Crystal Dynamics News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered has released Update 2 for the game, bringing a huge number of fixes for the trilogy across all platforms. The update for Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered focuses on all three titles, although the third title has the most extensive list of changes this time around.

Aspyr, the developer behind the recently released Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered collection, have confirmed that a controversial change that was just made to the game will be reverted in a future update. This marks the third patch for Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered from Aspyr, who has received a fair share of criticism regarding the handling of a number of its latest ports.

The recently released and evocatively named Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered starring Lara Croft allowed an entirely new generation of gamers to experience the formative action platformers for the first time. But it seems that in the last update, released a couple of weeks ago, sexy pinup posters of Croft herself have quietly gone missing, a change not mentioned in the patch notes. Fans, as you might imagine, quickly noticed and were unimpressed, already pointing fingers at Crystal Dynamics.

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors has suggested he must shoulder much of the blame for a “long list” of mistakes that led to a “painful” restructuring of the company.

Swedish game and media holding company Embracer Group has announced its plans to split into three separate entities.

Embracer Group has been on a losing streak of late, having recently missed out on a $2 billion investment, laid off thousands of employees and sold one of its key properties, Gearbox, at fire-sale prices. Now, the company has announced plans to split into three separate, publicly listed entities, Bloomberg reported.

This morning, the Embracer Group announced a major transformation of the company, which will be split into three separate publicly listed companies: Asmodee Group, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends. The existing Embracer Group listing on Nasdaq Stockholm will be renamed to Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends, and shares of Asmodee Group and Coffee Stain & Friends will be distributed as dividends to shareholders of Embracer Group. The listing and distribution of Asmodee Group shares is expected to occur within 12 months, and Coffee Stain & Friends shares during calendar year 2025.

In the latest step in its restructuring initiative, Embracer Group has announced that it will be splitting into three different companies. Embracer is a Swedish video game and media conglomerate that got its start in 2011 as Nordic Games Licensing, taking over the intellectual properties of defunct publishers like JoWooD and THQ. In the years since, the company has grown into a major presence in the video games space.

Embracer Group, the company best known for acquiring an obscene number of studios, publishers, and intellectual property and then laying off thousands when that didn't work out, is set to split into three separate entities. Following its massive restructuring plan, the business is dividing into a trio of companies, each with their own leadership and specialities.

Embracer Group has announced its intent to split into three separately listed companies through 2024 and 2025 in the most drastic restructuring effort since the company fell into financial hardship last year, and bringing an end to the megalithic IP and studio acquisition project of the last decade. Asmodee Group will split off this year, with “Coffee Stain & Friends” and “Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends” then splitting up in 2025.

New details about Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game have been revealed.

Embracer, the embattled gaming company that went through a massive restructuring over the past year, just announced that it will split up into three different companies: Asmodee, Coffee Stain & Friends, and Middle-earth Enterprises & Friends.

The Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered compilation has reportedly made a change to the game that was not mentioned in the recent update's patch notes, riling up fans about previous promises. The compilation, released earlier this year, brings back the iconic original trilogy of Lara Croft's adventures that turned the franchise into a household name in gaming. The remakes have seen praise for their graphical enhancements to the classic adventure games, as well as several quality-of-life upgrades. Now, however, an unmentioned part of the most recent update is making a controversial change.

Tales of Kenzera: ZAU director Abubakar Salim says he would like to play Kain in a TV adaptation of Legacy of Kain.

EA‘s upcoming Black Panther will be an open-world game, according to a new job listing.

Xbox Game Pass users can now play Shadow of the Tomb Raider as part of their subscription. The critically acclaimed action adventure is the ninth title to reach Xbox Game Pass in April 2024, and the 50th since the turn of the year.

Xbox has announced the games coming to Game Pass this April, led by Lego 2K Drive.

Earlier today, megacorp Embracer announced they were selling Borderlands developer Gearbox to Take-Two. During an investor call about the divestment, CEO Lars Wingefors confirmed that this brought an end to the restructuring process Embracer announced last year. He was also asked whether this meant Embracer had plans to start acquiring other studios again.

Toys for Bob has reportedly entered a deal with Xbox to develop a new game that's similar to its previous work.

Two years and a month after Horizon Forbidden West launched on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 consoles, PC gamers can finally step into the vast and gorgeous post-apocalyptic Western USA created by Guerrilla Games.

