mod for Final Fantasy XIV. This sparked uproar in the MMORPG community, sparking fear about other mods shutting down and leading to general controversy. Typically, Square Enix has turned a blind eye to FFXIV mods and has taken a "let it be" approach, but this time they chose to get involved.

Now game director Yoshi-P has stepped in to deliver an official statement on the situation and explains how Square Enix feels about mods in the mega-popular online game. Ultimately, it comes down to two things: Neither Yoshi-P nor the publisher really mind if you use mods as long as you don't infringe upon other players and negatively impact the core gameplay experience.

Hundreds of Blizzard developers have unionized to fight what they call a "passion tax" in the games industry, which can weigh heavily on beleaguered workers.

Microsoft has recognized another union in the video games industry as 450 game developers at Blizzard's Team 3 (Diablo) have voted to come together under the Communication Workers of America (CWA) labor union. The new union joins other recognized groups like ZeniMax Workers United, Raven Software's QA union, and World of Warcraft's collective of QA testers.

As for the passion tax, one developer explains:

Hello Games just released another major update for No Man's Sky that adds new features like ship building, online crews with friends, a new corvette ship class, and ship-free space exploration.

No Man's Sky Voyagers updates the game to Version 6.0, bringing a slew of new features to the space sim. Gamers can now team up together as crewmates on the same ship while playing online, and even build their vessels together with the new craft customization options.

In a bold new step for a game that seems to just one-up itself at every turn, No Man's Sky is now letting players explore the cosmos in their spacesuits. Well...you can float around at least, but more things might come of this in the future.

Microsoft will end the year with 42 million Xbox console users, analyst firm Omdia predicts.

While competitors Nintendo and Sony share console sales figures, Microsoft stopped reporting Xbox units in the disastrous Xbox One era. Since then, Microsoft typically only reveals a few key data points: revenues, maybe an update on monthly active users and time spent playing cloud games. If a few big games launched, odds are that Microsoft once again took over Sony's PlayStation charts because their titles are now breaking exclusivity.

As for Microsoft's home turf, things are looking rather...saturated. The company has acknowledged lack of growth on console, prompting a hard pivot off-platform with breaking software exclusivity and offering services like Game Pass and cloud streaming on PC and mobile. One analyst firm believes that Xbox's user base will 'flatline' to ~42 million by the end of 2025. Other estimates say that the Xbox Series X/S shipments could be as high as 35.9 million, but this isn't technically the installed base of users. The cross-over between the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S generation remains unclear.

PC gamers who access Steam in the UK will soon have to verify their age in order to even see mature games on the storefront.

The UK is ready to start enforcing The Online Safety Act, forcing new strict guidelines on service providers. Valve has announced some changes to how users in the United Kingdom will be able to access Steam, confirming that age verification will now be required to access certain games on the platform.

So, what counts as a mature game on Steam? There are currently over 6,300 games tagged as mature on Steam, and while there are adult-themed games in the mix, there's also big titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and GTA V included. This will effectively gate off access to some of the biggest AAA games to minors, who, under the auspices of the age rating systems, aren't technically supposed to be playing these games anyway.

Lenovo is expected to unveil its next-gen Legion Go 2 gaming handheld at IFA 2025 next week, powered by AMD's new Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU.

In a new post by mobile leaker Evan Blass, the second-generation Legion Go 2 gaming handheld (which doesn't have an official name just yet) will be unveiled. MSI already has its Ryzen Z2 Extreme APU-powered Claw A8 gaming handheld, and ASUS is said to confirm pricing for its new ROG Xbox Ally handheld in October, both of these gaming handhelds are powered by the Z2 Extreme chip from AMD.

Lenovo's new Legion Go 2 handheld is a big step up from its original Legion Go, and its Legion Go S handhelds, which either run Windows 11 or Steam OS. These handhelds are powered by the AMD Ryzen Z1 Extreme which has just 4 cores and 8 threads, and an RDNA 3-powered Radeon 780M integrated GPU.

Sucker Punch's new Ghost of Yotei gameplay footage showcases some pretty savage combat sequences, complete with a beheading, dismemberment, a brutal sword throw, and how firearms will work in the game.

Unlike its predecessor, Ghost of Yotei will have guns. PlayStation dropped a new gameplay trailer that highlights the guns that can be used in the game, including long guns and handguns, complete with a mechanic that slows down time when heroine Atsu is reloading. It looks like players might be able to adjust the crosshair or line of sights during this sequence, and if so, it could offer an edge in battle. The sequence feels loaded with tension, though.

While the trailer is literally called "firearms gameplay," there's one thing that actually stole the show: sword-throwing. Atsu can toss her short swords at enemies--we see her do it twice--and continue a lethal dance of whirling death.

Battlefield 6 isn't far away from release now, with EA publishing the PC system requirements for its Call of Duty killer, with 1080p 30FPS enjoyed on a modest GeForce RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 5600 XT graphics card. But... if you want 4K 60FPS, 1440p 144FPS, or higher... the system requirements aren't out of control.

EA says that Battlefield 6 will offer "the best PC experience in the history of the franchise" with support for the 4K resolution (this shouldn't even be mentioned, it should be standard for all PC games), support for 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide gaming monitors, HDR, uncapped framerates, PS5 + Xbox gamepad support on the PC, the ability to create and browse game servers, streamer and incognito mode, and more.

