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!
Xbox Updates: Something happened at the last minute last time, something that did make it into the previous Roundup, but its coverage was brief and it was easily overshadowed by the ensuing panic around tariffs and the cost of living crisis. I consider it fundamentally necessary to revisit this subject and discuss at greater depth.
On April 3rd, the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee declared Microsoft to be a priority boycott target after it was proven that Microsoft and the Israeli Defense Force have a $133 million contract for the extensive use of Microsoft AI and cloud technology in surveillance of and assault on Gaza. Two software engineers for Microsoft AI spoke out during Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event on April 4th in protest of Microsoft directly profiting from the genocide in Palestine and actively suppressing employee support for Palestine, even firing workers for simply holding a vigil for the victims. The two protesters were immediately fired as well. The BDS movement explicitly identified all Xbox revenue as part of the boycott, from Game Pass to all hardware, digital purchases, and microtransactions. It is necessary for Microsoft to feel the pressure to end its partnership with the IDF, and it is virtually impossible by now to engage in the Xbox ecosystem without touching the same cloud and AI tech that accelerates a genocide. The BDS committee acknowledges that some jobs require the use of Microsoft software like Teams and Word and that’s out of your control.
On April 22nd, those behind the indie tactics RPG Tenderfoot Tactics announced that they are delisting the game’s Xbox port from sale in solidarity with Palestine and BDS, and discussed the decision here with Nathan Grayson at Aftermath. The game remains available for PC and Switch, where sales have already increased in support of the decision and made up for lost revenue.
I’ve had Xbox as my primary console for over four years, with both a One X and a Series X. I’ve had Game Pass Ultimate that entire time. I own, no exaggeration, hundreds of Xbox games. I regularly and vocally endorsed the Series X until Game Pass fell in quality and the Activision acquisition underlined ethical concerns. I already knew that future Xboxes will be completely worthless, I buy physical games almost exclusively used, and I’ve been using resold keys for Game Pass for quite some time, so they were never getting all of my money, but divesting from this ecosystem as much as possible no matter what is my goal. My Game Pass will expire mid-May and I will never return, and PS5 and Switch 2 will be my primary systems for the foreseeable future. Sony unfortunately also has business with the IDF, so I will also be further minimizing my money going directly to it, buying digital indie games on Switch 2 whenever possible, only buying physical PS5 games used, never subscribing to PS Plus, and never participating in live services on Xbox or PS.
I think that everybody needs to have some lines in the sand by not supporting or limiting support for certain artists and companies, but I don’t expect anyone to have the exact same ones that I do. And I’m very well aware of the inherent limitations on our actions, the old saying about ethical consumption and capitalism, not to mention just how far reaching Microsoft or Sony are as companies. They are actively hard to completely avoid. I understand that this is my individual decision, I am not publicizing it and discussing it to shame anyone or self-aggrandize, just to demonstrate and inform. I understand other decisions and wherever your own personal compromises are in a world that inherently compromises us, just as I hope anyone else can give understanding my own limitations and compromises. Not even defense, I earnestly don’t consider my own failings here to be defensible, I don’t like that I’ve broken my Walmart boycott to secure my Switch 2, I don’t like that my News Roundup series will continue to serve somewhat as publicity for these two companies regardless of how much I criticize them and remind you of their faults.
But anyway… You know what’s going to make such a boycott even easier?
On May 1st, Xbox announced that, in response to market conditions and especially tariffs on China heavily affecting their hardware manufacturing, base first party game prices will start going up to $80 this holiday with COD, and hardware prices are raised worldwide including in the US for the first time, taking the basic disc drive Xbox Series X to $600, the basic Series S to $380, the digital Series X to $550, and the 2TB Series X to $730 within spitting distance of the PS5 Pro. Well, the PS5 Pro’s 2024 price. If it wasn’t already apparent to you, it should by now that more price increases are coming, PlayStation will definitely have at least one more price hike on top of what they already announced April 13th. The PS5 is not going to be $500 in the US forever. Ghost of Yotei is already confirmed to be $70, but Intergalactic will absolutely be $80.
