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!
March 24th: Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney announced that his company is firing over 1000 people, pointing to their increasing operating loss that I first pointed out years ago, but redirecting the blame for that loss away from his own poor leadership, away from his lengthy and costly legal wars with other tech giants, away from his unsuccessful Epic Games Store, insisting that it’s definitely not related to his investment in AI despite Sora getting shutdown at the exact same time. No, it’s totally just that fewer people are playing Fortnite. Epic is also cutting some of Fortnite’s less popular game modes, delisting small games it owns, and increasing the price of V-bucks and reducing rewards. Many senior engineers revealed that they were targeted in these layoffs due to their higher salaries despite the greater cost their loss will have on the quality of the product, even people who were big enough “true believers” in the company to work while sick and engage with the fan community. They even fired a programmer who needed his health insurance through work to receive treatment for terminal brain cancer. By many accounts, this tumult at Epic is dovetailing into leaning harder on the massive partnership began with Disney over two years ago, which is now rumored to be leading towards an eventual buyout. In the meantime, the companies are planning to launch a Disney-themed crossover extraction shooter by the end of 2026.
March 25th: After Nintendo opened preorders for Yoshi and the Mysterious Book on March 10th for all regions except North America, it was clear something was up, especially since the game had lower than average pricing. On March 25th, we got our update, one which inspired a lot of concern and speculation: Nintendo officially announced that first party Switch 2 exclusives going forward, starting with Yoshi’s launch on May 21st, will have a price split between digital and physical editions as had already been the case in other regions. Yoshi costs $60 digitally and $70 physically. Nintendo was very explicit that these pricing splits only apply to software launching going forward, because changing Mario Tennis Fever to $60 now would be unfair to anyone who already bought it at $70.
We’ve known for a long time that physical releases do actively cost more to produce than digital releases due to manufacturing costs, shipping costs, and sharing revenue with retailers, and that’s especially true for Nintendo’s expensive proprietary cartridges, but game publishers in the US have been reluctant to act this directly on this issue out of concern for alienating retail partners. Illustrating that problem quite elegantly, WalMart and Amazon have already started discounting Switch 2 game preorders to price match. It’s frustrating to be in this position as both a working class retail worker and a physical games enthusiast, but on the bright side, people imagined a far worse version of this situation than the reality of it?
Yes, a common interpretation of this announcement on the day it occurred was that physical games were going up in price rather than their digital copies’ prices were going down, even though we’ve obviously seen $70 be the main standard for Switch 2 games so far. Some suggested that Yoshi would be the only game to be this cheap, every forthcoming game would be $70/$80 or even $80/$90. Nintendo quickly responded to explicitly say, “The cost of physical games is not going up,” it’s a digital discount instead, and that was proven to be genuine by several announcements between then and now. The next two first party Switch 2 games to go up for preorder were Splatoon Raiders and Star Fox, and both of those games are $50 digitally, $60 physically. Nintendo is very much going cheaper where possible in order to sell more copies, realizing that many games simply can’t sell widely at $70, it still loses more than it gains. Nintendo has always used price variability with Switch games, we saw WarioWare at $50, Everybody 1-2 Switch at $30, but now that initiative has been taken to an aggressive new stage, and it’s clear why.
This Roundup has taken long enough to produce that Nintendo had its earnings release on May 8th before I could publish, giving a lot more extra info and context. Mario Tennis Fever failed to reach 1 million copies sold in its debut quarter, unlike all three Switch 1 Mario Sports games, and the reasons why are clear: like many current-gen games, it’s not compelling enough to the public to sell at the $70 pricetag. Pokopia can sell well at $70 because it’s truly new and exciting; Mario Kart World is distinct enough from its direct predecessor Mario Kart 8 to justify buying both; an iterative Mario Tennis game fails to achieve either of those qualities. And there’s another cause of this desperation to sell more games faster, that the Switch 2’s established successes like Mario Kart and Bananza started slowing way down way faster than Switch 1’s blockbusters did.
