With the arrival of October comes a brand new Humble Choice lineup for PC gamers to dig into, and it looks like a stacked selection this month. Leading the pack is Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii followed by Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and Psychonauts 2 (which are all 8/10 games in our eyes), alongside five other PC games to add to your Steam library for just $14.99/month when you sign up to become a Humble Choice member.

That's a steal compared to buying all eight games on their own, but that's not all. One month free of IGN Plus is also thrown in the mix, plus you get some added shopping perks when you're a member, like up to 20% off in the Humble store. What a treat.

Check out this month's full lineup below, and if you like what you see, sign up for just $14.99 to add them to your Steam library.

Humble Choice - October 2026

When Rockstar debuted its extended look at GTA 6 on Netflix, it was as if the developer had uploaded a one-off episode of a crime thriller to the platform. Sure, this was a gameplay reveal and there was certainly plenty of what was clearly a person playing a video game, but it nonetheless felt like a cinematic event. Compelling characters, building tension, slick action, and beautiful camera direction – it was as if Michael Mann had shadow-dropped a CGI short.

None of that will have come as a surprise. Rockstar has always had one eye on the movies – the game that shot it to stardom is a love-letter to Goodfellas, and its most recent open-world is the greatest Western never filmed. But the cinematic ambition we associate with the studio truly came to fruition in 2004 with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Its predecessors, GTA 3 and Vice City, had been packed with references to classic crime cinema and voiced by genuine Hollywood talent. But that wasn’t enough for San Andreas. For this ‘90s-set Californian epic, Rockstar wanted to put you in the movies. And so it designed missions that felt like they’d been pulled from the silver screen.

There’s no better example of this than Reuniting the Families, the penultimate chapter of San Andreas’ opening act. It’s a highly-scripted, expertly directed slice of interactive storytelling that casts you in the leading role. And by trading the freedom of its open world for a tighter, more authored experience, San Andreas makes this gripping getaway feel more dramatic than any story the series had told thus far.

It remains true even today that the vast majority of Grand Theft Auto’s missions take place outdoors. This is a series built on the city sandbox. One of its most appealing facets is that you’re free to go anywhere – every road, alley, and freeway is fair game. Causing trouble in that mass sprawl of concrete and asphalt was simply what GTA was during the first two games of the series’ 3D era, which for the most part only permitted you to come indoors when an NPC invited you in for a cutscene.

But the indoors offers something the open-world can't: Control. Direction. Oversight. Rooms and corridors are the perfect container for scenes and set-pieces, untouched by the continual simulation of metropolitan life. And so it’s no surprise that San Andreas, with its substantially loftier storytelling goals, frequently sends you into buildings all over its digital golden state. As Carl “CJ” Johnson, you stealthily murder your way through a music mogul’s mansion, steal rifles from a sleeping weapons hoarder, and rescue a damsel in distress from a burning condo – all moments that, thanks to a stronger guiding hand and purposeful level design, feel akin to playing through a movie scene.

That feeling peaks in Reuniting the Families, a turning point for the failing Grove Street gang. With the rival Ballas having practically overrun the city of Los Santos with its drug pushing operation, CJ’s brother Sweet decides it’s time to pull together the gang’s fractured families. He’ll meet the heads of the sets at the Jefferson Motel. CJ and fellow gang members Ryder and Smoke will accompany him, but remain outside while the negotiations take place. Soon, a rejuvenated Grove Street will strike back at their enemies and reclaim the streets.

If only crime were that simple. As soon as Sweet enters the building, the police turn up in force. Ryder and Smoke scarper – “It’s every motherf*cker for himself!” – but CJ heads into the motel to rescue his brother.

