Tencent and NetEase’s stocks are dropping at a massive rate due to China introducing new gaming regulations. Tencent’s stocks dropped around 16%, while NetEase’s fell 25%. [Thanks, Josh Ye!]

The new policies in question focus on online game management. These regulations mainly center on curbing spending in video games, specifically ones with a gacha element or a daily login. Here are some of the new policies that China is setting for its video game companies:

• Online games will no longer be able to offer rewards for daily logins. They can no longer give rewards for when players first spend money or when they spend money several times in a row.
• Games need to have a limit on how much players can spend to top up their digital wallets.
• Developers cannot offer “probability-based lucky draw features” to minors.

Metal Gear Solid’s Master Collection was a fairly underwhelming package of some of the greatest video games ever made when it released back in October. While official updates since then have done little to address some of its most egregious problems - leaving modders to step in, as usual - the game’s latest patch has finally offered up a decent serving of improvements direct from the source.

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As we’ve all heard countless times throughout these last 12 months, 2023 has been a very interesting year in gaming. There were an exorbitant amount of layoffs, companies gobbling up other companies like corporate Pac-Man, and leaks galore. But despite the obvious problems within our industry that 2023 unmasked, it…

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If you’re a Mac user holding out for a chance to play Norman Reedus Walking Simulator, you’ll need to wait a little longer: the release date for Death Stranding: Director’s Cut has officially been pushed into next year. The good news is that it’s “early 2024”, so hopefully it won’t be too long.

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Insomniac Games has broken its silence on the recent ransomware attack that resulted in hackers releasing confidential studio information, personal employee data, and an entire playable build of the upcoming PlayStation 5 exclusive, Wolverine. “We’re both saddened and angered about the recent criminal cyberattack on…

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HoYoVerse has uploaded a new Myriad Celestia trailer for Ruan Mei, who will debut in Honkai: Star Rail as a playable character on December 27, 2023. She will be the first limited 5-star of Version 1.6 and will run with fellow new character Xueyi.

In the game's lore, Ruan Mei is a member of the Genius Society, much like Herta and Screwllum. Though she has not yet appeared in the game proper, you can get Ruan Mei’s blessing in Simulated Universe. She was also one of the characters who appeared indirectly in the Planar Infinity event from Version 1.4.

You can watch the Honkai: Star Rail Myriad Celestia trailer for Ruan Mei here:

Online servers for Dark Souls 2 will be shut down in March, for anyone still playing on either PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

Dark Souls developer FromSoftware made the announcement today in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter.

"The Dark Souls 2 PS3 and Xbox 360 servers will shut down on 31st March 2024," the post confirmed. "A message stating that online play is disabled will be displayed. Offline play will still be possible."

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The Epic Games Store doesn't normally carry games rated Adults Only, it will make an exception for titles that only received the label due to the use of blockchain technology.

An update on Epic's developer site still notes that these games must comply with its blockchain and general guidelines. Games, for example, cannot facilitate gambling and link to NFT marketplaces.

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The Epic Games Store will allow blockchain games rated Adults-Only back on the PC marketplace after a new exception to its content policy.

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Bahnsen Knights knows what not to tell you. Its world is largely a mystery, because all that matters is the situation its protagonist Boulder is stuck way, way too deep in. Everything feels like it's about to come to a head somehow, even though you have very little idea what's going on.

Its world could almost be a post-apocalypse one, a feeling that persists even though it's unclear how true it is, how much is ambient cult brainwashing, and how much just the result of Boulder starting to lose himself after being undercover for far too long.

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The Zenless Zone Zero Equalizing Test server will close at the end of the day on December 24, 2023. Players will no longer be able to enter the game, and they will lose all of their progress.

The Equalizing Test is the name for the second closed beta of Zenless Zone Zero. It allowed players to experience what the game has to offer in its current build and gave HoYoVerse’s developers the chance to polish or alter things based on user feedback. HoYoVerse thanked all participants for their suggestions and encouraged players to watch out for more information on the game’s official release.

Like with Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail’s closed beta tests, players cannot keep any of the progress that they made in the Equalizing Test when the game is eventually released. They will have to start the story again, as well as collect characters and items once more. You can read our preview of the Equalizing Test here.

