The Maw - 12th-17th February 2024

IT IS MONDAY. The creature waxes wroth! FEED IT.

Helldivers 2 is a popular game, but it's been hit by a fair few technical troubles since launching last week. Here's an update from Arrowhead's CEO and creative director.

Blizzard have laid out plans for "revitalising" Overwatch 2, and more specifically, "striving to make PvP gameplay more rewarding and fun and providing greater transparency for players in-game" over the course of Season 9 and beyond.

Here's an interview with David Pierce, senior game designer at Bethesda and a member of the Elder Scrolls 6 team. What does Pierce look for in a videogame story? "Human-scale stakes. The world (maybe even the galaxy) needs my help, but at the end of the day, there has to be something that I can connect with on a personal level."

Former Crytek and Arkane dev Julien Eveillé has announced Threshold, a "short, dark and atmospheric first person exploration game".

Squidgy farmimg sim Slime Rancher 2 has received a bunch of new gadgets as part of the year's first major update. Here's an overview trailer.

As spotted by PCG, From Software's parent company Kadokawa have dampened hopes of an Elden Ring Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC release in February in their latest earnings call, commenting only that "we are currently working hard on the development of DLC for ELDEN RING but we have not announced a release date at this time".

According to Shannon Liao of Inverse, Microsoft's Phil Spencer held a town hall meeting last week in which he reassured Microsoft employees that the company won't stop making Xbox consoles anytime soon, even if they do start releasing first-party games on other consoles.

Vampyr-esque dark fantasy RPG The Thaumaturge has been delayed to March 4th.

As Edwin noted earlier, FromSoftware owners Kadokawa have dampened hopes that Elden Ring DLC Shadow of the Erdtree might release this month - despite recent rumours and backend updates hinting otherwise - as they say there’s still no update “at this time”.

Of particular note in the earnings report is a reference to “major DLC” said to be in the works as the devs look to support the game in the “medium to long term” - could that mean another expansion to come?

Former Dead Cells lead designer Sébastien Benard is... not cool with publisher Motion Twin's decision to end development earlier this month. "Having seen first hand the actual situation behind the scene, I can honestly say I'm glad to not be part of this anymore," he wrote, in Discord comments picked up by Eurogamer. "The official statement is total marketing bullshit, the way this situation happened is on a whole different level."

yo-less says: I love the whole idea behind "The Maw" and I understand you've launched this as some sort of experiment, so I didn't expect it to look amazing from the start. It would be cool, though, Edwin, if you could get your CMS team to somehow implement a different layout for this thing. Some kind of virtual pinboard would be cool, reading through something that looks like a list of comments is pretty tedious and might keep more people from appreciating what you're doing here.

Our liveblog tech is definitely not designed to be used like this, and I'm in the process of negotiating with our valiant tech people about various changes. The trouble is, they have a lot on their plate! I'll keep everybody posted. Suggestions very welcome in the meantime.

Former Final Fantasy devs’ upcoming JRPG Lost Hellden boasts some gorgeous handpainted art applied to 3D character models, a world with dynamic weather and a battle system promising to mix action and strategy. It'll be out in 2025, with a demo landing later this year.

Days from release, Part-Divinity, part-Persona RPG The Thaumaturge has been given a two-week delay to find some breathing room from the crowded February release slate, developers Fool's Theory have announced.

Helldivers 2 has overtaken God of War and Spider-Man to become PlayStation’s biggest PC release to date. Could this mean we see more PC releases alongside their PS5 counterparts in the future? We can only hope!

itshappening.gif

I_have_no_nose_but_I_must_sneeze says: For anyone thinking of participating in this month's Game Club, Cobalt Core is currently 20‰ off at Steam for the next week. I've already been zapped to oblivion by a larger foe on my first run. Result!

*hand pointing upwards emoji*

IT IS TUESDAY. How is it only Tuesday? Did the Maw eat one of the weekdays again? FEED IT.