Embracer Group has sold off some assets of Saber Interactive, the developer of the long-awaited Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake, for $247 million. A couple of years ago, Embracer Group seemed poised to become a major player in the video games space as it acquired multiple key studios like Eidos Montreal, Crystal Dynamics, and Limited Run Games, reaching an incredible 110 game development companies by April 2022 with plans to buy more. One of the companies acquired by Embracer was Saber Interactive in 2020, which became one of the conglomerate’s 12 major divisions thanks to its numerous subsidiaries.

The Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered collection has just gotten an exciting new update, as players are now able to enjoy the trio of games at a whopping 120 frames per second and native 4K resolution. This feature is only available for the PS5 version of Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered.

Game developer Aspyr has launched Tomb Raider I-III Remastered update 1.02, fixing one of the trilogy’s most frustrating issues. Available to download now, the latest patch includes a handful of improvements for all three games as well as some of the bonus content.

We’ve been seeing an increasing number of industry veterans breaking away from the traditional AAA publishing space to form their own independent AAA studios, and another name has now joined that list. emptyvessel is a new studio formed by former veterans of the likes of id Software, Activision, Naughty Dog, Crystal Dynamics, Striking Distance Studios, Illfonic, and more.

Amid mass layoffs, studio closures, and general industry uncertainty, today began with a handful of studios and companies reclaiming control of their own destinies. We learned this morning that Saber Interactive and Gearbox are reportedly breaking free of Embracer Group. And now, it looks like Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob has sprung free of Activision and Microsoft.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic remake developer Saber Interactive has reportedly left embattled parent company Embracer in a $500 million deal to become a privately owned company.

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is often considered to be the lowest point of the series. It was such a failure that two planned sequels were cancelled, and the development of the series was handed over from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics.

The Tomb Raider franchise, as reimagined by developers at Crystal Dynamics, will be brought to life as a new tabletop role-playing game called Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth. But don’t expect anything as simple as a 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons clone. While combat and exploration are more or less settled science in the world of TTRPGs, Lara Croft’s latest effort hopes to uncover the far more precious treasures of open-ended narrative design and character development.

There are few western gaming icons who can boast the same prestige and cultural impact as Lara Croft. The famed archaeologist turned gun-toting adventurer has a storied mythos spanning multiple reboots and film adaptations, becoming one of the most recognisable faces in video games.

Earlier this month, a new image of a "unified" Lara Croft was released on the official Tomb Raider website, merging classic and reboot Lara Croft into one new design. Given how little we've seen from Crystal Dynamics or Amazon regarding the new Tomb Raider game we know is in development, this image was seen by many as the design for Lara Croft that the developers were intending to go with for her next game.

Embracer Group, the holdings company that spent years scooping up as many gaming properties and development teams as possible, has had to reduce its unsustainable size, cutting jobs, closing studios, and shelving projects. Last summer, the company announced its restructuring plan, and has now confirmed the figures pertaining to layoffs and more, and it's not pretty.

UPDATE 4.45pm UK: Consider me educated. I have looked into this further, and it turns out not only is Trinity the name of the military order in the rebooted Tomb Raider games, but it is also the code name for the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, which was conducted by the United States Army back in 1945. And that could be what the Tomb Raider website is referring to. Whoops!

Tomb Raider Remastered Trilogy is finally out and has updated three classic games and brought them to modern consoles for the first time. It's a pretty exceptional remaster too, sprucing things up by giving the original games' arguably outdated visuals a fresh coat of paint. it all looks pretty new and shiny, mostly for the better, though there is one glaring exception that is causing a bit of frustration among fans.

Super Mario 64 defined 3D platformers to such a degree that its influences are still being felt now, 28 years later. The original Crash Bandicoot debuted more or less simultaneously with Nintendo's classic, but ended up taking a much different path with the concept.

The next Tomb Raider game that is currently in development has presumably shared the first official sneak peek of hero Lara Croft, and it's an exciting throwback. Tomb Raider is one of the most successful action-adventure franchises in gaming, and the next mainline game, currently titled Tomb Raider Next, is giving Lara Croft a new look.

Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics launched a new website for the franchise on Wednesday — Valentine’s Day is also Lara Croft’s birthday — with another peek at the impending “unified” design for its action heroine. New artwork of Lara sporting a post-Survivor trilogy look that evokes her classic design supports the theory that the Lara we saw last fall in Call of Duty is basically the character’s future appearance.