$80 games will be the new standard, and we could easily see hardware and software keep going up given that this trend was already starting this generation long before Trump’s reelection. Talks of GTA6 being the first game to reach $80 base price so that other publishers could follow suit were already happening in the fall of 2024 well before the reelection. Nintendo did not set a precedent, it only bit the bullet on going first. Perhaps Shuntaro Furukawa lost a poker game with all the other gaming CEOs earlier this year. This is not a one company problem, it’s an industry problem and a global problem, the problem of unsustainable production scale, laying off veteran developers making development even harder, the redirect of revenue into CEO pockets, etc.
Alright, now here’s what other bullshit Xbox has been up to.
April 5th: Microsoft released an entity created by generative AI that was trained on Quake 2, and promoted it as a major innovation and a real gameplay experience. It’s not a game in any sense, it is irresponsible to cover as a real game or even just a demo. It is a barely interactive video vaguely and inaccurately recreating one level of the game, it is patterns mindlessly reproduced without any design, intent, curation, and especially no stability. It literally melts down and stops working so incredibly fast that they tried to hide that with a strict time limit. It requires all the same equipment you could use to actually play Quake while spending vastly more electricity and water. It is in no way a meaningful substitute for the perfectly good full-fledged and human-made Quake 2 remaster Microsoft is already selling.
April 22nd: After literal years of leaks and rumors, most recently were actual screenshots found on Virtuos’ website, their project The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was officially announced in a stand-alone presentation and shadowdrop launched for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Virtuos made the game by engineering a unique fusion of the original game’s Gamebyro and Unreal 5. I think this whole thing is pointless and inherently worse than the original, but at least playing it makes my wife happy.
April 28th: South Korean press outlet MTN reported that Xbox-Blizzard has, after a bidding war, secured a partnership with the Korean games publisher Nexon to publish and co-develop two new projects that target the Korean market: Overwatch Mobile and the previously reported Starcraft shooter. Overwatch Mobile is considered to be the next major iteration of the series and not simply a port of Overwatch 2.
Switch 2 Updates: Where did we leave off? Oh yes. The tariffs and preorders. On April 9th, the Trump administration revised its global tariffs to a flat 10% for at least the next 90 days, while leaving Mexico and Canada at 25% and increasing tariffs on China to a cartoonish 145% rate. Import shipments around the USA are significantly reduced and shipment from China has virtually halted, with Apple saying that tariffs will cost it almost a billion dollars just in the rest of this quarter. The full effects of this on the global economy and on our everyday essentials like groceries here at home haven’t completely hit yet, but they will soon and it’s incredibly terrifying. As for Nintendo, preorders in the US and Canada were able to start at midnight on April 24th without any current price increase for the Switch 2 console or games thanks to the Vietnam supply chain, but accessories that are still largely made in China became even more expensive and hard to get across the board, from $100 controllers to $40 amiibo. Preorders sold out within the first few hours that night but have seen scattered, short-lived restocks at retailers ever since. As previously mentioned, I was able to buy my Switch 2 and Mario Kart to give firsthand coverage after it launches in one month.
The question of future affordability and availability for Switch 2 remains, but a larger more existential concern has reared its ugly head after Switch 2 games finally officially went up for preorder: a vast majority of third party games use the download-required DRM Game-Key Card instead of actually putting the game on the cartridge, and in the case of EA and Activision, they’re not even bothering to go that far, they’re still using codes in boxes. Even games that previously looked like they were using real carts are using game-key cards after all, except for Cyberpunk and all Marvelous games. Sega*, Konami, and WB Games are making it even worse by not even providing upgrade paths for Switch 1 owners of Sonic X Shadow Generations, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, Suikoden Remaster, or TERF RPG. The Switch 2 has all these great modern games running perfectly well, but no way to properly own and preserve them, not to mention the problem of how quickly their large files will take up internal storage and force an expensive MicroSD Express card on you.
