Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications!
Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!
August 5th: Voice actor Natasha Chandel listed “Project White Sands by Valve” on her website, seemingly leaking another major game project by the secretive developer before quickly removing once it got publicly noticed. The project name has inspired speculation over the connection between that name and Black Mesa, and that only became exacerbated by subsequent datamining of existing Valve games looking for any evidence of another new Half-Life project following Alyx.
Nicole Carpenter at Polygon reported that mobile game developer Jam City has confirmed layoffs for 10% of its staff, firing around 85 out of over 800 people. This is the dev’s second round of layoffs in the past three years. Jam City has more than ten offices around the world and has made numerous notable licensed mobile games.
Nintendo stand-alone released the second trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, offering a five minute major look at the game’s world and features, revealing the Bind and Reverse Bond mechanics, fast travel, and horse-riding traversal.
August 6th: Here we go again. The Financial Times (Anna Nicolau and James Fontanella-Khan) reported that Warner Bros Discovery is once again considering a sale of its video game assets, albeit a small scale one, as part of a bigger issue. The company is seeking to reverse a steep stock price decline that has continued since the Discovery takeover two years ago. After first considering a major breakup by divesting its linear TV properties as was widely reported in late July, this has been deemed the last-case option, and many other smaller offloads are being explored, including a minority ownership stake of its video game properties, which despite Kill the Justice League’s losses is considered quite valuable off Mortal Kombat and the now in development Hogwarts Legacy sequel.
Saber Interactive, newly independent from old parent company Embracer, announced that its A Quiet Place horror adventure game will launch on October 17th 2024.
EA and Respawn announced the release date of the PS4 and Xbox One ports for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor as September 17th 2024. I still believe the Jedi games to be in development for the Switch successor as well.
Developer RageSquid and publisher No More Robots revealed Descenders Next for a 2025 launch. This is a direct sequel to their 2018 downhill biking game Descenders, now focused on several separate extreme sports. It’s set to launch on PC and Xbox One/Series/Game Pass Ultimate as a timed exclusive, with PS4/5 and Switch 2 ports confirmed for later on.
August 7th: Parent company Facebook/Meta announced that developer Ready at Dawn will be shut down after 21 years. Ready at Dawn was a first party studio for PlayStation, creating The Order 1886 and several franchise spinoffs, before the company pivoted to VR and was subsequently acquired by Facebook’s VR department. The downsizing of the Meta VR division has also reportedly included canceling a headset akin to Apple’s insane $3500 Vision Pro.
August 11th: In a sudden and shocking development, PUBG parent company Krafton announced that it has bought developer Tango Gameworks and the Hi-Fi Rush IP from Microsoft for an undisclosed amount two whole months after Tango’s office had already closed. The purchase is confirmed to not include previous Tango IPs The Evil Within and Ghostwire: Tokyo. Around 50 of Tango’s original 100 staff will return to its new iteration. Krafton and Microsoft are currently negotiating an ongoing strategic partnership which would keep the tech giant closely involved in the Hi-Fi Rush series’ future. The survival of this studio and this new popular original series is of course prompting excitement, but Krafton’s mistreatment of workers and subsidiary Striking Distance Studios is well documented and unacceptable, especially the treatment of an employee who was sexually assaulted by Krafton then-executive Kevin Kimball.
August 14th: Sega announced Two Point Museum, the third entry in the comedic simulation series and its first curren gen exclusive, with no current release window.
The Until Dawn Remake was announced to launch on October 4th 2024 for PS5 and PC. Later in September shortly before its launch, developer Ballistic Moon fired at least 11 workers as part of a major scaledown to “secure the future” of the studio.
Retro streaming service Antstream Arcade was confirmed to be coming soon to PlayStation consoles after hitting Xbox last year.
August 15th: EA and Bioware premiered the third trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which announced that it will launch on Halloween/October 31st 2024 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. The date and a shorter version of the trailer leaked ahead of time.
The lead writer of Quantic Dream’s Star Wars Eclipse has left to start his own studio. Adam Williams was at the developer for nine years and was also the lead writer for Detroit: Become Human. What a promising resume.
All Possible Futures and Devolver Digital announced that The Plucky Squire will launch on September 17th for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and Switch, with a physical release currently scheduled for February 21st 2025.
