Publisher News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Following the sale of Gearbox to Take-Two, Gearbox Publishing, which wasn’t part of the sale, has rebranded.

There’s what looks like a bug (not that kind!) in Helldivers 2 that has left some players scratching their heads — and the developer of the game is certainly having fun with it.

Blizzard has published many hotfixes for Season of Discovery, including fixes for Loganaar who was needed for the Epic Crafting Questline, a new visual for Void Zone, and tweaks to Balefire Bolt. In addition to the Eranikus nerfs from earlier today, Blizzard also announced that Avatar of Hakkar's HP was reduced by 35%.

Following Embracer Group’s sale of Gearbox Entertainment, Gearbox Publishing has rebranded to Arc Games. The newly minted label will handle publishing for Hyper Light Breaker when it launches, as well as other Gearbox projects.

Both Amazon and Target are hosting competing buy two, get one free sales right now. They include an impressive selection of board games, books, and movies. As for the rules, just add three eligible titles to your cart, and your least expensive cart item will be free. Just note that if you’re taking advantage of this sale at Target, you’ll need to enroll in their free Target Circle program before you check out.

In the aftermath of Saber’s separation due to Embracer’s recent struggles, it might be easy to expect someone like Saber Interactive CEO (and owner, via holding company Beacon Interactive) Matthew Karch to be a bit gleeful, or even spiteful. But he’s not.

Indie gaming’s biggest names will livestream a digital showcase for “iii games” on Wednesday, promising new looks at more than 30 titles from studios and publishers behind hits like Darkest Dungeon, Spiritfarer, V Rising, and Risk of Rain 2.

Sports anime and manga remain one of the most popular genres, with new ones coming out every season. That doesn't mean the classics are not popular now, however, and one manga is continuing to be published more than forty years after it first debuted. After more than forty years, though, it is going to try something really new to keep fans interested, and keep the manga alive.

There's no denying Baldur's Gate 3's massive popularity, and its director of publishing, Michael Douse, has drawn comparison between it and the survival crafting game Palworld for finding success with a game that not all investors might have taken a chance on. 

The news that Baldur's Gate 3 will not receive a sequel from the developer Larian disappointed several fans. Still, the studio is reportedly working on a new title, which will also be released in early access first.

It is no exaggeration to say that Final Fantasy Tactics is one of the most successful spin-offs in the long history of Square Enix's IP.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero has disappeared from the Xbox store. Some fans say that they've been unable to access the store page for a few days now, with no explanation as to why it's been taken down.

A CD Projekt Red executive has slyly poked fun at fellow publisher Ubisoft and its failed attempt to label Skull and Bones as a "AAAA" game.

It's been a rough couple of years for the games industry, with record levels of layoffs and more and more people losing their jobs with each passing month. Xbox and PlayStation alone have laid off thousands of people between them, leading to the cancelation of promising projects, and smaller developers like Gearbox are feeling the effects of Embracer's massive spending spree in 2021.

You'll struggle to find anyone that wasn't surprised by Baldur's Gate 3's rampant success over the past year. It's an excellent RPG and one of the most ambitious the industry has ever seen, but many assumed that its genre would have been too significant of a barrier for the game to break into the mainstream.

Over the past few months, Baldur's Gate 3's developers have used its platform during awards season speeches to advocate for a healthier game industry. This tradition now extends to its publishing director, who, in a recent interview with Game File, shared his thoughts on industry-wide layoffs plaguing developers over the past two years as an "avoidable fuck up."

Singularity 6 is the latest studio to be hit by layoffs, with the Palia developer confirming in a statement sent to IGN that it has laid off around 35 percent of its workers.

Infinity Games just dropped a new brain-bender called Arc Tracker: Pendulum on Android. It’s now up for pre-registration. Priced at $1.99, it’s a pendular motion puzzle game. Infinity Games has also published some other well-known puzzlers including Maze: Puzzle and Relaxing Game, Laser: Relaxing & Anti-Stress, Infinity Loop: Relaxing Puzzle and Energy: Anti-Stress Loops.

Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is currently embroiled in a hacker problem that has resulted in unreleased skins, seasons, and even playable characters leaking online.

In a major step towards protecting news publishers and content creators from copyright violations done by companies while training their artificial intelligence (AI) models, Electronics & Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that the Indian govt is planning to formulate a new AI law. This development comes after the govt made it mandatory for companies to get a permit before rolling out their untested models, a decision that was highly talked about and ultimately revoked later on.

DriveThruRPG is currently offering discounts on PDFs of all the essential rulebooks you need to jump into the Fallout TTRPG, including the Starter Set, Core Rulebook, and Gamemaster’s Toolkit. This deal is an excellent way to get acclimated (or reacquainted) to the world of Fallout before the Amazon Prime show launches April 12. If you’d like a sample of what this RPG has to offer before you commit some dollars, a free 63-page quickstart guide is available.

