Springloaded's upcoming sim Let's Build a Dungeon, arriving in early access in February, lets you run a game studio and design your own game. It simulates Steam's backend and SteamSpy-like sites with around 700 fictional games, and includes events like a hacker blackmailing you over a leak. A demo is available now.
The creator of the Total War: Warhammer 3 mod SFO: Grimhammer 3 has deliberately corrupted the mod to stop unauthorised reuploads, particularly those involving AI. Creator Venris said on Patreon that the mod will be made private if the situation escalates, and that updates will still release on Steam as always, with no paywall. The SFO mods aim to make the Warhammer games more lore-friendly while keeping battles entertaining, and the last update before this one was called Call of Bretonnia.
Memory shortages have pushed desktop and handheld PC prices up, keeping entry-level 1080p gaming in the low four figures, so the author tested a gaming laptop instead. A Medion Erazer Scout 15 with an RTX 5050 costs £850, cheaper than a DIY desktop build with monitor, Windows license and basic specs at about £1,100. It packs an Intel Core i5-13420H, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD and a 144Hz IPS screen, but battery life is poor and fan noise is loud.
Former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach and current NBC Football Night in America analyst Mike Tomlin has spent the last 12 years building a single Minecraft city, which he showcased in his account's first YouTube upload. The video has accrued 1.5 million views, with the official NFL and Minecraft accounts both commenting. Tomlin, who was convinced to share the project by his son Dino, later appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers and described playing Minecraft as "therapeutic."
The NBA's Miami Heat will rebrand as "Vice City" for its November 18 game against the Milwaukee Bucks as part of a GTA 6 promotion called "A Night In Vice City." The event will feature a specially constructed "Vice City Court," reimagined uniforms and special Vice City merchandise throughout Kaseya Center. Grand Theft Auto VI is scheduled to launch on November 19, 2026.
System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster is currently free to claim on the Epic Games Store until October 8, 2026, and stays in your library permanently once claimed. Nightdive Studios released the remaster in June 2025 with 4K/144fps support, mod support, and cross-play co-op for up to four players. Epic is also giving away Buried Stars this week, available to claim until the same date.
Blizzard has added the quest "Kyle's Gone Missing!" to World of Warcraft: Forever as part of the October 1 patch, now live on the beta. The quest originated in The Burning Crusade through a 2007 Make-a-Wish campaign for Ezra Chatterton, and was added after players requested it on the forums. Blizzard Principal Designer Johnny Cash said he brought the quest into Forever.
The Steam Autumn Sale for 2026 is now live and runs through 10 AM PT on October 8. Resident Evil Requiem, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and 007 First Light are each 30% off, while Endless Legend 2, Xenonauts 2, and Solasta 2 are half price. Far Cry 6 is down to $6 from its $60 RRP.
God of War Ragnarok is now cheaper than ever on PC, and GameSpot says it's worth picking up at that price. The game continues Kratos and Atreus's Norse story and includes the post-launch roguelite mode Valhalla, which has its own story plus per-run upgrades and attributes. No specific discount price is given.
The NBA's Miami Heat will be rebranded as Vice City for a game against the Milwaukee Bucks on 18th November 2026, the day before GTA 6 launches, in a collaboration with Rockstar. The court will be themed around the game's version of Vice City with GTA 6's pink marketing tones, and players will wear a custom kit yet to be revealed. A Vice City Collection of merchandise will also be sold, with t-shirts starting at $45 and snapback hats at $50.
In Aion 2, main story Episodes become locked at set points until the Ascension Gauge is filled. Completing Regional side quests raises the gauge by just under 5% each, and Episode quests also fill it, so players focused on the main story likely need only three or four extra Regional quests.
The WoW: Forever beta has reduced dungeon quest XP rewards by 50%, but only the bonus portion added on top of the base Classic values. The Wailing Caverns quest Deviate Hides, for example, still awarded 3,100 XP after the change. As this is a beta, the numbers remain subject to change.
A PC Gamer editor argues that hidden object games are a valid genre worthy of respect and recommends several titles. Find My Frogs and its sequel Branches have no timers or click limits, and Branches has a demo on Steam, while I Commissioned Some Bees 0 is free. Sniper Dan mixes hidden object with FPS, Cat Me If You Can is fully 3D, and Morels: The Hunt 2 is on sale for $5 (75% off) in the Steam Autumn sale.
IGN has already played eight of October's biggest releases and published previews, including Phantom Blade Zero (October 29), Castlevania: Belmont's Curse (October 15), Final Fantasy Resonance (October 22), Warhammer 40K: Boltgun 2 (October 14), Emberville (October 27), Planet Zoo 2 (October 13), Nintendo Switch Sports Resort (October 22), and Stupid Never Dies (October 22). Phantom Blade Zero offers three difficulty options but stays hard even on default, while Final Fantasy Resonance is described as the most impressive use of HD-2D the writer has seen.
