Ubisoft has disclosed a valuable trade secret in its latest annual financial report. It appears that, if a developer takes a really long time to make a video game that isn't as bulletproof as GTA 6, fans might stop caring.

The Far Cry creator identifies in its report, spotted by Game File, that "an inappropriate release schedule" can be grave for a video game business. Releasing slipshod games too early will never work, but "conversely, releasing a game too late – when market anticipation has waned and it no longer meets market standards in a highly competitive environment – can also hinder its success."

Ubisoft addresses the issue in only vague terms, but it still sounds like the company is making a quiet self-admonishment here. Ubisoft, which has disposed of over 2,000 workers in the past two years alongside a few passionate swears of loyalty to generative AI, is working with a clogged tank.

Fans of Ubisoft's big FPS series have been waiting on Far Cry 7 since 2021. We can apparently expect to get more Ghost Recon at some point in the next three years, though it's been seven years since Breakpoint, and Ubisoft recently killed its developer Red Storm, laying off 105. Beyond Good and Evil 2 is now a legal adult – the sequel was first announced in 2008.

To that last point, Beyond Good and Evil 2 creative director Fawzi Mesmar said earlier this year that the action-adventure game's team is still committed to "delivering a remarkable game for our players to enjoy." When? That's classified.

Though, Ubisoft provides a sort of answer in its annual report, admitting that issues like an overly long release cycle can cause "damage to the game's reputation and brand image, loss of players (disappointment of players who would turn to the competition)." So the real reply to "When?" is actually, "It doesn't matter anymore."

After laying off thousands, Ubisoft says losing "key talents and skills" is a big danger for the company.

Solo developer Mateo Covic, best known for co-op rage game Paddle Paddle Paddle, received a lot of attention online following his arguments against Valve's Steam refund policy, which he called exploitable after seeing players refund his game even after beating it and, sometimes, leaving a positive review (in some cases, bragging in their review about pulling off the refund). Covic told us that he's staunchly "100% pro refund" and is very happy with how his game's performed overall, and we also discussed the unique pressures that may face short games purely as a function of how Steam works.

If your game can be beaten in under two hours, which is Steam's default refund window, it's at much greater risk of this sort of refund abuse (which is, to be clear, banned under Valve's own rules, though those won't stop everyone). Many people told Covic that he should simply make a longer or more replayable game to dodge the two-hour window. While he's open to massaging other parts of Steam refunds, agrees that Valve's policy is good for players, and acknowledges that a pretty small percentage of players actually abuse refunds this way, he rejects this stance on game development outright.

"A game is ready when it's ready, and I don't even think about the playtime during development," he explains. "I want to develop small, fun and affordable games and so far no one had a problem with that. Paddle Paddle Paddle had fantastic reviews, streamers loved it, and I was super happy how the game turned out.

"I will never stretch out a game with more content just to avoid refunds. I will shut up and take the refunds in the future and this tweet showed me that Steam is a hard market but I'm not willing to change my development approach!"

Covic says he actually tried expanding one of his earlier games, Makis Adventure, with extra content. He ultimately found that, even with positive Steam reviews, those extra sections were the weakest link in the chain. Makis Adventure did see longer average playtimes, but Paddle Paddle Paddle performed incomparably better.

Short games absolutely have an audience. Covic highlights A Short Hike, which he beat in about an hour and a half and calls "probably one of the best evenings I had with a game," as one example. He also likes the Fears to Fathom series. Covic says this is the type of game he most enjoys making right now, and won't allow whatever nebulous market pressure to dissuade him.

These are some of the best short games you can spend an afternoon on.

Years into a restructuring that's seen it shed thousands of jobs and multiple high-profile creative veterans, Ubisoft leadership considers losing key staff and failing to attract new talent to be significant risks for the company.

Ubisoft's latest annual report contains an updated assessment of "risk factors that could affect its performance, its reputation, the achievement of its strategic and financial goals, and its share price."

One subsection singles out "risks related to talent," with "loss of key talent and skills" listed as high risk and "lack of attractiveness to key talent" as moderate risk.

These points are explored in more depth later in the report, and the verbiage is fascinating not just in the context of Ubisoft's own overhaul, but amid the broader brain drain afflicting the games industry after devastating layoffs and studio closures which have forced many people out of games altogether, temporarily or permanently.

Xbox just added 1,600 people – soon to be 3,200 – to the growing list of games layoffs. Ubisoft itself is down to a much leaner 16,590 staff according to the report – a dramatic cut from 18,666 in late 2024, and that was after more than 2,000 layoffs already. Ubisoft's pace has averaged roughly 1,000 people cut per year over the past four years. Even as it makes these cuts, Ubisoft says it has to be careful about staff retention.

"The sudden departure of members of the games core teams could be damaging to the Group's development and could have a significant impact on its editorial policy," Ubisoft observes.

"The Group's success also depends on its teams' know-how and skills in a highly competitive international market. Indeed, the video game industry requires a certain number of innovative skills at the cutting edge of their respective fields. The Group is therefore exposed to a situation of dependence on certain key talents whose creativity or technical expertise is rare and highly valued in the market (artificial intelligence, cloud gaming, data, etc)."

To help mitigate these risks, Ubisoft says it's established a succession plan for executive officers and is working toward "the gradual implementation" of a similar plan for key roles like creative director, producer, and studio general manager. Various corporate muscles have also been flexed – including "the monitoring of commitment levels" and "the development of a differentiated compensation policy" – to help promote leadership skills, knowledge sharing, and training.

Ubisoft's report notes high turnover, "particularly for senior talented individuals in key roles," as a relevant factor here, alongside inadequate training, the need for new skills, and a working environment that "does not meet the aspirations of talented individuals."

This connects nicely to the report's discussion of bringing in new talent. "Ubisoft faces increasing pressure from not only its direct competitors in the video game sector, but also from competitors in other sectors/industries in search of the same talents (engineers, etc.)," the report continues.

In this space, Ubisoft targets an evolved and "selective recruitment, development and retention policy" as a way to bring in and hold onto people, promote career advancement, build a "welcoming and inclusive" workplace, and engender "continuous learning."

In one of the most interesting lines in the whole 356-page report, Ubisoft directly acknowledges the conflict between its actions (laying people off) and these aspirations (finding and keeping people), describing the "development of a deep-rooted corporate culture, promoting well-being at work, allowing talented team members to reach their full potential, despite a transformation plan that is necessary to return to the expected level of performance."

The company's report underscores a growing problem in the industry: great games cannot just be made by anyone, and, in this consolidation-heavy time, that may mean that a company gaining an IP but losing the people who defined it doesn't really get it much in the end. In fact, everyone loses out.

I'm reminded of a quote from New Blood head Dave Oshry, who I spoke to as part of a larger 2025 report about what people get wrong about game development.

"With the exception of solo devs, games are an artistic endeavor that require the cooperation of handfuls, dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people at once working together to create interactive art," Oshry said. "You can put all the great programmers, artists, animators and sound designers you want in the same building but that doesn't mean they can make a great game. Great games are made by great teams that work great together. It helps when they're all friends, too."

"This is not how I imagined it would end": Ubisoft to lay off Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at its Barcelona studio, with one calling the remake's release "bittersweet."

id Software producer Andrew Willis can only see one way through the Microsoft mess as the company begins executing its plans to bulldoze 3,200 jobs at Xbox: studios owned by workers, rather than executives who don't mind setting fire to, say, 3,200 jobs.

Willis mourned the layoffs – which already impacted 136 of id Software's total 185 staff members – in a LinkedIn post earlier this week, calling the layoffs an "incomprehensible decision," and remarking that "the game industry is being run by people who do not fundamentally understand anything about it, not even how it generates value or profit." He's decided in a new post, then, that "the only way to fix the video game industry at this point is for developer owned studios to start rising from these studio closures and layoffs."

Doom studio id Software, of course, was originally created by Doom's developers in 1991, but Willis also seems in favor of true worker cooperatives where all of a business' employees double as owners who can guide direction. A co-op is not impervious to problems – worker-owned Dead Cells developer Motion Twin had a public falling out with the game's lead dev after a disagreement in 2024, for example – but I think many people would prefer interpersonal drama to receiving an email from a CEO you've never met informing you that something like 3,531,840 more people in your field have just been laid off.

So, Willis, who also helped lead id Software's unionization efforts in 2025, says, "We've got to learn from the past, be fiscally responsibly, and create an environment of sustainable growth (though growth should be a byproduct of success, not a goal in and of itself)."

"Its the only path forward I can see," he reiterates. "These large publishers and monopolies have proven themselves terrible stewards and somehow even worse financial managers." To his point, although Microsoft Gaming had already eliminated 2,500 jobs in 2024, and Microsoft killed about 15,000 more jobs in 2025, Xbox began 2026 with its overall revenue 9% down in a hole.

"If the people who create the value own that value, good things will follow," Willis concludes. Makes sense to me.

Microsoft lays off Bethesda vet behind Todd Howard's "crazy" Fallout 4 idea, "too many Skyrim weapons to count," the Dwemer, and Mudcrabs – and he may leave games altogether.

It's all go for Palworld right now. The monster-hunting survival game just went 1.0, to absolutely incredible results, and a dating sim spin-off is currently in the works. According to developer Pocketpair, more is coming, including some surprises you may want to watch out for.

"We're thinking carefully about what we might do next," John 'Bucky' Buckley, the head of publishing and communications at Pocketpair, tells Game8. "We've got some spin-offs we're experimenting with, and hopefully we'll be able to figure out how to keep expanding the Palworld universe."

One of these is More Than Just Pals, the romantic social adventure wherein you play a new transfer student at Private Palpagos Academy, which looks obscenely fun. I mean, there's apparently the option to eat your fellow students, and what could be more appealing?

There are no hints about what these other side games could be, but a Pokémon Stadium-esque release seems like an easy win. Of course, Pocketpair will never beat the comparisons if this does happen, but at the same time, why not?

Buckley is clear that Palworld as a property is going to get bigger and bigger. Pocketpair has "a few other little secret things in development," he adds. "The IP is gonna keep growing."

When you consider the game managed to draw in over 885,000 concurrent players on the back of the update 1.0, there's room for a lot of confidence in the existing release and where the property could go. Pocketpair's sense of humor and creativity are such that I believe the devs would approach things with the right attitude and expectations, too.

Where this all leads is an open prospect, as Buckley acts coy about committing to what Palworld may look like in five years. If the first two are anything to go by, whatever it is will be big.

Palworld 1.0 redesigns multiple Pals and makes them look less like Pokemon

Palworld 1.0 is finally here, over two years on from its monumental early-access launch, but once upon a time, Pocketpair's creature-collecting survival game could have fallen into a very different genre – albeit still with all the cute Pals that fans have grown to love.

While often compared to Pokemon when it comes to its creature collecting aspects, and the likes of Ark with its survival gameplay, speaking in a recent interview with Game8, head of communications and publishing at Pocketpair John "Bucky" Buckley explains that Palworld was originally supposed to be a factory game like Satisfactory.

"It started life as, 'Wouldn't it be fun to have a factory game like Satisfactory, but instead of machines, it was little creatures? Wouldn't it be fun if those little creatures were each their own individual, rather than just miscellaneous creatures that were working? Wouldn't it be fun if [there was] creature collecting?'" he begins. "And then it turned into open world and survival crafting naturally. The game has changed a lot from the original concept, but I think the core idea of Factory Sim with your Pals is still there."

Of course, we can still see some elements of Palworld's factory sim inspirations in the game today. Your Pals are capable of using workbenches to craft things for you, for example, or farm things for you.

It makes me wonder if Pocketpair could ever release a spin-off that leans even more into the factory sim genre in the future. After all, the devs are already making Palfarm – you guessed it, a farming game – as well as, uh, Palworld ~ More than Just Pals, a dating sim which (for better or worse) isn't an elaborate April Fool's Day joke.

Palworld devs "had high expectations for 1.0," but with over 855,000 concurrent Steam players, lead says "this is staggering."

Meccha Chameleon, the latest "friendslop" hit on Steam to take over our social media feeds, is officially so popular that it's spurring shameless clones.

It's no secret that Meccha Chameleon has absolutely dominated the web for the past month or so, with its unique Prop Hunt-esque hide-and-seek gameplay. Flying by seven million sales in under two weeks on Valve's PC platform, it was only a matter of time before the new indie gem would spur copies from other developers – and that it has.

Scribble Hunt is one such copy, sitting on Steam with screenshots that look straight out of Meccha Chameleon.

Developed by mysterious studio "Scribble Bunny," Scribble Hunt sounds a whole lot like the smash-hit game from lemorion_1224, too. "Paint the bunny man and blend into the scene like a chameleon," reads its description. "2–10 player online hide-and-seek. Sample colors, match the lighting, tune your materials – disguise yourself to perfection and slip away right under the Hunters' gaze."

And, erm, yes… there is an AI-generated content disclosure declaring that "some store page images and promotional art of this game are made with generative AI."

Interestingly, as pointed out by South Korean outlet INVEN, the game's name is perhaps the most egregious "rip-off" of all here. In Korean, it translates to – you guessed it – Meccha Chameleon. This feels far too close for comfort, perhaps paving the way to potential legal issues.

I'm instantly reminded of other recent supposed game "clones," like Monster Fantasy and, of course, Pickmos, which made headlines for similar reasons.

The maps showcased in Scribble Hunt look like fan-created Meccha Chameleon maps as well (I mean, that is the Art Museum map redone, is it not?), but we can't see too much of the game yet. As for its release date, it isn't out yet – and Scribble Bunny doesn't disclose when it'll launch, either, simply stating that it's coming sometime this month.

If I'm honest, though, I'm not certain it'll last… at least not in its current state.

I suppose only time will tell what ends up happening to Scribble Hunt – it might make a comeback with a different name and design, if nothing else.

Searching for more to look forward to? Browse our quick roundup of the best upcoming indie games to anticipate, or our rundown of the coolest new games underway.

Gerard Way, the frontman of My Chemical Romance and known multi-hyphenate, made a detrimental confession to his street cred during one of his band's shows at Wembley Stadium. Apparently, he hasn't yet played Baldur's Gate 3, a crime Larian Studios is eager to remedy as soon as is humanly possible.

There are less conspicuous places to announce the gaps in your video game knowledge than to around 90,000 fans in a sold-out concert, but Way has never been one to do things by half. A question emerged from the crowd in between songs asking whether the singer had ever played Baldur's Gate 3.

