Eurogamer

Indie showcase Day of the Devs is now a fully independent non-profit organisation, with a freshly-launched fundraising initiative.

In an official release from organisers Double Fine Productions and iam8bit, the organisation said its mission remained to "celebrate the creativity, diversity and magic of video games, give a voice to emerging or underrepresented talent, and to connect players with developers, and their games."

"Over the last decade we have shined a bright sparkling spotlight on many hundreds of games, hosted tens of thousands of people at our in-person events, and reached millions of viewers through our virtual showcases," the organisation wrote. "And we have done all of this for FREE - providing our programs for no cost to either developers, or players."

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Visions of Mana will not be coming to Game Pass, Xbox has confirmed to Eurogamer.

Over the weekend, references to Square Enix's forthcoming action-RPG releasing on Game Pass on day one were spotted on the Xbox website. Xbox has now confirmed this was an error.

"We're aware that Xbox.com included language that indicated Visions of Mana was coming to Xbox Game Pass and can confirm this was an error," reads a statement to Eurogamer from a Microsoft spokesperson.

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UPDATE 31/1/24: 2K has confirmed Spec Ops: The Line is being delisted from all online stores due to expiring licenses.

In a statement shared with Eurogamer, a 2K spokesperson said: "Spec Ops: The Line will no longer be available on online storefronts, as several partnership licenses related to the game are expiring.

"Players who have purchased the game can still download and play the game uninterrupted. 2K would like to thank our community of players who have supported the game, and we look forward to bringing you more offerings from our label throughout this year and beyond."

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Dragon Quest Builders will release on PC on 13th February, eight years after its initial console release.

The sandbox game, somewhat inspired by Minecraft, is a spin on the classic RPG series from Square Enix.

This particular version, available via Steam, will include upgraded crafting features and the Terra Incognita DLC first seen in the 2022 mobile version, in which Builders can freely craft.

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Following the departure of Mike Ybarra, Blizzard has announced its new president: Activision's former general manager of its Call of Duty franchise, Johanna Faries.

Faries' new position was announced last night, following layoffs at Microsoft last week. Her appointment marks the first new leader of the studio since Microsoft finally purchased Activision Blizzard for $69 billion in October, following almost two years of regulatory approvals and legal wrangling. Her official first day will be next month, on 5th February.

In an email sent to Blizzard staff, Faries acknowledged that her new role at Blizzard may stir up a "range of reactions, questions and even concerns". The new president noted Activision, Blizzard and indeed King are all "decidedly different companies with distinct games, cultures and communities", despite being under one umbrella.

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Warner Bros will push further into video games as it seeks ways to ensure its big budget franchises generate "more than just one great hit every three or four years".

"We want it to be 'always on'," Warner Bros gaming and streaming boss JB Perrette told Variety. "And the good news is the gaming space is lending itself to that."

Warner Bros values four of its franchises as worth a billion dollars each - DC, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and Mortal Kombat. Speaking in the same interview, Warner Bros Interactive boss David Haddad said that video games will be a key component in ensuring those franchises remain evergreen - and ever lucrative.

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Hello! It's that time again - I promise to keep it brief. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League's servers are now live for early access players here in the UK, but we won't have a review for you here on the site today - or indeed on the game's full launch this coming Friday 2nd February.

This is because its publisher, Warner Bros., is only sending out review code today. As far as we know, this isn't a case of Eurogamer being singled out or otherwise treated differently to the many other sites or channels that plan to review the game. It's just that the publisher has decided to send out code after the game has gone live, rather than in advance - something that happens from time to time, albeit rarely a full 24 hours after it's been playable in some parts of the world.

There are the usual caveats to note here, of course, the most important being that as always, we are absolutely not entitled to early code. How many codes are handed out and when is entirely at the publisher's discretion - it's their game, they can handle access to it how they like. Instead, please just see this is another "PSA" to go along with similar ones we've published in the past in similar situations, such as those for games like No Man's Sky, Watch Dogs 2, Borderlands 3, Cyberpunk 2077 or most recently, Starfield.