*A better decision from Sega is the confirmation that the new Director’s Cut content for Yakuza 0 is coming to the game on all other platforms too after a timed exclusivity period.
A closer look makes it clear that there is a specific cause to this problem rather than just the usual corporate cheapness and greed and preference for digital’s higher profit margin: these new high-speed cartridges are not only quite expensive, but their only available option is the largest and most expensive full 64GB model, which takes physical releases into a risk of taking a full loss. It’s last-gen’s 32gig cart problem magnified. Thanks to store listings, we already know that Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Switch 2 Edition is nowhere near a full 64 gigs in size, but it is nonetheless on a 64GB cartridge because there were no smaller carts provided. Suddenly it feels like Nintendo made things worse in an attempt to solve the problem with how third parties treated cartridges last generation. It calls to mind all of the complications created by the Nintendo 64’s cartridges.
There is one bright side to this issue however, that first party Nintendo does remain committed to releasing its games fully physical, which is now officially confirmed to include all Switch 2 Editions from Zelda to Prime 4. In fact, Switch 2 Edition cartridges recapture the promise of Smart Delivery by containing both versions of their games and being fully playable on both Switch 1 and Switch 2 consoles. I’m so happy to say that my advice last month no longer applies! Though of course there are still issues: it’s still true we can’t all afford to pay full price to replace our existing cartridges, it’s still true that maybe Nintendo shouldn’t still be charging full price for the eight year old three-generations-spanning Breath of the Wild, especially when its Switch 2 Edition is missing the DLC. I don’t like completely devaluing games but I do want a middle ground between that and Nintendo still refusing to do permanent discounts entirely.
That covers the biggest headlines Switch 2 has had in the past month. But there are other stories right now of course and I can’t get to all of them. Some simply don’t have a definitive conclusion yet, like the unfortunate open question of docked VRR support mentions being removed from first party websites. I feel like it’s probably still in but maybe coming as a post-launch patch, or just isn’t compatible with all possible TVs, but we’ll have to wait and see. We’ve started learning about the console’s use of DLSS, but info is still thin on the ground for now. The Split Fiction port has revealed that some Switch 2 exclusive titles can GameShare stream onto a Switch 1, so the second player doesn’t even need a Switch 2, and going a step beyond the Friend Pass Hazelight already does. Devolver Digital and Koei Tecmo have both declared Switch 2 to be their main priority platform with further unannounced projects for it in the works. More third party ports are already leaking via ratings boards before the very likely June Direct. Nintendo is suing one of those accessory makers that participated in Switch 2 leaks because they put Nintendo’s trademarked Switch 2 logo on their products without approval.
Everything Else
April 1st: CD Projekt Red dissolved subsidiary The Molasses Flood and absorbed it into existing core internal teams, less than four years after acquiring the former indie developer of games Drake Hollow and The Flame and the Flood. Cofounder Damian Isla elected to depart as a result, saying that the decision was for the best.
April 8th: What the Golf? developer Triband announced a new online PVP multiplayer project, What the Clash?, which launched May 1st for Apple Arcade.
April 9th: Singaporean laptop and game gear company Razer began pausing product sales in the US in response to tariff risks.
Disney Interactive announced, after almost two years since the original launch, that its co op metroidvania Disney Illusion Island will no longer be a Switch exclusive, it will launch for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on May 30th 2025.
Microsoft scheduled the 2025 Xbox Games Showcase for June 8th 2025 at 10AM Pacific, followed immediately by a presentation dedicated to Obsidian’s The Outer Worlds 2. Microsoft and Xbox are war profiteers from the genocide in Gaza.
April 10th: Triple I Initiative: This showcase featured many announcements, from new Vampire Survivors DLC to the reveal of the FPS VOID/BREAKER, and perhaps most notably: Six years after acclaimed indie action game Katana Zero launched, developer Askiisoft finally resurfaced with a new trailer announcing its long promised free DLC expansion is nearing completion.
