PlayStation boss Hideaki Nishino confirmed at the inaugural Crunchyroll Anime Future Forum that PS5 will integrate anime into its main menu with a dedicated hub, beginning Spring 2027. PS5 owners can already access Crunchyroll via the console's dedicated app, but the new initiative will place the streaming service front and centre. Sony acquired the subscription-based platform for $1.1 billion in 2021.
Former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has joined Skydance's board as an independent director. Skydance, formed by Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, owns gaming operations including Paramount Games and Warner Bros Games, which a Variety report says will be merged into a single entity. Kotick left Activision Blizzard at the end of 2023 after Microsoft completed its acquisition, following a California lawsuit over workplace misconduct that ended in a $54 million settlement on pay and promotion inequity claims and $47 million set aside for gender discrimination accusations.
Sony has sold dozens of XR patents to Meta, in what appears to be a pullback from AR/VR hardware.
NEW: Unity's new Spark program is meant to let the public use AI agents to help make games in Unity
Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor begins bringing furloughed staff back
Gravity Well laid off more than 40 developers after losing its funding. GamesIndustry reported the layoffs.
Gravity Well, an independent studio founded by Respawn Entertainment alumni, has let go of the majority of its team after losing its funding, with more than 40 developers affected. Its three leaders said in a LinkedIn post that the funding was lost this summer and that the studio is still searching for a new partner. A much smaller team will carry on as the studio continues to fight for survival, though it described its future as uncertain given the current state of the industry, and asked other companies to consider hiring those affected.
The Outlast Trials has broken its concurrent-player record with over 120,000 players, more than four times its previous high of 36,000 set when it launched in Steam Early Access in 2023. Red Barrels credited a $4 Steam Autumn Sale discount, roughly half of players coming from China, and the Halloween season. The co-op horror game launched version 1.0 in spring 2024 and will follow with its annual Geister event and Season 8 in December.
Bit Reactor, the developer of Star Wars Zero Company, has started bringing back staff it furloughed ahead of the game's launch. CEO Greg Foertsch said in a Bluesky statement that the studio began the process of returning more of its team to work this week, without confirming how many people are returning. A person familiar with the situation told Game File that more than half of the pre-furlough team is now back on the payroll, while others remain unpaid; Game File previously reported that furloughed staff kept their employee status but received neither salary nor benefits, and sources said 80% of staff were furloughed before launch.
Bit Reactor, the studio behind Star Wars: Zero Company, began returning some furloughed developers to work this week, CEO Greg Foertsch called it an important step forward. The studio furloughed around 80% of its workforce weeks before launch, and Game File reports more than half of its overall headcount is back on payroll while a fair number of workers remain in limbo. The tactics game sold over 1m copies shortly after release.
Skate has been de-live serviced by ReSkate, a modding platform downloaded 350,000 times https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sports/reskate-modding-platform-released/
A fan-made modding platform called ReSkate makes EA's early access free-to-play skateboarding game Skate playable offline, with support for private servers, custom maps and other mods. It had been downloaded over 350,000 times from GitHub as of Tuesday. Its two creators told PC Gamer they will comply if EA sends a cease and desist, but ReSkate is open source and already has more than 70 forks on GitHub.
The next Halo game will be handled by a completely new team under Activision, while Halo Studios, formerly 343 Industries, keeps a small team for released titles and lays off 268 people. In the final issue of the Canon Fodder blog, Halo Studios community writer Alex Wakeford shared the first full look at the Endless, called the Xalanyn, children of Abaddon, after the faction was teased in Halo Infinite through the Harbinger. The blog also includes Zeta Halo environments that may have once been planned for Halo Infinite DLC.
Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor said it has started bringing some furloughed staff back to work. CEO Greg Foertsch said around 80% of staff had been sidelined without pay before release because the studio was running out of money, and the return process began this week. According to Game File, the studio's pay-rolled headcount is still less than half of what it was before the furloughs, while Newzoo ranked Zero Company as the sixth-best PC game of August by revenue in six major Western markets.
