Penny’s Big Breakaway studio announces layoffs: ‘Evening Star has been swept up in the same turbulence that has affected so many of our peers in the games industry’
The videogame industry continues to be wracked by instability and chaos: Evening Star, the developer of the 3D platformer Penny’s Big Breakaway, has announced that “turbulence” in the business has forced it to lay off six employees. “This was a post that I was hoping to not have to write, but Evening Star has been […]
Control 2 isn’t affected by the collapse of Annapurna Interactive because the deal was signed by the other Annapurna
Despite the implosion of Annapurna Interactive—whose entire staff quit earlier this week—the recent deal its parent company, Annapurna Pictures, made with Alan Wake developer Remedy Entertainment will remain intact, according to the studio’s communications director Thomas Puha. Annapurna Pictures, not Annapurna Interactive, signed a deal with Remedy to co-fund the development of Control 2 and […]
Google results insist a Bugsnax sequel is coming out next month, but there’s one small problem: Its devs aren’t making one
Getting your game noticed is a tricky business when you have to punch through the noise of the more than 10,000 new Steam games releasing each year. Young Horses, the developer of Bugsnax and Octodad, have found itself in an even trickier spot: Thanks to Google, people are expecting a Bugsnax sequel that doesn’t […]
Flappy Bird makes an unlikely comeback after its creator apparently let the trademark lapse and the vultures swept right in
Update 09/16/24: Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen has now confirmed he has nothing to do with this relaunch. Full story here. A decade ago Flappy Bird, a crude but colourful autorun-style game, became a viral hit on mobile. It was so successful, in fact, that it became a millstone for its creator, Vietnamese programmer Dong Nguyen, […]
PSA: Consider cranking up Space Marine 2’s difficulty for co-op
Hey there, I won’t keep you long: If you’re playing Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2‘s campaign with some friends, are you finding it too easy? My friend and I reached that point after the first few missions. I was hosting the lobby and had difficulty set to “Normal” like I do in 90% of games. […]
The Penguin Sale on Steam celebrates Batman’s pointiest villain by slashing prices on the best superhero games around
There’s a new Batman series debuting on HBO next week, although it’s not actually about Batman. It’s called The Penguin, and it’s about—you guessed it—Oswald Cobblepot, better known in Gotham’s underworld as The Penguin. The series stars Colin Farrell, reprising his role from the 2022 flick The Batman, and he’s no Burgess Meredith but early […]
‘There’s an alternate universe where Half-Life disappeared after release’: Valve’s first marketing strategist Monica Harrington says she helped navigate its way out of early disaster
Looking back on Valve’s record of repeated hits and the fact that most of us are playing our PC games under Steam’s monolithic shadow, it’s tempting to think that this was the only way history could’ve gone. But according to Monica Harrington, Valve’s chief marketing strategist in its early years and then wife of studio […]
Immortals of Aveum developers find a new home at Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser’s Absurd Ventures studio
Following the flop of the fantasy FPS Immortals of Aveum, a “core team” from developer Ascendant Studios has found a new home at Absurd Ventures, the studio launched in 2021 by Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser. The former Ascendant team will form a new studio called Absurd Marin, headed up by Ascendant Studios founder and […]
Whoops, they did it again: Bungie admits fan art was used in an official Destiny 2 collectible, says the artist will be ‘compensated and credited for their incredible artwork’
A snafu that saw fan-made art used in the design for an upcoming Destiny 2 Nerf gun has come to a happy ending, as the artist involved says the situation is resolved, and Bungie says it’s going to pay up. The trouble came to light earlier this week, shortly after Bungie unveiled the Nerf Ace […]
EVE players are in revolt over CCP’s blockchain plans: ‘None of us want this crypto slop’
Yesterday, I wrote about my chat with CCP’s top brass about its upcoming survival MMO EVE Frontier—a new game in the EVE universe that uses blockchain tech to (so goes the CCP pitch) take the player-led philosophy of EVE Online and make it weirder, wilder, and woolier, even letting players become effectively co-developers of the […]