The Minecraft launcher now supports Quick Play on Java and Bedrock Edition, letting you bounce back into a recently-visited world without going through all the menus. "The Quick Play bar has a total of five slots, so once they are all filled, playing a sixth world will cause the oldest world in the bar to be bumped off the list," reads the above-linked post. "If you want to make sure a world (or more) stays in the Quick Play bar, you can simply pin it, so that newer worlds won’t bump it down."

IGN has a big report about the games industry's mass layoffs this and last year, which probes beyond the standard "companies overstaffed during the lockdown boom" narrative.

Posting on Discord, Rocksteady says Suicide Squad has or had "a major unintended bug" which causes the Burn status effect's damage to increase so much it "basically meant that if you used a Burn build, every Mastery Level had the same difficulty". As PCG notes, what's interesting here is that the developers considered leaving it in, because Rocksteady's hope is that players will "continuously find a new meta and then break it by finding a better one".

Katharine just posted this in the Slack because she not-so-secretly despises us all.

Arrowhead have released another Helldivers 2 patch, which addresses server capacity, login access progression and mission rewards.

GLAAD have released their inaugural annual report on "the quantity, quality and diversity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) characters in video games" during the past year.

An excerpt from the introduction: "Our data shows that 17% of active gamers—nearly 1 in 5—are LGBTQ, a figure that has been replicated and confirmed by Nielsen in multiple recent surveys. Moreover, LGBTQ gamers are as dedicated to gaming as non-LGBTQ gamers in terms of regular time spent playing PC and console games and average financial spend per month. In stark contrast to the fact that 1 in 5 active gamers are LGBTQ, games with LGBTQ content account for less than 2% of all games currently available on consoles."

Extra, extra! Management sim News Tower has launched into early access. It's all about wallowing in the thrill of old-timey journalism, before journalism became a massive game of chicken with Google's algorithms. "Dive into the roaring 1930s as you build your media empire in the bustling heart of New York City," exhorts the Steam page. "Hear the clatter of typewriters, the shouts of newsboys, and the hum of printing presses churning out your latest edition."

Some afternoon music: Chuck Ragan's Flame in the Flood title theme.

Rhianna Pratchett has weighed in on the question of who owns the rights to the old Discworld adventure games.

Xbox have surprise announced a free Dune expansion for Microsoft Flight Simulator - and it's available now, wouldn't you know. Here's a launch trailer, featuring a very tetchy Ornithopter:

Microsoft Flight Simulator - Dune Expansion Launch Trailer

Watch on YouTube

treelo says: You may say Katherine hates you but I'd say Katherine loves you and wishes to spread the good word.

Truth.

One final shout-out from me today: go and play the very good demo for sheepy action roguelike Stand-Alone!

Paradox have dropped a demo for Escape the Mad Empire - "a party-based, rogue-like dungeon crawler with intense and deeply tactical combat."

Pulling from the IGN report into layoffs Edwin linked earlier: magical FPS Immortals Of Aveum reportedly cost $125 million to make and "no one bought it", according to developers who worked on the project.

Horrible cannibal survivasl 'em up Sons Of The Forest reaches 1.0 next week on February 22nd. We already knew, but there's now a trailer that shows some of its new features.

Earth Defense Force 6 has been delayed until this summer from its previous "spring" release window. If EA had put $125 million into making a game with the same concept as EDF, I bet it would have sold better.

Dead Island 2 arrives on Steam this April after its year of Epic Games Store exclusivity. To fertilise the ground for its arrival, Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition is free to keep from Steam for the next two days.

Dragon Quest Builders is out now on Steam. Originally released in 2016 on PlayStation 3 and 4, this is its first arrival on PC - although its 2019 sequel has been on Steam since the same year.

I'm glad Square Enix continue to release all of their games on PC - eventually.

Katharine mentioned it earlier this evening, but here's a fuller post on Microsoft Flight Simulator's free Dune expansion, which is out now. It lets you pilot the Royal Atreides Ornithopter over Arrakis, with some time trials and a rescue mission to play.