UPDATE 6pm UK: A statement from Eidos Montreal has confirmed 97 jobs have been lost at the studio, following the previously-reported news that its Deus Ex project has been cancelled. The studio employed 481 people, as of 2022.

"For the last 17 years, our teams at Eidos have worked on some of the most beloved brands in the industry, combining deep storytelling and innovation into unique games," the studio wrote in a statement posted on social media. "We have created memorable multi awarded experiences that we are proud of and we know our teams members have put their heart and soul in all of them.

"The global economic context, the challenges of our industry and the comprehensive restructuring announced by Embracer have finally impacted our studio. The difficult decision has been made to let go 97 people from development teams, administration, and support services.

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Co-op survival action RPG Enshrouded has welcomed over a million players since its release in early access last week.

Sharing the news, developer Keen Games said it was "completely blown away" by the game's reception in just four short days.

"From the bottom of our hearts, we want to thank all our players," it wrote in a statement shared with Eurogamer to accompany this milestone.

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This week's DF Direct Weekly - perhaps inevitably - kicks off with extended discussion on the Palworld phenomenon, while much time is spent mulling over the Horizon Forbidden West PC features trailer Sony 'dropped' last week. However, what caught my eye in putting this piece together was our discussion on input lag in the wake of John's Tekken 8 coverage, where it emerged that Namco had delivered the most responsive Tekken game in the modern era. We don't focus too much on input lag, but really we should, especially as we enter the next era of graphics technology.

Put simply, input lag is usually defined as the time taken between input from the player on his device of choice and that input playing out on-screen. Typically, the longer the delay, the more noticeable it is and the less enjoyable a game can be to play. Basic methodology in measuring it - in basic terms at least - has not changed since 2009, when ex-Neversoft (now UFO debunker) Mick West posted an article where he measured input lag by using a 60fps camera pointed at both joypad and screen. By moving frame by frame, you can see the precise frame where input is made and then you simply count the frames until the result is visible on-screen.

AMD's first Ryzen 8000 desktop processors are here: the $329/£309 8700G, $229/£219 8600G, $176/£169 8500G and OEM-only 8300G. These 4nm APUs look to be adaptations of the Ryzen 7040 laptop processors we tested late last year, with current-gen Zen 4 CPU cores and powerful RDNA 3 graphics capabilities. AMD sent us the top two chips, the Ryzen 7 8700G and Ryzen 5 8600G, which come with dedicated Ryzen AI hardware not afforded to the rest of the stack.

To get the measure of these new models, we've tested their performance both standalone (page two) and when paired with a discrete graphics card (pages three to five). On both counts, we've uncovered some impressive capabilities - which could make a Ryzen 8700G or 8600G a canny pick for straight-up entry-level gaming, media PCs or as a stop-gap solution while waiting for a next-generation graphics card.

Looking at the specs makes for fascinating reading. While the eight-core Ryzen 8700G and six-core 8600G are separated by a sizeable $100 MSRP gap, the two chips are surprisingly similar in most respects, with the 8700G boasting only 2MB of extra L2 cache (8MB vs 6MB), 100MHz higher rated boost speed (5.1GHz vs 5.0GHz) and a beefier Wraith Spire cooler versus the smaller Wraith Stealth provided with the 8600G. TDP, L3 cache size and AI performance are all the same. However, greater differences are evident in GPU performance, with the 8700G getting a more capable 12CU Radeon 780M graphics solution versus the 8600G's 8CU 760M.

Some games can take forever to finish. Hours upon hours can be put into any given title, as players make their steady way to victory. When those credits ultimately roll, the sense of achievement can be a wonderful feeling.

But, this isn't the case with Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, at least right now. In fact, many are finding they have 'completed the game' even before they take their first step. This is thanks to an issue that has seen those already with their hands on the game logging in to find they have full story completion from the off.