Previously rumored out of Comic-Con, a new rerelease for the cult classic Crystal Dynamics series Legacy of Kain has been announced in very limited fashion. The original two PS1 entries will be available the Evercade arcade lineup.
Once again, the gaming holiday season is increasingly becoming delay season. Warhorse Studios announced that Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will launch on February 11th 2025, after retailers first leaked that the game was pushed out of this fall.
August 18th: The now highly successful (eighteen million copies sold in two weeks, mostly on PC in China) launch of Journey to the West action RPG Black Myth: Wukong by Chinese developer Game Science has been accompanied by a strange, layered, and disturbing story about guidelines for streamers receiving early codes of the game. Because professional reviewers/journalists widely confirmed they didn’t receive the same guidelines, and because of the inflammatory content of the writing, there was a widespread allegation that this was a false rumor until multiple streamers were able to provide direct physical evidence and received support in the journalistic space. Not all of these guidelines are questionable, but within their list of “banned content that instigates negative discourse” is the term “feminist propaganda” and all terms related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
As reported at IGN last year by Rebekah Valentine and Khee Hoon Chan, this developer has a longstanding public history of vulgar misogynistic comments and attitudes, largely on local social media site Weibo, that is now getting more notice in the West. The list of incidents is very long and goes back over a decade, making the company notorious for scaring off women that wanted to work there or were just excited for the game, but the most galling example is the extensive statement made by cofounder and lead artist Yang Qi in 2013 that women and men’s “biological differences” make gaming interests for them completely different and that he’d have to feminize himself if he wanted his games to appeal to women.
August 19th: Square Enix finally announced that Final Fantasy 16 will release for PC on September 17th, with the base game at only $50 and the full experience with DLC for $70. Though nothing has been officially or specifically announced yet, Square has reiterated its current interest in better supporting Xbox after significant success for FF14 on Xbox, and suggested that Day 1 PC releases are in the cards for the future of the FF franchise.
Level 5 has once again delayed one of their new titles, with Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time indefinitely delayed out of its previous October 2024 date. And while we’re at it, Paradox delayed Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 yet again, pushing out of Fall to allegedly arriving in the first half of 2025.
August 20th: Japanese voice actress Atsuko Tanaka tragically passed away at age 61 of an undisclosed illness. Tanaka voiced many iconic characters in her native language from Major Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell to Chun Li, Bayonetta, and Lara Croft.
Developer Space Ape has shut down their live RTS Rival Kingdoms after nine years online, immediately and completely closing access to the game.
Virtuos acquired British support developer Third Kind Games to further shore up its AAA development side with more than 70 employees out of the UK.
GamesCom Opening Night Live: The opening announcement, complemented by Randy Pitchford melting down on social media over the failure of the movie, was the first tease for Borderlands 4, announcing it will launch in 2025. Oh wait, there was a preshow, hold on: among others, it included three more Dave the Diver crossover DLCs, sequel Revenge of the Savage Planet, life sim Inzoi from Krafton, and more. Embracer Group and Coffee Stain announced that the original Goat Simulator will receive a current gen remaster for its 10th anniversary later this year. In development alongside their untitled fantasy action RPG, developer Techland revealed Dying Light: The Beast, a crossgen midsize standalone spinoff game focused on shooting over survival and the return of original series protagonist Kyle Crane out for revenge in a new rural setting.
Before I continue, I will shoutout this VGC interview with the Savage Planet series creators, which discusses their time as an inhouse Google Stadia studio and just how incompetent Google really was. Don’t Nod offered the gameplay reveal and launch date for Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, setting it to release in two parts on February 18th and March 18th. Dragon Ball Sparking! Zero made another appearance. Amazon and developer Glowmade revealed their party game dungeon crawler King of Meat. Developer Fuzzybot announced revealed their co op action roguelike Lynked: Banner of the Spark, which will early access release in October. No More Room in Hell 2 saw a new trailer and FTP shooter Arc Raiders had a 2025 release window and 2024 public playtest announced.