Free Stars: The Ur-Quan Masters is coming to Steam on February 19th. It's a freeware re-release of Star Control 2, sans the trademark, and it's being released by the original creators.

IT'S WEDNESDAY. Bless the halberds and magnetise the shields! Form a Penrose triangle! FEED THE MAW.

As reported by Eurogamer.pl, Bloober Team's president Piotr Babieno has said that the recent State of Play Silent Hill 2 remake trailer "doesn't reflect the spirit of the game" (machine translated from Polish). He also noted that Konami are "entirely responsible" for the game's marketing.

Gematsu report that Sony have trademarked "Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet" for entertainment goods including games in the USA. Perhaps it's a collaboration with The Beastie Boys.

Those Larian people are about to patch Baldur's Gate 3 again - they're incorrigible! This one lets you dismiss party members while asking another person to join your crew, and tries to prioritise your character during automatically triggered dialogue so that party members don't steal the show.

Yoshitaka Murayama, head of Eiyuden developer Rabbit & Bear Studios and the creator of the Suikoden series, has passed away due to illness.

EA and Maxis are adding a Vitiligo skin feature to The Sims 4 via free update.

Via Gematsu, Sony don't plan to release "any new major existing franchise titles" next fiscal year - in other words, between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025. That doesn't rule out smaller original games, I guess. What about PC ports, Sony?

Ubisoft France employees are on strike today after "management offered a budget dedicated to raises that would be lower than inflation for the second year in a row".

Austin-based Monumental have acquired Kongregate, a games publisher and web portal who were dear to me back in the days when I used to run a Flash gaming blog. GI has more.

IT IS THURSDAY. How dull it is to make an end, to rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! FEED THE MAW.

Hermetica is a deckbuilder with an alchemy theme and illuminated manuscript-style visuals, similar to Pentiment and Inkulinati. If you'd told me years ago that games with illuminated manuscript-style visuals would be a Thing, I would not have believed you. Here's the announcement trailer.

There have been layoffs at Homeworld 3 developer Blackbird Interactive. As reported by Game Developer, these are part of a "realignment plan" at the studio necessitated by "economic pressures outside of our control." Homeworld 3 was delayed from March till May 13th last week.

Palworld's community manager has gently suggested that people impatient for new Palworld updates stop calling the game "dead" and play other games instead.

Open world pirate RPG Caribbean Legend has a 10-20 hour demo that's going down well among the Steamsters. It's based on the old Sea Dogs series and inspired by Sid Meier's Pirates.

Here's a two hour video interview with Grinding Gears about Path Of Exile 2, in which there is talk of WASD and endgames.

Helldivers 2 will "never" have a PvP mode, according to Arrowhead.

Embracer have released their latest financial results.

Stunlock have devlogged about what to expect from vampire action-RPG V Rising's 1.0 update. The offerings include a story finale, a new visual customisation system, and some enhanced weapons. Has anyone here played this much? I missed it when it first came out, but I do like me a vampire game.

Viking management sim Land of the Vikings has received a new update which adds fresh Land for the Vikings to be managed on. Also a new set of resource menus.

Here's a video from Nightingale devs Inflexion detailing how they're updating the survival sim for its early access launch on February 20th. There's mention of changing up the UI/UX, which has been a bone of contention round these parts.

Well-received wizarding FPS Wizordum has had a community mapping jam, and the results are rather fetching.

No Man's Sky is getting an Omega update with a swathe of additions, broadly geared towards getting new players involved. Here's a trailer.

Edwin referenced V Rising's recent developer update earlier, and here's a fuller post on the updates coming this spring to the vampire survival 'em up and its PvP, endgame content, armour, and lighting effects.

Starbreeze say that sales and player numbers for co-op heist sequel Payday 3 are "significantly lower" than hoped, but they're not giving up. They've outlined a 2024 development roadmap that includes an offline mode, solo mode, changes to progression, a UI revamp, and both quickplay and Crime.Net-style server browser functionality.