Developer Rocksteady is aware of this unexpected narrative fast track, and is now in the process of sorting it all out.

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Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth has become the series' most successful launch on Steam over its launch weekend.

Infinite Wealth continues the stories of protagonists Ichiban Kasuga and Kazuma Kiryu as they make their way to Hawaii, and since its release on 26th January has recorded a peak concurrent player count of 46,161 on Steam (recorded by SteamDB at time of writing).

This makes it by the far the biggest Steam launch for Like a Dragon. The next best Steam launch for the series was Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name which peaked at 13,737 during its launch weekend on 11th November.

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A new update for Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1 will finally make Metal Gear Solid 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, and the bonus content compatible with Steam Deck.

As shared on the official Japanese Metal Gear social media account, Version 1.4.1 is available for the Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1 on Steam from today (29th January).

"The main changes are that MGS2, MGS3, and bonus content will now be compatible with Steam Deck," the account stated (via Google translate). It noted that other Metal Gear games are already compatible with Valve's portable PC.

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Fighting and fantasy fans are desperate to see Final Fantasy 7's Tifa in Tekken 8, so much so Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada acknowledged it.

Plenty of fans have noted how well suited Tifa would be to the fighting game series, but Harada's X (formerly Twitter) post about Rebirth and Tekken 8 booths being next to each other at the Taipei Game Show spurred on fan desires.

"All I'm gonna say... is what everyone else here is saying... but I'm gonna say it anyways... because 'Tifa Lockhart' would be absolutely INCREDIBLE if she made it into 'Tekken 8' this time Harada-San!!!," replied one fan.

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Edmund McMillen has discussed a potential Fortnite collaboration with Epic Games, the celebrated indie designer has said.

The maker of Super Meat Boy, The Binding of Isaac, The End is Nigh and The Legend of Bum-bo confirmed in a post on X that he had chatted with the maker of Fortnite about a possible team-up in future.

It's unclear from McMillen's response how far talks have got, though it wouldn't be the first time Fortnite has collaborated with an indie developer on some form of crossover.

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Footage from a cancelled futuristic Call of Duty sci-fi game in development by Tony Hawk's studio Neversoft has leaked online.

The footage was spotted by Call of Duty insider account CharlieIntel, and seemingly comes from a cancelled Xbox 360-era Call of Duty game known as Future Warfare (or "NX1" internally). The game was originally in development at Neversoft, which was ultimately merged into Infinity Ward in 2014.

Confirming the footage as legitimate, former Neversoft developer Brian Bright said this cancelled Call of Duty release would have launched in place of Ghosts. "Neversoft pivoted from Guitar Hero to make a futuristic COD game," Bright wrote on X. "I believe this would have been in place of Ghosts, trying to remember. We had two to three campaign missions, and a bunch of [multiplayer] work done (I was lead MP on this) before cancellation."

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UPDATE 5pm UK: Sony has now confirmed its PlayStation State of Play broadcast this week, on Wednesday 31st January at 10pm UK time.

The show will last 40 minutes, and feature"guest appearances from some of the most talented minds in gaming", according to PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst. Expect your seasonal dose of Kojima, then, and perhaps a sighting of the lesser-spotted Ken Levine.

Stellar Blade and Rise of the Ronin are among the games set to be shown, alongside many more set to launch on PS5 and PSVR2 this year and beyond.

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Visions of Mana, Square Enix's forthcoming action-RPG, will reportedly release on Game Pass on day one.

The game was recently shown at the Xbox Developer Direct as a surprise feature and welcome indication of Square Enix supporting Microsoft's platforms.

According to Idle Sloth on X, formerly Twitter, a number of users have spotted references on the Xbox Store to the game arriving on Game Pass day one.

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Publisher Annapurna Interactive has announced a delay to the release of narrative adventure game Open Roads.

Open Roads was announced in December 2020, and was set to release on 22nd February.

