Twitch has laid off employees for the second time this year.

Today's cuts were reported by Today Off Stream's Zach Bussey, who said the cuts were significantly smaller than the March round, which included more than 400 people.

A source familiar with the situation told GamesIndustry.biz that today's layoffs were limited to the customer experience organization as the company shifts to rely more on outsourcing vendors to fulfill those roles.

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Ahead of the crossover event between KFC Japan and Final Fantasy XIV beginning on October 4, 2023, a new promotional video appeared on the KFC Japan official social media account. In the video, we can see Colonel Sanders in the game riding a bike with a Chocobo beside him along for the ride. According to the caption, he is delivering the tastiness of fried chicken to all of the Warriors of Light in the world of Final Fantasy XIV.

View the new video in the post below:

[embed]https://twitter.com/KFC_jp/status/1709010409502724133?t=jJb4McDRH7izjiOnZQbs8A&s=19[/embed]

On the collaboration's official web page, you're greeted with a graphic of a Chocobo and Moogle in KFC uniforms next to the classic Colonel Sanders logo. These illustrations will be used for the stickers that will come with any Final Fantasy XIV Collaboration Set. One Japanese-style chicken cutlet burger, one original chicken, a small french fry, and a medium drink are also pictured with an image of a Chocobo. We can also see the new "eat fried chicken" emote in action.

As a part of the collaboration, a Final Fantasy XIV Collaboration Set will be available to purchase at KFCs in Japan. Customers will get chicken, stickers, and an item code for the “eat fried chicken” in-game emote. It will cost 1,240 yen ($8.36).

PowerWash Simulator VR will hit Meta Quest 2, 3 and Pro on 2nd November, developer FuturLab has just announced.

The surprise hit of last year was first announced for VR in June during the Meta Quest Gaming Showcase.

Now, in just one month's time you'll be able experience the zen of cleaning up Muckingham in VR! And ignore the dirty driveway at the front of your house for a little while longer.

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Elon Musk followed up on a September proclamation that he’d test out video game livestreaming on X (Twitter), with a run through Diablo IV’s most difficult Tier 100 Nightmare dungeon. The October 2 stream was an unprecedented success, in the sense that it happened with—as far as I can tell—zero race-baiting. However,…

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A Tokyo-based robot manufacturer is selling a pilotable mecha robot that looks like it came straight out of Mobile Suit Gundam (or Patlabor if you’re really cool) for a whopping $3 million.

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Ghostrunner 2 is just a couple of weeks away now, hitting PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC on October 26. Developer One More Level released the first Ghostrunner in 2020, and announced its sequel a year later. We saw some gameplay during a PlayStation Showcase earlier this year. But as fans of the first game know, the series' music is one of its best aspects and we haven't learned much about Ghostrunner 2's soundtrack yet – until now. 

Game Informer can exclusively reveal Ghostrunner 2's soundtrack list, and is excited to share that you can listen to one of its songs – "Road Zero" – right now. At the bottom of this article, beneath the tracklist, is a music player. Click play and enjoy artist Dan Terminus' "Road Zero" in full. 

Anyone who has played Apex Legends for a season — and sometimes even less than that — will undoubtedly know that the game has problems. Certain issues like hits not registering are claimed to be fixed, but creep back up as time passes. Again, this is just kind of what you accept as an Apex Legends player. And yet, a recent problem stemming from an event is still a little bit funny and frustrating.

The recent Harbingers Collection Event started on Sept. 19 and brought out a new Revenant-themed grenade called the Rev Shell. When thrown, it will travel in a straight line until it senses an enemy and then quickly change course to track them. They are hilariously persistent and provide a fun twist for the game’s Halloween event. The Rev Shell also factors into one of the event’s challenge badges that required players to deal 1,000 damage with them.

Imagineer will hold a new Medabots S collaboration with the Zoids franchise on October 5, 2023. The new crossover event will primarily convert five Zoids into playable Medabots. They will be the Blade Liger, Shield Liger, Command Wolf, Geno Saurer, and Death Saurer. [Thanks, 4Gamer!]

Players will be able to obtain the Shield Liger by playing an event battle that runs until November 26, 2023. The remaining units will be available from rotating gacha banners. The crossover will also feature custom skins colored after the Lightning Saix, Blade Liger Mirage, Bloody Death Saurer, and Geno Breaker.

Imagineer has also uploaded a new trailer showcasing the Zoids collaboration on the Medabots S YouTube channel.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and when it comes to video games like Starfield, that phrase could not ring any truer. Indeed, in a rapidly evolving medium where enjoyment can be a deeply personal and ephemeral commodity, trying to condense an epic 100-hour RPG down to a one-size-fits-all score can be as challenging as trying to defeat a Terrormorph with a wheel of cheese.

