Gaming News

Deck Nine, the studio behind Life Is Strange entries Before the Storm and True Colors, as well as The Expanse: A Telltale Series, laid off 20% of its staff today.The studio announced the news in a statement on X/Twitter today, writing, "Like many others in the games industry right now, Deck Nine has been affected by the game industry's worsening market conditions.""These people are amazing, talented, and awesome developers," the statement adds. "They have made a huge impact during their time at Deck Nine Games and we did not take this decision lightly. Please hire these people if you can, they're amazing."Deck Nine didn't specify how many people that 20% equates to, but IGN understands that the studio employed roughly between...

We probably don't need to tell you this, but developing a game is hard, even more so when a ton of quality assurance work needs to be done. The remake of Resident Evil 4 was far from immune to those struggles, as a new documentary recently revealed.The details came in a recent episode of the documentary series 100 Cameras (spotted by GamesRadar), which, true to the name, installs a hundred cameras to capture individuals in the specific episode's theme. This particular episode focused on Capcom.At the time of filming the episode, Resident Evil 4 Remake had one month left in development before its release date, with a slew of QA issues that needed to be addressed. One development team member disclosed that they found "around 70" bugs...

Battlefield game director Marcus Lehto has confirmed that he left EA following reports that he recently exited the company.The well-established game maker, who is also responsible for co-creating Halo, took to X/Twitter to share thoughts about his departure. He says it was his choice to leave the company, adding, “This was very a tough decision for me to make.”“I want to thank the Battlefield community for allowing me to listen to you while I was able,” Lehto said. “Your feedback will help make Battlefield stronger. I wish the teams at EA all the best moving forward.”In a separate post, Lehto explained that he’ll be taking time away from games for now.In a statement, an EA spokesperson told IGN, "Marcus Lehto has made the...

The Ori games have always felt like something of a big deal. That’s in part thanks to the backing of Microsoft Studios, which published both The Blind Forest and The Will of the Wisps initially as Xbox console exclusives. The shine of that exclusivity drew people to Ori’s quality, and by the time the games were released on other platforms it was common knowledge just how talented developer Moon Studios was. It’s a reputation that somewhat betrays the reality that the first Ori game was built by just a couple of handfuls of staff. The studio is small. Or it was small, at least to begin with.Today, Moon Studios is pretty sizable for an indie developer, and currently at work on its most ambitious project yet: No Rest for the Wicked, an...

Sick of life in the densely populated core of civilization, you decide to gather your gear and head out to the unsettled wilderness for a life unbothered by others—closer to the land, the soil. So you get yourself ready to go, new overalls, new multi-use pickaxe, and a brand spanking new giant farming robot.That's the pitch for Lightyear Frontier, the upcoming cozy little farming and crafting sim with a mecha-sized twist. Stomping around an unexplored frontier world with your big robot, building up a farm full of amenities and decorations, and building up shed-fulls of equipment were all things I got to enjoy when I sat down with a rather generous preview build.My key takeaway was that Lightyear Frontier is a sweet, calm game...

EA has announced EA Sports F1 24, launching globally on May 31 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via the EA App, Epic Games Store, and Steam.EA said F1 23 players can play Time Trial challenges with selected all-new 2024 team cars by pre-ordering F1 24. Owners of F1 2021, F1 22, or F1 23 get a 15% discount when they pre-order the F1 24 Champions Edition. As a bonus, players also get the McLaren and Alpine 2023 F1 esports liveries, which carry over to F1 24."For the first time, our F1 23 players can now connect immediately with the 2024 season with some of their favourite teams ahead of this weekend’s first Lights Out," said Lee Mather, Senior Creative Director at developer Codemasters. "Our full...

Dragon's Dogma fans! We've got some good news for you if you're looking to get a cheeky little discount on the upcoming sequel. Dragon's Dogma 2 is down to around £50 for both Xbox and PS5 preorders, which is a huge deal. We've had a lot of great preorder deals recently, and now another one has entered the fold for us to feast on. If you're looking forward to getting your hands on the game for launch day, then head over to trusted eBay vendor The Game Collection (TCG) and use the LEAP20 code to get it for just £49.46 on Xbox, and £50.36 for PS5 (see here).We highly suggest using this method for buying any games right now, as TCG is a trusted UK online retailer and one our of favourites to recommend in 2024. You're pretty unlikely to...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants, the 2017 arcade game by Raw Thrills based on the 2012 Nickelodeon TV series, is coming to all home consoles (read: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam) on April 23. It'll be priced at $29.99.TMNT: Wrath of the Mutants is being developed by Cradle Games and Raw Thrills, and it includes the voice actors from the show (Seth Green, Sean Astin, Rob Paulsen, Greg Cipes) reprising their roles as well as four-player local co-op. Check out the reveal trailer above and the first screenshots of the home console version below.In addition to the original arcade game's six stages and 13 boss fights, this home release adds three all-new stages...

