Killbug studio Samurai Punk is shutting down

Someone in China created thousands of fake social media accounts designed to appear to be from Americans and used them to spread polarizing political content in an apparent effort to divide the U.S. ahead of next year's elections, Meta said Thursday.

Absurd Ventures, the studio established by Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser earlier this year, has revealed its first two projects: a graphic novel and audio drama, both launching in 2024.

Back in early 2020, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser shockingly announced he was leaving the studio. While we don’t necessarily know how this will affect Rockstar as they haven’t released a new game since then, Houser was unquestionably a huge creative force at the company, writing every Grand Theft Auto title since GTA 2 as well as Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2, Bully, and more.

Absurd Ventures, the new transmedia company from Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser, has announced its debut projects.

CD Projekt Red has made quite a name for themselves. This studio is known for thrilling RPG experiences, especially with the release of The Witcher franchise. However, after The Witcher 3, the studio tackled a different IP. We eventually received Cyberpunk 2077, a game that traded in the fantasy aspect and monster hunting for a futuristic criminal underworld. The game has been available for several years now, but as you know, it just recently had a resurgence thanks to Phantom Liberty. CD Projekt Red had started a new marketing campaign with the Night City Archives to keep the momentum going and potentially rope in some new players.

With work on Cyberpunk 2077 winding down post-Phantom Liberty and more resources now being shifted to The Witcher 4, CD Projekt Red hopes to expand its development operations to a scale "not precedented in the history of our company."

Cyberpunk 2077's live action project won't be released until 2025 at the earliest, CD Projekt Red has confirmed.

MachineGames is a studio that found their niche with the Wolfenstein games, at least until they didn’t.

Tumblr underwent a redesign in July 2023 when the platform announced it would improve its content discovery as well as ease the process of creating a page. The company claimed the changes were implemented based on user feedback. Now, taking another step in its feedback-focused process, it will also be removing the Tumblr Post Plus subscriptions. It allowed creators to share content behind a paywall for those subscribers who paid for the subscription. The company has said that it will be removed starting January 2024.

Rockstar has removed the Social Club branding from its website, presumably in anticipation of GTA 6. As per the news account @videotechuk_ on Twitter, the publisher has replaced the nomenclature with simply ‘Rockstar Games' and scrapped any references to ‘Social Club members.' The online gaming service is also missing the old logo now, though players can still engage in multiplayer elements and accrue member-exclusive rewards from games like Grand Theft Auto V and Red Dead Redemption 2. For now, it's unclear whether Rockstar would launch a new platform or simply update the existing application to usher in the new era, but traces of the branding still remain in-game.

The Treachery in Beatdown City: Ultra RemixDLC builds upon the tactical street fighting of the original game, adding new moves, locations, enemies, and tunes. With the original game having such a precise, challenging turn-based hand-to-hand fighting system, how do you carefully build onto it without breaking the original release?

Sony have revealed the next set of games coming to their premium subscription services, PS Plus Extra  and PS Plus Premium.  Nine new games added to PS Plus Extra service on November 21st 2023, with the exception of Teardown which is out now.