Earlier this week, hackers published over 1.6 terabytes of data stolen from Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games, with files ranging from employee passport scans, Slack conversations and employment records to details of several forthcoming games. Totalling around 1.3 million files, the hack includes a fully playable WIP PC version of Insomniac's Wolverine game, which has yet to be formally shown off beyond some initial concept images, and is at present only confirmed to release on PS5. Social media users have been playing the stolen build and posting videos, which range from early tutorial sequences to story scenes.

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China today announced a series of planned restrictions on video game monetization and engagement tactics, according to Reuters.

The National Press and Publication Administrations released new draft rules that will ban a swath of common mechanisms in games, including daily log-in rewards, bonuses for first-time spenders, and incentives to spend repeatedly on a game.

Publishers will also be prohibited from offering loot boxes to minors or allowing for in-game items to be auctioned or used as speculative assets. Games will need to impose spending limits on players, while publishers will be required to run all their servers for Chinese games in China.

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Marvel's Spider-Man developer Insomniac Games has now released a statement addressing the ransomware attack on its studio earlier this month, the release of stolen data this week, and the spread of information on upcoming projects now circulating the internet.

The PlayStation studio had stayed silent until now, something it said was a result of it being "focused inward" to support team members. Personal data was included in the breach, Insomniac confirmed, but the studio is still "working quickly" to examine the impact.

On the spread of stolen material relating to Marvel's Wolverine and other, upcoming game projects, Insomniac said it would share information "when the time was right".

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Hear ye! This month marked the 25th birthday of Thief: The Dark Project. While not as infinitely mutable as other 90’s icons like Doom (which just turned 30, and can be played on a pregnancy test), stealth gaming’s grandpappy has maintained an enduring appeal and influence, especially for those more inclined to sneaking than slaughter. Buckets of digital ink have already been spilt examining this legacy, so I won’t dive into the weeds of a hagiography. What I want to highlight is a major event that marked the 25th anniversary – one that makes today as great a time as any to explore Thief’s still-thriving mod scene.

Notable: After a quarter-century, stealth fans were gifted a new, 10-mission Thief campaign called The Black Parade. Pitched as a prequel to the first game, it features a new protagonist, new story, and new heists, built by some of the most lauded modders on the scene. More notable still: The team lead is Romain Barrilliot, a fan-turned-pro designer at Arkane, where he, alongside other former Thief acolytes, iterates the immersive sim tenets in their patented im-sim laboratory. Mostest notablest? One of Thief’s original designers, Daniel Thron, joined The Black Parade’s team – and simultaneously released a new Thief short film, featuring the original game’s voice actors.

The year may be winding down, but the news just doesn’t stop. This week, we have insights into the inner workings of a massive game studio, a glimpse into who tops people’s lists of sexytime video game fantasies, and one legendary auteur admitting he’s plum tuckered. Read on for the week’s biggest gaming news.

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The year may be winding down, but the news just doesn’t stop. This week, we have insights into the inner workings of a massive game studio, a glimpse into who tops people’s lists of sexytime video game fantasies, and one legendary auteur admitting he’s plum tuckered. Read on for the week’s biggest gaming news.

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Recently the Digital Foundry team met up online to discuss the best game graphics of 2023, with Alex Battaglia, John Linneman and Oliver Mackenzie nominating their favourite titles. What struck me about the list - reproduced in full at the end of the article - was how many titles weren't those that were pushing the absolute boundaries of graphics technology in terms of features. Instead, the games chosen - and especially the highest ranking options - were those that were smartly designed to both serve gameplay and take full advantage of the (often limited) hardware they were running on.

Hi-Fi Rush and Super Mario Bros. Wonder are perfect examples of this, I feel. Both games were first-party releases that distinguish themselves with a bold, consistent sense of style, with colourful and imaginative environments populated by characters with exaggerated movement that emphasises particular poses. In Hi-Fi Rush in particular, this is heightened further by the cel-shaded appearance and decimated animation "on twos" that makes the game feel like a playable cartoon.