Hotly anticipated city builder Cities Skylines 2 launched on PC via Steam in October and immediately ran into a number of issues developer Colossal Order has struggled to get on top of in the months since. Now, with player sentiment turning a ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating into ‘mostly negative’ for recent reviews, and with the first Cities Skylines game with more players than its sequel on PC, the boss of Colossal Order has issued a message to disgruntled players designed to address chief concerns.In November, Colossal Order confirmed a series of delays for planned DLC so it could focus on much-needed performance improvements and the already delayed Mod Editor. The console version wouldn’t be released until the PC version was...

Helldivers 2’s great war to spread democracy across the galaxy is being undermined by an unlikely source: farmers.Arrowhead’s phenomenally popular co-op focused third-person shooter features a galaxy-wide war that pits the forces of Super Earth against Terminids (alien bugs) on one side and Automatons (alien robots) on the other (check out our Terminids and Automatons enemy list for more). The idea is to “liberate” planets from alien infestation by completing operations, which are made up of a variety of missions. If you start an operation then fail to complete all the missions within it, the operation counts as a loss for Super Earth.You can see the effect your work has on the status of each planet’s liberation as you complete...

Palworld developer Pocketpair has released an update for the game that makes a number of important improvements. Patch 0.1.5.0 is out now for Palworld on Steam and soon on Xbox.Highlights for patch 0.1.5.0 include adding backup of save data on the world selection screen, resolving an issue of unnecessary data accumulating in save data, improvements to the Pal AI, server lobbies, and the first improvements to cheat prevention (Palworld's cheating problem is on the rise). It’s also worth noting the patch adds fully supported keyboard key configuration. And players will be happy to know long-pressing F can now be toggled. Now your finger can rest!Last week, Pocketpair announced its ‘Pokémon with guns’ crafting and survival game had...

I'm going to break from tight-fisted tradition by starting my discounts article with something that could not reasonably be considered a thrifty gamer purchase. That said, and despite its $549 price tag, I feel the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree Collector's Edition is something most of us would want on our respective radars. If only for drooling purposes, at the very least. I can't wait to play this DLC. Am currently looking for a buyer for a few spare organs of mine, but have hit some T&Cs issues with Facebook Marketplace.Today I'm raising a mid-morning vodka martini to the 20th birthday of Everything or Nothing, the best Bond game this side of GoldenEye 007. Considered a continuation of Die Another Day and technically the last...

With Final Fantasy VII Rebirth releasing just later this week, Final Fantasy VII Remake got a surprise update, tweaking one of Tifa's outfits and breaking a heavily used mod.The update was released across PlayStation and PC last night. Square Enix didn't reveal full patch notes for version 1.003, only listing "updates to several bugs" on its Steam page. Fans, however, were quick to notice one change in particular in regards to one of Tifa's outfits.Warning: Potential spoiler for Final Fantasy 7 below.As spotted on ResetEra, Tifa's cowgirl-inspired outfit in a Nibelheim flashback was changed slightly to add a black undershirt under her white button-up. The change is likely a continuity one, as the outfit as patched more closely...

Pentiment launched on PS5 and Switch last week. Some quickly noticed the PS5 version runs better than the Xbox version. However, that will change soon, according to the game's creator.A user on X/Twitter posted a screenshot of a video comparison of the frames per second (FPS) performance between the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of Pentiment. While not a graphic-intensive game, some were puzzled that the Xbox Series X version of this 2D game was locked at 60fps while the PS5 version was able to run at 120fps.Pentiment director Josh Sawyer cleared the air, noting that 120fps will be enabled on Xbox in the next update, and it was locked or "disabled" on that platform due to a bug.While the update will arrive on Xbox soon, it is...

For nearly a year, Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, also known as ConcernedApe, has been teasing the farming simulator's massive Patch 1.6. Now, after a development period that turned out longer than he had expected, the update finally has a release date.In a post on Twitter/X today, Barone celebrated the game's eighth anniversary by announcing that the 1.6 Update will be out on PC on March 19, with console and mobile following soon after.In an update to the game's press site, Barone also noted that the game has sold an impressive 30 million copies across platforms, with over 19 million copies on PC, throughout its eight years."With a new update on the horizon, a worldwide concert tour underway, an official cookbook coming...