Microsoft/Xbox had numerous announcements and appearances which I will group together here. On the showfloor launch dates and prices for the new Series S and X models were announced. A campaign level from Black Ops 6 was newly previewed. Both Starfield expansion Shattered Space and RTS Ara: History Untold were announced to launch in September (September 30th and 24th respectively), while a free update adding the first all terrain vehicle to Bethesda’s RPG was shadowdropped. One more trailer arrived for Age of Mythology: Retold before it just launched last week. Banner Saga creators Stoic briefly returned with their Xbox partnered Towerborne, setting a September 10th Steam early access date with its Xbox launch coming soon. Blizzard’s president arrived to discuss the imminent WoW and Diablo 4 expansions, as well as an Overwatch 2 x WoW crossover. Lastly, Machine Games and star Troy Baker offered the next trailer for Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, finally announcing that it will launch December 9th 2024 for PC and Xbox Series S|X, with a PS5 port confirmed for Spring 2025. With Microsoft now confirming the very large window it’ll take for new games to hit the Game Pass Standard tier, PS5 owners will get Indiana Jones faster than many Game Pass subscribers.
A new trailer for open world game Infinity Nikki announced signups for a closed beta test. Path of Exile 2 set its early access release date as November 15th. Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 made one more appearance before its launch. MMO Dune Awakening saw its gameplay reveal trailer and an Early 2025 release window for PC confirmed. Original Little Nightmares creators Tarsier Studios revealed their next game and first fully 3D title Reanimal, a horror adventure about a brother and sister escaping an island full of mutant animals. After four years of only being on PC, mobile, and PlayStation, Mihoyo officially announced that their signature open world gacha game Genshin Impact will launch for Xbox Series S|X on November 20th 2024. (A Switch port was announced years ago before disappearing, perhaps it will reappear on the new hardware?) Mihoyo also previewed the first new update for Zenless Zone Zero after its recent launch, and a Fate Stay Night crossover in Honkai Star Rail was announced for 2025. Capcom offered the next trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds showing the Scarlet Forest area. SNK newly set Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves‘ launch date as April 24th 2025.
Netflix announced that it has exclusively acquired the Monument Valley puzzle game series, with the first two games coming to the platform in September and October before the newly revealed Monument Valley 3 launches in December. Another new gameplay trailer for action game Mecha Break set a 2025 release window. Firaxis and Take Two offered the second trailer/gameplay reveal trailer for Civilization 7, showed extended gameplay right after the GamesCom event ended, announced Gwendoline Christie as the narrator for this gen of the series, and announced that the game will launch for all platforms on February 11th 2025. NetEase’s new trailer for Marvel Rivals showed new characters (Captain America and Winter Soldier), confirmed that all character additions come free of charge, and announcing that it will launch December 6th 2024. Amazon announced its previously leaked adult animated video game anthology series Secret Level, which will premiere in December. Its 15 episodes adapt such series as Armored Core, Outer Worlds, Sifu, Spelunky, Mega Man, Pac Man, and three first party PlayStation series: God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, and the now tragically failed Concord, which will remain when the series premieres.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 appeared right after its delay to announce an extended gameplay showcase premiering the next day. VR game Batman: Arkham Shadow saw its gameplay reveal and an October release window. Supermassive had two offerings: the next Little Nightmares 3 trailer, showcasing its co op puzzles, and the reveal trailer for The Dark Pictures Anthology: Directive 8020, the fifth entry in that horror series, its first current gen exclusive and first science fiction story, starring Lashana Lynch. Developer Okomotive revealed their new game after the FAR duology, third person fully 3D adventure Herdling coming 2025 published by Panic. Keighley proudly introduced notorious asshole and scam artist Peter Molyneux to reveal his new first non-mobile project since leaving Xbox, Masters of Albion, a citybuilder and tower defense game in development for the past three years. It’s taking advantage of the Fable association (Albion is the setting of Fable) despite not in any way being a legal collaboration with Microsoft, because the name is not trademarked. Classic Molyneux.
NetEease announced a FTP life sim set on sky islands, Floatopia. It will launch in 2025 for PC, mobile, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Netflix revealed Squid Game: Unleashed coming soon to its app. FTP extraction shooter Arena Breakout Infinite shadowdropped into a short early access window and set 1.0 launch to occur by the end of 2024. Unknown 9: Awakening was announced to be launching October 18th 2024. The First Berserker: Khazan set an October date for a new technical test. Floatopia. As the last announcement, Take-Two and Hangar13 offered a brief cinematic trailer to officially reveal Mafia: The Old Country, the fourth entry and prequel in their crime sandbox series which is scheduled to launch in 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, and will see more info in December. This game’s existence first leaked in 2022 after a costly original IP cancelation and severe layoffs.