Confined by the complex’s small rooms and enclosed hallways, San Andreas suddenly transforms from an open-world playground into a third-person shooter. The motel’s layout functions akin to a level in a linear video game, its corridors guiding you forward through a series of pre-determined moments and combat encounters. The tense atmosphere this scripting creates is apparent from the moment you load in – a fellow Grove Street member is shot to pieces and sent flailing over the hall’s upper balcony. Another lies dead in the stairwell. A woman runs for her life. As you head on up to the main floor, you’re hit by an unexpected jump scare: a SWAT officer rolls through the door and opens fire. You’re about to enter a criminal's worst nightmare, a house of horrors where the law is waiting to pop out from behind every door.

The motel’s corridors are lined with invisible trigger points, each one kickstarting a unique scenario that turns a generic video game shootout into a cinematic vision of a building under siege. A civilian runs from one room to another, crossing your line of fire. A door blows off its hinges. Gangsters light up troopers as they crash through a skylight. An officer hangs from an air vent to take you by surprise. As you inch forward through this maze of rent-by-the-hour rooms, it becomes clear that each square foot of it has been painstakingly crafted to ensure every second of the ordeal feels ripped from the movies. Unlike the movies, though, there’s no guarantee that the hero will survive. You still need to demonstrate some skill to stay alive.

Thankfully, CJ is no slouch; he can combat roll just as good as a pig in kevlar. This is the tool that will shift you in and out of cover, taking you from safety to a perfect firing position in just a couple of incredibly cool seconds. And there is a lot of cover – not just the 90-degree corridor corners, but laundry baskets, sofas, and upturned tables. This is a cover shooter map built two years before Gears of War made chest-high walls a trend. Naturally, such an arrangement demands an appropriate weapon. Armed with the MP5 that his enemies drop, CJ becomes John McClaine, the motel his own miniature Nakatomi Tower. Now I have a machine gun, ho ho ho.

After creating a small mountain of corpses, CJ finally reunites with Sweet and the pair make their escape. A rooftop showdown with a police helicopter would, in any other mission, act as the finale, but this isn’t any other mission. Sending the whirlybird to its doom is just the half way point. With every cop in the city on your tail, a lifeline is found in Smoke and Ryder, who suddenly pull up in getaway wheels. There’s no time to question where they’ve been or why they’ve returned to the scene of the bust. You hop in and call shotgun. Well, AK – you’ll need fully automatic fire for this one.

The mission’s second half sees the format shift from third-person shooter to on-rails turret sequence. And while the action has spilled out into the streets, the tight control allowed by an interior space remains: technically speaking, CJ is inside a car, its driver following Rockstar’s script to the letter. The journey is completely authored, and so it becomes a rollercoaster ride through Los Santos – the route specifically designed to take you through streets perfectly shaped for the oncoming storm.

Police cruisers give chase, their passengers pumping magazine after magazine into your car’s bodywork. Initially, you’re at the front of the pack, the boys in blue tailing behind, but that very quickly changes. Like a city-sized Disneyland dark ride, cops keep popping up on either side of the track – screeching out of alleyways or thundering through junctions. What begins as a simple “blast what’s behind you” becomes a 360-degree shooting gallery, demanding constant assessment of all angles for incoming threats.

The cops are on rails just the same as you are, which means you’re the sole dynamic component in this regimented excitement machine. And while you choose where the bullets go, almost every stunt has been planned – the train will always ram into one of the initial trio of interceptors, the first biker will always collide with its allied car. All pursuing vehicles have been primed to detonate, ensuring the whole ordeal is a chain of explosions triggered by just a few bullets. You’re the improvising actor on a perfectly choreographed action movie set.

If you’re going to make an interactive action movie for the PS2, then you nod to the greats while you’re doing it. A mid-chase cutscene introduces motorcycle-riding cops in a shot lifted directly from the 1997 Nick Cage classic, Con Air. As more bikers join the chase, they leap onto your car, just like the T-1000 did in Terminator 2. This kind of action is commonplace in a post-Uncharted world, but back in 2004, a cop hurling himself onto your motor and throwing a punch was one of the most exciting surprises San Andreas could throw at you.

