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!
October 6th: Publisher Funcom announced that it was engaging in company wide layoffs and shuttering subsidiary developer The Outsiders only three years after acquiring the studio behind modestly successful rhythm shooter Metal Hellsinger.
Yacht Club Games suddenly announced that Mina the Hollower will be delayed on all platforms, explaining that it is a short-term polish and QOL focused delay for a game that is all but finished and discussing that further in a Bloomberg piece by Jason Schreier. A date cannot be determined just yet but expect the game in Q1 2026 at the very latest.
October 8th: Stephen Totilo exclusively reported that Ubisoft canceled an early in development major Assassins’ Creed game in 2024 over concerns for the subject matter: the game followed a Black Assassin battling the Klan and other reactionary forces in Reconstruction-era America. Officially, the cancelation was in response to the US’ current political climate and the racist backlash to Assassins Creed Shadows. The game’s development team was very passionate about the project and very unhappy about the decision, and my heartfelt empathy goes out to them. The reasoning is asinine when AC Shadows was ultimately a hit and this game wouldn’t even be ready to launch for many years of further political shifts. But at the same time we all know what it looks like when Ubisoft handles such subject matter, it looks like every Far Cry or Watch Dogs or AC game that watered down politically charged topics into nothing because Ubi leadership is somewhere between amoral and outright regressive.
Sega and the International Olympic Committee have signed a new multi year licensing partnership starting in 2026 which exclusively focuses on Sonic merchandising, after their original partnership ended in 2020 and ended the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics video game series.
October 9th: Heart Machine announced that their Hyper Light Drifter successor Hyper Light Breaker is ending development after poor performance since its January early access release. The studio will be laying off some staff in the aftermath, and still has their Metroidvania Possessor(s) launching in November. By the end of October, the studio had abruptly fired even more people.
October 10th: An open letter has been written and published by 93 current and former employees of Build a Rocket Boy, the studio which launched the failed shooter MindsEye this summer in disastrous condition. Build a Rocket Boy is led by Leslie Benzies, who was President of Rockstar North for nearly 20 years, working on every Grand Theft Auto game between 2001’s GTA3 and 2013’s GTA5 before leaving in 2016. The letter directly addresses Benzies and other studio leadership for terrible working conditions and mismanaged, potentially illegal layoffs of over 250 devs. Developers received poor communication and were forced to work mandatory overtime or crunch for four months up to launch, damaging them beyond burnout to the point of outright illness, followed by being punished for bad leadership with chaotically implemented mass layoffs that ignored proper procedure. The Independent Workers of Great Britain labor union is representing these former employees in legal action over the mismanaged layoffs.
October 12th: Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game was announced to be coming to PC, Switch 2, PS4/5, and Xbox Series S|X in Summer 2026, a long requested release for the beloved franchise ahead of its new movie and TV series.
October 13th: The hacker that targeted Game Freak last year returned alongside Legends Z-A’s launch to release the rest of the data he stole, revealing major new information about the next several years of Pokémon releases, including Z-A’s DLC, Generation 10, Legends 3, and beyond, based on documents from between 2020 and 2024.
As I’ve previously reported from last year’s leaks, Pokémon’s 10th generation is scheduled to launch in Holiday 2026 as Pokémon Wind and Pokémon Waves, after both Legends Z-A and Gen 10 were delayed a full year in response to the reception of Scarlet and Violet. The mainline generations are now fully on a four-year cycle with Gen 11 confirmed to be scheduled for Holiday 2030. The Legends games are on a three year cycle with Legends 3 scheduled to launch in 2028. A major side game is also tentatively scheduled for 2029. Gen 10 was pitched from the start as a Switch 2 exclusive and the previously seen Switch 1 data was only because they were prototyping the game before they had Switch 2 devkits.
Legends 3 is planned to be set in the distant past of the Galar/United Kingdom region from Gen 8, 1000 years ago (which is still earlier than the Darkest Day from the lore), and has a very unique central mechanic of using larger swarms of Pokémon with single abilities, up to at least 30, against kaiju/Dynamax boss monsters; that is to say, it is Pikmin-like. Developing the very first Gigamax Pokéball will be a main storyline. The other side game is an Unreal 5 MMO in very early development whose world would incorporate all four of the original Japanese regions, Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, and Sinnoh, plus Kitakami from the Gen 9 DLC. For a more imminent side game, Pokémon Pokopia is confirmed to be a live service with ongoing post-launch paid DLCs, and was originally a Switch 1 game that became Switch 2 exclusive.