Nevertheless, it’s important to open a dialogue about these things, as discussion makes the world galaxy go round. From this perspective, it seems that Reddit user Touny420 has well and truly struck the motherlode.

Activision Blizzard has released a new trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 ahead of its Call of Duty: Next event on 5th October.

The trailer shows some moments of multiplayer gameplay, as well as some short glimpses of the 16 maps from the original Modern Warfare 2 that have been "modernised for fast-paced combat".

Multiplayer will feature new modes, including a 3v3v3 mode called Cutthroat, and new Battle Maps alongside usual staples like Hardpoint and Kill Confirmed.

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What are you doing later? Bit of a night out in a bleak post-Soviet city, maybe? Drink? Dance? Drugs? Pet giant rats? Chat with a back-alley cyborg tech? Catch a poetry reading? Have a blood pressure test? Contemplate your empty existence? Eat a kebab? All this and more awaits you with Neyasnoe, the new first-person explorer from the creators of It's Winter. While It's Winter had you so bored and lonely you might cook egg on toast only to flush it down the toilet, here you're surrounded by life, and I'm not sure that's much more comfort.

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Assassin's Creed Mirage hits PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Amazon Luna, and PC this week (and it's coming to iOS for certain devices next year, too). We've been covering it for a few weeks now as part of Game Informer's exclusive cover story coverage during September – check out our Mirage hub here for exclusive features, interviews, previews, and more – but everyone can play the game this week. 

Ahead of its release, we spoke to Basim voice actor Lee Majdoub about his entry into video game acting, what he brings to the character, and more. We also spoke to Mirage narrative director Sarah Beaulieu during the same interview to gain more insight into what fans of the series' lore can expect and more. We also spoke to Roshan voice actor Shohreh Aghdashloo and you can check that out here.

Enjoy our interview with Lee Majdoub and Sarah Beaulieu below!

In June, Nintendo revealed Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the first all-new 2D Mario platformer on consoles since the launch of the Wii U. In the 11 years since the last 2D game launched, we've received multiple re-releases, two Super Mario Maker titles, two mainline 3D titles, and even a mobile auto-runner. After nearly two decades of the New Super Mario Bros. series dominating the 2D side of the iconic franchise, Super Mario Bros. Wonder represents a new era for the Mushroom Kingdom crew. To celebrate the impending release of this new 2D adventure on Switch, Super Mario Bros. Wonder graces the cover of our latest issue of Game Informer.

I flew to both U.S. coasts – first New York, then Seattle – to get as much info about the game as possible. I've spent more than two hours playing Super Mario Bros. Wonder and have spoken with multiple key members of the development team. In this cover story, you'll get behind-the-scenes stories about the creation of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, exclusive hands-on with stages nobody else has played, and even a discussion on the legacy of the New Super Mario Bros. series. 

Our cover art this month features Elephant Mario, one of the new forms the company's mascot and his friends can take in Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Director Shiro Mouri wanted to create a new form that would cause Mario to grow in stature, and this in-your-face representation of that vision pays homage to that earliest desire.

Konami revealed that it will add new content based on Hololive's Shirakami Fubuki in Sound Voltex Exceed Gear. While the new collaboration will primarily add new playable songs, it will also include more exclusive time-limited content modeled after the VTuber.

A total of five songs will newly appear in both the arcade and PC versions of Sound Voltex Exceed Gear on October 5, 2023. In addition to Fubuki's solo songs "Say! Fanfare!" and "KingWorld," Konami will include the "Happiness World" duet with Houshou Marine and "Onikemo Dance" trio with Nakiri Ayame and Ookami Mio. Fubuki will also provide a new cover of the BEMANI song "Oboro" to complete the lineup.

There’s an alternative world to Lego that few people have heard of. And no, we don’t mean Megablox or what-have-you, but instead a teeny-tiny alternative world: The miniscule world of Nanoblock, and its legions of knock-offs. Titchy blocks, a fraction of the size of Lego, but just as much fun to build, and one hell of…

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AMD recently added a new HYPR-RX mode to its AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition, intended to give users of its RX 7000 series graphics cards an easy way to boost performance and responsiveness in a range of games. Enabling this profile automatically engages a range of technologies, including image upscaling (RSR/FSR), latency reduction (Anti-Lag+) and context-sensitive resolution reduction (Boost). In a small number of "HYPR-Tuned" games, these features are automatically applied when the HYPR-RX profile is engaged, while in others you'll need to lower your input resolution or choose an FSR upscaling mode to enable the feature in each title. With all that apparent complexity, does HYPR-RX deliver the effective one-click performance tuning that AMD promises - and is it easy enough to use? I tested out a range of games on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX to find out.