In both cases, the graphics and animation styles chosen serve the gameplay beautifully, with responsive controls and a living, breathing world that reacts to your actions, whether it's enemy and flower reactions in Super Mario Bros. Wonder or the world gently vibing along with the music in Hi-Fi Rush.

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Earlier this week, ransomware group Rhysida released more than a terabyte of data it illegally obtained by hacking Marvel's Spider-Man 2 developer, Insomniac Games. The hacked data comprised of more than 1.3 million files, for a total of 1.67 terabytes of data, including information about Marvel's Wolverine, future Insomniac Games titles, release schedules, private employee information like tax and employment forms, internal studio messages, and more.

Insomniac has now publicly addressed the hack in a new statement, stating that development on Marvel's Wolverine will continue as planned.

An update regarding Insomniac and Marvel's #WolverinePS5. pic.twitter.com/CMkCCoZwwj

— Insomniac Games (@insomniacgames) December 22, 2023

Here's what the studio said, in full: 

The Day Before, once Steam’s most wishlisted game before experiencing a bizarre journey through multiple delays, accusations of being a scam, apparent legal disputes and a catastrophic Early Access launch, will shut down its servers in one month. The effective end to the game will accompany refunds for anyone who brought it on Steam.

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South Park: Snow Day, the upcoming four-player cooperative adventure first announced in August, is coming on March 26. A new trailer shows off more of the game’s frosty action and, of course, the series’ signature foul-mouth humor.

As the New Kid, players join Cartman, Stan, Kyle, and Kenny on an epic quest after a blizzard blankets the Colorado town, and school is canceled. Like the most recent South Park titles, The Stick of Truth and The Fractured But Whole, the adventure is told through the lens of a make-believe high-fantasy adventure, but Snow Day ditches turn-based combat in favor of a more action-oriented experience. 

Players can use different melee and ranged weapons, wield magic and other abilities, and customize their character with various clothing. Snow Day can be played with up to four friends, alongside strangers in online matchmaking, or as a solo experience with A.I. allies. 

South Park: Snow Day is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch, and PC.

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Jill Braff has been appointed as head of studio for ZeniMax Online Studios and Bethesda Game Studios.

As reported by The Verge, her appointment was a part of the leadership changes shared with the news of Bobby Kotick's departure next week as CEO of Activision Blizzard.

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This Week in Business is our weekly recap column, a collection of stats and quotes from recent stories presented with a dash of opinion (sometimes more than a dash) and intended to shed light on various trends. Check every Friday for a new entry.

There's a Cantonese saying I've been looking for an excuse to use in one of these columns for months, and with the year drawing to a close, I'm going to drop it here as a little present to myself.

"Sik see sik zoek dau."

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Happy holidays! Hopefully you’ll be able to take a break from the upcoming festivities to enjoy some gaming. Should you find yourself at a loss of what to play, we’ve got a few recs.

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Happy holidays! Hopefully you’ll be able to take a break from the upcoming festivities to enjoy some gaming. Should you find yourself at a loss of what to play, we’ve got a few recs.

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I was skeptical knowing that Capcom was going to attempt to help create a mobile game set in the Devil May Cry universe with NebulaJoy. I wouldn't really call this part of the franchise, since it's more or less just a spin-off with a very loose story featuring key members from the Devil May Cry series. But given Capcom's previous foray into the mobile genre with Sengoku Basara: Battle Party, my hopes weren't exactly high on whatever it was Devil May Cry: Peak of Combat was potentially going to deliver. While there is some good in this portable action game, the entire experience is bogged down in over-complicated systems that encourage players to dip into their wallets was early as the first mission.

Over the years, I've come to the realization that I'm a real hound for Capcom games. Resident Evil. Sengoku Basara. Devil May Cry. Haunting Ground. If it happened to come out during the PlayStation 2 and GameCube generation, I probably played it. Mostly because I just really liked what Capcom was dishing out. So naturally, given my propensity for the company's games and my love for all things Devil May Cry (even the Japan-exclusive stage play that was really just OK), that I'd be down to eat up what Peak of Combat was selling. Unfortunately, the game itself is really inconsistent in several ways that dragged down whatever good was left in it.