"No, I only played Baldur's Gate 1," he said in response. "Not that I probably wouldn't have liked two and three. I did play the Icewind Dale expansion; I just ran out of time, y'know?"

I'll give him that - all three Baldur's Gate games are the dictionary definition of timesinks. You can spend hundreds of hours in them, and completing any when you have other responsibilities is an accomplishment.

Way turns his attention to the fan and asks for their opinion on 3. "Is it good?" he says. "I would assume so, the first one was a lot of fun, it was the closest thing at the time to playing Dungeons and Dragons."

This is a quality echoed by the sequels, each one capturing different aspects of what exploring the Forgotten Realms in tabletop form feels like. Naturally, once Larian caught wind of this, it immediately offered Way a copy of the threequel on the house.

"Gerard, there's a Baldur's Gate 3 code with your name on it if you fancy trying it, lots of love, Larian," the studio tweeted. It tagged Way's old Twitter account, but it's been disused since 2016. I can tell you Frank Iero, the band's rhythm guitarist, is quite active on Instagram, and might be more easily grabbed for attention on the matter.

Outside of that, you may need to contact their PR and hope the request gets through. I interviewed Way once upon a time, through DC Comics, so getting him on the line isn't impossible. Roll for it, Larian, and see what happens.

Baldur's Gate 4 could've been headed by a Baldur's Gate 2 veteran, but the RPG legend "wouldn't want to compete" against Larian: "That would be insanity"

Black Flag Resynced codes are in high demand, as they can be used to claim free rewards in this updated swashbuckling adventure. Some are cosmetic, such as fresh sails to adorn your ship, but you can also redeem them to get Animus keys – and there's enough on offer to unlock one of three new swords for Edward Kenway to wield. To find out more, here are all of the Black Flag codes and how to redeem them for rewards.

All Black Flag Resynced codes

The following Black Flag Resynced codes can be redeemed for rewards:

• ACBF-PHGN-SYBJ-RTRF – 1,500 Animus keys, Crimson Storm Sails
• ASC-BFR-PMK-000 – Shipmate Monkey Pet

Neither of these Black Flag codes have an official expiry date, although when the first one was announced producer Justin Ng said it "will remain available for a limited redemption period" – so make sure you claim it as soon as you can.

There are also some other routes to claim rewards for Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, such as:

• Watch 2 hours of Twitch streaming – Rustborne Swords (expires August 2, 2026)
• Watch 4 hours of Twitch streaming – Cheetah Claw Cat Pet (expires August 2, 2026)
• Complete Red Bull Quiz – Wings of the Tempest Sails (expires September 30, 2026)

For the Twitch Drops you simply need to watch participating streams for the length of time stated, which is cumulative so you don't need to do it in one sitting. If you need any help with linking your accounts then this Ubisoft Support article has you covered.

To complete the Red Bull quiz, scroll down the page until you find the 'Spin' button and hit that to start the questions. There are six in total and you only need to answer one of them correctly, then provide your name and email at the end to receive a unique code. When you redeem that code a message which pops up suggests this reward may not be available yet, and you'll receive a further email from Red Bull once it's in the game, so don't stress if you can't immediately find it.

How to redeem Black Flag Resynced codes

The most direct way to redeem Black Flag Resynced codes is to activate them in-game, by entering the pause menu then following the Store prompt in the top right corner of the screen, before hitting the Redeem Code option to the bottom left of the screen.

However, some players (especially on consoles) have reported issues with this process, so you can also redeem Black Flag codes though the Ubisoft Connect app by tapping your profile icon then choosing the Key Activation option, or going through the official Redeem codes site and following the steps there. You'll need a Ubisoft Connect account for either of those routes, so if you don't have one already then complete the process to set one up.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

Before The Witcher 3 came two predecessors from CD Projekt Red: The Witcher 2 and the series original RPG – an RPG that features one heck of a, erm, unique romance system.

In case you've never played the first Witcher game, the 2007 gem boasts a certain set of cards you can collect that act as… well, sex trophies, basically.

While more modern genre giants like Baldur's Gate 3 have elaborate romantic cutscenes (many of which are indeed NSFW), The Witcher had these romance cards instead – little pieces of art that, much to many fans' dismay, arguably felt a bit shallow in substance.

According to lead story designer Artur Ganszyniec, however, CD Projekt Red opted for the cards because the developers knew they needed romance – The Witcher books do feature romance, after all – but didn't have the resources or ability to create full-blown, lengthy love arcs or animated cutscenes.

He recalls as much in an interview with CHIP (as translated by GameObserver), admitting he's not 100% sure how it all went down.

"Sometimes a feature appears as a result of someone going: in the books, there's lots of romance, so we'll probably need romance, too. Someone creates a list of characters; someone else looks at it productively and says: 'There's no way we're making so many cutscenes.' Then comes the question: 'if the cutscenes are a problem, what do we do? Maybe 2D drawings?'"

That might just be the origin story of the infamous "sex cards," as they're widely known.

"I don't know if that's the exact way it happened," Ganszyniec continues, "but that's how it could have happened. Everyone's responsible for finding solutions to their own problems, and suddenly something's in the game. When something's already made it into a version, it's difficult to remove it."

And, yep – "sometimes it worked as a shortcut." When you have cards instead of scenes, you "understand that it's meant to represent just part of a longer story."

Plus, as the dev puts it, "thanks to the fact that The Witcher was indeterminate and full of shortcuts, the player accepted it." That makes sense, I suppose – and, well, for the most part, folks did.

That's not to say the cards are popular, but it's not as though they soiled The Witcher's reputation. CD Projekt Red worked with the resources it had at the time, and Ganszyniec isn't "ashamed" of the romance cards despite their reception.

"Some of these moments ended up being absurd," though, and he's not afraid to admit as much. "It's just that sometimes you fail to write something good enough – then, you play the game, you read the dialogue, and you see: this did not work." Hey, it happens… right?

Here's hoping The Witcher 4 features a more, uh, immersive romance system, as CD Projekt Red has said it'll "absolutely" be a part of the RPG.

Excited to see more upcoming CD Projekt Red games come to fruition? Browse through our roundup for other great new games arriving this year and beyond, too.

The Black Flag Resynced Antocha Wreck is one of the many shipwrecks you can plunder for long lost loot, with one chest in the wreck itself being quite tricky to find. Grabbing all eight loot chests in this wreck is really useful as well, since you'll gather both a load of Reales and the Mortar Ultimate Plan, which is arguably one of the best in all of Black Flag Resynced. With that, I've detailed the locations for all seven chests in the Antocha Wreck below.

All Antocha Wreck chest locations in Black Flag Resynced

As mentioned, there are eight chests to rip open in the wreck of the Antocha – seven containing Reales and one secret chest containing the Black Flag Resynced Ultimate Plan for the Mortar – with four of them stuck within the two halves of the destroyed ship.

Starting with those since they're the hardest to reach, here's how you can find every chest in the Antocha diving spot:

1. At the very bottom of the south edge of the northern half of the wreck (the stern of the ship).
2. In a small room on the middle deck of the stern wreckage. Swim into the deck, take the second left, then turn left again to reach it.
3. Deep within the stern wreckage on the upper deck. From chest 2, turn around and go straight ahead, then up to the next deck to find the chest straight ahead.
4. At the end of a corridor accessed via an opening on the east corner of the stern wreckage. The opening is roughly halfway down the ship and there is a shoal of fish plus some coral and plants surrounding it.

5. On the top deck of the southern bow half of the shipwreck, near the bowsprit.
6. In the small shipwreck part closest to the diving bell.
7. In the small shipwreck part directly south of the diving bell.
8. Secret: In the small shipwreck piece furthest from the diving bell. This contains the Mortar Ultimate Plan.

When looking for these chests and secrets in the Antocha, or any shipwreck accessed via the diving bell for that matter, remember to scan the area by holding L2/LT to look for white dots as these are the chests, then check your map often to see where to go. Obviously, you also need to watch out for sharks and ensure Edward doesn’t drown, so make sure you return to the diving bell and use the barrels to refill the oxygen meter – barrels can only be used to replenish Edward's air once each!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

For six months after the March 2024 launch of Dragon's Dogma 2, Capcom had all hands on deck, mostly responding to issues and complaints via patches. Ever since, the RPG's dev team has been working on Dark Arisen, a major expansion meant to answer the fans who wanted to keep playing.

Dragon's Dogma Online head and original Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita joined the sequel's team around the middle of the project, and toward the later stages, he began to wonder what an expansion might look like for Dragon's Dogma 2, which proved to be a divisive RPG. About half a year after launch, work on Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen began in earnest, and now we're headed toward an October 8, 2026 launch for the long-awaited expansion.

"Sorry to keep everyone waiting," Capcom producer Naoto Oyama tells GamesRadar+ in an interview (via interpreter). "We started the project during the period where, after the release of the base game, we received incredibly passionate feedback from our players who expressed a desire to play more and continue exploring. They wanted to enjoy more combat in this game, so we really worked hard on answering these requests. We launched the project with the concept of providing a highly accessible brand-new adventure, more combat, and we're happy we were able to announce this and come back to the game again."

Kinoshita's return was a godsend to Dragon's Dogma 2 players who'd given up hope that the game would ever receive the same treatment as the original. Dark Arisen made Dragon's Dogma a noticeably better game, and there were hopes that the sequel would get at least the same style of expansion – in addition to the major title updates due this year, with one already released and another coming in August.

Kinoshita says, "I'm really happy to be back here as director for the new Dark Arisen. The motivation behind kicking off this project was the passionate feedback we received from players, so we really appreciate people's support and feedback received so far."

For the new Dark Arisen, Kinoshita explains, "I was thinking, if we can make an expansion for this game, how can we make it? What will be enjoyable? What will be fun? So I'm really positive that, finally, this is taking shape and we'll be able to deliver this soon to players."

This expansion is also called Dark Arisen for a few reasons, Kinoshita says. "We decided on the title after finalizing the content we were creating. It wasn't title first. We named it after consolidating the ideas of what we want to include in the expansion.

"There are three main reasons for the naming. One is a strong affinity with the story that will unfold in the new area. The second is the presence of a loot-based gameplay cycle similar to the original Dark Arisen. And for the third one, we chose a familiar name which we think is the easiest way to convey to everyone what kind of elements will be added. Some people have already experienced the Dark Arisen expansion in the first title and we're building something similar and more expanded in Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen."

Compared to the original game's expansion, this new Dark Arisen is less of a dungeon-crawler experience, instead bringing players to a new area of the open world in the Norgan region (with some dungeon challenges along the way, for good measure). "Also, an appeal compared to the original is that the story that unfolds in the Norgan area is really deep, and there is kind of a mystery you will chase and you have to solve, and there will be supporting characters around you," Kinoshita adds. "Compared to that title's dungeon-crawler experience, that will be pretty different."

To my delight, there will be a similar rhythm of uncovering relic-type equipment and essentially decrypting it back at your base, uncorking a whole crate of random end-game gear at once to see what will make it into your build. In the best way, this feels similar to Capcom's Monster Hunter games adding G-Rank or Master Rank gear in their expansions.

"For both existing players and new players, I hope people will enjoy Dragon's Dogma 2 more, that it will lead to the perfect shape of Dragon's Dogma 2," Kinoshita concludes.

Capcom returns to its divisive RPG with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen, and the dev leading the expansion says its friction will be preserved – "That is something that we offer so that players can make a decision on how to play."

GameSir may have some of the best PC controllers under its belt, but it's taking square aim at Xbox fans with its latest T7 Pro drop. The Retro Green colorway has just dropped on the brand's site, yet another callback to that OG Xbox aesthetic we've all been yearning for amongst... well... everything that's happened this year.

The $49.99 / £55.99 Hall effect controller blasts that translucent aesthetic with its primary-colored face buttons and a whole bunch of ambient LEDs. That gives it a slightly livelier aesthetic than Retro Fighter's take on the classic design, with the Hunter's translucent chassis simply letting its screws do the talking.

That means the effect seems to wear off by the time we get to the grips, but that RGB lighting looks like it'll be doing most of the talking anyway.

Translucent yearning aside, the T7 Pro has a sturdy lineup of features at its disposal. While those after one of the best Xbox Series X controllers for more competitive pursuits might begrudge those membrane ABXY buttons, the wired connection keeps things zippy and fuss-free, while Hall effect analog triggers still make use of two-stage trigger stops for twitch-reflex movement as well.

That all comes packaged up with four rumble motors and the obligatory back buttons - configurable in the GameSir Nexus software.

If you weren't a child of the transparent Xbox era, though, that's not a feature set that's going to be setting the world alight. For $50, you can also pick up the GameSir Cyclone 2 (now $49.99 at Amazon), the gamepad we rate as the best value on the market. This is a TMR controller (an upgraded version of Hall effect tech), with a wireless 1,000Hz polling rate, a charging dock included, and larger back buttons.

That would be my recommendation if you'd called me as the fun police, anyway. I'm always down to jig with some translucent tech, and the Retro Green T7 Pro manages is certainly calling to a heritage with all the style and vibes of the best retro controllers.

• See all controller deals at Amazon

On the other side of the console wars back in the day? We're also rounding up the best PS5 controllers and the best Nintendo Switch 2 controllers for more options across the market.

As we get closer to GTA 6's launch with no PC port in sight, it'd be understandable if you were wondering why Rockstar Games is choosing to ignore such a massive chunk of fans at release, especially when it seems very likely to bring the game to the platform eventually. Well, according to one Rockstar veteran, the studio isn't opposed to releasing games on PC – it just might not be worth the time or effort when it could be focusing on something else first.

Speaking in a new interview with Reece 'Kiwi Talkz' Reilly on YouTube (below), former Rockstar Games producer John Ricchio – who worked at the company between 2003 and 2014, and is credited on GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption, and Max Payne 3 – discusses the GTA developer's approach to PC ports. He notes that, although it's "less fashionable" in the games industry now than it once was, it causes many "problems" to start development on PC and then move to consoles afterward. "You're much better off starting with the constraints," he adds, because "shrinking is a lot harder than extending."

