Auto Added by WPeMatico
Valve have made changes to Steam’s community awards system to discourage people from posting daft and angry posts in order to farm Steam points. You will, in fact, no longer be able to receive Steam points from other users when they give you awards. Adding insult to injury, there’s a new set of awards that are explicitly designed to spread goodwill. Filth!
As seen in The Maw, fluffy defence shooter Mochi-O is out today, and – judging from the Steam demo I’ve played – is an at least passingly entertaining MIRV explosion of gleeful nonsense. Landing somewhere between tower defence, Vampire Survivors, and Tamagotchi, it has you holding up a genetically engineered hamster-like creature up to a window and blasting waves of attackers with the mounted weapons systems hidden in his fur. Then, setting him down and giving him a good long scritch.
Bungie’s Marathon reboot now has what you have to hope will be its final release date, following a rocky development path featuring plagiarism scandals and indefinite delays. The futuristic shooter’s locked and loaded for March.
A first major update for Minecrafty block-build-and-basher Hytale arrived over the weekend, and it’s added in some extra danger. There are now dinosaurs running around in the underground jungles. These are work-in-progress dinos, so who knows what might happen if you end up earning their big lizard ire. Also, the in-game bedtime’s now half past seven.
Much in the same way that I started this year by telling my loved ones I would cut down my portion sizes in 2026 to attend to my ageing body, Zenimax Online Studios began the year by saying they would be releasing smaller updates for Elder Scrolls Online to refresh the MMO’s creakier content.
Both Edler Scrolls Online and I shall end 2026 leaner and able to climb stairs without our knees popping.
But, in announcing its move from Expansion-sized chapters released every 12 – 18 months to smaller Season updates released every three months, it wasn’t clear what this meant for new zones. Would the world of Tamriel stay locked at its current size, with additional areas being too large a thing to add in a Season update?
.jpg?width=690&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Former Assassin’s Creed series lead Marc-Alexis Côté is suing Ubisoft for damages, alleging that his abrupt October departure from the company after 20 years wasn’t a matter of personal choice, but a case of “constructive dismissal”. That, in non-legalese, means that the developer believes he was left with no choice but to resign, having been offered new roles he viewed as demotions amid a round of corporate musical chairs.
Rockstar North, the Edinburgh office of GTA 6 developers Rockstar Games, has been cordoned off by emergency services following reports of an explosion in the building.
Valve have reportedly rewritten Steam’s AI disclosure form, essentially a declaration of a game’s generative AI usage that developers and publishers must complete to sell on the platform. The new form, shared by consultant Simon Carless, now specifies that while the presence of in-game GenAI content must still be divulged, including on the game’s store page, the usage of AI-based production tools for “efficiency gains” does not require disclosure.
“We are aware that many modern game development environments have AI powered tools built into them,” the update form reads. “Efficiency gains through the use of these tools is not focus of this section. Instead, it is concerned with the use of AI in creating content that ships with your game, and is consumed by players.”
Happy new week of PC game releases, all! First, the customary paragraph of Maw musings. What we refer to as the Maw goes by many other names in different regions, as different cultures react to its cosmic incursions. Across the channel in Normandy, generations of monks have addressed the creature as La Bête des Trous. The Finnish know the Maw as Tuleva Syöjä. In the United States, meanwhile they call it Friday Night at Applebee’s.
Many of today’s game designers have, like me, grown up with Japanese Y2K style – the style of the late 90s and early 2000s that gave us not only fear of the end of the world due to a calendar change, but also the WipEout series, futuristic PlayStation 2 ads, and fashion that incorporated everything from glitter to holographic fabrics and cute crop tops.
In a media landscape that seldom shies away from homages and sequels, I’ve waited a long time for the influence of childhood favourites such as Dance Dance Revolution and Space Channel 5 to pop back up. After all, plenty of Western developers have taken inspiration from Japanese role-playing games, giving us Sea of Stars, Undertale and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, to name a few. Recently, I found some really cool games by Western developers that are living the Y2K dream with me, so it was time to dive into their inspirations and compare some childhood anime with some nerds.
