The latest stories from Rock Paper Shotgun, with full credit to the original publisher.
An employment tribunal in the UK has ruled against striking blacklisting claims levied against Rockstar Games by staff the GTA 6 studio abruptly fired last year from ongoing legal proceedings between the two sides. The staff were let go in autumn last year, with Rockstar subsequently claiming that they were fired due to the leaking of "confidential information" via a public forum. The IWGB Game Wo
Towards the end of goblinAmerica's tutorial level, you mercilessly gun down a huge cherry tree. Like much else in the game's world, the tree is an abomination – beige and rubbery as a stunted hatchling, with hard, tacky fruit hanging from it like dumbbells torturously sewn into the skin. Its death throes are pathetic, and somehow erotic. It sags and sprawls, breasting across the arena boobil
It seems appropriate that Control Resonant drags the Remedyverse back away from Alan Wake II’s screeching horror, as it’s spent the past few weeks – and as of yesterday, about three hours of playable preview build – assuaging my fears. Control the First, in my defence, took its kinetically supernatural shooting, put it in the hands of a likeable hero, and wrapped everything
A couple of months on from pushing to make some vital veteran additions to their team in order to get their massive Oblivion remake mod over the line, Skyblivion's developers are once again appealing for volunteers to aid in overcoming some "final roadblocks" standing the way of its release. Meanwhile, it sounds like the chances of another statistical breakdown from the modders running down exactl
Guild Wars 3 developers ArenaNet have published a Hot Take of sorts about the MMORPG genre, while explaining in broad strokes how their forthcoming "modern evolution" will differ from Guild Wars 1, released in 2005, and Guild Wars 2, released in 2012. As they note, MMOs and gaming at large have changed enormously over the course of the series. Entire business models, storage formats, and subsets o
While Crusader Kings 3 typically deals in the fantasy of sitting on a big chair in one place and shouting at underlings, roaming its world as a the unlanded leader of a band of travelling adventurers is just as fun and arguably the best way to kick off a custom dynasty. Up to now, the freedom to pursue the life of a ruthless mercenary, valiant knight, or stuffy bureaucrat surviving off of favours
The Guild: Europa 1410 is a reboot of 4HEAD's strategy game Europa 1400: The Guild from 2002, created by the studio behind the well-regarded World War sim Last Train Home. My first hurdle in the Steam demo is working out who and where the hell I am. The demo treats you to a slice of Kuttenberg, a Czech city made famous to a lot of non-Czech people by Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2: at a glance, it co
Hellblade developers Ninja Theory are one of the numerous Microsoft-owned studios currently facing a very uncertain future, as the company look to either spin off or shutter a bunch of the developers under the Xbox banner. In Ninja Theory's case, the news that their existence hangs in the balance was made even more jarring by the fact they'd revealed a new game, Senua, earlier this month at Xbox's
When Final Fantasy 7 Remake part two was officially revealed to be titled Rebirth, an immediate question arose for pretty much everyone: what will part three be called? That question has persisted since Rebirth came out, with way too many people suggesting Reunion despite the fact they did that one for Crisis Core (seriously, what's with that). The answer was finally revealed this month to be Reve
Last month, publisher Kwalee released their first game made in house as part of their studio Kwalee Labs, Luna Abyss, a first-person bullet-hell platforming adventure game about a prisoner exploring a derelict megastructure. Now, it appears that the entire team that made the game has been laid off. Read more
Last month the European Commission promised that they would provide a response to the Stop Killing Games campaign that seeks to gain more protections around online game server shutdowns into law. That reply has now come in and, essentially, it's not the result Stop Killing Games were after. Read more
About a year ago, Saber Interactive offered up the fairly surprising reveal of a Hellraiser game in the form of Hellraiser: Revival. It's a singleplayer joint, one that sort of reminds me of Outlast in vibe, and now a year on from that reveal Saber have locked in a seasonally appropriate (roughly) release date. Read more