March 26th: Jason Schreier reported that PlayStation has shut down another exclusive external partner studio, Dark Outlaw Games, which was itself formed from the ashes of the exact same people’s previous development studio Deviation Games, in the world’s stupidest shell game.
An Xbox Partner Preview showcase featured such announcements as a full detailing of RGG’s Stranger Than Heaven, an Xbox port for Dispatch and Xbox/PS5 ports for Hades 2, a new Stalker 2 DLC, and more.
March 27th: Sony announced another immediate global price increase for all PlayStation hardware, with the base PS5 and its digital-only version increasing to $650/$600, and the PS5 Pro now being $900.
March 28th: The English translator for Embracer Group/Warhorse Games’ GOTY nominee Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was abruptly fired and accused the company of telling him that they plan to exclusively use genAI for language translation.
March 30th: Embracer Group and Eidos Montreal fired 124 people and sent the studio’s leader packing after 19 years in the dev’s third round of layoffs in the past 12 months. Those departing were largely part of the previously reported disastrous AAA production Wildlands, which has now been officially canceled after spending over 7 years and $100 million with nothing to show for it. Embracer punished the floundering Eidos and “rewarded” its more successful RPG dev Warhorse Studios at the same time, announcing in May that the latter will begin developing an open world Lord of the Rings RPG after it was first leaked in March.
Cult classic arcade shmup series Truxton was announced to be getting a brand new fully 3D revival from its original creator after 34 years: Truxton Extreme will be launching on July 30th for PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.
Mobile game studio Pixelberry Studios was reported to have recently fired multiple developers who are now banding together to form their own new studio, after their former employer was previously hired by a genAI-focused publisher.
Konami announced that it is increasing its employees’ salaries for the fifth consecutive year, increasing both its starting salary and its base salary.
March 31st: Stellar Blade developer Shift Up announced that they were acquiring Shinji Mikami’s new post-Tango game studio Unbound and will be publishing all future titles.
April 1st: Landfall Games, leader in the friendslop scene after developing Content Warning and publishing Peak, announced that two of their games are newly on consoles. Content Warning released for Switch 1/2, Xbox One/Series, and PS5, while Haste released for Switch 2, Xbox One/Series, and PS5.
Following from the GOG and PS4/5 releases, Capcom took the next step in freeing some of its most important archival games: the original Resident Evils 1, 2, and 3 were all released on Steam, alongside Breath of Fire 4.
April 2nd: Take-Two fired an entire internal team dedicated to gaming AI, starting with team lead Luke Dicken who started the role at Zynga before Take-Two acquired it. One team member described the event as “shifting priorities from upper management”. It should be noted that the team worked with procedural generation and machine learning first while genAI was a small priority for them, so actually worthwhile gamedev resources are still being lost here.
Embracer Group and Coffee Stain announced that their Malmo-based mobile subsidiary will be closed and all 17 workers fired.
In a new interview with Vinit Argwal, former Naughty Dog employee and director of Last of Us Online, he discussed the details behind that project’s cancelation in late 2023, saying that it had been in development for seven years and was roughly 80% complete, but ND couldn’t afford to finish it and Intergalactic at the same time.
Mechwarrior developer Piranha Games engaged in yet more layoffs, firing almost 30% of staff.
April 3rd: Undead Labs and Microsoft showed new life for the long gestating State of Decay 3, announcing that public alpha playtests for the game will start very soon. Studio head Philip Holt discussed the game on a new podcast, admitting that the game had barely started pre production when it was first announced in 2020, and so the zombie deer or other zombie animals featured in that 2020 trailer are not ultimately in the final game.
April 7th: Out of the Blue Games announced that their Lovecraftian puzzle game Call of the Elder Gods will launch for all current gen hardware on May 12th 2026. This is a direct sequel to 2020’s Call of the Sea, one of my all time favorite games.
