Video game giant Rockstar has sacked more than 30 workers across the UK, including my constituents working at their Edinburgh office. I urged Ministers to support workers who have lost their jobs, and stop this from happening again.

Ubisoft not just delaying games anymore. Now delaying earnings results 15 minutes before they are scheduled to have their quarterly call with investors.

While prepping for my Obsidian interview, I listened to a 2019 interview with Fallout co-creator and Outer Worlds 2 creative director Leonard Boyarsky, who mused then about using AI to help write NPC dialogue. When I checked if they'd used it for OW2, the answer: “We haven’t been using it AT ALL.”

With all this talk of GameCube-like Steam Machines (with a bit of the Wii's blue light thrown in), I just remembered that Nintendo released a game a decade ago that was basically called Steam. Excuse me.... CODE NAME S.T.E.A.M.

Horizon MMO announced "The game will be cross platform for mobile and PC"

Not an Xbox, not a GameCube, it's a new Steam Machine Valve says this gaming PC has six times the power of Steam Deck, as they frame this as a device for Steam Deck users to upgrade to. Fascinating store.steampowered.com/sale/steamma...

A pleasant Wednesday surprise

A section of dialogue choices between the player (blue) and Outer Worlds 2 character Ethel Tinsley (red). The full tree of choices for the conversation is shown on the right. The dialogue is written in OEI Tools, a tool made by and for Obsidian Entertainment

NEW: I spoke to Obsidian (Outer Worlds, Avowed, Fallout: NV) about how their games are written They've heard "horror stories" of writers sidelined at other studios Sawyer: At Obsidian, writers and area designers are "co-creators" who sculpt a game world together www.gamefile.news/p/obsidian-e...

REVIEW: Going into the past is just what Katamari Damacy needed. I thoroughly enjoyed Once Upon a Katamari's trip through history. And I hope its developers, the absurdist specialists at Rengame, spelunk through more eras of the past, in the future www.gamefile.news/p/finally-a-...

We often hear about games taking longer to develop than planned. But this? “The game didn’t really fit into Devolver’s schedule, because I was gonna finish it too soon. So they asked if there’s anything that I could do to lengthen the development time.”

That Mina the Hollower delay was worse than I thought.

NEW: Fun chat with Ball x Pit mastermind Kenny Sun - Does it matter how I play? Sun: "It is very much a game about pretending that you’re getting better by getting better stats" - Max no. of balls on screen: 1,000; (slightly less on Switch; alert Digital Foundry!) www.gamefile.news/p/ball-x-pit...

Another GTA VI delay... to November 19, 2026

Fuck this

The Scottish Greens stand with the dozens of workers sacked by @rockstargames.com for exercising their right to organise with @gameworkers.co.uk @iwgbunion.bsky.social Reinstate them now, then get around the table & give your staff the pay & conditions they deserve for making you billions.

The Anti-Defamation League today urged Microsoft shareholders to vote "no" on Prop 9 Says it "advances...false allegations of 'genocide,' echoing rhetoric [the ADL finds] misleading and intended to demonize Israel rather than promote genuine human-rights accountability" www.sec.gov/Archives/edg...

Microsoft says it's bolstering ways for workers to report misuse of its tech (anon, w/o retaliation) and is "working to strengthen our existing pre-contract review process for evaluating engagements that require additional human rights due diligence" Seeming result of pressure over MS-Israel

NEW: I obtained audio of an unusual presentation by Ubisoft's CEO. He tees up a slick video about the backlash to AC Shadows "What happens when a legendary franchise reveals one of its most anticipated experiences? Only to become the game everyone loves to hate?” www.gamefile.news/p/paris-vide...

The Xbox paradox of 2025 (Paradoxbox?)

Two lists and one thing to chew on List 1: The prolific output from MS' game studios in 2025 List 2: The additional 7 (!) ports to PS5 this year 1 Thing: Most of Microsoft's output was from studios it acquired since 2018, barely last-gen. Most of its game studio network is quite new to the company

i’d also say that the GOP’s obsession with this gives candidates an opportunity to articulate and stand up for their values. “i refuse to make anyone feel like they don’t belong in my [state/city/community]. and i want everyone to live the best life they can achieve [insert policy slogan]”

just wanted to re-post this messaging that helped win an election

Congratulations to Nintendo for not just the biggest console launch of all time but the most colorful console launch chart of all time.

Nintendo slide from their latest briefing to investors, where they say they want to establish a steady cadence of movies

It really is this way 😅

NEW: For years, Xbox execs promised to end their platforms' gaming droughts Since 2018, Microsoft aggressively expanded its roster of game studios In 2025, it paid off with a loaded year with games Unclear, given the rest of Xbox's 2025, if they'll do it again www.gamefile.news/p/fall-guys-...

