Censorship, shrinkage and a Subnautica scandal

Welcome to Video Games Weekly on Engadget. Expect a brand new story each Monday or Tuesday, damaged into two components. The first is an area for brief essays and ramblings about online game tendencies and associated matters from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s lined the business for greater than 13 years. The second incorporates the online game tales from the previous week that you must find out about, together with some headlines from exterior of Engadget.

Please get pleasure from — and I’ll see you subsequent week.

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This week, I’m fried. Maybe it’s the plodding and ever-present crumbling of society and human decency, or perhaps it’s as a result of Love Island USA simply ended so I’m feeling further listless. It’s a well-known summer time sensation, however this 12 months every part is exaggerated and additional tense, the stakes of each motion appear greater, and as an alternative of melting into the heat of the season with a popsicle and a smile, I usually discover myself frozen and numb. I’m the popsicle, coo coo ca choo.

I’m unsure precisely what I’m making an attempt to convey right here, however I feel it’s clear that I shouldn’t be writing something too severe for the time being. I’m engaged on a couple of studies and making an attempt to maintain my composure amid the chaos, and all of the whereas, the online game headlines preserve rolling on. I’ve included a couple of greater than typical this week, as penance for my popsicle state.

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The information

UK studio The Chinese Room, creator of Still Wakes the Deep and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, is unbiased as soon as once more. The Chinese Room leaders accomplished a administration buyout with assist from VC agency Hiro Capital to totally break up the studio from Tencent subsidiary Sumo Digital, which acquired it in 2018. Plenty of folks had been laid off as a part of the transition and the studio is left with a complete of 55 workers. The Chinese Room continues to be engaged on Vampire: The Masquerade — Bloodlines 2 for Paradox Interactive, and it additionally has authentic tasks in improvement.

Still Wakes the Deep was considered one of my of 2024. Whether you’re a fan of lovely paranormal horror otherwise you’re simply actually into oil rigs, give it a go.

Vice’s proprietor, Savage Ventures, doesn’t need you to learn . Or .

Vice eliminated two articles about on sure “adult-only” content material and the group that pushed for the change, Collective Shout, which has the assist of outstanding anti-pornography teams with conservative spiritual foundations. The tales had been written by contributor Ana Valens, who had been “due to concerns about the controversial subject matter — not journalistic complaints.” Valens has vowed to by no means write for Vice once more and a handful of reporters there have .

Censoring tales about censorship is actually a alternative, Vice.

The residence of Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology, Supermassive Games, is shedding 36 folks, restructuring its workforce and delaying considered one of its tasks into 2026. A says the choices had been in response to the online game business’s “challenging and ever-evolving environment.” It’s estimated that Supermassive had greater than 300 workers earlier than the layoffs.

Directive 8020, the fifth installment within the Dark Pictures Anthology, is now resulting from come out within the first half of 2026, quite than this fall. Honestly, I’m not stunned to listen to Supermassive wants extra time to work on Directive 8020. I watched Engadget UK bureau chief Mat Smith play the demo at Summer Game Fest in June, and whereas it appeared nice, we had been each stunned by how quick and non-interactive the phase was. He summed up this sense with the road, “Finally, I got to play (but only for a few minutes).”

Supermassive can be engaged on Little Nightmares III, a sequence that it took over from Tarsier Studios. Tarsier created Little Nightmares and its sequel, however misplaced the rights to the IP when the workforce was acquired by a subsidiary of Embracer Group in 2019. Series writer Bandai Namco saved the Little Nightmares model and commissioned Supermassive to construct the third sport, whereas Tarsier is working by itself venture, .

It is sensible that Supermassive would prioritize Little Nightmares III with the intention to fulfill its obligations with Bandai. The sport has already been delayed as soon as, and it’s set to hit PC and consoles on October 10.

I nonetheless have excessive hopes for FBC: Firebreak to be the Left 4 Dead revival we’ve all the time needed, however reality is, it’s . Remedy Entertainment is conscious of this difficult reality and has a plan to repair it. The studio laid out its pipeline for making FBC: Firebreak simpler to leap into, extra enjoyable to play and fewer complicated general, with most main adjustments coming in an replace this winter.

PCGamesN printed an interview with Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le, who left Valve years in the past to check out unbiased improvement. One sentiment caught out to me.

“They didn’t force me out or anything,” Le advised PCGamesN. “But a part of me kind of regrets it. Looking back, my decision to leave Valve was, financially, kind of a poor decision. If I had stayed with Valve, I would have been able to retire by now.”

It’s not introduced as an indictment of Valve, however I discover it notable that Le describes the studio as a spot to retire, quite than an area to innovate and create the following technology of video video games. At this charge, Valve won’t ever outrun its popularity because the studio the place (professionally talking).

But, hey, at the very least they don’t seem to be getting laid off en masse. Which, sadly, brings us to the following headline.

Cyberpunk 2077, Sea of Thieves and Dune: Awakening assist studio Virtuos is shedding 270 builders, which is about seven % of its workers. Virtuos is presently greatest often known as the studio behind The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered alongside Bethesda, and it has greater than 4,000 workers throughout Asia, Europe and North America. The cuts have an effect on builders in Asia and Europe, with “fewer than 10” in France, the place work on Oblivion Remastered was headquartered.

Make positive to pin this one in your calendar. Saber Interactive is making Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, a first-person, action-survival horror sport that options actor Doug Bradley as Pinhead for the primary time in practically 20 years. Barker himself offered enter on the story, too. It’s coming to PlayStation 5, PC and Xbox Series X/S, with no launch date but.

“The Hellraiser universe is defined by its unflinching exploration of pain, pleasure, and the thin and terrifying line that separates the two,” an outline from Saber Interactive reads. “That essence is at the heart of our game.”

Game Developer reporter Chris Kerr spoke with various workers at Zenimax who’re nonetheless reeling from the layoffs that . The vibes there sound fairly horrible.

“This carcass of workers that remains is somehow supposed to keep shipping award-winning games,” one senior QA tester told Kerr. The developer continued, “Microsoft just took everything that could have been great about the culture and collaboration and decimated it. Morale is terrible. It’s grotesque. People are stressed. They’re crying.”

When Xbox isn’t firing thousands of employees in one blow, it’s quietly laying the groundwork for the future of video game distribution. An update for Xbox Insiders this week introduces cross-platform cloud support, bringing your cloud library and play history to the Xbox PC app. This means you can access cloud activity on an Xbox console, PC or Windows handheld, and seamlessly play cloud games across devices. This is just how video games are going to work in the coming decades, and it’s interesting to watch our future slowly roll out in blog posts and software updates.

Did you miss all of the mess around Subnautica 2 last week? Or, more accurately, this past month? To quickly summarize, Subnautica publisher Krafton is being sued by the series creators after it fired them and then delayed their game, allegedly sabotaging a $250 million bonus payout due to developers. To not-quickly summarize, see my complete .

I don’t know who else wants somewhat levity of their life proper now, however I actually do. Thankfully, the stop-motion present My Melody & Kuromi is coming to Netflix on July 24, and there’s already an lovely by LE SSERAFIM to get pleasure from. Zen out, watch the entire Sanrio sweetness and at last settle the talk: Are you extra of a Kuromi or a My Melody?

Additional studying

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Have a tip for Jessica? You can attain her by e-mail, Bluesky or ship a message to @jesscon.96 to talk confidentially on Signal.