Tag: News

Maybe you’ve heard of Kamala Harris; she’s the current US vice president and very likely the Democratic party’s official presidential nominee for November’s US election. But now she’s firmly back in the spotlight, the mildly curious case of her secret life in developer Remedy’s 2019 action-adventure Control has resurfaced online.

You see, pinned to a whiteboard in an unassuming corner of The Oldest House – the transdimensional Brutalist office block at the heart of Control’s story – is a picture of a missing 40-year-old Bureau employee, Jane Farland, lost during one of the House’s shifts. Only, Photoshopped eyes aside, Jane Farland is the spitting image of Vice President Harris.

Harris’ surprise secret life as a fictitious video game character has been noted before – in this five-year-old Reddit thread, for instance – but the picture has started gaining traction again as Harris once again makes headlines thanks to her likely US presidential bid.

Control Ultimate Edition Trailer

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UPDATE 3.45pm UK: Last night’s quartet of leaked Lego Fortnite sets have now been made available to pre-order.

In addition to the previously-revealed US and European pricing, Lego now lists UK pricing for the Battle Bus (£90), Peely Bone (£90), Supply Llama (£35) and Durrr Burger (£13) sets.
Minifigures included with the Battle Bus include Jonesy (Battalion Brawler), Brite Bomber, Adventure Peely and other fan-favourites such as Drift, Raven, Cuddle Team Leader and everyone’s favourite swole cat Meowscles. Deeper cuts from Fortnite lore are also in the set – such as the villainous Cube Assassin and Trespasser Elite. (No Fishstick? I guess Lego is saving him for Wave 2.)
All four sets are now available for pre-order via Lego.com, ahead of their launch on 1st October.

ORIGINAL STORY 11am UK:
Photos showing Lego’s first wave of official Fortnite sets have popped up online, and feature a $99/€120 (roughly £76) Battle Bus set featuring an array of fan favourite characters as Lego minifigures.

Physical Fortnite Lego sets had been widely expected ever since the launch of last year’s Lego Fortnite mode, which acts as the ce…

EA really wants people to know it's truly, madly, deeply invested in generative AI.Taking the stage during the company's recent investor day, EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke about how the technology is driving innovation within EA studios and said it has become "the very core of our business."Wilson previously claimed 60 percent of EA's development processes could be "impacted" by generative AI, and said the technology is something the publisher is "embracing deeply." Those remarks came shortly after EA laid off 5 percent of its workforce.Doubling down on that narrative, Wilson said AI isn't a "buzzword" for EA and noted the company currently has over "100 novel AI projects" in development across three categories: efficiency, expansion, and transformation.Discussing the former, Wilson said efficiency isn't just about delivering "cost savings," but rather "doing what we do today faster, cheaper, and at a higher quality.""That means driving more iterations, more testing and high quality content for our communities. It means removing obstacles for our game developers," he added. "I…

Not long after it was relaunched with over 55,000 screenshots and a platter of new features, the Game UI Database hit a major roadblock.Edd Coates, creator of the free repository, noticed the website had been "laggy as hell" and with the help of server maestro Jay Peet, started to investigate. The fix was alarmingly simple. Blocking a single IP address allowed normal service to resume, but who was the owner of that digital calling card? None other than OpenAI, the generative AI firm behind ChatGPT and Dall-E.Coates initially shared the news on X, and slammed OpenAI's practice of scraping websites for information that can be used to train its models. The company isn't shy about this. Its website openly states its large language models are trained on three sources including "information that is publicly available on the internet." Of course, a myriad of lawsuits and potential legal challenges involving major newspapers (including the New York Times) and even YouTube creators would argue that "publicly available" doesn't equate to legal (thanks The Guardian and The Verge).For Coates, the issue here is twofold. For starters, he doesn't …

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…

Oxenfree is reportedly being completely removed from Itch.io in October. Developer Night School Studio, which was purchased by Netflix in 2021, shared the news in an email sent to Itch.io users whose library includes the 2016 adventure game. That email was then posted on Reddit.Notably, the message states that people who own Oxenfree will have until October 1, 2024, to download the title so they can retain access."Oxenfree will no longer be available on itch.io beginning October 1, 2024. If you have already downloaded the game, you'll be able to keep it and continue to play from your downloaded files. If you have not already done so, you can download files until October 1, 2024 to keep the game," reads the email."Everyone who worked on Oxenfree deeply appreciates the support from our community over the past eight years and we hope to see you on another service or timeline soon. Thank you! If you have questions or need additional support for Oxenfree, please visit our support website."

Why is Oxenfree vanishing fro…

Merge Games cut staff over the weekend, and closed down its single office based in Chelford, England.The studio is part of Maximum Entertainment, and in a statement to GamesIndustry, CEO Christina Seelye explained the cuts were part of its previously announced consolidation plans. At time of writing, it's unknown how many developers were affected by the layoffs."We made the difficult but necessary decision to take further cost-cutting measures, and these unfortunately include staff redundancies," she stated.

Merge's portfolio to fold into Maximum Entertainment

As a publisher, Merge worked on titles such as Spirit of the North (and its upcoming sequel), and the physical editions of Spirittea andThe Thaumaturge. Its remaining portfolio will reportedly be integrated into Maximum. It's currently unclear if Merge still exists as a separate entity.In 2023, parent company Zordix relaunched its games division as Maximum Entertainment. Earlier this year, various subsidiaries (like Merge, Modus Studios, and…

After a year of laying off developers, Behaviour Interactive is bringing some new ones into the fold. The Dead by Daylight developer/publisher announced today that it is acquiring Red Hook Studios, the company behind Darkest Dungeon and Darkest Dungeon II.It's incredibly rare for a game studio to announce an acquisition like this so soon after a year of layoffs and studio closures. So rare, in fact, that the only comparable example feels like Activision Blizzard's establishment of the Polish game studio Elsewhere in May 2024 while parent company Microsoft axed jobs across the company.The news may be bittersweet for plenty of the game development community. On the one hand, the Red Hook acquisition looks to be a coup for both companies. On the other hand, so many other developers lost work—and an entire studio was closed down—on the road here.In an interview with Game Developer, Red Hook Studios co-founders Tyler Sigman and Chris Bourassa, joined by Behaviour Interactive CEO Rémi Racine, explained why both parties pursued this transaction. For Red Hook, it was a chance for stability that would fuel bigger and loftier dreams, and according to Racine, it's a move…

"You can bet your life that Nintendo hates this company. […] If you basically trigger the wrath of Nintendo, they will come after you."—Serkan Toto, Kantan Games CEO

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PlayStation 4's Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete Edition got a price bump ahead of the recently revealed remaster for PlayStation 5 and PC.The bundled version of Guerrilla's sci-fi RPG was $20 for several years (thanks, PSPrices), but has now been doubled $40. The PS5 and PC version will be $50 (its original price in 2017), and PS4 owners can upgrade to that for $10.Sony is basically looking to prevent players from exploiting a loophole and paying only $30 for the new version of Horizon, in turn losing out on $20 from PS4 owners.PlayStation 5 games are no stranger to odd upgrade structures. Before Horizon Forbidden West's release, Sony required PlayStation 4 owners to buy another copy if they wanted it on PS5, a console which could be hard to get at the time.After backlash, Sony reversed course and made the upgrade path free for all players, regardless of what version they bought at the time. However, this was a one-time deal: cross-gen first-party titles (like God of War Ragnarok) cost $10 to upgrade from PS4 to PS5.That method has stuck as recently as the PS5 remaster of The Last of Us Part II from earlier this year, and will remain for whatever other remasters PlayStat…