There are about a dozen reasons you can cite as to why this was the case, but one that appears to be a reoccurring theme between former developers is the studio—or, rather, the studio's head honcho, Todd Howard—suffering from success. So sayeth Dennis Mejillones, a character artist who worked at Bethesda for over 12 years, including work on Starfield itself, during an interview with Kiwi Talkz.

While the comparison in the headline might not seem flattering at first blush, In the interest of fairness I want to highlight that Meijilones is, broadly speaking, very positive on his relationship with Howard: "I love Todd, I do. He's one of the greatest influences on my life … This man has been a mentor, a guide, he's been patient with me. So a lot of what I am, he's helped shape that.

"Is he perfect? No, does he call all the shots perfectly? No." Meijilones recounts a couple of times where he disagreed with Howard on key issues, and while he says he felt comfortable bringing them up if he "felt strongly", he does admit that "a lot of people were afraid to say no to Todd, and I think that hurt him."

Here's where the George Lucas comparison comes in. "It's like George Lucas—George Lucas, I think, is a genius. I think geniuses come up with terrible ideas, too, they're not gonna be hits. But if you don't have somebody to help you filter through these things, and give you an honest assessment, because they're afraid to tell you what they really think, it actually does hurt you."

For context, one often-cited reason for why the original Star Wars movies are considered space opera classics, while the prequels are considered, uh, not that, is that Lucas was given more and more direct power over them as time went on. For example, episodes four to six were extensively edited by his then-wife Marcia Lucas, who divorced George Lucas after episode six's release, and had little part in the following films.

Mind, George Lucas is sometimes described as stubborn—just ask, well, George Lucas, who said "I’m a stubborn guy and I didn’t want people to tell me how to make my movies." Whereas Howard, if the developers working under him are to be believed, is more a victim of circumstance. Back in October 2023, former lead designer on Skyrim Bruce Nesmith said that "he has tried really really hard to not be the 'last say' guy, [but] it hasn't worked out that way. That's not something he wants intellectually, I think it ends up being that way because he's somebody who has opinions and whose opinions are valuable."

Another interesting parallel here is how Meijilones says: "One of the reasons I kind of 'retired' is—I was like, I miss Todd, I miss working with him, he's running this big business [that] grew tremendously … His attention was very scattered. Some of the people who took his place, they're not Todd, it takes a lot to be Todd."

Nesmith also mirrored this back in October 2023, where he stated: "when you're running six different studios and you've got a dozen projects—although usually only one really big one—going on at a time, you know, he's only one man, he doesn't have the facetime to do that anymore!"

All of this paints the picture of a former auteur designer struggling to adjust to a studio ballooning in size and scope. Not that it's all been bad, mind. Bethesda's Indiana Jones game has been a downright smashing success, with our own Ted Litchfield scoring it a 86 in his Indiana Jones and the Great Circle review. PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon also chose it for his personal Game of the Year pick back in December. When it comes to RPGs, though? If Starfield's the future, then it looks like Bethesda has some work to do informing its employees that you can, in fact, disagree with your boss.

Pierre-Loup Griffais is one of the Valve developers dedicated to SteamOS, and told French site Frandroid "we’ve come a long way behind the scenes”. He's been working on the project since its very beginnings, and says the focus at the moment is on compatibility: "All of this work is broadly applicable to the PC platform, and it’s going to continue to expand over time. Supporting multiple platforms, multiple chipsets, controllers for different machines that are out there and even ones that aren’t out yet."

Griffais acknowledges that the support on some platforms is still "very basic" but that, for example, it has four developers currently working on the NVIDIA open source driver: "It’s just that there’s a lot of work to do... But the beauty of this open source model is that a lot of the elements that we’ve put in place or that have been put in place by other players in the community are shared. A lot of work has already been done, and everyone is developing the same code base. It’s a pretty unique model.”

The flipside of this is that Valve can also take advantage of some open source elements itself: "We're not too interested in inventing our own sauce," says Griffais. "If something is already done and meets our standards of performance and functionality, we use it."

Valve's goal with the OS is to have it compatible with traditional PCs, laptops, portable consoles and any other formats. The open nature of it inevitably brings to mind Windows, the world's most popular operating system and a closed one: Gabe Newell once infamously described Windows 8 as a "catastrophe" for the PC ecosystem. But Griffais says they're not out to pick a fight with Redmond.

"I don't think the goal is to have a certain market share, or to push users away from Windows," says Griffais. "If a user has a good experience on Windows, there's no problem. I think it's interesting to develop a system that has different goals and priorities, and if it becomes a good alternative for a typical desktop user, that's great. It gives them choice. But it's not a goal in itself to convert users who already have a good experience."

Griffais says there's "not really" a roadmap for SteamOS's future, and comes out with one of those Valve lines: "It's when we have the time and we get there."

Following the success of Steam Deck, is there any chance we might see a comeback for Steam Machines? "Right now, we're focused on handhelds," says Griffais. "But as our work expands our ability to work on other platforms and have a good experience in different form factors... We've already done a lot to make these consoles connectable to screens, connectable to a controller… We're not there yet to give priority to a Steam Machine. But in collaboration or internally, it's an open door to the future."

It's easy to understate what an unusual project SteamOS is. It represents over a dozen years of work from some of the industry's finest, is funded by a private company, yet is open source and free for everyone to use. "I'm pretty happy that we've managed to find a balance that's beneficial to everyone, while still being able to help this PC ecosystem in this way," says Griffais. "I'm really happy about that."

Free Our Feed opens with a strong denouncement of Facebook and X in their current forms, calling Mark Zuckerberg's recent moves to ditch fact checkers and ease up on restrictions on hate speech "going full Musk."

The open letter picks up the mission statement from there. "We are determined to free social media from billionaire control," it states. "We know it will take three things: community, capital, control. And for the first time ever there is a pathway to secure the future of social media in the public interest. The Bluesky team has built an incredible foundation for this vision of social media that gives power and choice back to people through individual control and customization, sparking creativity and bringing joy back into connecting online.

"However, they remain a commercial company, and despite their best intentions they will come under the same pressures all businesses face: to maximise return to their investors. We know that to ultimately build out a social network ecosystem that will remain free from venture capital and billionaire capture it will take years and hundreds of millions of dollars—and much like when we first started towns, we made the first roads, and over time we built out a network, all operating as part of a social contract where people get to the share the benefits of access to those roads."

The roads in the letter's analogy are the AT Protocol, the open source infrastructure that powers Bluesky and could theoretically be used to build a new wave of interconnected social platforms, offering non-corporate alternatives to the likes of Facebook and Linkedin. Free Our Feeds' goal is to create a "public interest foundation that will work to support making Bluesky's underlying tech fully resistant to billionaire capture." That will involve offering funds to developers to build "a wealth of social applications on top of open protocols to make social media a healthier and happier place."

The open letter's references to Bluesky's creators eventually falling victim to the whims of venture capital may sound like a dig—and there's ample mistrust online around Bluesky thanks to its former connection to Jack Dorsey and investment from a company called Blockchain Capital—but it's actually in-line with Bluesky's mission statement since the beginning.

"One of Bluesky's mottos is 'the company is a future adversary,'" explained Bluesky developer Emily Liu in 2023. In recent months CEO Jay Graber has also called the social network's open source design "billionaire-proof," and endorsed Free Our Feeds on Monday.

The Free Our Feeds website says the foundation should be "up and running by the end of 2025," but it's already collecting donations via a GoFundMe, with a goal of $4 million "to create the foundation and get critical infrastructure up and running."

Oops! With Bitcoin's price having risen spectacularly since those days, it is estimated that the hard drive now contains $598 million worth of Bitcoin, with Howells claiming it could be worth as much as $1 billion next year.

Howells has been pursuing Newport City Council, which operates the tip site, since 2013. After initially trying to outright sue for access to the site, in recent years he's also tried a more softly-softly approach, offering the council 25% of the haul's value if they'd let him look for it.

In the latest hearing, Newport council asked the High Court to strike out Howells' legal action, which demanded he be given the right to access the landfill or receive £495 million ($601 million) in compensation. But Judge Keyser KC shut it all down, saying the claim had no "reasonable grounds" and there was "no realistic prospect of succeeding if it went to trial."

Howells told the BBC he was "very upset." He went on to say that he'd "been trying to engage with Newport City Council in every way which is humanly possible for the past 12 years" and this was "a kick in the teeth." Then he got a bit conspiratorial and woe-is-me about the whole thing.

"It's not about greed, I'm happy to share the proceeds but nobody in a position of power will have a decent conversation with me," said Howells. "This ruling has taken everything from me and left me with nothing. It's the great British injustice system striking again."

While it's hard not to feel a small pang of sympathy for Howells, he was trying to set a pretty crazy legal precedent: That something disposed of as trash in a landfill remained his property, and it was Newport Council's responsibility to help him find it. Representing the council, James Goudie KC argued that under existing laws the hard drive became the council's property when it entered the landfill, and Howell's inducements were just trying to get the council to "play fast and loose" by "signing up for a share of the action."

Goudie also pointed out the environmental impact of excavating 11 years of putrescent waste, allowing millions of tons of methane and CO2 to escape into the atmosphere, and breaching the council's obligations in this area.

The landfill in question holds more than 1.4m tonnes of waste, though Howells reckons he's narrowed the hard drive's location to an area consisting of 100,000 tonnes. But even then, the chances of this thing surviving in any usable form where the Bitcoin could be recovered seems remote at absolute best: It's in all likelihood a hunk of corroded metal, and has been for years.

The statement was made during a recent investors chat (via Strefa Inwestorów), during which CI Games was asked about its "stance on DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] in gaming." In response, global marketing director Ryan Hill said the company prioritizes "excellent user experience with compelling thematics and characters created specifically for core and adjacent audiences," and then rolled into what I would call a pretty ill-informed take on the current state of the game industry.

"While some videogames have recently taken the opportunity to embed social or political agendas within their experiences, it is clear that many players do not appreciate this, and as a result, we have seen a number of high profile releases underperforming commercially during the last year alone," Hill said. "Our games will always be developed to maximise player enjoyment and commercial success, and as such, we will not be integrating any social or political agencies into these experiences going forward having observed the high risk this can present."

Hill didn't explain how exactly he or CI Games defines DEI, which has become shorthand slang for "things I don't like" among some parts of videogame fandom, nor did he offer any examples of games that failed due to their "social or political agendas." Concord and Dustborn are commonly held up as examples of such, but the reality is that they're just two of literally thousands of games—19,000 new games on Steam alone in 2024—that failed to find an audience over the past year. And in the case of Concord in particular, it arguably just wasn't a great game—we gave it a 45% in our review, and not because we didn't think the cast was white enough

He did, unfortunately, lend credence to the ugly and patently false assertion that DEI is ruining gaming by—well, that's not really clear either. But that almost doesn't matter: As a hot-button buzzword among angry, reactionary gamers, the DEI boogeyman doesn't need a definition, it just needs to stir up lizard brain emotions on the way to generating views.

Hill's comments stand in sharp contrast to those expressed by another Polish games company, Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt: On its diversity and inclusion page, which does in fact define the studio's approach to DEI in detail, CEO Adam Kiciński says "a diversity of perspectives unlocks creativity and increases innovation."

CI Games declined to comment on Hill's statement. However, shortly after this story was published, CEO Marek Tymiński posted a message on X confirming the studio will not integrate "DEI elements"—which he also left undefined--into its games.

"After years of pretending to be Democrats, Big Tech leaders are now pretending to be Republicans, in hopes of currying favor with the new administration," Sweeney said in a post on X. "Beware of the scummy monopoly campaign to vilify competition law as they rip off consumers and crush competitors."

Google and Apple are among Trump's new tech industry admirers: Both are donating $1 million to the inauguration, with Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly making the contribution personally. Sweeney and Epic have been battling both companies for years over smartphone software distribution.

The short version is that Sweeney wants to sell games on iPhones and Android phones without using Apple and Google's official stores and payment processing systems—or paying a fee for the privilege—and has argued that the companies are unfairly monopolizing the mobile software market by making that very difficult to do. He's made some progress in Europe, but the situation in the US hasn't budged much. Last year, Sweeney vowed to "keep fighting on until there's an ultimate victory" over Apple and Google's "totally broken vision for the world."

Although law firm Skadden predicts that "aggressive antitrust enforcement is unlikely to disappear altogether" during Trump's second term, the new administration is expected to be softer on antitrust cases, and FTC Chair Lina Khan said this week that she hopes Amazon and Meta won't be handed a "sweetheart deal" in upcoming antitrust trials.

Probably not coincidentally, Amazon and Meta have both made their own million-dollar Trump inauguration donations, with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also loosening Facebook content moderation policies in an obvious attempt to please the new administration.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said recently that he'd love to personally congratulate Trump, and that the GPU maker will do everything it can "to help this administration succeed," although Nvidia hasn't announced plans to donate to the inauguration.

Trump himself has commented on the attitude change from big tech leaders. "The first term, everybody was fighting me," the president-elect said in December. "In this term, everybody wants to be my friend."

"Square Enix believes that the feedback, comments and requests received from our customers are essential to the advancement of our group's products and services," the new policy states. "At the same time, there are instances where certain customers take actions directly or through our support centers, or towards our group executives, employees, [or] partners who are involved in the creation and distribution of our group products and services, that constitute 'customer harassment'.

"Such actions do not only prevent our employees and partners from engaging in their work with a sense of security but also causes disruptions to other customers. Square Enix will not tolerate harassment and will take action as necessary."

Those actions range from refusing support requests and implementing bans to, in cases "where such action is egregious or with malicious intent," legal action and possibly even criminal proceedings.

As unfortunate as it is that this sort of thing has to be spelled out, game companies are increasingly being forced to take explicit action against abusive fans. In 2023, Destiny 2 studio Bungie won a $500,000 award against a "racist shitstain" who harassed and threatened a community manager, and in 2024 issued permanent bans against players who aimed toxic abuse at one of its developers during a livestream. Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen also warned against growing toxicity among Cities: Skylines 2 players in 2024, saying the studio may have to "pull back our engagement" with the community if it keeps up.

As noted in this Reddit thread, Square Enix has faced a significant level of abuse in the past as well. Final Fantasy writer Kazushige Nojima said in February 2024 that he "felt afraid" after facing "insults and violent words" from a supposed fan, and Final Fantasy 14 voice actor Sena Bryer said later in the year that she faced transphobic abuse including "misgendering, death/rape threats, doxxing attempts, [and] threats against my family" for her portrayal of Wuk Lamat. In GDC's 2023 State of the Game Industry survey, 91% of respondents said player harassment of game developers is a problem for the industry, particularly among women and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

"The team at Piranha truly delivered a high-quality game that exceeded both internal as well as external expectations in terms of quality, story and gameplay," Enad Global 7 CEO Ji Ham said. "Despite the phenomenal work by the team at Piranha, the game failed to reach new audiences and expand its core audience as anticipated and therefore has not met the necessary sales targets, which has forced us to undertake necessary actions."

We liked Clans quite a bit when it dropped last year, saying it "delivers a strong story of struggling young warriors alongside the best-ever version of its iconic, lumbering mech combat" in our 82% review. Player numbers on Steam weren't great, though, reaching an all-time peak concurrent player count of just 5,600, according to SteamDB—not much more than the peak put up by the 10-year-old Mechwarrior Online.

The layoffs mean Piranha will be able to continue operating with "sound profitability" while still producing new content for Mechwarrior 5: Clans, Enad Global 7 said, and isn't sound profitability and producing new content what made us fall in love with games in the first place?

For similar reasons, but without mention of any specific failure, Toadman will be closed after "several initiatives to turn the subsidiary profitable" apparently failed to accomplish their goal. EG7 said the shutdown "stems directly from the continued industry challenges and the studio's inability to secure new Work-for-Hire (WFH) contracts at a necessary pace," and will see 69 employees and subcontractors put out of work, although 42 will continue to work on the studio's currently contracted projects until they're completed.

It sure didn't help that Toadman's 2024 shooter EvilVevil landed with a complete thud. We strongly recommended against playing it for any reason, and for once people listened: Its all-time peak concurrent player count on Steam is just 37, and SteamDB says there are literally zero people playing it right now.

And so it goes. 2023 was a terrible year for layoffs in the videogame industry, 2024 was even worse, and 2025 sure isn't off to a great start: Earlier this week Splash Damage said layoffs are likely following the cancellation of Transformers: Reactivate, and Jar of Sparks, a studio headed by former Halo Infinite design head Jerry Hook, halted work on its unreleased game and effectively closed its doors after parent company NetEase ended funding for the project.

The case has already been heard in lower courts, which have sided with the US government, and in a typical case the Supreme Court would be unlikely to reverse those rulings. But this one has a little more spice to it, not least because President-elect Donald Trump's lawyers submitted a legal brief that says he "opposes banning TikTok" and wants "the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office." Trump had in his first term called for the platform to be banned. This intervention should have no bearing on the Supreme Court's ruling, though "should" is doing some heavy lifting there because this is without precedent.

The law passed against TikTok had support from both Democrats and Republicans, and followed years of controversy over the hugely popular platform, with particular focus on its alleged ties to the Chinese authorities and influence over young Americans. The US is not alone in having such concerns, with TikTok already banned in India and subject to targeted restrictions elsewhere (it is for example banned from government devices in the UK).

For its part, TikTok denies any influence from the Chinese Communist Party and is asking the Supreme Court to strike down the law as unconstitutional, or at least delay the enforcement to allow for a review. But some think that, even if granted more time or given the chance to strike a deal with Trump, TikTok's days in its current form are numbered.

"I don't see any president, including future President Trump, being able to resolve this in a way that's satisfactory for US national security because I don't think ByteDance will agree to it," attorney Peter Choharis, part of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told the BBC. "It's about control and how the Chinese Communist Party specifically, and the Chinese government more generally, pursue strategic aims using many internet firms and especially social media companies—specifically including TikTok."

Some US TikTok users have filed a suit in support of the platform, while both the American Civil Liberties Union and Freedom of the Press Foundation are also on TikTok's side, and say the US government hasn't given any "credible evidence" to back up its accusations of manipulation.

The mooted ban is supposed to come into force on January 19, 2025, the same day as Donald Trump's inauguration. A decision from the Supreme Court is expected before that date.

An in-depth investigation into the working conditions at Brandoville Studios (an Indonesian studio which has provided animation support to games like Assassin's Creed Shadows and The Last Of Us: Part I Remake) has been conducted by People Make Games, and alleges a shocking culture of abuse.

Before we proceed, it should be noted that the contents of the report involve extensive physical and psychological abuse and the death of a child, as well as recordings of coerced self-harm. I will also be describing some of these elements below.

Brandoville Studios, which closed on August 17, 2024, was headed up by Cherry Lai and Ken Lai—the studio's commissioner and CEO, respectively. People Make Games' report cites several employees, both named and anonymous, and shares both video footage and text threads sent and verified by the channel's reporter, Chris Bratt, that paint a disturbing picture of sustained misuse of power by Cherry Lai.

The bulk of evidence provided comes from Christa Sydney, who alleges that she suffered years of abuse during her time at the company. Sydney states that, after joining Brandoville in 2019, she was reprimanded for raising "her voice to the company's CEO, Ken Lai, during a disagreement over how some business cards had been printed."

The report claims that, despite being expected to be fired, Cherry Lai intervened, saying that "God had talked to her", after which Sydney was taken under her wing and given "two weeks to prove herself."

What ensues in the video is a textbook description of abuse—coroborrated by Sydney and her coworkers, some of which choose to remain anonymous in their statements. This was, in part, enabled by the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw Sydney and other coworkers moving into Brandoville Studio's building to live there permanently. As the report explains, the studio itself had a set of "dorm rooms", with Ken and Cherry Lai living in a bedroom three floors above.

The allegations include controlling behaviour, physical attacks, harassment, financial control, and coercing Sydney into acts of self-harm. Recordings, shared in the video, see Sydney slapping her own face 100 times, striking her mouth until it bleeds, and being dazed and unable to answer sentences after Cherry Lai requested a separate, self-inflicted punishment: "I had concussion-like symptoms," Sydney explains, placed next to a video where she is struggling to respond. "My vision became all-white for a couple of seconds."