While this certainly influences Rockstar's approach to PC ports, Ricchio explains that it's also often about prioritizing the devs' efforts. When it came to Red Dead Redemption, for example, Ricchio says "we actually got a PC build running very early" to see how long it'd take – something that might come as a surprise given that the game's eventual PC port arrived a whopping 14 years after its initial console release. But, as the ex-production dev says, "It's not even that we don't care about PC. It was just like, is it worth spending time getting a PC port going versus working on GTA 5?"

According to Ricchio, it's "always those conversations" that drive the PC plan at Rockstar – the studio isn't "anti any platform." Regardless of the platform, it's about whether it's "worth spending the time and effort to get something running."

In the past, there have been "a lot of cases" of "legitimate hardware limitations" – something Ricchio admits is less of an issue now that consoles like the PS5 and Xbox Series X are "definitely closer" in power. But, the point remains – "if you're working on that, you're not working on something else usually. Are you spending money on that? You're not spending money on something else."

Ultimately, then, Ricchio says, there either "has to be enough of a business reason to do some of those ports," or the port has to be "super easy to do," which it "rarely" is because "there's always something that you gotta do."

So, I guess if we're not getting a GTA 6 PC port at launch, maybe it's because the devs could be busy working on Red Dead Redemption 3, or – wild as it is to even imagine at this point – GTA 7? Regardless, hopefully PC fans won't have to wait too long for the game to make its way to Steam – it took GTA 5 over a year and a half.

GTA 6 faces potential $35 million fine if Rockstar doesn't comply with online safety laws that mean Australians would need ID to play.

Even after several updates adjusting features like fast travel, Dragon's Dogma 2 remains a pretty exacting game. Capcom's modern RPG series is known for an eclectic mix of ideas that results in a texture that some players find irresistible, while others outright hate it. Director Hideaki Itsuno previously called the sequel a game that wasn't designed for everyone, and Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen director Kento Kinoshita seems to be of a similar mind as the long-awaited expansion approaches an October 8 launch.

Speaking with GamesRadar+ via interpreter, Kinoshita reflects on the friction in Dragon's Dogma 2's design. "That is something that we offer so that players can make a decision on how to play," he says. "If they have multiple options and decide what's the best way, that's giving players [choices]. This is the core essence of how we design the friction in the game."

I ask how the Dark Arisen expansion – which will add a new area, storyline, dungeon challenges, and many enemies and items – adjusts or preserves that friction. "We believe we're developing the game so that people can enjoy that kind of friction, having multiple options and making decisions," Kinoshita affirms. "We believe that's preserved in the expansion content as well."

To give players true choices in games, devs have to accept that some content will be ignored or unnoticed. They also have to make more content to flesh out whatever path is chosen, at least compared to a linear game in principle. How do you balance giving players more without making the whole thing too big? And for an expansion like this, explicitly made to answer requests for additional stuff to do, is it a good thing or a stressful thing to hear that players want more?

"That's a really good question," responds Kinoshita. "As [producer Naoto Oyama] answered earlier, my first impression was, sorry to keep everyone waiting. In terms of the balance, we have to consider how long we can take to develop the game and how much volume we can include in the expansion. If we have to put more content into the expansion, it means it will take more time to develop. But also, we were aware of the passionate feedback from players, especially that they want to enjoy the combat more. But we have to set a certain limit to the amount of content."

Capcom had a few goals with Dragon's Dogma 2: Dark Arisen: more content, a more accessible game, and "great value," per Kinoshita. The question was how to align these goals with what players had demanded – more combat, more areas to explore, and more reasons to play in general after a pretty abrupt ending. The result is a more ambitious expansion designed "more like an adventure full of freedom" and, compared to the original Dark Arisen, less like a big dungeon full of loot (though I'm told there will also be smaller dungeons full of loot).

"The main focus in terms of the amount of content we decided to put in the expansion was answering that feedback, more combat, focusing on the amount of new enemies, how wide the new area is, how the story unfolds," Kinoshita adds. "That's how we balance volume and try to answer those requests from players ... So when balancing what we want to include in the expansion and how to answer the requests, that was also something we considered. So we hope that more and more people will enjoy the game."

After Monster Hunter Wilds, Capcom wants to redeem Dragon's Dogma 2: "performance improvements," Dragonsplague changes, and more in free updates 2 years after launch.

Hopes were high that the latest Diablo 4 patch would address the problems around Mythics introduced in Season 14. Alas, this isn't the case, as the update, coming tomorrow, July 14, only addresses a sliver of the issues, leaving players hoping for more systemic change in the weeks to come.

Essentially, the new season, Death Awakening, made Mythic Uniques a general pain in the backside. Crafting them is trickier; the drop rate for the items as loot is staggeringly low, and even using them isn't as effective as it once was.

Blizzard made a small mess here, and despite allusions to fixing things in this patch, the most glaring problems remain unaddressed, per the patch notes. That said, the process of acquiring and using Fragments for crafting Mythics is becoming easier, which is a welcome alteration.

Prior to now, it took five Fragments to make a Mythic Unique in the Horadic Cube. That turned out to be a pretty high number for how rarely they actually appeared after an encounter. Now, Corrupted Reaper will drop two of them per Hoard Chest, and you can get four if you utilize the Lair of Plenty War Plan.

On top of this, you'll only need four Fragments to craft a Mythic Unique. These aren't the total systemic changes many players were hoping for, but they should relieve some of the tension while the devs look into fixing other aspects. Drop rates are rarely simple to fix, since an overcorrection in the other direction won't help the game.

The patch notes state a bug where some Lair Bosses weren't dropping Uniques like they should has been fixed too, which may help you find some if you've been trying and failing to build up your collection. The usual smattering of fixes and tweaks across various aspects is included otherwise.

Diablo 4 streamer spends "20 hours non-stop" farming bosses for the ARPG's rarest items, doesn't get a single one: "Don't try this at home"

Calmness washes over me as I place a brig on the shelf, nestled lovingly between a schooner and a fishing boat. There's something deeply satisfying about building out my collection of ship models in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, each awarded to me after defeating a vessel of its likeness in the clear blue oceans connecting the West Indies, and it keeps me coming back to Great Inagua for more.

The magpie-like thrill doesn't stop there. In fact, one of my favorite things about the Black Flag remake is its curated approach to base building. I love wafting about my splendid mansion between missions, admiring all my trinkets like a wistful, somewhat inebriated old widow looking back on her life with pride. What good is all that pirate booty if Edward can't put it somewhere special?

Warning: spoilers for major character deaths ahead!

Home and hearth

I didn't expect the mansion on Great Inagua to become such a warm, inviting space when I liberated it from a Templar in the game's early hours. Yet here I am, rushing back to the island hideaway with a backpack full of paintings, vases, and even an intricately-designed wardrobe to adorn its halls with.

What started out as a lengthy side quest – restoring the late lady-of-the-house's art collection by request of her devoted butler, whom I seem to have inherited along with the mansion itself – has become a pronounced obsession. It's a different approach to the base building elements seen in some of the best Assassin's Creed games of late. With its grid placement system and massive library of structures, landscaping, and design tools at the ready, Assassin's Creed Shadows leaned heavier on the sandbox elements of life sim games like The Sims. It made sense for Shadows as a dense open world RPG, fleshing out the system as seen in Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Ravensthorpe base camp.

But Black Flag Resynced's mansion of trinkets sits a little closer to the likes of Assassin's Creed Syndicate's procedurally-decorated steam train hideout, which sees new items and mementos unlocked after completing mission sequences.

There's no grid system in Edward’s mansion, but individual gaps in its art collection. Tasteful portraits have their own ascribed wall hanging spots and cannot be displayed elsewhere, as do furniture items, while tabletop decorations and miscellaneous paintings can go on any suitable surface. There also seems to be a finite number of artworks, art pieces, and furniture items to collect, which does make narrative sense. Edward is supposed to be restoring a curated suite of items that have been doled out to various Templars across the West Indies, each with their own pride of place in the mansion – not redecorating the house as he pleases.

That in itself adds a rich bit of texture to Black Flag's overall world building. Edward might be the current occupier of the mansion, but he is not its owner. He did not purchase it; much like the Templar Du Casse before him, Edward had to kill to take what wasn't his. I've mentioned before that I think he's a huge bastard, and, well.. Put like that, can you really disagree with me?

Know your place's place

To my utter surprise, though, Edward does not meet the butler's request for him to restore the art collection with a sneer. Nor does he threaten to sell the items off for profit, as would befit a pirate.

Edward agrees to this strangely sentimental side project, setting out in earnest to get the mansion back to the state it was in before its rightful owner died. He accepts that this house is not truly his, and that there's no point trying to wrest it from the long-dead Lady's hands when her butler is still here laying claim to it in her stead. Edward shows the butler deference instead of derision, and after all his mouthy blustering, I love seeing him humbled.

There are still inflections of Edward's own personality shining through as he restores the place. He starts collecting ship models, for a start, displaying them in his large office space, and can display his armor and weaponry in one of the parlors. There’s even a basement passage leading out into Great Inagua’s village center with extra painting spaces, each waiting to commemorate one of Edward’s lost comrades. They become little vigils once a portrait is placed, creating a space where Edward can stop and take a moment to remember friends and adventures past.

It's become one of my little rituals. I always make time to stop by the house to reflect on Edward's journey so far after a particularly grueling main mission, having a little cuddle with pet monkey Albert on the way to Blackbeard's portrait, perhaps sneering "prick" at the likeness of a slain Templar and plantation owner en route to his miniature collection.

All it takes is a mild word from the butler ("there's still more art to be found, Mr. Kenway") I'm off again, hunting down my next mission marker in hopes of securing another fine painting. But first, I collect my protection money. He might have a disarming respect for culture and art, but Edward Kenway is still a pirate after all.

Check out our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review for our Games Editor's thoughts on Ubisoft's latest.

The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i has always been an absolute unit of a machine, so it makes sense for the brand to pump as much power as it can into this 16-inch chassis. The mid-2026 refresh that hit the shelves this week only makes a minor change to its specs under the hood. Rather than the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX that previously headlined the best gaming laptops on the market, the 2026 iteration has opted for an Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus.

For the hefty MSRP of $5,478.99 (currently $4,463.99 at Lenovo). The two processors share the same core and thread count, aim to operate within the same power limits, and split the work of those cores the same way (8x Performance and 16x Efficient). That's a problem with the RTX 5080 equivalent from last year is currently down to $2,649 (was $3,499) at B&H.

Gaming laptop prices have been soaring all year, but things have stepped up in the last few weeks. New 2026 releases were always going to lag behind their previous iterations from a value standpoint - components like RAM and storage are far more expensive than they were during the last release cycle. However, those older rigs have started to see their prices shift north as demand for cheaper rigs squeezes retailers' remaining inventory, making finding even an RTX 5060 for under $1,400 a feat.

• Join GamesRadar+ Deals on WhatsApp for our top daily discounts

Still, there's a difference between knowing why an RTX 5080 gaming laptop costs $5,000 and actually being willing to pay that amount for a similar performance to last year. The Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus and Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX (found in the 2025 iteration above) both offer a 24-core, 24-thread setup, with the newer chip edging slightly ahead in its max 5.5GHz boost rate (vs. the 275HX's 5.4GHz). By all accounts, though, real-world performance is enhanced by around 6-7%. The price difference between these two builds? 68.5%.

You're getting the same QHD+ OLED display running at the full 240Hz refresh rate, with both models offering 32GB DDR5 RAM and the older version actually doubling your storage to 2TB.

• See all gaming laptop deals at B&H

I'm also hunting down the best Asus gaming laptops as well the best Razer laptops and best Alienware laptops.

The Elder Scrolls Online team is unfortunately part of Microsoft's ongoing plan to cut 3,200 employees at Xbox, leaving the developers behind the Bethesda MMO far fewer in number than before.

In fact, the team is apparently as small as it was about a decade ago, when the game only really began to take off after its shaky launch – or, at least, that's what prominent community figure Baratron, who helps run the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages and its Discord, reports.

He reveals as much in a new message, explaining that he learned the news from associate design director Jason Barnes and associate director of community management Jessica Folsom.

It came during the past weekend's Elder Scrolls Online Tavern event in Hesse, Germany, where fans and developers gathered to celebrate the MMO.

"This is important," writes Baratron. "According to both Jason Barnes (Associate Design Director) and Jessica Folsom (Associate Director of Community Management), Zenimax Online Studios is now at the same size as it was when they made both Wrothgar and Summerset."

That's shocking, to say the least – but he doesn't seem to think it's a bad thing. After all, "both are highly acclaimed DLCs," as the UESP admin puts it. "So while the layoffs are extremely upsetting for everyone involved (of course including players), this is not necessarily the end of new content or the game going into maintenance mode."

Baratron assures that there's more reason to think the end of Elder Scrolls Online isn't near, too.

"Also Nick Giacomini (Game Director) and Susan Kath (Studio Executive Producer) are specifically not at the ESO Tavern because they're working on the new Roadmap of when content will be released," he states. "It really is not the end yet."

It's a bit of bittersweet, good-and-bad news, all things considered – the layoffs, obviously, are not nice to hear about… but it's reassuring that they don't spell the demise of the MMO.

Here's hoping any and all affected developers are able to land on their feet, and The Elder Scrolls Online proves to have a brighter future than fans expect following the upsetting news circulating recently.

"There's really no one left": Former Elder Scrolls Online dev says the MMO "basically funded other failing projects" as Microsoft guts the studio

The Future Games Show is coming back next month for not one, not two, but three exciting shows serving up the best of what Gamescom 2026 has to offer.

The Future Games Show at Gamescom will see the return of the main event. That means world premieres, exclusive trailers, developer deep-dives and possibly even a few demo drops. Back in June, the Future Games Show Summer Showcase featured more than 40 games, so you know you're in for something good.

The fun doesn't end with the conclusion of the main event, either. Immediately after the first show concludes, the team will return with FGS Live from Gamescom. Directly following the show, the FGS editorial team will be reporting live from Gamescom itself in Cologne, Germany. Expect even more world premieres, as well as news and interviews straight from the show floor.

Finally, there'll be an even closer look at the action inside Gamescom itself. For the first time, FGS Best of Gamescom will take viewers into the show, with exclusive booth tours, developer interviews, and a look back at the most exciting announcements of the week.

