PC Gamer's FOV 90 column is running a single-elimination tournament to decide the greatest FPS mode, with readers casting the votes. Round 1 pits 16 modes against each other, including Team Deathmatch vs FFA, Battle Royale vs Extraction, and Bomb Defusal vs Hostage. Voting closes Saturday, October 3 at 11:59 PM PDT, with results and Round 2 to follow next week.
Dune: Awakening arrived on PS5 and Xbox as part of a large update that added new story content, a full single-player mode, and the option to avoid PvP entirely. After over a dozen hours on PS5, the author says the game controls well on a gamepad, its harvesting and combat avoid tedium, and online sessions run with almost no lag. It previously launched on PC.
Valve shipped a large update for Deadlock, which is still not officially released, adding six new heroes: Nurse Harrow, Rat King, Solomon, Deadman Danny, Baba and Violet. The update also reworks the visuals of all three main lanes and adds four districts, improves UI and HUD elements such as healthbars and an event feed, reworks the ping system, and adds over 10,000 non-ping voice lines with a dialogue player. It further introduces a parry cooldown display, custom lobbies supporting up to eight spectators, and accessibility options including enemy colour changes, auto movement and firing, and voice over subtitles.
Capcom producer Genki Sunano told Kotaku that the Switch 2 version of Monster Hunter Wilds was not a simple scaled-down port but a rebuild aimed at delivering a natural Wilds experience on the console, targeting a stable 30 FPS in handheld mode even during four-player hunts. The team evaluated assets and underlying processing one by one, rebuilt certain assets and shaders, and kept new visual effects aligned with existing hitboxes and collision detection. Sunano said the process was painstaking and at times seemingly endless, and that the lessons will feed into performance improvements for existing platforms ahead of Monster Hunter Wilds: Ascendance. Monster Hunter Wilds comes to Nintendo Switch 2 on December 4.
The author liked Battlefield 2042 and No Man's Sky at launch even as both were widely criticized, enjoying their eerie solitude and odd physics. EA overhauled BF 2042's maps and refocused on 64-player modes, while Hello Games spent a decade turning No Man's Sky into a redemption story. Hello Games founder Sean Murray says he still has a soft spot for the original 2016 version.
Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer acknowledged in a video responding to YouTuber JbowenDaMan that Wardogs' endgame is "a bit sh*t" right now, while saying the studio is fine with something being overpowered for a season and underpowered the next. The 100-player FPS has been in early access for almost three weeks and has a serious XP grind. Bulkhead also plans Tarkov-style skills that improve through repetition and persist across seasons, plus a future "intel" resource for unlocking gun parts and attachments.
Activision confirmed that Shipment, one of the Call of Duty franchise's most notorious maps, is returning in this year's Modern Warfare 4, after fans spotted it in the newly released PC trailer. Shipment debuted in 2007's Modern Warfare 4 as a tiny map full of shipping containers where players can be wiped out at spawn. Activision did not say whether it will be among the 12 6v6 maps at launch or arrive later. Modern Warfare 4 launches on October 23 for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, and PC.
Activision confirmed in a new Modern Warfare 4 blog that the game will include a brand-new multiplayer mode called Collateral, similar to Counter-Strike and Valorant. The round-based mode has teams alternate attacking and defending two bomb sites, with players starting on a pistol and earning cash for kills and objectives to buy armor, equipment, pistols, and higher-tier weapons between rounds. Dying loses the current loadout but keeps earned cash, and respawns, killstreaks, automatic health regeneration, and custom loadouts are disabled; the game will also include the cash-based Inflation mode seen in last month's beta.
Arc Raiders executive producer Aleksander Grøndal told Game Developer at Gamescom that Embark Studios has struggled to balance serving over 16 million players with its own workforce, which he says is "super tired." He said the studio confirmed around four months ago that it would drop monthly updates to ease pressure on the team, and that constant overshooting of capacity plus maintenance work forced content plans to be cut. Grøndal also described taking five months of sick leave from burnout during his 15 years at EA.
