Game Developer News, Tips, Tricks, Ideas

Embark Studios' The Finals is a free-to-play online shooter that brings the Battlefield series' level of mayhem and destruction to an over-the-top team-based reality TV-style competition. After several months of playtests, The Finals is out, and the impressive technology behind its environmental chaos is now on display.

Epic Games has won the antitrust lawsuit it filed against Google after a jury determined the Google Play marketplace is an illegal monopoly.

This past Thursday, December 7, developer Fntastic's The Day Before launched on Steam. Now on Monday, December 11 (today), Fntastic is closing its doors. 

Earlier today, Fntastic revealed it was closing its doors just days after it launched The Day Before in Early Access. The developer claimed it "failed financially," and by that, it meant the game was refunded by roughly half those who bought and played it. 

The near-400 members of the ZeniMax Workers Union (ZWU) can tentatively choose how artificial intelligence is implemented in the workplace. 

Assassin’s Creed: Mirage has offered a luminous example of how Muslim representation can be, along with its Arab, Persian, and broader SWANA representation. For one of the region’s most prominent religions, Islam, the game offers Muslim and non-Muslim players worldwide not only positive Muslim representation, but the depiction of an entire Islamic civilization. No one is the token Muslim. Islam is gracefully designed into the fabric of Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, from our Muslim protagonist Basim Ibn Ishaq, to various members of his society, to sprawling Masjids, architecture, and art covering 9th Century Abbasid Baghdad. While Islam is the main religion depicted in Mirage, other religious minorities like Christians also appear in the city, as Baghdad was a highly diverse city as well at the center of trade. The Silk Road spanned all of Asia, North Africa, and beyond, and the religions across the regions.

What, precisely, is the value of an actor's face in the world of video games?

The upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice Leaguewill eventually be playable offline, confirmed Rocksteady Studios. Following the newest trailer at last night's Game Awards, the studio confirmed on its official Discord (spotted by VGC) that an offline story mode was in the works. 

Video games are fast becoming one of Australia's most recognizable exports. In recent years, a stream of titles born down under have found commercial success and critical acclaim on the global stage. Cult of the Lamb. Untitled Goose Game. Stray Gods. Heavenly Bodies. Hollow Knight. The Artful Escape. Gubbins. Unpacking. The list goes on and on.

Danish indie studio Triple Topping Games has laid off its entire workforce after declaring bankruptcy.

GameStop has acknowledged its decision to oust former president and CEO Matthew Furlong could backfire.

Hi, I'm Philipp Wittershagen, senior developer at the small, independent German game studio Mimimi Games. We're best known for reviving the stealth-strategy genre with Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun to critical acclaim, following up that success with Desperados III and, most recently, our most ambitious and self-published title Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, which, although again released to critical acclaim, will sadly be our final game.

Nintendo's upcoming live event that was planned for early 2024 in Tokyo, Japan has been canceled by the developer. A press release translated by Japanese game news translator Genki reveals the cancellation was brought on in part by threats made against both Nintendo staff and attendees. 

In Alan Wake II, the latest reality-warping entry in the expanding Remedy Connected Universe, mind truly is matter.

The tumultuous saga at Bungie continues, with a new report from IGN claiming the studio may be completely taken over by Sony depending on the performance of June 2024's Destiny 2: The Final Shape. 

On the latest episode of the Game Developer podcast, we had a far-ranging chat with Strange Scaffold creative director Xalavier Nelson Jr. Nelson's outfit just put out its largest game, El Paso, Elsewhere, earlier in the fall, to significant critical acclaim. We talked a great deal about the game and its many inspirations.

Twitch is shutting down its business in Korea and claims that operating in the region has become "prohibitively expensive."

Australian studio League of Geeks is pausing development on Jumplight Odyssey indefinitely after making over 50 percent of its workforce redundant.

If you were to drive over to goblin.bet you would find an entertaining bit of internet fluff: pixel art monsters fighting it out amongst themselves for your amusement and fake betting pleasure. The monsters use the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition ruleset and stats, in their System Reference Document (SRD) form for legal reasons. The fights are all completely automated, arranged into brackets, going from a challenge rating of 1/8 to up to 15 and above. Monsters that win a bracket advance up until the next, until an overall winner is crowned. And then it all starts over again.

The upcoming PlayStation 5 remaster for The Last of Us Part II will allow players to play the survival horror game like a roguelike. 

Hello Neighbor publisher Tinybuild is accelerating a cost reduction plan that will result in an unknown number of layoffs.

EA has laid off an unknown number of employees at UK studio Codemasters to meets its "evolving business needs and priorities."

Rockstar dropped the trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI ahead of schedule to counter a leak and confirmed the title will launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X | S in 2025.

Starbreeze Studios is trading in its crime masks for dice. The Payday developer will be developing and self-publishing a game based on Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons, with a planned release window of 2026. 

Xbox boss Phil Spencer says Microsoft spends over $1 billion a year bringing third-party titles to Xbox Game Pass.