Finally, a huge deep dive on Generation 10, Wind and Waves. It was pitched from the start to be designed around taking advantage of the Switch 2 hardware and a new engine designed to avoid the technical issues of Scarlet and Violet, and a lot of ambitious mechanics are planned to be introduced as a result. While we can never be completely certain about what the final game will be like, and it is a lot of ideas for one game, we do know two things: that the most recent files leaked are from Spring 2024, well into the middle of development for this game, and that Game Freak had specifically started doing testing and prototyping earlier in its production cycles in order to perfect implementation and avoid having to cut features.
Pokémon Wind and Waves is set on a tropical island archipelago like Gen 7, but with a new inspiration of Southeast Asia, primarily Indonesia and Malaysia. Canada, Scandinavia, California, and Greece were also considered very early on, but among other concerns, Game Freak explicitly wants to avoid “Euro Fatigue.” Like Scarlet and Violet, the archipelago is a large scale non linear open world, now consisting of large main story islands that were designed from scratch and also smaller procedurally generated islands used for side activities including multiplayer raids. Surf and Dive are main early abilities in the game as Surf is needed to traverse the open ocean and Dive is used for full real time underwater exploration a la Horizon Forbidden West.
The new Z-Move/Terastal type of ability is based on expanded dynamic weather conditions, and Weather/Climate is a main theme of the game, with the villains using a weather controlling machine for aggressive land development and ultimately colonizing/destroying the entire ecosystem and killing all Pokémon. You are supposed to be able to ride, pet, and hug as many different Pokémon as possible at any time in the open world, instead of a small selection of rideables or an isolated space for interaction like PokéMonAmie or the camps in Gens 8 and 9. There are survival mechanics out in the jungle. The nonlinearity has been expanded upon further from Scarlet and Violet, from early on you can beeline straight to the Champion to challenge them, a la going directly to Ganon in Breath of the Wild. The game was at least initially planned to have multiple endings based on how you handle the gyms, Legendaries, and the villains.
And lastly, the main Legendary Pokémon of the game is the Seed Pokémon, a baby Pokémon retrieved from a special island and which has “infinite” evolutionary forms, with each evolution being procedurally generated, somewhat randomized and somewhat dynamically based on your decisions as a player, how you treat your Pokémon, how you navigate the world, etc. The Seed Pokémon’s island has one of two Legendary Guardians, the actual cover art Pokémon, and this island too has procedural/randomized elements.
Broader behind the scenes info includes the fact that a Legends Johto game was pitched and then scrapped, seemingly because it was too similar to Arceus, and most notably there are plans for implementing voice acting at long last, just no clear indication for which game it’ll be introduced. Also there are pages that essentially just say things like “Nintendo told us not to use GenAI” and “We don’t want another guest song like that Ed Sheeran one.” Lastly, there have been some misconceptions and mistranslations that have emerged from cursory looks at the leaked documents, and I want to directly set the record straight on the biggest one: people have gotten the impression that Wind and Waves’ entire budget is $20 million, when in fact that was its pre-production budget, the most recent documents indicate that its costs have already surpassed $60 million with two more years of production and marketing costs left to account for, it is decidedly in the normal AAA range, especially for Japan where budgets are lower overall compared to the US due to cost of living differences.
October 14th: Longtime Assassins Creed franchise lead and producer Marc Alexis Coté announced that he has left Ubisoft after he declined to transfer over to the new Tencent/Vantage division that AC falls under. He then further clarified the events: Ubisoft had forcefully demoted him and given over the franchise director position to someone from Tencent, and he had no interest in the lower role.