Guard Crush Games and Dotemu announced that a native Switch 2 version of their acclaimed beatemup Absolum will be releasing in 2026, including a proper cartridge physical release.
April 8th: Simply one of the best games reporters out there, Rebekah Valentine announced that she is leaving IGN after five years. Two weeks later, we knew where she was going next: Kotaku announced that it was hiring Rebekah Valentine as a new senior reporter shortly after she left IGN, as part of the former’s broader revitalization and expansion after finally leaving the albatross of a parent company that was G/O Media.
While leading up to launch for 007 First Light, IO Interactive announced that the game’s Switch 2 port will see a small additional delay to Summer 2026 after all versions were already delayed from March to May.
Extraction shooter The Cube, Save Us is shutting down just weeks after release. It is not to be confused with the upcoming Atomic Heart spinoff The Cube.
April 9th: Neill Blomkamp’s NFT and blockchain game studio Gunzilla Games has been exposed for forcing its staff into unpaid labor for many months at a time and lying about pay being right around the corner.
A small release date trailer for Rhythm Heaven Groove was announced via the Nintendo Today app, showing that the game will launch on July 2nd 2026 for only $40 in the US but at a premium pricing in Japan.
April 10th: Level-5 hosted another livestream showcase for its long slate of titles that are only just coming to fruition. Snack World Reloaded, a remake of their 2017 3DS RPG Snack World, was revealed for PC, Switch 2, and PS5 with no release window. DecaPolice had its Switch 1 and PS4 versions canceled in favor of a Switch 2 port, and is allegedly launching this year. A second trailer debuted for Yokai Watch spiritual successor Holy Horror Mansion, still with no release window or platforms and still not showing any true interactive gameplay, just the kind of limp footage genAI can muster. Their most real/finished-looking project by far right now is Professor Layton and the New World of Steam, which added PC and PS5 versions, showed more gameplay, and is currently set for Holiday 2026.
The Taiwanese ratings board leaked a Switch 2 port of Eidos’ acclaimed 2021 Guardians of the Galaxy action RPG. Many other ratings board leaks have occurred this Spring: a Lego version of Cities: Skylines, a Switch 2 port of Devil May Cry 5, and the already revealed Switch 2 port of Dragon Quest 11.
April 11th: RockStar was hit with yet another ransomware cyberattack to steal and leak its data, albeit on a much smaller and milder scale compared to the infamous GTA6 leaks back in 2022.
EA announced that it was about to shut down multiplayer servers for Dragon Age: Inquisition, starting with the PS3 version by the end of April.
April 14th: Reporting out of China strongly indicates that the development team of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers has dissolved and been reassigned to other parts of the Leenzee studio, in response to the game’s director Xia Siyuan abruptly leaving the company and founding a new studio.
April 15th: French games journalist Gauthier Andres, who is a reliable source of Ubisoft coverage and was a big part of the original reports surrounding the development team behind Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, has now reported that said developers have been fully reassembled for their own project. Whether or not the acclaimed metroidvania is actually being revisited, this certainly beats being in the Beyond Good and Evil 2 mines.
April 16th: 4A Games and Embracer Group partnered with Xbox to present a full reveal and gameplay showcase for Metro 2039, the fourth main entry in the FPS series, scheduled to launch in Fall 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Both the game’s production and its writing/design have been heavily impacted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine due to its effects on developer 4A and Metro author Dmitry Glukhovsky.
Ron Gilbert and Terrible Toybox launched console ports for their new game Death by Scrolling.
April 20th: After remastering their first 3D platformer Croc last year, the reformed Argonaut Games has teased on social media that their memed N64-exclusive shooter Buck Bumble will be their next remaster.
April 21st: Almost a year after the game’s reveal, a second trailer was finally released for Switch 2 exclusive spinoff Splatoon Raiders, showcasing the game’s looter shooter gameplay with single player and 4 player co op options, announcing that it will launch on July 23rd 2026. You deploy to open island areas followed by exploring one of several unique dungeons to find and assemble new gear. There’s a hint of story cutscenes from both the trailer and the game’s filesize suggesting video files expanding it far beyond its predecessors.