Have you ever played Noodlecake’s Lumino City, the cute puzzle adventure game? It’s been around for quite a while. Then, why am I talking about it? Well, this pretty ‘lit’ game is now up for grabs at just $0.99. Originally priced at $4.99, it’s already garnered over 11.3k reviews on the Play Store since its release in 2017.

Pokmon Scarlet and Violet is the latest mainstream game for The Pokemon Company. One thing that the franchise allows players to do is hunt for Shiny Pokemon. Whether that be on Pokemon GO or be on console games. However, after so much time, The Pokemon Company has published their very own Shiny hunting guide for the game.

Roblox boss Stefano Corazza has opened up about accusations of young developer exploitation on its platform, saying that the opportunity Roblox gives its teenage creators is “a gift."

Everyone’s favourite candid games exec, Phil Spencer, was in the news last week discussing the concerning ‘lack of growth’ in video games.

Developer Wolf & Wood, in collaboration with publisher RapidEyeMovers, has announced a new non-VR version of C Smash VRS for the PS5. The game is titled Cosmic Smash VRS – New Dimension, and it is slated for release in late summer of this year. Owners of the PSVR 2 version of C-Smash VRS will receive the New Dimension update for free.

The Outer Worlds: Spacer’s Choice Edition is free to keep through April 11, courtesy of the Epic Games Store. This extrasolar tale of capitalism run amok is set on a frontier full of company towns, classism, and crooked companies that’d sell out their own mom for a quick buck. The Spacer’s Choice Edition is the definitive version of the 2019 RPG and includes a host of graphical improvements in addition to the post-launch DLC Peril on Gorgon, and Murder on Eridanos.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is set to receive a trippy parkour map called Get High as part of an upcoming 4/20 event.

A suspect has been arrested for threats made against Nintendo in December 2023. Nintendo decided to cancel its Live Tokyo 2024 event, originally scheduled to be held on January 20-21, 2024, after an unknown person made multiple threats against company employees and attendees. As a precaution, Nintendo postponed several tournaments that were to take place during the Live Tokyo show.

Ubisoft has announced that its annual Forward event will return this summer.

Pokemon Scarlet and Violet players can't believe their luck, as The Pokemon Company publishes the first-ever official Shiny hunting guide.

The Poohniverse is expanding. The first teaser trailer for Bambi: The Reckoning, the third movie in the Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey universe, has arrived, and the titular deer is all out for revenge.

The publisher of Unicorn Overlord says there are currently no plans for DLC or a PC port, but a recent survey does mention the possibility of a sequel.

Spider-Man 2, Starfield, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom all launched in 2023 but these blockbusters didn't stop Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch players from spending most of their time with older games like Grand Theft Auto 5 and Fortnite.

Monolith Productions, the team behind Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War, had a Batman game in production that was ultimately canceled by publisher Warner Bros. Interactive.

One of the big stories of the past year has been the collapse of Embracer Group, as the failure to secure a major $2 billion investment resulted in the company cutting loose several major studios, either by selling or shuttering them, and laying off 1,400 employees. One of the studios Embracer let go of was Saber Interactive, which was sold to new company Beacon Interactive for a relatively meager $247 million (Embracer originally paid $525 million for them). You’d think the head of Saber might be bitter about this, but instead the company’s founder Matthew Karch is still singing Embracer’s praises in a new GamesIndustry.biz interview.

Scrooge McDuck would never pay full price for his Disney Lorcana cards, and neither should you. Right now, Amazon is offering discounts on booster display boxes, packs, and starter decks for Disney Lorcana. Display boxes for Lorcana’s first expansion, Rise of the Floodborn, are currently on sale for $130.35 (was $143.99), while boxes from the newer Into the Inklands set are discounted to just $118.88, their lowest prices to date. Each display box contains a total of 24 booster packs with a guaranteed spread of rare cards in each pack.

Ubisoft Forward is returning on June 10, live from Los Angeles, the publisher announced today on Twitter. This is Ubisoft's premiere event to show updates, upcoming releases of announced games, and brand-new unannounced projects. Once, it was part of the various Electronic Entertainment Expo conferences. However, with E3 now effectively dead, it has become part of its soft replacement: Geoff Keighley's Summer Game Fest, which starts on June 7 this year. There's no word yet on which games will be shown at Ubisoft Forward, but we can certainly speculate based on the publisher's known lineup.

Monument Valley, the popular adventure puzzle developed and published by ustwo games, has kicked off its 10-year anniversary celebrations. Ten years, can you believe it? Since the milestone is so significant, the celebration ought to be just as extensive, right? It’s not a one-week or one-month fête, it’s a one-year-long celebration!

