Australia's Fair Work Ombudsman posted an official Instagram guide explaining how citizens can request unpaid leave if they have no paid leave left to play GTA 6 on launch day. The guide notes that wanting to play the game does not give workers an automatic right to unpaid leave, though they can still negotiate with their employer. Grand Theft Auto 6 launches globally, including in Australia, on November 19 for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Digital Foundry reports that Sony has sold dozens of patents to Meta, a move that seemingly signifies the end of Sony's VR efforts. The report does not give the deal value, the specific patents, or any statement from either company.
Microsoft has announced a new division called Xbox XP, led by newly appointed XP President Kayleen Walters, formerly of Minecraft developer Mojang. The division will focus on four investment areas: Xbox Pictures, Xbox Products, Xbox Places, and Xbox Partnerships. Former Meta, Personio and Reddit executive Maria Angelidou-Smith is also being appointed as CEO of Mojang and Minecraft.
Xbox officially unveiled a new division called XP, focused on movies and TV, to be headed by Lucasfilm veteran and former Mojang president Kayleen Walters. XP covers four areas: Xbox Pictures, Xbox Products, Xbox Places, and Xbox Partnerships, handling film and TV, merchandise, live events and immersive experiences, and creator and brand collaborations. Xbox previously launched Xbox Entertainment Studios in 2012 and shut it down two years later.
Xbox announced a new internal division called XP covering film and television adaptations, consumer products, partnerships, and live experiences. Mojang president Kayleen Walters, who spent eight years at Microsoft on Minecraft and executive produced A Minecraft Movie, will head it. Former Reddit chief product officer Maria Angelidou-Smith replaces her at Mojang.
Google and Unity announced generative-AI game-making platforms yesterday, with Google's Playground available for testing in the US and Unity's Unity Spark listed as coming soon. Google said Playground lets users create, play and share custom games from a few prompts without coding experience, and will integrate with Unity Spark when creators want more professional mechanics and high-fidelity 3D. Unity said Spark is not about one-shotting game development, and a demo showed two people co-creating the sci-fi shooter Space Corridor while pulling assets from the Unity Store; Google did not say where Playground's assets come from.
State of Decay developer Undead Labs has spoken out after rebuying its independence and leaving Xbox last month. Eurogamer reported the statement and linked to further reading.
Google and Unity unveiled their own generative AI game-making platforms. One of them was demonstrated with a demo titled Space Corridor, which Eurogamer described as poor in quality.
Wizards of the Coast has confirmed to IGN that it did a small reprint of its four Magic: The Gathering Warhammer 40K Commander Decks, originally printed in 2022 as part of Universes Beyond, and they will be available to distributors and stores soon. Fans and WPN retailers should check with their distributors, as availability may vary by region. Wizards did not confirm whether the all-foil Collector's Edition versions would also be reprinted, and no price was given for the reprints, which originally retailed at a $59.99 MSRP.
Australia's workplace regulator, the Fair Work Ombudsman, released a graphic helping workers understand their rights for taking time off when GTA 6 launches this November. It notes that under the National Employment Standards, Australians can take unpaid leave only "under specific circumstances" such as caring duties or emergencies, not for playing a game, though workers can ask their boss. The game is predicted to make $5.2 billion in launch week alone and reportedly cost around $1.5 billion to make.
Xbox CTO Scott Van Vliet said the team has heard developer feedback and agrees that bringing a game to Xbox should be easier than it is today. He said Xbox is starting with areas that create unnecessary friction, including its concept and publishing processes. Xbox boss Asha Sharma also said at a recent Microsoft HQ meeting that the goal is to simplify publishing across Xbox consoles and PC.
AMD has confirmed plans to bring FSR 4 upscaling to the Radeon APUs used in handheld PCs, via both new APUs with native FSR 4 support and a lightweight version for older integrated graphics, both targeted for the end of 2026. RDNA 3-based handheld chips were already intended to get FSR 4 this year, but AMD has previously said RDNA 2-based Steam Deck and Steam Deck OLED support will take until 2027. FSR 4 offers sharper visuals than FSR 3.1 at the cost of a smaller performance boost.
Expression Games, the developer behind the Hell Let Loose franchise and co-developer on Star Wars Galactic Racer, has opened a physical studio in Manchester in response to the needs of its staff and co-development clients. The studio will not mandate office attendance or set working hours, and will continue to support remote working. CEO Errol Ismail said Hell Let Loose: Vietnam has sold a million units since its August release.
Brazil's licensed betting sites went dark on Oct. 6 after President Lula signed Provisional Measure 1,394 on Sept. 25, whose Article 16 bans betting-related advertising and sponsorship aimed at the Brazilian public and required sponsor branding removed within 10 days. Vivo Keyd Stars paused its Counter-Strike 2 project indefinitely on Sept. 30 and released its players, LOUD dismissed a CS2 roster, and MIBR, Fluxo W7M and FURIA removed betting sponsors from some or all communications while Legacy and Imperial still displayed Rainbet and Gamdom. BetBoom had held Brazilian broadcast rights or sponsorship across much of top-tier Counter-Strike, including BLAST Latin American Portuguese- and Spanish-language broadcasts, PGL Brazilian rights and ESL FACEIT Group Brazil broadcasts through 2026, and the status of those deals remains unclear. The measure lapses unless Congress approves it, with a deadline in January or February 2027, an amendment deadline extended to Oct. 13 and an Oct. 25 presidential runoff shaping what comes next.