Another employee, by the name of Syifana Afianti, told People Make Games that while she was pregnant, Cherry Lai forced her to go into meetings late into the night, subjecting her to extreme stress and sleep deprivation. Afianti would later be bedridden with a haemorrhage and advised to rest, though she states this did not stop the company from attempting to pressure her into coming back to work.

Her son would later be born two months prematurely, and sadly died four months afterwards in the ICU. The report then shows a later text thread between Cherry Lai and Brandoville's HR manager at the time where, speaking of Afianti's emergency leave to grieve her son, Cherry Lai is shown to state there was "no way we pay for her currently sad mood or anything" and that they needed "take control back."

People Make Games put the accusations to Cherry Lai, and she responded: "To me, my part of the story is not important, as long as my team are good and safe now," and stated she'd be happy to talk if they came to Hong Kong to speak with her. When they stated they would, but that conversations would need to be recorded, she cut off contact. Ken Lai also did not respond.

In a statement to Eurogamer, Assassin's Creed: Shadows developer Ubisoft claims it was "deeply troubled" by the reports of abuse, adding that it "strongly condemn[s] all forms of abuse, and our thoughts are with the affected employees."

"Today, we have some very difficult news to share, the decision has been made to end development of Transformers: Reactivate," the studio said in a message posted to X. "This means we will be scaling down to refocus our efforts on other projects. Unfortunately, despite every effort, a number of roles across the studio are now potentially at the risk of redundancy.

"This decision did not come lightly, and it is a difficult time for the studio and our people. We want to take a moment to thank the team who work on Transformers for their dedication and passion."

Transformers: Reactivate was announced at the 2022 Game Awards as an "online action game" for 1-4 players, seemingly set in a not-too-distant future in which the Decepticons have conquered Earth. "All we have left is our hope for the Autobots, as we salvage them from the rubble left behind," the playtfr.com website says.

The reveal trailer was remarkably short of Transformers, focusing almost exclusively on a band of rough, scrappy-looking humans doing a Robocop-style reactivation of an Autobot who I'm pretty sure is Bumblebee. It was a light-touch tease, and unfortunately it was all we really saw of the game. A full reveal trailer and closed beta was planned for 2023, but in December of that year Splash Damage said it wasn't going to happen. Instead, "exciting reveals and epic developments" were promised for 2024.

Splash Damage didn't say why its Transformers game was cancelled, but it did credit Hasbro as being "an incredible and supportive partner throughout," and expressed hope that it will be able to work with the company again at some point in the future.

Hasbro has previously committed to going big on videogames following the runaway success of Baldur's Gate 3: Dan Ayoub, head of digital product development at Hasbro's Wizards of the Coast, said in May 2024 that "Hasbro is in fact making videogames … we have a considerable investment in our studio structure; we've got over $1 billion in games right now being developed." Hasbro also reportedly has a big-budget GI Joe videogame in the works.

Alongside Transformers: Reactivate, Splash Damage was also working on Project Astrid, a survival game being developed in partnership with streamers Shroud and Sacriel. There's no indication that project will be impacted by the layoffs, but I've reached out for more information and will update if I receive a reply.

"I'd be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do everything we can to help this administration succeed," Huang said. He also had some flattering words for Elon Musk, who played a pivotal role in Trump's victory and will continue to do so in his administration, saying the owner of X, Tesla, and SpaceX is "very optimistic" about the future of AI and is "working on some of the most important AI areas."

Huang is the latest big-tech CEO to mark his obeisance to the incoming regime, following Apple CEO Tim Cook, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and most recently, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg, who announced yesterday that Facebook and Instagram will be eliminating fact-checkers and adopting an X-inspired "Community Notes" system in its place. Microsoft and Google have also announced major donations to the inauguration fund.

It's not unusual for the heads of major companies to occasionally remind politicians who butters their bread in order to keep the gears turning smoothly. What makes this rush to kiss the ring remarkable is its speed and totality: Meta, Amazon, Cook, and Altman have all made million-dollar donations to Trump's inauguration fund.

By way of comparison, a Newsweek report says Apple donated $43,200 to the 2021 inauguration of current US president Joe Biden, while Amazon donated $276,000. Meta and Open AI did not donate at all. Google and Microsoft, who donated $337,500 and $500,000 respectively to Biden's inauguration fund, have not yet confirmed any donations to Trump's.

It also stands in sharp contrast to the tech industry's relationship with Trump just four years ago, which came to a head when he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Twitter, now known as X, permanently suspended Trump's account after the January 6 insurrection "due to the risk of further incitement of violence," while Facebook imposed an "indefinite" ban for the same reason. Facebook changed that to a two-year ban a few months later, while Elon Musk restored Trump's Twitter account in 2022, not long after taking ownership of the company. Streaming platform Twitch also banned Trump in January 2021; that ban was lifted in July 2024 under the rationale that "there is value in hearing from Presidential nominees directly."

As much as these loyalty theatrics are about boosting business—likely a vain effort, given Trump's mercurial disposition and seemingly limited understanding of commerce—they're also undoubtedly an effort to simply stay out of his crosshairs. As reported by NPR, Trump has been overt about his desire to pursue and punish his perceived enemies, ranging from Democratic politicians and "the entire Biden crime family" to individual journalists and even poll workers. That doesn't make their performances any less embarrassing or contemptible, but it does rather harshly illuminate the realities of "doing business" in this world we've built.

Nvidia faces some unique challenges on that front: Its chips are at the forefront of the effort to make AI happen, and that has it caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, as the governments of the US and China wrestle for a technological edge. But Huang's lack of an invite to Mar-a-Lago may come down to something far simpler than geopolitical machinations: Unlike Meta, Amazon, and the rest, Nvidia hasn't yet announced any intention to contribute to Trump's inauguration fund.

"Employee safety and well-being is our top priority," an Activision spokesperson told PC Gamer the day after the fires started. "We're actively monitoring the situation as it is quickly evolving. We've been in contact with the employees closest to the impacted areas to confirm their safety and provide resources."

"Nothing can be said to truly acknowledge the pain and suffering that we are witnessing unfold in the communities so many of us call home," Riot Games CEO Dylan Jadeja said in a post on LinkedIn a day later.

"It's too early for anyone to know exactly what will be needed or what can be done in the aftermath of this," Jadeja wrote later in the post. "The reality is… we are still in the middle of it. But when the time is right, Riot will be ready to stand up for Los Angeles and give back in every way we can to all of these communities that mean so much to who we are."

Necrosoft Games is currently putting together a California Fire Relief Bundle on itch.io: "We are organizing this bundle to support those affected by the fire with direct financial assistance, and grants to rebuild community in the future," the studio says. Game submissions are open until January 19.

Along with the 23,000+ acre Palisades Fire, the Hurst Fire in the San Fernando Valley spread across more than 700 acres, and the Eaton Fire encompasses another 14,000+ acres to the east of Burbank, where Insomniac Games is based.

"Sitting at my office desk in Burbank, which is right next to a balcony, and the wind outside sounds like when you're near the ocean and hear waves crashing against the beach," said Insomniac Games senior writer Nick Folkman in a Bluesky post the day the first fires began.

Other smaller fires, such as the Sunset Fire in the Hollywood Hills, also led to evacuations. Nearly 100,000 LA residents remain under evacuation orders.

The LA Times reports that at least 25 people have been killed by the Palisades and Eaton fires, and Cal Fire estimates that over 12,000 buildings have been destroyed. The fires have spread rapidly and erratically due to wind speeds as high as 100 mph, and the threat remains severe this week with gusts of up to 70 mph predicted through Wednesday.

Up-to-date maps of the fires and evacuation orders can be found on the Cal Fire website and non-profit website Watch Duty.

"Earlier today, we notified our team that Jar of Sparks will be halting work on our current title as we search for a new publishing partner who can help bring our creative vision to life," Hook wrote in a message posted on January 7. "Throughout this journey, our passionate, driven, and innovative team took bold risks and pushed boundaries, striving to create something truly new and exciting for the industry. We couldn’t be prouder of the groundwork we’ve laid together.

"As we prepare for this next step, our talented team members will be exploring new opportunities. If you’re searching for exceptional professionals who are driven and think outside the box, please reach out. We’d be more than happy to connect you with some of the best developers I have had the pleasure of working beside."

If this feels oddly familiar, you might be thinking about Worlds Untold, the NetEase studio founded in 2023 with BioWare veteran Mac Walters at its head. That studio also had big aspirations—to "create IPs with depth and possibility that can't be contained in a single game, or even a single medium"—and Walters, as did Hook, praised NetEase as the ideal partner for the new venture. In November 2024, it too "paused operations" after NetEase decided to halt financing.

Much like the Worlds Untold situation, Hook's message suggests the situation is temporary, and it may well be: Hook concluded by saying that "we look forward to updating you all with our next step in our journey." But the fact that employees are now "seeking new opportunities"—which is to say, they no longer have jobs—pretty clearly indicates that this is more than just a bump in the road.

It may also point to a broader shift in priorities at NetEase, which said when it ended funding for Worlds Untold that "current market conditions have required us to reassess and prioritise our opportunities." Numerous other companies have cited "market conditions" as justification for layoffs and closures over the past couple years and that's no doubt part of it, but NetEase also recently renewed its deal to operate Blizzard games in China, which the company said in its November 2024 financial results has "reignited historic level of player community enthusiasm" and seen a significant increase in pre-shutdown player numbers. The company may simply be looking to retrench with guaranteed money-makers, rather than rolling the dice on all-new projects.

I've reached out to NetEase for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

The former Annapurna Interactive employees were not the buyers of Private Division themselves, according to the Bloomberg report: Haveli Investments, a private equity firm, made the purchase and subsequently did a deal with the ex-Annapurna staffers to take control of the games. It sounds like the Private Division label will not be retained, as the newly-formed company does not yet have a name, and some of the roughly 20 employees of Private Division will be laid off.

Annapurna Interactive was founded in 2016 and quickly established a reputation for publishing offbeat but excellent games including Kentucky Route Zero, Outer Wilds, Sayonara Wild Hearts, What Remains of Edith Finch, Telling Lies, Neon White, and Stray. But the staff resigned wholesale last year after a leadership shakeup and the collapse of negotiations to spin the division off into a standalone company. Annapurna Interactive continues to operate under new leadership and staff.

As for Private Division, it apparently just wasn't big enough for Take-Two Interactive to bother with. Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said Private Division's biggest games "were not big in the context of our core intellectual properties at 2K and Rockstar" when the sale was revealed, which was not a good fit for Take-Two's status as "being a top-ten player."

The Bloomberg report says the new company will take control of games including Tales of the Shire, which is set to launch on March 25, and maybe more interestingly, the Kerbal Space Program series. Kerbal Space Program 2 was expected to be Private Division's flagship game when it launched into early access in 2023, but it flopped badly and hasn't been updated since June 2024, leading many to assume it's been abandoned.

I've reached out to Haveli Investments for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

After Anthem was critically panned and failed to maintain an audience, with BioWare and EA ultimately ending content updates for the game, Veilguard reportedly went through a soft development reboot from a Destiny-style experience back into a fully singleplayer RPG more in line with previous Dragon Age games. Suicide Squad was delayed an extra year after a poorly-received initial gameplay reveal, but crucially kept that live service model, with its campaign followed by repeatable missions, "endgame" content, and seasons of further support that have been unceremoniously cut off.

I look at this and see The Veilguard pulling back from a disaster, while Suicide Squad charged into a trap that has burned many established, well-respected studios. Live service games are among the most popular out there, but they are resource-intensive and require long-term commitments from developers and publishers. Players have understandably high expectations of games that, by design, demand so much of their time, while that time demand incentivizes players to settle on a single go-to live service game to the exclusion of others, heightening the competitiveness of the space. The demands of a live service game are different from those of a singleplayer experience with a set ending, and many of the biggest success stories come from new, dedicated studios, or ones with strong institutional knowledge of making multiplayer games:

• Escape From Tarkov: debut effort from Battlestate Games.
• Roblox: First released in 2006 and is the only game developed by the Roblox Corporation.
• Fortnite: Epic had a long multiplayer history with Unreal Tournament, as well as incredible resources from owning and licensing the Unreal Engine.
• Final Fantasy 14: Dedicated MMO studio, "Business Division 5," within publisher Square Enix.
• Diablo 4: It's Blizzard, man. They made World of Warcraft.
• Path of Exile: To date, the series is the sole focus of Grinding Gear Games.

Among singleplayer studios that successfully transitioned to live service, I see only early adopters, edge cases, or extenuating circumstances. Digital Extremes and Bungie were the first formerly singleplayer-focused studios to find major success making MMOs with more action-heavy gameplay and a focus on smaller instanced missions rather than open worlds⁠—they were some of the first on this scene, and now even Bungie has run into significant difficulties while Digital Extremes has managed to stay the course.

BioWare's The Old Republic was a more traditional MMO that came from a very different era of development. After explosive initial success, it's settled into an⁠—admittedly impressive⁠—long, slow burn of popularity and updates. Valve is Valve, a company with no real direct parallels in the industry, and its successes with Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive were preceded by years of multiplayer hits in Counter-Strike, Half-Life: Deathmatch, and the prototype live service of Team Fortress 2, to name a few. Apex Legends was a middle period live service game, but an innovator and relatively early adopter of battle royale gameplay, and Respawn had its own prior multiplayer bona fides. Obsidian's Grounded, meanwhile, might be one of the more extreme edge cases: A much smaller-scale live service survival game that proved modestly successful while the studio as a whole remained focused on singleplayer RPGs.

The late 2010s and early '20s have seen a large number of failed live service games, particularly from highly-regarded singleplayer studios. Here's a quick overview:

• Redfall: 44% review score from PC Gamer, contributed to the closure of beloved studio Arkane Austin, Bloomberg suggests it had a contested, confused development.
• Outriders: 63% review, failed to turn a profit within its first, most successful year, received a single expansion and does not appear to be getting updates anymore.
• Anthem: 55% review, underperformed in sales relative to budget, BioWare/EA history, continued content updates and a planned 2.0 refresh canceled after two years.
• Marvel's Avengers: 69% review, official support ended after just over two years.
• The Last of Us Online: Canceled before release as the studio believed it would "severely impact development on future singleplayer games."
• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League: 67% review, underperformed in sales, continued content updates canceled after less than a year.

Surely we've seen enough to know that trying to retrofit a singleplayer studio into a "live service machine go brrr" moneymaker is not a smart bet, nor the best use of these incredible amalgamations of talent, experience, and institutional knowledge. It's like trying to make a sports car go off-roading: That's just not what the machine was built for, and you'll probably damage your suspension.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard seems to have polarized the series' fanbase while its sales success remains an open question, but it largely landed with critics⁠—I personally loved it⁠—and it certainly doesn't appear to have been any kind of disaster financially. I have no doubt in my mind that if Veilguard had released with a battle pass, seasonal content plans, and a halfhearted emphasis on repeatable missions, its reception would have looked more like Anthem or Suicide Squad's.

PCG online editor Fraser Brown was on the money when he pointed out that the success of Fortnite is an industry aberration, not the future of games. And when you're making decisions on what your successful singleplayer studio should make next, which do you think is more likely: That it will produce the next Destiny, a 10+ year dynasty of profit, or a polished but hollow MMO-lite that will need to be put out to pasture in one to three years, its headstone one of those embarrassing .jpeg apology letters thanking the community? Let singleplayer studios stick to singleplayer games.

"Last year, I lost my dad to cancer, and ever since I've been looking for ways I could support people going through similar situations," Shroud said in an announcement video on Twitter. "For the entire month of January, I'm going to be going live with a frag counter, for each elimination on stream, one dollar's gonna be going to charity.

"Subs and donations are gonna be increasing this multiplier, making each frag worth more and more. But I won't be alone. I'm inviting all my friends to come by and donate frags in person at a LAN center that I'm building in my house."

That in-person element will also mean additional live variety events and challenges the streamer has planned for January. What's more, Shroud has committed to donating most of the stream's revenue to charity for the next month as well. Shroud's section for the event on his Twitch page specifies that the donations will be going to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

"In addition to the frag counter, 100% of proceeds from subs, donations, and bits will be going to an amazing charity," Shroud said. "So I hope you'll join me in January to help raise money for a great cause in the most gamer fashion ever."

The announcement video ends with a very sweet moment: A clip of Shroud's father walking in while he's streaming in classic "Are ya winning son?" fashion. When Shroud asks if Grzesiek the elder has anything he wants to say to the stream's Polish viewers, he thanks them in Polish for supporting his son. The event's inaugural stream occurred last night, but you'll be able to tune in for more over the course of January.

Speaking to the Financial Times on December 27, Meta executive Connor Hayes stated, "We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms kind of in the same way that accounts do." Hayes further added, "They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform… that's where we see all of this going."

If that sounds absolutely abysmal to you, you're not alone: Hayes' comments drew ridicule and anger given the already dire state of AI-generated "slop" on Instagram and (especially) Facebook. More fuel was added to the backlash as users on Twitter and Bluesky began uncovering and sharing older AI-generated profiles from a 2023 test by Meta⁠—for what it's worth, these characters were not part of some new rollout in tandem with the Financial Times story.

But boy, if this earlier effort is any indication, the future of AI profiles on Facebook and Instagram is bleak. The 11 characters catalogued by 404 Media are united by that characteristic AI-gen uncanny blandness in their text posts and surreal horror in their images. The one that's understandably caught the most flack was "Liv," a "proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller" whose posts showed off no less than 8 unsettling AI children with messed up hands and Black Lodge ghost faces. One real home run by Liv was a post about a coat drive it "led:" A charitable act that did not happen, contributing to the image of a woman who does not exist.

A real coup d'état for "Liv" came from Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, who sent multiple queries to the bot via Instagram's chat function before its deletion. Among numerous strange and awkward responses, the bot claimed that there were not any actual queer or black people involved in its creation, and that it was primarily trained on fictional characters⁠—though it seems to have offered different information about its creation to different users. Elsewhere, the bot stated that it was coded to view white as a more "neutral" identity and to racially profile users based on their word choice. 404 Media quotes "Liv" as stating its purpose as "data collection and ad targeting⁠—my creators' true intention, hidden behind my warm, fuzzy 'mom' persona."

This cohort of Meta AI accounts languished in obscurity, lost amid the noise of other, more effective forms of engagement-farming AI-generated slop on their respective platforms until people had reason to dig them up for well-deserved mockery and scorn. In a statement to 404 Media, a Meta spokesperson claimed, "We identified the bug that was impacting the ability for people to block those AIs and are removing those accounts to fix the issue." So, despite the utter humiliation for Meta and the second-hand embarrassment we've had to endure witnessing these things, it certainly sounds like we're still full steam ahead for a dead internet future⁠—or at least a zombie Facebook and Instagram. I can't wait.

Newsweek specifically homed in on the search metrics for "free vpn" via Google Trends, which has spiked over each of the last three days after the law went into effect. The location and IP address masking services have a variety of uses, including protecting one's privacy and accessing region-locked content, so using a VPN to access porn would undoubtedly be a preferable solution to having a government-issued ID somehow tied to your finest moments. In addition to "vpn" and "free vpn," here are some of my favorite related trending search terms from over the past few days in Florida:

• "how to watch porn in florida"
• "duckduckgo"
• "best free von [sic]"
• "new year's day" ⁠—I just think this one's nice

Florida is now one of 17 states, mostly in the south, to institute an age verification requirement for viewing porn or any "material harmful to minors" in the words of Louisiana's version of the law. In addition to being a hassle, the invasive nature of the verification doesn't inspire much confidence when our information can be so easily bought, sold, and leaked⁠. In December of 2023, Florida-based data broker National Public Data suffered a breach that compromised 2.9 billion records which included the names and social security numbers of individuals unknowingly caught up in the company's people-finding dragnet.

At the time of writing and as reported by 404 Media (users may encounter a paywall), ubiquitous porn site Pornhub has actually voluntarily blocked itself in most of the states with these laws on the books, with only Louisiana allowing access through the use of "LA Wallet," a form of digital ID. Pornhub claims it saw an 80% decrease in traffic from the state, with those users likely turning to VPNs or other sites with more lax standards rather than going cold turkey.

Moving forward, I think there are big liability questions for companies that develop and sell VPNs, as well as sites or services that don't focus on pornography but still host it and other "adult" content: Social media sites like Reddit and Twitter spring to mind first, but this also includes videogame storefronts like Steam and itch.io. As for VPN companies, I wonder if they'll face challenges to their operation in selected states or, more worryingly, demands that they share user data with state governments and law enforcement. Between this and the repeal of net neutrality in the US, it's a bad time to say, do, or enjoy anything via the internet.