October 15th: Metroid Dread developer Mercury Steam is once again the subject to an extensive exposé about the studio’s bad working conditions, as the leadership’s mistreatment has only significantly worsened this past year in the lead up to and aftermath of their new game Blades of Fire having an unsuccessful launch in May. A new “Irregular Workday Distribution” model was introduced to make crunch/overtime essentially mandatory with nine to ten hours of work every single day with no PTO or remote options, and circumventing legal standards for recording and agreeing to overtime in the process. Intentionally poor communication around the decision only made it worse by creating chaos, keeping workers uninformed of what choice they had in the matter. Some employees and departments were given favoritism and allowed to leave early without letting know those left behind that they couldn’t access their colleagues for needed information or help.
Efforts to organize, unionize, and self advocate began, but they were all thoroughly punished. One employee was fired in retaliation for requesting paternal leave, another was fired for vocally resisting the new office policies. Larger layoffs occurred in August when 18 “problem workers” who had advocated for themselves and their coworkers were fired after being intentionally mismanaged and sabotaged. And then, communications were suddenly restricted and audited in September, surveilling all messaging and deleting anything not strictly related to work, dispersing these organization efforts and instilling fear. At the end of September, the CSVI union stepped in to expose and denounce Mercury Steam leadership’s behavior. The virtually mandatory crunch continues unabated as of now without any additional compensation or reward.
Almost 400 employees at Blizzard who help maintain the Battle.net platform have now successfully unionized together, getting their vote and recognition from Microsoft right before the labor neutrality contract that was signed back in 2022 reached its expiration date. One member at the newest union said that layoffs and return to office will be priority subjects in contract negotiations. It was later revealed that Blizzard’s Hearthstone and Warcraft Rumble development teams have also unionized just under the wire.
Last year’s instant cult classic adventure game 1000xResist was announced to be releasing for PS5 and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate on November 4th 2025, after previously hitting PC and Switch.
Chucklefish delayed its life sim Witchbrook to 2026 after announcing it in 2018 and rerevealing it earlier this year.
Several announcements came from the latest IGN Fan Fest: Warhammer 40K CRPG Rogue Trader was announced to be coming soon to Switch 2 by Owlcat. Skybound and Nice World announced that Goodnight Universe will launch on November 11th 2025 for PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Squirrel with a Gun was announced to be releasing for Switch 2 on November 18th.
October 16th: Tomonobu Itagaki, the controversial creator of the Dead or Alive fighting games and 3D Ninja Gaiden reboot, has passed away at the age of 58.
A new punchline emerged colliding two of the industry’s single worst threads, as David Cage announced that Quantic Dream is developing a free to play live service multiplayer action game alongside the lost-gestating Star Wars game at the toxic studio. Spellcasters Chronicles is scheduled to have its first closed beta test before the end of the year.
EA announced that Battlefield 6 has lived up to its lofty expectations to the tune of over 7 million copies sold in its launch weekend, in what will likely be its last major release as a publicly trader publisher before it consolidates with the Saudi Crown and US right wing. Battlefield 6’s separate sister game/dedicated FTP battle royale mode has also now been officially unveiled and launched October 28th.
October 20th: Some actual hard evidence emerged for one of the widely rumored next Resident Evil Remakes, as actor Jon McLaren publicly listed “Project Chamber at Beyond Capture Studios” as an upcoming AAA project: the title is understood to be a reference to Resident Evil 0’s Rebecca Chambers, and the studio in question is Capcom’s main motion capture partner ever since it cut ties with Reuben Langdon and his Just Cause Productions. This information was discussed in a larger report claiming that Resident Evil Code Veronica Remake will launch in 2027 and Resident Evil 0 Remake will launch in 2028.
A major Amazon server outage affected large swaths of hardware and software, from “smart beds” to Fortnite and Roblox. Once again, online infrastructure should not be monopolized and centralized, nor should it be integrated where it doesn’t belong.
October 21st: Sarah Needleman at Business Insider wrote a behind the scenes exposé on Electronic Arts’ efforts to institute generative AI at every level of the company for all of its nearly 15,000 employees. Anonymous staffers testify that their workloads have worsened because they’re being pressured to use a proprietary chatbot that inflicts hallucinations into their code that need to be corrected. One senior QA dev from Respawn who was laid off earlier this year personally experienced the phenomenon of training an AI before being replaced by it.
Sega and Rovio announced that 36 employees including senior staff are being laid off after their project, Angry Birds Dream Blast, recently underperformed.