Bit Reactor, the studio behind Star Wars Zero Company, brought some of its furloughed workers back this week. Most of the studio was furloughed a few weeks before launch, and over half of the staff is now back while the rest remain furloughed.
Capcom has clarified that it will not use generative AI to create content for its games, after its RE Engine plans drew fan concern. The company said AI will only be used to speed up development, including improving tools, testing game code and analyzing data, as part of its REX (RE Next Engine) effort to improve the RE Engine.
Gears of War: E-Day launched this week, and The Coalition studio head Mike Crump told the BBC that keeping it Xbox-exclusive was a natural choice because the series has been tied to the Xbox brand for 20 years. He said the team measures success beyond sales and retention, including whether it showcases the platform and pushes the hardware to its limits. IGN notes the game runs well on Xbox Series X and Series S and scored a 9 in review, while Microsoft is in the middle of a months-long restructuring and The Coalition developers told Eurogamer they expected layoffs.
Interestingly, Fab seller revenue increased significantly in September. AI acceleration has led to more demand for content, and many devs are using AI assistants to build scenes including buying building blocks from Fab.
Push Square reports that Sony has sold VR-related patents to Meta. The outlet frames the deal as a sign that Sony is stepping back from VR, without giving a price or details of the patents.
Xbox Game Pass is adding Neon Abyss 2, Valor Mortis, and Battlefield 6 this month, but the bigger story may be the games leaving the service. Polygon says one of the departing titles is the best RPG on Xbox Game Pass.
Unity has announced Spark, an AI vibe-coding tool that it says lets people make and share games in their browser with no prior Unity or game development experience, and it is listed as "coming soon" with a waitlist. Its promotional trailer shows a game called Space Corridor being made by typing six words, and that demo game can be played in a browser now, running about five minutes and priced at $7.99.
World of Warcraft: Forever beta players have repeatedly pushed back against updated high-definition character models and character portraits, preferring the game's original look. Developer Blizzard originally planned to use only HD models but added an option for original character models after testers stressed its importance, and a quilboar boss mistakenly using its modern WoW model was quickly reverted to its WoW Classic appearance. Earlier this week the character-creation screen also switched back to WoW's original portraits.
Some furloughed staff at Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor have returned to work. CEO Greg Foertsch told Game File the studio has started bringing more of its team back but did not give specific percentages or figures. Game File's sources said headcount is now more than half of what it was before the furloughs, and it remains unclear whether more staff will return; a lawsuit involving Foertsch and co-founder Alison Kelly is ongoing.
Paramount's $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has been finalized, with the combined company taking the name Skydance. Its games division, called Games and Experiences, merges Paramount Games Studio with Warner's internal teams including Avalanche Software, NetherRealm Studios, Rocksteady, TT Games, WB Montreal and WB Boston, and will be led by Tony Driscoll. The board includes former Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Emerson Collective founder Laurene Powell Jobs, with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair serving as an advisor.
Bit Reactor, the developer of Star Wars Zero Company, has started returning more team members to work this week after furloughing over 80 percent of its staff down to a skeleton crew. Sources estimate the returning employees bring the studio back to more than half of its pre-furlough headcount, though many furloughed workers have not yet been brought back.
AdHoc Studio told Polygon that The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley has confirmed Dispatch is eligible for all major categories at the 2026 awards, making it two years running. All eight episodes of its first season released by Nov. 12, 2025, before the Nov. 21 eligibility cutoff for the 2025 show, yet judges had only played half the season when it earned a Best Debut Indie Game nomination. The game later received six DICE Award nominations including Game of the Year and won three BAFTA Games Awards.
The FBI arrested a 29-year-old Alabama Fortnite player after Epic reported threats he made over voice chat. According to the affidavit, Edward Frith, who used the username "WagesOfNinja," said he wanted to "literally murder somebody" and thought about killing "every day." He was indicted for violating Interstate Threatening Communications on September 23 and pleaded not guilty on September 24.
According to ZDNet Korea via Road to VR, Sony intends to transfer a total of 419 global patents to rival Meta, with 43 US-specific properties changing hands between June and September this year. Sony was an early entrant into the head-mounted display market with its HMZ-T1, which also formed the foundation of the original PSVR project. The first PSVR was a respectable hit on PS4, but its successor never gained much footing, while Meta continues to push ahead with VR Glasses due out in 2027.