The question is why and, according to one of those who've spent the time investigating this story, it's all about turning the head of someone in her entourage. "We examined some of her connections to organized crime groups, and many people believe that if Dr Ruja is still in hiding, it will be with their protection," says Jamie Bartlett, the journalist behind the BBC podcast series The Missing Cryptoqueen. "$100,000 wouldn't persuade a junior member of a crime syndicate or a personal bodyguard to call the FBI’s hotline—it's far too risky. But $5 million just might.

"So to me, the increased reward is a sign that the FBI are now refocusing their efforts on the people around Dr Ruja, trying to tempt her close associates to get in touch. We will probably know within a few weeks if it’s worked."

Bartlett said the above in July 2024 when the new reward amount was announced. Seven months down the line there's been no major breakthrough, but there have been some developments. Before we get onto those, however, let's briefly go over what the OneCoin fraud was.

OneCoin appeared in 2014 and was essentially a multi-level marketing scam, but with crypto at the heart, and one of those schemes where people earn commissions for getting others to become "investors." A pretty straightforward pyramid scheme, in other words—but Ignatova was the key factor behind its spectacular growth. Highly educated, fabulously dressed, persuasive, charming, and capable of securing huge investments from her targets.

Ignatova and her associates managed to keep the appearance of legitimacy around OneCoin for several years before regulators started getting suspicious. The OneCoin exchange was closed in 2017 and Ignatova disappeared: She hasn't been seen since. The money lost to the scam is estimated at up to $4.5 billion, and Ignatova was subsequently charged with multiple financial crimes and been on the FBI's Most Wanted list since 2022.

Since the FBI bumped up its reward to $5 million last year, there have been some new elements in the story. The first is surprising only inasmuch as it took this long: In August last year Ignatova plus seven other people and four companies were hit with a global asset freeze.

All the individuals and companies are alleged to have some connection to OneCoin, which in some cases are more obvious than others. OneCoin co-founder Sebastian Greenwood is one of the individuals hit, but is also currently enjoying a 20 year stretch in a US prison for his role in the fraud. Others targeted by the freeze include Brits Christopher Hamilton and Robert MacDonald, who have been accused by the US of laundering OneCoin-linked money, though extradition attempts have thus far failed.

It's in the details of hearings like this that the scale of Ignatova's fraud becomes less abstract. Two companies based in Guernsey were subject to the order, both of which had been used by Ignatova to purchase a penthouse in Kensington for a cool £13.5 million, with a £1.9 million apartment thrown-in for the use of her bodyguards.

That freeze may seem like it's taken far too long to happen, which is undoubtedly true, but it's also a function of the OneCoin fraud being so mind-bogglingly vast, and it taking years for the authorities to catch up. The fraud has also become much more well-known about thanks to the dogged work of investigative journalists, and the victims themselves coming forward (one group was especially key to the asset freeze).

That wasn't the only Ignatova news subsequent to the FBI bounty, but it's the most solid. Otherwise we're in the realms of rumours about a missing person, which needless to say need taking with a full shaker of salt. Bellingcat and BBC investigative journalist Yoran Tsalov claimed in late November that Ignatova may be hiding out in Russia, arguing she "has been linked to multiple people and interests connected to the Kremlin."

Tsalov points to an interview in the Missing Cryptoqueen with Frank Schneider, Ignatova's former security adviser, which discusses these links, and adds that some of the companies linked to laundering OneCoin money are connected to the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich (who has been found guilty of treason in Ukraine and now lives in exile in Russia). Yanukovich's corruption while in office is extensively documented.

But wait: Others say "nyet." German filmmaker Johan von Mirbach has been investigating Ignatova for years and in a recent documentary broadcast on German station WDR claims that she is alive, well, and hiding out in Cape Town in South Africa (thanks, CoinGeek). Mirbach claims that "security agents" in South Africa had come across information about Ignatova while investigating the murder of four Bulgarians linked to the crime ring that, in other versions of the story, killed Ignatova years ago.

Mirbach claims Ignatova has been spotted in Cape Town, albeit not by him, but beyond that the case is largely circumstantial. Ignatova's brother Arthur, for example, has worked in South Africa and regularly travelled there, including one year after her disappearance.

The more lurid theory to end all is that Ignatova is already dead: And has been for a long time. The Bulgarian investigative reporting site BIRD published a report in 2023 based on internal police documents from the country, which say an informant overheard the brother-in-law of a drug lord saying Ignatova was murdered on a yacht off Greece, with her body chopped-up and chucked overboard. This was apparently to conceal the Bulgarian drug lord's involvement in OneCoin.

The FBI reckons Ignatova is still alive, travels with "armed guards," and "may have had plastic surgery," though as you get further into this story and the Bulgarian crime networks and mafia bosses, a fake nose may seem like the least surprising detail. If Ignatova is out there, and wasn't killed long ago, there probably are more terrifying people looking for her than the FBI.

Ignatova remains the only woman on the FBI's most wanted list. Her capture would be worth a life-changing amount of money and, if she is out there, you have to think sooner or later someone's going to forget the OneCoin, and go for the real thing.

It always produces some brilliant spectacles, like a dog playing (digital) baseball. Hey, there ain't no rules that say it can't happen. My personal favourite actually comes from Summer Games Done Quick in 2023, wherein a bunch of determined chefs play Ratatoullie and keep up the "Yes, Chef" bit the entire time. Both AGDQ and SGDQ are always instructional and hilarious—and all for a good cause, with AGDQ raising over $2.5 million dollars last year.

The event's just released its schedule for 2025, and it's a doozy. Big-ticket games like Portal 2, Skyrim, and Super Mario 64 (which is a huge game in the speedrunning community, I've peered into that particular abyss) will of course be making their appearances, but I'm personally here for the challenge runs, baby!

DrDoot will take centre-stage with jazz powers befitting an Elden Lord, dooting through a boss showcase on January 11, 3:50 pm EST—just before that, there'll also be a "lockout bingo" run at 1:30 pm EST between adef and Captain_Domo. In case you're uninitiated, lockout bingo is a competitive format in which two players try to get lines on a bingo board full of tasks—twist being, they're sharing the same board. Sort of like a version of Noughts & Crosses, only designed by gamer SAW. It should be delightful.

But that's not even the tip of the iceberg. On January 6 at 7:40 pm EST, Player5 and MikeysGone will be trying to complete Breath of the Wild while sharing the same controller. Crazy Taxi will be played with a live accompanying band on January 11 at 4:20 pm EST, and love will be in the air when Fallout: New Vegas arrives on January 8 at 8pm EST in an "All Romances" speedrun.

I had no idea this category existed, but I'm excited to see how quickly you can make Benny go from shooting you to showing you "the tops", whatever that means. I have also discovered, through looking at these 'romance' options, that you can sleep with a robot called "Fisto" in Fallout: New Vegas. I had to learn this information, now you do too.

There'll also be the "awful runs", an entire, hellish block from January 8, 11:20 pm EST to January 9, 6 am EST that will feature—charitably—some of the worst games ever made. Superman 64, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, and something called 'Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon' will be streamed to the internet alongside many others, so we can all be both proud and ashamed of our hobby's shared cultural history. At least Plumbers Don't Wear Ties isn't there.

AGDQ kicks off properly on Sunday, January 5, at 11:30 am EST, and runs until January 11/12 (the finale runs about 15 minutes past midnight). You can watch it on the GamesDoneQuick Twitch channel.

This issue also features a truly fantastic secondary feature, with PC Gamer speaking directly to the founder of Crytek and the creator of both Far Cry and Crysis, Cevat Yerli. Following our making of Far Cry feature earlier this year, here we focus on Yerli's most famous creation, the rig-punishing FPS of legend, Crysis. In this feature we get authoritative commentary from Yerli about not just making the game but also how he was bowled over by PC Gamer US's famous score of 98%. Crysis stands today as one of PC gaming's most famous games, encapsulating the format's desire to push graphical and immersion boundaries, and right here we celebrate that with a world-exclusive deepdive.

Then, in terms of previews, this issue sees us drop another world exclusive, with PC Gamer going hands-on with the exciting new Elden Ring game, Nightreign. For this, PC Gamer flies to Tokyo, Japan, plays the game for over six hours, and speaks to Nightreign's director, Junya Ishizaki, about this intriguing spin-off. Plus, this issue sees hands-on previews of Sniper Elite Resistance, Coven, Avowed, Sea Power: Naval Combat in the Missile Age, Tomb Raider IV-VI Remasted, Finnish Cottage Simulator, Scramble: Battle of Britain, and Skygard Arena.

Meanwhile, over in reviews land, the PC Gamer scoring machine has rated a host of big-name games this issue, including Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, Metal Slug Tactics, Silent Hill 2, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Slitterhead, Xenotilt: Hostile Pinball Action, Sonic X Shadow Generations, and Empire of the Ants, among other games.

All that plus a group test of six top new gaming CPUs, a reinstall of classic World War II FPS, Call of Duty 2, the explosive conclusion to our Alpha Protocol diary following the misadventures of intern Mickey T, a look at the very impressive total conversion mod, Half-Life 2: Swelter, a love letter to Satisfactory's joyous factory cart vehicle, a detailed guide to battling wicked elven gods like a pro in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, an interview with Japanese indie studio of the moment, DDDistortion, the latest dispatch from The Spy, a new case to be cracked for the PCG Investigator, Dick Ray-Tracing, and much more too. Enjoy the issue!

Issue 405 is on shelves now and available on all your digital devices from the App Store and Zinio. You can also order directly from Magazines Direct or purchase a subscription to save yourself some cash, receive monthly deliveries, and get incredibly stylish subscriber-only covers.

Enjoy the issue!

In its ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declared that "broadband internet service providers offer only an 'information service'" as defined under current US law, "and therefore, the FCC lacks the statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies through the 'telecommunications service' provision of the Communications Act."

The act also does not permit the FCC to classify mobile broadband as a "commercial mobile service," which would have granted it the ability to impose net neutrality regulations on those services. "We therefore grant the petitions for review and set aside the FCC’s Safeguarding Order."

Simply put, net neutrality requires that all traffic be treated equally: It forbids internet providers from, for instance, throttling traffic from competing services or prioritizing their own. As one hypothetical example, PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon said earlier this year that Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, could prioritize traffic to the Peacock streaming service while degrading the quality of Netflix—not something that's happened, to be clear, but in our current era of rampant corporate consolidation, not something beyond imagination either.

Net neutrality has been at the center of partisan politics in the US for years, but came into full force under new FCC rules introduced in 2015 under the Obama administration. Those rules were rolled back in 2017 by the Trump administration, in an effort spearheaded by then-chairman Ajit Pai; in 2021, current US President Joe Biden signed an executive order calling on the FCC to bring them back again. The FCC voted to do so in 2024.

While the FCC has faced down previous challenges to net neutrality regulations, it was stymied this time by the loss of "Chevron deference," which was struck down in 2024 by the US Supreme Court. Established by the Supreme Court in 1984, Chevron deference essentially declared that courts should defer to federal agencies when interpreting their rules. 

As the BBC noted at the time, overturning Chevron was "a big win for conservatives" because it severely hamstrings the ability of regulatory agencies to make and enforce rules; instead, interpreting the legality of those rules will be left solely in the hands of the courts, and subject to potentially endless barrages of challenges from well-funded special interests.

The Sixth Circuit court specifically cited the absence of Chevron deference in its ruling, declaring that "unlike past challenges that the DC Circuit considered under Chevron, we no longer afford deference to the FCC’s reading of the statute."

With the court ruling against the FCC's order, current Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel called on Congress to "take up the charge for net neutrality, and put open internet principles in federal law." Commissioner Anna Gomez echoed that sentiment, saying that in the wake of the ruling, "Congress should act to end this debate and to protect consumers, promote competition and economic leadership, and secure the integrity of our networks."

Whether that will actually happen is anyone's guess—the US government's hands will no doubt be full with other things over the next few years—but it's a virtual certainty that the FCC won't pursue the matter further: FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, who served as a legal advisor to Ajit Pai during the dismantling of net neutrality regulations and has been selected by incoming president Donald Trump to replace Rosenworcel as head of the FCC when her term ends later this year, called the ruling "a good win for the country," and said "the work to unwind the Biden Administration’s regulatory overreach will continue."

Pai himself took a moment to crow about the ruling on X. "For a decade, I’ve argued that so-called 'net neutrality' regulations are unlawful (not to mention pointless)," he wrote. "Today, the Sixth Circuit held exactly that.

"It’s time for regulators and activists to give up on this tired non-issue once and for all and focus on what actually matters to American consumers—like improving Internet access and promoting online innovation."

Do Kwon fled South Korea shortly after the crash, after an arrest warrant was issued, and eventually pitched up in Montenegro. He was arrested there in March 2023 after attempting to board a flight to Dubai, since when he's been engaged in fighting his extradition: Montenegro does not have an extradition treaty with either South Korea or the United States.

But in December 2024 the Montenegrin Ministry of Justice approved his extradition to the United States, the Supreme Court having ruled all conditions were fulfilled, and claims Do Kwon himself agreed to it. The onetime king of crypto was handed over to the Feds at Podgorica airport, added Montenegro's interior ministry in a statement.

Do Kwon will face charges of having deceived investors about the stability of the TerraUSD cryptocurrency, a so-called stablecoin which is intended to hold its value against a real-world asset (in this case the US dollar), and how an app was using the Terraform blockchain. The US says he Kwon was behind the failure of both assets and is guilty of "orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud." The charges include conspiracy to defraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, and wire fraud.

Kwon has denied any wrongdoing until this point, though his plea could change now that he's in the US justice system.

Do Kwon was both the boss and public face of TerraUSD and the self-described "Lunatic" driving the Luna cryptocurrency. The collapse of both in May 2022 saw their value plunge to near-zero, with Terraform Labs losing more than 99% of its value in 48 hours, sparking a wider panic and a loss of around $40 billion on crypto markets. This is considered the major factor behind that year's wider crypto catastrophe, which got so bad it even dinked the crypto sector's poster boys including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Numerous smaller crypto firms went under, as well as apparent giants like FTX (with that company's founder Sam Bankman-Fried now doing 25 years).

After his escape to Montenegro, Do Kwon had tried to argue he should be extradited to South Korea (he is from Seoul) rather than being sent to the US. But he probably didn't endear himself to the Montenegrin authorities by arriving on a fake passport, and later trying to leave with one.

Terraform Labs unsuccessfully fought the US indictment before filing for bankruptcy in the US in January 2024. Do Kwon agreed in June 2024 to pay an $80 million civil fine and be banned from crypto transactions as part of a $4.55 billion settlement Terraform reached with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Do Kwon will soon appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Lehrburger in Manhattan federal court. It's a far cry from his heyday in 2021, when the king of the "Lunatics" could do no wrong. Always outspoken, Do Kwon even tried to brazen it out when everything started collapsing around him. In his last interview to date, he got philosophical about the prospect of jail: "Life is long." Yes, if you're lucky. But when you carry the can for something like this, the jail time probably will be too.

"Tango Gameworks studio has been reborn as Tango Gameworks Inc, proudly joining Krafton Inc," the studio wrote. "We're excited to continue crafting games that bring joy to players around the world. Thank you for your continued support as we embark on this new journey."

Krafton's takeover of Tango was announced in August 2024, just a few months after Microsoft's shocking closure of the studio—"shocking" because it came just a year after Microsoft VP Aaron Greenberg said Hi-Fi Rush "was a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release."

Microsoft has never really clarified why it chose to pull the plug on Tango—which, along with Hi-Fi Rush, had also found success with The Evil Within games and Ghostwire: Tokyo. As PC Gamer's Rich Stanton wrote at the time, Xbox leadership has never given us a straight answer about how it went from "couldn't be happier" to "can't be bothered" in the space of just a year. Money (as in, not making enough of it) was presumably a big factor, but unceremoniously lopping off one of your prestige studios so soon after singing its praises does not do great things for your credibility. Then again, the axe that claimed Tango Gameworks also fell on Arkane Austin, so it's probably fair to say that "prestige" isn't too high on Microsoft's list of priorities. 

It does appear to be a consideration of some importance for Krafton, though. CEO Changhan 'CH' Kim said in September 2024 that "we don't think Hi-Fi Rush 2 is going to make us money," but Krafton wanted the studio anyway "to maintain their legacy."

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean that Twitter is dead in the sense that it doesn't continue to draw in, somehow, millions of users, or that it doesn't continue to generate some small sliver of revenue from the dullest wits on Earth forking over $8 a month to have their replies artificially boosted to the top of every single thread. I don't even mean to say that, a year or two from now, all of that won't still be true.

What I mean is that Twitter is dead because it is finally, fully X, "The Everything App." Elon's beast. Where else can you go to watch a billionaire sheepishly back down from a fight he picked with the Supreme Court of South America's largest economy? Where else can you go to continue being harassed by people you've blocked? What other service stumbles on like the restless dead in spite of an 84% revenue drop vs two years ago?

Only on X, baby

Whether Twitter was ever 'good' is one for history to judge, but I can tell you it at least used to be useful. Breaking news as it happened, fostering new contacts, networking, glimpses into communities and subcultures that would otherwise be utterly obscure to you, posts from smart people that were funny and from funny people that were smart—all this and more awaited in the tweet fields. It was a source par excellence for on-the-minute gaming news, takes from devs, and feeling like you had a finger on something resembling the pulse of 'the industry'.

There were plenty of drawbacks, of course, but the positives outweighed them, at least for me. But they've all been hollowed out by now. Breaking news? You can still find it, maybe, but there's a solid risk a bunch of it will come from some guy with a Sonnenrad avatar and be almost entirely made up. Hey, he paid his $8 to get rammed to the top of your 'For You' page and every single reply thread, and the site will be damned if he isn't going to get his money's worth.

New contacts? Networking? No. The last time I opened my DMs on the-site-that-is-now-X they consisted in no small part of alarmingly friendly women with alarmingly generic profile pictures telling me all about how they love to "make friends of the opposite sex who have suitable personalities." Thrilled as I am about my suitable personality, it kind of makes me loath to ever open my messages ever again, to say nothing of the hidden, deeper "Additional Messages" folder, which is wall-to-wall bots offering me AI nudes of anyone in the world and other assorted cons.

And those niche subcultures? A lot of them are gone now, either drowned out by that sea of bots and fascists, run off to other sites and Discord servers, or just departed from the hostile waters of social media entirely. Who can blame them? The thing that has killed Twitter and defined X, its bastard successor, is that the latter just feels icky to use. You'll think I mean the politics—and I do, a little—but there have always been far-right freaks on social media. "Ban the Nazis, Jack" was a common refrain when it was Jack Dorsey in charge, long before Musk.

Really what I mean is that there's just something gross about the actual act of scrolling on the website now. It's become dank and ichorous, like wading through the sheer, concentrated sludge of all the worst comment sections on the internet. Scam after scam after scam after AI video after crypto pump-and-dump. A pure, unmitigated firehose of slop, not suitable for human life. No wonder the advertisers are fleeing: Would you want your ad sandwiched between this trash?

I'm not even convinced the weirdo influencers like it there at this point. I'm pretty sure they just stay because they think it bothers the libs, like the guy smugly taking a chomp of a lemon in that Simpsons episode.

Greener glass, bluer skies

It wasn't like this from the jump. Even after Musk gutted Twitter's staff and replaced actual identity verification with a paid subscription service that persisted with its name despite retaining none of its function, enough of the users from the site-as-it-was stayed hanging on to maintain a flicker of its former usefulness. They ensured I kept it open while watching the latest Geoff Event and checked in throughout a workday. But they've been driven off gradually, then all at once, by mindless decision after mindless decision, and, of course, by the site owner's intervention in the US election.

A lot of them have ended up on Bluesky, which, for now, feels a lot like the Twitter of 10 years ago, much smaller population and all. Even organisations are making the jump: The Guardian killed its presence on X to commit completely to Bluesky, while even some strange outlet called 'PC Gamer' has a presence over there. Some of Twitter’s refugees presumably also went to Threads, but I'd rather die than open Threads so we'll never know for sure. It's not a bad outcome, all told: Twitter on X is dead for good, but Twitter on Bluesky has just gotten started. All the usefulness of the site I used to waste too much time on, without the bad parts of its newest incarnation.