Future Games Show at Gamescom and FGS Live from Gamescom will both take place on Wednesday, August 26, and they'll be followed by FGS Best of Gamescom as the action in Cologne winds down on Sunday, August 30. You'll be able to watch all three digital shows on Twitch, YouTube, X , Facebook, TikTok, and right here on GamesRadar+, so keep your eyes peeled for more announcements as the show draws closer.

Razer announced its brand new Cinnamoroll Edition Razer Kraken Kitty V2 BT wireless headset on July 9, and it's one of the most adorable pairs of cups the brand has unveiled so far.

The Kraken Kitty V2 BT, which is set to launch on July 20, 2026, has swapped its usual pointy, RGB Chroma-powered cat-ears for Cinnamoroll's adorable puppy dog ones instead. While other Razer collabs result in headsets that are simply covered in officially licensed art, this partnership with Sanrio has resulted in a pair that looks so recognisable for the iconic Sanrio mascot that you could use it for cosplay. As someone who hasn't officially made an outfit in several years, I am seriously considering doing just that with this upcoming $139.99 (Razer) pair.

I cover plenty of the cutest and best gaming headsets released by brands like Razer, but so often these collabs result in designs that are a little more understated. Take the recently announced upcoming Razer Espeon & Umbreon Collection for an example. It includes an Espeon and Umbreon Edition Razer Kraken V4 X headset, but it's essentially just a purple version of the existing pair, with some images of the two Pokemon on the headband.

As officially licensed tech typically comes at a higher price (this Cinnamoroll Edition is $40 more than the typical Kraken Kitty V2 BT at $99.99 at Amazon), I much prefer when the designs are more in your face about their inspirations. Fortunately, that's exactly what's happened for this new Cinnamoroll Edition model. Cinnamoroll is known for his down-turned floppy ears, and they're right there on the headband, as is the iconic white and pastel blue color palette that I associate with the Sanrio puppy.

If you were to create a gijinka cosplay (which means to create a human design inspired by an animal/creature), this pair would be perfect. I can already imagine the little ears peeking through a matching white wig. The only problem that would arise would be disguising the Chroma-powered RGB Razer logos on each cup, but the rest of the Cinnamoroll iconography is fortunately reserved for the interior of the headset, which is ideal for cosplay. The real Cinnamoroll doesn't wear images of himself, so why would you in cosplay form?

Of course, I'm not going to recommend that you grab this upcoming $139.99 pair if you purely if you want to dress up as your favorite Sanrio character. It should really be on your radar if you want to look cute and if you're after a new gaming headset. It's rocking the brand's TriForce 40 mm audio drivers, which are found throughout the best Razer headsets available today and still sound fantastic.

Begrudgingly, this is a Bluetooth model, and so there's no 2.4GHz wireless to take advantage of. With that in mind, I'd mainly recommend it to PC players, rather than anyone rocking a PS5. While that might be disappointing to some, this headset is part of a wider PC Cinnamoroll Edition lineup, which also includes a Razer Iskur V2 X NewGen gaming chair available for $449.99 at Amazon, so there's plenty of opportunity to give your desktop a freshly baked Cinnamoroll look.

• View all Razer wireless gaming headsets at Amazon

If you aren't a Sanrio fan, I've also rounded up the best PC headsets for gaming, the best PS5 headsets, and the best Xbox Series X headsets to check out.

Obsidian Entertainment is one of several prolific studios affected by Xbox's layoffs, with job losses and reportedly substantial changes to its release slate. After taking some time to consider his response, the co-director of The Outer Worlds 2 has publicly commented on what's going on and has some choice words for anyone spreading unsubstantiated rumors.

"This has been an extremely difficult week at Obsidian," Brandon Adler, who's now directing an unannounced project at Obsidian, writes on LinkedIn. "Not only have I had to say goodbye to some amazing game developers, but I've had to say goodbye to some of my best friends. I truly feel for every one of them. Know that if you are looking to hire one of these former Obsidian devs, you are hiring some of the best people around - both professionally and personally."

He then takes aim at the "cold take artists" who've been commenting and speculating about the current landscape and atmosphere at Obsidian. "The number of times I've seen people, with no understanding of who has worked on our previous games or what they contributed, talk about how Obsidian isn't who they used to be... is staggering. Most of the time they are not just wrong, but spreading an enormous amount of misinformation."

He goes on to mention that current higher-ups are people who worked on major Obsidian releases such as Fallout: New Vegas, Pillars of Eternity and The Outer Worlds. "The through line from Knights of the Old Republic 2 to our current games is pretty clear," he adds.

"Is Obsidian the same as it was 20 years ago? No, of course not. Nothing stays the same," Adler says. "But the DNA at Obsidian is the same as it always was. The same DNA that created Knights of the Old Republic, New Vegas, Neverwinter Nights 2, and South Park: The Stick of Truth."

Two things can be true at once: Obsidian's lost a considerable amount of talent due to changes imposed by Microsoft, and there are still plenty of seasoned devs working away at the studio. The future is uncertain, even with the prospect of a new Fallout, and I believe it's important to acknowledge the real and true difficulties of the current climate for the company and Xbox's development teams as a whole.

"I'm extremely proud of our history and I am also excited for who we have become," Adler says to finish. "Just remember, when you are seeing people spouting off about Obsidian, running their mouths about who we are now vs. what we were then, you are listening to someone crow about something with zero insight into how a game is made and who contributed to our previous games."

Obsidian reportedly safe from Xbox studio closures despite fears the RPG powerhouse was in negotiations to avoid shutdown

Palworld developers are reacting to the game's massive resurgence in player count thanks to the launch of 1.0.

Over on Twitter, the Palworld Twitter account celebrated hitting 850,000 concurrent players on Steam (with the game's 24 hour peak on Sunday, July 12 hitting 855,525, per SteamDB). The post reads, "We can't believe it! Following the official release, Palpagos is once again bustling with Pal Tamers! A huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone playing Palworld. We hope you're enjoying Palworld 1.0!"

Meanwhile, head of publishing and communications at Pocketpair, John 'Bucky' Buckley, reacted on his own account, giving his thanks to the players who have dropped in for the game's 1.0 launch. "Obviously, we had high expectations for 1.0 internally, but this is staggering. We really hope you are enjoying your time in Palworld again!"

The 855,525 concurrent player count lands Palworld within the top 15 biggest games ever on Steam when it comes to concurrent players, just below Baldur's Gate 3 (875,343) and above Battlefield 6 (747,440). Or rather, it would land Palworld there, except it's not even Palworld's biggest.

When Palworld launched into early access in 2024, the game reached 2,101,867 players. That number – at the time – gave it the second-highest number of concurrent players on Steam ever, just behind PUBG: Battlegrounds. However, it's since slipped into third following the release of Black Myth: Wukong.

Even so, this new number is still a hell of a resurgence, given that the highest the game ever reached post-launch was 273,204 the following month, and since last August, the game's monthly peaks have generally stayed below 100k.

Palworld 1.0 redesigns multiple Pals and makes them look less like Pokemon.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced might be a single-player game – which Ubisoft says is "playable offline" – but that didn't stop the revamped pirate adventure from being temporarily unplayable on PC for many during its launch weekend thanks to issues with Ubisoft Connect.

On July 11, many Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced players on PC reported being unable to load the game at all, experiencing an "insta crash" when Ubisoft Connect popped up. "Even 'Play offline' doesn't work. What a disaster," one affected user wrote, as another said: "Can't start a single player game offline.. ggs ubisoft."

This problem seemingly didn't affect everyone – some on Reddit noted that "it didn't log me out or make me not able to play it," and that "I've played offline just fine. I was playing offline when this happened."

It seems likely that many of those running into issues may not have launched the game at all up until that point – in a frequently asked questions section on its website (specifically, the part that asks if Resynced is playable offline), Ubisoft says: "Yes. A one-time internet connection is required to download the game. Once downloaded, the full main campaign of Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is fully playable offline. However, an online connection will be needed to play live content linked to the Animus Hub (Store, Anomalies, Projects, Vault)."

With that said, that doesn't appear to have been the case for everyone. Looking at the game's Steam reviews – which have taken a hit since Ubisoft Connect went down – many players had multiple hours on record by the time they left their negative ratings. "Can't play game in offline mode because I can't reach servers. 0/10," one reads, with over nine hours played at the time of submitting it.

Because this was a Ubisoft Connect issue, it wasn't just Black Flag Resynced that was affected, mind you. One Reddit user stated: "Tried to play Fenyx Rising on GeForceNOW, and couldn't because of it."

Regardless, the timing of this happening couldn't have been much worse given that it was on Black Flag Resynced's launch weekend, when many fans would have been starting it for the very first time.

Thankfully, everything appears to be back to normal now, and the game's reviews on Steam are still Mostly Positive, but it seems that console players definitely had a better experience on Saturday than many of those on PC.

Be sure to take a look at our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review if you're yet to play, or our roundup of the best Assassin's Creed games if you're looking to revisit an older adventure.

It still feels unreal, but Alien: Isolation 2 exists and is coming out sooner rather than later. Creative Assembly is back to take another big swing – or at least that's what we got from the first preview. But of course, everyone's wondering about Alien: Isolation star Amanda Ripley. Where is she? What is her potential role in this new story?

Shockingly, it seems we'll be strictly following a new protagonist, Blake, on a colony planet haunted by the Xenomorph. We've yet to learn much about the story and where Blake's journey might go, but Alien: Isolation 2 is trying not to retread too much of the 2014 original. That said, longtime fans remember the first game ended on a cliffhanger that was quite divisive, so surely Ellen Ripley's daughter has to be involved somehow, right?

Well, not really. While it seems Alien: Isolation 2 happens shortly after the events that destroyed the Sevastopol Station, Amanda Ripley has already continued her adventures elsewhere. More specifically, she was at the center of a comic book run by Dark Horse. It remains to be seen whether the leads at Creative Assembly will ignore them or play along by focusing on a different character and storyline, but here's the rundown on what happened and how it all could be tied together.

Spoilers ahead. If you'd like to keep Amanda Ripley's fate a mystery and stick to the games' narrative, turn around now.

The Corporation always wins

Alien: Isolation's final cutscene shows Amanda floating adrift in space until she's seemingly found by a ship. Three days had passed, but she survives and is taken to the Mendel Station... where another Xenomorph outbreak awaits. The immediate sequel to the original game was Alien: Blackout, a mobile-only game that has more in common with off-beat horror titles like Five Nights at Freddy's. It wasn't very good or inspired, and the plot was mostly a retread of Isolation's ideas through different mechanics and systems. You only need to know Amanda managed to escape alongside other survivors and set course to Earth.

Past this point, you should read Brian Wood's Aliens: Resistance and Rescue, two limited four-issue comic book series that directly follow Amanda Ripley as she tries to expose the Weyland-Yutani Corporation after returning to Earth and being silenced by the powers that be. Tonally, they're more in line with James Cameron's Aliens, so we get to see Amanda gunning down plenty of Xenomorphs as opposed to playing things smart with almost no resources.

Without getting into specifics, these stories also introduce the ex-Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks, who was introduced in Aliens: Defiance, also written by Brian Wood. They make for a fun duo of protagonists even if Resistance and Rescue mostly boil down to uncovering and putting an end to more of Weyland-Yutani's experiments. As Alien: Romulus (which also happens between Alien and Aliens) revealed, the Company was busy while Ellen Ripley slept for decades. We know Amanda could've kept fighting the good fight after Rescue's ending, but ultimately, she settles down years later and lives a normal life as revealed by Aliens. The sad thing is she never saw her mother again.

The fight against Weyland-Yutani might be far from over though. Another overlooked fact is Alien: Rogue Incursion – a VR game later adapted for regular screens – briefly mentions Amanda's post-Rescue exploits as Zula Hendricks continues her war against corporate evil in deep space. With developer Survios gutted earlier this year, however, the game's planned second part might never happen.

Ripley's legacy

Alien: Isolation 2 might orbit the Romulus timeline – though we don't know specifics yet – and both Ripley and Hendricks are still active, so there's a solid chance the game won't be as standalone as it looked at first. 20th Century Studios, Creative Assembly, and Sega are keeping their cards close to their chests (as they should), so it's smart to expect the unexpected.

LV-921 provides a new playground for the developers that should keep veteran players on their toes – especially if the Xenomorph's AI has evolved as much as the graphics – but I have no doubt that it's only the first step of a bigger and more terrifying journey. Who could've expected the original game to shake things up past a certain point with several Xenomorphs after just one had already made survival almost impossible? It's why I'm prepared for a wilder, more brutal ride. Sorry, Blake, it's looking bad for you.

In any case, both Ellen and Amanda Ripley's legacy is this huge shadow that seems to cover the entire Alien franchise after the Nostromo incident. One way or another, they changed Weyland-Yutani's course and gave it something it desperately wanted. So it makes sense it's up to them to make sure toying with the universe's deadliest species doesn't end humanity. As we know, they manage to at least hold the horrors at bay if you're okay with keeping Alien 3 and Resurrection in the canon. What about unsung heroes like Hendricks, Blake, or Rain Carradine though? Well, it's their turn to shine.

Alien: Isolation is still one of the best horror games ever made - but if its sequel's setup is still confusing you, here's how to watch all of the Alien films in order.

Although Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced launched to "Mixed" reviews on Steam, it's proving to be one of the most popular entries on PC from Ubisoft's legendary franchise. On Steam, at least.

Standing as a remake of what might just be the series' peak title, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced has climbed its way up Steam's ranks over the past few days – so much so, in fact, that it's set a new record for the Assassin's Creed name.

As per SteamDB, the revamped gem hit over 100,000 concurrent players on Valve's platform yesterday… only three days after its July 9 release date. That's quite a figure, considering the game's predecessors' own.

The second-highest concurrent player count ever hit by an Assassin's Creed game is 64,825, for comparison – and yes, that number belongs to none other than Assassin's Creed Shadows, Ubisoft's previous entry to its nearly 20-year-old series.

After that, Assassin's Creed Odyssey sits in third place with a peak of 62,069. Then, the figures drop a bit more with Assassin's Creed Origins, with only 41,551 players back in 2017.

It only gets lower – quite a bit, too – from there, with every following game dropping below 20,000 concurrent players. Interestingly, the original Black Flag boasts a peak of only 16,049… a good 88,707 fewer players than Resynced, with its own 104,756.

That's one heck of a big difference, but I suppose it makes sense. If most folks are anything like me, they were probably playing the OG game on Xbox or PlayStation back in 2013.