Copa City is a football game in which you do everything but play football. The playing of football is the empty centre of this strategy gaming doughnut - the calm in the eye of a storm of city-building and tycoon management mechanics. You've been hired by some famous real-world clubs to organise their matches, a job that extends from outfitting the stadium itself to plonking down fanzones, drink s
It's not a good week to be in the games industry (again). As Xbox reportedly prepare to either shutter or spin off Double Fine, Ninja Theory and Compulsion, Don't Nod, original developer of the Life is Strange series, look to be in hot water of their own. As it currently stands, it appears that Don't Nod will run out of cash come November this year. Read more
Last week saw the release of Meccha Chameleon, a Japanese indie game in which groups of players hide from other players armed with shotguns. The twist over similar prop hunt games (that I've played, anyway) is that you can pose and freely paint your character's body, disguising them within each map's colourful scenery. I had a feeling the idea might catch on – it's the kind of novelty item t
We're in the thick of this week's Steam Next Fest now. If demos were big juicy bugs, I can best liken it to driving down a country road in the '70s in high summer: you can barely see through the windscreen for splatmarks. Does that work as an analogy? No time to check, there are demos to be playing. I've been playing ten minutes here and there whenever there is a free moment, I'd I've installed a
In the time-old tradition of marketing, EA have announced something ancient as though it's just been thought up by the boffins in the advertising lab. Their big new moneymaking wheeze to squeeze every last penny out of their games: billboards. In a press release that stretches into essay-length territory, EA sing the praises of their new ad platform, which is "transforming how brands connect with
Mostly decent open-world ninja sim Assassin’s Creed Shadows is getting its last big update today, as Ubisoft begin the process of shooing players away from the year-old RPG and towards the gleaming, nipple-adding newness of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced. The Shadows patch even includes an unlockable outfit based on Edward Kenway’s pirate garb, displaced only 150 or so yea
Xbox are reportedly closing or spinning off Psychonauts developers Double Fine, Hellblade studio Ninja Theory, and South of Midnight creators Compulsion Games, as Microsoft commence efforts to yet again "reset" their billion dollar gaming business after already laying off thousands of staff, cancelling games, and closing several studios over the past couple of years. Read more
"There is a hole in the world," writes Ursula K Le Guin in The Farthest Shore, "and the light is running out of it." Alas, The Farthest Shore contains no terrible mechanical instruments of hole-digging. For that, we must turn to MOLE, "a psychological horror experience with tactile simulation elements about madness, faith, and the depths we choose to dig". Out now on Steam, it makes me think of Mi
Xbox Games Studios boss Craig Duncan and chief of staff Louise O'Connor have left Microsoft, according to reports, with all the studios under Duncan's watch now operating under Xbox chief content officer Matt Booty until a replacement is found. Read more
The UK government have announced a ban on social media platforms for British people under the age of 16, encompassing Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X.com (known hereabouts as MechaHitler.com or Xitter, among other lousy putdowns). The ban is expected to come into force in spring 2027, and will have far-reaching impacts on ye olde videogame discourse, because people do so love
Back when I first tried a G-Sync Pulsar monitor at an Nvidia shindig in February, I clung to the hope that maybe, finally, gaming display tech had made its first real breakthrough in years. Dozens, if not hundreds of samey screens would be revealed as incompetent fools in the searing light of Pulsar’s innovative genius; Nvidia’s own frame generation systems would weep in shame that the
"The mid-summer dry spell"? My friend, your naivete is exceeded only by your boorishness. You should be ashamed of yourself! This week is anything but dry. It's the week of another Steam Next Fest – a period of carefully abbreviated, wishlist-baiting bounty, in which we cram the Maw's many jaws with demos and playtests. Read more
The Witcher 3's multiplayer mod, the world's premier tool for forming big towers of multiple Geralts precariously perched atop each others' shoulders, has added another string to its bow. You can now meet up with some mates at a tavern to play games of Gwent against them, a concept so appealing CD Projekt made a whole game out of it. Read more