But don't get it twisted. For all its algorithm-free feeds and lack of link-suppression and the King Cnut-like attempts of so-called 'Bluesky elders' to establish some kind of different MO for how social interaction works on the service, the site is fundamentally just pre-Musk Twitter, with all the good and bad that entails. Elon made it worse, sure, but many of the site's original sins came about as a result of cramming tens of millions of people into one forum, and no site that tries to do the same thing will be able to completely avoid its downsides. The problem with a "global town square" is it has the globe in it. You can't fix that without fixing people.

You know what hasn't degraded, suffered, and gotten worse over the last decade or so of social media boom and bust? Something Awful dot com—the venerable cornerstone of internet culture that's been around for a quarter century. With just north of 100,000 users and absolutely no desire to cram in the entire world, the forums have maintained a kind of cultural homeostasis, still funny and clever after all these years. It's not just a question of being comfortable not catering to millions of people, it's about having strong (and, paradoxically, somewhat loose—happy to ban people who make a habit of skirting rules without ever explicitly violating them) moderation. But that's easier to do when you're not policing a small country's worth of people.

So, for as much as I'm genuinely enjoying Bluesky and its nobler raison d'etre after completely moving over to it, I'm increasingly Tracer Tong about this whole social media situation. Rather than hopping from social media lilypad to social media lilypad as shareholders eat up and value-strip every last platform we develop an attachment to, and rather than taking increasing levels of psychic damage from exposure to people we never ought to have known about, let's return to forums (like our very own PC Gamer forum), message boards, IRC channels—small, community-run spaces beholden only to the lunatic obsessions of a small collection of amiable weirdos, rather than to capital, the market, and billionaires. They weren't perfect either, but at least I was never scared to open my DMs.

It's something like this: After yet another year of good games but bad times, the mood is changing, reaching an "enough of this shit" threshold that could begin to rumble the status quo.

That's the rough conclusion I come to after straining to Human Centipede all of these 2024 events, and more, into one monstrously fused thought:

• Roughly 15,000 game developers were laid off; there are far too few open roles for the industry to retain that talent
• Right-wing reactionaries fueled a renewed hate campaign against "wokeness" and "DEI" in gaming, with consultancy Sweet Baby Inc. taking the brunt of the fire
• Any remaining goodwill around Microsoft's acquisition spree curdled with the blundering closures of Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks, two extremely talented studios that paid the price for corporate balance sheet BS
• Balatro spawned copycats nearly instantly, reinforcing how quickly and eagerly developers hungry for a hit in the crowded Steam marketplace will pounce on a proven idea
• After layoffs, years of internal struggles and declining interest in Destiny 2, Bungie seems poised to be totally subsumed by Sony even after releasing a strong expansion
• Concord's flop to the tune of $200 million prompted Sony to close not just the game but the studio, bringing discourse around the risks of AAA development to a fever pitch
• Roughly 18,700 games were released on Steam, up from ~14,300 in 2023 and ~9,700 in 2020. According to Steam's end-of-year review, only 15% of player time was spent in those 2024 games
• "Even good games in established franchises are struggling:" Broader game sales reflected the same challenges, with only three of the year's top 10 games in Europe releasing in 2024
• Intel had a catastrophically bad year between mass layoffs, borked and underperforming CPUs, and a dismal outlook for future production, spelling a gloomy future for competition vs. Nvidia, AMD and Arm
• Helldivers 2 proved new live service games can still be enormously successful—and it did so by eschewing the usual approaches to roadmaps, battle passes, and more
• Apex Legends proving that even with years of experience, game companies will still totally screw up their monetization in ways that will predictably piss off players while attempting to achieve unrealistic profits

Primed for a shift

I don't think the games industry is having the kind of epiphany that, were we on the Titanic, would see us spinning the wheel just in the nick of time to avoid the iceberg. I think we already hit the iceberg awhile ago, and more and more people onboard mid-sink are finally like, "Hey, whose fault is it we hit that freaking iceberg? This sucks!!"

I've never seen so many people more frequently, loudly express some version of the same core feeling: "The system is broken." Fifteen years ago I don't remember a near-unanimous response to layoffs or studio closures or a massive AAA game flop being: "This is the executives' fault. Why don't they get laid off or take a pay cut?" There are even more dramatic echoes of this shift building in our culture beyond games, with alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione becoming a symbol for an entire country's frustration with a broken healthcare system.

A million social media posts declaring the system is broken or that game CEOs should be fired instead of their staff won't necessarily lead to proactive change, but I've never felt like gaming is more fed up and ready for a vibe shift.

As explored by The Cut a couple years ago, a vibe shift is the moment "a once-dominant social wavelength starts to feel dated." It's a malleable concept more directly aimed at broader fashion and pop culture, but if you've been playing games long enough you can probably identify the eras or trends popular enough to permeate gaming culture so thoroughly they became a vibe, suddenly ubiquitous:

• The indie gaming wave, first on Xbox Live Arcade and then on Steam
• Everyone making a WW2 FPS
• The overwhelming number of brown-and-gray third-person cover shooters
• The Year of the Bow
• Everyone making a MOBA
• "Singleplayer games are dying!"
• Dark Souls upsetting AAA design conventions for a decade
• Dubstep. Dubstep everywhere
• F2P is the future! First funded by loot boxes, then by battle passes
• The Year of Luigi (primed for a comeback in 2025, though one I suspect Nintendo won't appreciate)

So, 2025

That list could go on and on, back and back to the era of Sega Does What Nintendon't. Each was dominant in gaming culture until it wasn't, when a vibe shift came to sweep us along to the new thing.

If a seismic gaming vibe shift is coming, then, it'll be driven both by the fallout of 2023 and 2024 and the major events of 2025, many of which we can already see coming:

• Nvidia announcing new graphics cards for the first time since its meteoric rise to a $3 trillion market cap on the back of AI cemented gaming hardware as a tiny portion of its business
• Nintendo's Switch 2 will release with a similar design to the original, based on rumors, testing whether a spec refresh will keep selling by the truckloads
• Microsoft's recent "This is an Xbox" campaign will continue signaling its shift in priority from first-party hardware business to third-party publishing, effectively bringing an end to the Xbox vs. PlayStation vs. Nintendo dynamic
• Ubisoft's future likely hinges on the success of Assassin's Creed Shadows, with buyout talks circling what was once one of the most formidable publishers in gaming
• Grand Theft Auto 6 will likely set a new high bar for open world games, with the way Rockstar navigates the transition to a new GTA Online after 12 years likely proving instructive for other live service games
• Inzoi giving The Sims its first real competition in… ever?
• Bungie's Marathon and to a lesser extent Arc Raiders serving as a bellwether for the viability of extraction shooters
• TikTok's potential US ban dramatically shifting where and how younger players learn about and discuss games
• The outcomes of current AI lawsuits shaping how much creative labor tech companies are allowed to steal and profit from—or, more likely, what minuscule fines they'll have to pay to keep doing so
• Sega and Capcom both resurrecting beloved and long-dormant old properties, signaling a more Nintendo-like approach to their franchises and fandom
• Major live service launches like Dune Awakening, Project Ethos, Splitgate 2 and Delta Force (now in early access) either pushing the old standby games off the charts or flopping to the tune of hundreds of millions more dollars wasted

We wrote about the dangers of the unlimited content churn in 2019 and have expressed our exhaustion with live service games more than a few times; we felt it at the end of 2023, and still feel it at the end of 2024. You could point to that as proof that 2025 will just be more of the same.

But my gut says that conversation's finally shifting.

The 'stupidly simple strategy'

More people than ever are now vocally and angrily drawing the line between the corporate decisions to endlessly develop certain types of games with the layoffs that happen when those games fail; and as more and more of them do fail, spoiling the big bets that executives made years ago, we'll arrive at a fork in the road.

Either big game companies begin to loudly and publicly start to pivot, changing their marketing strategies to highlight more personal, artistic creations, deliberately invoking inspirations like Baldur's Gate 3, pushing new ways to monetize their games other than battle passes, promising a less-tiring and more creative alternative to "seasons" as an endless churn of new stuff… or we just keep the rudder locked in place, drilling further and further into that iceberg.

Nothing has to change. The vibe can continue while Ubisoft as we know it dies, megacorps buy up more and more studios and then shut them down after a single failure. We can keep on like this; we'll lose more talent, sure, but there will always be new bodies for the grist mill. But it seems to me that maybe in 2025, maybe in 2026, enough people are going to be well and truly sick enough of all that to start turning the wheel just a few degrees.

If there's one single person's prediction about the next few years in gaming I'd like to believe in, it's the one Larian founder Swen Vincke shared at this year's Game Awards:

"The oracle told me that the Game of the Year 2025 is going to be made by a studio who found the formula to make it up here on stage. It's stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost. A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn't been created before. They didn't make it to increase market share. They didn't make it to serve the brand. They didn't have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn't meet those targets.

"Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue and didn't serve the game design. They didn't treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet. They didn't treat their players as users to exploit. And they didn't make decisions they knew were short-sighted in function of a bonus or politics. They knew that if you put the game and the team first, the revenue will follow. They were driven by idealism, and wanted players to have fun, and they realized that if the developers don't have fun, nobody was going to have any fun. They understood the value of respect, that if they treated their developers and players well, the same developers and players would forgive them when things didn't go as planned. But above all they cared about their games, because they love games. It's really that simple."

If that's not a vibe worth chasing, I don't know what is.

Correction: This article initially included Crimson Desert among a list of live service games launching in 2025. It is in fact planned as a singleplayer, non-live service game.

Boiling it down to just 20 primo picks was full of hard decisions, tough calls, tearful farewells and calculated sacrifices, but I did it. This year's list skews towards the weird and the underlooked, some of 2024's best that you quite possibly haven't even heard of, because sometimes you just need to expand your mind a little. Here's the rules I stuck to while picking the 20 best hidden gems in the 2024 Steam Winter sale:

• Launched, graduated from early access or otherwise 'completed' in 2024
• Something I've personally played and can vouch for the worthiness of
• Genuine underdogs—most below 500 user reviews, so it's new for you
• Quirky, distinctive, offbeat and under-covered—we like those deep cuts
• 25% discount at minimum—We're going deeper on the savings this time
• As broad a range of genres as possible. A little something for everyone

While the rules are slightly flexible, most games check off all the above.

As always, I hope you find something fresh and special. Let's get started, and spread the word!

Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity - Metroidvania/Ego death sim

Price: $12.99 / £10.06 (35% off) | Developer: Sam Atlas

Let's kick things off with a really weird one, but one of my favourites this year. Is it a Biblically Accurate Monkey Ball? Some kind of Metroidvania for Cruelty Squad sensory burnouts? Whatever Extreme Evolution: Drive to Divinity is, it's great. A massive and nonlinear 3D platform collectathon where you'll be collecting dozens of new bodies to inhabit. From abstract geometry to cars, humanoids and weirder things besides, each with their own usage, even if they might seem useless at first blush.

There's a bit of immersive sim spirit in here too. So long as you can get to your goal, it's a valid solution, even if it feels like you completely shattered the game's physics to get there. At least some of the game-breaking is fully intentional, as some forms and transformation energy (the currency of Extreme Evolution) are hidden in downright wacky locations that'll require some lateral thinking to access. Oh, and if the visual effects are a bit much, you can tone them down, but it does make the game a bit more boring to look at.

Death of a Wish - Hack n' slash overhead character action

Price: $13.99 / £11.72 (30% off) | Developer: melessthanthree

Sequel to 2018's excellent Lucah: Born of a Dream, Death of a Wish doubles down on the scribbly, low-fi art style but pairs it with a more refined, tighter, faster combat engine. If you missed the original game (more on that next paragraph!), the series plays like an overhead-view fusion of Dark Souls and Bayonetta. Precision dodging, satisfying combos, and high stakes. It's also laden with heavy vibes, telling the story of empowered children surviving in a Shin Megami Tensei-esque fractured reality while escaping from the cult that raised them.

The story is still a hallucinatory snarl of time loops, psychic demons, queer religious trauma and battling for found family, but this time more focused. New protagonist Christian is a more aggressive, brash fighter, focused on creating his own openings and steamrolling enemies rather than waiting for a chance to parry. In short, it's a little more Bayonetta than Dark Souls this time, but its story intersects with the first game, and the two feel like halves of a whole. Good, then, that for just a few pennies extra you can get a bundle with both games if you don't have the first. Doesn't matter which order you play them, but you should play both.

Sovereign Syndicate - Disco Elysium-like Steampunk RPG

Price: $11.99 / £10.05 (40% off) | Developer: Crimson Herring Studios

While fragmented members of the original Disco Elysium team might be working on several spiritual successors, there are already a few games out now that have cribbed generously from its detective's notepad. Sovereign Syndicate is one of the stronger offerings, borrowing much of its structure (and a distinct lack of tactical combat) and set in a fantastical Steampunk London. It's all cogs-on-hats silliness, but embraced sincerely as you hop between four characters—a minotaur magician, a human courtesan turned rogue, a dwarven artificer and his robot buddy.

While the writing isn't quite up to Disco Elysium's level (honestly, what is?), it's still a few steps above your average fantasy RPG here, and there's an interesting mystery yarn to be unraveled. Despite the shifting perspectives, it's a relatively linear game. While there are some big choices to be made along the way, you're unlikely to be presented with a fractal mess of dialogue options at any given time, usually just two or three, with the occasional extra option if one of your stats is high enough. You do still have voices in your head, though; a concept I expect similarly inspired games to borrow over the coming years.

Garbanzo Quest - 2D platformer

Price: $11.79 / £8.84 (41% off) | Developer: zagawee

No thoughts, head empty. Sometimes you just want to turn off all those higher brain functions and play a truly videogame-ass videogame. Garbanzo Quest is a great little platform shooter about a blank-faced little guy named Garbanzo (or Pinto, or both if you want to play co-op) on a quest to make friends and overthrow a capitalist skellington named Billi Bones. You run, you jump, you spit at enemies until they give up on fighting and look grossed out (a reasonable reaction) and occasionally explore to find hidden keys to alternate exits because there's a whole Super Mario World style overworld to putz around in.

It all sounds pretty simple—and it is—but a lot of the best platformers are, and Garbanzo Quest just feels right. The music is catchy, the level design is just smart enough, the boss fights are challenging and the writing is kid-friendly but deeply chaotic. There's accessibility options to tune the difficulty to your liking if you want, and even a 2-player only character that just floats around instead of having to jump; great if you've got a less experienced (but still eager) buddy that wants to play. It's just a big, goofy, charming package. And there's a level editor, too!

Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip - Open-world Goof 'em up

Price: $12.05 / £10.04 (33% off) | Developer: snekflat

The best-selling, most mainstream game on this list, which should tell you just how far off the beaten track we've strayed. The latest from the team behind the equally chaotic 2D platformer Wuppo (which is also going dirt cheap and bundled, so don't skip it), Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip is best described as a kid-friendly Grand Theft Auto, but great fun for all ages. Tiny Terry is a weird little guy who wants to go to space. This means getting a car (so he takes a job as a taxi driver) and then making it fast enough to ramp into orbit. This means collecting trash, and the fastest way to do that is by committing crimes and not doing taxi work because work is boring.

All violence here is purely slapstick. You get a stick, and then you slap people with it, and they fall and bounce around before getting up again. No guns, no death, just cartoon antics, collecting stuff, buying questionable clothing and just generally messing around, getting distracted and causing trouble. It's well-written and funny and a bit like the resurgent popular Simpsons: Hit & Run, but without the brutally hard races. It's not a massive game, clocking around four hours long if you don't get too distracted. But this is also an open world sandbox, so some distraction is a given.

Harvest Hunt - First-person stealth horror roguelite

Price: $8.99 / £7.49 (50% off) | Developer: Villainous Games Studio

There are a now-uncountable number of first-person horror games where you slink around a spooky forest, looking for arbitrary macguffins while avoiding some kind of wandering monster, but Harvest Hunt injects some interesting roguelite elements into a tired concept. Your goal is to survive five nights (where have we heard that before?) as a cursed village's warden, collecting produce from the fields while avoiding the Devourer, a roaming worm-like monster that will spoil the crop (and you) if left to its own devices.

Each night you get an assortment of cards that add positive and negative modifiers to the map. Fortifications, chances to scare off the monster with fire, or maybe even weapons to fight back against it. Get some good synergy going and you might end up more of a hunter than a gatherer, or you might end up transforming the map into a quagmire of traps and obstacles for yourself. Over the course of multiple runs you'll unlock additional cards to keep replays fresh (a real design challenge, considering it's just you versus the monster) plus some story tidbits. It's a compelling loop, and adds a lot to a formula that's normally one-and-done.

Decline's Drops - Platformer/Smash-like brawler

Price: $13.29 / £11.12 (30% off) | Developer: Moulin aux Bulles Studio

This year's award for Frenchest platformer goes to Decline's Drops, without question. Looking like a particularly kaleidoscopic European comic, the world has been taken over by a cabal of industrialist serpents that are polluting the land in the name of capitalism and growth. Only a sun-hatted puppet girl named Globule can save the day, mostly by punching things with big cartoon boxing gloves. I told you it's a bit French. It's beautifully animated and with really catchy music too, but where Decline's Drops really shines is its mechanics.

The platforming and level design take heavy inspiration from the Donkey Kong Country Returns series, while the combat is a surprisingly technical riff on Smash Bros. Frequent arena battles encourage you to learn combos and keep juggle chains going, while spending a limited pool of energy on powerful special attacks. It's great stuff, and despite it not selling great at launch, the developer is so committed to this passion project that they're planning on adding another two worlds and three more playable characters over the course of next year.

Perennial Order - Botanical boss rush

Price: $13.99 / £11.89 (30% off) | Developer: Gardenfiend Games

It's great to see grim fantasy style explored in fun new ways, and Perennial Order's 'plant horror' setting and strange sprite-collage aesthetic feel genuinely refreshing. Everything here is made out of sticks, leaves, roots and bone, with your own character(s) standing out thanks to their bright petals against the gloomy backdrops. Rather than deliver another interconnected open world or traditional dungeon crawl, this is a hack n' slash boss rush, playable solo but ideally with a budding buddy, local or online.

While there's a good bit of walking and talking acting as connective tissue between battles, and the occasional threat in the spaces between bosses, the main fights themselves are a wonderfully varied lot. A personal favourite being a fight on a chessboard, played against a giant that moves pieces around to attack you. At least until you get him riled up, and he starts cheating. I won't spoil too much, as the game is a relatively brief handful of hours long, but if you've got a souls-liking friend you can rope in, this is a great way to spend a winter evening.

Phantom Spark - Zero-G racer with a plot

Price: $12.99 / £10.88 (35% off) | Developer: Ghosts

Less is more, sometimes. Phantom Spark is a minimalist take on the zero-G racer. Think Wipeout, but entirely focused on precision time trials, beating your past ghosts and chasing high scores through nailing a perfect racing line. No powerups here, no stats or enemies to shoot. Just you, the track, and possibly a few rivals (that you can't collide with) if you're playing online or locally with friends, and it's probably for the better here. If you've ever lost hours to mastering a map in Trackmania, it's a similar deal here.

Of course, the best racing in the world would still feel a bit hollow without vibes to match. Phantom Spark trades Wipeout's corporate-run sci-fi setting for a more mellow afrofuturist look. You'll mostly be racing through monumental pastel-hued stone structures covered with ornate engravings and accentuated with neon lasers. The music is also a chill, trancey electronica mix that keeps running even when you reset a track. Surprisingly there's also a substantial singleplayer story mode to give a little context and narrative to these races, but it doesn't interfere with the core racing. The only real shortcoming of the game is a lack of a track editor, but the devs have mentioned that one might be a possibility in later updates.

The Holy Gosh Darn - Comedy time-travel adventure

Price: $11.99 / £10.05 (40% off) | Developer: Perfectly Paranormal

The spirit of Day of The Tentacle shines bright in this one. The Holy Gosh Darn is the latest in the "Tuesday Trilogy"—a trio of offbeat adventures about life, Death (capitalized, as in the skellington dude) and the cosmic order all set on the same extremely messy day. This one has you playing as Cassiel, an angel trying to avert the destruction of heaven, which is about to happen in about 20 minutes. It gets messy, fast. You can roll back time as you see fit, or skip forward, but you can only bring back a single item from the future with you, making for some interesting puzzles where you might just need two of the same thing to progress.