Thirsty Suitors developer Outerloop Games announced that they are laying off six staff ahead of their next game’s 2026 launch after dealing with tariffs, a project cancelation, and unsuccessful project pitches.
Marcus Lehto spoke out on Battlefield 6 failing to credit him and some of his team members who did early development on the game at EA subsidiary Ridgeline Games, which was formed to start and lead development on the FPS before being closed last year.
October 22nd: Ubisoft announced that it will layoff up to 60 people at subsidiary developer RedLynx and pivot the team to focus on mobile games, despite acclaimed work on the Trials motorcycle games and the Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 port. Ubisoft also sent a request for “voluntary layoffs” to Massive Entertainment, the main dev team for The Division, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and Star Wars Outlaws.
The infamous content mill parent company Valnet enacted mass layoffs at subsidiary outlet TheGamer with entire teams fired and shuttered, as revealed by now former employees on social media.
Remedy CEO Tero Virtala announced that he was stepping down effective immediately after a nine year tenure and in the wake of the financial failure of Control live service FPS spinoff FBC Firebreak. The company announced that it had taken a $19 million operating loss this past quarter with the vast majority of that directly coming from FBC Firebreak, and as a result a bulk of development resources originally allocated for the live service title have been moved over to Remedy’s other projects like Control 2 and the Max Payne Remakes.
Tribute Games and Dotemu announced that their beatemup Marvel Cosmic Invasion will launch December 2nd on all platforms.
Nintendo unexpectedly announced a free content update for Pikmin 4 coming to Switch in November 2025, featuring Decor Pikmin cosmetics and Pikmin Bloom integration, a new photo mode, and a toggle for decreasing or increasing the aggression levels of enemy creatures.
October 23: Alongside crunch/sexual harassment issues and the already infamous Subnautica legal battle, PUBG owners Krafton have stepped in it yet again with a press release declaring an “AI-first” strategy, intending to comprehensively integrate generative AI into its development pipeline and workplace infrastructure and spend roughly $70 million on AI-focused hardware.
After several leaks and me personally hearing about the port back in Fall 2024, Ubisoft finally officially announced Assassin’s Creed Shadows launching for Switch 2 on December 2nd 2025 for $60. The Claws of Awaji expansion that just launched in mid-September will arrive in early 2026. Cross-save and touchscreen support are included. This was part of a larger roadmap presentation.
Microsoft and Bethesda’s Fallout Day presentation featured two major announcements, Fallout 4: Anniversary Edition and Fallout 76: Burning Springs. Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition is the game’s latest rerelease coming in time for its tenth anniversary, in the style of Skyrim Anniversary Edition, where the engine actively gets updated to the latest version instead of just upres-ing the original graphics, all previous major DLC is included, many Creation Club items are newly included, and Creation Club is updated to its current Creations edition used for Starfield. Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition releases November 10th for existing platforms and will launch on Switch 2 in 2026. The Switch 2 port is confirmed to have all DLC and the Creation Club additions. Fallout 76’s new Burning Springs expansion will take place in Ohio, feature Walton Goggins reprising his TV show role, and launch on December 2nd 2025. Native PS5 and Series X versions of Fallout 76 will also release in Early 2026.
I do not endorse Microsoft products like the Fallout 4 rerelease or Halo Remake, this company continues to be soaked in the blood of Palestine as Israel ceaselessly violates the ceasefire and continues genocide unimpeded.
Atari and Nightdive Studios announced that the System Shock Remake will launch on Switch and Switch 2 in late 2025 with a complete physical edition for both consoles. Gyro and Mouse-con support are included.
The Galaxies Showcase featured many indie announcements, including Fumi Games’ Mouse: PI for Hire finally getting its launch date: March 19th 2026, on all cross-gen platforms now including Switch 2.
The Pokémon Company announced that Pokémon Legends Z-A sold over 5.8 million copies total in its first week, with the Switch and Switch 2 split being roughly 50-50.
Bandai Namco announced that their Switch 2 port of Elden Ring Tarnished Edition has been delayed to 2026 for further polish.