To complete "In the Eternal Fire's Shadow" in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you must help an Eternal Fire Deacon at an old mine named "The Devil's Pit." Added in The Witcher 3's next-gen update in December 2022, the quest rewards the Forgotten Wolf School armor diagrams, which are modeled after the armor worn by Geralt in the Netflix series.
Over the past few days, X has been flooded with AI-generated game mashup mods, including Minecraft inside Elden Ring, Escape from Tarkov guns in Skyrim, and Skate 3 mechanics in Modern Warfare 2 layered inside Minecraft. Most of these mods don't appear to be downloadable yet and exist only as Twitter clips, and testing a Claude-coded mod that adds Minecraft items to Skyrim revealed missing blocks, misassigned materials, and an invisible wall. The author argues these mods do little to actually integrate the games' mechanics, feeling more like sandboxes built to generate viral clips than playable experiences.
Xbox has outlined the games coming to Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Xbox on PC, and Game Pass from October 5 to 9. Gears of War: E-Day and STAR WARS: Galactic Racer arrive October 6, while Echo Weaver joins Game Pass on October 8. The lineup also includes KINGDOM HEARTS Collection [I～III], Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival, and Neon Abyss 2, with release dates subject to change.
About 24 hours after Gears of War: E-Day opened to Premium Upgrade, Premium Edition and Collector's Edition owners, it peaked at 20,374 concurrent players on Steam, beating Gears 5's record of 10,196. Digital Foundry reported that Xbox and The Coalition developed a technique using the SSD as a new tier of memory to supplement the 10GB of GDDR6 on Series S, so that version does not get a stripped-back world. The full release is set for October 6.
SEGA and RGG Studio have released a new gameplay video for the 50-year action adventure saga STRANGER THAN HEAVEN, introducing the game's 1943 Minami, Osaka era, one of its five cities and eras. The game is due out for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store on January 15, 2027, and will also be available via Game Pass.
Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director Naoki Hamaguchi said the game's final Sephiroth battle, launching April 8, will be an all-out fight far surpassing those in Remake and Rebirth, with nods to the original's ultimate limit break. He said it is hard to tell whether the trilogy could become a template for others, since it required the same team and leader to stay stable for over 10 years. He also said Revelation keeps the same pacing approach as Rebirth, side content won't undercut the urgency of the approaching Meteor, and Yuffie, Vincent and Zack get more playable depth than before.
A World of Warcraft: Forever streamer was banned after encouraging viewers on stream to buy gold on his behalf. The game is currently in beta ahead of a November launch and is caught up in a gold-buying and real-money transaction controversy. Blizzard has said it will punish gold buyers more aggressively and admitted it was too lenient in the past, with accounts accepting large amounts of questionable gold facing gold removal, suspension, or permanent bans.
A review roundup for Star Wars: Galactic Racer calls it an all-time great racing game. The arcade racer is described as a blend of Burnout and Wipeout. The piece also notes that Star Wars Zero Company, released in late August, was well received and currently sits at a metascore of 85.
Eurogamer's review calls Star Wars: Galactic Racer both a surprisingly fun roguelite campaign and a racing treat for Criterion fans. Developed by Fuse Games, it uses two boosts, Afterburner and the faster Ramjet, which can redline and explode if held too long. The campaign runs across acts and planets on an FTL-style branching map, where winnings upgrade your craft but a lost final race costs those upgrades. Planets change Ramjet behaviour, such as icy worlds making it last longer. A review copy was provided by Secret Mode.
IGN reviews Star Wars: Galactic Racer, Fuse Games' racing game that it calls the first of its kind in over two decades, built around a roguelite campaign with no mid-race restarts. Vehicles span landspeeders, speeder bikes, and a new skim speeder class, and each speeder is scrapped between tours so upgrades must be re-earned. The review praises the detailed planets and Burnout-style takedowns but says the small number of planets makes repeated runs feel tedious.
AI developer Mitchell Hynes has released the original Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved to play for free in a web browser, and it is not Gearbox's 2003 PC port. Five hours after release it saw nearly 20,000 games at an average of 94 frames per second. Hynes said his website's "Suspected Phishing" flag came from an automatic Cloudflare flag rather than Microsoft, and the ban was soon lifted.