Rebecka Coutaz, VP and GM of Battlefield Studios Europe, detailed how DICE reorganized its development approach after Battlefield 2042's disastrous launch. Battlefield 6 was developed from the start by four studios—DICE, Criterion, Motive Studios, and Ripple Effect—and sold over 7 million copies in its first three days, becoming the best-selling game of 2025 in the US.
GameLook got early hands-on time with The Unsleeping Wild's single-player exploration, combat and two-player stages through an offline event ahead of the ongoing closed test. The demo opened up three abilities — freeze, metal attraction and stone creation — that also feed into combat. Official descriptions say co-op is optional, with multiplayer covering map traversal, puzzles and reshaping terrain to create openings for teammates.
NTE's 1.4 update is live, adding the Puka Park amusement park map to Hethelo City with rides and anomaly-themed minigames, plus a new main story chapter and the medieval location Saint Albo Town. The second half of 1.4 will feature a crossover with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, teased in the preview stream with keywords and the song God knows. The update also adds tower defense, two-player PvP and card-flipping modes, a second Porsche collaboration and the Puka Plan reward system.
Epic has confirmed that Five Nights at Freddy's is joining Fortnite for this year's Fortnitemares event. A new trailer shows Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria as a map location, with Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy appearing as bosses, and Fortnitemares begins 1st October. The crossover had been rumoured for months, with the pizzeria appearing on the island during Fortnite's Override season.
Minecraft Dungeons II launches September 29 on Xbox Series X|S, PC, Cloud and other platforms. Mojang design director Laura De Llorens said on the Official XBOX Podcast that the sequel adds jumping, an interconnected world you can walk across, the new Sift dimension, armor split into four pieces, talismans and a reworked enchantment system. Multiplayer adapts when players join or leave and now mixes couch co-op with online play.
Embark Studios announced a PvE matchmaking test for Arc Raiders running from 13th to 20th October, letting players choose between the friendlier PvE version and the regular version. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal said around 37 percent of raiders are friendly co-op players, 34 percent are PvP-focused and the remaining 27 percent are a mix. The test supports solo, duos and trios, omits PvP-designed map conditions such as night raids and hidden bunkers, and lowers loot value in PvE matchmaking; Grøndal said it does not mean a permanent PvE mode will be added.
At Meta Connect, Meta announced two AI-powered game tools, Horizon Create for mobile and Horizon Studio for browsers, which let users build 2D and 3D games from text prompts and publish them to Facebook and Instagram. Meta also unveiled VR Glasses, five times lighter than Meta Quest 3 with a 5K infinite micro-OLED display, supported by Unity 6.6 through OpenXR, launching in Spring 2027 at $1,299.99.
Bungie announced short- and long-term plans for Marathon in a blog post, saying it wants to keep the extraction mode while adding more approachable experiences with different levels of intensity and commitment. October's Nightfall refresh brings a regular and a free permanent NuCaloric rewards pass, recurring sponsored kit queues, and larger access windows for the end-game Cryo Archive. December pushes the PvE mode Symbiosis, adds an experimental Team Deathmatch mode, a new shell, a reworked Perimeter map with new zones, a new PvE pinnacle encounter and a fungal aesthetic, while next March is set to add interconnected permanent PvE, PvP and PvEvP experiences, a new onboarding experience, a more focused questline and narrative, a new zone and a new alien enemy.
Bungie said in a new blog post that Marathon will be "growing beyond extraction," keeping its PvEvP experience while adding more ways to play. The upcoming Symbiosis update will bring the long-promised PvE mode and an experimental Team Deathmatch PvP mode, alongside a new shell named Bishop. Perimeter will get a fungus-driven visual overhaul with new routes, and a new zone plus a CyAc-sponsored social hub with a firing range are slated for March.
