Valve is facing yet another lawsuit, and it's not about the Steam company's 30% cut on all Steam sales. This time, the lawsuit comes from the state of New York, as the state's general attorney, Letitia James, has filed a lawsuit against Valve, alleging that the company has violated state gambling laws with the loot boxes available games like Counter-Strike. The news comes from a new report from Reuters, which adds that James calls Valve's loot boxes "quintessential gambling," and also accused the DOTA 2 developer of "threatening to addict children" to gambling. "Valve's loot boxes are particularly pernicious because […]

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The PS Plus Essential games for March 2026 have been revealed, and after February's lineup added a couple of strong indie titles, this month's lineup of four games includes a few bigger names like PGA Tour 2K25 and Monster Hunter Rise headlining this month's batch. Plays subscribed to the bottom tier of PS Plus or higher will get access to the two aforementioned games, along with Slime Rancher 2 and The Elder Scrolls Online Collection: Gold Road next week starting on March 3, 2026. As always, if you want to access these games after this coming month, you'll need to […]

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With Generative AI (GenAI) remaining the most controversial topic in the video game industry, any mention of GenAI or AI in general is making the hair on players' arms stand up. The latest occurrence of this comes from Genshin Impact players looking a little more closely at Hoyoverse's recent updates to the popular free-to-play game's Privacy Policy, which appears to have indicated that unless players opt-out, Hoyoverse will collect players' in-game voice chat data to train an internal AI model. Initially spotted on a now-removed Reddit post, Bluesky user Cevian shared a change to Genshin Impact's privacy policy that was […]

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Last year, EA brought back one of its most beloved franchises from the seventh generation of consoles with the return of Skate. It was absolutely not the Skate 4 that fans of the series had hoped they might get one day. It was EA's attempt at turning the franchise into a live service game that could churn out cash for the publisher, and despite it being the most-downloaded free-to-play PC and console game in 2025 according to a new Sensor Tower report, less than six months from its launch, developer Full Circle has been impacted by layoffs. A statement from […]

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Valorborn, the upcoming open-world sandbox RPG that developer Laps Games describes as a "dangerous, reactive medieval fantasy world full of freedom, tension, and possibility," officially has an early access release date. It'll arrive on PC first through Steam, and it'll be out in early access on April 15, 2026. Sim and city-building fans may already recognize Laps Games as the developer behind Land of the Vikings, the 2023 strategy city-building sim that lets you create intricate Viking colonies and challenges you to lead your people through difficult winters, military expeditions, all while managing resources so your colony can thrive instead […]

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One of the best action games of 2025 and the return of one of the best action series in video games last year, Ninja Gaiden 4, will get its first major DLC release next week, with the arrival of its previously announced The Two Masters DLC on March 4, 2026. The confirmation of its release date comes after we previously learned that the DLC would arrive sometime in early 2026. Announced in an Xbox Wire blog post, we also got a new look at gameplay from the DLC, which adds two new weapons (one for Ryu and one for Yakumo), […]

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Ubisoft has seemingly lost another one of its veteran developers as part of its ongoing organizational restructuring following the company's announcement of a "major reset" last month. After learning who would be taking charge of the Assassin's Creed franchise going forward in its new structure yesterday, today we've learned that Clint Hocking, a Ubisoft veteran who was the creative director on Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Far Cry 2, Watch Dogs: Legion, and most recently the creative director on the upcoming Assassin's Creed: Hexe project, has left the company. VGC initially reported Hocking's departure, and when we reached out to Ubisoft […]

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The State of Gaming 2026 report from global data firm Sensor Tower is here, looking back on 2025 across several metrics, including which games sit atop the global sales charts - not just regional charts like Circana's US-specific reports. We knew that Battlefield 6 was the best-selling game in the US last year, but now Sensor Tower's data confirms it to be the best-selling game on a global scale, and it's not the only EA game at or near the top of the charts. EA Sports FC 25 and EA Sports FC 26 took the number two and number three […]

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Global data firm Sensor Tower has released its State of Gaming 2026 report, which looks back at the video game industry in 2025 across a wide range of metrics, including where publishers are spending their marketing money and which publishers have the most downloaded portfolios. Last year, Microsoft was the publisher that spent the most on marketing for its PC and console games, but it came second in terms of cross-platform game downloads for its portfolio of titles, behind Electronic Arts (EA) in first, while Take-Two came in third. At least that's how it shakes up when you're not including […]

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Last Friday, the video game industry changed forever with the reveal that Phil Spencer would be retiring as the chief executive officer of Microsoft's gaming division, leaving the company he had spent 38 years with, while spending the last decade at the forefront of the Xbox brand. His replacement started yesterday. Asha Sharma, formerly the CEO of Microsoft's CoreAI division, was placed at the head of Xbox after joining Microsoft in 2024. Sharma's opening message to players has been all about how she wants to bring about "the return of Xbox," and in a new interview with Windows Central, she […]

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Ed Skrein, who you might recognize as the main antagonist in the first Deadpool movie or as the antagonist in Zack Snyder's ridiculous Rebel Moon films has been tapped by Amazon and PlayStation Productions to play Baldur in the upcoming God of War TV series. Skrein is the latest to join the cast, taking up one of the last major characters whose casting had yet to be revealed. We know who is playing Kratos, Atreus, Brok, Sindri, Mimir, Thor, Heimdall, Sif, and Odin, and we now know who will be stepping into Baldur's numb feet. Announced in a new report […]

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Insomniac Games was done letting us wait, as it announced in a short and to-the-point post on its official social channels that Marvel's Wolverine will release on PS5 this coming September 15, 2026. "Let's cut to the chase" writes Insomniac, before announcing the release date. While it's great to no longer be in the dark on the release date for what is arguably the most anticipated game coming to PS5 for PlayStation players this year, it is a little curious as to why we didn't get this news two weeks ago, when Sony held its first State of Play event […]

