RGG Studio Dev Comments on Yakuza Kiwami 3

2021 was a strange year for games. Amid the pandemic, major titles were few and far between, and instead, indie games reigned supreme. No game saw more fervor and applause than It Takes Two from Hazelight Studios, an exclusively co-op action-adventure game that has managed to sell 16 million copies as of March 2024.

Hazelight Studios – the development team behind acclaimed co-op games It Takes Two and A Way Out – is seemingly gearing up to announce its next game sometime later this year. In commemoration of its upcoming 10th anniversary in November, Hazelight Studios briefly touched on its next game in a post on Twitter, writing, “We’ve got new (real good) stuff cooking that we’ll talk more about later this year.”

Just Cause developer Avalanche has confirmed plans to enter a collective bargaining agreement with Swedish unions.

Possibility Space, an independent game studio with employees distributed across the globe, was abruptly shut down today by its CEO Jeff Strain, former employees revealed on Twitter. The studio launched in 2021 with the goal of creating a AAA title, and it had also hired industry notables like Waypoint's Austin Walker and Ubisoft designer Liz England. Its closure follows the shutdown of Crop Circle Games last month, another studio owned by Strain's Prytania Media, which he co-founded with his wife Annie Delisi Strain.

Late last year, over 100 employees of Avalanche Studios, the makers of Just Cause, announced an intent to unionize. The workers have officially ironed out a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish labor unions Unionen and Engineers of Sweden. The agreement goes into effect during the second quarter of 2025.

Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios has reportedly furloughed the majority of its staff.

A developer from Team Reptile, the indie studio behind Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, commented on the franchise's future, hoping to work on more games set in the same universe. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is an indie platformer game that first launched on Nintendo Switch and PC last August. Players control a new member of the Bomb Rush Crew, Red, where they use their inline skates and other extreme sports equipment to spray paint the city of New Amsterdam.

Last week, a small set of interviews went viral over claims that the proverbial ‘gold rush’ for indie game funding had ended. Today, we get some clarification about those interviews.

It’s usually better when writing about games to defer to personal experience before regurgitating marketing, but in the case of bizarre and deeply intriguing 90’s FPS PO’ed, the trailer that STAR WARS: Dark Forces Remaster studio Nightdive released over the long weekend contains a quote that sums up my memories perfectly: “First game I ever owned and played on my PS1,” says quote-ee matt.baller, “In hindsight, I’m surprised I’m not more messed up.”

Nightdive Studios—a studio that is making a name for itself thanks to its handling of classic action games through excellent remasters and remakes—has announced a new remaster of 1995 first-person shooter PO’ed. Appropriately dubbed PO’ed: Definitive Edition, the remaster will be coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.

The head of Like a Dragon developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio says he wants to make Yakuza Kiwami 3 at some point.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth just released early this year, but it seems the next entry in what was previously known as the “Yakuza” series is already in full swing. As spotted by Gematsu, Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio announced auditions for the next Like a Dragon game during their latest video update. We don’t know the title of the next Like a Dragon yet, but series director Masayoshi Yokoyama did provide some clarification, saying Like a Dragon: Kiwami 3 (a remake of the third entry in the series) isn’t the next thing on the docket, although it is quite likely to happen someday.