Game Releases

AdHoc Studio, founded by ex‑Telltale veterans including co‑founder and CCO Pierre Shorette, has rapidly revived episodic, choice‑driven games with Dispatch, a superhero comedy that launched on PS5 and PC on October 22 and sold one million copies in ten days.

At Lucca Comics & Games’ Death Stranding World Tour 2 panel, Hideo Kojima outlined the pandemic-driven production hurdles behind Death Stranding 2, including remote green‑screen shoots with actors Luca Marinelli and Alissa Jung, and set out the philosophical aims of his work, including making his player base happy.

The post-apocalyptic MMO PIONER has entered open beta on Steam. Developed by Serbian studio GFA Games – founded by former developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Atomic Heart – the ambitious shooter now opens its doors to a wider audience for the first time.

Electronic Arts' planned $55 billion all-cash buyout by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and partners, slated to close in Q1 2027, has triggered a wave of protests from prominent The Sims creators, including LilSimsie, Plumbella and James Turner who have left EA’s Creator Network and revoked creator codes over fears the new ownership could undermine the franchise’s long-standing LGBTQ+ inclusivity.

A sneaky, completely legal way to get past the credit card requirement on the popular gaming platform Steam.

Showrunner Lauren Schmidt-Hissrich claims there are different kinds of fans, and the show brought in fans who, otherwise, would not have been introduced to the world.

Embark Studios’ sci‑fi extraction shooter Arc Raiders rocketed to 1.5 million sales in three days and a Steam peak of roughly 355,000 concurrent players, but the surge overwhelmed servers, causing hour‑long queues, matchmaking errors, and occasional disconnects that the studio termed a “wobble.”

Fantastic Pixel Castle confirmed it will close on November 17, 2025, after NetEase cut funding and first‑party support for its in‑development fantasy MMO codenamed Ghost, studio head Greg Street announced on LinkedIn.

Avalanche Studios’ prospects for Just Cause 5 look bleak after co‑creator Christofer Sundberg called the project a “no‑go,” citing a sustained talent drain worsened by the cancellation of Contraband, major layoffs, and office closures.

Evil Egg marks the digital return of a long-forgotten arcade classic. The fast-paced twin-stick shooter launched on Steam on October 30 and has already earned a 100% positive rating just days after release. Even better, it’s completely free to play.

Former Rockstar co‑founder Dan Houser told the Lex Fridman Podcast that Agent, the studio’s long‑teased Cold War spy game, underwent five major iterations but never came together because the spy genre’s beat‑driven, time‑sensitive storytelling clashed with Rockstar’s open‑world design principles.

Digital Eclipse's Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection, released on Steam, Xbox Series S|X and Nintendo Switch for $50, has drawn mixed reviews, with only 45% of them being positive on Steam, after players reported high input lag, restrictive quick-play-only matchmaking, weak netcode, and audio and cutscene issues.

Arc Raiders has emerged as Embark Studios’ breakout extraction shooter, peaking at 354,836 concurrent Steam players shortly after launch. However, the flood of users has strained servers, resulting in long login and matchmaking queues, mid-match disconnects, and unwanted party joins, which have somewhat underwhelmed users.

Epic Games' Fortnite x The Simpsons crossover converts the Battle Royale map into a compact, nostalgia-packed "Springfield Island" with nine themed POIs, a Simpsons-themed Battle Pass, Sidekicks, Victory Cup tournaments, timed Twitch and account-link rewards, and a four-episode weekly miniseries driven by a Zero Point shard storyline.

Former Rockstar lead writer as well as co‑founder Dan Houser has told Lex Fridman he feels a greater sense of loss at the prospect of Red Dead Redemption continuing without him than he does about Grand Theft Auto VI, citing the Red Dead duology’s cohesive, thematically consistent narrative.

An Italian indie developer may have pulled off one of the funniest marketing surprises of the year in Japan. A mistranslated game title sparked plenty of laughs – and sent the game’s wishlist numbers soaring.

The developers put the fate of the much-hated monetization approach to a vote; if the players could hit 100k, the system would be taken down. The community did it well ahead of the poll's stated deadline.

RV There Yet? is a fun little game that uses proximity-based voice chat, and players are loving it, with as many as 86% of its reviews being positive.

Former Volition design director Chris Stockman, best known for 2006’s Saints Row and a vocal critic of the 2022 reboot, says Embracer Group has requested a formal pitch for a prequel tentatively called "Saints Row 0," which he envisions as a return to the series' 1970s-rooted, gang-origin story.

In an interview with The Escapist, Jay Klaitz, the voice of GTA V’s Lester Crest defended reports that Grand Theft Auto VI will carry a $100 price tag, arguing Rockstar’s years-long development, intensive motion-capture work and ongoing post-launch updates effectively deliver “multiple games” in one purchase.

Aspyr’s Deus Ex Remastered, revealed during Sony’s State of Play, has provoked widespread backlash over updated textures and reportedly “blocky” character models, a reaction amplified by original art director Jerry O’Flaherty’s blunt denunciation on the FRVR Podcast.

Embark’s new extraction shooter Arc Raiders launched to a strong reception, hitting 100,000 concurrent players within 30 minutes and peaking at 264,673 on day one while holding a 90% Steam user rating even as the developer claims to have a 10-year plan on the cards for the title.

Amazon Games has quietly canceled its long-gestating Lord of the Rings MMO amid large-scale corporate layoffs that heavily impacted its gaming division, a move confirmed by a now-deleted LinkedIn post from senior gameplay engineer Ashleigh Amrine.