Xbox carried out a second wave of layoffs this week and shifted studio management away from Xbox directly to Bethesda or Activision, with Obsidian moving to Bethesda and Rare, World's Edge and Halo moving to Activision. Ninja Theory faces closure, Halo Studios was nearly dismantled by layoffs and World's Edge was halved. Communities around Hellblade, Outer Worlds, Forza, Age of Empires and Sea of Thieves reacted with sadness and concern, while Ninja Theory, Obsidian and Rare have not commented publicly.
Modder Yui has released a seamless co-op mod for Dark Souls 2 in alpha form, allowing up to five friends to play through the entire game together in one session. The mod syncs progression and NPC dialogue, removes co-op zone barriers, and adds a streamlined connection system plus difficulty scaling options. It requires Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin updated to version 1.03 and is available on Nexus Mods or Github.
Alinea Insight estimates WARDOGS sold 2.2 million copies and earned about $70 million on Steam in its first week after entering Early Access on September 10, outpacing ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2 over the same period. It reports roughly 11% wishlist conversion, with the highest player overlap in sandbox tactical games such as Arma and Gray Zone Warfare and only 9.3% with ARC Raiders. The game sits at about 74% positive reviews, with complaints centered on server queues and streamer priority, rising above 86% among players with more than five hours.
After about three hours with Rayman Legends Retold, Eurogamer's author says his worry that the shift from 2D to 2.5D would spoil the original's music levels did not hold up. In interviews, Ubisoft Milan animation and realisation director Marco Renso and Ubisoft Montpellier brand producer Loïc Gounon said the new tracks include levels inspired by the Macarena and MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This, bringing the game to about a dozen music levels alongside the six originals. The team said physics and collision still run on the UbiArt Framework while visuals and audio are rendered in another engine, and the game has moved from 1st October to 3rd December.
Bungie announced in a developer video and blog post that it plans to restore Destiny 2 content archived in the game's digital Vault, making vaulted campaigns, destinations, and raids available to all players again. The studio said years of updates mean the content needs reworks such as updated lighting, combat encounters, and combatants, and it will share progress in the coming months. Bungie also said Marathon did not reach as many players as hoped and will be expanded into a deeper survival experience, with more details due later this week and content still planned for the October Nightfall Refresh and December Symbiosis updates.
Activision's Team Ricochet, which runs Call of Duty's anti-cheat efforts, cited data claiming cheating in games is an $8.5 billion industry. An Anybrain-commissioned survey of 250 US and UK developers found 69% of studios consider cheating a "significant or very significant problem," with over half reporting measurable drops in player retention or revenue loss. 76% of respondents have implemented anti-cheat measures, and 88% plan to increase anti-cheat investment over the next 12 months.
Game Informer interviewed the World of Warcraft: Forever team at BlizzCon, with lead game designer Tim Jones and lead software engineer Nora Mills discussing new zones like Mount Hyjal and Riverglades, Azeroth's new lighting and particle system, and plans to improve the leveling experience for all players. The interview also covered add-on support, pricing for the new Skyborne elf race, and how Blizzard plans to implement future content such as new classes, including the long-requested Tinkerer.
inZOI producer Kim Hyung-jun said in a group interview that the game has undergone major system reworks since its Steam Early Access launch on March 28, 2025, and will get a full release next year with cat raising and over a hundred outfits. He said he does not regret the Early Access decision, and highlighted multiplayer, Online AI NPCs, and the "Canvastown" feature as key iteration points.
Curve Games has partnered with independent developer Wayfinder Studios to publish its online co-op RPG Wyldheart. Curve described the deal as the next phase of its roadmap after being acquired by Nazara Technologies last May for £21.7 million. Sweden-based Wayfinder Studios was founded in 2020 by EA DICE veterans, and Wyldheart has more than 375,000 Steam wishlists and raised €248,000 on Kickstarter.