MindsEye is back in the news yet again: the IWGB union is helping several workers at Build a Rocket Boy sue their employer over the alleged installation of surveillance software on their devices.
April 23rd: Annapurna Interactive released a new trailer detailing Switch 2 releases for five major games from its catalog: the previously announced Switch 2 Editions of Sayonara Wild Hearts and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes by Simogo were both shadowdropped, featuring 1440p120fps/4K60 support. Stray was announced to be receiving a free Switch 2 upgrade on May 28th featuring 4K resolution, 60fps, and mouse controls. Lastly, Keita Takahashi’s To a T and Davey Wreden’s Wanderstop will both be newly launching for Switch 2 in June, the former on June 11th and the latter June 23rd. Wanderstop will also be receiving a Switch 1 port, and these ports were initially teased when Wanderstop’s dev studio Ivy Road tragically shutdown on March 31st due to being unable to secure funding for a second project.
April 24th: During the latest Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest, the next main expansion Evercold was revealed for a January 2027 launch, while the Switch 2 port had its first footage shown and a August 2026 launch window announced.
Yacht Club Games announced that after its last minute delay and extra polishing and rebalancing, Mina the Hollower has gone gold and been submitted for certification on consoles and Steam. The release date was announced on May 6th after that process was finished, with the game launching for all platforms on May 29th 2026.
Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Hexe has now lost its game director, Benoit Richer, after recently losing its creative director. This directly juxtaposed the first official trailer release for a different game in the same franchise that leaked years ago, Assassins’ Creed Black Flag Resynced, which is launching July 9th 2026 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X at $60. The remake has tweaked the widely criticized “boat stealth” sections and the modern-time sections, but it also has predictably cut the actual best part of the game, the Freedom Cry slave rebellion DLC, which we know is the kind of thing Ubisoft is scared to do again.
The Steam page of Star Wars: Galactic Racer accidentally listed and leaked an October 6th 2026 launch date before it was quickly removed.
Despite its many struggles, developer People Can Fly announced that it was acquiring the very small company Cooldown Games.
April 28th: Butterfly Soup creator Brianna Lei and her studio Psychic Kiss launched a successful Kickstarter announcing their new game The Crane Rider’s Tale, an adventure game murder mystery set in the midst of Chinese mythology and featuring very Pentiment-inspired design from its art direction based on real ancient Chinese artwork, to its strict limits on your investigation and complex skill checks, plus special investigation abilities. It’s currently targeting a late 2028 launch for PC.
April 29th: The financially insolvent French games publisher Nacon announced the first victim of its inevitable downsizing: Spiders, the developer behind RPGs like Greedfall and Steelrising, is shutting down immediately after 18 years and laying off 71 people. Two other subsidiaries, Cyanide and Kylotonn, have already filed for financial insolvency. Nacon tried to immediately pivot back into marketing hype with the Nacon Connect showcase, prompting Spiders employees within the SJTV union to declare: “We refuse to see the group responsible for Spiders’ abrupt end pillaging the still-warm body of our jobs. Although we hope that our games will still be enjoyed, we would like players to avoid giving their money to Nacon, as it would reward the group for its actions.” On top of declaring the boycott, the union accused Nacon of having premeditated the closure of Spiders rather than making an emergency decision amid financial turmoil, saying that Nacon had spent many months last year both refusing to sign a new contract with Spiders and blocking them from seeking out new partnerships, after previous years of denying royalties and enabling an abusive workplace culture.
April 30th: Maddy Thorson’s studio Extremely OK Games announced their new project for a 2027 launch on PC: City of None is a 2D Steampunk Metroidvania designed by Noel and Liam Berry.