There isn’t much of the games industry that hasn’t been impacted to some degree by the wave of layoffs it’s been suffering for more than a year at this point, but very few companies have contributed to that damage as much as Embracer Group has. Embracer announced an internal restructuring program in June last year after it failed to close a $2 billion deal with Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games group, and since then, across all of its studios, it has laid off a startling number of people.

Embracer Group’s ongoing restructuring has resulted in the company cutting 1,400 jobs, or about 8% of its global workforce, it confirmed on Thursday.

Tomb Raider Remastered Trilogy is almost here, bringing with it Lara's first three adventures to modern systems. They're absolute classics, full of dramatic moments, tense fights, and a whole host of new and improved features, but with all of that good stuff comes with it the series' dodgy past, particularly when it comes to the depictions of certain cultures.

This will be a unique story for us to write, so we need to give some context to it all. Humanity is nothing if not arrogant regarding what it feels it can “get away with” and how it can “showcase things it knows little about.” It’s these kinds of beliefs that have led to stereotypical depictions of various races throughout media for over a hundred years. Movies, TV shows, and, yes, video games have all partaken in this, and society has tried to do better once they were called out for it. The Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered collection is one such title that is a “product of the times,” and Crystal Dynamics wants you to be keenly aware of that.

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered begins with a content warning that explains the trilogy contains «offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices».

The Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered collection comes with a warning that denounces some of the content from the original trilogy as «rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices.» The bundle comprising the remasters of the original Tomb Raider trilogy releases February 14 for PC and the last two console generations.

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered contains a warning about the inclusion of racist and ethnic stereotypes.

The recently released Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League attracted less than half the concurrent player base of Marvel's Avengers in its first 24 hours.

Black Forest Games, a German video game developer subsidiary of THQ Nordic, which Embracer Group owns, is reportedly planning to lay off around 50% of its employees. Last December, two Danish developers owned by Embracer Group, 3D Realms and Slipgate Ironworks, announced that over half of their staff would have their roles eliminated. With that announcement, around 1000 people were laid off by Embracer in the second half of 2023. Now, Black Forest Games is seemingly the latest developer to be affected.

Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive has reportedly made a round of layoffs.

As the release of the (deep breath) Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft approaches (yes, that is its full and official Steam title) on February 14th, developers Aspyr have detailed some of the game's new features over on the PlayStation Blog, and how they've approached bringing the art, controls and effects up to date for 2023. Personally, I'm extremely pleased to see they've added a photo mode, for example, as I spent inordinate amounts of time making Lara do creepy side-eye smiles during inappropriate Shadow Of The Tomb Raider scenes. But I'm also heartened to see they've kept in the original tank controls as an optional extra, alongside a more modern control scheme to make them more approachable.

Aspyr has detailed how it’s updated the original Tomb Raider trilogy for modern platforms.

It’s been almost 30 years since Lara Croft took her first snowy steps in the mountains of Peru. In about 30 days, PlayStation players will get to re-experience Lara’s first three globe-trotting adventures, with a fresh look and feel in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. 

Aspyr shared tons of new information regarding the Tomb Raider 1-2-3 Remastered collection, mostly about how the original games' gameplay and art have been revamped for the collection's release on February 14. The remastered Tomb Raider games will be available for purchase on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC.

The early months of 2023 saw Embracer Group failing to close a $2 billion deal with Saudia Arabia’s Savvy Games Group, following which the company initiated a restructuring program that would entail layoffs, project cancellations, and studio closures. Sadly, Embracer Group’s continued efforts to stabilize its financial situation have come at the cost of a staggering number of company-wide cuts, and that’s something that’s continued into the new year.

Streaming giant Twitch is set to lay off around 500 members of staff this week according to a new report.

Unity has announced it intends to lay off approximately 1,800 employees, or around 25% of its workforce.

It’s been more than a decade since Crystal Dynamics, the developer best known for the Tomb Raider series, first introduced players to its reimagined take on Lara Croft. 2013’s Tomb Raider painted Lara as someone capable of adapting and overcoming nearly any situation while maintaining a level of emotional depth and self-awareness, a quality the game’s sequels would go on to further explore.

Surgeon Simulator developer Bossa Studios has laid off one-third of its staff, it’s confirmed.

Surgeon Simulator and Lost Skies developer Bossa Studios has become the latest affected by the sweeping lay-offs hitting the video game industry.

As revealed by last week's leak, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy is the final free game on the Epic Games Store holiday list. Unlike previous freebies, though, users have a full week to redeem the game and permanently add it to their libraries.