As of the just-released as-of-September-30th sales....The Switch 2 (10.36m units) had not yet outsold the Wii U (13.56). But Mario Kart World (9.57m copies) has already topped the Wii U's Mario Kart 8 (8.46m). Definitely helps that MKW was available in a discounted bundle with the system

EA has told its workers that it'll have "creative control" over the games it makes, even if, as expected, it is bought by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and other powerful investors EA also says $20b in debt wouldn't stop it from more mergers/acquisitions www.gamefile.news/p/ea-creativ...

BREAKING: Yesterday Grand Theft Auto VI maker Rockstar Games fired dozens of people, all of whom were involved in union efforts. A British union calls it "blatant and ruthless" union-busting. Take-Two Interactive says it was due to misconduct. Here's the scoop: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Headline I can't believe is real, but is www.ign.com/articles/lov...

A damaging leak is delaying today's Game File a bit (probably should have gotten those gutters cleaned before today's downpour in my area)

What's most intriguing to me about Nintendo upgrading a 2020 Animal Crossing in 2026 is that, based on past history (and counting the mobile game), it feels like a full new game is due: 2001 - AC1 2005 - Wild World 2012 - New Leaf 2017 - Pocket Camp 2020 - New Horizons

I have studied these new Roblox charts and have concluded that Roblox is extremely popular

Question for Sea of Thieves players: How many expansions would you say the game has had? There are always some updates with each season, but fair to say that the Pirate's Life and Monkey Island releases were of a greater scale. And... there haven't been any like that since? Or am I missing one?

Posted this thread over on Twitter, but it has some relevance here in terms of how people read and react to social media posts from reporters (and specifically how I operate). So I'm also posting it here...

Also in today's Game File: Lead designer of Pacific Drive, which launched onto Xbox and Game Pass last week, is urging people to buy/play it on other platforms Speaking for himself, NOT the studio He left the game's studio in July, didn't work on the Xbox version, is irked by Microsoft's silence

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was just on the online tech show TBPN and provided one of the longer answers about his views of the game business that I've seen - Wants to put their games on everything, a la Office - Wants to revisit console/PC paradigm - "best way to innovate is to have good margins"

NEW: I spoke to original Halo devs about that ICE Halo post One: "abhorrent” Another: "Using Halo imagery in a call to ‘destroy’ people because of their immigration status goes way too far, and ought to offend every Halo fan, regardless of political orientation” www.gamefile.news/p/halo-ice-d...

BREAKING: Amazon is making "significant" cuts to its video-game division, moving away from MMOs like New World, and gutting its Irvine and San Diego development studios www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Happy to have not reached this parenting threshold yet www.crossplay.news/p/oh-no-my-k...

In 2022, Microsoft forcefully responded to a shareholder proposal that was skeptical of its diversity & inclusion programs: "we believe this request is motivated by an animosity to diversity and inclusion commitments " Three years later, MS is avoiding even using the word "diversity" (thread)

If you like puzzle games at all, you need to try Spooky Express. For a rare Sunday edition of Game File I wrote about this spit-shined gem of a puzzle game. It has 200+ levels and delivers nearly as many eureka moments PC, iOS, Android (free to start on mobile) www.gamefile.news/p/spooky-exp...

The dream of every Muslim is simply to be treated the same as any other New Yorker. And yet, for too long, we have been told to ask for less than that, and endure hatred and bigotry in the shadows. No more.

From Game File: Microsoft has long defined its gaming content/services revenue as coming from 1st/3rd-party games/DLC, subscriptions, ads, cloud and "third-party disc royalties" They cut the bit about discs in July (I noticed it this week) Sign of the times re: Xbox discs & game discs overall

NEW: In a glimmer of positive news for Xbox, Microsoft's gaming division hit a revenue target this year that is tied to the compensation for the company's CEO Microsoft's senior execs have had an Xbox pay target for years but those targets kept getting missed www.gamefile.news/p/microsofts...

Days after hyping games business to investors, Netflix closes Squid Game: Unleashed studio aftermath.site/squid-game-unl...

Coffee Stain--makers of Goat Simulator and Satisfactory, publisher of Valheim--is set to be spun off from Embracer to become a rare publicly traded AA game company Profitable but small. 13 studios, 250 people They play up indie-style dev, downplay transmedia www.gamefile.news/p/coffee-sta...

A lot of emails from a news alert service that I use are bypassing my gmail inbox and going into trash (not spam). I don't have any filter set up for that, but I used to manually trash a lot of those emails. Wondering if "learned" that they're trash? And how to stop it from doing that?

Mentioned this in Game File regarding the drama around Ubisoft's head of the Assassin's Creed franchise The biggest AC games are made in Canada. The now-former head of AC was based in Canada My sources say the listing for a new head of AC located the job in Paris www.gamefile.news/i/176439363/...