Given that we're relatively familiar with the effects of FSR/FSR 2 upscaling and Boost, we started with the latest feature addition: Anti-Lag+. Like regular Radeon Anti-Lag, this technology aims to reduce the latency between a user input and an on-screen result (eg clicking the mouse and firing a bullet in Counter-Strike), but rather than being a driver-level feature that works in all games, Anti-Lag+ is integrated by developers into the game itself. That makes it more like Nvidia's Reflex tech, with regular Anti-Lag being analagous to Nvidia's Ultra Low Latency mode.

Warner Bros Montreal's one-four-all superhero spin-off Gotham Knights hits Game Pass today. In his RPS review, Ed Thorn described it as "an action-RPG that wraps what could've been a wonderfully realised Gotham universe in a tired, slapdash mix of meaningless numbers and loot." I reviewed it myself as a freelancer and can't disagree with his verdict. Game ain't great. But I find myself itching to download and revisit this muddled open world contender all the same.

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On the official Final Fantasy VII Remake social media account on October 3, 2023, Square Enix showed off the new Synergy Abilities mechanic that will make its debut in the upcoming game FFVII Rebirth. Essentially, it explained the feature in a little more detail. A video was also included that previewed what Aerith and Tifa, Red XIII and Yuffie, and Barret and Cloud’s synchronized abilities will look like in the game while working together as a team.

You can view the video in the post below:

[embed]https://twitter.com/FFVIIR_CLOUD/status/1709147027492467082[/embed]

According to the post and what we’ve learned so far, FFVII Rebirth players can pair two party members together for Synergy Abilities. When doing so, players can synchronize their skills to unleash a powerful paired skill. When using Synergy Abilities, each character drains the ATB gauge. Additionally, the number of potential techniques that can be used increases as the party level also increases. We already received an introduction to some of Red XIII’s abilities with Barret, Aerith, and Cloud in a gameplay preview for the now fully playable character.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will be released on PS5 on February 29, 2024. Its exclusivity arrangement ends on May 29, 2024. FFVII Remake is available for the PS4, PS5, and PC. You can also find FFVII Ever Crisis on mobile devices.

Even with all of Cyberpunk 2077’s fancy updates and technical fixes, there are still some bugs slipping through the cracks in the mostly-excellent Phantom Liberty expansion. One such crack which seems to be giving players a bit of trouble appears in the “New Person, Same Old Mistakes” mission, due to a…

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Xbox has announced its next special edition wireless controller called Gold Shadow.

The controller is inspired by the official Shadow range of controllers released during the lifetime of the Xbox One. It has a gold-to-black metallic finish on the front, creating an illusion of a shadow cast at the bottom of the grips, while the rest of the controller is carbon black.

The gold metallic finish extends to the D-pad. There are rubberised diamond-pattern side grips, unlike your bog standard Xbox controller.

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I'm a fan of the modern Bethesda RPG, having spent nearly 100 hours with Fallout 4 - which, for me, is a lot more time than I'm usually willing to give up. My fondest memories lie with Oblivion, because I think it captured exploration beautifully. I liked emerging from a big cave as a big nobody and striking out along a cobbled path, excited to go for a summer's walk. Skyrim abandoned Oblivion's warmth for your average fantasyland, but kept the great outdoors.

If I don't have an objective in Starfield, I sort of freeze over and don't really know where to turn. And even if I do, I perform a deep sigh and open up my menus and curl myself into a pinball, ready to get pinged around the innards of whatever can lies beyond the airlock in front of me. So far, Starfield's adventuring forces me indoors and it's a shame.

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The latest Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 trailer is here, and it features Peter Parker and Miles Morales pondering their responsibilities in addition to a fight against Venom. More quiet moments from the game are interspersed with scenes of the two people who take on the role of Spider-Man face the opponent. We can likely expect to see it fairly often, as this will be the new TV spot for the upcoming game.

The footage begins with both Parker and Morales swinging in to face Venom. After they do, we see a shot of Parker in a graveyard. He wonders if he’s “strong enough to save” the city. After that, we see Morales in his bedroom wondering if he can “protect the people [he] loves.” It cuts back to the fight against Venom, before again showing the more introspective side of the heroes. Both of them prepare to head out and fight as they think of the loved ones they lost. The two then fight Venom in earnest while each echoes the sentiment, “I am Spider-Man.” 

Here's the Marvel's Spider-Man 2 "Be Greater Together" trailer:

October’s first batch of Game Pass titles aren’t necessarily spooky, but they’re no less exciting. The long-awaited Forza Motorsport leads the pack as it crosses the finish line to release next week. Like A Dragon: Ishin, the historical drama and remake of the formerly Japan-exclusive Like A Dragon spin-off, is also on the way. 