More news arrived on the floor at GamesCom. Sniper Elite developer Rebellion discussed their next two games, Sniper Elite Resistance and Atomfall. They announced a March 2025 release window for Atomfall, which was first revealed by this year’s Xbox Games Showcase. It will release for PC, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series/Game Pass Ultimate. Squirrel with a Gun saw an October 15th launch date announced.
August 21st: Gearbox, who bought the Risk of Rain series from Hopoo Games two years ago and fully took it over, announced that a native current gen port of Risk of Rain 2 would arrive for PS5 and Xbox Series on August 27th (free for existing owners) alongside the second paid DLC. Said DLC, the first content for the series developed exclusively by Gearbox and not by its original creators, was not received well, to put it lightly. And now Hopoo Games is dissolving entirely and canceling its next project because the team has been recruited by Valve.
August 22nd: Ubisoft has revealed the next entry in the Heroes of Might & Magic series, announcing that it will be developed by Unfrozen and release in early access in 2025 with a scheduled 1.0 launch in 2026.
Krafton and Striking Distance, whose unhealthy workplace I discussed above, announced the that the developer’s second game Redacted will launch on October 31st. First discussed as Project Birdseye, this is an isometric roguelike spinoff of Callisto Protocol taking clear inspiration from Hades.
August 23rd: An extensively researched and evidenced report by Grant Stoner at IGN has unexpectedly revealed that Coty Craven, a notable figure in games accessibility, has been repeatedly catfishing the community, creating nonexistent individuals in order to assert himself into the space and gain influence, most notably creating Can I Play That and the Game Content Triggers Database. Craven claimed to be the romantic partner of Susan Banks AKA OneOddGamerGirl, a deaf amputee and queer muslim gamer who spent 2015 to 2019 using exclusively indirect communication like social media and email to ingratiate herself into games accessibility. There was no video of her ever seen, and in her residence of Oak Park, Illinois, no patient record or obituary matching her name and background ever found. Banks’ death was the biggest springboard for Coty Craven to gain influence in the games industry, but he also catfished people as multiple other disabled people of color and alleged associates, including getting attention directly from Insomniac for a piece about Spider-Man 2.
Led by a member of the disabled gamers community, IGN’s team spent months putting together this piece as precisely as possible, wanting to be absolutely certain of these drastic accusations before publishing them. They reached out to Coty Craven for comment during that process, to which he he deleted his social media presence and some of the sites and pages created under his false identities including the Game Content Triggers Database.
Three whole fucking months after I first covered it, Valve has finally officially announced their new multiplayer game Deadlock after allowing over 44,000 people to play it and talk about it as an open secret all summer. Valve describes the game as a hero shooter crossed with a MOBA and still in early development with temporary art.
August 27th: Nintendo Indie World and Partners Showcase:
This very strange double booked third party Direct began with a rapid fire set of crossover reveals for this year’s hit card game Balatro. Four free cosmetic DLCs based on The Witcher 3, Vampire Survivors, and fellow crossover kings Dave the Diver and Among Us, were all shadowdropped. Next was the most detailed look yet at Neva, the second game by Gris developer Nomada which finally announced an October 15th launch date. Our first brand new reveal was Moth Kubit coming in Spring 2025 to PC and Switch, an experimental and satirical RPG about an insect society and a megacorporate mystery. Coffee Talk developers Toge Productions discussed the history of the series and provided a reveal teaser for a third entry moving away from Seattle to a new setting: Coffee Talk Tokyo is scheduled to launch in 2025 to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series. A free DLC for the Sea of Stars RPG was revealed for a Spring 2025 release, while another licensed DLC for Powerwash Simulator, this time themed to Shrek and his swamp, was also announced.
Developer Furcula and publisher Annapurna revealed the action roguelike Morsels coming in February 2025 to PC, Switch, and PS5. Sassy Chap Games, a developer founded by voice actors, and publisher Team17, offered the latest look at their comedy dating sim Date Everything, announcing it will launch October 24th 2024. Acclaimed fantasy RPG roguelike and Peggle alike Peglin is expanding from mobile platforms with a shadowdrop launch on Switch as a timed console exclusive. RubberBandGames announced that their open world fumblecore game Wobbly Life is arriving on Switch in December 2024 four years after its initial release. Co op puzzle platformer Pico Park 2 was surprise revealed and shadowdropped five years after its predecessor, hitting PC and Switch that day with Xbox ports set to arrive September 12th.
