Author: Alexander Morris

Embracer-owned studio Lost Boys Interactive has laid off an unknown number of employees. Confirming the news on LinkedIn, the studio explained the redundancies will impact employees across several states."Lost Boys Interactive has made the very difficult decision to reduce our overall headcount in accordance with local laws and consultation processes. As a remote first company, this impacts employees across several states," reads the statement."We are committed to supporting our affected staff in finding new positions as quickly as possible. Additionally, Lost Boys will collaborate with other studios and recruiters to help connect them with job opportunities."

Lost Boys under Gearbox and Embracer

Lost Boys is a co-development studio known for working on titles like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Diablo IV, and PUBG. The company was acquired by Gearbox Software in 2022 when it was under the ownership of Embracer.Although Gearbox was divested by Embracer earlier this year, Lost Boys remained with the Swedish conglomerate—wh…

More changes have hit Steam, this time for its user reviews. After being spotted by players last week, Valve has implemented a helpfulness system that prioritizes informative reviews on a game's store page.As Valve explains it, helpful reviews have typically been sorted by the number of user votes designated as such. But that system's been easily exploited and made it so jokes reviews (or memes) can take center stage and go viral, which is substantially less helpful.With the new change, one-word reviews, or ones made of memes or ASCII art, will be placed behind actual reviews. Even so, the developer acknowledged those "humorous, but unhelpful posts" can be toggled back onto the store page proper through the "display" drop-down menu.Valve also said the new system "doesn't impact how review scores are generated for each game; it is simply changing the order that reviews appear on each store page."The system is a work-in-progress, and the studio said it will take "quite a while" to analyze new and current reviews to determine their helpfulness. It's unclear how this system will work when it comes to concertrated review-bombin…

Epic plans on bringing Fortnite and other mobile titles to a litany of storefronts, but not those it views as "rent collectors" in disguise.The company outlined its new strategy in a blog post and explained it will support marketplaces that offer "all developers a great deal" while ending partnership with some others—including the Samsung Galaxy Store."Today, we're announcing that Epic plans to bring our own mobile games including Fortnite to other mobile stores that give all developers a great deal. And, we will be ending distribution partnerships with mobile stores that serve as rent collectors without competing robustly and serving all developers fairly, even if those stores offer us a special deal for our own games," it wrote.

Fortnite is coming back to the EU iOS store

The company reiterated that Fortnite will be returning to iOS in the European Union soon, while the Epic Games Store is also heading to Android worldwide and iOS in the EU. Those moves come after a new Digital Markets Act was introduced across EU territories, offe…