Fntastic announced earlier this month that it would be closing down, just days after launching its controversial game, The Day Before. It said at the time that servers for The Day Before would remain in operation but that the game's future was unknown. Now, the studio has announced that it has officially ceased operations and The Day Before's servers will be turned off next month. 

More specifically, the servers will be turned off on January 22, 2024. While the game has an emphasis on online play, it could still be played offline. However, on December 12, five days after the game launched on Steam, it was pulled from the storefront and The Day Before hasn't been available for purchase since. Plus, Fntastic says the game will be "retired." 

pic.twitter.com/GIX4ZAztny

— The Day Before (@playdaybefore) December 22, 2023

Here's Fntastic's full statement on the server closure: 

First Contact Entertainment, the team behind VR games like 2018's Firewall: Zero Hour and this year's Firewall Ultra on PSVR 2, has announced it is closing, as reported by Gematsu. After almost eight years as a studio, it will shut down at the end of the year. It cites a lack of VR support within the industry. 

"After almost eight years of working with the most amazing team I've ever had the pleasure of being part of, I'm sad to announce that we will be closing our company First Contact Entertainment by the end of the year," a Facebook post from the company reads. "The lack of support for VR within the industry has eventually taken its toll. As a AAA VR game developer, we are just not able to justify the expenses needed going forward. 

"We are a team of fearless innovators willing to push new technologies to its limits. I am extremely proud of the team and grateful to our investors, our partners and of course, our community of dedicated and passionate players. It's been a wild ride. Thank you."

Game development disaster The Day Before will go dark forever on 22nd January 2024.

A statement posted this morning to X, formerly Twitter, gave remaining players a month's notice that the game - once Steam's most-wishlisted title - would close down in just over 30 days.

As a reminder, The Day Before only launched in early access on 7th December. This means its servers will only have been active for 48 days total - even shorter than Liz Truss' tenure as PM.

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Chinese regulators have announced far-reaching curbs on monetisation and reward systems for online games, in a move that has wiped almost $80 billion from the market value of the world's biggest videogame publisher Tencent and their rival NetEase. Under the new government restrictions, which are pending final approval, online games in China will be banned from giving players rewards for logging in every day, spending money within the game for the first time, or spending money several times consecutively.

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More than just the way they approach narrative, level design, and gunplay, there is one constant throughout every single one of Remedy's titles: they will always have the perfect song for the perfect occasion. While Alan Wake 2 is certainly their magnum opus in that regard among several contenders, it's about time we took a look back at the best needle drops in the studio's long history.

Max Payne Theme - Kärtsy Hatakka/Kimmo Kajasto (Max Payne)

The original Max Payne's legacy is very much tied to the time of its release. It was the first video game to fully implement the slo-mo gunplay John Woo and the Wachowski Sisters had been trying to make into a Thing. But all that felt rather passe the more other games came and diluted the formula. The bullet-time may have been what got players in the door. But it was the neo-noir graphic novel vibes that have endured over the years. The constant leitmotif of those vibes is that theme, a grim piano undercurrent that gave even more depth and gravitas to James McCaffrey's jagged, self-deprecating, hard-boiled detective narration, and would be the constant reminder of Max's escalating failures as time went on, with the fully string-based rendition of the theme representing absolute rock bottom for our hero in the Rockstar-developed third game.

Welcome to door 22 of the RPS Advent Calendar. To enter, you must prove your identity by answering a simple question. Who are you? A human... or a puppet?

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Sony has said it will no longer delete Discovery content from PlayStation libraries following fan backlash.

In a statement, Sony said it had now struck an "updated licensing agreement" with Discovery owner Warner Bros. to ensure previously purchased content would remain accessible "for at least the next 30 months" (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz).

An update on Sony's legal website now states similar, and reassures users that "the Discovery content removal planned for 31st December 2023 is no longer occurring.

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The existence of the Upper Lunch Hut implies the existence of a Lower Lunch Hut, but as far as I can tell, no such building exists. It's one of many mysteries that surround the edifice, which I discovered during a holiday in the Cairngorms this August, while everybody else at RPS was writing about some tyrannous entity called Gamescom.