A mission as grandly cinematic as this couldn’t simply end with the Grove Street boys getting away. A roadblock is easily surmounted by simply driving straight into the two officers, but as we’ve learned, the LSPD were trained at the Robert Patrick school of holding on tight. He’ll soon wish he’d let go. Smoke drives into a narrow alley, where a helicopter swoops in low, its spinning blades angled for the kill. The pedal hits the metal, and the officer is chewed up in what is surely one of the goriest moments in any GTA. The helicopter falls to earth, the boys in green bail out, and their getaway vehicle crashes through a nearby Sprunk billboard, dropping down onto the freeway where it smashes into a fuel truck. The giant explosion is, of course, mandatory.

Reuniting the Families frequently appears in conversations about the best San Andreas missions. It’s not difficult to see why. But it, and the design of San Andreas as a whole, is the starting point for one of Rockstar’s greatest challenges: how to balance the freeform simulation of a living, breathing open world with those cinematic ambitions. By the time of Red Dead Redemption 2, the gulf between these two styles became completely clear. While exploring its sandbox frontier, you’re given complete freedom to play your way. Your actions have consequences, of course, but that’s dictated by the simulation. When you’re on a mission, that freedom is almost completely taken away – in order to put you in the movie and tell the story it wants to, Rockstar needs you to follow the script to the letter. And as the possibilities offered by the developer’s open worlds have increased, the fact that those possibilities are stripped back during moments of storytelling creates a sharp contrast.

That’s not to say one side of Rockstar’s formula is better than the other. If nothing else, the fact that I’ve dedicated an entire article to how brilliant Reuniting the Families is should tell you that I’m a big fan of the studio’s approach to these cinematic story missions. They’re exciting. Thrilling. They have authorial intent. They put you in the goddamn movies! But, with any luck, GTA 6 will find a way to successfully marry the simulation and the story.

Even if it doesn’t, Reuniting the Families proves having two sides to a coin is a worthwhile pursuit, particularly if both halves of the whole are equally accomplished. San Andreas did amazing things with its city sandbox at the same time as creating linear missions that could be fantastic stealth infiltrations, home invasions, or explosive getaways across Los Santos. And it was those moments that really took us into CJ’s life. Those were the missions that made him feel like a real person with a story to tell. That time he saved Sweet from the cops? Man, it was absolute cinema.

It’s October, which means two things: spooky season is here, and it’s time to celebrate. That’s something PUBG MOBILE knows all too well, because going live today is a brand new pumpkin-themed makeover to Brainrot Royale in Version 4.6. It comes with some anticipated new quality of life changes, as well as new event gameplay, limited-time rewards, more social interaction, and stronger collection progression. Familiar faces including Boneka Ambalabu, Brr Brr Patapim and Ballerina Cappuccina are along for the ride too. Let’s break down everything the new update has to offer.

Ghost Ship

Things get eerie with the epic new Ghost Ship, a new timed event that alternates with the Boss Room. When the event begins, a gigantic ship emerges from the mist and sails into the centre of the level, where it periodically locks onto Brainrots travelling along the conveyor belt and fires tracking Ghost Bullets at them. Those tracking bullets select their target, and if there’s a hit, then the Brainrot mutates into a Pumpkin Brainrot, a special Version 4.6-limited tier that’s yours for the taking. You can also collect Pumpkin Brainrot by smashing the Pumpkin Eggs found in the Boss Room. You can take them back to your base, or perhaps steal them from someone else. The choice is yours.

That’s not all the Ghost Ship event offers. Special updrafts occur during the event, which permit players to fly up onto the ship’s deck. It’s there they will discover the Pirate Captain’s Shop. In it, great booty awaits in the form of limited items and rewards. To get all that pirate plunder, you’ll need to get Pirate Coins.

The Ghost Ship’s arrival introduces Pirate Coins, a new event currency separate from the regular coins earned in Brainrot Royale. Stealing another player’s Brainrot, smashing eggs in the Boss Room, and purchasing or shooting Brainrots can all earn you Pirate Coins. Higher-level and rarer Brainrots and eggs drop more Pirate Coins, so there’s plenty of reason to hunt down the biggest rewards.