In its last act before full closure, indie studio Tequila Works started auctioning off the rights to most of its creations, like Rime, Deadlight, Gylt, and several unfinished games as well. My beloved Sexy Brutale is not listed because it’s actually owned by main codeveloper Cavalier.
Bloodborne producer Teruyuki Toriyama just cofounded Sirius Studio, a new game developer focused on large console releases, years after leaving Sony Japan Studio upon its 2020 closure. Toriyama also produced Demon’s Souls and Astro Bot: Rescue Mission.
A seemingly official August 8th launch date has leaked for Take-Two and Hangar13’s Mafia: The Old Country.
Xbox announced that Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition will launch for PS5 on May 6th alongside the new Three Kingdoms DLC.
Capcom fully showcased the Elena DLC character for Street Fighter 6 and announced that she will launch June 5th, the same day as the Switch 2 port and base game/DLC bundle.
The Sega Genesis Classics library for Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack announced three new games, most notably the original Streets of Rage. The others are Super Thunder Blade and ESWAT: City Under Siege.
NetEase newly rescheduled the current gen console launch for free to play hero shooter FragPunk to April 29th.
As reported first by…the Daily Mail, the Amazon live action Tomb Raider TV series looks to be canceled after millions of dollars spent on Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s contract without a script ever delivered.
Naughty Dog figured out a way to rerelease The Last of Us yet again, and reinforced Neil Druckmann’s current public claims that The Last of Us 3 isn’t happening, with The Last of Us Complete for PS5, digitally shadowdropped and physically releasing on July 10th, featuring the PS5 editions of both Last of Us games.
April 11th: In a new presentation for Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road, Level-5 scheduled the game’s launch for August 21st 2025, announced that it will launch on Switch 2 and Xbox Series S|X on top of previously confirmed ports, and announced that its mobile ports have been canceled.
April 12th: At long, long last, Bungie premiered an extended gameplay reveal for Marathon and announced that it will launch on September 23rd 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, with full cross-play and cross-save across all platforms, at a still-unannounced pricepoint that is said to be premium but not a full $70+, and a paid battle pass on top of that. Sounds like they haven’t decided yet whether it’s 40 like Helldivers and Concord, or even more. Marathon on PC follows the new policy to no longer require a PSN account, and Bungie has also extended this courtesy to the Xbox port, which Xbox isn’t doing with the required Microsoft Account for games like Forza on PS5. Bungie is planning to explore the possibility of a Switch 2 port but, let’s be real, this game will not last long enough for that to see fruition.
April 13th: In response to inflation and tariff-induced economic trouble, Sony increased PlayStation 5 pricing in international territories yet again, affecting Europe and the UK, Middle East, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Only the base PS5 Digital Edition/disc-drive-less was affected, raising the price floor, and pricing for the standalone disc drive product was actually decreased to compensate. The PlayStation Plus subscription service also increased its price in many countries.
April 14th: Devolver Digital and My Friend Pedro creators DeadToast Entertainment announced that their new game Shotgun Cop Man will launch May 1st.
Out of the Blue and publisher Raw Fury announced that their game American Arcadia will release May 15th 2025 for Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox One/Series, after hitting PC in late 2023. Out of the Blue previously made one of my all time favorite games in Call of the Sea, but the new title was sadly not well received.
Ahead of the next series entry later this year, a native PS5/Series X port of Bendy and the Ink Machine was scheduled to launch in late spring 2025.
Former Dragon Age head writer David Gaider confirmed something I think we all kinda already knew in our hearts, that there was lots of tension between the separate Dragon Age and Mass Effect teams at Bioware, due to factors like EA’s favoritism towards Mass Effect, and some Mass Effect team members disliking fantasy elements and preferring to make shooters instead of RPGs.
April 15th: Conglomerate Gamurs Group has fired more people at its gaming subsidiaries like Twinfinite and Destructoid, leaving those websites virtually dormant, while completely shutting down and erasing PC Invasion, turning its website into a redirect to Prima Games.