In a New Year’s letter, Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu plans to be “aggressive in applying” generative AI to their “content development and publishing functions” going forward.

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Art work reportedly taken from Free Radical Design's unreleased TimeSplitters game has popped up online.

Following the likely cancellation of the TimeSplitters reboot and confirmed closure of developer Free Radical, alleged images and assets from the project have started to appear online.

Embracer Group’s internal restructuring program has been a brutal one that has resulted in mass layoffs across a number of studios owned by the company, and the company is continuing to make cuts. The latest studios that have been hit with layoffs are 3D Realms and Slipgate Ironworks, both of which were acquired in 2021 and operate under the Saber Interactive banner.

Embracer Group has reportedly made layoffs at 3D Realms and Slipgate Ironworks.

Marvel has some major success stories in gaming in recent years with Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, but at the same time, the company has also endured some failures. Take, for instance, Eidos Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which enjoyed solid critical reception but failed to sell to expectations, or Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers, which suffered an even worse fate, taking a beating on both fronts before being delisted earlier this year.

Embracer Group’s brutal company-wide cutbacks are continuing, and Free Radical Design is the latest studio to suffer the chopping block. Reports indicated last month that Embracer was considering shuttering the TimeSplitters studio just two years after its re-establishment, while later in November, it emerged that Free Radical was facing closure before Christmas.

Approximately 9,000 games industry employees have been laid off so far this year.

New World Interactive has become the latest studio owned by Embracer Group to suffer a round of layoffs.

2023 has been dominated by an endless news cycle of widespread layoffs across the entirety of the games industry, and that is continuing even as we move into the final weeks of the year. The most recent studio to have suffered cutbacks is Codemasters, the developer of EA Sports WRC and F1 23, among many other racing games.

The latest studio to be affected by Embracer's «comprehensive restructuring programme» is Insurgency and Day of Infamy developer New World Interactive.

Yesterday, Nick Calandra first circulated the rumor that the Embracer Group had closed down New World Interactive. The rumor was then corroborated by Insider Gaming, although a Saber Interactive spokesperson later clarified the studio was being restructured, not shut down.

Electronic Arts has made a round of layoffs at UK-based racing games developer Codemasters.

Xbox Game Pass is adding 12 new titles to its December catalogue, including two day-one releases. The standout here has to be the Remnant franchise — both From the Ashes and its newly launched sequel Remnant II, celebrated for its souls-like shooter experience that pits players against tough-as-nails fantastical monsters, across procedurally-generated levels. Its challenges can also be tackled in co-op, so it's best advised that you check out the sequel because it will have a larger active player base. Another major addition this month is Far Cry 6, setting you against the vibrant tropical island of Yara to topple its ruthless dictator Antón Castillo (Giancarlo Esposito), who is hellbent on using the Viviro, an unstable form of cancer treatment, to restore his land to former glory. It arrives December 14 on Xbox Game Pass.

Ubisoft's Far Cry 6 is heading to Xbox Game Pass this month.

After leaking earlier today, Microsoft has confirmed the latest Game Pass titles coming in December. Remnant: From the Ashes and Remnant 2 are available today for subscribers on cloud, consoles and PC, while December 1st sees the arrival ofSpirit of the North andSteamWorld Build for the same platforms.

Just recently, we got two new surprise additions in the ever-growing Game Pass catalog with the addition of Remnant: From the Ashes and Remnant 2, but there’s plenty more for subscribers to look forward to in the next couple of weeks, as per prominent leaker billbil-kun.

2023 has been a turbulent year for Embracer Group, with a number of its many studios and projects having been affected by widespread layoffs and an internal restructuring initiative. Now, another studio under the company’s umbrella has been hit with significant layoffs.

After reports from earlier this month that developer Free Radical Design—which had been working on a revival of classic sci-fi shooter TimeSplitters—was on the verge of being shut down, Embracer CEO Lars Wingefors has seemingly confirmed internally that the studio will be closed before Christmas.

Embracer Group CEO Lars Wingefors has reportedly confirmed to employees that TimeSplitters studio Free Radical is facing closure next month, as part of a sweeping restructuring programme that has already resulted in more than 900 job cuts at the company.

Fishlabs is the latest developer to see layoffs as part of the ongoing cuts at parent company Embracer, Eurogamer understands

Chinese TikTok parent ByteDance is restructuring its video games business and reportedly stopping work on all unreleased games.