If you are a fan of Rockstar Games, you probably know how secretive the publisher is about sharing behind-the-scenes looks at some of its most beloved games. Fortunately, one fan has unearthed a hidden audio file in Red Dead Redemption 2, revealing audio bloopers during the game's production.

Uniqlo’s latest video game collaboration may be its best yet. It teamed up with Nintendo on six T-shirts inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and they’re coming to stores in late April. Each $24.90 T-shirt features iconography and characters from Tears of the Kingdom. Have a look at them below.

June 10 will be a big day for Ubisoft, as the major triple-A publisher will be holding a new Ubisoft Forward livestream that day – around the same time as Summer Game Fest. With the once-prominent E3 not returning for the foreseeable future, it will fall to similar events like Summer Game Fest to serve as a showcase for upcoming video games from publishers like Ubisoft in 2024 and beyond. Certain companies have even started hosting their own shows throughout the year, with Sony supposedly holding a PlayStation Showcase centered around Silent Hill 2 and other first-party titles sometime next month.

Epic Seven is collaborating with Overlord, the light novel series. Smilegate just dropped a trailer announcing the crossover. Some sharp-eyed players had already found the juicy details hidden in the game’s countdown page code since April 1st. Now, that’s literally staying ahead of the game!

Atari has bought the publishing rights to Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, and all major titles in the franchise, from Frontier Developments. The sale closed at $7 million and includes the rights to eight series titles. Atari and franchise creator Chris Sawyer's deal includes a long-term licensing agreement for the games as well.

Smash-hit co-op horror game Content Warning is now a certified viral mega-hit, with over 6.2 million players claiming the game for free at launch.

Long-running games firm Atari has bought the publishing rights to 2004's Rollercoaster Tycoon 3.

Atari has bought the RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 publishing rights from Frontier Developments for $7 million.

Fresh from bringing back classics such as Star Wars: Dark Forces, Turok 3, and Quake 2, Nightdive Studios has announced its next restoration — and it’s a game no-one expected.

EA has announced its EA Play subscription service will be updated on Thursday with the addition of the high-quality golf game EA Sports PGA Tour. Current members will be available to download and kickstart their golfing career as the title is added to The Play List, which already features many other games published by EA. You can check out our All EA Play Games on PS5, PS4 guide through the link.

The PS5 remake of Silent Hill 2 has taken one step closer to its reported 2024 release as the ESRB has handed the title a Mature age rating. Generally awarded near the completion of a game's development, the USA firm warns of blood and gore, language, sexual themes, and violence throughout the experience from Bloober Team. A trailer published by Sony at the start of 2024 pegged Silent Hill 2 with a 2024 release window, and this new update could signal that's still on the cards.

Each week we’ll look ahead to what’s in store for World of Warcraft, share the latest news, and keep you in the know byte by byte. Explore the Sunken Temple and more in Season of Discovery Phase 3 and go on the hunt for hidden treasure eggs during Noblegarden!

Despite its delisting and the impending shuttering of its servers, fans of Friday the 13th: The Game have reason to rejoice, thanks to a fan project.

Landfall’s surprise April Fools release Content Warning has been claimed by more than 6 million Steam users in only 24 hours.

Blizzard has posted This Week in WoW which includes the launch of Classic Season of Discovery Phase 3 Thursday and the return of Legion Timewalking in Dragonflight.

Rockstar has announced plans to add Bully and LA Noire to GTA+ later in 2024.

French publishing giant Ubisoft is laying off 45 members of staff. 

According to developer and publisher Capcom, the recent open-world role-playing game (RPG) Dragon’s Dogma 2 has managed to surpass 2.5 million units sold worldwide since its March 22 launch.

The latest surprise Steam hit is Content Warning, a Lethal Company-style game that’s enjoying enormous success on Valve’s platform off the back of a ‘free to keep’ promotion that ends soon.

The Snapdragon X Elite was previously benchmarked in an unnamed Lenovo laptop, and it received less than stellar scores, though those figures were still impressive compared to what Qualcomm had previously released, which was the highly disappointing Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3. However, newly published results reveal up to a 49 percent bump in the latest Geekbench 6 leak, and we will discuss the potential reasons for this massive score difference.

Thousands of jobs have been cut across the entire games industry in a wave of mass layoffs in 2024 so far, and that number is continuing to steadily grow. Ubisoft is the latest company to have eliminated positions, having cut 45 jobs in a fresh round of layoffs, as reported by GameSpot.

Indie publisher tinyBuildannounced a brand-new game called that mixes ducks, destruction, and survival. The game was announced on April 1, and despite its bizarre concept, is not an April Fool's joke. tinyBuild is best known for its niche games like , a horror puzzle game, and a management Sim. This will be the publisher's first foray into the survival genre, and is said to be a mix of popular survival games like and .

