Game News Roundup: June 2024 (2024)

Welcome back to your monthly report of game news, where I do my best to compile everything into one convenient ad-free place, so you don’t have to worry about the pesky cracks that info can fall through at other publications!

Thanks and credit for the banner image as always goes to the Avocado’s one and only Space Robot!

June 3rd: Massive Swedish game developer Avalanche Group Studios announced that it will fire 50 people and close two of its five offices, including a Montreal studio it had acquired less than a year ago. As I make sure to say every time, this is the Just Cause Avalanche and not the Hogwarts Legacy Avalanche, who are currently developing Contraband for Xbox and who I previously covered in April for union efforts. Contraband is now said to have seen some internal delays by Tom Warren and others.

Sony/PlayStation officially scheduled the release of the PSVR2 PC adapter for August 7th 2024 at a $60 pricetag, but they really Sony’d it by revealing that many of the PSVR2 headset’s main features are universally disabled when playing on PC, features like screen HDR, eye tracking, headset feedback, and advanced haptic feedback.

On the same day that I finally received my console physical edition for the game, Larian officially announced that BG3’s main Patch 7 will release in September and deliver official crossplatform mod support as previously promised as well as the last piece of new narrative content with expanded endings for evil playthroughs. Official modding tools are currently being tested in a closed alpha and will see a second test in July ahead of release. There will be a small gap between the PC and console releases of this patch.

In the wake of BG3 only furthering Dungeons & Dragons’ mainstream success, and the infamous canceled reboot early last year, Wizards of the Coast is offering the biggest design update to D&D in a decade, and they are openly embracing much of the worst, most predatory, and just insufferable video game industry practices, with preorder bonuses, paid early access, and overcomplicated content charts.

June 4th: After previous layoffs in January, Dead by Daylight creators Behavior Interactive announced that it will fire 95 more people out of 1300 total workers, with 70 layoffs occurring at the Montreal headquarters. Tough week for game devs in Canada.

A year after its reveal, Annapurna and Hohokum/Wilmot’s Warehouse developer Hollow Ponds have officially scheduled the launch date for Flock, the anticipated indie co op creature collector focused on flight. It will release for all platforms July 16th 2024.

Netflix Games announced 14 more titles to be added throughout 2024, including The Case of the Golden Idol, Cozy Grove sequel, Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, Don’t Starve Together, the recently revealed Harmonium: The Musical, and Tales of the Shire.

June 5th: UK citizen Vicki Shotbolt filed a $839 million collective action lawsuit against Valve with the Competition Appeal Tribunal, accusing the corporation of using digital monopoly to force a steep commission fee on publishers and in turn cost UK consumers more for games.

June 6th: Jason Schreier’s latest report for Bloomberg is the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League hit piece we all knew was coming, citing roughly two dozen anonymous sources within Rocksteady. Warner Bros Games is taking one of the biggest losses in video games history on the title and it’s no mystery why. As Schreier has previously said, the project started as an original IP non-service multiplayer puzzle game made to be as different as possible from the just-finished Arkham Knight. The success of David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad film and 2014’s Destiny inspired WB’s head of video games David Haddad to pitch Rocksteady’s leaders on soft rebooting this Project Stones into what it is now, canceling a different Suicide Squad game in the same breath.

Rocksteady had no idea what they were signing up for in terms of the development demands of a AAA live service. Though staff size grew by about 100 people throughout the seven years of development, it’s still dwarfed by the sizes of the teams needed for games like Destiny and Fortnite. Starting production at the beginning of 2017, they initially expected less than three years of development with a late 2019 release target. They lost new recruits who came to Rocksteady to make single player not multiplayer. There had already been multiple delays and a major gameplay pivot from melee focus to gun focus* by the time the game was publicly announced in August 2020. Further delays were caused by things like buggy short term engineering fixes for quickly designing multiple distinct characters and a larger world, and director Sefton Hill creating a perfectionist bottleneck of constant changes to both the script and the game. Inexperience with multiplayer and Destiny itself left a team unsure how to design compelling but repeatable encounters.

*Thus giving us “Why is Captain Boomerang using guns and not boomerangs, why is King Shark using guns instead of biting people,” etc.

Workers demoralized by these conditions were met by harmful attitudes enforced by leadership. Toxic positivity, a Bioware Magic TM esque “it’ll come together right at the end” attitude, and outright dismissal as more and more other AAA live service failures piled up. Cofounders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker finally gave up and left in fall 2022, founding the new studio I covered last time and reportedly telling recruits poached from Rocksteady that they wouldn’t have to deal with the mandates and pressures of a publisher like WB anymore. Which makes the Xbox partnership rumor very darkly funny.

When David Haddad went to Rocksteady in February 2024 to confirm that their game was losing money, he said that WB was going to focus on collaboration between internal studios instead of layoffs to compensate for WB as a whole being understaffed compared to other major publishers. (Please never trust executives.) As exclusively revealed by Schreier, Rocksteady is keeping the lights on by reheating their more successful sister studio’s toxic leftovers, devoting the majority of staff to making Hogwarts Legacy: Director’s Cut, while preparing a pitch for their next single player game. The post-launch support team for Kill the Justice League has already been majorly reduced from what it was supposed to be.

After Jeff Grubb and others continued to make comments about Dragon Age’s appearance during this Summer Game Fest cycle and created confusion, Bioware stepped in to set the record straight. “Dreadwolf was no longer appearing” because the ten years in the making fourth mainline Dragon Age game is no longer Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, it’s now Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Its gameplay reveal was confirmed to be released as a standalone presentation on Tuesday June 11th. My complete coverage of news on Veilguard will be part of the Xbox Showcase section below.

CD Projekt Red’s GOG made a disturbing infrastructural decision, announcing that players’ cloud save files exceeding 200MB will be automatically deleted after August 31st 2024.

The new developer Kindred Spirit Games was founded in the UK by former Mediatonic/Fall Guys alumni.

Leaking very shortly before announcement, the latest Nintendo Switch Online update added five Mega Man Game Boy games to the service’s catalog.

Guerrilla Collective: Here are some highlights from the full presentation as covered here. The first two reveals were skateboarding MMO Wrekless and a highly unexpected “new” game from Playtonic, Yooka-Replaylee, a premium current-gen remaster of a game far too young to receive one. Fabraz, developers of Demon Turf, have teased their ambitious next game as Project Tides, a “truly expressive” 3D platformer with a large open world. Cyberpunk adventure Neon Blood set a holiday 2024 release window. There was rhythm action game Disco Samurai. Nightdive featured one of their next two remasters, Killing Time Resurrected, a 1995 comedy horror Doomclone/boomer shooter.