At the BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremony, Blizzard officially revealed Diablo V for spring 2029 and a StarCraft open-world shooter led by former Far Cry lead Dan Hay targeting a 2030 launch. Diablo IV comes to Switch 2 on September 15, Warcraft III: Reforged gets the new Forsaken Kingdom campaign today, and World of Warcraft Forever arrives on November 4 with a beta starting September 17. The next World of Warcraft update, Midnight Eclipse, and the expansion The Last Titan are aiming for 2027.
At the BlizzCon 2026 Opening Ceremony, Blizzard President Johanna Faries announced that Heroes of the Storm is getting its first new hero in six years, Xal'atath, a ranged assassin from World of Warcraft: Midnight who wields Void abilities and arrives later this month. Blizzard shared her ability kit with Game Informer via a press release, including the Void Volley trait, Dark Heart Ritual, Void Step, Shadow Mark, and the heroics Void Eruption and Void Convergence. Faries also said another hero might be on the way in the near future.
Battlefield Studios unveiled a 2026 roadmap for Battlefield 6 in a video called The Year Ahead, confirming Seasons 3, 4 and 5 are in development. Season 3 arrives in May with remakes of Golmud Railway and Battlefield 3's Grand Bazaar, plus battle royale solos and ranked play for Redsec. Season 4 in July adds naval combat with a dynamic wave system, aircraft carriers and new naval vehicles across Tsuru Reef and a Wake Island remake, along with custom lobbies and Spectator Mode, while Season 5 will bring three maps. Persistent servers and a server browser, including self-hosting, are also planned for 2026.
Battlefield Studios announced that Battlefield 6 will be free to play from March 17 to March 24, accessible through the already free-to-play Battlefield Redsec with a new Battlefield 6 Free Trial section in the main menu. The trial offers Casual Breakthrough, All-out Warfare and a third playlist showcasing the new Nightfall mode and its map, with All-out Warfare covering Conquest, Breakthrough and Escalation across Contaminated, Hagental Base, Eastwood and Mirak Valley. Progression is shared with Redsec and unlocks carry over to the full version, and March 17 also marks the start of Season 2's second stage alongside a large update.
Bungie's extraction shooter Marathon has officially launched, peaking at 88,337 concurrent players on Steam, a little over half of the 143,621 peak concurrent from its Server Slam test. The open test had offered almost all classes, two maps and many gameplay and progression systems. The game currently holds a Very Positive user review rating on Steam based on over 4,600 reviews, and the author notes the weekend may push numbers closer to the Server Slam heights.
Blizzard unveiled Diablo 4's Season of Slaughter, running March 11 until the Lord of Hatred expansion launches April 28. The season adds the ability to become The Butcher, a Killstreak system, Bloodied Items, and a Doom: The Dark Ages collaboration with mostly paid skins. A free Paladin trial runs March 11 to 18 on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, capped at level 25.
Bungie's Marathon launched its free Server Slam open test on Steam, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, reaching a peak of 143,621 concurrent players on Steam about 12 hours after servers went live. For comparison, Arc Raiders drew 189,668 concurrent players at its own pre-launch server test. Marathon releases March 5 on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
Netmarble has announced the release date for The Seven Deadly Sins: Origin, an open-world action RPG set in the world of the anime and manga but telling an original story, with players taking the role of Prince Tristan of the Kingdom of Liones. It launches on PC (Steam) and PS5 on March 16, with the global mobile release on iOS and Android following a week later on March 23, and pre-registration is open on the official website. Beyond combat and team building, the game also includes fishing, cooking and foraging.
The Battlefield 6 Season 2 gameplay reveal will stream today on the official Battlefield YouTube channel at 8am PT, 11am ET and 4pm GMT. Season 2 goes live on February 17, with the medium-large map Contaminated available at launch, set in the mountains of Germany around a former NATO airbase. The season will also bring new weapons, new gadgets and the return of the AH-6 Little Bird helicopter, with a more detailed roadmap to follow today's reveal.