Will Shanklin

Grand Theft Auto VI’s return to Vice City is officially scheduled for fall 2025. On Thursday, parent company Take-Two Interactive wrote in its Q4 2024 earnings report that it’s narrowed GTA 6’s previously announced 2025 window to autumn of next year.

Hades II is now available in Early Access for PC players. After performing a technical test from April 16 to 29, Supergiant Games said Early Access for the “bewitching sequel” would follow “relatively soon after.” The developer lived up to its word, as a week after wrapping the preliminary test, PC players can now buy and play the highly anticipated roguelike title for $30.

Nintendo sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice for over 8,000 GitHub repositories hosting code from the Yuzu Switch emulator, which the Zelda maker previously described as enabling “piracy at a colossal scale.” The sweeping takedown comes two months after Yuzu’s creators quickly settled a lawsuit with Nintendo and its notoriously trigger-happy legal team for $2.4 million.

As Microsoft tries to beef up its in-house Xbox studios, it may want to be more careful about leaving a trail of broken promises when things don’t go as planned. A year after the hyped vampire shooter Redfall landed with a thud, a Kotaku report highlights how players are still waiting for the advertised post-launch DLC they already paid for.

The newest Assassin’s Creed game will soon arrive on iPhone and iPad. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, the 2023 installment that takes you to ninth-century Baghdad, will be available on June 6 for the iPhone 15 Pro series and iPads with an M-series chip.

Microsoft has officially announced the next Xbox Games Showcase. In a blog post, the company said the summer version will be on Sunday, June 9, at 10AM PT / 1PM ET.

PUBG: Battlegrounds is somehow old enough to evoke nostalgia. The pioneering battle royale game, which entered Steam Early Access in 2017, will borrow a page from Fortnite’s playbook and honor its first map. Erangel Classic will recreate the old-school battlefield from the game’s inception for a limited two-week run in May and June.

Who hasn’t spent sleepless nights pondering what would happen if we applied Vilfredo Pareto's (the early 20th-century Italian economist) theories to Mario, the Mushroom Kingdom’s Italian high-jump champion and part-time elephant cosplayer? Data scientist Antoine Mayerowitz, PhD, tackled that age-old question, and the resulting work provides an objective way to tell us the best Mario Kart 8 racer combinations. Hint: It sure as hell ain’t Koopa Troopa.

Fallout games are having a moment in the wake of glowing reviews for the new TV series adaptation on Prime Video. Amazon has added two of the series’ best games as freebies for Prime members on Luna, its cloud streaming service. Fallout 4 is also getting some love, as Bethesda said it will drop the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S update for the 2015 game on April 25.

The Pretendo Network, an open-source Nintendo Network alternative, no longer requires a hacked Wii U console. With Nintendo’s servers for the obsolete console shutting down on Monday, the Pretendo Network shared a new workaround that provides (limited) access to its homebrew servers without jailbreaking your dusty old console.

Crypt of the Necrodancer just won’t die — and that’s a good thing. The nearly decade-old roguelike rhythm game received new content on Thursday, bringing virtual pop star Hatsune Miku into the fold as a playable character.

April’s new Xbox Game Pass arrivals give you Lego racing, Lara Croft and a Lil Gator. Subscribers can play the Mario Kart-like Lego 2K Drive starting on Wednesday, the trilogy-wrapping Shadow of the Tomb Raider on April 11 and the charming stop-motion adventure game Harold Halibut on April 16.

Paper Trail, the game that lets you fold the world around you, finally has a release date after multiple delays. The top-down puzzler is now scheduled to launch on May 21.

On Wednesday, Sony unveiled the latest catalog of games for PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium subscribers. The latest batch of titles includes the Resident Evil 3 remake, Marvel’s Midnight Suns and NBA 2K24 (among others). You can play the games for free starting on Tuesday, March 19.

Nintendo is honoring Princess Peach with a set of appropriately colored Joy-Cons. On Tuesday, the company posted on X (Twitter) that a set of pastel pink Joy-Con controllers will launch alongside Princess Peach: Showtime! on March 22.

The Day Before is no more. The spectacular trainwreck of a game, which saw developer Fntastic announcing its closure only four days after launch, closed its servers for good on Monday, reports IGN. Publisher Mytona has wiped all references to the much-hyped Steam Early Access title from its website.

Awesome Games Done Quick (AGDQ) 2024 has wrapped after a nonstop weeklong speedrunning marathon. This year’s charity raised over $2.5 million for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. Other highlights included four broken world records and a dog named Peanut Butter beating the oddball NES classic Gyromite.

Rock Band 4’s weekly DLC drops are coming to an end. Harmonix said Wednesday the upcoming batch of new songs on January 25 will be the game’s last. Although all other live services will remain active, the developer plans to give full attention to the Rock Band-like Fortnite Festival, a rhythm game inside Epic’s digital world.

Valve may have had a change of heart about fan-made tribute projects “borrowing” its intellectual property. GamesRadar+ reported on the Steam maker’s DMCA takedown notice sent to the creators of Team Fortress: Source 2, a passion project porting TF2 to the more modern Source 2 game engine. In addition, the Steam maker squashed a Portal demake for the Nintendo 64, hinting at a possible shift toward a more protective corporate strategy from the typically lenient Valve.

Take-Two Interactive has filed an opposition to Remedy Entertainment’s newest logo, claiming the symbol infringes on Rockstar Games’ logo despite the two having little in common besides the letter “R” representing a video game publisher. First reported by RemedyFirst, the trademark dispute was filed against two versions of the Remedy logo (one with the company’s name, one without) in September with the UK’s Intellectual Property Office.

Sony shared its upcoming PlayStation Plus free games for January on Wednesday. Headlining this month’s batch are Capcom’s 2019 Resident Evil 2 remake and the Borderlands spinoff Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. PS Plus Extra and Premium subscribers can claim the 14 new games on January 16.