The climactic sizzle reel confirmed remaster Shovel of Hope DX for a 2025 Switch release, annoucned that Europa will launch October 11th with a demo out now, Marvelous’ Cuisineer will hit Switch on Jaunary 28th 2025 after a 2023 launch, 3D furry mystery On Your Tail launches November 21st 2024, and Metal Slug Tactics and Plucky Squire made another requisite appearance. And one more thing, after almost two years: the beloved Wario Land spiritual successor Pizza Tower was shadowdropped on Switch!
The second half of this showcase opened with Digital Eclipse’s next historical documentary game after Atari50, Karateka, and the Jeff Minter Story, tackling their biggest name yet: Tetris Forever coming later this year, which features 15 classic entries in the legendary puzzle series, including Hatris, their signature historical museum and documentary features, and the brand new Tetris Time Warp which alternates between existing styles of the series. The Tetris Company also confirmed that Tetris NES Edition will arrive for all Switch Online subscribers later this year. Developer Caracal Games and publisher Dear Villagers revealed Star Overdrive, a fully 3D third person action game with puzzles, hoverboarding, and combat, will launch in 2025 as a timed console exclusive. Embracer Group shadowdropped Goat Simulator 3 for Switch digitally, with a physical release set for November.
A surprisingly early sizzle reel arrived, and from the jump it contained both mundanities like the next live seasons of Star Wars Hunters and Disney Dreamlight Valley, and huge news like The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky 1st (coming to Switch in 2025), a full remake of Nihon Falcom’s seminal 20 year old RPG which debuted the Trails series. The international Direct only highlighting the game for a second, compared to a full trailer in Japan, has been received poorly, including by the developers who were surprised by the timing of the reveal. Another exciting announcement was the Stalker remaster trilogy hitting Switch in November after Xbox and PlayStation earlier this year, the survival horror series’ Nintendo debut. Two previously leaked announcements were next, Worms Armageddon: Anniversary Edition by Digital Eclipse, coming September 26th, and The Patrick Star Game by Outright Games, coming October 4th. The former is a native remaster complete with a series museum and the Game Boy Color version, the latter is an open world physics playground. Imagineer’s latest Fitness Boxing game was also announced with a December launch.
Capcom’s absolutely unreal retro support continues with the reveal of Capcom Fighting Collection 2 coming in 2025, which features eight cult classics but most importantly to this Dreamcast girly, the first rereleases of Power Stone and Power Stone 2 since the PSP 18 years ago! The collection also features Street Fighter Alpha 3, Plasma Sword, Capcom Fighting Evolution, Project Justice, and two Capcom vs SNK games. The MVC Collection also saw a September 12th digital launch date and November 22nd physical release date announced. Gust and Koei Tecmo revealed the latest entry in their Atelier RPG series, Atelier Yumia: The Alchemist of Memories & the Envisioned Land which will launch March 21st 2025 for PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series. Square Enix offered new gameplay details for the Dragon Quest 3 Remake. Civilization 7 made an appearance to remind you that yes, this port exists too. And Konami offered two major announcements: the Suikoden Remasters are finally launching for all platforms on March 6th 2025, and the Castlevania Dominus Collection was revealed and shadowdropped.
This new collection largely completes the Castlevania rerelease set by featuring the three Metroidvania entries released on DS, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia, along with Haunted Castle Revisited, a brand new, well received full remake of the bizarre, poorly received arcade only sister game Haunted Castle. Bandai Namco announced the next step in bringing the back catalog of the Tales Of series to modern hardware, Tales of Graces f Remastered, which will release January 2025. MySims Cozy Bundle, featuring remasters of both 2007’s MySims and its direct sequel MySims Kingdom, is coming November 19th from EA. These spinoff games recaptured the franchise’s signature life sim gameplay in a cartoonier artstyle for the Wii audience. MySims was leaked first by retailer listings in Europe, then by concrete reporting by Kotaku, and finally EA just fucking listing the game on their website when it was still unannounced in defiance of all of Nintendo’s usual rules for this stuff.