May 1st: Wall Street Journal reported that GameStop was planning to buy out eBay so it could ruin the used games market again and leverage billions of dollars it doesn’t actually have to do it, as is the style of the time. The $56 billion takeover offer was soon officially submitted, but eBay proceeded to reject the bid.
Not long after the Endless Mode spinoff site closed down, AV Club parent company Paste Media has fully killed its games coverage division and fired all related full-time staff, yet another tragic blow to the withering establishment games press and an especially sad way to go out for Paste Games after it managed to survive since 2010.
The band Imagine Dragons and their game studio Night Street Studios announced that their live service shooter Last Flag is ending support just three weeks after launch due to finding virtually no audience.
VR developer Survios was reported to be firing the majority of its staff and struggling to stay afloat, motivating in turn the non-VR ports for Alien Rogue Incursion they just announced, seeking quick revenue.
May 6th: Remember that time Nintendo announced a Direct at Midnight Eastern time? This is about as weird as that. Shigeru Miyamoto took over Nintendo’s social media on a late Wednesday afternoon to announce that a Star Fox Direct would premiere only ten minutes later. The Direct used Star Fox’s appearance in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie as a launchpad for revealing Star Fox, a Switch 2 exclusive remake of 1997’s Star Fox 64, launching June 25th 2026, coming a decade after the Wii U’s own failed reboot-remake Star Fox Zero. The game faithfully recreates the existing level design with massively overhauled graphics, brand new full voice acting and cutscenes, Mouse controls, and a new competitive 4v4 multiplayer mode.
The latest Chinese gacha hit Neverness to Everness was found to have droves of genAI images and videos spread throughout, prompting A-list Vtuber Ironmouse to cancel her sponsorship deal for the game and reveal that the studio simply lied to her in order to get around the strict no genAI stipulation in her contract. The company did claim it would start replacing all of the AI-made content, except that the first patch to do so was discovered to be replacing one genAI image with a new one they hoped would be harder to catch.
May 7th: Psychonauts makers and first party Microsoft studio Double Fine filed to unionize under the CWA alongside the other unionized Xbox studios, planning to include all 42 employees, receive voluntary recognition from their parent company, and formally elect union leadership as well as contribute to efforts from the preexisting unions to negotiate a new labor neutrality agreement. All the best to anyone trying to survive at that proudly planet-killing, genocide-profiteering godforsaken company. Whose recent desperate efforts at good PR I have simply decided not to cover. Yes, I’m downsizing the comprehensiveness of my coverage out of an increasing conviction that some of it is doing more ill than good.
Capcom announced that Pragmata has sold 2 million copies after roughly two weeks since launch, cementing it as a success and a new active IP for the publisher after it faced several years of development hell and public scrutiny.
May 8th: Many gaming companies had their latest quarterly earnings releases, chief among them PlayStation and Nintendo. The biggest news from Sony is that they’re taking an astounding $560 million loss on Bungie as a studio due to the soft launch of Marathon and the continued tanking of Destiny 2. Unlike Concord, Marathon does have a small active and very passionate audience to court, so Sony will be continuing to support it for now, with its season 2 starting in June. However, Bungie still moved forward with drastic measures by announcing on May 21st that content support for Destiny 2 is permanently ending after a final update on June 9th 2026. The reign of one of the original live service shooter juggernauts is officially ending, 12 years after the original Destiny’s launch, though the game will remain online for the foreseeable future. Bungie explicitly stated that it is pivoting its personnel and resources primarily towards various project pitches/incubations seeking a greenlight from Sony, a precarious position for first party PlayStation as seen with the dearly departed BluePoint. Jason Schreier reported that Bungie is planning “significant” layoffs after ending Destiny 2’s development without any next full-scale project lined up. Forbes’ Paul Tassi chimed in with his own report, saying that Bungie had considered relaunching Destiny 2 as Destiny Infinity with a return to regular major expansions before deciding that was too costly.
