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Space Goblin Studio – an indie team with “AAA credentials” – has revealed its debut game, Astrobotanica, is set to release in early access in 2025.
Delivering a “unique blend of survival, exploration, and plant wizardry”, Astrobotanica is described as a “lush open-world survival adventure” that “transports players to prehistoric Earth, where an alien botanist crash-lands while searching for plant species to save their dying home planet, Aya”.
You can see it in action in the teaser below:

ASTROBOTANICA – Official Announcement Teaser

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The sad and beautiful wolf adventure Neva has a release date.
Neva, which was initially announced back in May last year, will launch across PC, Nintendo Switch, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on 15th October, the team announced during today’s Nintendo Direct. On its release, it will retail at £16.99.
Described as an “emotionally-charged new adventure”, Neva follows the story of a young woman named Alba and her lifelong bond with a wolf.

Neva | Release Date Trailer | Coming October 15

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Defunct publisher Adult Swim games has published "sunset statements" on a number of its indie games' Steam pages, noting "Adult Swim is no longer able to continue as publisher for this game and the developer is not available to take over as publisher at this time."As spotted by GamesIndustry.biz, the near-identical statements were posted to the pages for Super House of Dead Ninjas, Traverser, Mega Coin Squad, and Zenzizenzic on Tuesday, and in at least one case, the developer was not actually contacted for a potential rights transfer, with Bitmap Bureau LTD (which made Super House of Dead Ninjas under a different name, MegaDev) taking to X to note they would like to keep the game going.

The interest is still there for some Adult Swim-affiliated developers

"Well, we're still active (under a new name), and more than willing to keep Super House Of Dead Ninjas alive!" the post said. In a reply, the developer said, "We sold the IP to Adult Swim back in the day, but we&#x…

Tose, a Japanese developer that's assisted larger studios with development on their games, saw consistent losses during the third quarter of the 2023-2024 fiscal year.In its recent earnings report spotted by Automaton, net sales for the studio came to 3.243 million yen (or $20.1 million), down 27.6 percent from the previous year. Overall losses amounted to 367 million yen over the nine-month period.

Cancellations and project delays to blame

As translated in its report, Tose puts the blame on several projects being cancelled by unnamed clients. Some were in development since the start of the 2023-2024 year, and their cuts led to "a large loss" in revenue.Blame was also laid at in-progress projects being pushed to the 2024-2025 year. As such, Tose has lowered its forecast projections from 5.520 million yen to 4.830 million yen for the remainder of the fiscal period.Tose didn't list any specific projects, but it's worth noting that throughout the decades, it's worked with Nintendo and Square Enix. The 44-year-o…

Joseph Rubino, a former cinematics editor for Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V, suggested the game's planned story DLC was scrapped once Grand Theft Auto Online grew into such a gargantuan hit.Talking to SanInPlay, Rubino revealed he was at work on an expansion focused on Trevor, one of the game's co-leads. Story DLC for each lead was previously datamined, and Trevor's actor Steven Ogg mentioned its existence in April.Per Rubino, prioritizing GTA V's multiplayer marked a shift in Rockstar's hopes for the open-world game. It was such a "cash cow" that he claims the studio didn't think single-player expansions would be able to properly stand beside it."I think looking back now I would say that you could probably do both, but that was a business decision that they made," he added. Further adding to the sting was the DLC was quite a ways into development before it got cut, which he admitted made him "a little upset." Even so, he said "a lot" of that expansion was put into GTA Online. "It's not like they wasted it," he acknowledged. "It was really, really good."GTA Online has been so ever-pr…

Square Enix released Final Fantasy XIV's new Dawntrail expansion this week, and the new adventure is doing big numbers. In a new blog, director/producer Naoki Yoshida claimed the MMO hit a new record of concurrent players.Hard numbers weren't posted, but Yoshida noted the concurrents were its biggest since the soft reboot A Realm Reborn launched back in 2013. He considered it even more impressive given the game's launch issues."It has been a joy to watch you all play, each in your own unique way," he said. "But we’ve become aware of several issues that may have proven a hinderance to your overall experience. For that, I sincerely apologize."Charting Final Fantasy XIV's numbers is a little tricky, given its multiplatform status. On SteamDB, it had a recent 24-hour peak of 71,208 players, which puts it not that far behind the peak of 95,150 players back when Endwalker launched in 2021.So big was Endwalker that Square Enix had to stop selling the game ahead of launch because it'd gotten too popular. Even with that expansion's issues, it went on to become a big revenue driver for Square Enix at the time.Dawntrail's importance was…