Now, PC players have grown in number – and Resynced's peak concurrent player count on Steam only proves as much.

Interested in one of the biggest new games of 2026 yourself? Read through our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review to learn what we think of it.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is here, but looking back at the OG 2013 game, the remake's creative director thinks that it only "became a classic" once players learned to love protagonist Edward Kenway.

Speaking in the latest issue of Retro Gamer, Paul Fu – who also served as a game designer on the original Black Flag – notes that while there's a lot to love in Ubisoft's pirate adventure, back at launch, not everyone was completely in love with quite how piratey it is. Namely, some felt that "Edward didn't really feel like an assassin."

Fu explains: "People really like the pirate fantasy and the characters, Blackbeard especially. I also remember what they didn't like early on was that Edward didn't really feel like an assassin."

Obviously, this wasn't a sentiment that stuck around forever. "I think people quickly came around in the next few years, and soon enough it became a classic," as Fu says. "I remember being really proud of the Montreal team for having the foresight to make an anti-hero."

He's certainly right about it becoming a classic – there's a reason why we rank it so highly on our list of the best Assassin's Creed games. With that said, it'll probably take a while before we can properly assess whether or not folks think its remake has been able to surpass it.

In our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review, we gave the remake three and a half stars out of five, praising its pirate atmosphere and excellent voice acting. However, games editor Oscar Taylor-Kent writes: "It splashes between wanting to be faithful, and wanting to make adjustments, not quite able to find an elegant middleground between the two. Combined with bugs and other annoyances, this isn't the bold, confident swing its predecessor was, but still a fun outing."

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced "is on track to be a much-needed hit for Ubisoft," says analyst, selling 5 times the Steam copies Assassin's Creed Shadows did pre-release.

Fallout: New Vegas director Josh Sawyer says Obsidian took a different approach to level scaling than Bethesda did with Fallout 3 to teach players that "things work a little differently" here, and that "you're going to get your ass handed to you if you're not careful."

Speaking to The 41st Precinct in a video interview you can check out below, Sawyer talks about going back to the OG Fallout when designing a new spin of his own on the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

More specifically, Sawyer loved that the critical path of Fallout 1 "is very open." If you really want to and know where to go, you can waltz right to the late game areas and skip a big ol' chunk of the story. Funnily enough, Sawyer also says that one of Fallout's co-creators, Tim Cain, told him that's down to a bug, but hey, everyone enjoys it enough so it's a feature now.

And a good thing it is, as it made quite the impression on Sawyer.

"I loved how open it was, and so, with New Vegas, I was like, 'I want to get that feeling back where we have difficulty gates,' so we took some of the level scaling out," he says. "It's a much more compressed level scaling range. That's why if you go to Quarry Junction, a Death Claw will just chop your head off. It's to teach the player, 'hey, this is not actually Fallout 3. Things work a little differently. You're going to get your ass handed to you if you're not careful.'"

To bring things to their most basic terms, enemies in Fallout 3 will increase in level and use better equipment to match your level. Return to an earlier locale in the late game and it'll be a nastier place than you remember.

Fallout: New Vegas enemies can certainly get meaner themselves, but only to a point. As such, you don't have to worry about Goodsprings turning into an endgame area if you return at a much later point. It does mean, though, that some of Fallout: New Vegas's areas will punch you in the face if you're not equipped. Think of it as a suggestion that you probably shouldn't be here until you level up. Once you do, though, you'll be able to steamroll foes in a way that isn't typically doable in Fallout 3.

Sawyer goes on to say that this approach to game design meant Obsidian could offer the player the chance to follow Fallout: New Vegas's story, as in Fallout, by skipping parts – albeit with the added challenge of surviving nastier areas.

"What that meant is that we could make the story – you can find Benny immediately," he says. "Like, you can go from Goodsprings straight to Benny. And that's the Water Chip. The design of that is you follow an information trail. I'm looking for this guy, I go here, he's not here but he says go here, go here, go here. But at any time, you can shortcut that. You can go through Scorpion Gulch and you can get to Novak and talk to Manny and then go to Boulder City. Or you can go straight to The Tops if you can figure out a way to get there. So, yeah, I was trying to embody that open spirit of Fallout 1."

I'd say Sawyer and Obsidian's approach to Fallout certainly landed, which is why New Vegas is so fondly remembered even today. It makes the future interesting, too, as Microsoft is reportedly kicking around plans to get Sawyer to head up another Fallout game to capitalize on the success of the TV show, especially as Bethesda won't be getting to that for a long time thanks to The Elder Scrolls 6. According to one former Obsidian lead, there was another Sawyer-led Fallout RPG in the works that ultimately got kiboshed, so it might not be the first time such a project nearly came to fruition. Maybe this time such a thing will stick and see the light of day.

Microsoft lays off Bethesda vet behind Todd Howard's "crazy" Fallout 4 idea, "too many Skyrim weapons to count," the Dwemer, and Mudcrabs – and he may leave games altogether.

The first all-new Spyro game in 18 years, Spyro: A Realm Beyond, is finally set to launch early next year, but the devs at Toys for Bob have had to be careful not to get too carried away with their "cool ideas" that would see the platformer run out of budget and time.

Associate creative director Louis "Lou" Studdert and studio head Paul Yan recently appeared on an episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, where they were asked if there were any moments during development when they realised they were going too far.

The answer is yes, though Studdert explains that "every game is like that" since there's so much "eyeballing" and "napkin math" involved as the team works out what elements might need cutting back, and what they might want more of.

"There are areas where you tighten the belt, and there's areas where you expand," he continues. "Just part of the game development process."

Yan adds to this, noting that "scope creep is a real thing." There's a simple reason for this: "Every time you're in a conversation with creative folks, it's always like, 'Wouldn't it be cool if this happened?'"

And yes, Yan says, "they absolutely are cool ideas, but if you commit to every single one of those, you know, without some discipline, then your game blows out of budget and blows out of time."

Thankfully, this isn't Toys for Bob's first rodeo. The studio has "high tenure folks who have worked together and can complete each other's sentences," and are also so "highly senior" that they know the drill when it comes to shipping games and understanding "'what is the scope within our team,'" Yan says.

In summary, he concludes, "We know ourselves, and we know when things are a little bit beyond our reach, or too much, and then we'll pull it back down to be what's appropriate for us developing it and also for the experience."

One thing the devs haven't held back on, however, is A Realm Beyond's flight system. In the same podcast, the devs explain that they wanted flying to be a very "active" thing, and crucially, not like a "flight simulator" where you can leave Spyro on "autopilot." So, expect you can find plenty of "decision-making" there.

Spyro: A Realm Beyond dev says the "loud and consistent" fans who bought 11 million copies of the Reignited trilogy helped manifest the series' first new game in years.

Looking back on the infamously buggy Assassin's Creed Unity after 12 years, Ubisoft veteran Jean Guesdon admits "this opus maybe pushed too many things at once."

As part of a new feature about Assassin's Creed in a new issue of Retro Gamer – on sale now, by the way – Guesdon offers a sense that ambition is largely behind the game's tricky release.

"Sadly, Unity's launch was a huge challenge because of several reasons," he says. "Like AC3 with AnvilNext, Unity's development was impacted by the incredible new tech allowing for 1:1 scale, interiors, massive crowds, a brand-new parkour system and an integrated multiplayer component. Pushing content and tech at the same time is always very demanding, and this opus maybe pushed too many things at once."

"[AC Unity] is one of the most underestimated games in the series," he says.

If you care for a history lesson, one of the big pitches behind Assassin's Creed Unity was the ability to play co-op with three of your friends online. Sounds neat, doesn't it? Four players sneaking around to assassinate targets and work together to achieve a common objective attracted the interest of many.

As you might have figured by now, though, Assassin's Creed Unity wasn't really able to handle it, among other things. Not long after launch, the interest was awash with clips of various graphical issues and bugs, leading to an apology from Ubisoft and a free expansion to make up for the bother.

Despite the bumps, Assassin's Creed Unity ultimately sold well, but Ubisoft certainly had to learn a lesson or two about matching ambition to what's deliverable.

"This is not how I imagined it would end": Ubisoft to lay off Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at its Barcelona studio, with one calling the remake's release "bittersweet."

Over a year on from its monumental launch, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 creative director Guillaume Broche has been looking back on what he and his fellow devs at Sandfall Interactive were told before their RPG's release – namely, that "no one's going to like" it.

The mere concept of that seems completely impossible now that the game is out – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 became the second ever game after Baldur's Gate 3 to collect all five major Game of the Year awards last year, after all. But speaking to Konbini in a new episode of Video Game Club on YouTube (below), Broche says the devs were warned about their plans for the RPG's combat.

"With Clair Obscur, there are plenty of design decisions that are fundamentally flawed," Broche begins. "What we heard a lot before we released the game was: 'You're making a game that mixes the challenging aspects of an action game – with dodging and parrying – with turn-based gameplay. No one's going to like it. Turn-based players like turn-based games, and action players like action games.'"

Of course, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 wasn't the first game to experiment with mechanics like this. Look at 1996's Super Mario RPG, which blended real-time action with its turn-based system – perfectly timed button presses make your attacks hit harder or blocks absorb more damage. A lot of players love this blend, and the Clair Obscur devs were no different when they were making their own game.

"We didn't care," Broche says of the warning Sandfall had received. "We think it's cool, we play it, and it's fun. We combined the two, and it worked. But fundamentally, there are a lot of design decisions that, from an outside or business perspective, make no sense at all."

In the same video, Broche explains that he thinks "imperfections" in games add to their charm, while "games that try to be perfect, that try to fix all their flaws – they're usually just really boring." By his own admission, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn't perfect, either – just look at its "unbearable" minigames.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 director thinks devs will eventually "be able to churn out a game in 5 seconds with a prompt," but he hopes they're not any good.

Spyro: A Realm Beyond introduces the ability to fly around freely as the titular purple dragon, but the devs at Toys for Bob want you to know that they've not made a "flight simulator," because "we want active decision-making."

Speaking on a new episode of the Kinda Funny Games podcast, associate creative director Louis "Lou" Studdert confirms that flying isn't just some sort of passive ability that you can use with zero thought – you'll have to put the effort in, pushing buttons, to guide Spyro around the sky.

"We wanted to make sure that it is active. It is decision-making. It is pressing buttons. It is almost, you know, that platforming feel of evaluating a play space and figuring out how to continue," Studdert says.

Pointing to some gameplay footage, Studdert explains that Spyro can dive downwards "to pick up speed," as well as "use his flame breath, spit a fireball at distance to ignite a campfire to create a wind updraft to give him quicker lift," before the player presses a button "to flap his wings to push on his momentum and keep his speed up." Spyro can also activate "sky rings" for a boost in the air.

"It's really about evaluating the play space," he continues. "It's looking [at] what you can interact with and connecting all of those to sustain your momentum and to keep going."

Toys for Bob studio head Paul Yan chimes in: "It's super important for us that the player is able to say, 'Look at that thing off in the distance. How do I get there? And then how do I leverage the environments around me and my abilities in order to do that?' Because what we don't want is for it to be a flight simulator where we say, 'OK, here's the destination, hit in the GPS, we're going to coast and get there.' There's no fun in that."

Yan reiterates that there's "no autopilot" option for Spyro's flight because "we want active decision-making." He explains: "Platforming as a term in this flight space is a little bit different than platforming like jumping on the ground, but similarly, we want that kind of decision-making to happen in that space."

Spyro: A Realm Beyond is set to release early next year, and Yan previously told us that the devs "want not just one new game, but many new games. We hope that this is the first of many." With that in mind, hopefully we won't be waiting another 18 years for the next all-new one.

"Going independent meant taking a massive, massive risk": How Toys for Bob split off from Activision and Xbox to help guide Spyro to A Realm Beyond.

Riot has finally unveiled League of Legends Classic, a return to what many seem to think was a kinder, more simple era of its world-spanning MOBA. Its announcement, with more details to come next month, has been met with curious optimism by much of the community, keen to see exactly which of LoL's many eras the Classic experience will attempt to recreate. But as someone who was there for most of those eras, I'm here to tell you this: you do not know what you are asking.

I started playing League of Legends at the end of Season 1, in the summer of 2011. Now, in my early 30s, that 15-year span means the part of my life that includes this game will soon be longer than the part of my life from which it was absent. And in that time, I've seen an awful lot that makes me keen to stay firmly in League of Legends' present rather than its past.

AP Master Yi. Garen with six Sunfire Capes. AP Sion with an on-click stun. The old Runes system. The old Summoner's Rift. Taric with an on-click stun. Old Urgot. Old Skarner. Old Ryze. The other old Ryze. Old Jungle. Old Dragon. AP Tristana. Launch Syndra. Launch Darius. Launch Zyra. Dodge chance (that you could pay to increase). AP Warwick. Gold generation attached to in-game items (but that you could also pay to increase). Lane assignments decided by who could shout the loudest in champ select. Dozens more design choices and misadventures lost to history but that certainly didn't make for a better game experience. Old League was a Wild West that was pulled into shape one frontier at a time.

Clearly, this era of League wasn't a complete disaster. The core experience was still good enough to turn it into one of the biggest games in the world, with an enormous esports scene and millions of monthly players, and it does still hold advantages over some aspects of the modern game. The item and rune systems, which have chased optimization in recent years, used to focus more on unique strategy than the current push for statistical dominance allows. A smaller roster allowed new characters to hold court; at 173 champions, the roster is now so stacked that the only way a new arrival can feel unique is to have ability tooltips that stretch into multiple paragraphs of explainer text.

In this older era, there were more ways to bend League of Legends to your will. A huge part of its early charm was that Wild West feel, which for my friends led to ridiculous strategies that we gave even more ridiculous names; 'Vastly Enhanced' used the lane-pushing power of Banner of Command and ZZ'Rot Portal in tandem to out-macro enemy teams; 'Heimer's Hairy Heroes' focused on pillaging the enemy jungle with a squad of animal characters all attempting to keep a solo Heimerdinger safe in the botlane. Elsewhere, the influencer scene was full of innovators pushing silly ideas because the game let them in a way it no longer does.