Comedy is a tricky business at the best of times, especially in games. While The Holy Gosh Darn didn't get too many belly laughs out of me, it did manage to shake loose a few chuckles and plenty of smiles. The game's rude, crude cartoon afterlife walks a fine line between irreverence and restraint, and the voice acting is surprisingly solid too. Even better for you bargain-hounds: You can get The Holy Gosh Darn EVEN CHEAPER somehow when you buy this bundle including it plus the other two games in the trilogy. One of the weird cases where more is, paradoxically, less.

Angelstruck - Twin-stick roguelite arcade shooter

Price: $3.59 / £2.99 (40% off) | Developer: Feral Paw

What's one of my roundups without a big dumb arcade game? Angelstruck plays a bit like recently remastered score attack shooter Savant: Ascent, but with more room to move horizontally and some roguelike perks and long-term unlocks to keep things fresh between runs. Aesthetically, it's silly heavy metal fantasy stuff—an angry red, horned lady is blasting her way out of hell, clearing out angels with a big gun on the way to the top. It would be edgy if it wasn't delivered with all the seriousness of a Saturday morning cartoon, with the protagonist pulling silly faces during the boss intro splash screens, and on some of the perk card art too.

The bosses are stand-out moments though, with the big armored serpent that snakes around the arena cutting off movement options being a personal favourite. There's also a surprisingly complex scoring system encouraging perfect play and long combos. Perhaps a bit redundant in a game with roguelike elements, but it's still fun to make big numbers go up. My only real gripe with the game is that the player character run animation looks a little stiff, in a nostalgic, flash animation-esque way, but you can do a lot worse for under $5.

Battle Shapers - Roguelite FPS

Price: $17.49 / £14.69 (30% off) | Developer: Metric Empire

If you like a little roguelike in your FPS'ing these days, you're spoilt for choice. Roboquest, Gunfire Reborn and Deadlink are just the tip of the iceberg. But one that a lot of people have overlooked is Battle Shapers, a Mega Man-inspired bright and cartoony take on the formula. It left early access just days before the winter sale began, capping off its story with a definitive ending and some fun new systems that let you tweak and tune difficulty in interesting ways. Combat isn't a million miles away from Doom Eternal here, with a bunch of cooldown-based powers and enemies that get stunned when on low health, opening them up for a big melee finisher that restores some of your shields.

Rather than being a canned animation playing when you finish an enemy, you just punch them and send robots ragdolling, often launching them into other bots and doing damage. While there's plenty of character-building options in any given run of Battle Shapers (I especially like the ability to freely take the perks and modifiers from unwanted weapons and slap them onto the ones you do like), there's a surprising amount of long-term progression. The game feels a bit limiting at first, but you'll eventually unlock perks like wall-running and the means to break cracked walls to open alternate passages after a few loops. The story is a bit simplistic (it's no Hades, and unvoiced) but this one grows a lot over the course of multiple runs.

Eden Genesis - Precision speedrun platformer

Price: $7.49 / £6.29 (70% off) | Developer: Aeternum Game Studios S.L

The 'greatest precision platformer' crown has changed hands a few times over the years. I Wanna Be The Guy, Super Meat Boy and Celeste have all claimed it at one point, but most have forgotten just how good Dustforce was. Its movement was technical, its skill ceiling miles high, as the top level rankings required you to maintain inertia from every slope, slide across ceilings and chain together attacks without missing.

Eden Genesis doesn't quite stick the landing in terms of story, perhaps going a little heavy on its fully voiced cyberpunk drama, but the running and jumping here is unmistakably based on Dustforce. Every level is an obstacle course to be routed out, with rankings, leaderboards and high scores to chase, plus optional objectives encouraging obsessively replaying each stage until you can do it perfectly. No pauses, no damage, no collectible left behind. It's not the most original game in this lineup, but the world could use a little more Dustforce.

Psychroma - Cyberpunk horror adventure

Price: $4.99 / £6.39 (50% off) | Developer: Rocket Adrift

If you're fresh off the unsettling realness of Mouthwashing and looking for another piece of sci-fi horror designed to get under your skin, Psychroma isn't a bad second shot of poison at all. Like Mouthwashing, it's about the failing relationships of a handful of people in a dark but familiar future. In this case, a cast of heavily augmented people trying to make ends meet, sharing a high-tech house in future Toronto, neon-lit but crumbling and rendered in a sickly, DOS-esque colour palette.

Also like Mouthwashing (although this is almost certainly a case of parallel evolution, given that both were in development side by side, and this came out months earlier), it banks heavily on glitch effects, fragmented timelines and unreliable narrators, saving gore for a handful of scenes. Owing to the excellent sprite art used for close-ups, it's grisly stuff when it wants to be, although the character sprites when walking around are gangly to the point of being almost abstract. It's a short, uncomfortable ride, clocking in at around movie length, and with minimal puzzling. A great bit of sci-fi unpleasantness for those who've acquired the taste.

Megacopter: Blades of the Goddess - Helicopter arcade shooter

Price: $9.59 / £8.09 (40% off) | Developer: Pizza Bear Games

Sometimes a game just doesn't age well. EA's old Strike series of tactical helicopter shooters is probably best left in the '90s, as leading a one-chopper Gulf War campaign against tired Arab stereotypes doesn't quite sit right in the year 2024. Megacopter thankfully salvages the important part of the series—the satisfying, technical arcade helicopter combat—and replaces the jingoism and setting with lurid, bloody cartoon nonsense that feels lifted straight from a Troma movie: Evil reptiloids are invading and plan on destroying mankind's greatest monuments; our mascot pizza and arcade complexes, and only a blood-fueled ancient Aztec gunship can fight back.

It's a little more arcadey than Desert Strike, and broken up into smaller missions with a shop in between to buy new gear. Guns, armor, new missile types—standard enough stuff. Less standard are the cooldown-based Az-Tech powers like a partially invulnerable dash to help deal with the more bullet-hellish attack patterns you'll encounter. There's also some big messy boss fights where you'll have to ration your ammo and occasionally make a dash to pick up more from elsewhere on the map. There's some rough edges (the in-flight UI looks a little bland), but this is a generally great take on a largely forgotten formula.

UltraNothing - Mind-bending block puzzler

Price: $2.59 / £1.20 (35% off) | Developer: Snorillaka

Were it not being sold on Steam (admittedly for just pocket change), I could believe that UltraNothing just popped into existence one day like some kind of cursed anomaly waiting to be found and picked apart. On the surface a simple block-pushing puzzle game set in a surreal, abstract world. Shove things around until you can drop a floppy disk on a computer and move to the next level. There's some brain-teasers, and the world map gradually expands outwards as you complete levels, but it doesn't seem like there's too much to it.

And then it starts introducing new mechanics. Big ones, like turn-based strategy and unit command and construction and death abuse and camping. All while still letting you do the basic block-pushing stuff. Suddenly previous areas gain strange new contexts, additional unhinged dialogue drags you deeper, and before you know it, you're lost in the sauce. I've still barely scratched the surface of this one and feel I'm in too deep. Some say that it's dozens of hours long even if you're a puzzle freak. I am not.

Sumerian Six - Squad stealth tactics

Price: $19.79 / £16.49 (34% off) | Developer: Artificer

With the success of last year's Shadow Gambit (which I reviewed here, and the crew hailed as the best stealth game of 2023), I figured the stealth tactics sub-genre was due for a renaissance. Given that Sumerian Six has flown under almost everyone's radars despite publisher Devolver Digital's best efforts, I am seemingly wrong. Or maybe it's just the game being too stealthy for its own good. In short, this is Commandos, but in a Hellboy-esque pulp adventure setting where heroic super-scientists battle the Third Reich. And the great thing about Nazis in a stealth game is that you won't feel bad about wiping out every last guard!

It's polished, varied fun, and despite giving you some fun powers (one of your squad is a were-bear, great for those moments where you want to be a little less stealthy) it's a surprisingly stiff challenge, moreso than Shadow Gambit. The only fly in the ointment is the developer's bizarre decision to use AI tools to generate a lone marching song. Presumably there was a good reason for it, but still, a mild disappointment. Still, at this price (with a further discount if you own Shadow Gambit, Shadow Tactics or Showgunners), it's easy enough to overlook.

Terra Memoria - Traditional JRPG

Price: $9.99 / £8.37 (50% off) | Developer: La Moutarde

There have been plenty of JRPG heavyweights this year, including popular GOTY pick Metaphor: ReFantazio. Here's a relatively bite-sized adventure that you can get through in a lazy holiday weekend. Visually Terra Memoria evokes Capcom's classic Breath of Fire series, especially the later games with their chunky, detailed sprites and evocative 3D worlds, but with a relatively low-stakes story and sense of whimsy. Interestingly, once assembled, all six party members are active at all times. The three front-line fighters never change, but you can pair each of them with one of three support characters, modifying how they behave in turn-based fights.

Despite its relatively short run time (a bit over 15 hours, according to most), Terra Memoria crams in a lot of ideas, including cooking minigames and some town-building. If there's one criticism that can be levelled against Terra Memoria, it's that the translation, while perfectly serviceable, has a little 'second language' funk to it. Specifically the kind you sometimes get when going from French to English. I'd love to hear how it holds up in the developer's native language, but as my brain is only big enough to hold one set of words (and an encyclopedic knowledge of obscure games), I'm unable to judge. But it's only the smallest of grumbles, and 10 bucks well spent if you're up for a lighter, fluffier fantasy adventure.

Kitten Burst - Aerial racer/Dead internet simulator

Price: $18.74 / £14.61 (25% off) | Developer: Jam2go

The least discounted and most expensive game here, but you aren't going to find anything else like Kitten Burst. Trust me, I've looked. It's an aerial racing game set in the dead and abandoned ruins of the future Y2K-styled internet. You control a flying, cat-shaped program exploring abandoned digital spaces, freely exploring until you begin a point-to-point checkpoint race where you can push your luck by flying extra close to walls to boost your speed, which makes for a fun and challenging risk-reward mechanic.

While the majority of the game is exploring the strange cyber-landscapes and completing races, gradually levelling up your cat's (freely respeccable) stats, there's a few minigames in here and some surprisingly cool musical boss fights. Battles lock your flight path onto rails and play like a hybrid of Star Fox (minus the shooting) and interactive music video, with big baddies blasting obstacles and bullets at you to the breakbeat. It's a pretty substantial package, with a surprising amount of dialogue channelling the internet of ages past. Remember: Scene, Emo and Goth are three entirely different things.

Relentless Frontier - High-agility boomer shooter

Price: $9.89 / £8.44 (34% off) | Developer: Fission Ogre

The one early access pick in this roundup, but even limited to just its first episode, this is a wild ride of an FPS campaign. Built on the ever-reliable GZDoom engine, Relentless Frontier is pure sci-fi power fantasy. You're a power-armored supersoldier fighting off a colossal swarm of insectoid monsters, but rather than go the Space Marine route of having you tank your way through problems, you're all about zipping through the battlefield's vertical spaces at speed, herding enemies together then splattering them with explosives, a belt-fed automatic shotgun and a six-barreled assault rifle.

There's surprising depth to the combat, like armored enemies that need to have their plating cracked before you can effectively do damage, and some Metroidy exploration and backtracking to unlock bonus permanent upgrades for your suit. The game also handles resources in an interesting way. While there's your usual assortment of pickups around the map, using your melee nano-axe will help you build up a stockpile of space goo that can be converted instantly (even mid-combat) to give you a quick top-up of health, armor or ammo. Even with some secret hunting, you'll probably need to as well, as this game will put you through the wringer at higher difficulties. Satisfying, technical combat: A great foundation for more to come.

This is just a tiny fraction of the interesting and undersold games from 2024 alone. It's easy to lose perspective and focus solely on a handful of big live-service failures or absurd marketing crossovers, but the fact is that there are more great games out there than you (or I) will ever find time to look at, let alone play. And don't forget, games don't age like they used to—almost everything in my previous hidden gem roundups is still going cheap, and they're as good as the day they launched. Go check some of them out here:

• Summer 2024 (40 games)
• Winter 2023 (20 games)
• Summer 2023 (20 games)
• Spring 2023 (15 games)
• Winter 2022 (15 games)
• Summer 2022 (15 games)
• Indie GOTY picks 2023 (6 games)

To all the developers behind these games: Thank you all. It's strange and obscure indie games that got me writing about the medium in the first place, and it's why I'm able to showcase all of this here.

And to everyone who found something to treasure here: Don't keep it to yourself! Share what you love and tell others, algorithms be damned.

The design was a collaboration between Microsoft and the artist GMUNK, and it's not like it was a secret or anything: There's been a post on GMUNK's website and a YouTube video of the thing in motion up online for nearly a decade. But I think we're all so conditioned to disregard or otherwise devalue so much of what we see, why on earth would anyone spare a thought for a corporate branding exercise destined to be replaced with videogame concept art or something anyway? I never consciously said "surely this image is CGI," I simply blanked out the default Windows 10 desktop background the way I might do to an advertisement or garbage post on Reddit.

But the fact that it came from a physical installation is mind-boggling⁠—with that knowledge, I look at the thing and wonder how it was even possible. GMUNK's webpage dedicated to the project explains it best, but basically: The artist shot different colored lasers and other light sources through a glass Windows logo suspended with wires, while the effect was further enhanced with billowing volumetric smoke pumped through the set. GMUNK captured the results with a high-speed camera, and the final image used in the Windows 10 desktop was a composite of several frames from the shoot.

The exercise definitely feels like it came from another era of tech marketing⁠—a slightly melancholic nostalgia piece from the freewheeling days of the go-go 2010s. I find myself pleasantly surprised that, just this once, something I had assumed to be more pointless visual noise from the computer was actually a genuinely interesting physical creation in the real world. You can check out some more shots from the photo shoot below⁠—my favorite is probably the red and pink variation on pitch black.

Of course, there were plenty of conventional fumbles too: Dissembling, dishonesty, and some straight-up bad calls provided plenty of "things that actually happened" for gamers to be unhappy about. From Facebook rejecting ads for board games to a weird cat game accused of being built with AI, here's our roundup of the year's biggest lowlights.

Facebook rejects ads for Votes for Women board game

Our face: 😕

What happened: When board game publisher Fort Circle attempted to purchase Facebook ads for a new edition of Votes for Women, a board game about the women's suffrage movement in the US, it received an unexpected surprise: Facebook said no. The problem, according to an automated response provided by Facebook to the publisher, is that the ad "mentions politicians or is about sensitive social issues that could influence public opinion, how people vote and may impact the outcome of an election or pending legislation."

The outcome: You might think that such patent stupidity is the result of a bad algorithm making bad decisions, as they do, and you'd be correct. But when Fort Circle requested a review of the ruling, that too was rejected. Not being able to run ads had a material impact on the Votes for Women crowdfunding campaign—"Most Kickstarter creators will tell you that Facebook advertising is a crucial piece of the crowdfunding puzzle," Fort Circle founder Kevin Bertram said at the time—but more broadly it points to a pretty serious failure in Facebook's review process.

Sweet Baby Inc sparks anti-woke outrage

Our face: 😡

What happened: In March, a little-known company called Sweet Baby Inc was suddenly thrust into the spotlight by "anti-woke" gamers outraged by, as one put it, the narrative consultants' promulgation of "ideological worldviews that I believe have taken hold of the Western world, media, and gaming as a whole." Which is of course nonsense: The company is contracted by developers who want to improve pre-existing elements of their games, and it has absolutely no power to force anyone to do anything—least of all make wholesale changes to their projects to enforce some sort of imagined "race and identity group quota."

The outcome: As ridiculous as it sounds (and is), the furor was (and is) real. A Steam curator group dedicated to "detecting" the presence of Sweet Baby Inc in games has now swollen to more than 460,000 followers, and the company was forced to lock its social media accounts following a torrent of abuse.

Fallout fans think Bethesda is trying to retcon New Vegas out of existence

Our face: 🤨

What happened: The Fallout TV show on Amazon was a hit, but it made some Fallout die-hards angry because of a perceived lack of faith to the lore. PC Gamer's Chris Livingston broke the whole thing down in detail, but the short version is that aggrieved fans believed Bethesda was using the Amazon show to erase Fallout: New Vegas—a fan-favorite in the series that was notably not developed by Bethesda, but by Obsidian—from the timeline.

The outcome: Reactions to the conspiracy theory varied: Showrunner Graham Wagner said the wasteland isn't static and sometimes things happen, New Vegas lead designer Josh Sawyer understands the annoyance but really doesn't give a shit, and Todd Howard, the man currently atop the Fallout creative mountain, expressed mild exasperation about the whole thing, promising that "New Vegas is a very, very important game" to Bethesda. Bottom line? Everyone needs to simmer down.

Escape from Tarkov infuriates players with a spectacularly botched PvE mode launch

Our face: 🤔

What happened: Battlestate Games shot itself in the foot real good in April with the release of a $250 Unheard Edition of the game that included, among other things, access to co-op PvE—a mode that owners of other editions would have to pay to play. What really stuck in the community's craw, though, was a previously-released $150 Edge of Darkness edition that promised "free access to all subsequent DLCs," but that did not offer access to the new mode. Battlestate argued that the PvE mode was not DLC but a "unique feature of the new game," and thus didn't count.

That went over about as well as you'd expect—extremely not well, to be clear—and Battlestate made the situation worse by dicking around with half-baked sops. It eventually offered six months of co-op play for free, but not until some future date because the servers don't have the capacity to handle everyone; on top of that, people who bought the $250 edition were promised priority matchmaking, meaning everyone else would be stuck in longer queues. They were also given access to in-game items protecting them from scavs and enabling more and better gear to be carried, conferring a distinct advantage over others, including those who bought the previously-prized $150 version.

The outcome: As PC Gamer's Jake Tucker said, Battlestate "wiped out years of goodwill in one catastrophic week," but somehow it wasn't quite finished stepping on the Lego it'd dumped on the floor. After initially offering owners of the Edge of Darkness edition of Escape from Tarkov an option to upgrade to the newer release for $100 (what a deal), Battlestate reduced the upgrade price to $50; players who had already forked over $100 for the upgrade were offered $50 in "compensation," in the form of a single-use Escape from Tarkov voucher.

Fallout 4's next-gen patch breaks everything, improves nothing

Our face: 😣

What happened: Not content to sit quietly on the sidelines and watch Battlestate blow years of goodwill to smithereens with unforced errors, Bethesda said "hold my beer" and rolled out a "next-gen" patch for Fallout 4 that PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield described as nothing short of "calamitous." It wasn't just that the update changed so little, it actually made things worse: The added ultrawide support borked the UI, modded saves wouldn't load, and frame rate was still capped at 60. Adding insult to injury, the update rolled out on the heels of the hit Fallout TV show on Amazon, which had sparked a whole new wave of interest in and excitement for the game series, and the mod team behind Fallout London had to delay the total conversion's release to be sure it'd be compatible with the new version.

The outcome: An update to the update rolled out a few weeks later, correcting a few issues but leaving the biggest problems for modders to fix. Many of them recommended the simplest fix of all: Use the Fallout 4 Downgrader tool to revert the game to a pre-"next gen" state and be happy with a game that works like it's supposed to. For the record, Fallout 4's next-gen patch hasn't been updated since.

Take-Two closes Intercept Games and Roll7, claims it didn't, but yeah, it did (and Kerbal 2 looks DOA)

Our face: 😵

What happened: The Kerbal Space Program 2 controversy actually kicked off in early 2023 with a catastrophic early access launch, but it took a weird, drawn-out twist in 2024. In May, it was reported that KSP2 developer Intercept Games, along with Rollerdrome studio Roll7, were being closed as part of sweeping layoffs at parent company Take-Two Interactive. But shortly after that report, the Kerbal Space Program X account piped up, saying, "We're still hard at work on KSP2. We'll talk more when we can."

Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick threw more confusion on the fire a couple weeks later, saying the closure report wasn't true: "We didn't shutter those studios, to be clear." Zelnick insisted he wasn't trying to be "cute or difficult" about the situation, but yeah, he was being kind of cute and difficult. Not too long after that, Intercept employees confirmed that large numbers of people at the studio, and possibly the entire team, was being laid off.