British publisher Kwalee has acquired a 3.58 percent stake in Devolver Digital.The company said the equity investment is part of a "broader strategy for balanced growth" and described Devolver as a "fantastic brand" with "category defining games.""The investment in Devolver fits with Kwalee's broader growth strategy to expand beyond its heritage in hyper casual mobile gaming to achieve more balanced growth. The minority investment in Devolver increases Kwalee's exposure to the PC/console segment, one of its four target verticals," reads a press release."Kwalee's own entry into the PC/console market is relatively new, with its latest launch Robobeat rated 'overwhelmingly positive' on Steam, receiving 97 percent positive reviews. Kwalee has over ten promising PC/console games in the pipeline including The Precinct, The Spirit of the Samurai and In Sink."Kwalee was able to make the investment after Devolver undertook an equity placing of £7.9 million ($10 million) through the issue of 23.9 million new shares of common stock. Those shares represented 5.4 percent of the issued and outstanding share capital of De…

Kotaku Australia is being shut down by publisher Pedestrian Group so the company can focus on its own brands.The Guardian broke the news after obtaining an email sent from Pedestrian Group CEO, Matt Rowley, to a number of employees across the company.Pedestrian Group currently licenses the Kotaku brand and others including Gizmodo, Vice, Refinery29 and Lifehacker (which are also being axed) so it can deploy them in Australia.Rowley described Pedestrian Group–which is owned by media conglomerate Nine–as a "highly successful business" in that email, but indicated the company has decided to move away from licensed brands."We've made the tough decision to focus on our wholly owned Pedestrian brands where we control the strategy, the content, the product, the sales and the outcome–the entire business," he said."This will have an impact on roles within the group and I appreciate the uncertainty this change creates, so we will be in contact immediately with those people."

Kotaku Australia i…

Piranha Bytes veterans Jennifer Pankratz and Bjorn Pankratz have left the Embracer-owned Risen developer to establish Pithead Studio.The news comes after a report from CD-Action indicated that Piranha Bytes has been shut down by Embracer. Those rumblings haven't been confirmed by the studio or its parent company, but come months after Piranha Bytes admitted to being in a "difficult situation."In January, the German studio indicated it was in trouble with Embracer looking to cut jobs, torch projects, and divest assets in a bid to reduce debt after an era of free-wheeling mergers and acquisitions.At the time, it was reported the studio was in danger of being shuttered, but despite acknowledging the situation Piranha Bytes also seemed defiant. "There are a lot of news [stories] about us circulating right now and this is our answer: Don't write us off yet," it wrote on X.Game Developer has reached out to Embracer for more information, but it's evident that key talent has departed Piranha Bytes.Between them, both Jennifer and Bjorn Pankratz spent almost four decades at the Gothic and Elex developer, with the former joining in 2008 and the latter in 199…

MiHoYo's newest action-RPG Zenless Zone Zero has garnered 50 million downloads worldwide since its launch on July 4.The game released on PlayStation 5, Windows, and mobile, and builds on the developer's ongoing success in recent years. Last year's Honkai Star Rail opened with 20 million players at launch, which itself built on the 17 million players for Genshin Impact."A city that once only existed in the hopes and dreams of the dev team has never been as buzzing with life as it is now," wrote MiHoYo.

MiHoYo's reputation as a hit maker stays intact

The developer's clout helped Zenless, as did going viral over the weekend and being free-to-play. The latter market can make almost any game explode into popularity at launch, particularly if there's been strong marketing behind it.Like Genshin and Honkai, Zenless has received fairly solid reviews, with the studio's gacha mechanics being the main point of contention. MiHoYo noted that the game has "lots of improvements to be made,&qu…