Become a Brainrot

While collecting Brainrot has its own set of rewards and challenges, we know what you’re thinking: wouldn’t it be fun to become an actual Brainrot? Well, thanks to the addition of new themed items, that dream is now a possibility. With Pirate Coins, you can purchase the Brainrot Wand, which allows you to get into costume, disguising yourself as the new pumpkin-themed Brainrot. There’s also a Magic Broom, which allows players to fly freely around the level and even bring another player along for the ride. That’s not all, though. The broom also has a useful dash attack which can be used to knock down thieves, giving players a chance to chase them down and recover any Brainrots they’ve stolen.

“With Version 4.6, we wanted to build on the fun and unpredictability of Brainrot Royale while giving players a new culture-inspired experience to jump into,” says Rick Li, Producer of PUBG MOBILE and Deputy General Manager of Quantum Studio, LightSpeed Studios, Tencent Games. “The pumpkin-themed update brings new twists like the Ghost Ship and creates even more unexpected moments between players.”

The update also introduces the Star Upgrade system, which allows players to convert their extra Brainrots into a higher-star version. To do this, you’ll select two Brainrots of the same type and star level through the fusion system. Succeed and your Brainrot will get bigger, produce more Coins per second and become a more valuable collectible. If the fusion fails, don’t worry! You’ll get a success-rate bonus for your next attempt. Keep at it and you can eventually upgrade a Brainrot all the way to Meteor tier.

New Interactions and Improvements

Version 4.6 is amping up the ways players can interact with each other in-game. Now, when you walk up to another player, you can view their profile card, add them as a friend, exchange popularity gifts or hand over one of your Brainrots. In gifting, you can send Brainrot directly to another player’s backpack or base, making it easier to share your collection with friends.

“World of Wonder gives us the opportunity to keep expanding the ways players can experience PUBG MOBILE, and Brainrot Royale is a great example of that,” says Vincent Wang, General Manager and Head of PUBG MOBILE Publishing, Tencent Games. “As the ecosystem grows, we want to keep giving players new experiences while creating more opportunities for talented creators and studios to bring new ideas to PUBG MOBILE.”

There are also some valuable quality of life improvements, including a new backpack capacity limit. Your backpack can now hold up to 64 Brainrots, and once it’s full, you won’t be able to pick up any more until you organise your collection or sell lower-value ones to free up space. There’s more room to grow back at your Base, though, with Version 4.6 raising the Rebirth level cap by five additional levels. Players who’ve reached the cap can now progress through new levels, and each level unlocks another base slot, giving you more space for Brainrots and Coin-producing facilities.

So what are you waiting for? PUBG MOBILE’s Brainrot Royale Pumpkin-themed update is now live, and a world full of Ghost Ships, Pirate Coins, magic wands, brooms, are at your fingertips.

PUBG MOBILE’s Brainrot Royale pumpkin-themed update is available now in World of Wonder as part of Version 4.6. Download PUBG MOBILE for free on the App Store and Google Play Store, and follow the official World of Wonder social channels on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube for the latest updates and creator content. You can also visit the official PUBG MOBILE social channels on Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Ben Affleck has revealed he plays shooters like Fortnite and sometimes ends up getting into arguments with kids in voice chat.

When speaking on the New Heights podcast, Affleck was asked about the inspiration for some of the costumes in his latest film, Animals. The new Netflix thriller features a character wearing a fuzzy bunny mask, and Affleck stated that he took inspiration from Fortnite for that particular costume. He noted that his son was taking an interest in Fortnite skins and kept calling them "tough." Affleck joked that he didn't quite understand what was "tough" about a character wearing a bunny mask, but utilized it as an inspiration.

"I thought these costumes are so kind of random and unusual, that's what I based the costumes on," said Affleck. "I thought he'd be getting them off games."

The actor also noted that he plays quite a few games himself, including sports titles like Madden and 2K, as well as shooters. Affleck joked that because of his gaming experience, he believes he's good at shooters, but realizes he's not as capable as younger players.