After two Five Nights at Freddys announcements (Help Wanted 2 and story DLC for Security Breach) a second sizzle reel featured Epic Mickey Rebrushed, Tales of the Shire, Just Dance 2025, Funko Fusion, EA FC 25, and Lego Horizon Adventures. Two more major announcements closed the show. Marvelous fully revealed the next brand Rune Factory game, previously announced as Project Dragon: Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma coming Spring 2025. It’s a ‘reimagining’ of the series’ signature life sim and action RPG elements, and moves the games from Unity to Unreal 5. And one more thing: Sega finally delivering Yakuza Kiwami for Switch on October 24th 2024! This is only the second appearance by the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series on Nintendo hardware, and as a full remake, is a much better offering than the original PS2 games ported to Wii U only in Japan.
Later the same week, Nintendo released another extended stand alone trailer for Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, revealing the alternate Still World, and new combat options for boss fights including the Swordfighter form and Dampé’s inventions. And mere days later, some brief stand alone trailers for Mario & Luigi: Brothership and Super Mario Party Jamboree debuted as well.
The following story has been edited by Avocado moderation with my, Lily Bones’, support. The same no bullshit reporting style that I have been actively praised for here will sometimes not always be the safest way to act, and the community deserves to be protected.
August 28th: Jason Schreier’s latest report on the disastrous conditions at Destiny maker and first party PlayStation studio Bungie has revealed that the first director on Marathon, Christopher Barrett, didn’t just depart this year over the general state of the game, (Edit here from Kappa – the followings is from Barrett’s PR firm: “Bloomberg reported the texts it reviewed “included flirtatious messages from Barrett and requests to hang out with the women involved” and that the investigation found that Barrett “made references to his wealth and power within the studio, suggesting that he could help advance their careers. As you can see, the original story which you cite as the sources of allegations does not indicate any sexual misconduct and harassment” or allude to “extorting sexual favors”.)
As reported by Stephen Totilo at Game File, ABK subsidiary Raven Software has filed a labor complaint against Activision and Microsoft for bad faith bargaining on their union contract. There are no currently disclosed specifics.
Dozens of employees at developer Spiders have signed and released an open letter to management making several demands and threatening to strike over years of poor working conditions, especially during the production of Greedfall 2 and after the arrival of the current company head CEO Anne Devouassoux. Workers say they have experienced severe crunch, mismanagement, obstruction of worker representation, lack of gender parity, and loss of morale. The chaos of several release delays, budget reworks, and general lack of direction make the plan to fully launch the game less than a year after its current September early access release seem “difficult to achieve.” As of September 6th, the studio representation responded to the strike by raising its minimum salary by 11%, committing to honoring existing work from home arrangements, and launching an audit of their working conditions.
Amazon Games and Bandai Namco announced that their MMORPG Blue Protocol will be shutting down on January 18th 2025 and canceling its international release.
Ubisoft issued a major patch to Star Wars Outlaws which forced its early access players to lose all of their progress in the game and restart. Ubisoft’s apology reward to these customers, people who are already playing it because they either paid for the $18 a month tier of Ubisoft+ or paid over $100 for the premium preorder of the game, is a mere single in-game cosmetic and 100 loyalty points.
Sandfall Interactive released a standalone gameplay reveal trailer for their RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which was first shown at this year’s Xbox Games Showcase.
August 29th: In a wide-reaching new partnership, Remedy announced that Annapurna will co-finance the development of Control 2 and has received exclusive licensing of the Control and Alan Wake IPs for multimedia adaptation. Remedy will still be self-publishing Control 2.
Eric Barone publicly discussed how the console/mobile ports of the Stardew Valley 1.6 update have still not been finished, in turn revealing that Haunted Chocolatier’s development has been on hiatus in the meantime.
After Matt Merkle faced serious health issues last year which delayed Mike Uyama’s intended departure from Games Done Quick, ownership and management have now finally transferred over to Merkle, leading the organizing and event along with co-owners Jason Deng and Ashley Farkas.
August 30th: Takashi Mochizuki at Bloomberg reports that Ouka Studios, the developer of Square Enix’s Visions of Mana which only just launched, is being shut down with all but a handful of people already fired. But this has nothing to do with their new game at all. According to Mochizuki, the top two Chinese games publishers, Tencent and NetEease, are both downscaling their presence in Japan’s games industry as part of the larger monetary churn with which they’ve already been struggling, and Ouka is collateral damage on NetEase’s end. It’s the same old story of expanding too fast, spending too much money and then not getting a return on it quickly enough.