Niantic fired 68 employees in the aftermath of selling all games business to Saudi Arabia and refocusing on AI-driven spatial tracking.
Larian officially released Patch 8 for Baldur’s Gate 3 and finally completed the bulk of post-launch support for the game, adding 12 new subclasses, cross-play, photo mode, Series S splitscreen, a bugfix for that damn elevator, and much, much more.
Story driven kingdom management simulator Yes, Your Grace: Snowfall was announced by developer Brave at Night to be launching for PC on May 8th 2025 with Switch and cross-gen Xbox ports still coming later this year. I want to make sure this one stands out to my readers, the original Yes Your Grace was my very first Game Pass game five years ago and I fell completely in love with it. Its management sim gameplay and richly heartfelt story of a struggling noble family intertwine perfectly.
After previously launching for PC and Switch, FTP life sim Palia was announced to be releasing for PS5 and Xbox Series S|X on May 13th alongside a new free content expansion.
Free DLC released for the RPG Eternal Strands.
April 16th: Finnish developer Makea Games announced their closure after only three years of life, laying off over 20 employees. Their sole launched title, parkour game Supermoves, underperformed and had high costs due to online and live service support, and their second game, Superstrike, has been canceled before launch. Makea’s founders are in ongoing rights negotiations for their projects, but offline play will remain and there will be advance notice if online support has to be shutdown.
Capcom announced and released a major update for the Marvel vs. Capcom collection, with equivalent patches for the other Capcom Fighting Collections coming soon. This patch supports offline versus play for all games, increased resolution options, and other quality of life features, plus additional artwork and music.
April 17th: The Russian government has charged World of Tanks developer Lesta Studio for “extremist activity” and support of Ukraine and filed to completely seize the company’s assets. World of Tanks owner Wargaming divested from Lesta at the start of the war on Ukraine and allowed it to continue developing its own splinter version of the game, which makes a lot of money that is clearly the real goal here.
In a stunning about-face from the company we all remember as untrusted, infamous, and basically exited from the industry a decade ago, a new Nikkei survey reveals that Konami is now one of the most sought after employers for new graduates in Japan in response to its successful Silent Hill and Metal Gear Solid revivals. Konami leapt from 31st place to tenth place in the list, and hopefully its workplace culture has massively improved from what we know to reward these passionate new arrivals.
After first launching for Switch and the Epic Game Store last year, World of Goo 2 has now released for PS5 and Steam as well, as of April 25th.
April 18th: Nintendo amended its lawsuit against streamer Jesse Keighin, requesting a permanent injunction and default judgment due to the accused failing to respond or appear in court since the lawsuit began last November, while also massively reducing the financial damages sought, scaling from over $150K to a total of $17,500. Keighin’s crime is copyright violation and distribution of Switch emulators, as he openly pirated and livestreamed various first party Switch releases ahead of launch over the past several years, and linked said emulators to fans. The reduction in damages is fascinating to me, maybe they actually realize that it was bad PR to put a previous pirate in permanent debt to them? Anyway, there’s another legal action to cover as well, a new subpoena to Discord regarding the hacker that targeted Game Freak last year.
April 19th: EA, Respawn, and main developer Bit Reactor fully revealed their new game during Star Wars Celebration: Star Wars Zero Company is an XCOM-like single player tactics game scheduled to launch in 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, about a mercenary team operating during the Clone Wars.
April 21st: Nintendo announced and released Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones for Game Boy Advance Classics on Nintendo Switch Online’s premium tier.
April 22nd: Devolver Digital announced that it has fired 40% of staff at its wholly owned subsidiary Nerial, which developed the Reigns series, Card Shark, and The Crush House.
Square Enix, Capcom, Taito, Bandai Namco and Sega all entered a new pledge for the dedicated archival and presentation of past game development materials going back to the 1980s, from concept art to original arcade cabinets.