The game will now be out on 28th March, which Annapurna said was to "ensure the most polished experience for players" in a statement sent to Eurogamer.

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Have you spotted the Killmonger dreads? They're everywhere these days. What started in Marvel's Black Panther film is now ubiquitous in gaming. And these dreads are not just on the heads of Miles Morales or Tekken's Eddy Gordo. They're in character creators too. The style began as fashion but has quickly become a stereotype.

Black players have noticed. "In general, we get stuck a lot of the time with the afro, the smaller afro, the buzz cut, or the gel braids going back, or nasty dreads that are symmetrical on either side. Or they all love the Killmonger dreads now," Twitch Ambassador and content creator Danielle Udogaranya (aka Ebonix) told me recently, all but ticking the same old options off on her fingers.

The Killmonger dreads are a striking example of how representation in these kinds of expressive tools urgently needs to move away from stereotypes. Character creators are a fascinating part of video game design where players decide how they look on screen, with opportunities for positive representation as well as negative reinforcement. When developers get this stuff right, players can see themselves in a video game and feel fully immersed. But when representation is poor or lacking, it can be a disaster.

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Nexon has announced it is pulling the plug on its free-to-play PvP medieval fantasy game Warhaven just four months after it launched in early access.

Despite initial plans to launch the game in full later this year, Nexon has now revealed that rather than launching the game in early 2024, it's shutting down on 5th April, 2024.

"Today, we are here to announce with a heavy heart that we will be concluding the live services of Warhaven," the team announced on Steam earlier this week.

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Free "interactive study" Interaction Isn't Explicit is now available via the PlayStation Store.

Described as a "short, interactive study" by designer Frank L. Silva, Interaction Isn't Explicit "isn't a traditional game but a debate of different aspects of game design" that aims to explore the "pros and cons" of traditional mechanics and consider which ones are "essential for the language of computer games".

You can see the announcement trailer below, which shows how the interactive piece reflects on the ways we play games, and the visual languages we use to understand them:

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Palworld developer Pocketpair has apologised to fans affected by cheating in Palworld, admitting that "it is currently difficult to completely prevent all cheating".

In a statement posted to X/Twitter, the team confirmed that even though the monster-collecting game has barely been out a week, it has already received reports from players that they have encountered "cheating on official servers".

In a statement entitled "Regarding countermeasures against cheating on official servers", the team said: "Currently, some players have been confirmed to be cheating on the official server.

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Ironmace says a court has dismissed its former publisher Nexon's request for an injunction following the publisher's claim that Dark and Darker has been written with stolen code from a game the team had been developing for Nexon.

In a statement to players on its Discord server, an Ironmace developer – known as SDF – reported that a court has dismissed Nexon's injunction for "trade secret and copyright infringement", "thus rejecting the claims and suspicions that Dark & Darker was developed by using Nexon’s trade secrets and infringing on its copyrights".

The court also reportedly ruled that Dark and Darker's service "should not be suspended based on Nexon's claims and evidence alone", paving a potential return to Steam for the game.

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Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski says he's "down" to consult on the next Gears game, saying "if they were smart", Microsoft and Coalition would invite him to "give his two cents".

In a statement posted to X/Twitter over the weekend, Bleszinski – who last contributed to a Gears game back in 2011 – said that as the Gears of War franchise has long been "an ENORMOUS part of [his] legacy", he was open to work with Microsoft as "just from a PR standpoint alone, it would be gold".

However, it seems that neither Microsoft nor Coalition has taken Bleszinski up on his offer, and thus he has "moved on" from game development.

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If you're encountering an infinite loading screen when trying to connect to Palworld servers this weekend, you are not alone.

The official Palworld X/Twitter account acknowledged that, further to the patch that deployed earlier in the week, some players may be experiencing "congested access".

"Following the recent patch, numerous logins are concurrently underway, leading to congested access," the team explained in the statement.