Kirby Air Riders Direct: The feature-length second and final presentation by Masahiro Sakurai for his upcoming Kirby Air Riders, the Twisted Metal to Mario Kart’s Forza Horizon, offered a suite of information. For the best and most complete coverage of this showcase, there’s no option like my best friend and colleague Wolfman Jew’s article right here, but I’ll do my best in more truncated fashion. New riders, new machines to ride, new copy abilities, and new courses were of course announced in this Direct, including remakes of every single course from the original Kirby Air Ride. Most importantly, two more main modes were newly announced to be included alongside the previously confirmed Air Ride and City Trial:
Top Ride returns as the third and final mode from the Gamecube predecessor, a streamlined take on the main racing mode where you traverse smaller courses from a top-down point of view. The game’s Story Mode as teased in the ending cinematic from the first Direct has been officially revealed as Road Trip, which offers roguelike sequences of racing courses and challenges linked together by expensive pre-rendered cutscenes. Lastly, the game will have two online multiplayer stress tests ahead of launch, and it is confirmed to have no further DLC or sequels planned, it will be complete at launch as the entire vision for rebooting Kirby Air Ride.
October 24th: At the Halo World Championships, what was first leaked by Tom Warren in June 2024 has finally been officially announced, long after anyone could be surprised by it: Halo: Campaign Evolved, an Unreal 5 remake of the series’ debut game, will launch in 2026 for the series’ 25th anniversary, on not only PC and Xbox Series S|X, but PlayStation 5 as well, and Microsoft emphasized the Halo on PlayStation part of the reveal with merch and the explicit statement that Halo will continue being on PlayStation going forward. What would’ve felt like an earth shattering development some time ago has been diluted by Microsoft’s overall brand degradation and drip feeding of first party multiplatform releases.
It doesn’t help how underwhelming the product itself is: only the first game’s campaign, no* competitive multiplayer, no other games covered, in an engine that hampers performance and drains away much of the series’ visual style, even more so than 343’s trilogy. Its only distinguishing factors is having splitscreen co op again after Infinite dropped it, three new prologue levels of dubious quality, and some QOL additions to some of the game’s less well regarded design choices like the Library level. Reportedly, a Master Chief Collection port was in advanced development before it was canceled in favor of this. That would obviously be a much more compelling offering and a more effective statement piece, but we don’t exactly want to be more likely to buy a Microsoft game anyway in the wake of Microsoft’s continued genocide profiteering.
*There is reportedly a separate FTP competitive multiplayer Halo project in development. There are also already reports of campaign remakes for Halo 2 and Halo 3.
Speaking of Halo, the Trump administration’s DHS is once again using gamer memes to deeply evil and horrific ends, with multiple images and taglines from Halo used as anti-immigrant rhetoric. Many that have worked on Halo or recently worked with Xbox are disgusted not only by the ads but by Microsoft not doing anything to stop it, with a lead designer of indie game Pacific Drive calling for people to boycott the game’s Xbox/Game Pass release.
And speaking of Microsoft, Jason Schreier’s latest Bloomberg report provided helpful details elaborating on what we all here already broadly understood: that the freefall collapse of Xbox Game Studios was exacerbated by acquiring Activision Blizzard King two years ago for an eye-watering $70 billion, as it prompted Microsoft to institute an exorbitantly high and strict 30% profit margin mandate at Xbox. (Schreier clarifies that 17-22% is standard for AAA game publishing. PlayStation had 16% earlier this year.) Microsoft leadership has started talking more openly about future Xbox hardware, and has now essentially admitted that it will be more PC-like and more exorbitantly expensive than ever, which also fits into this broader problem/strategy.
Netflix shut down another internally owned game developer, this time the studio Boss Fight Entertainment, those behind that asinine looking Squid Game Fall Guys clone. The battle royale has proven to be popular, and the streaming giant keeps hyping up its gaming division to shareholders while downsizing it in the same breath.
Apple has once again lost a major antitrust lawsuit over its appstore policies, with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal ruling that Apple used its power to overcharge customers and businesses, leaving the tech corp liable to paying up to £1.5 billion in damages, which will be decided separately soon.