April 23rd: PlayStation and Sucker Punch Productions released a stand-alone major trailer for their hotly anticipated primary game for the year, Ghost of Yotei, announcing that it will launch for PlayStation 5 consoles on October 2nd 2025, with a PC release to follow by late 2026 or early ’27. The new trailer offers more details of the story and some gameplay footage, showing the six main targets of player character Atsu’s hunt for revenge, and a promotional interview highlighted the fact that the Yotei Six can be tracked and fought in any order. It seems that the industry-wide wait for GTA6 is finally running out of patience.
Toronto-based indie developer Mighty Yell, creators of The Big Con, announced an undefined number of layoffs due to financial difficulties, while saying that the launch of their next All Systems Dance is still on track.
Mike Straw at InsiderGaming reported that Until Dawn creators Supermassive Games have canceled a Blade Runner game they started developing in 2024 for a Fall 2027 launch across current and next gen consoles. The game was planned to incorporate more real-time action gameplay alongside Supermassive’s usual narrative adventure ethos.
April 24th: Bryant Francis at GameDeveloper reported that the struggling Paradox Interactive has made its existence even more difficult and complicated by recently instituting a return to office policy. The policy immediately mandated four in-office days a week in February 2025 and will change over to a full five days by September 2025. Multiple sources for Francis say that the policy implementation has been chaotic and massively unpopular with staff, and the announcement came right after previous denials from leadership that it would happen. Local worker unions surveyed Paradox employees and found 20% already looking for a new job and 34% saying the policy will likely make them look for one, adding up to over half. The union has communicated with Paradox leadership, submitting extensive data on the benefits of remote work and basic office safety violations at Paradox headquarters, but both were ignored.
In a huge win for preservation, former Volition employees made a massive donation of development assets to the Strong National Museum of Play, thousands of game builds and documents encompassing the entire 30-year history of the Red Faction and Saints Row studio that Embracer Group murked in 2023. Even protoypes from unfinished games like a Saints Row PSP spinoff are now publicly archived.
EA announced that Madden NFL 26 will launch in August 2025 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch 2 Day 1, formally becoming a current-gen exclusive series and returning to Nintendo after a decade-plus hiatus. College Football 26 is launching in July without a Switch 2 port.
Remedy Entertainment officially scheduled the launch of their big multiplayer live service game FBC Firebreak for June 17th 2025 on PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and both consoles’ subscription services, announcing a $40 pricepoint and details of its post-launch battle passes. All gear from said free and paid battle passes are said to be permanent additions with no time-limits.
More employees at the VR division of Meta have been fired as the metaverse continues to hemorrhage money and the tech giant’s owner started to be openly right-wing, adopting policies explicitly harmful to all marginalized groups both inside the company and on its social media platforms.
The founder and CEO of Discord has stepped down after ten years and transitioned to a new position, remaining on the board and in close proximity to the new CEO Humam Sakhnini, who was previously an Activision Blizzard King executive for live service series like COD and WOW.
Facing pressure from shareholders despite a successful launch for Frostpunk 2 last year, 11 bit studios announced Frostpunk 1886, an Unreal 5 remake of the original Frostpunk scheduled to launch in 2027. The developer promises to support both games in parallel while also launching survival game The Alters sometime this year.
IO Interactive cofounder Janos Flösser announced his new studio Wombo Games and their game Raiders of Blackveil, a multiplayer title coming out in early access this summer.
April 25th: As reported at the NYT, Ziff Davis has filed a $100+ million lawsuit against OpenAI for mass copyright infringement of its publications through ChatGPT. The parent company of IGN/Digital Foundry/GI.biz/Rock Paper Shotgun/NintendoLife alleges that its works were actively and knowingly used to train the chatbot. This is individual and distinct from the many other lawsuits against OpenAI which openly admits that infringement is intrinsic to its technology but claims it falls under fair use definition, which it shouldn’t.
As reported at Bloomberg, in the midst of CEO William Ding abruptly plunging the company into chaos by abandoning much of its first party development pipeline so quickly after it was established, several major executives have left NetEase in March and April. Departures include publishing lead Matthew Weissenger, marketing lead Matthew Liu, and most notably Simon Zhu, president of global investments and partnerships, the guy who connected NetEase with Marvel Snap dev Second Dinner and led its international expansion to begin with.