Dauntless and Fae Farm developer Pheonix Labs has laid off 34 employees across its support teams.

Ex-staffers at Lionhead Studios spoke to The Gamer about Fable 3, where they discussed the highs and lows of making the closer to the original fantasy-RPG trilogy. 

EA has expanded its Patent Pledge initiative by open-sourcing accessibility tools and tech from titles like EA Sports FC 24, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, and EA Sports WRC.

Blumhouse Games has hired industry veterans Jo Lammert and Clint Brewer to help it carve out a space in the spooky corner of the video game industry.

Over five years after a copyright dispute regarding PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and the mobile game Knives Out, Krafton and NetEase have reached a settlement on the matter. 

Steam will halt support for macOS 10.13 and 10.14 (better known as High Sierra and Mojave) on February 15, 2024.

Riot Games has created a new chief product officer (CPO) role, which will be headed up by co-founder Marc Merrill. 

The Video Game History Foundation (VGHF) is attempting to raise $50,000 through its Winter Fundraiser 2023 initiative so it can continue to "preserve, celebrate, and teach the history of video games."

Earlier this year, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser set up a new transmedia company dubbed Absurd Ventures. Months after that announcement, the studio has revealed it's locked in two projects (and "universes") to release next year. 

Netflix has another sizable addition to its games lineup with Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition. The remastered collection is coming to Netflix Games on December 14 via iOS and Android, as well as the streamer's native mobile app. 

In a bid to improve business efficiency, Sega has introduced ChatGPT-4 in a "closed environment" within the company.

Sega recently canceled Creative Assembly's online shooter Hyenas and commenced layoffs at the UK studio, but has now stated the "game itself was good."

A funny thing happened when I sent questions over to Alan Wake 2 composer Petri Alanko. After he sent over his responses, I had the uncanny experience of realizing they sounded like something Alan Wake himself would write.

"I think immersive sims started to believe their own marketing material. That never fosters creativity," says Mosa Lina developer Josh Hollendonner, explaining why he felt compelled to create what he describes as a "hostile interpretation" of the genre.

Engine maker Unity will cut around 3.8 percent of its global workforce, totalling 265 roles, after ending an agreement with digital effects company Weta FX.  

A new report from VGC claims Free Radical Design will be shutting down on December 11. The studio, best known for the TimeSplitters franchise, was under evaluation by parent company Embracer to see if it warranted closure. 

Next year, Gamescom will be spinning up a new event set in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Appropriately dubbed Gamescom Latam, it'll run from June 26, 2024 to June 30 and provide "a unique opportunity for gaming fans and for the digital entertainment industry from Brazil, the whole Latin America and beyond."

Grasshopper Manufacture, the punk rock video game studio led by CEO and game designer Goichi “Suda51” Suda, turned 25 years old earlier this year. This milestone firmly entrenches Grasshopper as a contemporary of larger and more well-known developers like Valve, Sony Santa Monica, and Retro Studios, which may come as a shock if all you know about the studio is that time Suda revealed a game while sitting on a toilet.

Land Above Sea Below is a puzzle game about building up islands above a rising tide. Players need to carefully place various tiles to keep their island above water, all while steadily building a beautiful waterside place that defies the tides that aim to constantly drag it down.

Bungie confirmed that Destiny 2: The Final Shape is pivoting from its February 27, 2024 to June 4. In a blog post, the developer explained that it wanted to ensure the expansion is in its best shape come launch and effectively saves the troubled shooter. 

TikTok maker ByteDance is restructuring its video game business to deliver "long-term strategic growth."

As technology advances, it’s common to see games getting visually better, whether in remasters, remakes or a graphical update. But there also has to be consideration taken into whether or not part of the atmosphere or vision of the original is lost in the march of progress. These considerations feel ever more important in a forthcoming graphical update for Square Enix’sFinal Fantasy XIV, set to arrive in next year’s 7.0 update and its Dawntrail expansion.

A Space for the Unbound developer Mojiken Studio has been acquired by Toge Productions for an undisclosed fee.

The saga of Sam Altman's firing and re-hiring from OpenAI happened at a distance from the video game industry. Some game developers have been experimenting with the GPT-4 API to create chatbot-like NPCs, but major platform owners like Valve have signaled they won't allow games built on the model to be sold without proof they were built on data owned by the developer.

Nearly 15 years ago, Rockstar Games announced a brand-new game: Agent, which ultimately never saw the light of day. And according to a former Rockstar employee, the would-be title had to be dumped in favor of Grand Theft Auto V. 

As he recounts his work producing and managing the original Left 4 Dead game launch, released 15 years ago this week, Chet Faliszek pauses our conversation at his Seattle home office to double-check an exact date. "September 7, 2005, at 1:10 p.m." This was the exact moment he was formally introduced (via e-mail) by his boss, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell, to Turtle Rock Studios founder Mike Booth, to “consult” on a new, Valve-funded video game project. Its codename at the time was “Terror.”