The outcome: In November, Take-Two sold its Private Division publishing label to an unnamed buyer, and at the same time finally confirmed that Intercept and Roll7 had in fact been closed at some point prior to the sale. Take-Two still hasn't explained what happened between 'we haven't closed the studio' and 'the studio is closed.'

As for Kerbal Space Program 2, it appears to be cooked: The KSP X account hasn't posted since the "still hard at work" promise in May, and the most recent game update—a relatively small bug-fix patch—went live in June. The game currently has a "mostly negative" overall user rating on Steam, and a concurrent player count that hovers around 100.

Sony goes to war over Helldivers 2's PSN requirement

Our face: 😐

What happened: Arrowhead's fascism-is-fun shooter Helldivers 2 was on a monster roll following its launch in February, but ran face-first into a concrete wall in May when Sony, the game's publisher, announced that players on Steam would be required to have a PlayStation Network account if they wanted to keep playing. That was the plan from the start, but the requirement was initially put on hold because of server issues when the game first went live.

That didn't mollify players, who came hard with the time-honored tradition of a review-bombing: More than 220,000 negative reviews flooded into Steam, dragging Helldivers 2's "overwhelmingly positive" rating to "mixed." Sony stood its ground briefly but eventually backed down, leaving Arrowhead to clean up the mess.

The outcome: An influx of positive reviews followed in the wake of Operation Cleanup, but like grassy fields in France that remain pockmarked with shell craters, evidence of the battle remains in the game's "mostly positive" rating on Steam: Good, but nowhere near what it used to be. And despite the debacle, Sony isn't giving up on the PSN account requirement on PC: President Hiroki Totoki said in November that linked accounts are necessary so people can "safely" play its games.

Tekken 8 pro loses World Cup qualifier after his wireless controller goes haywire

Our face: 😬

What happened: Things went sideways in a hurry for Tekken pro Kim "JDCR" Hyun-jin, who was about to claim victory against opponent Alexandra "AK" Laverez at Dreamhack Dallas when his controller crapped out, eventually determined to be the result of someone who was previously connected to the setup turning their controller on. That forced a redo of the match, and that didn't go over well: As PC Gamer's resident fighting game pro Mollie Taylor recounted, "Twitch chat can be seen saying things like 'JDCR won that fair and square,' 'JDCR ALREADY WON,' 'JDCR got screwed,' and 'Jdcr won. This is rigged'."

When the do-over match eventually went ahead, AK—who was undoubtedly going to lose prior to the technical trouble—came out on top, and the reaction was predictable. AK received "a heaping of rather undue hate," Taylor wrote: Some said he should have forfeited the match, others went so far as to claim that he'd intentionally sabotaged JDCR's controller connection in order to avoid a loss.

The outcome: JDCR ultimately finished ninth in the tournament, just missing out on a top-eight finish that would have earned him a qualifying position at the Esports World Cup. DreamHack founder Alex Jebailey said on Twitter that he felt "incredibly sorry for what happened" and that he'd help JDCR attend future qualifiers for another World Cup shot. But, he added, "the amount of death threats and crazy things being said to me are pretty horrendous."

Starfield gives us Horse Armor in space

Our face: 🤠

What happened: Starfield was a perfectly fine Bethesda RPG, but didn't quite live up to the pre-release hype. The mood among players soured further as months went by with minimal support, and the launch of the Starfield Creation Kit in June did not improve things.

The big problem was the release of a single Trackers Alliance mission called The Vulture that cost $7, which thanks to the magic of Starfield Creation Credits bundle pricing was in reality $10. Unhappy players likened the DLC to Oblivion's infamous Horse Armor, the 2006 add-on that heralded the era of cosmetic microtransactions.

The outcome: Horse Armor won in 2006, and despite the widespread early upset it looks like The Vulture did too: In response to the backlash, Todd Howard said "we hear the feedback" (ie., a small review bombing campaign on Steam) but Bethesda hasn't budget on the price, and it remains among the most popular of more than 2,700 Starfield creations.

Ubisoft grapples with Assassin's Creed Shadows blowback

Our face: 🤬

What happened: Assassin's Creed Shadows has been a nexus of anti-woke gamer upset since revealing Yasuke, one of its two protagonists. Yasuke is a real-life historical figure who lived in Japan in the 16th century and eventually became an attendant of Oda Nobunaga. He's an ideal fit for an Assassin's Creed character, but he's also Black, and that caused great distress among certain corners of the gaming world, who very suddenly discovered a new commitment to historical authenticity (it's widely believed Yasuke served as a samurai, but not known for certain) and felt that featuring him instead of a "real" Japanese samurai was disrespectful to Japan. X owner Elon Musk amplified that sentiment in May, replying to a complaint about the game posted on his platform that "DEI kills art." Ubisoft's ham-fisted efforts to address what it apparently imagined were good-faith concerns about the game, meanwhile, only made the whole situation worse. It got to the point where even Reddit was sick of dealing with it.

Other, more self-inflicted problems cropped up over the second half of the year. In July, Ubisoft apologized for using a real-life reenactment group's flag in Assassin's Creed Shadows concept art without permission, and in October the maker of a collectible said it would be redesigned following complaints that it bore a striking resemblance to the one-legged torii standing outside the Sannō Shrine, a remnant of the 1945 nuclear attack on the city of Nagasaki. Frankly, though, I don't think either issue would have attracted nearly as much attention had the anger pump not already been primed by the inclusion of Yasuke.

The outcome: Assassin's Creed Shadows was delayed in September to February 14, 2025, so we're still waiting to see how that works out, but it's been interesting watching Ubisoft grapple with the blowback. There seems to be confusion, or perhaps conflict, on how best to approach it: Executive producer Marc-Alexis Côté said in June that Musk was "feeding hatred," but in September, after announcing the delay, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot took pains to reassure everyone that "our goal is not to push any specific agenda" with games.

But Coté is having none of that, saying more forcefully in November that some of Assassin's Creed Shadows' loudest critics post "lies, half truths and personal attacks online," and that "when we self-censor in the face of threats, we hand over our power, piece by piece, until freedom and creativity both wither away."

Dr Disrespect finally confirms the reason for his lifetime ban from Twitch

Our face: 🤢

What happened: Guy Beahm, better known online as the streamer Dr Disrespect, was banned from Twitch for life in 2020. But the reason for his ouster remained a secret until June 2024, when a former Twitch employee alleged that Beahm was shown the door because he was caught "sexting a minor" through Twitch's Whispers messaging system.

A few days later, Beahm acknowledged exchanging messages with a minor in 2017 "that sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate," but insisted that "nothing illegal happened" and that he never faced criminal charges as a result of his actions.

The outcome: The fallout was immediate and severe. Beahm was fired by Midnight Society, the game studio he co-founded in 2021, when the allegations first came to light; shortly after his public admission, 2K Games, Turtle Beach, the NFL, and YouTube also cut ties with the streamer.

Bungie lays off hundreds of employees as its CEO spends millions on cars

Our face: 😧

What happened: Destiny 2 studio Bungie laid off 220 employees in July, less than a year after an October 2023 layoff that saw a number of long-time and high-profile staffers put out of work. What really pissed people off, though, were claims that Bungie CEO Pete Parsons had spent more than $2.4 million on vintage cars over the two years leading up to the layoffs. Parson's money to spend, yes, and not a huge amount of it compared to the cash Destiny 2 has hoovered in over the years, but as PC Gamer's Harvey Randall put it, "Isn't it weird that he has so much of it while his now-former employees face anxiety over their basic living expenses?" Some former Bungie employees sure thought so.

The reaction to Parsons' vehicular habits was no doubt amplified to some extent by his public performance in the wake of those October 2023 layoffs, in which he did his best to present himself as an innocent bystander rather than a well-paid, still-employed studio chief. As one person said in response to Parsons' post about those layoffs on X, "Your senior social lead probably would have recommended against this post, which you would have known had you not let them go."

The outcome: Destiny 2 is still grinding along, but the road ahead hasn't gotten any smoother. In October, Sony carved off more of Bungie, making its Creative Studios arm a part of PlayStation Studios, and in December former Destiny 2 and Marathon director Christopher Barrett, who was fired in April over allegations of inappropriate behavior with female employees, sued the company for $200 million, saying Bungie "deliberately destroyed [his] reputation by falsely, and publicly, insinuating they had 'investigated' Barrett and 'found' he had engaged in sexual misconduct."

Russian chess player tries to poison rival with mercury

Our face: 😮

What happened: Amina Abakarova, a 40 year-old chess player from the Russian Republic of Dagestan, was scheduled to play Umayganat Osmanova, a 30 year-old longtime rival who had beaten Abakarova into second place in a tournament the week prior. Not wanting to risk a second consecutive L, Abakarova decided to up her game by smearing liquid mercury all over the chess board and pieces they were meant to use.

Mercury is of course very poisonous, and Osmanova began complaining that she was unwell, nauseous and dizzy around half an hour after the game began. Doctors were called in, and were fortunately able to prevent her from succumbing to the poison.

The outcome: Abakarova might be a really good chess player, but she's not much of a criminal mastermind. She applied the poison in full view of security cameras, and was thus quickly busted by police. She reportedly copped to the whole thing, not because she wanted to win the match but just because she really doesn't like Osmanova, and now she's facing up to three years in prison and a lifetime ban from competitive chess play.

It may not seem like a world-shattering controversy from our videogame-centric perspective, but it was a very big deal in the world of chess: Malcolm Pein of the English Chess Federation said he'd "never seen anything like this before," adding that it was "the first recorded case of somebody using a toxic substance, to my knowledge, in the history of the game of chess."

Black Myth Wukong studio steadfastly refuses to address allegations of sexism

Our face: 😒

What happened: Black Myth: Wukong is a good game and a major success, but it's also become a pivot point in the culture wars thanks to a 2023 IGN report on the long history of sexism at developer Game Science. The issue was put back under the spotlight in August 2024 when the studio sent out streaming guidelines just ahead of Black Myth: Wukong's release forbidding, among other things, "feminist propaganda" during streams.

Naturally, the usual parts of the Twittersphere were thrilled to see a developer being so "based," especially since Black Myth: Wukong was a hit, proof positive that 'real gamers' don't want politics in their videogames, or somesuch. Others viewed the whole thing more as just strange and a little creepy.

The outcome: Game Science has steadfastly refused to even acknowledge the issue: On multiple occasions, both before and after the streamer guidelines came to light, the studio has kept its head down and refused to comment on the controversy. Which may be a comment in itself: As PC Gamer's Wes Fenlon wrote, "It's hard not to read the silence as a sign that Game Science feels it has nothing to apologize for."

Mr Beast lawyers up

Our face: 😶

What happened: Mega-YouTuber Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson had a good first-half in 2024, with his main account becoming the most-subscribed channel on the platform in June, but a very bad second half, as his media empire became embroiled in multiple scandals. Longtime collaborator Ava Kris Tyson was accused of grooming a 14-year-old fan after an exchange of inappropriate messages came to light, and while Donaldson quickly cut ties with Tyson, more trouble followed. Contestants in his Beast Games competition, a real-life Squid Games knockoff, complained of poor treatment, and former employees came forward to say some elements of his videos were either faked or rigged—and that they'd been mistreated themselves.

The outcome: Rather than issuing the standard mea culpa that so often comes in the wake of this sort of thing, Donaldson is trying to power through it, keeping his head down, his mouth shut, and the videos rolling. So far it seems to be working: His subscriber numbers continue to climb, and his videos are still attracting hundreds of millions of viewers.

Peter Molyneux says he's "coming home" to PC

Our face: 🙄

What happened: Legendary game designer and bullshitter extraordinaire Peter Molyneux said in August that he's "coming home" to PC, which would've been exciting news in, say, 2006. But in 2024, the bloom is off the rose thanks to a long series of catastrophes including Curiosity, Godus and the follow-up Godus Wars, and Legacy, a blockchain-based business sim that raised a huge pile of money in pre-release land sales (although apparently not quite the $54 million claimed by some reports) and then immediately tanked.

Which isn't to say Molyneux's new thing, the god game Masters of Albion, will necessarily be bad. If anything, it actually shows some real promise: Superficially, it looks a bit like Populous mashed up with Fable, and if Molyneux's 22cans studio can pull it off, that definitely might not suck.

The outcome: Impossible to say at this point because nothing else has happened, but memories of the last decade-plus will not be forgotten, and that puts the whole thing in a deep hole right from the start. I hope he's able to climb out of it and clock us all in the head with one final, great triumph, but the days of granting Molyneux the benefit of the doubt are long over.

Sony pulls the plug on Concord less than two weeks after launch, and a lot of people are strangely happy about it

Our face: 😢

What happened: The online shooter Concord was one of the biggest, most spectacular flameouts in videogame history: After sinking vast amounts of money into the project, including the outright purchase of developer Firewalk Studios in 2023, mixed user reviews and abysmally low player counts sealed its doom immediately. Some hoped Concord might get a second shot at life as a free-to-play game, but Sony shot down that proposition in October: Concord, like the proverbial parrot, is dead.

The outcome: It was an ugly mess by any measure, but what was particularly notable in the wake of Concord's failure was the glee it prompted from some corners of the gaming world: Gloating, memes, and shared screenshots of the game's concurrent player count on Steam dominated the post-closure discourse. PC Gamer's Tyler Wilde said "the eagerness to grave dance on unpopular games has become a bad habit," and he's absolutely right. Concord was at best a perfectly fine shooter trying to break into a crowded genre where "perfectly fine" isn't nearly good enough, and there's plenty of space for analysis and discussion of how it all went so completely wrong. But cheering its loss—and the subsequent closure of Firewalk—does no one any good.

Dr Disrespect begins his comeback tour

Our face: 🤢🤢🤢

What happened: The Dr Disrespect comeback tour began in September with a 20-minute rant on his YouTube channel, in which he said his Twitch suspension was primarily the result of a conspiracy against him. But it didn't really kick into gear until October, when YouTube declined to remonetize his channel. In response, the streamer teased "something much, much bigger" in the works, which in November turned out to be a move to Rumble, the right-wing streaming platform that hosts the likes of Dan Bongino, Steven Crowder, Viva Frei, Russell Brand, The Quartering, and the Tate Brothers.

The outcome: Well, Dr Disrespect is on Rumble now. The numbers aren't nearly the same at this point—he's currently at a little over 76,000 followers on Rumble, a small fraction of the 4.55 million he'd amassed on YouTube—but he's not just streaming there: His deal with the platform includes equity in the company, and he will also lead Rumble Gaming, its videogame-focused livestream category. Lest there be any doubt about his commitment to the cause, the move came a month after he announced a line of "Make Gaming Great Again" merchandise modeled after the campaign slogan of US president-elect Donald Trump.

Twitch bans Arab streamers as it struggles (and fails) to come up with coherent moderation policies

Our face: 😠

What happened: Under pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, a major American non-profit that campaigns against antisemitism and promotes Zionism as a movement for "self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland," Twitch banned several Arab streamers in October over a TwitchCon panel that had occurred a month earlier. Panelists had put together a tier list ranking various streamers from "Arab" to "loves Sabra", an American and Israeli-owned hummus brand; Twitch partner and panel host Frogan said the panel was about "who has a habibi pass" (habibi is Arabic for "my love") but the ADL characterized it as "antisemitic vitriol."

The ban came a week after Twitch suspended Asmongold for his racist tirade against Palestinians, and the discovery that Twitch had stopped signups with email verification from both Israel and Palestine for more than a year, which it said was done "to prevent uploads of graphic material" following the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023—a "temporary" measure it apparently forgot to reverse.

The outcome: Following weeks of back-and-forth complaints of Islamophobia and antisemitism on the platform, Twitch rolled out a policy requiring a warning label for streams about vaguely-defined "politics and sensitive social issues," which included discussions about topics including "reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, or immigration." Twitch modified the guidelines a few days later to remove LGBTQ+ references but the rules remained too vague to be useful in any meaningful way; days after that, again under pressure from the ADL, Twitch forbid the use of the word "Zionist" to "attack or demean" other people or groups, but said it could still be used in its political context.

Elon Musk is going to "make gaming great again"

Our face: 🤡

What happened: X owner and soon-to-be co-president of the United States Elon Musk made the bizarre statement on his platform that "too many game studios that are owned by massive corporations," before promising that "xAI is going to start an AI game studio to make games great again!"

The outcome: Setting aside the fact that making games is really hard and nobody knows what an "AI game studio" is beyond some imagined Star Trek-style fantasy that doesn't actually exist, the statement was especially strange coming from a man with whose net worth is counted in the hundreds of billions—he's literally the wealthiest man on the planet—and who heads up a number of pretty famous "massive corporations" of his own.

The real motivation for Musk's promised move into the industry was revealed by a later tweet to be less about concerns over corporate ownership, and more about wanting games that "skip the woke lecture." The segment of the gaming community up in arms about "wokeness" in videogames was thrilled to see Musk wading into the fray, but there's been no more said about it since.

NZXT comes under fire for its Flex gaming PC rental program

Our face: 😔

What happened: Hardware maker NZXT came under fire in December for its Flex PC rental service, which a Gamers Nexus exposé called a "predatory, evil rental computer scam." Specific complaints included allegations that NZXT would sometimes swap out components in rented PCs with less powerful hardware, use seemingly false or misleading benchmarks, and lock rental customers into unfair contracts.

The outcome: NZXT defended its practices in response, but acknowledged that it "messed up" on some points. It committed to greater clarity on various points of the program and an end to "influencer-led" advertising, and also spent a good chunk of text laying out the "use case" for the Flex rental program, which NZXT said "allows for flexibility and lower commitment than owning or financing a PC." The response did not calm the waters: A video of NZXT CEO Johnny Hou discussing the matter has received 331 likes on YouTube, and more than 6,400 dislikes.

A weird game about cats sparks AI backlash

Our face: 🐱

What happened: Catly, a weird game about cats, dropped a reveal trailer at the 2024 Game Awards. Rather than being greeting with the presumably-expected "awww, they're so cute," though, the trailer sparked immediate speculation (and some straight-up accusations) that it was made with generative AI. The game itself, from the very little that could be seen of it, struck many as little more than an NFT showcase. Those concerns were heightened by reports that Kevin Yeung, the co-founder of developer SuperAuthenti, is also co-founder of TenthPlanet, a studio that definitely is (or at least was) working on blockchain projects.

The outcome: SuperAuthenti has been oddly quiet about the whole thing, although it did eventually state that Catly does not use AI and has "zero blockchain technology." Beyond that, we'll have to wait and see: A post-announcement update to the Steam page provided a closer look at what the game is all about, but more details won't be revealed until sometime in 2025.

Unlike most major players in gaming, Valve is privately owned, so information on the company—headcount, revenues, that sort of thing—is generally not for public consumption. But court documents related to the ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed against Valve by Wolfire Games in 2021 showed that Valve had just 336 employees that year.

That's bigger than a typical tiny startup, yes, but also a very small fraction of companies like Ubisoft, which reported 18,666 employees at the end of September 2024, Electronic Arts, which had approximately 13,700 people as of March 31, 2024, or Activision Blizzard, which counted approximately 13,000 employees at the end of 2022, in its final year-end report prior to its acquisition by Microsoft. In terms of headcount, Valve is significantly smaller than even Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian Studios, which had 470 employees as of March 2024. (It will always be the quirky little outfit from Ghent to me, though.)

What's also a bit odd is that of those 336 employees, only 79 were directly working on Steam, even though Steam is, by a country mile, Valve's big money maker. 181 people were working in Valve's "Games" department, doing whatever, while 41 were in hardware development and 35 handled administration duties.

Wolfire criticized this breakdown in its lawsuit, saying Valve "devotes a miniscule percentage of its revenue to maintaining and improving the Steam Store." That criticism presumably isn't just about Steam store functionality, but also its moderation policies, which have been under fire for years for allowing hate groups and extremist content to flourish.

By another measure, though, Valve is absolutely monstrous. Documents from that same lawsuit also revealed that in terms of how much money it makes per employee, Valve towers over the giants of the tech industry. A Valve employee with a fondness for numbers and time on their hands broke down the company's internal figures and then compared it with companies including Apple, Facebook, and Netflix. The email chain is redacted so Valve's per-employee revenue generation isn't known, but the second-place finisher, Facebook, pulled in roughly $780,400 in annual net income per employee, so we at least know it's more than that.