Two years ago, we learned of one of the greatest video game heroes of all time: a man wearing nothing but a jar atop his head.His name? Let Me Solo Her. His job? Exactly what his name says he does: standing outside the doorway to Elden Ring's most difficult boss, Malenia, and offering to take down the punishing, scarlet rot-infested warrior on behalf of players who were struggling to do it themselves.Now, almost two years later, Let Me Solo Her (LMSH) is still fighting Malenia on behalf of the people. But his Malenia-murdering days may soon be at an end, thanks to the recent announcement of Elden Ring's first major story DLC: Shadow of the Erdtree.We first spoke to LMSH way back in April of 2022, and caught up with him again...

Publisher NIS America has announced an English version of dark action RPG Reynatis heads west this Fall on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC via Steam.Reynatis, directed by Takumi Isobe, is described as a single-player “atmospheric urban fantasy” and is set in a realistic recreation of Shibuya, Tokyo, “where the ultimate clash between magic and order is about to unfold.”Here’s the official blurb:In Reynatis you navigate the streets of Shibuya and choose between remaining concealed to talk to civilians, shop, and accept quests, or exposing your true self to harness your inhuman powers. You get to visit the alternate world of Another, a fantasy land packed with monsters and secrets.As for combat, you can...

Elden Ring players are flummoxed over FromSoftware boss Hidetaka Miyazaki's tease that one final secret still exists within the two-year-old game.Speaking to IGN last week, Miyazaki commented on the myriad twists and turns Elden Ring takes throughout its pieced-together story that demands players interpret items, landscapes, bosses, and beyond. This style of storytelling naturally leaves a lot to player investigation and interpretation, but despite more than two years of myriad fans analysing, Miyazaki said there's still more to find.He and his team at FromSoftware "are always surprised and delighted by how much the players do discover, and how much these communities work to uncover these secrets", he said, before dropping the...

Earlier this month, the games industry gathered in Las Vegas, Nevada to celebrate the 27th annual D.I.C.E. Awards, honoring the best of video games in 2023. It was a great time, and a lot of really excellent games won well-deserved prizes.But it’s also been a rough year for the games industry. We’ve written about the current upheaval elsewhere, and it didn’t go unremarked upon onstage, either. Even in a time of well-earned joy, a number of developers onstage were there having lost fellow team members who should be celebrating with them. Even those lucky enough to have avoided layoffs were accepting their awards in front of an audience of peers rocked by job loss, funding uncertainty, and apprehension.Backstage, we had the...

The parent company of Elden Ring developer FromSoftware is releasing a novel based on the beloved fantasy role-playing game, but its subject isn't necessarily what you'd expect.As reported by Siliconera, Kadokawa Corporation is releasing See You At That Grace After Work in Japan, a novel telling the story of two co-workers who get to know each other by playing Elden Ring. The title references the Sites of Grace locations throughout Elden Ring's world of The Lands Between.The novel follows a Japanese office worker and gamer who enjoys Elden Ring but has only played solo. After spending his workbreaks looking at guide websites, a senior colleague notices and, as a fan of Elden Ring themselves, speaks to the worker about it. The two...

Supermassive Games, the studio best known for making choice-filled horror games that are borderline interactive movies, announced that it is planning to lay off employees as job losses continue to devastate the gaming industry.In a statement posted on Twitter/X, the developer acknowledged the challenges the gaming industry currently faces with mass layoffs, and that it was not “immune” to this. It stated it was “undertaking a reorganisation” of its studio and planned to enter “into a period of consultation,” which would affect some of its employees.Although Supermassive did not disclose how many employees are affected, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier wrote before the announcement that the British developer planned to lay off...

Tekken 8 has sold over two million copies in the first month after launch, publisher Bandai Namco has announced.The fighting game launched on January 26 across PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and sold one million on its first day of release, then hit the two million sold mark in the first month. This “greatly outpaces” the sales of Tekken 7, Bandai Namco said. Tekken 7, which is still being played, has the series’ total highest sales record of over 11.8 million copies sold worldwide.Tekken 8 appears to be selling at a similar pace to rival fighting game Street Fighter 6, which also shifted two million copies after a month on sale. Capcom's Street Fighter 6 went on to sell three million copies in seven months...