"I always play games," he said. "I play first person shooter games, so I think I'm good, and then 12-year-olds just f**k you up. I try to come out and I'm like, ‘Here I come.’ I get killed right away, and then they taunt you, like, ‘You suck. F**k you!’ I end up getting in arguments. ‘F**k you! I don't suck! I'm a grown man!’”

Affleck has been vocal about his love for gaming before, particularly Valorant. The actor has attended multiple Valorant events with his son, noting in the past that he mains KAY/0 in the game. He also joined the Valorant e-Sports team Sentinels for a watch party last year, where he talked about his experience with the game on stream.

Before there was Warzone, Fortnite, or even PUBG: Battlegrounds, there was Minecraft Survival Games. While the exact origin is nebulous, Norwegian YouTuber Dennis Vaeride is credited as launching the first Survival Games server in April 2012, just one month after The Hunger Games’ film adaptation had opened in cinemas. The concept followed the rules outlined in Katniss’ harrowing ordeal: dozens of players would sprint into the middle of a starting circle, gather supplies, and then hunt until the last one standing.

Little did Vaeride know, he’d just fired the starting pistol on an industry-wide battle royale. Many studios would try to replicate this formula. Few would survive. Those that did would grow fat on microtransactions and spiralling player counts.

Last year the market for the battle royale sub-genre was valued at $11.2 billion. It is expected to reach nearly $30 billion by 2035. Everyone’s chasing the money and almost all of them are discovering just how difficult it is to carve out their own piece of the pie – even heavyweights like Halo Studios and monied companies like Amazon Games have failed miserably. It’s a financial frenzy that can be traced all the way back to those Hunger Games-inspired Minecraft servers… although the true spark that set the industry ablaze came a year later, from a single developer living in Brazil.

In early 2013, Brendan Greene had an idea for a DayZ mod (the zombie survival game that was itself a mod of mil-sim ARMA, and was already responsible for whipping the survival genre into a frenzy on PC). Inspired not by The Hunger Games but by Kinji Fukasaku’s similarly themed 2000 thriller, Battle Royale, Greene’s idea was a last-player-standing multiplayer mode that took place on a large map scattered with weapons and restricted by a shrinking circular safe area. He developed what became PlayerUnknown's Battle Royale over a number of years, and his association with the format became so significant that Sony brought him on as a consultant whilst developing the competing H1Z1.

But Sony wasn’t the only major studio that took notice of Greene’s rise. South Korean studio Bluehole offered him the chance to create his own project. That game was PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds – a 100-player last-man-standing shooter with random loot drops and an ever-decreasing map size. The game launched on Steam Early Access in March 2017. By December, it had over three million concurrent players. Everyone took notice of Greene’s success – including Epic Games.

Fortnite was not always the battle royale you know today. When it launched in July 2017, it was a struggling tower defence game where a quartet of players scavenged and built fortifications to defend against waves of nocturnal monsters. PUBG’s meteoric success convinced Epic’s CEO and CCO, Tim Sweeney and Donald Mustard, to take a gamble on improving Fortnite’s future: they quickly tasked the team to develop their own equivalent of PlayerUnknown’s formula.

By September, the mode was released. It was barebones, practically ramshackle, with minimal assets and a bizarre application of the building systems from the original fort-crafting mode. But it had one secret weapon. Unlike PUBG, Fortnite: Battle Royale was free-to-play. The most popular video game idea in the world was suddenly free for all. Within 2 weeks, it hit 10 million players. Within a year, it was home to 125 million. Today, the number of registered Fortnite players sits at 650 million.

The battle royale pivot changed Fortnite forever. It isn’t even a game anymore – it’s become a platform, one where Ariana Grande and Eminem have performed virtually, previews of Star Wars movies have played, and servers worldwide were shut down to emulate a world-ending event.