Nightdive’s other remaster (announced at IGN Live along nothing else of note) is the very exciting The Thing Remastered, not just prettifying the 2002 game licensed from a horror masterpiece but actually modernizing its gameplay to bring it closer to its original vision of an advanced system for the shapeshifting monster. Escape from Ever After is a Paper Mario inspired RPG straight up about a worker revolution. Survival horror games Post Trauma and Hollow Body were both featured. And lastly, former Daedalic employees, that is to say survivors of the Gollum disaster, have triumphantly returned with their own new studio and new game, 2D action RPG Under the Island.

June 7th: Summer Game Fest 2024: This year’s Keighleyfest opened with a brand new first party PlayStation game, a very unexpected one unless you saw it leak a few days earlier: Lego Horizon Adventures, a co op comedy reimagining of the original Horizon Zero Dawn built in Unreal 5 coming Holiday 2024 to PC, PS5, and…Nintendo Switch, featuring a returning Ashly Burch as Aloy and the new actor for Sylens after we tragically lost Lance Reddick. Although the fully voice acted wacky comedy and cooperative gameplay makes it look similar to the most recent lego games by Traveler’s Tales, this is in fact developed by series creators Guerrilla themselves with support from Keywords. It’s Sony’s third Day 1 PC game after this year’s live service shooters, and second first party Switch port after MLB The Show. A sequel to the Source engine zombie survival game, No More Room in Hell 2, will release in early access this October. I’ll just get past this next one as quickly as possible: a multiplayer sports game from that fantasy IP owned by a billionaire actively campaigning against my human rights, you know the one, it will launch in September on all platforms.

The developers of Choo Choo Charles revealed their second game, the chaotic 20 player escape room sim Cuffbust. Star Wars Outlaws made an appearance. From the makers of Gris, Neva made its second appearance with a gorgeous gameplay reveal trailer and a recommitted 2024 launch window. First rumored by Jeff Grubb quite some time ago and decidedly not the Borderlands 4 or Mafia 4 reveal people had in mind when Take-Two teased a major sequel at SGF, Sid Meier’s Civilization VII (7) was officially revealed for a 2025 launch on PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch, which goes to show just how well the 6 Switch port did. Black Myth Wukong got a big new trailer and an indefinite delay for its Xbox port. Open world survival game Once Human and live shooter The First Descendent got big showcases and have both since very successfully launched. Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2 made another appearance and Atlus’ Metaphor ReFantazio made another appearance with a story trailer. WB Games brought Batman: Arkham Shadow, yes, a brand new entry in that series which just got derailed by Suicide Squad…but it’s VR exclusive.

The second year of Street Fighter 6 DLC characters was officially revealed, with 2D cinematics for Fatal Fury’s own Terry Bogard and Mai Shiranui, plus the beloved Elena from Street Fighter 3, and an in-game model for the inevitable transformed and revived iconic villain M. Bison. M. Bison has already released as of the end of June, Terry will be Fall 2024 followed by Mai in early 2025, and Elena is Spring 2025. SNK kept their train rolling with a enw trailer for Fatal Fury 5: City of the Wolves with new characters and an early 2025 window. Co op medieval roguelike Tears of Metal was revealed by developer Paper Cult.

Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero was officially announced to launch in October. A grotesque Black Hawk Down game was featured. A 30 player ftp fighter Battle Crush was shown and launched in June. A high budget indie ftp multiplayer action game, Mecha Break, was shown off. Digital Eclipse announced their next retro project as in the vein of Shredder’s Revenge, sidescroller Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind coming to all platforms this year. The Game Bakers, developers of couples RPG Haven, revealed their next game Cairn, a brutal difficult climbing sim coming in 2025.

After the horror movie studio’s gaming division was announced last February, Blumhouse Games came here and quickly officially revealed the first six of nine indie horror games which are set to launch between now and 2027: Fear the Spotlight by Cozy Game Pals, Sleep Awake by Eyes Out, Grave Seasons by Perfect Garbage, The Simulation by Playmestudio, Crisol: Theater of Idols by Vermila, and Project C by Half Mermaid. The first has had the biggest showcase as it’s launching later this year on PC, PS4/5, Switch, and Xbox One/Series: a 90s teen horror story with mystery, puzzles, and PS1 style graphics. French indie cinematic 3D platformer Deer & Boy was revealed, coming soon from Lifeline Games. A new trailer premiered for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 ahead of its launch later this year. After leaking earlier the same day, the new survival horror from Keiichiro Toyama the creator of Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush saw its proper gameplay reveal and launch trailer, announcing Slitterhead will arrive ovember 8th for PC, PS4/5, and Xbox Series, featuring a signature mechanic of transferring between any resident of the city to explore, fight, and escape monsters.

An extended gameplay trailer announcing an early access release this year premiered for…Killer Bean, a roguelike shooter which was definitely in SGF as a meme but is inexplicably also part of a preexisting decades old D-list franchise. Stanley Parable creator Davey Wreden revealed Wanderstop, the new game from studio Ivy Road and publisher Annapurna coming to PC and PS5, which is a dark deconstruction of cozy games and story driven teashop management sim. Another trailer for Unknown 9: Awakening reconfirmed a fall 2024 window after its gameplay reveal back in March. Jyamma Games offered a new look at their soulslike Enotria: The Last Song coming to PC and current gen consoles September 18th. An October 25th launch date was confirmed for Sonic X Shadow Generations alongside a first look at the exclusive new Shadow levels complete with aesthetic choices that are catnip for our dear Katie. A new trailer for MMO Dune Awakening explained its story and setting of an alternate reality where dark messiah Paul was never born, the Fremen disappeared, and House Atreides remains. FTP RTS Battle Aces was revealed as the debut game of Uncapped Studios from former Clash of Clans devs.

Among Us developer Innersloth had something much more significant to announce than their TV show (which did get a quick first look at its opening credits) or another game update: The Outersloth Initiative has been founded to support smaller indie developers with funding and distribution without any of the usual strings attached from publishing deals or acquisitions. It’s a deeply necessary, radical, and stirring act for this troubled industry. Six games were confirmed as Outersloth supported projects: acclaimed early access physics puzzler Mars First Logistics, mecha card RPG Battle Suit Aces from the makers of Battle Chef Brigade, community builder Mossfield Origins coming this year as the debut of Studio Any Percent, One Btn Bosses by Midnight Munchies, Star Fox inspired roguelike Rogue Eclipse by Huskrafts, and a very early look at Project Dosa, the next game by Outerloop, makers of my beloved Thirsty Suitors. More good news arrived as Remedy shadowdropped the first of Alan Wake 2’s expansions and confirmed a physical release for this year.