Modern League is not without its problems. Power and complexity creep run rampant, monetization has been pushed further and further, individual expression has been squashed. But for those faults, League of Legends is undeniably a better game than it used to be. Champions might be more complex, but they look and play better, with far more opportunity for counterplay than the age of on-click stuns and three-hit passives ever allowed. The entire game looks better, with the modern Summoner's Rift such a dramatic improvement over the original that I can scarcely believe what I used to play on. Arena and ARAM have been established as excellent additions that go a long way towards replacing the creativity stripped from the core experience. Onboarding still has a long way to go, but it's far better than it used to be, with gradual QoL improvements that help newcomers but don't hinder veterans. And that's to say nothing of a wider ecosystem that has been hugely improved by the arrival of adjacent experiences like Arcane and TFT.

Balance is better, game design more confident, player experience improved at almost every level. Riot's even worked hard to bring League of Legends' notoriously toxic community into line, and the amount of genuinely bad behavior I now see is vanishingly rare. Modern League is better than League Classic is likely to be at almost every turn. But the real issue that this vision of the past faces isn't even in the quality of the game – it's in the attitude of its players and the reality of the experience they're searching for.

An obvious comparison to League Classic is WoW Classic. Blizzard rewound the clock on World of Warcraft, and in doing so returned players to a version of the game's world that was otherwise lost to time. Both Azeroth's narrative and geography, and the promise the launch version offered of a new kind of MMO experience were things that could be recaptured and re-experienced. League of Legends is not that kind of game. Endlessly repeating, and driven in part by player skill but more importantly by an extraordinary amount of player data, it's shaped by overlays and stat websites that have optimized the games and its players in a way that I don't think League Classic can shake.

Nostalgia is a powerful draw. But when you discover that your favorite old champion is just a badly-designed version of their current form, and you're up against an AP Master Yi enhanced by modern players' ability and game knowledge, all while your teammates grief each other over who got dibs on playing midlane, you might find that this isn't quite the same kind of Classic experience that's breathed new life into other games.

Paddle Paddle Paddle developer Mateo Covic of studio Zoroarts went viral this month for his comments on Steam's refund policy, which, after more than 55,000 people refunded his well-reviewed but short rage game, he called exploitable. Speaking with GamesRadar+, Covic defends much of his argument but stresses that he supports the refund system overall and doesn't want to see consumer rights eroded.

"I'm 100% pro refund but the current 'no questions asked if you request a refund within two weeks and with less than two hours of playtime' policy just makes it super easy for players to abuse this rule," Covic says.

Referring to Valve's refund rules, which expressly prohibit gaming the system "as a way to get free games" under threat of refund denials, Covic adds, "Steam says that refunds are not for people to play games for free, and refunds in general should be requested (in my opinion) when the Steam page misled you with wrong information, the game had problems that prevent you [playing or enjoying] the game, and other similar reasons that can be found in the Steam policy."

He says he isn't dissatisfied with his game's sales or refund count, which he acknowledges is not out of band for a game like this. "My tweet was targeted towards the people who enjoyed the game, wrote a positive review, and refunded the game just because they can," he explains. "Many people think that I'm a complete asshole now and want to remove the refund policy in general but that was never my intention."

This whole saga led to more "hateful DMs and insulting comments" than he'd ever seen, Covic says, and Paddle Paddle Paddle was "review bombed already and went from very positive recent Steam Reviews to mixed ones." He reasons, "I guess it's a big learning opportunity and I will think twice before posting a statement / request like that in the future."

Covic singles out an argument made, among others, by Twitter user and game curator Indie Game Joe: the existence of Steam's refund policy gives users a level of protection that makes it easier to try out some games, which can lead to more sales overall even if it can also result in more refunds. Covic says this stance did give him pause.

"Sure my refund rate is high with 55,000+ refunds, but when I did some research I found out that a refund rate of 20% is pretty normal for a rage game," he says. "Overall, a refund rate of 10% is normal for games on Steam. I'm super grateful for the game's success after all, and I just learned that it's a normal thing to have that many refunds when you have an amount of 270,000 sold units... Regarding your question: I don't know if people think, 'Yeah let's try it out, I can refund it anyway.' What helped my game way more was the cheap price. When I showed people the game's trailer they often were like, 'Oh looks fun,' but when they found out about the price of $2.99 on sale they were willing to try it out right away."

One thing he does firmly dismiss is the idea of intentionally making games longer just to dodge the two-hour Steam refund window. He worries Steam's policy could discourage shorter games in this way. Despite this hiccup, Covic says Paddle Paddle Paddle "changed my whole life," enabling him to work on games full-time, and now specifically making short games has become a joy and a focus for him after spending years on hybrid action game Makis Adventure.

Covic concludes, "I don't know how many people really refunded my game with a true reason since you could just lie and choose one of the possible refund reasons. Steam's 'no question asked' policy makes it super easy and quick to do that. I can see how many players refunded the game because it was too difficult, for example, but it would help if they left a helpful comment too since that would help me to work on that problem."

Here are the biggest upcoming indie games for 2026 and beyond.

I'm surrounded by enemies in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, and I'm getting my ass kicked. Two swordsmen flank me either side, one heavy axe-wielding brute boxes me in dead ahead. I don't have enough room to swing my sword – but I do have one last smoke bomb.

Executing targets big or small with the hidden blade is immensely satisfying in any of the best Assassin's Creed games. But it feels especially welcome in Edward Kenway's slick new remake given how challenging regular melee combat can be. It's precise art, "modernized" compared to the original as Resynced's technical director told me in an interview, but with just enough of that hitbox-based hack and slash flair to remain faithful to its old school roots. But there's one game in particular it reminds me of most. I'm impressed to say that Assassin's Creed Unity has been unseated as the unofficial king of finicky combat in the series as a whole.

Down but never out

As it turns out, a pirate's life is not always for me. It takes me a bit of practice to get comfortable with Edward's fighting style in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced: it's built around parrying, dodging, and timely hits in between, with the opportunity to counter after performing a perfect guard or dodge.

Now this is all well and good when I have just one foe to focus on. There's a skill and finesse to combat here, something best approached with nimble thumbs on the joysticks and a sharp eye watching for blue warning flashes, alerting me to an imminent attack. Edward's sneaky dodge-rolls over foes' backs, powerful heavy attacks with his double cutlasses, and general pirate panache reminds me of Arno Dorian's different yet equally stylish fighting style in Paris-set Unity.

But unless he's using enemies as human shields when confronted with a mob, a swarmed Edward certainly suffers for his art. Given that's exactly how boarding ships after naval combat plays out – that's an awful lot of cutlass moshpits. Which is where the privateering gets shoved to the wayside for a touch of sneaky assassin charm.

Deploying my last smoke bomb in the midst of a heavy close-quarters firefight, I'm able to walk around the obscured bubble and quickly dispatch any baddie while they're distracted. Meanwhile, throwing out the rope dart with the right button on my D-pad lets me interrupt even red-flashing power attacks and rain down some pain with my own blades instead.

Bar Yasuke from Assassin's Creed Shadows, who was no assassin and didn't have access to hidden blades, I can't recall the last time a non-RPG Creed protagonist's personal fighting style felt so distinct from their assassin moves. There's a graceful, almost feline way about Arno's that lends itself well to assassin-like stealth. Evie Frye of Assassin's Creed Syndicate wields her cane sword just as elegantly, and even her tankier brother Jacob knows when and where to reign in the brawn and take to the shadows. When Edward Kenway is boarding your ship after peppering it with non-so-subtle cannonballs, you know he's coming.

Edward, with all his rough edges and swashbuckling privateer moves, is by far the least graceful hero of the bunch, and it shows in how he fights. He plays dirty and mean because that's how a pirate rolls, not to mention he's not really an official assassin at all to start out with. He doesn't operate by the Creed; he writes his own to suit his own needs.

Where does the original Black Flag rank among the best Assassin's Creed maps in terms of aesthetics and utility? Go find out...

Laura Fryer, a veteran of the video game industry and one of the founding members of the original Xbox project, is sounding the alarm amidst the industry's shift toward all-digital games.

Fryer recently uploaded a new video to her YouTube channel in which she warns specifically against PlayStation's recent announcement that it's ending production of physical game discs starting in 2028. She uses a story about her family's Rock Band tradition to make a point about the impermanence of digital-only games, explaining that she once spent "hundreds of dollars on Rock Band songs" only to lose them over a licensing issue. After her original Xbox died and was replaced by a newer model, she was unable to download the songs on her working console because they had been delisted. "Eventually, we just gave up," Fryer says, tragically. "We gave up on our favorite family game."

If you're reading this, there's a good chance you've shared a similar experience with digital games over the years. Publishers have offered fully digital versions of games for decades now, and most purchases made on PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox storefronts don't come with any sort of physical token guaranteeing permanent ownership, but with PlayStation moving away from physical discs altogether, it's likely situations like Fryer's will become much more commonplace in the next console generation.

Fryer says her Rock Band story isn't just a "one-off technical glitch," but "the blueprint for what Sony is planning next. "So when people ask me what I think about Sony's recent announcement that they're going all digital, that's all I can think about."

Fryer also wades into the debate about physical's market share compared to digital, which some analysts say is as low as 10% physical vs 90% digital, but Fryer argues that the inclusion of digital-only games in those comparisons makes "digital look way more dominant than it actually is."

She also points to an old promotional video in which then-president of SIE Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida hypes up the PS4's ability to read offline discs when Xbox One's pre-launch plan was to make all games require an internet connection. These days, of course, things are different, with GTA 6, arguably the biggest game of the century, essentially going all digital. This, in Fryer's view, opened the floodgates.

"Sony waited for Rockstar to make the first move, take the heat, and now they're going all-in to make this the new normal," she says.

Fryer also makes the convincing argument that PlayStation going discless isn't just about reducing production costs for new games and hardware, claiming that it's also about erasing the second-hand market and re-gaining complete control over its ecosystem. "All the major players; Sony, Microsoft, even Hollywood; they're all aligned here. Digital kills the used market and it stops the old library from competing with new games on the next console," she says.

Ultimately, Fryer says a digital future is likely "inevitable" due to convenience, but says even a company as trusted by gamers as Valve is prone to leadership changes that could potentially result in digital libraries like the ones on Steam becoming just as vulnerable as song collections on Rock Band.

"I admit, most of my Steam library is digital too, because I trust they won't pull the games," Fryer says. "But I worry about that, because platforms depend on good leadership. Gabe Newell will not run Steam forever, and we've seen from Xbox how fast priorities can shift when you get new leadership," she adds, seemingly referring to Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's big "reset."

Wrapping up her argument against a digital-only marketplace, Fryer goes full circle with what she calls her "Rock Band warning:

"Digital is convenient until someone else decides you've had enough, and there are some games and movies where I will never have enough," she says. "Physical gives you real ownership, right? And in my case, physical would've protected those irreplaceable memories."

GamesRadar's Dustin agrees: PlayStation killing discs is bad for everyone, whether you care about physical games or not

Microsoft communications lead Frank Shaw says the 1,600 Xbox employees recently cut at the start of a layoff wave which will hit 3,200 jobs by the end of the fiscal year were not laid off to be replaced with H-1B visa foreign workers.

Seemingly heading off reports that falsely conflated plans for Microsoft to hire H-1B visa employees with the Xbox layoffs, Shaw says in a striking Twitter post, "Lots of bad information out there --let's clear it up."

Echoing Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Shaw reiterates, "Recent workforce changes were made to restructure the XBOX business because it is not healthy." He is quick to stress that, "They were not made to replace employees with foreign workers."

Shaw says "the H-1B figures being referenced are Microsoft-wide visa renewals and new hire applications. They are not specific to XBOX and represent a small percentage of Microsoft's overall workforce. And the majority of roles impacted were not American roles."

These initial Xbox layoffs hit multiple teams and studios around the world, with four studios already shed and Dishonored maker Arkane Lyon in talks over divestment options, and the likes of id Software and Bethesda feeling heavy losses of their own.

The H-1B visa program has faced additional scrutiny under the Trump administration, with AP reporting 2025 plans to overhaul the program. Matthew Tragesser, US Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said in December that the program had been "exploited and abused by U.S. employers who were primarily seeking to import foreign workers at lower wages than they would pay American workers."

Shaw insists, "XBOX is the largest employer of American workers in the gaming industry and the largest American gaming company."

Dismissing apparent criticism of Sharma, who was appointed to a new Federal Reserve job task force the very week she oversaw the dissolution of 3,200 jobs, Shaw adds, "And Asha is an American born, raised, and educated CEO, from Wisconsin."

The Elder Scrolls 6 will be hurt and potentially delayed by Xbox layoffs, Bethesda devs expect: "This has had a crushing effect on morale."

Steam has reportedly already brought Valve $11.1 billion in revenue in 2026 so far, and I bet that makes you feel even better about that Steam Machine price point.

Alinea Analytics has released its mid-year analysis of Valve's platform, saying, "In the first half of 2026, we estimate that games on Steam generated $11.1B in gross revenue, the platform’s highest-ever half-year."

The firm adds, "That’s up 14.5% on H1 2025, and up 8% even on the holiday-heavy H2 2025, which is the more remarkable comparison given the back half of the year usually wins on seasonal sales and holiday buys."

As for why Steam did especially well this year, Alinea notes a "surge in Asian players (China especially), higher prices on releases, viral co-op hits, smarter back-catalogue strategies from the big publishers" and "third-party publishers quietly returning to Steam after their own-launcher experiments, tails between legs."

The report notes that the first half of 2026 was roughly four times as big as the first half of 2017. However, a more shocking metric is that Steam has reportedly generated more in the first half of 2026 than in the entirety of 2020 – a year when everyone was inside playing games and dodging COVID.

While massive AAA games like Resident Evil Requiem, Crimson Desert, and 007 First Light – as well as indie hits like Mewgenics and Mina the Hollower – have blown up this year, the percentage of Steam revenue coming from new games actually appears smaller than in the past as backlog sales grow.

Alinea notes that 29% of game sales in the first half of 2024 came from games released that year, while 27% of H1 2025 sales were from new releases. Of course, 2025's first half had Monster Hunter Wilds, which sold 11 million copies in 2025, with 8 million of those selling in the first three days. The first few months of 2024 were also stacked with anticipated games that undoubtedly bumped those numbers up. So far, Alinea is tracking 2026 Steam sales at just 21% from new releases.