Wube Software announced a free native Switch 2 upgrade for their hit indie management sim Factorio, scheduled to launch “as soon as possible” with a current December 2025 target. It will feature Mouse-con support, 4K resolution, handheld VRR support, and enhancements to visuals, loadtimes, and base sizes. After skipping Switch 1, the game’s 2024 Space Age expansion will arrive on Switch 2 alongside this Switch 2 Edition.
October 27th: Edia, another retro holdings company trying to make a space for itself in the games industry, announced that it will rerelease all three of the Battle Arena Toshinden PS1 fighting games on current hardware, commemorating the role the games played in early PlayStation history.
October 28th: Amazon announced that it was laying off 14,000 employees including leaders and members of its gaming division, the latter of which also included officially ending support for the MMO New World, which saw some success at launch in 2021 but will now likely shut down its servers after the current courtesy period of 2026. MMOs and AAA development in general are understood to be deprioritized now, with a Lord of the Rings MMO now reported to be canceled. Prime Gaming’s now former VP discussed these events on LinkedIn where he, and I do think this is a shock to virtually everyone outside Amazon itself, said that they were trying to directly compete with Steam as a PC gaming storefront and not just subscription services like Game Pass.
Indie developer Simogo had a 15th anniversary presentation which revealed their Simogo Legacy Collection and upcoming Switch 2 ports of Sayonara Wild Hearts and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, coming early 2026. Simogo Legacy Collection is coming to PC and Switch/2 on December 2nd 2025, it features their first seven earlier games: Kosmo Spin, Bumpy Road, Beat Sneak Bandit, Year Walk, Device 6, Sailor’s Dream, and SPL-T.
Netflix and Don’t Nod announced that they have partnered for a new story-driven Netflix-exclusive game based on a major preexisting IP. For the studio’s sake and given Netflix’s track record, I hope Netflix paid upfront in cash.
October 29th: The latest Limited Run Games LRG3 showcase announced many more new indie and retro physical releases, which you can see here. This includes Capcom’s Arcade Stadium and Onimusha 2 remaster, Fear Effect 2, and Ubisoft’s Valiant Hearts sequel.
As part of opening preorders for Resident Evil Requiem, Capcom announced that the game will have a custom Switch 2 Pro Controller, an Amiibo based on Grace coming next summer, Fortnite cosmetics, and a $90 bundle of RE7, RE8, and RE9 for Switch 2. A dedicated presentation for the game will premiere in early 2026.
Nintendo released Luigi’s Mansion for the Gamecube Classics collection on Nintendo Switch Online. Earlier in the month, Nintendo also added new SNES games to the base NSO tier, including the original Bubsy.
October 30: Nintendo announced both a Switch 2 Edition and a cross-gen free content update for Animal Crossing New Horizons releasing on January 15th 2026. The $5 Switch 2 upgrade includes native 4K docked resolution and 1080p handheld resolution, 12 person online multiplayer, and integration for mouse controls, the console microphone, and the camera accessory. The free update includes increased storage, bulk crafting, Mr. Resetti’s Reset Service for your island, expanded support for Dream Islands with multiple fully customizable islands, DLC items from Lego and Nintendo which include being able to play NSO games (NES and Game Boy) inside of the game much like the original Animal Crossing, and a new resort hotel on your main island’s pier, which works like a streamlined free version of the Happy Home Paradise paid DLC.
October 31st: Jason Schreier has reported appalling news out of the allegedly cleaned up GTA6 developer Rockstar: the studio fired dozens of employees, between 30 and 40, on Thursday October 30th, and every single one of them were actively attempting to organize an office union. Rockstar claims they were all fired for misconduct and that the union connection is a coincidence. Simultaneous, exponential, international misconduct.
November 1st: A campaign has emerged calling for the removal of actor Teruyuki Kagawa from Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku’s upcoming Yakuza Kiwami 3, who took over voicing and mocapping one of the main villains for the remake and is now known to have confessed to sexual harassment of multiple women after photographic evidence emerged. The backlash is motivated not only for general objection to his behavior but specifically the way it undercuts how these games have previously and directly criticized sexual violence.
Thank you to everyone for your support over the years, in all its forms. I am incredibly grateful for you, all of you, for your enthusiasm, kindness, inspiration, and generosity. I will no longer be asking for your financial support, only for your shining presence in my comments. I am proud to say that this train can keep right on rolling!