Anyway, let’s get this done: live service The Finals showed its new season, Amazon revealed New World: Aeternum, the single player revamp of its middling MMO coming to PS5 and Xbox Series October 15th, and Palworld showcased its next major update which released June 27th. Ironmace had a new trailer for their legally troubled hardcore D&D RPG Dark and Darker, which shadowdropped right after the show. EA brought a long sketch by Tim Robinson to promote the Skate Reboot, announcing it will begin console playtesting this year. Riot Games’ hit FPS Valorant was announced to finally be reaching consoles with beta testing starting immediately and full releases on PS5 and Xbox Series later this year. Capcom brought a few things, the Monster Hunter Stories remaster, a July 19th launch date for Kunitsugami: Path of the Goddess, and of course the third trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds. The show closed out with action game Phantom Blade Zero returning from last year’s PlayStation Showcase with new gameplay and demos across the year.

Day of the Devs and Access-Ability Showcase: Tim Schafer’s indie show returned with 21 games this year, all of which I will cover. Laura Kate Dale’s accessibility focused event is linked here. Stoneskip and iam8bit returned to shadowdrop Simpler Times on PC, a game about your last day at your childhood home. Grindstone developers Capybara Games revealed competitive online puzzle battler Battle Vision Network for PC, mobile, and consoles, a spiritual successor to their Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes puzzle battle game for the DS, which got a remake last year. Cairn oddly reappeared right after its SGF reveal. GBA RPG homage Petal Runner was revealed from Nano Park Studios. Chinese developer Pollard revealed a first person horror narrative adventure about corporate dystopia, Karma: The Dark World. Spelunky creators Mossmouth announced that their long awaited anthology game UFO50 is coming to PC September 18th.

The Netflix exclusive Cozy Grove sequel was shown and launched. A narrative adventure without dialogue about a puppy evading capture, Koira is coming in 2025 as the debut game from Studio Tolima. Arranger finally saw its launch date announced as July 25th. One of the previous Blumhouse Games, Fear the Spotlight, saw a full feature here and a 2024 launch window. Puzzle platformer Screenbound made another appearance with a premise that needs to be seen to be believed: a 3D world is navigated while simultaneously playing a 2D handheld game with both dimensional worlds directly interacting. Horror indie dev Clapperheads revealed Zoochosis, a choice driven game about trying to manage a mutating menagerie of zoo animals. Coming 2025 from developer Oopsie Daisies, hand drawn narrative adventure Tom the Postgirl is about voyeurism coming back to bite you. Rocket Drift’s sidescrolling cyberpunk horror game Psychroma is coming soon to PC. Thai studio Tan Ant Games revealed Building Relationships, a comedy adventure about a lovelorn house, which they pitch as “A Short Hike but stupid.”

Another DLC for puzzle game A Little to the Left was announced and launched. Timeloop adventure game Hello Again is scheduled to launch in 2025. Optillusion Games revealed While Waiting coming 2025, a game about the moments in life where you’re waiting and getting impatient. I just finished Coffee Talk Episode 2, which I adored, and the developer’s next game Afterlove EP, a romantic narrative game dealing with grief and featuring rhythm elements, is tentatively set to launch this fall. Calligram will launch their point and click noir adventure Phoenix Springs on September 16th for PC. Lastly, the developers of Road96 revealed Tides of Tomorrow, a similar kind of dynamic narrative adventure, but now with asynchronous multiplayer, i.e. other people’s choices affecting you and not just your own, and set on an ocean planet facing death by pollution.

Devolver Direct 2024: This year’s show from Devolver Digital had several updates, two brand new reveals, and oddly left some notable games out in the cold, like Baby Steps, The Plucky Squire, which got a demo at SGF and extensive preview coverage without a trailer to go with it, or Neva, which had its gameplay reveal trailer completely separate at SGF for whatever reason.

Cult of the Lamb’s next free content update is Unholy Alliance, which releases August 12th bearing local co op with a new Goat character as its main addition. The Road to Elysium paid DLC for The Talos Principle 2 was shown off and launched June 14th. Broforce creators Free Lives brought back their first person action game Anger Foot to finally announce a July 11th launch on PC. Horror reality show game The Crush House also scheduled its launch in a new trailer, hitting August 9th on PC. Lastly, Hyper Light series creators Heart Machine unexpectedly announced a new game separate from Hyper Light Breaker: Possessor(s) is a sci fi horror sidescrolling action game coming in 2025. Sébastian Benard and Deepnight Games revealed Tenjutsu, an isometric pixel art roguelike yakuza brawler with no current release window.

June 8th: Wholesome Direct: Here are some highlights from the full presentation as covered here. Four games we’ve seen before shadowdrop launched on Steam right after the show: frog farming sim Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge, physics puzzle game POOOOL, Indian narrative adventure The Palace on the Hill (also on Xbox and mobile), and RPG Tracks of Thought. A story driven match 3 puzzle game starring the goddess Artemis was revealed, Mythmatch. Rooster is a point and click adventure about all of the Chinese Zodiac animals. Supermarket sim Discounty is coming next year to PC and all consoles and will directly explore the destructive side of your capitalist enterprise. There was also the Future of Play indie showcase.

Future Games Summer Showcase: Here are some highlights from the full presentation as covered here. The next DLC for hit horror fishing sim Dredge, The Iron Rig, was revealed with an August 15th release. After laying off everyone but the founders, Keoken revealed a third entry in their signature series, Deliver Us Home, and launch a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign. A multiverse themed DLC for Goat Simulator 3 was announced and launched. Developer River End revealed their stealth game Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream coming in 2025. Dustborn, a Quantic Dream published game seen at the last Game Awards, announced an August 20th launch date in a new gameplay trailer. Deadbolt’s survival horror Pneumata is coming soon this summer. Sonoyuni is an isometric action game inspired by Japanese mythology coming soon from Don Yasa Crew. The last announcement was the new indie developer Woodrunner Games, featuring animators from Cuphead and Rick & Morty, teasing their first project ahead of reveal later this year.

June 9th: Xbox Games Showcase ’24

The Xbox event opened with the 90s set Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 gameplay reveal trailer, setting the stage for a showcase lighter on Activision than you might expect, and mercifully giving all the info I needed to make the tail-end half hour Black Ops 6 Developer Direct redundant with its focus on multiplayer and Zombies. Black Ops 6 will launch October 25th 2024 for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, PS4, and PS5. Black Ops 6 is always-online across all modes due to its use of cloud texture streaming, and the last-gen versions can’t run splitscreen. These Black Ops 6 announcements were accompanied by details of exactly how a brand new premium Call of Duty would be distributed on Xbox Game Pass, but that information became out of date just one month later when a drastic update to the service was announced just one month later on July 9th.