As for Nintendo: despite best efforts to avoid it, due to ongoing conditions affecting manufacturing and shipping costs, Nintendo is moving forward with an international price hike for the Switch 2 console, with the largest and most immediate being in Japan. The Japan-only Switch 2 was so competitively priced that it had bad ROI despite how popular the console is in the country, so it’s going up by 10,000 yen. All last-gen Switch models and NSO tiers are also seeing price raises in Japan, and all four of those hardware price hikes take place on May 28th 2026. Outside Japan, the Switch 2 is going up in price by $50 in the US ($450-$500) and Canada ($630-$680) and €30 in Europe, effective on September 1st 2026, holding out for awhile and giving advance notice in the hope of boosting summer numbers.
Nintendo had more news of course. The Switch 2 sold almost 2.5 million more consoles between January and March 2026, reaching a total of 19.86 million for the fiscal year. All forecasts for the fiscal year were surpassed, while forecasts for the new fiscal year are distinct: Nintendo anticipates moderate growth for Switch 2 game sales, 60 million units for the year, while expecting decline for Switch 2 hardware sales, 16.5 million, due to the price increase. Established software sales were rather slow so far in 2026, with new software taking the reins as Pokémon Pokopia* sold over 4 million copies in just over a month, and Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream sold over 3.8 million copies in its first two weeks. Mario Tennis Fever did not reach a million copies in its launch quarter: that underperformance is largely credited to its $70 pricetag and is widely understood to be the cause of the more aggressive variable game pricing introduced in recent months.
*Due to Pokopia being published by The Pokémon Company outside Japan, only those non-Japan sales are recorded on the website’s bestsellers page, creating some public confusion.
Nintendo’s fiscal meeting also announced the latest in a line of major retirements from the company in the past year: Takashi Tezuka is leaving on June 26th 2026. He’s been at the company for 42 years, directed/assistant-directed such seminal titles as Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 3, Yoshi’s Island, Super Mario 64, Link’s Awakening, and A Link to the Past, and been a major producer for many newer titles, especially the Yoshi series as he’s essentially its creator and shepherd. I especially want to shout out his role as a story writer for the early Zelda games alongside Yoshiaki Koizumi and Kensuke Tanabe, where he’s known for being inspired by Twin Peaks in creating Link’s Awakening’s story and characters, and in turn established the legacy of many more enigmatic characters featured in Zelda games afterwards.
May 11th: 44 Flash-based games from the Cartoon Network website have been restored and rereleased for free.
May 12th: Ah, Discord mod scandals, one of the only things we can count on to keep happening anymore. The Sea of Thieves streaming community is in uproar after a community manager was allegedly found to have inappropriately messaged and sent nudes to underage fans, and Rare’s Discord mods have deleted all attempts to discuss it rather than confront the problem. This has prompted roughly a dozen members of the official Sea of Thieves Partner Program to quit.
May 14th: The Krafton vs Unknown Worlds situation reached its conclusion for now when Subnautica 2 did indeed launch in Early Access on this date. When we left off, Ted Gill had regained control over his development studio, but Krafton acted out of spite by announcing the game’s launch date before he had a chance to assess the game or deal with communications. He was at risk of being forced to delay the game himself and face the bad PR. Ultimately he didn’t need to delay the game, and Unknown Worlds was then elevated by legal mandate to co-publisher of Subnautica 2 to further increase his control over his team’s creation. The game’s release has been a massive success, selling over four million copies in its first week and officially activating the $250 million payout that Krafton had been desperately trying to avoid for the past year.
Connor Makar reported for Eurogamer on a disastrous development cycle over at Amazon Games, which ultimately ended with some of the thousands of layoffs Amazon announced late last year. The since canceled AAA Project Trident faced many development issues, mainly stemming from misguided mandates by executives including a requirement to extensively use genAI and change the entire tone of the game.
Developer Polyarc announced that their previously VR-exclusive action platformer games Moss and Moss: Book 2 are coming to Switch 1/Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X in Summer 2026 as Moss: The Forgotten Relic. Back at the end of March, Polyarc announced that it was firing 30 employees due to funding difficulties and canceling a major project. It’s all very similar to another VR team, Survios, who I covered earlier.