As reports suggesting major changes are brewing at Xbox, likely involving mass layoffs, continue to swirl, the console maker's current boss' plans for the future apparently involve pushing out new Fallout and Elder Scrolls games in speedier fashion. Asha Sharma's desire to whip out new entries in flagship series reportedly comes as Microsoft are considering spinning out or restructuring Xbox as a
If, like me, you walk through this world forever thinking about Chicken Run, you too may expect at any moment to discover the animal kingdom is actually made up of industrious town-building critters. Though, hopefully they're not looking to attack and tie us up if ever they're rumbled. Especially when the towns they're making look as delightful as those in frog townbuilder Croakwood. I could watch
Sundays are for testing the limits of the hunger for street furniture in your community. Since moving into the new flat, we've been taking things left behind by the previous owner down to the street one-by-one. A lamp here, a side table there, a splash of shelving. So far, everything has been taken by neighbours and passersby. But, after a week of rain where we couldn't take anything out without i
Vanillaware might not be a household name to some of you, but it's got a library that hangs up there with the best of them. Odin Sphere, Dragon's Crown, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, all games that I have seen their biggest supports plead for you to play them on sites like Dwitter and Bluesky. Only problem for us lot is that none of them are on PC. Well, most of them, as just this week it was announced
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that when you think of penguins and video games, Club Penguin is probably the one that comes to mind for you (or the Surf's Up adaptation if you're nasty). There aren't really a lot of games about these flightless birds, and they're normally on the sillier side when there are because penguins are funny little critters. Penguin Colony, the next game from the de
City builders, kind of by definition, tend to be quite large in form. You're constructing an entire city here after all, and all the complications that come with that. So how about a citybuilder that's going for something a bit smaller? Meet Zlin City: Arch Moderna, a city builder designed to look like you're making dioramas, made by scanning actual, physical models, inspired by the real Czech cit
Generally when a game gets remade, you'll assume that it'll mostly be the same at least narratively, given how not normal can be with works that are considered uncomfortably sacred. That's certainly what many may have guessed about the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy, only those pesky Whispers to get in the way offering some changes here and there. Rebirth continued that here and there, staying the
As with most suits of this nature, the one Nintendo filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair has been going on for a while now. Almost two years, in fact, specifically over infringement of patent rights related to specific mechanics, as opposed to anything like copyright. Nintendo suffered a bit of a loss earlier this year, and now it sounds like the whole thing might only net them what is esse
Among the worries faced by game developers seeking a publisher is the gamble of a prototype – that is, "a playable build that meaningfully shows what’s good about your game – a proof of concept", in the summary of Suspicious Developments boss Tom Francis. Specifically, Francis says a "prototypable project is one where you can build that in an amount of time you can afford to lose
The weather has been an unpredictable mess of downpour and blazing sun this week, but Saturday feels like it could be the turn. Another chance for the sun to yank on the starter cord of summer and get that season's engine thrumming. I simply refuse to have to turn back from another walk around the park because 10 metres from my front door the lovely sunshine is replaced by pelting rain. Read more
Crimson Desert. It's basically an everything game at this point, so it's not too suprising that the latest update developers Pearl Abyss have put out takes the Red Pudding further down the road of being a Nintendogs competitor. The number of pets you can tame as you wander around Pywel has been growing gradually since launch and you can now have up to 100 of them. That seems dangerously impractica
Following some instances of Forza Horizon 6 players losing saves and ending up having to start over from scratch, developers Playground Games are starting to roll out fixes. For PC folks, they're advising a check that the latest version of Microsoft Gaming Services is running, as the app is the way PC-centric fixes for the issue are being rolled out. Read more