More price increases are arriving for every tier of Game Pass, and the baseline Game Pass for Console is being overhauled into Game Pass Standard, which will now have online services and the EA Play catalog, at the expense of the primary value offering: there will be no Day 1 releases, including but not limited to first party Xbox games, they will all come months or years later, at launch they are exclusive to Game Pass Ultimate, which is about to cost $20 a month. As of September 12th 2024, Game Pass Standard’s library will change and its price is increasing from $12 a month to $15, Ultimate from $17 to $20, PC Game Pass from $10 to $12, and one year of the increasingly redundant Game Pass Core will cost $75 instead of $60. Game Pass Console immediately became unavailable for new customers.

Let’s call this what it is. The beginning of the death of Game Pass and another big milestone for the death of Xbox that’s been unfolding all year thanks to that godforsaken ABK buyout. Game Pass’ software library is already down from its peak a couple years ago, it already had one price raise and needless overcomplication of its structure, and now those problems are going into overdrive while downscaling its signature feature. All of the upcoming first party Xbox games announced at this very show are actively being taken away from a large portion of the Game Pass subscriber base already slowed to a crawl, and not just those, all Day 1 games! Like Silksong!

I’ve had Game Pass Ultimate for almost four years now and gotten a lot of tremendous experiences out of it, but even at its very best nobody should be asked to pay a price this steep for not owning your games and having games taken away. And as bad and drastic as this change is for us consumers, it’s still a tiny band-aid on all the financial losses and damage directly caused by subscription services, and especially a rubicon crossed like Black Ops 6 on Game Pass. I will still never be personally suited for PC gaming, my Series X was the right option for me at the time, but nobody should reward Microsoft for this behavior and nobody should bother investing in this doomed ecosystem if they aren’t already, a PS5 or a gaming PC is obviously the better substitute on the whole even with their own obvious caveats. And nobody if they can help it should choose destructive devaluing streaming subscriptions over directly buying the art you want and intend to support, I am putting my money where my mouth is on that.

Zenimax followed ABK with the reveal trailer for the heavily leaked Doom: The Dark Ages, idSoft’s third entry in the modern Doom series, a prequel in a medieval setting with plenty of new gameplay features. Gone is Eternal’s vertical platforming, instead there are vehicles, a mecha tank to drive on land and a cybernetic dragon to fight in the skies, and a new signature weapon the Saw Shield for both offense and defense. Doom: The Dark Ages will launch five years after its predecessor in 2025 on PC, Xbox Series S|X, Game Pass Ultimate, and yes, PlayStation 5 Day 1 as previously rumored. Four years after the game’s reveal, Undead Labs’ State of Decay 3 finally resurfaced, but only with another cinematic trailer and no release window, so it didn’t actually tell us anything. The Coalition and Obsidian are now both confirmed to have support teams on this project.

EA debuted a highly unpopular cinematic trailer for Dragon Age: The Veilguard ahead of its gameplay reveal two days later, showcasing a Fall 2024 launch window, all 7 main companions (cut down from nine), and not much else: dwarf Lace Harding returning from Inquisition accompanied by the beloved Varric as a retired npc, Dalish elf ranger and Grey Warden Davrin, private detective and Tevinter freedom fighter Neve Gallus, Qunari dragon hunter Taash, Nevarran necromancer Emmrich Volkarin, Antivan Crow and mage hunter Lucanis Dellamorte, and Bellara, a Veil Jumper, mage explorers protecting the Arlathan Forest. All seven companions are pansexual and universally romanceable without the gender or race restrictions of Inquisition; designers say that they are avoiding the infamous playersexuality of Dragon Age 2 by having all characters be textually queer unaffected by the player character’s identity and capable of romancing other companions.

Extensive preview coverage accompanied the gameplay reveal event, giving major details about the game’s character creator and handling of past games’ events. Improving hair was a priority with more options and motion physics introduced. The character creator is indeed trans-inclusive with all body options unrestricted and pronoun options available. The game will be fully playable offline by no longer requiring EA account and Dragon Age Keep connection for managing past choices: now, choosing your past choices and implementing your custom Inquisitor are both built into the character creator, reminiscent of Mass Effect’s previously on comic and Hawke in Inquisition respectively.

And lastly, yes, the 20 minute gameplay reveal showed a very pretty Tevinter city and a very simple starting quest, but the combat is all anyone will discuss. It has been significantly overhauled to be more action-RPG than ever before, and really it’s specifically more like Mass Effect than any previous DA game, with only two party members at once who you don’t directly control anymore, and the radial menu being more about switching specials out and activating specials for companions. The camera is thankfully not tightly behind the back like it was in the leak, it’s much further out. The 60fps mode is the default/intended experience though there is a Quality mode too. After Inquisition introduced a jump button, we’re following in the trends of the ten years since it with a dodgeroll and a parry. A Rogue can now do fast swaps between their melee weapons and their bow. You get the idea, it’s not BG3’s hardcore CRPG turn-based goodness, and was never going to be with its multiplayer roots and how long ago this was all locked in.

Bethesda finally offered a colorful reveal trailer for the first of what we now know will be annual story expansions, Starfield: Shattered Space, scheduled for a 2024 release, but wait, there’s more. The next major patch/free update for Starfield was showcased and shadowdropped right after the event, most notably adding the game’s official mod support/Creation Kit toolset. For Fallout 76, the free Skyline Valley content update was announced to be releasing June 12th, expanding the game’s open world map for the first time since launch. An update to add playable Ghouls was revealed in the wake of the popularity of Walton Goggins’ TV series character. It’s set to release in early 2025. next was another third party reveal, this time from French independent developer Sandfall Games, who has scheduled their original fantasy turn based RPG Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 for a 2025 launch for PC, PS5, Xbox Series S|X, and the exorbitantly expensive Game Pass Ultimate.

First party developer Compulsion Games offered a second trailer and gameplay reveal for South of Midnight after it was first shown last June, showcasing the third person traversal and combat gameplay and announcing a 2025 launch window. The game looks exceptional with its style, world, and now gameplay, but still lives in the shadow of We Happy Few’s infamy. Blizzard premiered a long cinematic trailer announcing an August 26th 2024 launch date for the next World of Warcraft expansion The War Within. Konami brought Metal Gear Solid Delta back for a new gameplay trailer but still no release window, or no official one anyway. GameStop accidentally listed and retracted a November 2024 launch date putting the game very near the 20th anniversary after its source material MGS3 Snake Eater. Konami is still happy to take your $70+ with preorders now open despite no release window, of course.