This success is maybe a bit harder to swallow given that the 1TB Steam Deck OLED just got a price hike to be almost a grand, while Steam Machine pricing starts at $1,049. RAM shortages and US tariffs are obviously major weights, but when a company is printing money like this, you might expect it to eat some costs. However, Valve made it perfectly clear that subsidizing hardware "doesn't align with our beliefs."

I can't afford $1,049 for a Steam Machine, but Valve has already graced your PC with the ability to be a high-spec living room rig from afar.

If any game typifies annoying side characters, it's The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and that pesky Navi. "Hey, listen!" is embedded in the brains of anyone who's ever taken that particular quest to stop Ganondorf, and another adventure's suffered the same plight, leading to a patch.

In this instance, it's recently released action-RPG The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales, a game published by Square Enix. There are clear Zelda influences in the use of a single, sword-wielding protagonist on a mythic date with destiny, who's accompanied by a glimmering butterfly named Faei.

Though meant to be helpful, it turns out Faei's contributions were a little more irritating than intended. "Think Navi from Ocarina of Time except it's [around ten] seconds of hammed up anime girl interjections," reads a negative Steam review. "Add that to Elliot's 'Hyah' which only has [three-to-four] variations. and jumping noise, it's like one of those brain rot simulators."

The devs are aware of these complaints, and have decided to remedy the situation by adding an off switch. The latest patch lets you simply remove Faei's insights entirely, and you can feel a certain sigh of relief emanating from the community.

There were settings for minimizing how often you heard her in-game, but according to the same reviewer above, even the lowest option still has a voice line across several more activities than you might like. Generally speaking, choice is good, and while some may enjoy Faei, it's clear plenty don't, and letting them switch it off seems like a wise move.

Nintendo has never offered any such thing for Ocarina of Time. I can't imagine, even if patches existed in the late-'90s, the company would've bothered. It's just not how the house Mario built ever operated. I lament this each and every time I head back to Hyrule, to be honest.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lead says Zelda: Breath of the Wild was "the first open-world game that actually delivered on the promise of an open world"

Resident Evil Requiem has all sorts of brilliant lines, especially from iconic protagonist Leon Kennedy – but there could've been even more, had Capcom not cut them.

Leon Kennedy actor Nick Apostolides reveals a few in a new discussion from Play, Watch, Listen+ on YouTube (below), including one that would've come up during the Titan Spinner fight – an arguably hair-raising battle against a huge arachnid.

"The one that they didn't use would have been my favorite," Apostolides explains, admitting that the cut line would've been his most beloved… had Capcom not removed it from the game.

"When you fight the spider, I wanted to say – and we recorded it, 'You know, you've been a real itsy-bitsy pain in my ass,'" the actor recalls, using his legendary Leon Kennedy voice while recalling the line. "It would have been a banger." Indeed, it would've been.

I'm not alone in agreeing with the star, either, as folks over on Twitter lament the cut dialogue. "OMG," exclaims one fan. "This would have been freaking incredible."

Quoted responses (if you click to view post activity) are just as amusing, with somebody shouting, "WE WAS ROBBED!" Another jokes, "Requiem Leon is definitely a father."

The actual video on YouTube has garnered some pretty great attention, too – considering that Apostolides used his Leon Kennedy voice while describing the cut line, folks comment on how it could be modded into the game itself now.

"Well, he just gave us the line right there to mod it into the game," as one person says – and, I mean, they're not wrong.

There are all sorts of Resident Evil Requiem mods out there, from those affecting gameplay to others targeting visuals. What's to say a boss fight line couldn't be the next to go live? I certainly wouldn't be opposed to it, and it seems like the community is already considering the possibility.

Here's hoping we get to hear the "itsy-bitsy" line in-game someday, then – Leon Kennedy can never have enough one-liners, if you ask me.

Yet to play Capcom's latest horror game? Be sure to read our Resident Evil Requiem review. You can also check out our guide to Resident Evil Requiem's safe codes to help you through the game.

The Blood of Dawnwalker is taking remarkably big swings for developer Rebel Wolves' debut game. I played the upcoming RPG for four hours earlier this month, and came away fascinated by how physically it involves the player in its world. Time is an action point-style resource that keeps the game's world moving forward, while protagonist Coen's playstyle varies greatly as a vampire by night and human by day.

While its third-person action and open-world setting betray its developer's experience on RPG hits The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, The Blood of Dawnwalker shows a clear drive to go deeper on role-playing elements. Catching up with game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz, I suggest that a lot of the game's depth is typically reserved for isometric-style RPGs – think Baldur's Gate and Fallout, wherein rules and systems are used to reinforce their respective fantasies.

In another life, The Blood of Dawnwalker could have mirrored those examples even closer. "At the beginning of the game, we knew we wanted it to be third-person," shares Tomaszkiewicz, "[but] when we started thinking about combat, we thought maybe we would make it isometric."

"In the end, we thought that telling the story and being immersed with your characters is best when you see it all the time on screen," the director continues. "A big part of RPGs is itemization – changing your character, putting new clothes and weapons on, and so on. You want to see them on your character all the time, and in isometric games it works but the characters are smaller and the details are harder to see. We knew we had the technology and know-how to do really detailed characters, knew those materials would be really good, and decided to create a third-person [perspective] where you can change the distance from the character."

Fighting talk

Rebel Wolves opted for real-time combat for the same immersive gains. "The goal we had was to not create combat where you see pretty stuff on the screen, like you're pressing a button and watching a movie. We wanted you to feel that you are in the center of combat, that you need to observe your opponent, and react, and learn to fight. I compare it to Guitar Hero, because there is a similar feeling that in the beginning – you cannot hit these buttons! – and after a week, you're doing it really fast [...] Here, you'll also have this learning curve."

I expected The Blood of Dawnwalker's combat to mirror The Witcher 3, which Tomaszkiewicz directed, but in play it's quicker and more dynamic. Your mouse or analog stick input determines the direction Coen's attack swings from – mixing it up makes enemies less likely to block your blows – and similarly, blocking or parrying a blow requires matching the direction it's aimed from.

How Coen fights depends on the time of day. When the sun is up, he's a fairly normal swordfighter, able to use combat techniques via an ability wheel – but not his vampiric powers. Those are limited to nocturnal use, letting Coen fight with his claws and other supernatural powers. A Dishonored-style blink allows you to reposition instantly and often, and while you can't heal by eating food in vampire form, you can snatch an enemy in combat to gain health with quick gulps of their blood.

Playing Coen at the start of his journey means I don't have access to some of his more dramatic powers, but it already feels exceptional – comparable to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and Dragon's Dogma 2, but easier to get to grips with. It's right on the sweet spot, involved enough for the sickos and straightforward enough for more casual fans – how did Rebel Wolves get there without over-cooking?

"Oh god, it was a lot of iteration," laughs Tomaszkiewicz. Combat started with a simpler concept and "quite easy" opponents, but it "started to get boring" over multiple playthroughs, leading to further additions. "From iteration to iteration we'd add something, change something, and in the end we are where we are now. There is no other way [to get it right] than iterating and playing all the time. If you're playing this game hundreds of times and still have fun when you fight, that was the goal – to create a combat system you can enjoy and you can repeat."

"The example I like to give here is Max Payne," he adds. "I replayed it five times, because I like the things I can do there, how it looks, and so on. I wanted to create it here, with similar feeling [and] different tools."

Through the lens of combat, I get the impression that Rebel Wolves has spent the last four years untangling itself from the RPG genre's norms and expectations – instead following the fun and seeing where it leads. Its much-lauded time system is "like Persona," says Tomaszkiewicz, but argues The Blood of Dawnwalker's shifting day and night dynamic is unlike anything we've seen before. "There are no games we could have compared this to. We created two different loops, and [essentially] needed to create two games in one."

"You can play the same quest at day or night, and it's a little bit different," the director adds. "Different choices, different consequences – it's a lot."

An overlooked but incredibly promising open-world game that needs all the attention it can get, called GTA 6, has been spared humiliation.

Molleindustria – the developer of some really interesting, politically charged indie games fronted by Paolo Pedercini – had planned to embarrass GTA 6 come launch. For an entire year, the indie outfit said it was going to release its own narrative-driven, open-world game (Future? No Thanks!) alongside GTA 6.

But as we count down the weeks to GTA 6's November release date, Molleindustria has shown mercy. Future? No Thanks! is now coming out on July 22. I can practically hear the sighs of relief coming from Take-Two and Rockstar's offices.

"Last year, we promised to release our upcoming game, Future? No Thanks! on the same day as Grand Theft Auto 6 in order to humiliate Rockstar in the open-world genre and deliver the killing blow to the Western game industry," the developer writes on social media.

"However, after repeatedly aligning our timeline with Rockstar's and delaying our release date alongside theirs, we realized we were at serious risk of making the game too polished, too bloated, and ultimately inauthentic," it continues. "Moreover, our superintelligent Marxist models forecast an unprecedented recession in the fourth quarter of 2026, with negative implications for gamers' disposable income and short-term demand for ecosocialist narratives. We had no choice but to move the release date up to July 22."

In all seriousness, Future? No Thanks! isn't gunning for the same crowds as GTA 6, but it still looks like one of the more interesting new games on the horizon. Set in 2045, the world is seemingly thriving. Climate change is being tackled, democracy is being upheld, and technology isn't being used to slowly erode our way of life – our grumpy old man protag still isn't happy, however.

The game's Steam page describes the bad-mouthed gramps as someone who "no longer fits in" and wants to check everything off his bucket list before his "self-scheduled euthanasia." Hence, the name and the goal of the game. "Indulge in outdated pleasures, explore a post-post-industrial Midwest, clash with a society that's moved on without you, and maybe, just maybe, leave with fewer regrets." It's on my wishlist, that's for sure.

GTA 6 shipping without discs "feels unfair to studios still backing physical," Lords of the Fallen 2 boss says, and Sony's certainly not helping.

A sad bit of history has occurred at Bethesda due to Xbox's latest round of cuts. An artist who'd worked at the studio for almost two decades, and was the last on his team who contributed to Skyrim and was still at the studio, has been laid off "after almost 18 years of dedication to The Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Starfield."

As per a personal LinkedIn post, Ray Lederer started at Bethesda during the development of Skyrim, where he contributed "concept art, visual design, and gameplay ideas" according to a alongside the late Adam Adamowicz, who passed away in 2012. After that, he transitioned over to Fallout 4, after which he got to work on Fallout 76 and eventually Starfield, before transitioning back to Tamriel for The Elder Scrolls 6.

"I've lived many lives here, made many lifelong friends, been through incredible highs of success and some devastating lows of tragedy and loss," he writes. "I will never forget the strength and dedication of our teams to bring these worlds to life in so many ways for so many people. I will truly miss working with the incredible talent and what was the unique charm of BGS."

Besides being in the trenches for Skyrim – an historic game whose legacy still burns brightly 13 years on – he was part of the initial visual concepts for Starfield. Lederer holds a remarkable amount of institutional knowledge, for a legendary studio with whom he seemed dedicated to.

Careers like his aren't all that common in video games, as many move between studios for a variety of reasons. 18 years is a serious run, and it's a damn shame that he isn't able to part ways with a company he knows so well on his terms.

"It has been my honor and the highlight of my career to be part of something that means so much to our fans, pop culture, and to us, as creators," he adds, mentioning that he's now open to pastures new.

Sadly, Bethesda's among several studios which have suffered losses like this as Microsoft swings the axe of restructuring around its games wing. Doom studio id Software's reportedly now the size of a support studio, according to a now-former artist, and Obsidian's now apparently working on the next Fallout after having several projects cancelled.

Times are harsh over at Xbox. With any luck, Lederer and his peers will find their next opportunities in short order.

Fallout and Elder Scrolls union says Bethesda layoffs didn't hurt Microsoft's "14 layers of management" – "We lost dozens of programmers, artists, designers and testers."

Animal pelts, skins and hides in Black Flag Resynced are all an important part of how you improve both your maximum health and your ability to carry around ammo and equipment generally. However, finding animal pelts isn't easy, as you'll have to explore the world to find and hunt various creatures and critters, from deer to jaguars to monkeys. Fortunately, I'll show you where to find all the pelts and animal locations in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced below, as well as how to get them all quickly without even having to leave Inagua.

All animal hunting locations in Black Flag Resynced

Below we've laid out where to find every animal you can hunt in Black Flag Resynced, with coordinates and islands attached. When you reach the marked area, use your eagle vision to find and mark the animal nearby, and use common sense a little. Crocodiles are usually in water, while monkeys are usually up trees, and so on.

It's also worth remembering that certain animals behave differently in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced . For example, deer will flee, while jaguars will fight back and potentially kill you if you're not careful. Keep in mind when hunting them!

Once killed, just approach the animal and choose to "Skin" with the button shown to harvest the skin and bones. It doesn't matter how you kill an animal, they yield the same amount of rewards whether down by assassination, bullet, sword or blowgun.

How to get animal skins and pelts easily in Black Flag Resynced

Though you can hunt animals for free, there's another option: upgrade both the general store and treasure dealer in Great Inagua. Once upgraded, the merchant's store will allow you to buy any animal pelt and skin in exchange for bones (the cost changing depending on their rarity.

Bones can be obtained by killing any animal in the game, but you can also buy them for 5000 Reales each from the Treasure Dealer, once unlocked. This leads to a straightforward cash-for-bones-for-skins arrangement that isn't cheap, but is at least highly efficient, especially if you're flush with cash in the late game. You can also spend some of your pelts at the Treasure Dealer to earn special Black Flag Resynced Outfits!

For animals you can treat slightly better, here's how to get all the Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced pets. Or while you're hunting for animals, hunt for the different Black Flag Resynced Treasure Maps too!

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission.

The Palworld 1.0 patch notes are gigantic, but an understated element of the update was only spotted after players dove into the new content themselves. Several old Pals have been redesigned, seemingly to bring them up to par with modern creature designs, but many fans also noted that the new versions put some distance between similar Pokemon designs that sparked comparisons in the past.

On the Palworld subreddit, user Silverr98 assembled side-by-side comparisons of the new designs for four updated Pals. Verdash, a green bipedal Pal, is now a bit shorter but has much longer ears, a less pronounced collar, and poofier shorts.

I think this is all redesigns from r/Palworld

"Verdash actually has its own identity now instead of giving off 'legally distinct Cinderace' vibes," Reddit user Pends101 says in a reply, and they're not the only one that feels this way.