First, the approach: having exited a vast pine forest of primeval aspect and supernatural disposition, with distant, daylit clearings leading the eye deeper and deeper into the undergrowth, till it feels at last as though your gaze has become tangibly enmeshed with clutching root and lowering branch - having finally escaped from that terrible, terrible forest, with its single, mournful stream crossed by a bridge of predatory bareness that is surely a haven for trolls, you set out across a grey and purple oblivion of reed and heather, a moorland rising to the border between glens, broken only by the stark red stain of a door. Nearing this otherworldly aberration, this scarlet phantasm, you realise that there is a house constructed around it, a sloping excrescence of withered planks and flaking plaster. What fell secrets could it harbour? Let us go and make our visit.

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China has announced new rules to limit the encouragement of spending in online video games, spooking investors in two of the world's biggest publishers.

News of the limits wiped a combined ~$80bn from the value of Tencent and NetEase, China's two main games publishers that now support or part-own many of the world's biggest games companies.

Chinese online video games will now no longer be able to offer an extra incentive to spend in a game for the first time, or for spending repeatedly, Reuters reported.

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The 18-year-old responsible for last year's Grand Theft Auto 6 hack has been sentenced to an indefinite hospital order.

As BBC News reported, a judge said the GTA 6 hacker posed a "high risk" to the public. A mental health assessment found that they "continued to express the intent to return to cyber-crime as soon as possible."

Rockstar Games claimed that the hack cost the company $5 million in damages.

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Like a circus strongman's barbells, 2023's year in VR has been heavily weighted toward either end. The last twelve months were bookended with the launch of two excellent VR headsets (although only one is truly relevant to us PC gamers) and a whole bunch of great VR titles. The summer, however, was the quietest I've known for a long time, to the point where I ended up playing two VR minigolf games in the absence of anything better to do. Fortunately, the last few months have made up for it, providing enough fantastic VR games to feed us well into next year. So it's an unevenly weighted set of barbells, the kind that would give our moustachioed muscleman a slipped disk.

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One of my most bittersweet gaming memories is pretty recent - at most it was a couple of years ago. It was the day after we all knocked off work and I pulled the sofa round in front of the TV and played a game that I wasn't reviewing, or writing about, or checking up on to decide about coverage for. It was that Ubisoft Battle Royale. My memory is terrible and I just had to look up the name. It was Hyper Scape.

I had wanted to play it all year - that was the key fact here. I was and am a big fan of Battle Royale games, not for the shooting or competition so much as that if you land in a quiet part of the map you just get to pootle around and explore by yourself. It's a bit like being home from university unexpectedly and walking around town while the rest of your old friends are still away.

Hyper Scape was perfect for this. I'd had my eye on it because it looked expansive and stylish, with a kind of pseudo-white-box style to the architecture. It also had that mysterious Ubisoft Machine behind it. Who really made this? And was it really intended to be a Battle Royale, or was it off-cuts from something else, some other mega project? I remember in one part of the map I found an incredibly detailed Gothic cathedral. This was made specifically for Hyper Scape? Really? I'd still love to know the story of that map.

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The British teenager who hacked Rockstar and posted a swathe of work-in-progress GTA 6 development material online last year has been sentenced to remain indefinitely in a secure hospital.

Arion Kurtaj, now 18, was part of the Lapsus$ hacking group behind similar attacks on Nvidia, Uber and BT, among others.

Kurtaj hacked Rockstar in September 2022, while already on bail for hacking charges and staying under police protection at a Travelodge, BBC News reported.

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Marvel's Wolverine is still years from release, but people are currently playing - and uploading footage - of an incomplete early development build found within the files stolen from Insomniac Games by ransomware hackers earlier this month.

It's remarkable to see an in-development game being played in this way - and I can't think of a similar situation, at least in recent memory. The GTA 6 hack contained a mountain of development assets, yes, but nothing playable in this manner.

Here, people have been able to access a test build of Wolverine akin to an internal demo meant for Insomniac and Sony, that features multiple sections of the game available to play and explore. Naturally, these sections are still incomplete and unpolished, but key gameplay mechanics and story moments are included.

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