Check out the list of what’s joining and what’s exiting the library as well as links to our reviews of applicable titles.

What’s Coming To Xbox Game Pass

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide (Xbox Series X/S, Coud) – October 4

Forza Motorsport (Xbox Series X/S, PC, Cloud) – October 10

From Space (Console, PC,Cloud) – October 12

Like A Dragon: Ishin (Console, PC, Cloud) - October 17 | Our Review

What’s Leaving Xbox Game Pass on October 15

Eville (Console, PC, Cloud)

Overwhelm (PC)

Shenzhen I/O (PC)

The Legend of Tianding (Console, PC, Cloud)

Trek to Yomi (Console, PC, Cloud) | Our Review

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Console, PC, Cloud)

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Naughty Dog is laying off at least 25 developers this month with no severance, according to a Kotaku report.

Citing two sources familiar with the situation, the outlet said the cuts are coming from the studio's contractor workforce, and do not include full-time employees.

While the layoffs span a variety of departments, most of the people losing work are coming from the QA team.

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Epic Games has announced a partnership with the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) to rate all islands and other content published through Fortnite's Creative Mode.

As with full games, the IARC will assign a rating from E for everyone to a maximum of Teen. Epic says these will be prominently displayed in order to help parents better understand the content their children have access to through Fortnite.

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Nintendo revealed that when they go through the Super Mario RPG remake, there will be different soundtrack options. People will be able to hear the original soundtrack from the Super NES version, or go with a new orchestral arrangement. A new video showed the differences, with a few specific songs cited.

Here’s the latest Super Mario RPG soundtrack trailer. It begins first by comparing the original version of “Bandit’s Way” to the updated option. The second song featured is “Forest Maze.” Again, it begins with the original song before showing the new arrangement. The announcement confirmed that people can switch between the two or listen to the tracks outside of the actual game by going to the jukebox-like Sound Player.

Even if you're not running after members of the royal family with a camera strapped to your big posh noggin, I think basically everyone loves trains, being as they are big magical people movers that can chugga-chug you over an entire country. And not just people! As represented in the lovely voxel maps of puzzle game Station To Station, trains carry freight. Cheese, furniture, steel girders - everything a growing city needs! Laying the rails that connect all of your production chains is, as the UK government will no doubt be quick to tell you, an often-complex affair. But when you get it right in Station To Station you're rewarded by an already beautiful game becoming prettier.

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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so Lies of P may be most glowing Dark Souls tribute yet. Built on Unreal Engine 4, From Software fans will feel right at home with Lies of P's mechanics, its focus on learning attack patterns and timing parries. While developers Neowiz Games and Round8 Studio are hardly playing coy about their inspirations, they've delivered a well-executed recreation of a core blueprint that we know works - while arguably surpassing recent From releases in terms of technical polish.

Lies of P's unique setting deserves a few words before we get to how the game performs in its various modes on PS5 and Series X/S, as it represents the biggest twist on the Souls formula. The ruined gothic world of Krat is loosely inspired by the 19th-century, pre-Disney story of Pinocchio; it's a game universe where mechanised puppets have risen up against their human rulers. You'll face deranged creations, from mannequin policemen wielding stop signs to robotic dogs and rogue circus masters. Perhaps the biggest draw of Lies of P is letting that familiar Soulslike blueprint play out while exploring a brand new world.

With that said, what's the best graphics mode to employ on your visit to this curious land of puppetry and pageantry? No matter which console you're playing on, PS5, Series X or S, you have three modes to choose from - each with a slightly different blend of fidelity and performance. There's a 30fps quality mode, a smoother 40fps quality mode for those using 120Hz displays, and a 60fps performance mode. It's rare to see Series S in particular get a full spread of three modes - often, Microsoft's three-litre console has only one or two options.

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Where to Buy Spider-Man 2 Adidas Sneakers

Mark your calendars for October 20 if you want to gear up like your friendly neighborhood Spidey; with select retailers (TBC), Adidas online, the Adidas app, and some physical stores all expected to carry the Spider-Man 2 collection. For more immediate updates when the collection goes live, follow @IGNDeals now on Twitter/X or join our dedicated Deals Discord server.

Inworld AI today named an advisory board to help the start-up as it builds a "Character Engine" to create AI non-player characters, brand ambassadors, and educational assistants.

The advisory board includes Bing Gordon, Danny Lange, Jon Snoddy, and Neal Stephenson.

Gordon is a former EA chief creative officer and current partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who has also served as an advisor to Spotify, Niantic, and Dapper Labs, and has held seats on the board of directors at Take-Two, Duolingo, Zynga, and Amazon, among others.

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