Rejoice, Elden Ring fans, as the Shadow of the Erdtree expansion now has a nailed-down release date of June 21. What's better than that? Well, a discount on DLC of course. It's currently priced at $39.99 MSRP, sparking speculation that this could truly be a massive offering for fans. But, if you're on PC, we highly recommend picking up Shadow of the Erdtree from Green Man Gaming, a trusted online PC code merchant who currently has the DLC listed for $35.19 instead (see here) / £30.79 in the UK.That's $4.80 savings, and 12% off for an expansion Elden Ring fans are most certainly going to buy -- it's a Steam code as well so this is a no-brainer. The only catch is the deal will expire before the end of the day (February 26), so you need...

The number of people playing Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag has risen 200% on Steam after the release of fellow Ubisoft pirate game Skull and Bones.As reported by PCGamesN, the player numbers of 2013's Black Flag have floated either side of 1,000 for years. According to tracking website SteamDB, however, this number spiked on February 16: the day Skull and Bones finally released after years of troubled development.Black Flag rose to 1,679 players upon launch, followed by 2,600 on February 17, and 3,226 on February 18. That growth has continued, not dipping below 2,401 since reaching a new peak of 3,594 on February 25. Skull and Bones has yet to launch on Steam, with Ubisoft favouring a PC release on the Epic Games Store and its own...

It was perhaps inevitable: cheating has hit early 2024 blockbuster Helldivers 2.Players have reported a variety of cheats and exploits for Arrowhead’s explosive co-op focused third-person shooter. Hacks are adding infinite ammo, increasing speed, and even allowing players to trigger ‘god mode’. A recent popular exploit triggers an infinite stratagem glitch, which causes even more chaos on the battlefield.Some players have also ended up playing in a group with cheaters who are able to obtain hundreds of samples from missions. Samples are one of the key currencies in Helldivers 2 progression, with some only found on the harder difficulties. They’re used to buy ship module upgrades, which are powerful passive buffs that can...

Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios has called on the game’s community to cease what it called “threats and toxicity” over mod support, insisting conversations around new features “take time”.Ever since Baldur's Gate 3 came out in August 2023, players who use mods have been frustrated with having to uninstall, reinstall, update, and re-juggle their mods every time a new patch is released. So last week’s announcement that official mod support is on its way was seen as a positive. However, it seems a vocal minority within the community has taken things too far.In a series of tweets, Larian director of publishing Michael Douse said, in order for the developer to continue its healthy relationship with its community, the threats...

Helldivers 2 is only a few weeks old and already players are kicking their teammates before games even get going because they’re not bringing so-called "meta" builds to the party.As Helldivers 2 players level up and seek out the the rarest resources exclusive to harder difficulties, their loadout becomes an increasingly serious business.The community has declared a handful of must-haves for higher difficulties, including the SG-225 Breaker Primary weapon, and the Railgun, Eagle 500KG Bomb, and Shield Generator Pack Stratagems. (Check out IGN’s best loadouts guide to see what we think).One post on the Helldivers 2 Steam forum is gaining attention for declaring the need to “set the standard for 8+ missions.” “If they are using...

If you head over to eBay and use the promo code LEAP20 you can currently bag yourself a Steam Deck (256GB model) for £314.95 from verified seller The Game Collection Outlet (we've recommended them many times). This is a significant saving compared to the current RRP of £349 -- with the notable improvement that the model is actually in stock from TGC versus being unavailable directly from Steam.If you want the alternate models, you could get the 512GB model for £374.95, while the 64GB model is currently out of stock. This deal will expire at 11:59 PM on February 29, so don't delay if you're looking to secure the offer. Other great deals in the eBay sale right now include Helldivers 2 for £30.28 and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth for £51.96...

The Nier community is currently aflutter after what some are taking to be a tease for Nier 3.The apparent tease comes from the recent Nier: Orchestra Concert in London, where the word R3PENT was apparently displayed at the end of the show.“Anecdote from the Nier London concert but Yoko Taro took the stage at the end, told the audience that the Square Enix president was in the crowd and that if we wanted an Automata sequel to give the loudest applause of the night,” said ResetEra user SanTheSly.“The room immediately erupted into claps, cheers and yells. How much of what Taro said is true is up for debate but the case was made abundantly clear in person to Taro himself, at the very least. Mild concert content spoilers follow...

The developer of Helldivers 2 has declared the weekend just gone a success, insisting the game’s servers handled all players “without problem”.In a tweet, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt said he was proud of the development team after a weekend that appeared to go much better than the prior weekend for players trying to login. This despite Helldivers 2 breaking its Steam concurrent player count record once again, hitting 458,709.Helldivers 2 has suffered significant server problems since its explosive launch across PlayStation 5 and PC, so much so that Pilestedt had issued a warning about server queues for the weekend just gone. But the developer appears to be getting on top of the issues after releasing a number of patches and, most...