Intel confirmed a previous report that it will begin laying off 20% of employees, over 20,000 people which could include a dear friend of mine, during the course of this year.
April 27th: Sandfall Interactive announced that their just launched debut game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has already sold over 1 million copies without including Game Pass playerbase inflation.
April 29th: In yet another massively harmful cost-cutting that should be hitting the top of the company instead of the bottom, Electronic Arts was reported by Jason Schreier at Bloomberg and Rebekah Valentine at IGN to be firing several hundred employees, including roughly 100 at its star studio Respawn where another very early project, a Titanfall extraction shooter spinoff, has been canceled. Other departments heavily targeted in these layoffs were customer service and marketing. Once again, the vast majority of the losses “motivating” this are from EA Sports FC 25 and Apex Legends and not from Dragon Age. One laid off Respawn employee was the writer for the most recently revealed Apex Legends character. EA subsidiary Codemasters also fired more employees and made more cuts to its suite of racing series, announcing that they will end support for 2023’s EA Sports WRC and ending all current development for offroad/rally racing games like WRC and Dirt.
Basically the best respected third party controller company in the business, 8bitDo announced that it is ending all new shipping into the US due to the tariffs on China. Only stock already stored in the US will be available to purchase for the foreseeable future.
Sony and developer Ultzero Games have delayed the release of the recently rerevealed action game Lost Soul Aside, pushing it from May to August 29th 2025 for further polish.
April 30th: Four years after the original Epic Games v. Apple trial, which was upheld by both Appeals Court and the Supreme Court, the whole case has been revised because Apple both willfully violated the anti-steering and alternative payment injunctions of the original ruling and lied under oath about said violations. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers has revised the previous gentle restrictions on appstore policies into a sweeping change to appstore policy, an indictment of Apple’s anticompetitive and defiant behavior, and even recommended that Apple be investigated for criminal contempt. The Judge has now ruled effective immediately that Apple is banned from imposing any off-app fees and imposing any restrictions on third party and off-app actions. Apple has reluctantly began to comply with the ruling by updating Appstore guidelines while filing to appeal it in the meantime. Tim Sweeney, who still sucks, says that if this new policy of secure unobstructed workarounds for Apple’s steep fee becomes global and permanent, Epic Games’ lawsuit against Apple will end for good.
This is a huge win for smaller creators and mobile developers whose margins are severely impacted by Apple’s for-profit fees. For one example of how this changes things, this means that Patreon is now working around the extra 30% fee and mandatory subscription billing that Apple was forcing. I was in the position of having to either pay that fee on every new subscriber myself or charge extra to new subscribers to cover it.
Three core team members from Nier Automata, including creator and producer Yoko Taro, announced in a Famitsu interview that they are working together again on a major new unannounced project. This being revealed in the midst of Square Enix aggressively hyping up its Nier 15th anniversary events and other developments makes it seem possible that Nier 3 could be revealed to be in development at last after Automata became a surprise hit eight years ago.
The dedicated State of Play presentation for Borderlands 4 premiered alongside the announcement that the game’s launch date was being un-delayed by roughly two weeks, moving from September 23rd to September 12th 2025 just after Marathon was announced for the former date. The Switch 2 port is currently understood to be coming in 2025 but not day and date with the initial launch.
Saber Interactive began delisting asymmetric horror title Evil Dead: The Game from the PlayStation Store and Epic Games Store, and only formally announced that it was being completely delisted after people already noticing this. It has since been removed from Steam as well. Servers will be kept up for right now to allow existing owners to keep playing.
Two indie point and click mystery adventures had their launch dates announced: Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer will hit PC on May 20th 2025, while Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping is coming May 22nd for PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox One/Series. The first Duck Detective is also newly hitting PS5 on the same day.