To get free trials to Apple subscriptions like Apple TV Plus and Apple Arcade, you typically have to buy new Apple products. Some phone plans include them as perks, too. However, Best Buy is offering free trials to new and returning customers who have a free Best Buy account.

No Rest for the Wicked, the Diablo-esque action RPG in the works at Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps studio Moon, won't be $70. CEO Thomas Mahler says the game's price point is down to the nature of the team, their shared stance on the rising price of games, and the notable lack of shareholders pawing at the company's books. 

Content Warning is a brand new co-op horror game where you "get famous or die trying," and it's 100% free for its first 24 hours.

Little Land is a new survival game on Android that’s sure to test your survival instincts. It’s set in a microscopic world where you’re tinier than an ant. It lets you build structures, befriend bugs and defend yourselves against pesky enemies. Published by Puzala Games, it’s free to play.

Publisher tinybuild has announced Duckside, a new persistent-world survival game for PC where you play as a duck. And no, this is not a joke despite it being April 1. Check out the announcement trailer above and the first screenshots in the gallery below.

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Publisher SEGA and developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio will hold cast auditions for the next Like a Dragon title, series director Masayoshi Yokoyama announced on the latest episode of “Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio TV.”

Exchange Codes in are a great way of quickly earning more of the game's primary currency, Gems. New outfits for characters, as well as character pulls, can be redeemed with Gems, making them a valuable, but often arduous to obtain resource. Using Exchange Codes that Capcom frequently posts, though, players can easily obtain hundreds of Gems to spend on their best Street Fighter characters.

Capcom has shared information on its ongoing survey in which it’s asking players which series they would like to see getting new games.

Xbox will apparently release the “majority” of its tentpole first-party titles on PS5 in the future, as its multiformat strategy gathers pace. Earlier in the year, the Redmond firm broadcast a strategic business meeting, where it announced four console exclusive titles – including Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves – would launch on Sony’s format. While it stopped short of confirming other rumoured releases, it insinuated this was simply the start of a new philosophy for the firm.

It’s been a huge 12 months for Final Fantasy, and Square Enix is seemingly just getting warmed up. Following on from the reveal of Final Fantasy 16 add-on The Rising Tide earlier this weekend, the publisher has now confirmed MMO expansion Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail will deploy on 2nd July. This all follows the release of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth last month, of course.

Take-Two has announced plans to acquire Gearbox Entertainment from the embattled Embracer Group, in a deal reported to be worth $460 million. The buyout makes logical sense, as Gearbox Entertainment will operate under the framework of 2K Games, which has long been the publisher of the popular Borderlands series. It’ll be led by founder Randy Pitchford.

Things have been quiet on the Suicide Squad front since the game was released in February. Publisher Warner Bros was disappointed by the game's poor sales but doubled down on making its live service dream a reality. A free DLC update is now available, adding The Crown Prince of Crime himself to the game.

Don't Nod, once the developer best known for the quirky adventure game Life is Strange, has seven games in development, four of which remain unannounced. With releases like Vampyr and Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden under its belt (and more on the way), it's clear that the company has larger publishing ambitions, wants to become a real player in a specific economic space, and is reorganizing accordingly.

Bandai Namco has stealthily released a new freebie about a Pomeranian making an absolute mess, and it's surprisingly one of the publisher's best-rated Steam games ever. 

PAX East is always a treat. A smaller, more intimate show than PAX West, PAX East is a good way to take the industry’s temperature and see a ton of exciting new games from both major publishers and small indies that are doing exciting new work you may not have heard of before. I spent four days at PAX East this year, seeing a ton of cool games both on the show floor and behind closed doors. Some I unfortunately can’t talk about, but let me be clear: I saw a lot of cool stuff. This roundup will cover the best of the best.

Keychron’s keyboards may not be as flashy as most models from Corsair or Razer, but it can’t be argued that they absolutely nail the basics. If you need a reliable daily driver with some extensive customization options, you can currently pick up the Keychron K8 from Amazon for its lowest price to date. Originally $69.99, the Keychron K8 is available for $56, but only if you click the on-page coupon before checkout.

A few days ago, Kotaku published a report suggesting Grand Theft Auto 6 may be delayed to late 2025 or even 2026. We didn't report on it because it seemed ephemeral rather than substantial, which Bloomberg's Jason Schreier (formerly of Kotaku himself) has now confirmed.

A new pixel adventure RPG Zero to Hero: Pixel Saga is now up for pre-registration on Android but only in Southeast Asia. Published by Rastar Mobile, the game is free to play and is expected to drop by the beginning of May.