Sea of Thieves Season 13 was briefly shown off ahead of a July 25th release. Ashen developer A44 Games brought their strong looking action RPG Flintlock: The Siege of Dawn back from Xbox’s 2022 show to announce it will launch quite soon, July 18th 2024 for PC/PS5/Xbox/Game Pass. A cinematic trailer announced that RTS remake Age of Mythology: Retold will launch September 4th 2024 for PC and Xbox Series |X/Game Pass Ultimate. Building on reports of a positive redirection after previously troubled development, The Initiative and Crystal Dynamics, plus a support team from The Coalition, provided the gameplay reveal trailer for their Perfect Dark reboot four years after its first trailer. First person stealth, Mirror’s Edge style platforming, and shooting are all shown, with melee and immersive sim ish takedown tool powers also part of the combat sequences. This game is still a ways out given that it took a reboot to get it on this more promising track, but an alleged episodic release model could mean that some of it is out sooner than later.

Blizzard announced an October launch for the first Diablo 4 expansion Vessel of Hatred. A story-focused third trailer arrived for Playground Games and Eidos Montreal’s Fable, officially announcing a 2025 launch window. NetEase subsidiary Bad Guitar Studio revealed their debut game, Overwatch-like Fragpunk coming in 2025. A coming of age narrative adventure reminiscent of personal favorites like LiS and Thirsty Suitors, Mixtape was revealed for a 2025 launch on PC, Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate, and PlayStation 5. Mixtape is published by Annapurna and developed by Beethoven & Dinosaur, the same indie team as The Artful Escape, one of my all time least favorite games. Talk about raising and dashing my hopes. And hilariously, an actual, similarly disappointing Life is Strange sequel appeared soon after: Life is Strange 4: Double Exposure is launching October 29th 2024 for PC, Xbox Series S|X, and PS5, with a Switch port officially announced with no current release window. Don’t Nod proceeded to delay the launch of Lost Records: Bloom & Rage from holiday 2024 to Early 2025 specifically to avoid competition from LiS4.

This new entry, whose development Rebekah Valentine recently covered in that brutal Deck Nine exposé, brings back the original series protagonist Max Caulfield and her time-rewind powers. Max lives far away from Arcadia Bay (allowing the player to canonize either ending without implications for the new story) and the consequences of her actions, and essentially relives the same plot as her original game by using her time control to save a friend from murder. Woodland survival game Winter Burrow was revealed for an Early 2025 launch. The previously announced massive free content update for Microsoft Flight Sim saw its release announced as November 19th 2024. Elder Scrolls Online promoted its just released expansion and 10th anniversary. A long cutscene trailer played for Indiana Jones with no update on the release window. Mecha Break reappeared from SGF to announce a 2025 release window and closed beta test on PC and Xbox Series. Chinese developer Leenzee Games provided a new look at their soulslike Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, announcing that it will launch in 2025 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series, and Game Pass Ultimate.

Obsidian offered a new gameplay trailer for Avowed and an extended preview a couple days later, revealing a third person mode. Officially the game is still just launching in 2024, no more specifics, but Obsidian accidentally put a November 12th 1014 launch date on their website before quickly removing it. Sniper Elite developer Rebellion revealed their new IP Atomfall with a gameplay trailer; this Britain-set post apocalyptic survival game will launch in 2025 for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X/Game Pass Ultimate. Ubisoft offered the gameplay reveal trailer for Assassins Creed: Shadows. Stalker 2 had another gameplay trailer before its hopefully final scheduled launch of September 5th 2024. Xbox made their official hardware announcements for the year before One More Thing: the $450 digital-only white Series X, a limited release 2TB disc drive Series X, and the white reskin of the 1TB Series S, all coming this holiday. The heavily rumored handheld did not make a specific appearance, though Phil Spencer sure is treating it like an open secret anyway.

Lastly, the next mainline Gears of War from The Coalition, five years after Gears 5, was officially revealed with a cinematic trailer: Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel about the beginning of the original war the games centered on complete with a younger Marcus Fenix and Dom and the nostalgia bait of Mad World returning. Given the positive reputation for the narrative direction of Gears 5, this is a tremendously boring, disappointing, unrisky move. As close as we can get to a direct feed from Xbox, The Verge’s Tom Warren soon reported that, per his most recent knowledge and despite no sign of it in the cinematic trailers, Gears of War: E-Day and State of Decay 3 are both currently targeting a 2025 launch along with Fable 4’s Holiday 2025 target.

PC Gaming Show: You can see every announcement here.

June 10th: Ubisoft Forward: Another predictably uneventful show from Ubisoft mainly focused on extended demos for AC Shadows and Star Wars Outlaws. The Prince of Persia series had its own dedicated segment. Free content updates for Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia were both shadowdropped, the Lost Crown’s Story DLC was formally revealed with a September launch, and a very brief nothing of a teaser trailer “thrillingly” announced a new 2026 scheduled launch window for the Sands of Time Remake, five years after the remake was originally announced to launch. A first story DLC for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was also shown with a July 16th release date. A new Monopoly game for all cross-gen platforms was revealed with a September launch. And moving on quickly from Anno 1800, the next mainline entry for that RTS series was unveiled, Anno 117: Pax Romana coming 2025 to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.

June 11th: Tencent subsidiary Sumo Group, owners of Sumo Digital and The Chinese Room among 19 total developers and more than 1500 employees, announced that it will lay off 15% of total staff, affecting hundreds of people. At least one of those 19 studios will be closed entirely, Timbre Games, which was opened just less than three years ago. With this, the total games industry firings for 2024 are understood to have now definitely surpassed 2023’s 10K~ total. Devastating.

June 12th: After last year’s layoffs, Australian indie developer League of Geeks is going ahead with an indefinite hiatus for the foreseeable future, devoting remaining resources just to keeping games available, bug fixes, and very minor content additions.

Square Enix officially announced the launch date for Visions of Mana as August 29th 2024 for all current platforms and a newly announced PS4 version.

June 13th: Dragami Games stand-alone released the first full trailer for Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a faithful remake of the 2012 Suda51 and James Gunn action game, announcing that it will digitally launch on September 25th for PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series S|X, with a worldwide physical release by Limited Run following shortly after.

In a development that I can only call both batsh*t crazy and kind of inevitable, the most recently crowned favorite gaming insider has had a precipitous fall from grace by revealing that they were a previously disgraced cis white male fake leaker pretending to be a Japanese woman. “Midori” had slowly built up a strong reputation with consistent seemingly accurate leaks exclusively about Sega projects. By the time they had in the past few months suddenly started claiming to have major info from other publishers like Square and Nintendo, my personal skepticism reared up and I started ignoring them. They kept retiring and unretiring, another telltale sign of sus insider behavior. quietly cultivating a Discord fan community of men parasocially crushing on “her” while behaving in a way now obvious as sexist and racist caricature. This culminated in investigations of them that prompted the immediate confession that they were really MysticDistance, a former Persona “insider” who lost all clout from consistently inaccurate claims.