"Verdash is now a smol boi instead of grass Cinderace," says Twitter user Rasen.

The Pal Robinquill, whose colors and overall shape drew comparisons to the Pokemon Decidueye, now sports an olive green cloak and a leaner silhouette which sheds the feather headpiece altogether.

Similarly, Fenglope, which previously used colors close to the horse-like Pokemon Cobalion, now uses a purple palette and has more flame-like horns.

Players also spotted a small change to the Pal Grintale, whose bright yellow eyes and jagged smile were often compared to the Galarian version of the Pokemon Meowth. After update 1.0, Grintale has subtle eye markings and straight teeth, with more of a Cheshire Cat vibe overall. Congratulations on getting the braces off.

Obviously, Pocketpair hasn't drawn a straight line from these changes to the Nintendo lawsuit it's still dealing with, but assuming it was a motivating factor, this wouldn't be the first time the developer has updated Palworld to avoid overlap with Pokemon.

Reactions to the new Pal designs seem pretty positive overall, and they do feel closer to the more recent (and, in my opinion, generally better) Pal designs. We still haven't topped the best Pal design of all time, though: Chillet.

Palworld 1.0 sees the survival game's biggest Steam player spike since its record-breaking early access launch and 96% positive reviews: "Better than even Pokemon."

The developers of Monster Fantasy have addressed comments that its upcoming title is perhaps a bit too similar to Capcom's Monster Hunter series.

Last month, the reveal trailer for Monster Fantasy was revealed from Jotoyo. The game is described as an action RPG with life sim elements, however, the trailer caught the eyes of many for another reason, that being some striking resemblances to another game with Monster in the title.

Now, the gaming community does have a bit of a tendency to be quick to label things a "ripoff" at the slightest similarity. Most new indie farming sims will be dubbed a Stardew ripoff (even if Story of Seasons heavily inspired Stardew), and we can even look as far back as the likes of Uncharted being dubbed a Tomb Raider ripoff and Digimon being called a Pokemon ripoff. However, I absolutely see the similarities when it comes to Monster Fantasy.

The game's trailer opens up with some landscape shots of biomes that look strikingly similar to the biomes from Monster Hunter Rise, and the music feels a few notes away from being the Capcom series theme song Proof of a Hero – with a similar build up to its main melody – as a Rathalos lookalike emerges. Fans have even noticed similarities with some of the weapon animations, specifically the bow and sword. The comments on the trailer aren't exactly shy about it either, with the refrain of "we got monster hunter at home" being a common comment.

In a Steam FAQ (via Automaton) posted by the developers, the team is facing the comparison head on, with a question titled: "The game looks very similar to Monster Hunter. Does it have its own unique features?" The developers respond: "Monster Hunter is indeed one of our sources of inspiration, and our core creators are big fans of the series. However, Monster Fantasy places greater emphasis on the new experiences created by the interaction between different gameplay systems."

It continues, "We understand that some of the combat demonstrations in the trailer may remind players of Monster Hunter. However, once players actually try the game, we believe they will find that the overall experience is quite different."

The post claims that the hunting "is only one part of our gameplay" and the developers really want to present "a fantasy world where, beyond hunting and combat, players can truly immerse themselves: building villages, enjoying a relaxed life, and forming friendly relationships with villagers."

The devs add, "Of course, the content we have shown so far is still from an early stage, and we understand that some footage may have given players the impression of a high degree of similarity. We have taken this feedback seriously and are already adjusting and improving the design."

Obviously, there's nothing wrong with games taking inspiration from others, we wouldn't have most of the games we love if not for that, but sometimes the similarities are a touch too blatant to ignore. Especially when we've seen instances like the Pokemon Palworld alleged patent infringement lawsuit, even when the survival game is a different experience than Pokemon, it maybe wore some of its inspirations a little too much on its sleeve for The Pokemon Company to ignore – and the massive success probably didn't help.

Monster Hunter Wilds fans collectively sigh as Ascendance expansion brings back hated elder dragon Kushala Daora: "I'm just really tired of seeing him."

Modders have been reanimating classic games inside of other classic games for almost as long as reanimation has been a thing (200 years or so; thanks, Mary Shelley) - from a Morrowind remake built within Elden Ring to, now, a Final Fantasy Tactics mod that plops the strategy game's combat onto Final Fantasy 6's scenarios.

Over the last three years, a modder known as Conman on the FFHacktics forum has been hard at work on a mod called FF6: Tactics, alongside a group of other contributors.

Rather than remaking the entirety of Final Fantasy 6 in Tactics' style, which would probably take much longer than three years, the goal was to "avoid any world map/randoms/stores and just jump from one battle to another."

Conman called this a "battle rush style" with the mod assuming "the player already knows the story." Final Fantasy 6's biggest battles, but in a strategy format, then.

That includes having most of Final Fantasy 6's main cast playable with their own quirks along for the ride: Terra's a scarily powerful magic user, Locke can steal, Cyan can pull off fancy sword moves... You get the idea.

New stages, reworked sprites, and that banger soundtrack filtered through FFT's sound font. After all that hard work, the mod is finally done and out now - you can find it here.

As you might be able to tell from the adorably chunky assets on show and the project's development timeline, the mod is built off the back of the original PS1 version of Final Fantasy Tactics, not the more recently modernized The Ivalice Chronicles remaster, so don't expect its quality-of-life improvements or cleaner graphics to show up in the mod.

And elsewhere in the realm of remakes, Square Enix recently said more traditional and official Final Fantasy remakes could be in the pipeline depending on what "resonates" with fans the most.

Perhaps that sparks hope for that long-rumored Final Fantasy 6 remake, but even if that's a far-flung dream at this point, at least we have the above gorgeous mod that's halfway there.

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation lead thinks a potential Final Fantasy 6 remake would "be in better hands if it went to another creator in Square Enix"

Persona 4 Revival might just be one of the most exciting new JRPGs underway – aside from Atlus' Persona 6, that is – and yes, its menus look just as stunning as the studio's past games.

In case you missed the likes of Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor: ReFantazio in the past couple of years, Atlus' JRPGs have featured some of the most stunning menus I've seen in any game.

With vibrant visuals, eye-catching fonts, and fluid movement between selections, they're simply to die for – heck, it's one of the most notable features Metaphor: ReFantazio fans pointed out before the fantasy gem even launched in 2024.

It appears that Persona 4 Revival will join the studio's lineup of beautiful in-game menus, with new screenshots of its own UI drawing attention from series stans online.

In one post over on Twitter, we see bright turquoise shades and yellows showcased with various fonts, reflections, and shadowy backgrounds. It's a graphic designer's dream come true, and fans can't help but praise Atlus for the jaw-dropping menus.

"I think this might be the cleanest and best graphical presentation from an Atlus game ever, my God," writes one fan. Another adds, "These look sooo good." Elsewhere, someone jokes, "I hope they spent some of the budget fleshing out the characters" – because, you know, it feels like a lot of money went into the menu designs.

There's also a clip of the menus in action floating about, and yep… they're brilliant.

As one poster exclaims, "HOLY SHIT, THIS MENU IS SO RAD!" And, I have to include my favorite comment: "I FUCKING LOVE ATLUS MENU SCREENS!" Me, too, anon. Me, too.

That's not to say that Persona 4 Golden had bad menus or anything – but Revival is an upgrade, after all, and the menu redesigns certainly prove it. Personally, I can't wait to experience them in real-time.

Thankfully, I won't have to wait too long – Persona 4 Revival is releasing on February 18, 2027, which is mere months away at this point.

Searching for more to look forward to? Browse through our roundup of the best new games coming this year and beyond to add to your wishlist.

Line up Arno Dorian, Jacob Frye, and Ezio Auditore, and they'd all have something Edward Kenway does not: being likeable blokes. The Welsh pirate was never meant to be a decent guy from the off. As an aimless drunk trying to find himself in the West Indies after royally fumbling the bag when it comes to his estranged wife back in Bristol, that offputting loser vibe was already there in the 2013 original. But it has to be said that while Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is an absolutely gorgeous and incredibly fun new game, it magnifies its protagonist's asshattery by dragging out his redemption arc for an unbearably long time.

I get it. We all love a rehabilitated bad boy, as anyone who plays dishonorable Arthur up to a certain point in Red Dead Redemption 2 will tell you. But, unlike a gruff outlaw atoning for his none-too-egregious sins at the dawn of a new world order, Black Flag Resynced gives me very little to root for in Edward. His personality traits are money, dubloons, and reales, and I am so very bored of it. How is it possible that over five hours and four sequences into the remake, I'm still rolling my eyes at a very two-dimensional anti-hero, waiting for the moment he starts feeling worth the emotional investment?

Ye olde frat bro

I've been trying to work out why I am so repulsed by Edward Kenway's character in Black Flag Resynced. Maybe I just hadn't noticed it before, and seeing such a faithful remake has exposed how simplistic the character has always been: from the faded leathers to the alcoholism, near-constant money-grubbing, and self-aggrandized dreams of rising above the derision he'd faced in the "old world", Edward is a stereotypical wannabe pirate. So much so, it starts to feel forced.

Others in the game recognize that. His friend Vane sneers at Edward’s twisted view of piracy, how he views it as a means to an end rather than an earnest movement for complete freedom from the shackles of Crown, Country, and Colony. James Kidd notes his equally shallow motives for dealing with Templars initially, Edward's interest piqued by the promise of a snazzy new get-up. There's also the matter of his most un-pirate-like commitment to his estranged wife back home. He intends to win her back with a fortune amassed as a temporary pirate, rendering him little more than a well-connected tourist in the West Indies.

Resynced does a great job of highlighting how hard Edward's intentions have been clocked from the start. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still righteous, Kidd remarks mildly, but it's clear that Edward's self-interest immediately grates on his companions very early on.

Only for me, it's not that early on. Six hours into Black Flag Resynced, Edward is still a goofy, greedy caricature of a peg-legged pirate, lacking only a Pretty Polly parrot on his shoulder squawking for a cracker. I'm starting to wonder if it's not the game that's making his simplistic bad boy era drag on for so long, but the way I'm approaching its new spatial parameters.

Thanks to being rebuilt in the powerful Anvil game engine, one of the most exciting tech advancements seen in Resynced is the seamless open world. As soon as I gain access to a ship of my own, I'm free to cut about Havana as I please – which means that I'm taking too long to get stuff done.

Too cool for charm school

The original's tight, linear narrative pacing has been well and truly let off its leash in Resynced. There are plenty of islands to explore (though the maps therein are quite limited), a vast ocean I can freely dive into at any time for some treasure hunting, and I can even indulge in a spot of harpoon fishing when a compass marker pops up. Then there's sea shanties to collect after chasing down sheet music over rooftops, Helix glitches to explore alternate timelines, pirate contracts, brief in-world events, and a host of side quests after unlocking Edward's island hideout.

All this is excellent, because I adore exploring the best open world games and letting myself get sidetracked, yet I can already feel how it's damaging my journey through the story as a player. I have to keep reminding myself that this is not an RPG. I could storm all the main early-game quests (is six hours still early game?!) to keep myself on the straight and narrow, but am too much of a magpie not to get pulled off-course.

Why would I jump straight into the next mission when I could go climb every vantage point in sight, something I do in many of the best Assassin's Creed games to open the world up before I get stuck in? Resynced's biggest problem is that it trusts me, the player, far too much to let its story play out as intended. As a result, I'm dragging out the worst of its hero.

Looking back at the stealth-action Assassin's Creed games, I don't recall ever feeling this much like a kid in a Havanaen candy shop. City-based Creeds have plenty of side quests, challenges, and collectibles, but the close-quarters element means I am never more than a few seconds away from fast-traveling to the nearest quest marker if I want to get back into the main story.

But as I set sail again for a distant island and pray to God I don't get swept up in another spot of naval warfare which was totally not my own fault, I realize that I have been intending to visit this map marker for the past thirty minutes to no avail. Resynced is almost too big and enticing to keep up the narrative momentum at times, meaning I am accidentally spending far longer in Edward Kenway's bastard era than I'd have liked. Help! My pirate game is too beautiful and distracting, and my lobster is too buttery!

I know that Edward Kenway's days in a pancake-flat pirate fantasy are numbered. His ego death is rapidly approaching, and embarking upon my first proper Templar Hunt, I am so very ready to see it. I don't know whether I love or hate Resynced's open world for being so good at its job that it makes an already unlikeable character even more of a tool, but I'm having such a good time getting lost in it that I can't even stay mad. Especially when, if I ever feel he is in need of karma points, I can send him out to feed chickens or pet cats to right the cosmic wrongs he inflicts upon myself and others (and his poor, poor wife).

Check out all the other upcoming Ubisoft games to anticipate next!

Xbox claims that reports of there being only one person in Texas left working on id Software's id Tech engine are inaccurate.

Reports emerged that as part of the devastating layoffs at id Software – which saw 136 of the studio's 185 staff members laid off – the team working on the id Tech engine was affected massively. Yesterday, it was claimed that this was so widespread that only one person was left working on the engine at id Software's main Richardson, Texas studio. However, in a statement given to Kotaku, an Xbox spokesperson says this is inaccurate

"There are dozens of people working on id Tech across multiple locations," the spokesperson says , adding: "Reports that there's only one person left in Texas are inaccurate." That being said, it is unconfirmed just how many people are left working on the tech.

Kotaku's source said they weren't sure how the engine could be patched due to the breadth of the layoffs, saying: "The institutional knowledge is just not there." The same source said: "id Tech as a technology is probably dead forever."

Derek Best, former principal VFX artist at id Software who worked on the latest Doom trilogy as part of his 12 year tenure at the studio, claimed the studio has been relegated "to support studio size," while saying Microsoft was responsible for "nuking a team into the dirt" and "throwing out massive technological achievements."

Alongside these comments, Best noted that "the VFX team was eliminated down to one single artist with no lead or producer." As for the engine, he also mentioned that "the engine programmer responsible for the massive gains in VFX pipeline improvements (like all the particle editor work) was let go as well," adding that "all devs that had Houdini knowledge for procedural modeling or cached animations were wiped out." Best said: "All the work for Doom: The Dark Ages in that program has gone to waste with no one to carry it on."

Pitches for a co-op Doom, a new Perfect Dark, and a John Wick-inspired cyberpunk game were cooking at id Software before Microsoft layoffs reportedly led to 136 job cuts.