On its FY 2026 earnings call, Micron said memory demand will exceed supply in 2027 and 2028, with industry tightness greater than in 2026 and no line of sight to when supply and demand will rebalance. The company said it has already sold most of the memory it expects to produce next year at much higher prices than in 2026, and that new factories coming online in 2028 will not immediately improve availability or lower prices. Rising memory and storage costs have pushed Microsoft, Apple, Valve, Sony and Nintendo to raise hardware prices, while Micron and two other major RAM makers face a class action alleging they fixed supply and prices.
Polygon's Wishlister picks six upcoming Steam games whose eye-catching art styles landed them on its radar, including the hand-drawn small-town cozy game Vivarium, the comic-book-styled 2D platformer Rebounder, and the hand-drawn Metroidvania The Eternal Life of Goldman. The list also features the Doom-like shooter Cybrlich and the Death Cult of Labor, the two-player puzzle game Reason and Rhyme launching Oct. 15, and the monochromatic indie game Lelu.
Star Wars Galactic Racer is a silly racing roguelite starring Shade, a former racer turned cargo pilot who returns to the sport for revenge against the arrogant champion Kestar Bool. Rather than moral drama, it leans into absurd, near-indestructible racing through lava, canyons, and acid valleys, which makes it feel true to Star Wars racing. It has become one of this year's favorite games.
PC Gamer reviews Star Wars: Galactic Racer, an arcade racer from Fuse Games, a studio founded by ex-Criterion developers, published by Secret Mode at $60/£50 with multiplayer support. Its roguelite tour links races chosen from a node map, with builds built around managing afterburner and ramjet heat plus status effects like Cooled and Burning. The review praises the sense of speed but notes unclear track signposting, an autopilot ability that can steer into walls, and a flat story payoff.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is the first Star Wars racing game since 2002 and is being called the best arcade racing game in a generation. It features a bombastic John Williams-esque orchestral soundtrack, a vivid cast of squabbling alien racers, stark planetary biomes, and thrilling audio design.
Kotaku's review finds Star Wars: Galactic Racer expands the prequels' podracing into an arcade racer that runs smoothly at high speed, with distinct vehicle handling and a roguelike season campaign starring Shade against champion Kestar Bool. The reviewer spent 19 hours finishing the campaign, calling the on-foot segments lackluster and noting most podracing content sits in arcade events and multiplayer; the game launches October 6 on PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.
The person behind an AI-generated browser game called Fallout: New York, built with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, claims to have received a cease and desist from Bethesda parent company ZeniMax. The creator, posting as CHRIS FIRST, said the game is free and generates no money, and suggested the "fallout.nyc" domain may be the issue. Bethesda has been asked for comment.
Konami released a demo for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse today on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, XBOX Series X|S, and Steam, letting players try early content before the October 15, 2026 launch and carry progress into the full game. The exploratory 2D action game is co-developed by Konami, Evil Empire, and Motion Twin and is set in Paris in 1499, starring Rose Belmont, daughter of Trevor Belmont. Physical and digital preorders are open, with Midnight Editions including alternate outfits, a Digital Sound & Art Gallery, and an in-game relic item, plus an Alucard-style outfit for early buyers.
Why this: Konami has launched a demo for Castlevania: Belmont's Curse and set its release date, with progress carrying over, so readers can plan a try and a preorder.
Game Informer's review calls Star Wars: Galactic Racer, developed by Fuse Games, an excellent racing roguelite whose campaign follows a run to join the Galactic League and beat champion Kestar Bool across multiple planets, with too many losses dropping you from the tournament. It notes the lack of a minimap and a steep early learning curve, and says being forced to use podracers in certain campaign events, where a loss can end a run, stayed frustrating. After about 20 hours the author kept playing Arcade, Scenario, and multiplayer, which offers six-race tournaments, pre-race bets, XP leveling, and cosmetic unlocks.
VGC's review calls Star Wars: Galactic Racer one of the best arcade racers in years, set after the fall of the Empire and following a mysterious racer named Shade seeking revenge on racing star Kestar Boole. Its campaign is run-based, with each session granting a league entry token that is lost if the race objective is failed, forcing the whole series to restart, while rewards upgrade the ship. Takedowns and the classic Burnout camera show its lineage, and the three vehicle types plus harder pod racing round out the package.
Gears of War: E-Day opened to early access players yesterday for those who bought the Premium Edition, Premium Upgrade Edition, or Collector's Edition, and some players noted missing legacy features such as chainsaw duels, meat shields, select past weapons, private lobbies, and leaderboards. In a statement timed with the launch, The Coalition said those features may arrive post-launch or in its next title, explaining that it rebuilt the gameplay sandbox from scratch for a more unified experience across campaign, PvE, and PvP. The first season runs eight weeks from the early access release to 1st December, ranked PvP arrives on 13th October, and the game's general release is 6th October.