Last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was fired by the company board for allegedly failing to be "consistently candid in his communications." Now, mere days later, Altman has returned as CEO.

Sony will be going to UK court over allegations of ripping off consumers with its PlayStation Store. 

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?

The launch of The Jackbox Party Pack 10 last month marks a milestone for the Chicago-based Jackbox Games, having released a multi-platform party pack containing five games every year since 2014.

YoYo Games' popular 2D engine, GameMaker, is now free for non-commercial on all non-console platforms.

Assassin's Creed maker Ubisoft has paused advertising on X, formerly known on Twitter, after platform owner Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic post and Media Matters claimed ads from major corporations were being shown next to harmful, far-right content.

A new report from IGN alleges an ingrained culture of sexism at Game Science, developer of the upcoming Black Myth: Wukong. The title has been featured prominently at game events like Gamescom in recent years, and received attention for being one of the first triple-A games from a Chinese studio. 

Over the weekend, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was suddenly ousted from his position and has since jumped over to Microsoft. His abrupt leave from the generative AI company was the start to a tumultuous series of events that throws the future of OpenAI into question. 

Returnal and Nex Machina game director Harry Krueger is departing Housemarque after 14 years.

UK virtual reality developer nDreams has been acquired by Swedish conglomerate Aonic for $110 million in what the studio described as a "landmark" deal for the VR industry.

In 2020, the developers of Raji: An Ancient Epic (one of the most well-known video games to come out of India) noted how difficult it had been to finance their work; the rejections from potential investors were so numerous that the founders came close to asking their team to look for other jobs. (They eventually received an Unreal Dev Grant.)

Germany plans to invest more into video games, beginning with a subsidy of €33.3 million (or $36.2 million) in 2024. Per a translated report from Games Wirtschaft, the Ministry of Culture will spend €100 million overall over the next three years. 

Who exactly pulled the plug on the planned downloadable content for Aspyr's Nintendo Switch port of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords? That's a surprising new question that has risen to the surface thanks to a new filing by Aspyr in its motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit levied against the company over the DLC's cancellation.

Earlier this year, we caught up with Baldur's Gate 3 lead character artist Alena Dubrovina to discuss how Larian purpose-built an inclusive character creator for the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

Ark: Survival Ascended sold over 600,000 copies on Steam in two weeks.

The ongoing saga of layoffs and studio closures in 2023 has been bad for developers of all shapes and sizes. But one notable surprise has been the dramatic impact they've had on companies behind live service games—and not just poor-performing ones, but successful ones like Fortnite and Destiny 2.

It's been a pretty good year for New Zealand studio Black Salt Games. The company's debut release, Dredge, launched to critical acclaim and recently topped 1 million sales, smashing internal expectations.

Mass Effect writer Mac Walters has joined NetEase to establish new Vancouver-based studio Worlds Untold.

Today at Unite 2023 in Amsterdam, Unity unveiled new details on what it is now calling Unity 6—the next version of the game engine software that will be available in 2024. Starting with this version, Unity is shifting to a number-based naming convention, moving away from the "LTS" (Long Term Support) naming format, which also listed the year that version of the software was developed in.

Swedish conglomerate Embracer Group laid off 900 people during the last three months after actioning a restructuring program designed to turn the company into a "highly cash flow generative business."

CD Projekt Red (CDPR) is launching an official mod editor for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in 2024.

The greatest challenge for any discipline in game development is the ultimate demon: math. More specifically, exponential math. As the upper boundaries of game development have become more polished and detailed, the effort needed to meet higher bars of quality requires more assets, more content, and more resources—all variables that grow exponentially larger when designers try to support features built around player choice.

Content note: This story contains discussions of children being propositioned for sexual actions and receiving sexual messages. 

French studio Pastagames wants to share the love with KarmaZoo, an altruistic platformer that's hoping to show how small acts of kindness are the way forward–both in life and across the title's platter of pixelated of levels.

Later Daters is a game about dating and companionship in a retirement community. It’s not some doom and gloom tale about romance at the end of your days, though; it’s an exploration of the passion, change, fun, and often-untold stories of life that happen as you’re experiencing your later years.

Persona and Shin Megami Tensei developer Atlus will raise the base salary of new graduates by 300,000 yen ($1,977) and the average annual salary of all employees by 15 percent in April 2024 to become more competitive on the global stage.

A common refrain from accessibility advocates in game development is that the best way to support players with disabilities is to start designing features around their needs from day one. Settings for color-blind players, text-to-audio descriptions, and other tools are easier to implement if they're accounted for early rather than shoved in at the end of production.

Remedy Entertainment's revival of Alan Wake sees the developer bring back its winding, complex game about horror storytelling in a bold new way. Along with the return of the troubled, reality-bending writer, a new protagonist named Saga Anderson enters the horrifying and supernatural fray. But Saga's unique place in the main story pushed the developers to come up with a compelling way to structure the game's parallel stories and how best to portray the newest character.