Another insider downfall occurred when Nintendo changed its website update policies to no longer list new games in advance of a Direct, only putting the games up online for preorder a week later, closing the info source of popular leaker Pyoro. Jason Schreier did a Bloomberg report on insiders in which he interviewed Pyoro and published all of this information without actually asking for or receiving permission from Pyoro. This is not the first time Schreier has harmed sources by publishing sensitive information without their informed and explicit consent, which is the baseline of ethical journalism. It infuriates me that this man is the standard all of games journalism is held up against, this kind of behavior would never hold up outside of this space.

June 14th: After launching their third game Wizard with a Gun just back in October 2023, developer Galvanic Games tragically announced that they are shutting down because the game did not sell well enough to support them any further.

A special Yacht Club Games Presents premiered in honor of Shovel Knight’s 10th anniversary, delivering several major announcements mainly for the developer’s premiere series, although there was also a new gameplay trailer for the upcoming Mina the Hollower. The final free DLC/content updates for both Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon and Shovel Knight Dig were both revealed and scheduled to launch this summer. Paradox Pack for Pocket Dungeon will include mod support on PC, online support, and new characters, stages, and items. Wicked Wishes for Dig will focus on a whole new level and deliver over 100 bug fixes, adjustments, and localization improvements which will mark the game’s completion ahead of soon to come PS5 and Xbox Series S|X ports.

Shovel of Hope DX, a new enhanced edition of the original game was revealed for a PC release. It will add rewind and save states, online multiplayer, and have 20 distinct playable characters, building off the followup campaigns like Specter of Torment. Lastly, a new mainline Shovel Knight game was officially announced as entering development, which will “launch Shovel Knight into an entirely new dimension of gaming.” Which is to say, the next Shovel Knight action platformer will be in 3D.

Quickly becoming one of my favorite developers, Inkle officially announced their next game after A Highland Song and Overboard!, Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls, a mystery narrative adventure set at the titular school in the 1920s, scheduled for launch on PC later this year and Switch after that.

June 17th: After many developmental difficulties and delays, Paradox Interactive went ahead and fully canceled their life sim Life By You, closing down the subsidiary studio and firing all 24 employees at the same time. But wait, there’s more: a now former employee publicly discussed his experiences making the game, saying the devs were confident and “ready to launch” before Paradox made a series of decisions without their input. The last indefinite delay was abrupt and put development “a month in purgatory” before the team only learned of their layoffs from the public announcement. During that hiatus, the developers “did everything we could to prove to them we were worth launching, including things like finding potential buyers or suggesting cutting ties and going indie. We heard virtually nothing back.”

Developer Pieces Interactive, who launched Alone in the Dark Remake three months ago, was fully shut down by Embracer Group as the publisher’s victims continue to pile up.

20 years after first being announced and 14 since its last appearance , pirate action game Captain Blood has been unexpectedly rerevealed with a new trailer announcing a Fall 2024 launch on PC, PS4/5, Xbox One/Series, and Switch. Developed by Seawolf Studio and General Arcade, published by SEG, this game appears to essentially be the Xbox 360 version it was last advertised as.

CI Games announced a 2026 sequel to last year’s successful soulslike reboot Lords of the Fallen, despite layoffs at the company. Epic is the game’s publisher on PC, leaving it likely a permanent EGS exclusive once it launches.

June 18th: Nintendo Direct

This Direct impressed with a last surge of brand new major games and fewer rereleases than anticipated, including a few shocker reveals. The presentation opened with a brand new fully 3D seafaring entry in the other Nintendo RPG series, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, coming November 7th 2024. This is the first fully new entry in this series since 2015. The Mario & Luigi series always played second fiddle to Paper Mario and has spent the past five years generally understood to be dead after the financial underperformance of 3DS entries helped kill its own studio AlphaDream. The new game’s developer is not confirmed but “original team members” are involved per Nintendo, most likely Monolith Soft’s Hiroyuki Kubota. The publisher’s hugely increased support for first party RPGs has been such a pleasure to see. The Direct’s first set of quick headlines featured Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition with no new info, a shonen anime adapting action RPG in Fairy Tale 2, and most notably, Fantasian: Neo Dimension, the widely anticipated complete edition console port of the Mistwalker Apple Arcade exclusive JRPG with gorgeous photo-diorama environments; the game is coming Holiday 2024 to PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox Series S|X.

A whopping two years since the launch of Switch Sports, another new free game update has been announced, delivering Basketball July 9th. Free content updates for acclaimed Metroidvania Disney Illusion Island and Among Us were also announced and shadowdropped. More third parties abound: Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports coming this fall. Open world mobile hit Hello Kitty Island Adventure will come to all consoles and PC in 2025, starting with a timed exclusivity on Switch. Monster collector Farmagia from the Marvelous Showcase is coming ovember 1st to Switch, PC, and PS5. Lastly, an intriguing sidescrolling sci fi Metroidvania called Mio: Memories in Orbit is coming in 2025 to PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series from Focus Entertainment and developer Douze Dixiémes of Shady Part of Me. The next first party update was a gift to me specifically, it’s Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, a remaster of Retro Studio’s first Donkey Kong game from the Wii, the predecessor to Tropical Freeze. Returns is just as masterful as Tropical Freeze, and it’s coming January 16th 2025 complete with all the exclusive levels from the 3DS version.

As recently teased, Dragon Quest 3 HD2D and the newly revealed Dragon Quest 1&2 HD2D Remake both appeared here, the former launching on November 14th and the latter coming in 2025. The since-launched Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD got a very brief promotion, and we now know the remaster was developed by Tantalus, the same producers as Twilight Princess HD and Skyward Sword HD. Previously announced licensed crossover game Funko Fusion made an appearance, it will launch September 13th for PC, Switch, PS4/5, and Xbox Series S|X. intendo partner Genius Sonority revealed the latest entry in their bizarre Denpa Men series, simply titled The New Denpa Men, launching July 22nd as a timed Switch exclusive. SNK revealed and shadowdropped the tower defense spinoff Metal Slug Attack Reloaded. Darkest Dungeon 2 was confirmed to reaching the same date as the PS4/5 versions, July 15th. Just Dance 2025 made an obligatory appearance, as did Tales of the Shire. Disgaea creators NIS unexpectedly revealed Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, a sequel to their obscure PS2 tactical RPG, coming 2025 to PC, Switch, and PS4/5.

