It’s finally time to say goodbye to the many gaming presentations and showcases of summer and look ahead to autumn and winter, when the biggest releases traditionally land.
This period of the gaming calendar can sometimes feel a little like a sort of “no man’s land” when nothing major is occurring, but thankfully, we’ve had plenty to keep us diverted and distracted this week.
Let’s take a look at what’s been happening over the last seven days or so when it comes to gaming news!
Several Rocksteady staff have apparently been laid off
The layoffs that have swept the gaming world continued this week, and this time, it was Suicide Squad developer Rocksteady’s turn to lose staff members.
Staffers at the studio told Eurogamer that around 17 members of the QA department had been let go as part of a restructuring effort, leaving around 15 people.
Supposedly, the layoffs happened as a direct result of the poor performance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which famously caused a dent in Warner Bros’ revenue to the tune of around $200 million.
Until Dawn remake developer lays off staff
Unfortunately, the layoff stories continue, as Until Dawn developer Ballistic Moon announced it would “significantly scale down” its team earlier this week.
In a LinkedIn statement, Ballistic Moon said it made this decision with “deep regret and a heavy heart”, but it didn’t announce how many staff members had been laid off.
The decision comes ahead of the launch of the upcoming Until Dawn remake, which is arriving in October.
Infamous British Doom mod pulled from Bethesda’s browser
If you’ve got a passing interest in British politics, you’ve likely heard of Margaret Thatcher, but did you know that she makes an appearance in one of the most infamous Doom mods ever created?
“Thatcher’s Techbase” is, as you might imagine, a rather tongue-in-cheek mod for the original Doom that sees players taking on Thatcher herself after navigating labyrinths full of extremely British things.
This week, however, the mod was taken down from Bethesda’s platform, apparently due to a report over “real-world politics”. It’s hard to argue with that; after all, this mod is clearly an unflinchingly realistic depiction of Thatcher’s time in office.
Xbox head Phil Spencer reminisces about making “the worst” decisions
Xbox boss Phil Spencer gave an interview this week in which he reminisced about some of the decisions he’s made as part of Xbox over the years.
During said interview, he admitted to making “some of the worst” decisions about games to back and games to ditch; he says he passed on Destiny because it “didn’t really click” for him, and he did the same for Guitar Hero.
There are some who might say that Spencer is still making some pretty poor decisions, especially in the light of the closure of Tango Gameworks and Arkane Austin, but we’ll leave that discussion for another day.
Original Risk of Rain dev closes, staffers join Valve
This week, the original Risk of Rain developer Hopoo Games shut down, seemingly on a semi-permanent basis, and its co-founders departed in order to join Valve.
Duncan Drummond and Paul Morse, along with several other Hopoo staffers, have joined Valve in order to “work on game development directly”, although we don’t know exactly what game they’ve been assigned to.
Sadly, a project that was in development at Hopoo, which was mysteriously codenamed “Snail”, will cease production. As Hopoo itself says, “sleep tight, Hopoo Games”.
Concord is dead less than two weeks after it arrived
It looks like the live-service strategy Sony wants to pursue isn’t working out too well for the company, as this week, its big live-service shooter Concord was pulled from sale.
Speaking via the PlayStation Blog, Sony said this week that Concord “didn’t land the way we’d intended”, and so the decision was made to take the game offline on September 6th.
It’s also no longer possible to buy Concord, and if you did, you’ll receive a full refund, no matter where you bought it from. We’d recommend looking into that if you were unlucky enough to pick it up on launch.
Black Myth: Wukong’s Xbox delay isn’t down to “platform limitations”
Having launched in August on PS5 and PC, Black Myth: Wukong has been one of the biggest and most convincing smash hits of the year.
Many are understandably asking what’s happened to the Xbox version, and while we still don’t know exactly when we can expect that version to come, we do know that it’s not to do with “platform limitations” that Microsoft knows about.
Speaking to Forbes, Microsoft said this week that while it would “prefer not to comment on the deals made by our partners with other platform holders”, it’s not “platform limitations that have been raised to us” holding Black Myth: Wukong on Xbox back.
The Minecraft movie trailer is here
After many years in development, we finally got to see the first trailer for the upcoming Minecraft movie this week, and it’s…well, it’s certainly a talking point.
The trailer showcases the talents of stars Jack Black and Jason Momoa, as well as the lovingly-rendered blocky world in which the movie will take place, although it doesn’t really look much like Minecraft if you ask us.
You can see the trailer, and make your own mind up about whether it works or not, above.
Alan Wake loses an iconic song
The original Alan Wake is getting an update soon that will remove an iconic song from the game’s credits, Remedy announced earlier this week.
David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”, which plays over the closing credits of the original game, will be replaced by an original composition created by the game’s composer.
Don’t worry, though – the song will remain in Alan Wake Remastered. It’s likely that the song’s removal is due to rights issues, and Remedy likely doesn’t want to renew the rights to the song in a version of the game it’s not actively supporting.