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UPDATE: Frontside 180 is reportedly a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pocketpair.

Original story follows.

Palworld developer Pocketpair has dropped a new Steam demo for its upcoming Metroidvania, Never Grave: The Witch and The Curse.

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Sony has quietly blocked the Cronus Zen from connecting to PS5 consoles via its latest firmware update, a device which lets players use, or modify, "any supported controller" on Sony's console.

Whilst Sony rolled out the change without explicitly acknowledging the change, Cronus Zen users soon noticed their devices were being disconnected following the PS5 update earlier this week, prompting Cronus to issue a statement to players affected by the change.

The developer behind Cronus Zen describes the device as one that allows players to connect "any supported controller, mouse, keyboard or racing wheel, to any major gaming console platform", offering an advanced scripting engine "that allows you to run powerful macros".

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As well as being a breakout hit on Steam, Palworld is available to play on both PC and Xbox systems via a preview build on Game Pass. As well as the expected Series X and Series S compatibility, this Unreal Engine 5 release is intriguing in that Xbox One consoles are also supported.

In summary, developer Pocket Pair blended the survival aspects of games like Ark: Survival Evolved with the open world monster hunting of Pokémon. Specifically, it takes Pokémon Legends: Arceus from 2022 as its main point of reference, with a similar range of seamless exploration, capturing and battling creatures. And yes, it's this similarity to Pokémon that has clearly been a topic of some controversy given so many of its ideas - and creatures - bear more than a passing resemblance to Game Freak's own designs.

Beyond the controversy though, just how does the game look and run on Xbox Series X, Series S, Xbox One X and (the 10+ years old) base Xbox One? How close are they to hitting their target 60fps, given the frame-rate is unlocked on all four? And how do Palworld's visuals scale from the most powerful machine to the weakest? Let's just say that early access has never been so apt a description. From a technical perspective, there's a lot of work to do before the game can be considered final.

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Gears of War creator Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski says Palworld's astonishing success "kinda validates" a pitch he'd made to Epic "many years ago".

In a post shared to Twitter/X, Bleszinski said he took the idea of "medieval Pokémon with baby dragons instead" to Epic, but the idea was "rejected at all the major publishers".

When asked by a curious follower what Epic said when Bleszinski made the pitch, he simply said: "It just… never went anywhere. I wanted to do it on mobile first".

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Crash Bandicoot developer Toys for Bob and Call of Duty studio Sledgehammer Games have reportedly lost around 40 per cent and 30 per cent of their staff, respectively.

The layoffs are part of Microsoft's decision to lay off 1900 employees across its video game teams. In an email sent to employees, Xbox boss Phil Spencer called this a "painful decision after Microsoft's $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year, and $7.5bn acquisition of Zenimax in 2021. Microsoft also laid off almost 900 positions this time last year, too.

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The April Fool's joke brought to life, Bloodborne Kart, has had to postpone its release following "contact" from IP owners Sony.

The kart racer based on Bloodborne was initially expected to release at the end of the month, but the indie team now says it needs additional time to "scrub the branding off of" the game.

"Long story short, we need to scrub the branding off of what was previously known as Bloodborne Kart," the team said yesterday. "We will do this, but that requires a short delay."

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Sker Ritual – the round-based co-op survival FPS and spin-off to horror, Maid of Sker – has launched a new demo for prospective PS5 players to try before they buy.

The early access co-op horror – which has a "mostly positive" user score aggregated from 650+ Steam players and is currently ranked 3.6 out of 5 on the PS store – already offers demos for PC and Xbox Series X players.

The demo offers players the chance to experience the "fan-favourite" map Cursed Lands of Lavernock, although while the game offers "round-based FPS" for up to four players, the demo is a purely single-player experience, I'm afraid. Full co-op will be available when the horror shooter launches in April 2024.

