The games industry reacts to Xbox layoffs: 'We are clearly at a turning point'

The latest mass layoff at Xbox will see roughly 3,200 people lose their jobs—1,600 today, and 1,600 more over the next fiscal year—and four game studios turned loose into the forest: Compulsion and Double Fine as independents, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs under new ownership. It's bad no matter how you look at it, a reflection of flailing leadership at Microsoft and a dreadful state of affairs for the game industry as a whole.

Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is suffering similar PSN region locking woes to Helldivers 2, with 132 countries barred according to Steam's backend

Tokon the piss

PlayStation might have opted to stop putting their single player big hitters on PC going forwards, but they're still committed to porting their online games in the name of juicing player counts. All good, since they've stopped frustrating folks by insisting that PC players link up a PSN account. Ah, bollocks. Based on the fact Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls' Steam backend lists it as not being available for purchase in 132 countries, Sony didn't learned their account linking lesson with Helldivers 2 after all.

"Smuggle chainsaws onto the pitch": What Blood Bowl's new publisher thinks the World Cup can learn from Warhammer

What team wouldn't benefit from an ogre?

Last week brought the news that strategy game publisher Slitherine have penned a deal with Cyanide Studios to continue developing Blood Bowl 3 (which will soon become Warhammer Blood Bowl. The tabletop-inflected sport is broadly similar to American football, though there are opportunities for even greater violence on the pitch.

"I could feel myself coming apart at the seams": Suicide Squad leads on almost leaving the games industry after its failure

Woof

Crikey, remember Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League? That sure was a mess. It was a public mess too, one where there were seemingly some attempts to save the game, but none that could have shifted it away from its inherent flaws. But for the game's co-director Axel Rydby and associate design director Johnny Armstrong, the behind the scenes events were enough to almost turn them off from the games industry entirely.

Ithaca is a road trip RPG about climate resistance and dealing with the hostage you have in your trunk

How'd that get in there?

The ethical quandaries around car usage aside, we can all agree there's nothing like a road trip, right? When better a time is there to think about every single decision you've ever made in life than on an open stretch of road with only other cars to stop you? It feels like a great setting for a video game, despite there not being very many road trip games. But another one is entering the fray and it's called Ithaca, a "narrative road-trip with RPG elements about environmental resistance."

GTA 6 makers have 10 working days to voluntarily recognise Rockstar IWGB Game Workers Union or it may go to a government tribunal

Can I get a witness?

The newly-formed Rockstar IWGB Game Workers Union are pushing for official recognition by Rockstar ahead of GTA 6's console release this November.

Generative AI is a "virulent plague" and even using it to eliminate "drudgery" has downsides, reckons long-time Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider

"It's not ready for prime time"

Former Dragon Age wordsmith David Gaider isn't keen on the use of generative AI in game development, at least in the tech's current form. In the veteran developer's view, even if it can be used as a means to speed up the handling of more mundane tasks - which is the way many execs have been trying to sell it - genAI runs the risk of inhibiting developers' abilities to teach the less experienced colleagues the ins and outs of the craft.