May 18th: Two months after it was first reported by Jason Schreier, it was officially announced in a company-wide meeting by Hermen Hulst that PlayStation has ended its PC releases for first party single player games and returned them to full PS5/PS6 exclusivity, even to the extent that it costs them more money thanks to canceling already in production ports for Ghost of Yotei and Saros while compensating Disney for violating their contractual stipulation on Marvel’s Wolverine and future Marvel games. Those three games were all explicitly cited as examples by Hulst. Multiplayer/live service titles will continue to see multiplatform support. I’m not convinced that this is the end of this trajectory
Kimmo Lahtinen, creator of the twin stick shooter Sektori which made it on Jacob Geller’s best of list last year, announced that the game’s new Switch 2 port is selling well enough to finally give him a living wage after 4.5 years of development and months needed to recoup production costs.
May 19th: Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast announced that one of their AAA Dungeons & Dragons games has been canceled less than a year after it was announced, ending a partnership with the new studio Giant Skull, which was founded by Respawn vets from the Star Wars Jedi team, most notably Stig Asmussen who was game director for both Fallen Order and Survivor. Hasbro is still boasting about its billion dollar investment in video games.
May 20th: David Cage’s Quantic Dream studio announced that their multiplayer MOBA Spellcasters: Chronicles will be shutting down on June 19th 2026 due to failing to find an audience, and layoffs will follow. This is the latest piece of floundering for the studio that hasn’t launched a game in eight years, is barely making progress on its Star Wars game, and struggles to find new hires due to its toxic reputation.
Otherside Studios, Warren Spector, and Megabit Publishing officially launched their multiplayer stealth action game Thick as Thieves on PC with a $5 introductory price ahead of planned content expansions, console ports, and eventual price increases.
May 21st: One of the single worst blights in the realm of entertainment journalism is the conglomerate Valnet, parent company of Polygon and many other websites that never reached Polygon’s heights. Valnet is already infamous for its hefty output demands and pitiful pay rates towards freelance writers, something I faced when I once applied to them out of desperation when my household was unemployed and broke last year. But now Valnet has proudly announced a new even worse policy, where writers’ hard work will go entirely unpaid if their submissions fail to reach a minimum of 1000 views within two weeks of publication, and will only receive $5 per thousand views.
ZAUM successfully launched its first game in seven years after the long chaos since Disco Elysium’s launch: Zero Parades: For Dead Spies released on PC to positive reception, with its PS5 launch scheduled for later this year.
System Era Softworks and Devolver Digital announced that Starseeker: Astroneer Expeditions will launch in early access on PC, Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on June 11th 2026, after its April 2025 reveal in the first Switch 2 Direct.
King Art Games and publisher Embracer Group announced that Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 4 will launch on September 17th.
A report out of Europe suggests that Sony could face legal action and fees for introducing dynamic pricing on the PlayStation Store without any prior or upfront disclosure.
May 22nd: There aren’t many high profile lead recastings in video games, let alone before a game is even finished. We all know Peter Dinklage in Destiny, there’s the abuser who broke NDA and got patched out of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, but now there’s this misguided RPG The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, which is recasting its male lead voice due to beta test feedback that he wasn’t emotionally expressive enough.
May 23rd: Game developer M2 announced that due to undefined differences with now-former employee and Ikaruga creator Hiroshi Iuchi, he has resigned from the studio and ended production on his long in the works next shootemup project Ubusuna. He hopes to restart development on the game independently.
May 24th: With Unreal 5 only just starting to get properly optimized after four years since release, naturally Epic decided now was the right time to announce that Unreal Engine 6 is coming, with the announcement video being focused on an overhaul to Rocket League, which has remained on Unreal 3 since its release 11 years ago. To my understanding based on info from tech-space associates, Unreal 6 is a much smaller change/more of a continuation compared to the UE4->5 transition, which is hopefully a good sign for the continued benefits of the optimizations in UE5.8. Also, Nintendo of America has already promoted the news, suggesting perhaps a closer partnership on compatibility with Switch 2 compared to Unreal 5’s troubles on the platform.