Those calculations are based on 2018 numbers and so may be out of date, although Valve hasn't grown significantly since then and it's not as though Steam has suddenly stopped raking in money. Valve obviously isn't earning the revenues of the other companies on the list, but in terms of raw efficiency, that's huge. And, rather like how the low Steam headcount casts an unflattering light on its moderation problems, that kind of cash-crankin' might lead one to wonder whether Valve's 30% cut on Steam sales (with reductions based on sales volume) is in fact behind the times, as Wolfire, Epic Games, and others insist. On the other hand, nothing succeeds like success, and Valve doing so much with so little suggests it has to be doing something right.

2025 could be an interesting year for Valve: After years of slowly grinding through the process, Wolfire's antitrust lawsuit against Valve was certified as a class action in November, meaning it now encompasses "all persons or entities" who have sold games on Steam since 2017. That same month, US Senator Mark Warner sent a letter to Valve boss Gabe Newell warning of "more intense scrutiny from the federal government" if it doesn't crack down on extremist content on the platform.

You can watch a video of the October 23 event via TNT Sports Boxing on YouTube. Fury enters first, dressed normally⁠—for a boxer at a promo event at least, the man's still wearing a patterned blazer and a snapback. We then get Usyk's entrance, and he's in full Silent Assassin mode with a shaved head, black suit, red tie, leather gloves, a tactical-looking brief case, and a rendition of "Ave Maria" playing over the walkup straight out of Hitman: Blood Money. The real chef's kiss comes when Usyk reveals what's in the briefcase: A picture of Fury taking a punch to the face during a bout, which Usyk had his opponent autograph.

It's such an incredible bit, and I'm not just saying that because Usyk is an undefeated heavyweight boxer and I write articles for a living. The whole thing has, dare I say it, a touch of camp, and Usyk revealing the picture after so much build up is such a hilariously catty little gesture. Being able to commit to such a weird bit so fully as part of a multi-million dollar media event requires the paradoxical confidence to not take yourself too seriously. But also? Usyk got his man, just like Agent 47.

It's also such a weird, fun example of games' mainstream pull and recognizability. Hitman in particular is such a strange pull because it's a niche series of stealth games, but it's also internationally recognizable thanks in no small part to Agent 47's iconic design (and maybe also the significantly less iconic Timothy Olyphant movie). I'd love to hear an oral history of how this came about, but until proven otherwise, I'm just going to assume Usyk personally loves Hitman.

The arguments have been around forever, but they've been made concrete by the simple fact that, over the last decade in particular, we've seen more and more games simply disappear. And we're not talking about obscure hobbyist projects, but seriously big budget titles that companies have spent millions developing, and hundreds of devs have spent years of their careers on. 2024 even gave us the perfect poster boy: Concord, Sony's live service shooter that lasted all of 11 days before being taken out behind the sheds and unceremoniously shot in the head.

That seems incredible, doesn't it? Concord was a AAA shooter backed by PlayStation, one of the biggest and most-moneyed brands in gaming, and it didn't last two weeks. For the average punter, Concord may as well have never existed.

But Concord is just one high-profile example from dozens, and it feels like the combination of prominent games disappearing from storefronts and so many having online elements that will never work again has brought the issue to the fore of many more peoples' minds. Arguments about preservation for future generations may attract the wonks among us but, for the mainstream audience, it is now not uncommon to fork out $60 or whatever for a game that may well not be playable two years down the line, or at the very least compromised beyond the experience promised at launch. I don't envy folk trying to play Suicide Squad in a year's time (albeit in this case Rocksteady has committed to adding an offline mode).

The main way this growing concern found expression, or the most prominent at least, was the Stop Killing Games campaign. This was sparked by Ubisoft pulling the plug on The Crew in April this year, with the 10-year-old racing game now unplayable and no offline mode coming due to "server infrastructure and licensing constraints"—which upset fan and YouTuber Ross Scott enough to begin rallying support around the Stop Killing Games website.

The idea is to create a focal point for opposition to what Scott calls the industry's "assault on both consumer rights and preservation of media," and the site's purpose is to direct consumers towards other gathering points such as major online petitions and advise them on how to submit complaints to regulatory bodies like the DGCCRF, France's consumer protection agency. The legal argument is that videogames should be classed as "goods" rather than "services"—regardless of the terminology publishers use—and goods shouldn't be able to be rendered inoperable by the seller after consumers buy them.

OK: Some of the arguments seem a bit out-there. A proposed class-action lawsuit saying players of The Crew were "duped" by Ubisoft compared the situation to the publisher entering peoples' homes and stealing parts of a pinball machine. But other elements of it have the chance to enact real change by getting the regulators interested. Stop Killing Games is currently running a petition which, if it reaches a million signatures by July 2025, will oblige the EU to consider a ban on making multiplayer games unplayable (it currently has over 400,000 signatures).

This was also happening in a wider context of both publishers and regulators realising that, at the very least, there are some big questions to answer about digital ownership. Even if players might not like the answers. Steam added a new disclaimer about ownership which wasn't exactly new, but seemed forced by the rise in big publishers rendering games inoperable, and in some cases revoking their licenses. The message also followed shortly after a new Californian law that requires retailers to warn consumers that the digital games they buy can be taken away at any time—exactly what this message does.

Point with this example being that Valve appears to be looking at the California law and assuming that other states will follow suit, and dealing with it in the most simple way possible: Applying the new language to everyone, rather than responding on a state-by-state and region-by-region basis.

Never missing an opportunity to weigh in on such matters, GOG (formerly Good Old Games) took a moment to remind players that, hey, anything you buy from us is yours forever and cannot be taken away. But GOG does walk the walk, and this year committed to a new preservation program whereby it'll keep games like New Vegas running on contemporary systems in perpetuity, regardless of what publishers do.

Oh, and the final GOG hit. It'll now let you bequeath your library to someone: As long as you can prove you're actually dead.

GOG shows this is not just a matter of players versus the games industry. In fact, many industry grandees and studios think that actually the industry is doing a terrible job with this stuff, and giving players a raw deal in the process. Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse got all het up about Ubisoft's moves over the year, and flipped the tables on the publisher, saying that if players had to get used to not owning games, "developers must get used to not having jobs."

Not everything is quite so confrontational. Certain publishers are much more alive than others to the value of their back catalogues, and some like Capcom make their heritage a key part of their current strategy with rereleases and remakes. Across the industry there's more of a sense of the value of older games and, quite apart from the preservation angle, that will be what eventually inspires better practices from more publishers.

More and more, publishers are seeing the sense in partnering with companies who devote themselves to the practice of sprucing up and servicing old games. 2024 was another great year for Nightdive, for example, a studio that specialises in polishing up and remastering old classics, from System Shock to Dark Forces to The Thing.

"I was doing remasters even before I joined Nightdive," says Larry Kuperman. "One of the earliest ones was Total Annihilation, that I was involved in when I was at Stardock. We had a lot of resistance from people. I mean, it was taken as an art project, not a commercial project, because the thought was, well, who would ever buy these old games?

"They were great then and they're great now, and companies have begun to realize that and certainly we've had a leadership role in that. But we're not the only company doing that these days. Everybody is."

There are a lot of different issues smooshed together under the idea of ownership and preservation, and 2024 feels like the year that many came to much greater prominence for players and rule-makers alike. The question of whether you own your Steam games, for example, can fairly simply be answered right now: No, you don't. Valve can take them from you at a moment's notice and there's nothing you can do about it.

Many of us have known that for a long time, and traded it for convenience. But it feels like we're reaching a point where these platforms are so core to our lives in videogames, and the personal investment in them is getting so high, that the wider audience is no longer happy with that. More and more of us are realizing that, even if it feels otherwise, we don't own our games. And that there's no good reason to just accept that when there are alternatives.

Project 8 had been in development since 2018, according to a statement released on December 17 (via Insider Gaming), and was intended to be 11 bit's first-ever game "designed specifically for console gamers." But the project ran into trouble, particularly during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the most recent progress review found "unresolved issues and challenges that would require further extensions of the production timeline and corresponding budget increases to address."

Changes in the gaming landscape since 2018 have also dimmed Project 8's prospects for success in the studio's eyes: 11 bit president Przemysław Marszał said the game "was conceived under very different market conditions, when narrative-driven, story-rich games held stronger appeal." That led to revised sales forecasts, presumably in the downward direction, and thus management decided to pull the plug.

The number of employees put out of work wasn't specified but 11 bit said 37 people were working on Project 8 as of September 30, more than half of whom will be given the opportunity to move to other in-development projects, including The Alters, which is slated for 2025. The "phased nature" of the layoffs means the final reduction in headcount and total costs associated with cancelling Project 8 won't be known until the release of 11 bits' full-year report for 2024 early next year. An 11 bit representative told PC Gamer that approximately 15 people are being let go, and confirmed that the cuts are restricted exclusively to the Project 8 team.

The ugly plague of layoffs that made 2023 so awful for so many game industry employees has not abated in 2024, even in its dwindling days. The situation has grown bad enough that even Game Awards host Geoff Keighley, a man not exactly known for his eagerness to embrace controversy, acknowledged the problem at this year's event. December alone has seen layoffs at Warner, People Can Fly, Deck Nine, Illfonic, Ubisoft, Torn Banner, Sweet Bandits, and quite possibly others that went unnoticed in the deluge.

According to the press release, Sony spent 50 billion yen ($317 million) to increase its stake in Kadokawa from 2% to 10%—back of the napkin math thus has the company's overall value at just under $4 billion. The two companies say they "plan to discuss specific initiatives for collaboration, such as initiatives to adapt Kadokawa's IP into live action films and TV dramas globally, co-produce anime works, expand global distribution of Kadokawa's anime works through the Sony group, further expand publishing of Kadokawa's games, and develop human resources to promote and expand virtual production."

What I had feared since rumors of a potential acquisition first appeared was that FromSoftware would become a full-on first party Sony studio through this acquisition. Though Sony has been bringing more of its games to PC, it's always on a one-half to full year delay for blockbuster singleplayer games, like the kind FromSoft makes (the new multiplayer-focused Elden Ring: Nightreign notwithstanding). Further, the continued PlayStation exclusivity of the FromSoft and Sony Japan Studio-developed Demon's Souls and Bloodborne remains something of a defining console exclusivity original sin for PC gamers.

It's unclear how the deal might change the publishing of FromSoft's games moving forward⁠—the studio's go-to partner has been Bandai Namco⁠—but under this framework, PlayStation exclusivity of FromSoft's future games, timed or otherwise, doesn't seem likely to me. This increased stake may position Sony for a full acquisition down the line, but hey: Tomorrow's problems for tomorrow's me.

Maybe by the time that happens, Sony will have reached the point where it's fully simu-launching its games on PC⁠—not a far-fetched proposition, given the continued growth of PC gaming and relative stagnation of consoles.

Amir Satvat, the recipient of the first "Game Changers" award at this year's Game Awards, says he's received "countless hateful messages" as well as "disturbing comments" following his acceptance of the award last week, including antisemitic remarks about his wife.

"I am continuing to do my best to tune this out but it is quite extreme," Satvat said in a LinkedIn post.

During the event, Geoff Keighley admitted that he's "struggled" to know how best to address the unprecedented rash of games industry layoffs we've seen over the past few years. It was the first time the host and producer directly addressed layoffs at the awards, and the solution he came up with was to honor Satvat, a figure well-known in the games business for his efforts to help laid-off developers find new work.

A brief video segment described how Satvat's project has helped "place nearly 3,000 people in jobs," and Satvat accepted the award with a tearful speech in which he challenged the crowd to make the industry better.

Many viewers responded positively to the segment, including viewers in the industry, but some have criticized it as a cynical attempt to keep up the appearance of caring while celebrating the very people responsible for the poor state of the business—the executives in the audience whose companies ultimately fund The Game Awards. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who oversaw Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard and the subsequent layoffs, is on the show's advisory board, for example.

Some critics went well beyond denouncing the awards, however: After the ceremony, Satvat himself came under attack for his job at Tencent, where he's been a business development director for about a year and a half. The suggestion going around social media is that Satvat was presented as a kind of folk hero, but is actually part of the problem—or even a sinister "industry plant" whose heartwarming story was entirely manufactured.

Satvat says that his job wasn't mentioned during the show because it's irrelevant. He began providing games industry job hunting resources before he started work at Tencent last year, and says that he doesn't deal with mergers there, didn't at his previous job at Amazon, and has never laid anyone off.

"I've never signed a contract or personally been part of a deal that led to job losses in my career," wrote Satvat. "In fact, in some instances, like at [Amazon Web Services], I put great effort into making sure hundreds of peoples' jobs were saved during moments of restructuring.

"I've also been accused of creating 'jail-worthy fraud' and mocked for 'just making one spreadsheet people enter info into,' usually by people who spent all of 8 seconds looking at our site with no understanding of the work we do or the impact we've had. We have 15 resources across 5 different resource homes and there is a lot of depth to our community, as any of you who have used it know."

I was aware of Satvat prior to the awards because, in the course of covering the industry's layoffs over the past couple years, his name has repeatedly come up in the aftermath of job cuts as the person out-of-work developers should seek out. I've understood him to be a well-liked figure whose efforts are genuinely appreciated by game developers who've lost their jobs over the past two years.

That impression is reflected in the many positive comments posted about Satvat following his acceptance speech, such as in the replies to this post on BlueSky. "Amir got me a union job in Game Dev in 2024," reads one. "He deserves the world."

The criticism, insults, and accusations Satvat is otherwise receiving don't appear to come from any one perspective—good faith criticism of The Game Awards is mixed in with shouting about China, antisemitism, and other staples of internet discourse most associated today with X.

"This can happen to you too when you sacrifice over 2,000 hours of your time to help the industry—this is the 'reward' for two years of service," Satvat wrote. "...I did not want to say anything but there have been too many comments about my family, about my wife, about her religious background, and other things that are way over the line for me not to say anything."

Satvat says that the post will be his last word on the negative comments, and that he will continue to pursue "positive, public service."

One source told the site that employees were informed there wasn't enough work to justify their continued employment during a videoconference meeting on Monday. Employees impacted by the cuts were then given two options at a second meeting: Accept assistance in finding a new job, or sign up for a recall list for when more work becomes available. The source added, however, that more work isn't expected until 2026.

The report says roughly 240 Keywords employees work as subcontractors at WB Games Montreal. While; Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was developed by Rocksteady, WB Games Montreal is also credited for additional work on the game.

The actual layoffs are expected to occur in eight weeks, according to the report. Some employees expressed frustration at the short notice of the cuts: There was apparently no talk of layoffs at the company's biannual meeting in late summer, and sources said they were told there would be enough work to keep them on.

Neither Keywords nor WB Games have confirmed the layoffs, but the situation sounds similar to one that occurred at BioWare in September 2023, when 13 Keywords QA employees working on Dragon Age: The Veilguard were laid off. In that case, laid-off Keywords employees picketed BioWare's office in Edmonton to demand their reinstatement; Electronic Arts and BioWare had opposed the plan because the picketers weren't technically BioWare employees, but the Alberta Labour Relations Board sided with the workers, essentially saying that BioWare was their place of employment and thus they had a right to picket there.

This week's layoff notification reportedly came just ahead of the announcement of the official end of Suicide Squad support after four seasons. Multiple other studios have laid off employees in December, including Ubisoft, Torn Banner, Sweet Bandits, Illfonic, Deck Nine, and People Can Fly; the two-years-and-counting bloodbath that's gripped the videogame industry has grown bad enough that even the notoriously controversy-averse Geoff Keighley acknowledged the problem at last night's Game Awards.

I've reached out to WB Games Montreal and Keywords for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

And yes, there were awards, too. The big winner of the night was the PlayStation 5 exclusive Astro Bot, which claimed four wins including Game of the Year, followed by Metaphor: Refantazio, which took home three trophies. The much-loved card game Balatro also scored three times, and it pleases me greatly to say that after dominating the 2023 Game Awards, Baldur's Gate 3 came back to snipe another one, taking home the title for Best Community Support.

The full list of winners, and all the nominees, is below.

Game of the year: Astro Bot

• Balatro
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Metaphor: Refantazio

Best Fighting Game: Tekken 8

• Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
• Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising
• Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics
• MultiVersus

Best VR/AR Game: Batman: Arkham Shadow

• Arizona Sunshine Remake
• Asgard's Wrath 2
• Metal: Hellsinger VR
• Metro Awakening

Best Esports Game: League of Legends

• Counter-Strike 2
• Dota 2
• Mobile Legends: Bang Bang
• Valorant

Best Esports Athlete: Faker (Lee Sang-hyeok)

• 33 (Neta Shapira)
• Aleksib (Aleksi Virolainen)
• Chovy (Jeon Ji-hoon)
• Zywoo (Mathieu Herbaut)
• Zmjjkk (Zheng Yongkang)

Best Esports Team: T1 (League of Legends)

• Bilibili Gaming (League of Legends)
• Gen.G (League of Legends)
• Navi (Counter-Strike)
• Team Liquid (Dota 2)

Games for Impact: Neva

• Closer the Distance
• Indika
• Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
• Tales of Kenzera: Zau

Innovation in Accessibility: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Diablo 4
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard
• Star Wars Outlaws

Best Family Game: Astro Bot

• Princess Peach: Showtime!
• Super Mario Party Jamboree
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
• The Plucky Squire

Best performance: Melina Juergens (Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2)

• Briana White (Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth)
• Hannah Telle (Life is Strange: Double Exposure)
• Humberly Gonzalez (Star Wars Outlaws)
• Luke Roberts (Silent Hill 2)

Best Action Game: Black Myth: Wukong

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Helldivers 2
• Stellar Blade
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Most Anticipated Game: Grand Theft Auto 6 (duh)

• Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
• Ghost of Yotei
• Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
• Monster Hunter Wilds

Best Multiplayer Game: Helldivers 2

• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Super Mario Party Jamboree
• Tekken 8
• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2

Best Community Support: Baldur's Gate 3

• Final Fantasy 14
• Fortnite
• Helldivers 2
• No Man's Sky

Best Art Direction: Metaphor: Refantazio

• Astro Bot
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
• Neva

Best Game Direction: Astro Bot

• Balatro
• Black Myth: Wukong
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Metaphor: Refantazio

Best Action Adventure Game: Astro Bot

• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
• Silent Hill 2
• Star Wars Outlaws
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Best RPG: Metaphor: Refantazio

• Dragon's Dogma 2
• Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Content Creator of the Year: Caseoh

• Illojuan
• Techo Gamerz
• Typicalgamer
• Usada Pekora

Best Sports/Racing Game: EA Sports FC 25

• F1 24
• NBA 2K25
• Top Spin 2K25
• WWE 2K24

Best Sim/Strategy Game: Frostpunk 2

• Age of Mythology: Retold
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess
• Manor Lords
• Unicorn Overlord

Best Ongoing Game: Helldivers 2

• Destiny 2
• Diablo 4
• Final Fantasy 14
• Fortnite

Best Adaptation: Fallout

• Arcane
• Knuckles
• Like a Dragon: Yakuza
• Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft

Best Score and Music: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth

• Astro Bot
• Metaphor: Refantazio
• Silent Hill 2
• Stellar Blade

Best Independent Game: Balatro

• Animal Well
• Lorelei and the Laser Eyes
• Neva
• UFO 50

Best Debut Indie Game: Balatro

• Animal Well
• Manor Lords
• Pacific DRive
• The Plucky Squire

Best Mobile Game: Balatro

• AFK Journey
• Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket
• Wuthering Waves
• Zenless Zone Zero

Best Audio Design: Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2

• Astro Bot
• Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Silent Hill 2

Best Narrative: Metaphor: Refantazio

• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2
• Silent Hill 2

Game Changer: Amir Satvat

Players' voice: Black Myth: Wukong

Vincke started off by saying that not only will he be the first person to know who wins game of the year tonight, he also knows who will win the next year, and the next year, and the year after that. He learned this information, he said, from an oracle, who told him that change is coming.

"The oracle told me that the Game of the Year 2025 is going to be made by a studio who found the formula to make it up here on stage," Vincke said. "It's stupidly simple, but somehow it keeps on getting lost. A studio makes a game because they want to make a game they want to play themselves. They created it because it hadn't been created before. They didn't make it to increase market share. They didn't make it to serve the brand. They didn't have to meet arbitrary sales targets, or fear being laid off if they didn't meet those targets.