Planet Zoo and Planet Coaster developers Frontier have a new Planet game in development that involves neither zoos nor rollercoasters, a scandalous turn of events. The project features a "completely new setting", in fact, though it'll still be some kind of strategy management game. Read more
I really should learn to take this stretch of trail a bit more carefully. The one that runs precariously alongside the edge of a lake, dipping and getting muddier right at the point when it’s easiest to gently stumble into the water if you’re not paying enough attention. The one which seems the only passable route around a mountain to the final cabin I’ve yet to visit in this aut
In case you missed the opening night of this year's Summer Geoffs, Like A Dragon/Yakuza devs RGG Studio's Japanese history-hopping crime brawler Stranger Than Heaven got a release date. That was rather overshadowed, however, by the reveal that it'll feature a digitally resurrected version of rapper Tupac Shakur. While not the first deceased face to be confirmed as featuring in the game, that honou
I'm not sure I can imagine greater horror than that of the "desktop idle sim". My computer's desktop already fills me with confusion and dismay. It's a mixed media moraine of reaction gifs, rogue ebooks, abandoned drafts, and shortcuts for apps I uninstalled years ago. It is like seeing my life's failure reflected in the compound eye of the fly nibbling on my corpse. And now, you would have me run
I like a factory simulation that fervently embraces the basic evilness of factory sims, these games about wrapping a smoking, clanking straitjacket around a realm of organic colours and unsuspecting resource deposits. Or in the case of Asema, around the wonders of the interstellar abyss, and whatever life it contains. "You are old, one of many," goeth the blurb. "There may be an infinite amount of
The main politician behind the Californian bill backed by the Stop Killing Games campaign that's currently making its way through the state's legislature has admitted that ensuring it's enforced likely won't be a walk in the park. Still, Assemblymember Chris Ward is hoping that if passed, the bill - which would see publishers shutting down servers for online games forced to provide full refunds or
It's been a big week for RuneScape: Dragonwilds! The survival game spinoff of the MMO classic had its 1.0 release date confirmed at Geoff's Night of Shiny Ads, and now Jagex have another release date to hand over. This one's for Umbral Sands, the game's next big update that takes it to an incredibly hot looking desert. Read more
There's something fishy going on here. Imagine you're me for a moment (sorry, I'm sorry, it'll be over soon). I'm having a browse on Steam, looking for anything a bit different, when you see a vibrant, CRT-interlacing ridden Atari-esque looking game called Bounce 2. I click on, and discover it's a sequel to a 1983 Atari 2600 game called Bounce that was designed to be a PONG killer, only to release
A little bit of space travel, anyone? Last time I checked in on Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions, the sort of spin off of regular ole Astroneer, it had only just shown off some gameplay for the first time. Apparently somewhere along the line I blinked and now here we are on its early access release day! Read more
Grand strategy games are often these slow, methodical things that require you to take your time, a genre that feels better suited solo. But how about a game that takes those same processes and throws in some multiplayer? In doing so you get Tapestry, a turn-based strategy game where you pit your faction against three others, all rendered in a painterly visage with deliciously choppy character anim
Spaceshipper X4: Foundations just underwent an empire-sized overhaul dubbed the empire update, which is fitting for a game that famously lets you form your own angry empirical armada of spacefolk. Among the plans on the agenda for the Xtending of X4 have been a rebalancing of ship combat that devs Eogosoft reckon is their most substantial to date as well as some handy additions like the ability to
I don't tend to think of Spore as a game that really came from any one person, moreso an omnipresent entity that just somehow installs itself on your computer. This is hogwash, of course, as it was made by creator The Sims Will Wright during his tenure at Maxis. Read more
Easily missed among last week’s Summer Game Fest advert marathon was the Latin American Games Showcase: an exhibition that, at over eighty games strong, dwarfed the Keighley-fronted main event, yet has received only a small fraction of the eyeballs. Less than two months earlier, 154,000 visitors poured into Gamescom Latam to see games made across Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Costa Rica, Mexi