Stray was confirmed to be coming this holiday. Lego Horizon Adventures made its expected yet still inexplicable appearance with impressive presumably native Switch footage. Square revealed a fully 3D Romancing SaGa 2 Remake coming October 24th. Danganronpa/Zero Escape vets Too Kyoo Games revealed their fourth console game, tactical RPG The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, coming Early 2025 to PC and Switch. The developer has revealed that they took out a loan and went into ongoing debt to fund this game. And now, thanks to Capcom, the final and easily the biggest 3rd party announcements of the show.

Ace Attorney Investigations Collection coming September 6th, bringing both of the Miles Edgeworth spinoffs, including the Japan-exclusive sequel, to PC, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. though the arcade reissue certainly made it easier to predict: the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection coming this year to PC, Switch, and PS4/5, including complete-on-cart/disc physical releases. Featuring all retro Marvel-Capcom titles through 2000’s MvC2 which boasted a whopping 50+ fighters, this is the first console rerelease of these long delisted classics since at least 2009, and in some cases first releases at all since the 90s.

Okay, just first party left now. Several major separate Nintendo Switch Online releases were announced and shadowdropped, with the multiplayer Zelda: Four Swords and remake Metroid: Zero Mission for Game Boy Advance, plus the Nintendo 64 Mature-rated app officially launching outside of Japan with the first Turok FPS and Rare’s Perfect Dark. This clears the way for Conker’s Bad Fur Day to join all the other secured Rare games. The M-rating app was previously used to bring Goldeneye and Jet Force Gemini to Japan nso due to their ratings in that region being higher than they are here. Then there was Super Mario Party Jamboree, the series’ third Switch entry which will launch October 17th 2024 with the most content in the series yet, five new boards with stronger looking designs, two remade retro boards, and many new game modes including a 20 player online mode. But it’s these last two announcements that really took the cake.

The toyetic Link’s Awakening Remake Link triumphantly returns at the start of the trailer. We’re all excited to see this engine and art again, and this time it’s for a completely brand new game. That’s right, the first new 2D/topdown Zelda in about a decade (Triforce Heroes was 2015, Link Between Worlds 2013), another new mainline Zelda just 16 months after Tears of the Kingdom, and…my god, it’s really happening. Link falls away and Princess Zelda steps up to become the main player character. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom will launch September 26th 2024, presumably once again developed by Grezzo. This game synchronizes Breath/Tears’ emergent and creativity-encouraging gameplay with the 2D format, and makes this mechanically unique enough to “justify” the protagonist shift and being an original 2D entry, by focusing on Zelda’s magic as the main mechanic, summoning and crafting for platforming, puzzles, and combat.

I was playful enough last paragraph, let’s be straight here: Retro Studios’ Metroid Prime 4: Beyond itself has triumphantly returned with a gorgeous gameplay reveal trailer, a 2025 release window, and a confirmation of minor antagonist Sylux taking a major role almost 20 years after he was teased at the end of Prime 3. The game was first announced in 2017 and rebooted development in 2019, and clearly it will gracefully close out the Switch generation just as oft been predicted.

June 19th: 11 Bit Studios announced that their game Creatures of Ava will launch August 7th. Meanwhile, Atari and WayForward announced a September 10th launch date for Yars Rising, including physical releases on Switch and PS5.

A bizarre, disturbing games industry job listing has gone viral, with developer Spectrum Studios on LinkedIn explicitly saying that all employees are required to participate in naked sauna sessions, with the creative director then vocally defending this choice and declaring it non negotiable because it’s the only way employees can best understand the sauna management sim they’re producing.

June 20th: Limited Run Games Showcase: The presentation featured over 20 announcements and updates, starting with a full reveal of Virtuous and Ubisoft’s Beyond Good & Evil 20th Anniversary Edition remaster, which digitally released June 25th and will see a physical release on all consoles. Ubi delisted the previous remaster on PC and Xbox right before this, though this one is at least generally agreed to be equal in quality to its predecessor, unlike the Metal Gear remasters. Penny’s Big Breakaway, Toxic Crusaders, Hitman: Blood Money Reprisal, Star Wars Dark Forces Remaster, among others saw physical releases newly announced. Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus for Switch will now have a proper on cartridge physical release six years after its infamous code in box edition. A physical release for Grasshopper’s Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered was lightly teased.

A large part of the slate was all built in LRG’s proprietary Carbon Engine. Previously announced Tomba! Special Edition, Clock Tower Rewind, and Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution got new trailers reconfirming their 2024/25 launch windows. A Tomba 2 Remaster was officially announced for 2025. The Gex Trilogy Remaster got its first full gameplay trailer and 2024 launch confirmed. And the one more thing reveal receives the deepest of sighs from me over LRG’s continued emphasis on online ironic meme culture: Bubsy: The Purrfect Collection will digitally and physically launch in 2025 for PC, Switch, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X.

June 21st: Mojang has announced the long-rumored optimized PS5 version of Minecraft which will match how the game runs on Series S|X, this release is currently in preview testing for anyone who bought the PS4 port and owns a PS5.

June 25th: The regular delistings of Forza games due to expiring licenses has come around once again, with 2018’s Forza Horizon 4 officially announced to be going down December 15th 2024 on PC and Xbox, leaving only the series’ current gen entries Forza Horizon 5 and Forza Motorsport 2023 left standing.

Embracer Group’s Epic Mickey Remake/Rebrushed saw a new trailer confirming a September 24th 2024 launch date on all platforms.

June 26th: Bethesda Game Studios Montreal, the developer of Fallout Shelter, became the latest Microsoft subsidiary to unionize in the face of ongoing upheaval at Xbox.

Atari announced that it has acquired the Surgeon Simulator series from Tinybuild.

Capcom announced that it was bringing the original 90s versions of Resident Evils 1, 2, and 3 to GOG. These have been widely unavailable for ages, outright replaced by their remakes on Steam and modern console stores, so this is a win for retro game preservation and hopefully a good step towards further rereleases. Capcom also acquired Taiwanese animator Minimum Studios and ended content support for Exoprimal after just one year.

Third party mobile sales trackers have published sales and revenue estimates for the slate of AAA game ports recently released to iPhone and iPad, suggesting they are severely underperforming as we all anticipated.

June 27th: 49 people have been fired at Gameloft’s Toronto office, a majority of that subsidiary’s employees.

Chinese games company Perfect World has fired thousands of employees across several offices and most departments, with the status of its projects One Punch Man World and Perfect ew World now in question.

Ransomware hackers have stolen myriad employee personal data from Japanese holdings company Kadokawa, owner of Spike Chunsoft and From Software among others.

The launch of Frostpunk 2 has been delayed two months by 11 Bit Studios due to negative feedback on its recent public beta. The game will now release September 20th with more polish and with extra features players wanted to be day-1 instead of patched in later.