The numbers on Steam only tell part of the story for the title; however, it was released on PlayStation and Xbox at the same time as PC.

Tecent seems to be channelling a different kind of legal defense when it comes to its upcoming title, Light of Motiram in response to Sony's claims that it has 'ripped off' on its Horizon franchise

Delibird in Wild Zone 12 in Legends ZA has low spawns and a high flee rate, which turns a simple capture into an endurance test, one that not all gamers appreciate in 2025. Here's how you can potentially make the process easier for you.

An Azure-related outage knocked out Xbox Live sign-ins, matchmaking, and the Microsoft Store earlier this week, Microsoft says fixes have been rolled out, and services should be back to their ‘pre-incident state’.

Escape the Backrooms’ 1.0 launch has sent players streaming into an eerie maze, and co-op fans are already raving, calling it a must-try for jump scares and chaotic teamwork.

Amazon has confirmed that New World will receive no further content updates beyond Season 10, but the game will remain playable through 2026 even as it offers refunds to recent purchasers of the title.

Danny Russell, the former Senior Global Community Manager for Sega of America and the architect of the Sega Forever initiative, confirmed on LinkedIn that he left Sega after 7 years. He was a key figure in Sega's launch of the 2017 program, which evolved from mobile re-releases into a full-blown preservation and archival effort for titles.

The failure of FBC: Firebreak to meet expectations despite repeated patches and a new content update titled 'Breakpoint' has heavily eaten into Remedy Entertainment's bottom line for the quarter, even as management remains optimistic about its future prospects.

Doom and Quake co-creator John Romero said Romero Games is in talks with multiple publishers to revive an unannounced AAA FPS after Microsoft abruptly withdrew funding in July, leaving the project in limbo.

An unofficial fan project that blends the gameplay of Vampire Survivors with the world of Halo has taken off quickly – just two days after launch, Spartan Survivors has already earned a 91% positive rating on Steam. The game is completely free to play.

Amid increasingly heated debates on Reddit, rumours of a next‑gen or Switch 2 port for Red Dead Redemption 2 have failed to materialize around the game's seventh anniversary, with Rockstar issuing no official confirmation on the matter.

The Trump administration’s social post repurposing Halo imagery, which used an AI-generated image of President Donald Trump in Master Chief armor and a DHS/ICE recruitment graphic urging “Destroy The Flood,” has elicited different responses from the community and creators of the Halo franchise.

Japan’s Patent Office provisionally rejected Nintendo’s patent application for “monster‑capturing” mechanics, finding the claim lacked novelty in light of prior art from older games and mods. This is a ruling that bolsters Palworld developer Pocketpair’s defense in its ongoing lawsuit, in which Nintendo is also a plaintiff.

In Ye Guild Clerk!, players don’t take on the role of a hero but that of a guild secretary in a fantasy world. Instead of slaying monsters, you chat with animal adventurers and assign quests from the comfort of your desk. The free cozy game launched on Steam on October 28 and has received overwhelmingly positive feedback since its release.

Peter Molyneux, the famed designer behind Black and White, Fable, and Dungeon Keeper, says his upcoming game, Masters of Albion, is his final redemption story.

The free-to-play Battle Royale mode is available across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series. Here's how to jump in and where to download it.

A 40-minute unfiltered PS5 build of Wreckreation leaked a day before release, showcasing Burnout‑inspired high‑speed arcade racing with loops, big jumps, track‑building, and destructible elements, even as viewers pointed out inconsistent performance and bugs that could perhaps be attributed to an earlier build.

Warner Bros. has launched a "For Your Consideration" awards campaign for A Minecraft Movie after its mammoth $957 million global box-office haul, targeting major categories including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor.

In the Shacknews documentary 24 ’Til Launch: The Making of Borderlands 4, Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford recounts how EA’s cancellation of his Rebel Boat Rocker project Prax War and the subsequent founding of Gearbox led to an unexpected call from Valve’s Gabe Newell, who invited Pitchford to pitch an expanded Half‑Life storyline.

After Halo: Campaign Evolved’s 13‑minute Silent Cartographer demo at the Halo World Championship 2025, former Combat Evolved designer Jaime Griesemer took to X to criticize changes. He focused most of his ire on the ability to steamroll Hunters in a Warthog, movable obstacles, and added trees, all of which he says wreck the pacing in the game.

Xbox’s president of game content and studios, Matt Booty, told The New York Times that it is pursuing a multiplatform strategy and now views competitors as broader entertainment like TikTok and movies rather than rival consoles, as Halo: Campaign Evolved and other former exclusives head to PS5.

At the Halo World Championship 2025 Community Stage, Halo community director Brian Jarrard wore a PlayStation t‑shirt while announcing that Halo: Campaign Evolved, a complete Unreal Engine 5 remake of the 2001 Halo: Combat Evolved, will launch as a day‑one release on PlayStation 5 in 2026.

Shawn Layden, the former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, told The Ringer he views live-service titles as "a repetitive action engagement device," arguing that actual games require a story, a character, and a world rather than looped engagement mechanics designed to keep players hooked.

GameStop has poked fun at decades of platform rivalry that allegedly started and ended with Halo becoming and then unbecoming a platform exclusive with a single post: 'The Console Wars are over.'

Pokémon Legends: Z-A shifted 5.8 million copies in its first week after the October 16, 2025, launch across Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, with half of them selling on the latter console, placing it as the franchise’s fifth-best debut.

Dataminers on X have uncovered files including maps, UI strings, and event scripts suggesting Battlefield 6's unannounced battle royale "RedSec" may be built into the live build and could shadow-drop as early as next week, even as EA and DICE remain mum on the topic.