Yacht Club Games announced that Shovel Knight Dig will come to cross-gen Xbox and PS consoles on May 15th 2025 alongside its final content update.
All of the first seven Leisure Suit Larry games were abruptly delisted from Steam by the series’ owner Assemble Entertainment. This was soon discovered to be due to EA now holding the license to the older titles after buying Codemasters and ending said license.
While giving an update on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown’s sales/playerbase, Ubisoft social media declared “You’ve revived the legend. The Prince is back…and he’s just warming up.” The company appears to be trying to suggest that a sequel to the acclaimed metroidvania is still possible after all the bad PR surrounding the development team disbanding. If it’s just an attempt to promote other Prince of Persia games like the long gestating Sands of Time Remake or The Rogue Prince of Persia, that is some spectacularly bad messaging.
May 1st: Parent company Fandom began engaging in severe editorial overreach against Giant Bomb in late April, which has quickly culminated in the beloved website losing virtually all of its current staff starting with team leaders Dan Ryckert and Jeff Grubb. Fandom indefinitely halted Giant Bomb livestreams and attempted to institute family friendly brand guidelines that were completely divorced from the history and spirit of Giant Bomb.
Vox Media sold Polygon to Valnet, the ScreenRant parent company/notorious clickbait content farm, and fired a vast majority of staff including industry luminaries like Chris Plante, Nicole Carpenter, Ana Diaz, Patrick Gill, Michael McWhertor, and more. Vox executives were already stonewalling their union contract negotiations before they further undermined the union by taking out Polygon’s entire union membership and bargaining unit through these layoffs, and salted the wound by announcing it on May Day. Everyone coming out of this horrible situation has made it perfectly clear that Polygon was absolutely successful, it still had millions of views per month and great ad revenue, it was more valuable than anything else in Vox’s portfolio, and it was in a plum position to cover the imminent biggest stories of the generation, the Switch 2 and GTA6 launches. The only thing that killed it is the godforsaken infinite growth model, horrifically bad leadership at Vox, and vicious union-busting.
Valnet’s head of mergers and acquisitions did his first interview about buying Polygon, where he refused to address any serious concerns about the merger, from hiring a new EIC and whether any new staff will be full-time, to never communicating with Polygon’s EIC or staff during negotiations with Vox, and even responding to a question about the widespread documentation of Valnet’s worker exploitation by pointing to the company’s defamation lawsuit against TheWrap for reporting it.
This is virtually the last nail in the coffin for institution-backed games journalism, but we all can and should put more into the worker-first model by folks like Aftermath, Second Wind, Remap, and much more.
Polygon and Giant Bomb were both places I used to dream about working for, and did try to apply for. I’m going to throw in a couple shoutouts to some of my favorite works from them in the coming months, starting with Nicole Carpenter’s union zine.
The launch of a new physical games distribution label is being teased by Lost in Cult, the UK-based publisher of books about the making of indie games like Outer Wilds and Citizen Sleeper, and DoesItPlay?, a dedicated space for documenting the details and completeness of physical game releases.
May 2nd: Rockstar finally officially announced that Grand Theft Auto 6 is scheduled to launch on May 26th 2026. Jason Schreier had been preparing us for this six month delay from its previous late fall 2025 window, saying at the start of the year and again today that developers weren’t confident in making it this year and that minimizing crunch is a main reason for delaying into 2026. Publishers can now finally fully plan around GTA’s launch date and will likely be scrambling to prioritize holiday 2025 and Q1 2026 at the expense of Spring 2026. I’m going to confidently make a prediction that you might question: I predict that GTA6 will be announced for Switch 2 this year, and that port will launch faster than the inevitable late PC port, but not day and date with PS5 and Xbox. I think Rockstar needs to compensate for the shrinking Xbox install base and is invested in its partnership with Nintendo after the success of GTA Trilogy and Red Dead Redemption on Switch 1.
Indie developer Clapperheads announced that their survival horror game Zoochosis will come to PS4 and PS5 after launching on PC last year.
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