Battlefield 6 will be launching with a flurry of AI upscaling technologies, with support for NVIDIA DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Frame Generation, DLSS Super Resolution, DLAA, and NVIDIA Reflex. There's also support for Frame Generation, Anti-Aliasing, and Latency reduction using AMD FSR and Intel XeSS upscaling technologies.

Microsoft is beta testing a new feature that unlocks cloud game streaming to all Xbox Game Pass subscribers, and it's possible that the feature could become permanent for all public gamers.

It looks like Microsoft might allow all cloud streaming for all Xbox Game Pass subscription tiers. There's just one catch--it's not official. Not yet, anyway.

Right now, the new entitlement is only available in the current Xbox Insider test, which is private. Reports indicate that all testers can stream specific PC games via the cloud, regardless of which version of Xbox Game Pass they are subscribed to. Even Game Pass Core subscribers can access the games.

CD Projekt's latest earnings report outlines the current state of its internal game development teams while giving quick updates on its myriads of in-progress projects.

The Witcher 4 is in full production over at CD Projekt RED, kicking off a new saga with Ciri at the helm. The Polish games company just announced its first-half earnings report, confirming a 35% profit margin on $121 million revenue (interestingly, GOG wasn't profitable).

Elsewhere in the report, the group confirmed it has expanded developer headcount from 750 to 799, with most of these workers focused on The Witcher 4. There are 444 people working on the next Witcher game, up from 422 developers since last quarter. Cyberpunk 2 added 20 new developers while other project teams grew more slightly. The shared services team, which focused on UE5 and other toolset optimizations across all platforms, grew by 18 people.

FromSoftware is amping up the sadism in their 3-player PVE co-op game with a new brutal difficulty option.

Elden Ring Nightreign is getting a hard mode, but in pure FromSoft fashion, it's not just difficult--it sounds downright punishing. The devs make it clear that the new Deep of Night mode was made specifically to test the mettle of battle-hardened Nightreign veterans.

The mode, which launches on September 11, will have multiple dungeon depths that are interspersed with foes and mutated bosses. What I found most interesting is how this dungeon-delving mechanic works: The game will scale the difficulty based on your performance, and it's possible only the best of the best will have the opportunity to play on the hardest settings while also surviving the trials.

Bethesda officially confirms a new Starfield expansion is in development, but there are no details on story or release timing just yet.

In a somewhat unusual move, Bethesda announced some Starfield news in a recent developer spotlight video. The studio published a new video interview with Starfield lead creative producer Tim Lamb that confirms two recent rumors are actually true: Starfield is getting another expansion, and space traversal is getting overhauled.

"When it comes to Starfield, I can't wait for players to see what the team has been working on. We have some cool stuff coming, including free updates and features that players have been asking for, as well as a new DLC story," Starfield producer Tim Lamb said in the interview.

Fans of the 90s survival series Dino Crisis have always wondered why Capcom never brought the series back...but it wasn't for lack of effort. New reports say that Capcom tried to make new modernized Dino Crisis games but the productions ultimately fizzled out.

Cult hit Dino Crisis was almost resurrected for the modern generation, and new reports from highly trustworthy insider DuskGolem indicate that Capcom made multiple efforts to bring the series back.

The games didn't make it past the early prototyping phases, however, and the publisher's overall commitment to developing a potentially high-cost AAA title in a semi-obscure franchise remains in question. Dino Crisis has sold 4.5 million copies across four games--for reference, classic franchise Ghosts'n Goblins has 4.7 million sales.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is again in the spotlight as another suggestion that there's going to be DLC for the hit game has been aired.

This follows another couple of teasers to this effect, and the latest hint comes from Creative Director of Sandfall, Guillaume Broche, in an interview on YouTube with MrMattyPlays spotted by PC Gamer (see above at just after the 38-minute mark).

When questioned about whether there will be DLC emerging for Clair Obscur, Broche says "there may be" before quickly clarifying that it's a "bit too early to say". However, Broche adds "we may be cooking" with a pretty big grin on his face, which is a fairly clear indication that something's on the boil, at least in my books.

Battlefield 6's recent Open Beta not only helped cement the latest entry as a return to form for the long-running series, but it also introduced a level of destruction that brought a new level of intensity to Battlefield. With buildings that can crumble and terrain that changes after some all-out tank warfare, you might think that this focus on visceral warfare might lead to performance and optimization issues.

That wasn't the case, and with the game's release still several weeks away (it's launching on October 10, 2025, for PC and console), the Open Beta showcased that Battlefield 6 was already running at 60 FPS on everything from a GeForce RTX 3060 to an Xbox Series S console. Part of this is because Battlefield Studios (comprising Criterion, DICE, Motive, and Ripple Effect) has been conducting hands-on Battlefield Labs playtests with the community for months.

This is enough time to resolve issues related to crashes, performance, and other bugs. However, another key reason is that the game runs on DICE's Frostbite engine, which was initially designed to power the first Battlefield games. Recently, we had the opportunity to sit down with Christian Buhl, Technical Director for Battlefield 6, so we asked him about Frostbite and what makes it the perfect fit for Battlefield 6's all-out warfare.