A Disco Elysium standalone expansion has reportedly been cancelled and a quarter of the studio's workforce placed at risk of redundancy, according to sources close to the matter. This is seemingly the third project cancelled in three years, with two projects - one related to Disco Elysium - apparently still in development.

Maximum Games are working on a competitive multiplayer fighting game set in the Avatar: The Last Airbender universe, as spotted by Gematsu. It's due to alunch in early access in 2025.

Diablo 4 is headed to Game Pass on March 28th. It'll be the first Activision Blizzard game to join the subscription service since Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition.

IT IS FRIDAY. Edwin has mysteriously vanished this morning, though we fear he may have been lured into the Maw's interdimensional vortex. A rescue team is on its way to pull him back to the land of the living, but for now you'll have to make do with me instead. FEED THE MAW.

The annual DICE Awards took place last night, and Larian will clearly have to build yet another trophy case, as Baldur's Gate 3 came away with five awards, including Game Of The Year. You can see the full list of winners here.

Happy 5th Birthday, Metro Exodus! Has it really been that long already? To celebrate, developers 4A Games are teasing the next mainline Metro game that's coming... "when it's ready", according to their Xweet yesterday.

Alan Wake 2 is Remedy’s fastest-selling game yet, shifting over 1.3m copies and selling 50% more than Control managed in half the time, but is still yet to make a penny of profit. Remedy are optimistic, though, with two bits of DLC to come and plans for future updates and "other activities".

Palworld developers Pocketpair have outlined their plans to step up anti-cheat measures in the survival game, as players struggle to connect to its official servers due to hackers and other ne'er-do-wells. Among the incoming measures will be a player list functon arriving later this month, followed by a dedicated "external anti-cheat solution" after that. You'll be able to choose whether you want it in your private and single-player games, though.

As Katharine shared earlier, post-apocalyptic mask-wiping shooter Metro Exodus will see a sequel - but only “when it’s ready”, according to devs 4A Games (hopefully before 2033).

Elden Ring and Tekken 8 publishers Bandai Namco have cancelled at least five games in development, saying they are working to put the “emphasis on quality” in the future with stricter standards and fewer titles.

Epic have posted their Epic Games Store 2023 year-in-review, which includes stats and plans for the year ahead. Spending on third-party games fell 13% last year, despite 1300 new games being added to the storefront - and despite spending on Epic's own games growing. Epic say they're going to focus on improving game discovery and the overall player experience in 2024, which includes adding a proper download manager and an offline mode, alongside other features.

Jump King is a famously punishing platformer, but if you're a glutton for more then there's good news: five years after its release, it now has Steam Workshop support and a new modding tool.

Rocksteady say that fixing server and login issues in Suicide Squad is their top priority, but they're apparently a tough nut to crack and they ask for patience while they work on them.

Brighton band Lime Garden released their debut album yesterday, which gives me excuse to share opening track Love Song, which I've been listening to regularly since last year.

Helldivers 2's team is likewise working on server issues, but todayh released patch 1.09 which includes crash fixes, matchmaking improvements and some balance tweaks. The full patch notes are over on Steam.

New World is rebuilding all its combat and its animation system in order to improve performance, by moving over to their own C++-based scripting language. The development update on the changes explains the benefits, challenges and compromises in uncommon detail.

The voice actor Richard Wells, who recorded the "PEGI 18", etc. that plays before game trailers, says he was paid just €200 (£170) to do it. Wells created a TikTok account on Friday and has already accrued over 17 million views.

I need a wee stack of time insensitive free games, fan projects, and other curios that I can slowly dribble out in news posts, for nights like these when the otherwise readily available potential news posts with which to feed the Maw are mostly minor, marginal or mean-spirited. I can and shall do the work to construct such a stack, but if you've got a beloved or two that you like to keep an eye on, and that you wish got a little more attention, feel free to share it in the comments.