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Last week, we finally got a proper look at Obsidian's new role-playing game Avowed. It was one of the handful of exclusive Xbox games at the Developer Direct, so the spotlight was searingly on it. But while there were things I was encouraged by - I really liked the otherworldly, colourful setting - there were other things I was less convinced about, and a bit confused about. Because for all it was billed as a deep dive, this showing, I didn't come away with a solid sense of what we'll do in the game besides fight, so when Obsidian offered me a chance to talk to Avowed game director Carrie Patel and gameplay director Gabe Paramo afterwards, to clear a few things up, I took it.

Avowed is the first-person RPG set in the same world as Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity series, Eora, but which plays very differently. The Pillars series is a real-time-with-pause, traditional CRPG, played from an isometric viewpoint. Avowed, on the other hand, pulls you right into the character's body to see through their eyes, meaning you'll both see and experience Eora in a completely new way.

Stardew Valley creator Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has shared an update on the farm-life sim's highly anticipated - and long-in-the-works - 1.6 update, saying he's now "done adding major new content" and that it'll "definitely" be out this year.

Barone revealed he was working on a 1.6 update for Stardew Valley back in June 2022, warning it would be relatively modest in scope and 'mostly modding-focused'.

With each new showing, however, 1.6 has seemingly grown more ambitious; by September last year, Barone confirmed it would include one major new festival and two new mini festivals, new items and crafting recipes, new dialogue lines, a new farm type, new late-game content, winter outfits for villagers, a new larger chest, 8-player co-op on PC, and more - that "and more" encompassing perhaps 1.6's most important addition: hats for cats and dogs.

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It's been five months since Paradox Interactive's surprise announcement Everybody's Gone to the Rapture developer The Chinese Room had taken the reins of its troubled Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2; in that time, the studio has been openly discussing its approach to the sequel, with its latest update now focusing on what it's calling "visceral immersive combat".

In a newly shared blog post, creative director Alex Skidmore outlines three main gameplay styles the studio wants accommodate on release, each emphasising or de-emphasising combat in different ways. The first is what it calls the Strategic Stalker, a take on the "vampire predator fantasy" where the focus is on staying hidden and using the element of surprise.

This stealth-focused approach to combat, says Skidmore, is all about sneaking up on an enemy, causing a distraction, then feeding on them quickly before a fight can occur. That's in stark contrast to combat style number two - the Action Brawler - which is for players that want to get stuck straight into a fight using "fast reflexes and combat skills".

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As The Last of Us Part 2 strides back into the spotlight thanks to its recently released PlayStation 5 remaster, developer Naughty Dog has announced an arrival date for its previously revealed making-of documentary, which will be available to watch on YouTube and in-game via an impending Remastered patch from Friday, 2nd February.

Grounded 2: Making The Last of Us Part 2 is (as its name very much implies) the sequel to Naughty Dog's original Grounded documentary, which released in 2015 and charted the "dogged development and unique philosophy" of the first The Last of Us game.

This follow-up documentary almost didn't happen; filming was forced to wrap up prematurely when the coronavirus pandemic struck in 2020, but the footage (which goes back to The Last of Us Part 2's early days in 2016) has now been revisited and assembled into an 85-minute behind-the-scenes feature exploring the sequel's development.

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A cunning Palworld fan has found an unreleased Pal creature hiding away in the game's code.

The black and purple beastie is currently codenamed "Dark Mutant", and can be seen through a datamine of Palworld's files. It has a 3D model - which you can see above - and a text log entry for the game's Pokédex, sorry, Paldex.

"Some say a beam from a {characterName id=|DarkMutant|/} that has perfected its technique can tear holes into other dimensions," the game says of the creature. "It's even believed that certain species of Pals were born from such phenomena."

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Shared-world puzzle game Islands of Insight now has a release date: 13th February.

Published by Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive, the game has been developed by Lunarch Studios as a first-person open world puzzle game with a mystical theme - think Myst or The Witness with multiplayer.

A demo will also launch as part of Stem Next Fest from 5th-12th February.

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