Long after rumors began about remakes of both the original 2007 Assassin’s Creed and 2013’s high watermark Black Flag, Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot directly confirmed in an interview that “some remakes” are in development alongside this year’s Shadows and the upcoming AC Hexe.

The final Sam and Max adventure game remaster The Devil’s Playhouse Remastered had its August 14th launch date announced.

Eight years after an emulated version was released on PS4, Embracer Group and Aspyr announced a new native remaster of Star Wars: Bounty Hunter starring Jango Fett, coming to PC and cross-gen consoles August 1st. But will it be any better than Battlefront?

June 28th: SAG-AFTRA concluded negotiations with indie game devs by officially adding projects of up to $30 million budgets to their contract that guarantees union coverage, AI provisions, and union actor access for indie games. Previously only games up to $15 million were covered.

June 29th: Ubisoft fired 33 employees at Ubi Toronto, which is working on both the Splinter Cell Remake and the Sands of Time Remake.

July 1st: The Capcom Next Showcase had a few announcements. A demo shadowdropped for Kunitsugami: Path of the Goddess, which is about to launch. Resident Evil 9 was mentioned for the first time in the slightest possible way, confirming that it’s been directed by RE7 director Koshi Nakanishi. Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster saw a full reveal after an unexpected teaser trailer a few days earlier: a second rerelease of the original 2006 cult classic will digitally launch September 19th 2024 (and physically launch November) for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, a first sign of life for the franchise since Dead Rising 4 flopped and Capcom Vancouver closed in 2018. Capcom bills DRDR as “practically a remake,” rebuilt and reanimated in RE Engine with significant if polarizing new graphics, along with new controls, new UI, easier saving, 4K60fps performance and more.

Sega has seen more leaks for its recently confirmed reboots of Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio, with images and footage of a Jet Set Radio remake built in Unreal 5 unofficially released online and public job listings for Crazy Taxi confirming that it is a massively multiplayer open world online game built in Unreal 5.

July 2nd: Surgent Studios, developer of acclaimed EA Original Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, announced layoffs of “just over a dozen” employees.

Palia developer Singularity 6 has been acquired by MMO publisher Daybreak Games of Everquest fame after the former’s financial difficulties. Daybreak will expand development of Palia and port it to more platforms beyond Switch and PC.

July 3rd: My apologies for evidently incomplete and inaccurate coverage of the WB Adult Swim Games situation from last time. They aren’t comprehensively returning all games to developers, with four more games newly announced for delisting because “the developer is not available to take over”, but the developers of one of these four games, Super House of Dead ninjas, is vocally available and contacting WB without reply.

July 4th: Support developer Tose announced that they were suffering a multi million dollar loss over the past three quarters/nine months due to partners canceling their games. Square Enix and Nintendo are two of Tose’s most consistent partners.

Rolling Stone reported on alleged toxic behavior by Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman, saying that Blackman’s behavior has caused Netflix to pause development and potentially cancel their Horizon Zero Dawn TV series that Blackman was heading.

Seven more NES games were released for Nintendo Switch Online: first party titles Mach Rider, Urban Champion, Golf, and Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Sunsoft’s The Mystery of Atlantis, and two more imports from Rare Replay, Solar Jetman and Cobra Triangle. A week later, the original trilogy of Starfy games for Game Boy Advance also released for nso, having never released outside Japan until now.

July 8th: Parent company Pedestrian Group will shut down Kotaku Australia and fire dozens of employees because it will no longer be licensing its publications from outside companies like G/O Media, from which it had sister branches of not only Kotaku but also Gizmodo and Lifehacker. Kotaku Aus editor David Smith publicly mourned his work and said that it was the second most read site in Pedestrian’s lineup.

After a previous version of the deal imploded not long after I covered it, Skydance and Paramount unfortunately did just reach new, final terms for a merger, shrinking the entertainment industry yet again, across multiple forms of media including games, in both consolidation and the threat of billions of dollars in imminent cost cutting. By now we all know what that means, just how gruesome it is.

Paradox indefinitely delayed Cities Skyline 2’s console ports yet again due to an inability to sufficiently polish and optimise the game.

July 10th: Nintendo unexpectedly released a very brief teaser trailer titled “Emio/Who is Emio?”, announcing a new exclusive M rated horror game in a sort of PT style viral marketing ARG. With both the content rating and the Switch 1 logo in the trailer, this game will probably be fully revealed and released sooner than later. Bloober Team coincidentally announced a Nintendo exclusive project on the same day as this trailer, but between the trailer’s Japanese content and the comment of IGN sources, it appears they are not the same game.

Announced first in Famitsu followed by a first trailer, Arc System Works and developer Yuke’s revealed Double Dragon Revive, a fully 3D reboot of the classic beatemup coming in 2025 to PC and cross-gen Xbox and PlayStation.

A new report by Mikhail Klimentov has revealed that in addition to the upcoming 2XKO, Riot Games was developing a second League of Legends fighting game more in the platform fighting party game/Smash Bros style, and the game was canceled early in development in response to the performance of MultiVersus.

July 11th: Frontier surprise revealed Planet Coaster 2 for a launch this Fall on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X. The game features new customization mechanics and a suite of new waterpark attractions.

Developer Splash Damage, creators of Brink, reported an unknown “small” number of layoffs.

July 12th: A new Game Developer report has made further allegations against Nintendo’s treatment of contractor employees, with translators from Keywords and Localsoft saying that their work on titles like Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and The Thousand Year Door Remake has gone uncredited.

July 13th: First announced in 2019 with no real visible progress or marketing since, Take Two and Cloud Chamber Games’ BioShock 4 has just shown signs of life with many new job listings posted and an alleged image leak.

This article is long enough already, but with the Xbox 360 store’s imminent closure I do want to shout out this Kotaku feature highlighting interesting games from that generation that are either actively being lost because of the closure or had already been lost. I own some of the games on this list, I’ve picked out some for future purchase where physically possible, and that’s obviously an important element of the piece, but it is just generally also a wonderful time capsule for the weirdest highlights of a very complicated generation of games.

A whole lot of time and effort goes into making my work here possible. Please show your support however you can to help keep this going, whether that means sharing these articles wherever and to whomever there might be interest, or for those able to, donating to my Patreon dedicated specifically to these writings, which is linked here:https://www.patreon.com/lilytina

Thank you to Marcus TAC, Katie, Brakeman, Jarathen, Sloot, Alanna, Ninjaneer, Prestidigitis, Frosst, AJ, Nemrex, Stasia, Belladonna, Professor, Dashboard, Monsoon, DS, and everyone else among them for your personal and financial support of this project. Thank you everyone for your reading!

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