May 27th: Square Enix hosted a Dragon Quest 40th anniversary livestream featuring multiple announcements, starting with a Switch 2 port for Dragon Quest 11S coming on September 24th 2026, about seven years after the original Switch release. The new version features no upgrade path or save transfer for existing owners unfortunately, but it does enhance the game to a native 1440p30 and 1080p60 performance. Next up was spinoff entry Dragon Quest Monsters: The Withered World, the creature-capture series’ fourth mainline entry coming directly after 2023’s DQM: The Dark Prince. Withered World focuses on Nera and Bianca from Dragon Quest 5 and is Coming Soon to PC, Switch 1/Switch 2, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. Finally, after years of self-admitted production troubles since its 2021 announcement, Dragon Quest 12: The Flames of Fate was rerevealed as DQXII: Beyond Dreams, as the project was hard rebooted some years ago. The new trailer for the next mainline entry showcased main characters and gameplay for the first time, including a robotic companion.
CDProjektRed officially announced the long-rumored third story expansion for The Witcher 3: Songs of the Past will launch in 2027 as a current gen hardware exclusive.
Valve announced an immediate whopping price increase for the still sold-out Steam Deck ahead of the Steam Machine’s eventual launch, showing just how severe the component pricing issue is for PC hardware, especially hardware that can’t get the bulk discounts from suppliers that consoles do. The 512GB Steam Deck OLED base model has changed from $550 to $790, while the 1TB Steam Deck OLED increased by $300, from $650 to $950. I suspect this basically ends the product’s reign in the PC handheld market.
Nintendo announced that Donkey Kong 64 will release for Nintendo Switch Online on June 4th, finally confirming one of the last remaining major Nintendo 64 releases. Previously, five more Virtual Boy games were added to NSO on May 13th, including Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei spinoff Jack Bros. starring Jack Frost.
May 28th: Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King proudly offered a first announcement for their latest cog in the US military industrial complex’s machine at a time where the evils of that institution are more visible than ever. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will launch for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and yes, day 1 for Switch 2, on October 23rd 2026. The campaign mode centers on fullscale war between North and South Korea, a totally innocent and not consent-manufacturing subject matter.
After launching Jurassic World Evolution 3 last year, Frontier Developments revealed Planet Zoo 2 coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X on October 13th 2026, seven years after the first Zoo Tycoon spiritual successor.
Team Cherry and Fangamer finally announced what I’ve been very eagerly anticipating, the physical edition for Hollow Knight: Silksong, as well as a physical release for the original Hollow Knight’s current-gen version. Silksong will launch physically for Switch 1/2, PS5, and Xbox One/Series on October 16th 2026, while its predecessor’s physical will arrive at the same time for Switch 2 and PS5. They come bundled with manuals and maps of their respective settings. Silksong’s Sea of Sorrow DLC is not included in the physical release and will likely wait for a reprint.
IO interactive announced that 007 First Light achieved 1.5 million copies sold on its launch day, putting the game in fairly safe financial footing out of the gate. Another creative team that needed the win, Yacht Club Games, haven’t announced sales yet for Mina the Hollower as of my publication deadline, but the game’s very strong critical reception indicates that it’s likely also in a comfortable position.
May 29th: Indie games publisher PlayStack, most notable for Balatro, Raccoin and Case+Rise of the Golden Idol, is being acquired by the investment group IMC, parent company of GameSpot and Fandom among others. Soon to be former owner TruFin announced a sale worth over £100/$100 million.
Xbox announced that Fable 4 has been delayed from Holiday 2026 to February 2027 for further polish and for it to not be crowded out by other first party Xbox games and certain major third party titles.
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!