Tom Henderson reported that Ubisoft’s live shooter XDefiant has seen its strong May launch quickly dwindling in both revenue and active playerbase. Its studio could face layoffs and ending support for the game by the end of this year, with its next season suggested as the cutoff even though it’ll be directly competing with Black Ops 6.
At PAX West, ArcSystem Works announced Guilty Gear Strive: Switch Edition to launch January 23rd 2025. The first three DLC seasons’ characters are all built into this edition, including the trans icon Bridget. This game leaked a day early due to a banner advertising it being spotted at the convention ahead of reveal.
August 31st: Hideaki Itsuno announced that he is leaving Capcom after 30 years to join a new game project which just began development at an undisclosed studio. Itsuno was a major creative head at Capcom, being the creator of the Dragon’s Dogma series which just successfully relaunched this year, and the director of the Devil May Cry series for 20 years.
September 2nd: Eurogamer reported that Rocksteady has suffered its first layoffs since the failure of Suicide Squad earlier this year, with 18 of 33 QA employees fired, putting the rest in a bind to keep up quality and workflow, and an unknown number outside QA also affected, including someone in the middle of their paternity leave.
Gloomhaven developers Flaming Fowl announced their new game Konfronto, a comedy sci fi auto battler on which the studio has explicitly said their fates rest, with their other project Ironmarked halted until they can get more money from customers or investors.
Nintendo had two minor announcements: first party subsidiary and Mario Party developer ND Cube has officially been renamed Nintendo Cube, and the president of Nintendo of Europe has been replaced. Stephan Bole had led the division for six years and is now replaced by Luciana Pereña.
Indie soulslike Enotria: The Last Song saw its Xbox Series S|X ports indefinitely delayed due to Microsoft simply not communicating with them for months about the game’s certification process even though it’s ready for submission and already cleared on PS5. Public attention to this story has since brought an apology from Microsoft and an ongoing conversation with developer Jyamma Games to resolve the matter.
Indie developer Joe Wintergreen revealed that Steam has rejected InFlux Redux, a remake of his 2013 puzzle game InFlux with an Unreal 5 graphical overhaul, for being too identical to the original game. “Explain why this should be its own product.”
September 3rd: Sony and Firewalk Studios made a truly brutal announcement in the wake of Concord’s immediate failure: the game is going offline after just two weeks, ending sales and refunding all players while they attempt to “explore a new, different path forward” for the hero shooter. If the game returns, it will most likely become FTP. So few people bought this game that a mass refund was cheaper than keeping the servers going during a retool phase. This is yet another major blow to PlayStation’s live service ambitions after multiple projects were canceled last year, Destiny 2: The Final Shape sold poorly, and Helldivers 2 lost most of its playerbase in just six months after its massive launch. It sucks so much that the only options for Firewalk after so much hard labor and money spent are to completely bail already or to pivot to an awful model that is ethically much worse than their original plan to have only the upfront cost and no charges after.
Capcom announced that their Marvel vs. Capcom Collection and Capcom Fighting Collection 2 releases will both reach Xbox One in 2025 after initially skipping the platform. The reason this almost didn’t happen is that these retro collections are built on Capcom’s old proprietary engine MT Framework, which has mostly been replaced by the RE Engine, and Microsoft never bothered to update Xbox’s compatibility for the latest version of MT until they stepped in to resolve this PR issue.
September 4th: This year’s Xbox Games Showcase was the first sign of life for State of Decay 3 and developer Undead Labs since its reveal four years ago and after reports of troubled development, and another step forward has been reached. The studio is officially ending updates for State of Decay 2 six years after launch to finally fully put resources on the sequel. The last update will add more bugfixes and make all seasonal content permanent.
September 6th: The SAG-AFTRA union announced many new agreements with game developers on the use of generative AI as their strike remains ongoing. Most notably an agreement was reached with Tencent’s Lightspeed Studios for their game Last Sentinel, which was one of the officially struck companies/games.
The Dutch Game Garden, a 17 year old Dutch organization for public funding and incubating indie games, has announced it will close in January 2025.
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