Bit Reactor, the studio behind Star Wars Zero Company, said some developers furloughed before the game's launch have begun returning to work, calling the earlier move a response to unexpected business developments outside its control. Game File reports the studio's headcount is back to over half of what it was before launch, while Alinea Analytics estimates the game, made with Respawn Entertainment and EA, has sold over 1 million copies. Bit Reactor did not specify which business developments it meant, and the studio and cofounder Greg Foertsch are in a legal dispute with former chief finance officer Alison Kelly.
The Coalition studio head Mike Crump declined to say whether the studio faces layoffs after shipping Gears of War: E-Day, telling the BBC the team is focused on what it "can control." He said E-Day is a "great foundation" for future Gears titles and that the next game "will not take nearly as long" to make. The studio's story director and others were laid off last month, as Kotaku reported.
Jobs roundup: October | Playstack CEO Harvey Elliott voted chair of UKIE, and Steel City Interactive appoints Murray Pannell as head of publishing https://bit.ly/4y7xgIQ
Wizards of the Coast union expands, demands company stop pushing generative AI
The Dungeons & Dragons team and Team X, which works on Magic: The Gathering and Duel Masters, are joining the Wizards of the Coast-CWA union, expanding it beyond the Arena team. The union is calling on Hasbro and Wizards leadership to stop pushing LLMs and generative AI and to adopt an enforceable AI policy, and it also demands ownership of what employees create outside work. Wizards has until October 13 to voluntarily recognize the expanded unit; the Arena team's union was not voluntarily recognized and later won its election.
Rockstar head of development Rob Nelson walked IGN through a 30-minute gameplay demo of GTA 6 ahead of August's Netflix Extended Look, covering the wanted system. Shaking off the law goes beyond escaping a red zone on the map, and Rockstar says it does not want GTA 6 to make players all-powerful the way GTA 5 often did, so actions carry more variables. The demo also showed Jason and Lucia's safehouse, where players can switch characters, interact, or decorate, though Rockstar stressed it is not their own house.
Google announced Playground, a browser-based platform where users generate simple AI games from text prompts, test them offline or share them via a link; it launches in an experimental phase. A more advanced version built with Unity, Unity Spark, arrives later this year and will generate 3D games from text prompts using assets from the Unity store. Unity CEO Matt Bromberg said the technology is not about having AI regurgitate an already invented game.
Astrocade, a free online platform built around AI-generated games and experiences, now has 10 million monthly users, up from around five million in just the last four months, CEO Amir Sadeghian told Gamesbeat. The platform lets anyone create games and interactive experiences with AI tools that other users can then play, similar to Roblox, and it is preparing to launch an iOS app while marketing heavily in the United States.
After Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros., Paramount Games Studio and Warner Bros. Games will merge into a single combined games division. The item comes from a Reddit r/Games post and gives no timeline, structure, or affected titles.
Xbox chief strategy officer Matthew Ball said on X that Grand Theft Auto 6 will launch on Xbox on November 19, but it "will not be streaming exclusively or to PC." The statement followed a Verge report on October 6 that Xbox had secured the exclusive right to deliver GTA 6 via Xbox Cloud Gaming.
The Coalition studio head Mike Crump said the next Gears of War game "will not take nearly as long" to make, crediting Gears of War: E-Day with providing a "great foundation" for future entries. The previous game, Gears 5, launched in 2019, seven years before E-Day arrived this week on Xbox Series X|S and PC. Crump added that his leadership team has worked together for upwards of 20 years.
Rockstar North's Rob Nelson told IGN that physical intimacy is a "huge part" of the relationship between GTA 6's Jason and Lucia, and players will be able to "role-play" their relationship. GTA 6's ESRB rating cites nudity and strong sexual content, and an international rating mentions "sex scenes," though there is no indication these scenes would be interactive. Jason and Lucia don't have to be a couple and can instead be simply "partners in crime."