AMD's Jack Huynh: FSR 4 Is Coming to Handhelds via a New Lightweight Model https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/10/amds-jack-huynh-fsr-4-is-coming-to-handhelds-via-a-new-lightweight-model
Game designer Richard Garriott has confirmed he will regain the rights to the Ultima series from Electronic Arts. He sold the series and his studio Origin Systems to EA in 1992 for $30 million, and under Section 203 of the US Copyright Act authors can terminate past copyright transfers after 35 years; he notified EA in April. Garriott said he gets the rights back officially in 2027 and is in active talks with EA about possible Ultima projects, after which he could re-release the earlier games or make sequels.
Star Wars Zero Company Success Allows Dev to Bring Back Staff https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2026/10/star-wars-zero-company-success-allows-dev-to-bring-back-staff
Star Wars Zero Company developer Bit Reactor has begun returning some furloughed developers to payroll, with staff numbers reportedly back to "more than half" of what they were before the furloughs. Studio boss Greg Foertsch said they hope to "eventually bring as many people back as possible." The furloughs became public through an ongoing lawsuit between Foertsch and former COO Alison Kelly, and some staff reportedly remain unpaid.
Gardens Interactive has raised over $35 million in a Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing its total funding to more than $70 million
Gardens Interactive has raised over $35 million in a Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing its total funding past $70 million. The studio, co-founded by veterans of Journey, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Sky: Children of the Light, is developing its debut multiplayer title Project Gardens, described as a "shared fantasy adventure" with "social roleplay elements."
Streamer KatieRouu was banned from Wardogs for exploiting the game's building mechanics to farm in-game money. She and her squad placed sniper lookout towers around a FOB, let the enemy capture it, then fired mortars at the structures from another FOB to earn cash and convert it into gold for skins. Wardogs developer Bulkhead's CEO Joe Brammer confirmed the exploit has been fixed for Season 2 and said the ban is final.
Chongqing has built a distinct identity in China's game industry through titles like My Time at Portia, My Time at Sandrock and Dyson Sphere Program from Pathea Games and Youthcat Studio. Pathea now has over 300 employees and Youthcat nearly 20, yet talent still flows to Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chengdu, and local capital remains more familiar with manufacturing. The Chongqing mini-game industry base unveiled in October 2025 has brought in 34 companies with over 200 office staff, pointing to two possible parallel paths ahead.
Bit Reactor has confirmed it is bringing some furloughed staff back to work to continue supporting Star Wars Zero Company. CEO Greg Foertsch said furloughing roughly 80% of the team before launch, after the studio ran out of money, was a difficult but necessary decision made internally without publisher EA's involvement. It is not yet clear whether everyone furloughed will return, and the studio says more updates on Bit Reactor and Zero Company are coming.
Paramount Skydance has formally completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, with the combined company renamed Skydance and its stock moving from Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD. The all-cash deal carries an equity value of $81 billion and an enterprise value of $110 billion, with shareholders receiving $31.01666668 per share in cash. Studios including Rocksteady, NetherRealm, TT Games, Avalanche Software and WB Games Montreal now fall under Skydance, and it has not been announced whether they will be folded into Paramount's own games division.
Why this: Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and readers can see the deal value, regulatory settlement terms, and where the game studios land.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records show Sony has sold 43 VR-related patents to Meta, and an agreement signed last December will eventually bring the total to over 400 global patents, including 180 in the US and 239 in Japan, China, Korea, Europe and other regions. PlayStation VR2 launched on February 22, 2023 at $549.99 / £529.99, and Sony published only two original games for it, Horizon Call of the Mountain and First Contact Entertainment's Firewall Ultra. In 2024 the headset got a price cut of more than 30% and PC support requiring an adapter, while Sony Interactive Entertainment's Eric Lempel called VR a meaningful but still nascent business.
The Coalition studio head Mike Crump has addressed reports that staff feared layoffs following the release of Gears of War: E-Day, telling the BBC that layoffs are out of the team's control and they should focus on shipping a great game. Crump said E-Day, which was largely built from scratch, will provide "a great foundation" for future entries, meaning the next game will not take nearly as long to make. Reports had said Xbox laid off story director Juan Vaca two weeks before release, and some staff worried about missing a contracted bonus tied to a Metacritic score, with the game currently at 87.
The September WeChat mini game bestseller Top 100 saw its churn rate fall from 25% in August to 23%, with only Call of Duty Mobile (No. 43) newly entering the Top 50 — the fewest new Top 50 titles so far in 2026. Zombie Cannon and Crazy Water World held the top two spots, while simulation management took three of the Top 10; among publishers, 37 Interactive Entertainment led with 7 titles, with Tencent Games and Dameng Longtu tied at 5 each.
The Coalition studio head Mike Crump told the BBC the next Gears of War game "will not take nearly as long" to develop, after Gears of War: E-Day took seven years following Gears 5. He declined to give specifics on whether the studio plans layoffs, saying the team focuses on what it can control. E-Day is an Xbox console exclusive and has posted the series' best numbers on Steam, but The Coalition has not announced any future projects.
Fireshine Games has acquired Fair Games, the developer of Necesse and a Danish indie studio. The deal was described as a defining moment for the studio.
Microsoft has reportedly reiterated its plan to have multiple Xboxes - of some description - for the next and 10th generation of consoles. The suggestion being that there's a main console accompanied by some kind of portable, on-the-go games machine. https://bit.ly/4yaYXjH
Xbox has denied reports suggesting it obtained exclusive game-streaming rights for Grand Theft Auto 6. Eurogamer relayed the response and linked to its report.
San-Ei Corporation and IID will host WePlay Expo JAPAN 2027 from April 2 to 4, 2027 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba, Japan. April 2 will be a business day, while April 3 and 4 will be open to the public. WePlay Expo has been held in China since 2017, and this marks the first time a WePlay exhibition is held in Japan.