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It's that time of year again, as we're back to yet another Steam Next Fest filled to the brim with demos of upcoming games, some of which could be some of the year's biggest games when they finally arrive. As I have done previously, I've gone through a slew of demos that are available as part of the festival, and curated my findings into a list of a few that I highly recommend you spend some time playing throughout the festival's remaining run time. It's also worth noting that even if you don't catch this list until after the festival […]

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Guerrilla Games has announced that it will host the first closed playtest for its recently announced Horizon-based co-op multiplayer game, Horizon Hunters Gathering. Curiously, it's the second playtest being run this week for a PlayStation Studios title, since Bungie's open server slam test for Marathon is also taking place this weekend. But at least in the case of Horizon Hunters Gathering, it's a closed-beta test you have to be invited into, so they theoretically won't cannibalize each other. That said, it still feels odd that Sony would opt to have them on the same weekend. Regardless, if you head to […]

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Blizzard has revealed a new Overwatch game, and no, it's not 'Overwatch 2' again. It's a new 4v4, free-to-play, top-down Hero shooter called Overwatch Rush, and it's a brand new game built for mobile players. The game was announced with a look at some early in-development gameplay, which you can see in the trailer below. It's being developed by a "dedicated team at Blizzard, separate from Team 4, all of whom have deep mobile experience," according to a blog post on Blizzard's official website, which is followed by Blizzard reiterating that Team 4 is "fully focused on Overwatch," as if […]

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Embark Studio's new Shrouded Sky update for ARC Raiders isn't a major expansion or anything, but it almost feels close to that kind of update, because it includes more than a few significant changes. A slew of weapons have been given nerfs to try and better balance PvP play, an element of progression that wasn't benefiting half of the player base is now gone, there are two new ARC threats to take down, and that's before getting to the fact that there's a whole hurricane for players to deal with now. The update is now live, with the full patch […]

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Do you remember that game from Amazon and Glowmade at Gamescom ONL 2024 that put Geoff Keighley in its trailer and looked like a more medieval version of Fall Guys? No? Well, to remind you (unless you're one of the 10 people playing it on Steam right now who need no reminder), that game was King of Meat, a co-op party platformer that dropped four friends into a medieval, community-built obstacle course. That's what King of Meat was, with 'was' being the keyword here, because today, Amazon and Glowmade announced on the game's official website that its servers are going […]

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Bungie's upcoming first-person PvEvP extraction shooter, Marathon, will be out on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S in a little more than a week from the time of this writing, and as you might expect, there has been a lot of communication and marketing from the team as we get closer to the game's release. The most recent of which arrived today, in the form of a new blog post on the official Bungie website, all to do with the game's networking and security. The blog post highlights the game's dedicated server networking and how elements like Fog of War […]

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Publisher Nacon will host its next Nacon Connect event next week on March 4, 2026, at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm BT. A press release for the event doesn't identify how long it will be, but it does tease new looks at upcoming titles like Edge of Memories, The Mound: Omen of Cthulhu, and Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss. The press release also adds that "This key event will highlight the publisher-developer's future releases as well as the latest from its accessories department," so we know we won't just be hearing about new games from Nacon; we'll also get […]

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With Ubisoft's massive organizational shake-up and "major reset" officially revealed last month, there have been a lot of changes at the company. Even before it was properly revealed, though, big changes had been made, with the establishment of Vantage Studios and the departure of the former head of the Assassin's Creed franchise, Marc-Alexis Côté. Today, we learned who would be replacing Côté, with three veteran Assassin's Creed developers at the helm of the franchise for the foreseeable future. The first is the new head of the brand, Martin Schelling, who has been with Ubisoft since 2003. He has worked on […]

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A new report from Game File points to the latest source of video game industry layoffs, this time coming from Tencent and its TiMi Montreal studio. In this case, the whole studio is getting shut down, leading to everyone on the team seemingly losing their roles nearly five years after the studio was founded with the intention of creating "AAA open-world multi-platform games." Game File's report comes after a now-deleted LinkedIn post from one of the studio's programmers shared that the studio had been shuttered, with employees having been aware of the situation "for some time." They also added that […]

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This past Friday, the video games industry, and more specifically, Xbox and Microsoft, entered a new era. A post-Phil Spencer and Sarah Bond era, with the announcement of Spencer's retirement and Bond's resignation. Former Microsoft CoreAI chief executive officer, Asha Sharma, took Spencer's place, while Matt Booty stepped into a new role as Xbox's chief content officer. As the industry and consumers wrap their heads around the sudden shake-up, a new report from The Verge looks to provide some insight into why it happened the way it did. Why is Sarah Bond leaving Microsoft instead of being the one to […]

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When you look at the state of the video game industry today, where long-running studios with veteran talent and brand-new teams (even ones built with veteran devs) get laid off entirely after their first project flops, it's easy to say that each new game hitting the market has a lot riding on it. In that general economic sense, ZA/UM's upcoming espionage CRPG, Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, has a lot riding on it. But it also carries a heavier burden than other new titles. Few games have to deal with trying to best a predecessor that is as well-regarded as […]

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At the time of this writing, we are days away from the global release of Resident Evil Requiem, the ninth mainline entry in Capcom's long-running, beloved horror series. It's an exciting time for fans of the series and horror fans, but it's also a tense time to be online, because there are plenty of spoilers online to be found. While Capcom has already issued a plea to fans asking them not to share these spoilers, industry icon and director of Resident Evil 2, Hideki Kamiya, has a different take on these spoilers getting out there. In its statement, Capcom says, […]

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