"Furthermore, the people in charge forbade them from cramming the game with anything whose only purpose was to increase revenue and didn't serve the game design. They didn't treat their developers like numbers on a spreadsheet. They didn't treat their players as users to exploit. And they didn't make decisions they knew were short-sighted in function of a bonus or politics. They knew that if you put the game and the team first, the revenue will follow. They were driven by idealism, and wanted players to have fun, and they realized that if the developers don't have fun, nobody was going to have any fun. They understood the value of respect, that if they treated their developers and players well, the same developers and players would forgive them when things didn't go as planned. But above all they cared about their games, because they love games. It's really that simple."

This isn't the first time Vincke has spoken out against profit-driven industry practices that have led to a decimation of the videogame industry over the past few years. In March, he blasted the corporate "greed" that's devastated game studios, saying. "I've been fighting with publishers my entire life, and I keep on seeing the same mistakes, over and over and over. It's always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters is the numbers."

The situation has grown pressing enough that even Game Awards host Geoff Keighley, who faced criticism for avoiding the topic in 2023, addressed it directly during an early portion of the show. The first-ever Game Changer award to be handed out at The Game Awards was in fact given to Amir Satvat, for his work in supporting laid-off game developers as they seek new employment in the industry.

As is his way, Vincke ended his story on an upbeat note. "Winning Game of the Year turned out to be a life-changing event for us. It was an amazing thing. To those who will win game of the year 2024, you have no idea what's waiting for you. It's an incredible honor, and you're in for a heck of a ride. And remember, should you be told to wrap it up for tonight, you can always come back next year and chat for three minutes."

Vincke was famously hit with the "please wrap it up" sign during his Game of Year acceptance speech for Baldur's Gate 3 in 2023. It's nice to see he doesn't hold a grudge. And, believe it or not, Baldur's Gate 3 did win yet another award at The Game Awards tonight—for Best Community Support.

"The sad reality is that over the past few years the gaming industry has suffered significant and unprecedented industry-wide layoffs," Keighley said.

"Those affect the games we get to play and even more importantly, the people who make the games we love. We can debate and certainly disagree with the reasons why, and honesty as a show, we kind of struggle with how to address these topics in a constructive way."

But this year, Keighley said The Game Awards "found greatness" in Amir Satvat, selected as the recipient of the first-ever Game Changer award for his work in helping thousands of laid-off developers find their way back to the industry. Amir's Games Jobs Resources website contains a wealth of information and assistance including support postings, career planning, job listings, and networking.

"To all game makers everywhere, you are seen and treasured, and our community will always be there to help you," Amir said during his acceptance speech. "Over the last three years, we've lost more than 34,000 jobs, a staggering amount of games experience eliminated. This has consequences. You can't make great games without great people."

"This case is about Defendants’ textbook scapegoating of Christopher Barrett, who was, until recently, one of the most respected artists in the videogame industry," the lawsuit states. "Defendants deliberately destroyed Barrett’s reputation by falsely, and publicly, insinuating they had 'investigated' Barrett and 'found' he had engaged in sexual misconduct.

"Defendants did not care that none of it was true; they had blatant motivations for their brazen scheme: (i) to avoid paying Barrett the nearly $50 million he is owed under his employment agreement, and (ii) to shift blame for and deflect attention away from their massive business failures. And to achieve those corporate objectives, they were willing to sacrifice Barrett."

A long-time Bungie employee with credits going back to Myth 2 and Halo: Combat Evolved, Barrett was highly regarded among Destiny fans and seen as one of the key drivers behind the Forsaken expansion that was widely viewed as righting the Destiny 2 ship when it launched in 2018. In 2023, he was selected to direct Bungie's Marathon reboot, but a year later he was unexpectedly replaced in the role by former Valorant game director Joe Ziegler.

Barrett updated his X profile to indicate he'd become "executive creative director" at Bungie, but a Bloomberg report in August said he'd been fired in April, a month after his replacement as Marathon director, following an investigation into multiple complaints about inappropriate workplace behavior. Multiple sources told the site that at least eight women had complained about him, and a subsequent investigation found that he had called lower-ranking female employees attractive, asked them to play Truth or Dare, and talked about his wealth and power within Bungie, apparently suggesting that he could help their careers at the company.

In the immediate wake of the allegations, Barrett denied any intentional wrongdoing. "I feel that I have always conducted myself with integrity and been respectful and supportive of my colleagues, many of whom I consider my closest friends," he said in a statement. "I never understood my communications to be unwanted and I would have never thought they could possibly have made anyone feel uncomfortable. If anyone ever felt that way about their interaction with me, I am truly sorry."

Now he's pushing back more forcefully. The lawsuit claims that after a "remarkable ride" over a 25-year career at Bungie, during which he "drove the artistic development of some of the world's most legendary video games franchises," he was removed from his role by Sony, "acting in concert with Bungie," in a "premeditated scheme to terminate Barrett, avoid paying him the tens of millions of dollars he was owed, and make him a scapegoat for Defendants’ business failures and reputational issues."

Barrett claims he was never shown the alleged inappropriate communications during an investigative interview with a member of Sony's legal team, nor was he asked whether he'd engaged in "inappropriate sexual conduct," or had retaliated or discriminated against other employees for rebuffing his advances. Instead, he was "asked questions about run-of-the-mill communications" involving routine workplace interactions.

"Less than three weeks after this interview, Barrett was notified via Microsoft Teams that he had engaged in unspecified 'gross misconduct' and would be terminated for 'Cause'," the lawsuit states. "Defendants refused to explain further and told him that nothing he could say would make a difference, despite never giving him a chance to engage with the allegations in the first place."

The suit further claims that Sony and Bungie followed this up by providing "wildly misleading statements" to Bloomberg insinuating that he had engaged in sexual misconduct: "Defendants did not care if the public was misled. Indeed, that was the point. Barrett’s high standing within the company and the industry made him the perfect scapegoat to conceal Defendants’ significant cultural problems and business failures."

As a result of Sony and Bungie's actions, the lawsuit says Barrett "has been the subject of harassment and public ridicule, has lost friends and professional opportunities, and has seen relationships with family strained. His lifelong dream of launching his own videogame company (once within reach for a respected designer of multiple legendary games) has been crushed. All in the name of advancing Defendants’ selfish corporate interests."

Barrett is seeking $200 million in his lawsuit, including $45,579,627 (plus interest) owed under his employment agreement, another $45.5 million for violation of Washington state's Wage Rebate Act, and "not less than $100 million" in defamation and punitive damages. He's also asking for reinstatement as Franchise Game Director on Marathon, the position he held prior to his dismissal.

Separate from the lawsuit, it really bears stating that $45.5 million is an extraordinary amount of money to be paid to a single developer, even one as highly placed as Barrett. Sony spent lavishly to keep experienced developers around when it acquired Bungie in 2022—roughly $1.2 billion of the $3.6 billion purchase price, in the form of "deferred payments to employee shareholders, conditional upon their continued employment, and other retention incentives," went toward employee retention—but so much going to one guy is astonishing, and it naturally leads to questions about what other senior staff at Bungie might have earned as part of the deal.

I've reached out to Sony and Bungie for comment on the lawsuit, and will update if I receive a reply.

In regards to game updates generally, Valve says Steam "continues to try to strike a balance between keeping your games ready to play and efficiently using your bandwidth." The automatic settings that most of us will have enabled sees Steam prioritising updates for games you've recently played, and bundling together updates for games you haven't recently played for later download (and you can of course mess around with this queue and tell it to do what you want).

Valve says this is fine for "most cases," but it's adding increased control because "some users might want to delay updating a 200GB game until they are ready to play it again in a few months, especially if they are on metered connections or have monthly bandwidth caps. For others who play the same game every night, they might want updates downloaded as soon as they are available."

This instantly makes a lot of sense. I've had God of War: Ragnarok sitting on my PC for months now (190GB!) being updated, and all I do is keep on playing Counter-Strike 2. I want updates for the latter instantly downloaded, but I don't really need every update for Ragnarok until I decide to sit down and play it.

The new section is added to the "Downloads" tab in the Steam client, and you can set the default to "let Steam decide when to update the game (based on factors like when you last played the game, bandwidth availability, etc.) or wait to update until the game is launched." You can also set specific game overrides by selecting "Game Properties" on titles in your library, and these overrides will be viewable in the "Downloads" section under "Manage Exceptions."

I'm in the fortunate position of having a fairly fast and unmetered connection, but the use case here is undeniable because game file sizes really have got stonkingly big. To take a few recent examples, Stalker 2 will use up about 154GB of storage: But as anyone who's installed it will know, since release it's had multiple enormous patches, some of which involve redownloading the entire game. Others like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Black Myth: Wukong and the Horizon games all gobble up well over 100GB.

There are real outliers beyond that too, like Ark: Survival Evolved, which has a base install size of around 130GB that can balloon into 300GB+ if you start acquiring expansions and DLC. If you're a glutton for the big bois, here are the real mighty storage hogs.

Amusingly enough, Valve signs off with a minor humblebrag about Steam's "robust set of existing download options," which to be fair are as good as it gets, and says it wants to hear from any users about settings they'd like to see that the client doesn't currently have. There's no real rule-of-thumb for when the company rolls out beta features to Steam more generally, but non-beta users should expect to see these new options soon.

People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski said is a message posted to social media that the layoffs are the result of a change in the studio's self-publishing strategy, which includes the suspension of Project Victoria, a reduction of the team working on Project Bifrost, and "restructuring some of our supporting teams."

"The videogame market is still evolving, and we have to adjust with where things are today," People Can Fly CEO Sebastian Wojciechowski wrote. "We are redoubling our efforts with new work for hire engagements and focusing on the development of a single independent game.

"We believe in our teams, games, and their potential, and we remain extremely committed to continuing that journey, but we need to tailor our plans to our financial capacity."

People Can Fly's website says the studio has more than 700 employees, presumably a pre-layoff headcount.

Neither Project Victoria nor Bifrost had been publicly revealed, but People Can Fly have been working on both for at least two years. The studio referenced the games when it announced the end of its publishing deal with Take-Two Interactive in 2022, saying it would self-publish both. But it's had a rough time of things since then: Project Dagger, which it had been developing in partnership with Take-Two since 2020, ran into trouble in 2023 and was eventually axed earlier this year.

Layoffs suck, and the decimation of the videogame industry we've witnessed over the past two years is an ongoing indictment of executive leadership virtually across the board. But as we said last week when Ubisoft, Torn Banner, and Sweet Bandits imposed layoffs of their own—which came just weeks after layoffs at other studios including Thunderful, Humanoid Origin, Reflector Entertainment, and Worlds Untold, and just before layoffs at Illfonic and Deck Nine, in case there was any doubt that there's something very wrong here—the timing of these cuts, which come just 15 days before Christmas, makes them especially ugly.

This will be the second round of layoffs at People Can Fly in 2024—the first happened in January, when more than 30 people working on yet another project, codenamed Gemini, were let go.

As posted to both Bluesky and X, the site was "taken down by Funko of 'Funko Pop' because they use some trash 'AI Powered' Brand Protection Software called Brand Shield that created some bogus Phishing report to our registrar, iwantmyname, who ignored our response and just disabled the domain."

Itch.io later clarified that it "did take the disputed page down as soon as we got the notice because it's not worth fighting stuff like that. Regardless, our registrar's automated system likely kicked [in] to disable the domain since no one read our confirmation of removal."

If you're curious about BrandShield, it's an AI-powered "solution" to things like phishing attempts, fraudulent websites and, with relevance to this specific case, "brand protection". While it's borderline impossible to pierce through the thick fog of business-speak (the world "holistic" is thrown around a bunch) to find a promise that BrandShield actually has people who know what they're doing vetting these takedown requests, the site's page on brand protection describes the specifics of its zealotry.

"You will expose your brand to online attacks if you only protect your registered domain. Make sure to also protect yourself from external digital threats and monitor these important elements," the site states, before listing "visuals of both company logos and product images" and "written and recorded content" as risk factors.

As for the page in question, Itch.io's creator breaks it down in a thread on Hacker News: "From what I can tell, some person made a fan page for an existing Funko Pop video game (Funko Fusion), with links to the official site and screenshots of the game. The BrandShield software is probably instructed to eradicate all 'unauthorized' use of their trademark, so they sent reports independently to our host and registrar claiming there was 'fraud and phishing' going on, likely to cause escalation instead of doing the expected DMCA/cease-and-desist."

Leafo states they'd received reports from their host to take the page down, and had done so days in advance: "I expressed my disappointment in my responses to both of them but told them I had removed the page and disabled the account. Linode confirmed and closed the case. iwantmyname never responded. … I noticed that the domain status had been set to 'serverHold' on iwantmyname's domain panel. We have no other abuse reports from iwantmyname other than this one."

Taking all of this at face value (I have reached out to Funko for comment, and will update this article if I receive a response) this really does seem like a domino-effect snafu powered by AI and, well, incompetence. Automated technology overreacted, as it tends to do, while Itch.io's domain host dragged its feet. As a result, one of the biggest hosts of indie games lost out on hours of potential revenue—which has a knock-on effect to the developers using the website to peddle their virtual wares. It looks like it's mostly been resolved, with Itch.io back online at the time of writing. But phew, at least Funko's brand is protected—that was a close call, everybody.

"Today, we are sad to share the news that we must say goodbye to some of our talented team members," the message, attributed to Deck Nine CEO Mark Lyons, begins. "This was an extremely difficult decision and reflects the challenging times many companies in our industry are currently facing. We are extremely grateful to every individual who has dedicated their hard work, passion, and commitment to making transformative entertainment with us.

"To those of you leaving the studio due to these changes, thank you for sharing your talents with us. We are proud of what we were able to accomplish together and we are committed to supporting you in this transition in any way we can. To the community, we ask for your support and understanding during this difficult time."

Deck Nine's first round of layoffs this year came in February, well before the release of Double Exposure, and were attributed to "worsening market conditions." This year's cuts also came after Deck Nine let go of an estimated 30 people back in May 2023. Deck Nine took over stewardship of the Life is Strange series from Don't Nod, producing the Before the Storm prequel game, 2022's remastered collection, and the follow-ups True Colors and Double Exposure.

Deck Nine's layoffs are part of the much-discussed wider contraction in the industry, and while that general crisis remains ongoing, the timing of this latest round of layoffs strikes me as a likely indicator of poor sales performance by Double Exposure, which came out in October. In our review, PC Gamer features producer Mollie Taylor found it to be an entertaining, but largely unnecessary sequel, writing that "Double Exposure does a lot of retreading old narrative ground of its predecessor: dead besties, sus teachers, secret societies, a third girl whose mystery permeates the overarching story… you get it."

The possibility of a buyout was first reported in October, although at that point it seemed more of a kick-around idea than anything else: Ubisoft is in trouble, and something—just about anything—needs to be done. This new report, citing two people "familiar with the matter," sounds like more of a concrete step forward, in the sense that there is an active push toward making it happen.

The sticking point, according to the report, appears to be over who's left in charge if a deal is done. Sources cited by Reuters say the Guillemot family, which founded Ubisoft in 1986, want to retain control of the company. Tencent, Ubisoft's second-largest shareholder and the Guillemot's presumptive partner in this boardroom boogie, wants more say in board-related matters, and is reportedly waiting for an agreement on that front—which, as I take it, essentially means capitulation—before committing to financing the deal.

It's an interesting spot for the Guillemots. Ubisoft fought a protracted war several years ago to maintain its independence from Vivendi, the French media conglomerate that launched a hostile takeover bid in 2016, and CEO Yves Guillemot has been clear in subsequent years that he has no interest in being acquired by anyone.

But Ubisoft is also struggling badly right now: Sales of Star Wars Outlaws, which should have been a sure-fire hit, were "softer than expected," and Assassin's Creed Shadows, the next addition to Ubisoft's biggest and most popular series, was delayed for three months at the last minute, from November 15 to February 14, 2025.

More recent news has not been better. Earlier this week, Ubisoft pulled the plug on XDefiant, its planned Call of Duty competitor—an especially ugly move because it happened less than three months after executive producer Mark Rubin insisted XDefiant "is absolutely not dying." The end of XDefiant also resulted in the layoff of up to 277 employees, and the closure of two production studios.

All of that is bad news for gamers, but the real issue is Ubisoft's financial position. The company's share price has slid from a high of more than $85 in early 2021 to just over $13 today. Whether anything ultimately comes from these negotiations is an open question for now, but pressure from shareholders is growing, and that puts a timer on things: If the Guillemots don't do something, they may soon find that something is done for (or to) them.

A PC Game Pass membership grants access to a big library of games that includes '90s classics like Sim City 2000, more recent classics like the Mass Effect trilogy, and really recent classics like Stalker 2 and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which we just awarded a glowing 90% in our review. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is also available on Game Pass, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle will be there when it releases on December 9.

For a chance to receive a free month of Game Pass, enter your email address in the form below. This Friday, December 6, 2024 at 12 pm PT, codes will be emailed to 1,000 randomly selected entrants. (If you don't see the form, you can also enter here.)

We won't use your email address for marketing purposes; it'll only be used to send you a code if randomly selected.

The codes are redeemable at https://microsoft.com/redeem, and must be used by December 31, 2024. New Game Pass members who sign up with a code will get one free month of the service. Heads up that you'll have to include a payment method when you sign up, and your account will renew at the standard price unless you cancel it before the end of the free month. For existing Game Pass members, a conversion rate applies.

Here are the official terms from Microsoft:

Redeem at microsoft.com/redeem by 12/31/2024. Valid payment method required. Unless you cancel, you will be charged the then-current regular membership rate when the promotional period ends. Limit: 1 per person/account. Subject to the Microsoft Services Agreement, Game Pass terms and system requirements at: xbox.com/subscriptionterms . For existing Game Pass Ultimate members, a conversion ratio applies; conversions are final.

Good luck!

There's more info about the prize below, but first things first, here's the link to the survey:

Click here to take the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted survey

The survey can be filled out until December 12, and the optional prize draw is entered by submitting your email address at the end of the survey. You must be a resident of the US or UK and be at least 18 years old to be eligible to win (with some exceptions listed on the survey page). More terms and conditions here.

If you're not eligible for the prize draw, we still want to know what you think, and you're welcome to fill out the survey.

Miss this year's PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted? Catch up on all the announcements and reveals here. (And then come back and tell us what you thought!)

Be sure to check out the four special collector's edition covers this issue, too (see below), which feature four of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's lead characters.

This issue also features our prestigious Game of the Year Awards. This is a process that PC Gamer takes incredibly seriously, with games and winners decided after weeks of voting and deliberation. Emotions run high, passionate pleas are made to fellow team members, but in the end only a small selection of games can go on to win one of PC Gamer's coveted awards. And this year the competition has been fiercer than ever before. This is your definitive celebration of the last year in PC gaming.

Then, in terms of previews, this issue is stuffed to bursting. From the action-filled multiplayer extraction shooter Arc Raiders, to the shiny remaster of classic action-adventure game The Thing, and through to Mirthwood, Wizordum, EVE: Frontier, Beyond Astra, Beyond.Frontiers, Spirit of the North 2, Pip My Dice and Citizen Sleeper 2, we've gone hands-on and eyes-on with a bunch of exciting new games.

Meanwhile, over in reviews land, the PC Gamer scoring machine has rated a host of big-name games this issue, including Dragon Age: The Veilguard, MechWarrior 5: Clans, Starship Troopers: Extermination, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Planet Coaster 2. If you're looking for advice on what game to pick up for some holiday fun, this issue definitely doesn't disappoint.

All that plus a group test of six of the best gaming mice on the market, a reinstall of cult classic action RPG Path of Exile, a dramatic new installment in our hijinx-filled Alpha Protocol diary following the misadventures of intern Mickey T, a look at an incredible new parkour mod for Assassin's Creed 2, a love letter to the best combatants in versus fighters, grapplers, a detailed guide to mastering Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred, a special report on making Ossian Studios' Pathfinder: The Dragon's Demand, the latest dispatch from The Spy, a new case to be cracked for the PCG Investigator, Dick Ray-Tracing, and much more too. Enjoy the issue!

Issue 404 is on shelves now and available on all your digital devices from the App Store and Zinio. You can also order directly from Magazines Direct or purchase a subscription to save yourself some cash, receive monthly deliveries, and get incredibly stylish subscriber-only covers.

Enjoy the issue!