It’s Happened Before, It Will Happen Again

PUBG and Fortnite’s dual success created a video games arms race: nearly 2,000 games have been assigned the “battle royale” tag on Steam, while hundreds more exist in the mobile gaming market. When you have a game that made $9 billion within two years and likely over $20 billion by now, it’s clear to see why so many publishers have tried to replicate its formula.

This is, of course, an echo of one of the original live-service booms from half a decade earlier: the MOBA. Another genre that grew out of a mod, the industry was captivated by the 5v5 “battle arena”, with dozens of studios attempting to replicate the success of Riot’s League of Legends and Valve’s Dota 2. Dozens of MOBAs were quickly developed and died almost as fast, and the same cycle could be seen with battle royale. Ubisoft’s Hyper Scape, Square Enix’s Final Fantasy 7: The First Soldier, Fallout 76’s Nuclear Winter expansion – even Epic itself couldn’t emulate its own success, with wrestling battle royale Rumbleverse flatlining less than a year after launch.

Some may claim the widespread failure to truly compete with PUBG and Fortnite is down to studios failing to innovate on Greene’s original concepts. But, as with the MOBA craze, a massively over-saturated marketplace may be the stronger prevailing reason. It’s a situation ex-BioWare producer Mark Darrah, who worked on looter shooter Anthem, knows well.

“You have to believe that you can actually dethrone one of the top two players in that genre, or you shouldn’t be doing it,” he says. For Darrah, that meant stealing the crown from Destiny – a task that the single-player RPG experts at BioWare weren’t suited to. Anthem struggled right from the moment it launched. Destiny remained on the throne.

But there’s more to that story. BioWare wasn’t just competing with Destiny – it was going up against a Destiny that had enjoyed half a decade of development, refinement, and a sequel. That’s an issue facing any developer getting into the live-service space in 2026 – the table stakes for new video games are radically different to even just 10 years ago. As Overwatch’s original lead director Jeff Kaplan puts it: “If someone wanted to make a MOBA today, they’re not competing with the likes of League of Legends five years in. They’re competing with League up to today.”

The Poisoned Chalice of Live-Service Success

Overwatch, the live-service game that triggered the hero shooter craze, was not planned. Kaplan was given an ultimatum after his previous MMORPG project fell apart: give us an idea within a month or the team gets disbanded.

Kaplan feels that pressure created an intense creativity boost amongst the team, both during the initial concepting and development of the 6v6 hero shooter, and beyond into its live years. The game “caught and rode the [audience] wave”, describes Kaplan, who compares it to World of Warcraft’s similar success.

“[The launch and first year’s success] was all because of improvisation, of just knowing and feeling what felt cool in the moment,” Kaplan explains.

Seven million people played Overwatch in its first week, entranced by its smart melding of heroes and abilities with FPS arena action. This wasn’t another contender to the fading MOBA trend, but something fresh and new and worth spending hundreds of hours with. Within five months, that number ballooned to 20 million. By the end of Overwatch’s first year, 30 million players were High Nooning and Dragonstriking one another across the hero shooter’s maps. Kaplan attributes his team’s success to their fluidity when it came to devising the game’s future, describing their development style as akin to an improvisational jazz band. A successful launch is the peak for a single-player game, but for live-service it’s just the beginning. Keeping Overwatch in peak condition was the key to ensuring it remained the live service shooter to play – something Blizzard achieved… until it didn’t.

Overwatch’s success created a loop: the development team would expand to make new and interesting updates, making the game more expensive to run, giving upper management an in-road to question the core fundamentals of that success, and how profit margins can be not only rebalanced, but perhaps outsized.

“People would say, ‘League of Legends is free-to-play, look at that. Why don’t you switch Overwatch? We could do it next month.’” recalls Kaplan. “It’s that one-size-fits-all mentality that is poison for development teams.”

And here we reach what many would perceive as both the promise and the problem at the heart of live-service games: there’s always more money to be made. This format isn’t about selling copies at launch, it's about continual profit, day after day, month after month, year after year. Kaplan eventually left Blizzard in 2021 following his disagreement with executive plans – management wanted to aggressively monetize his vision of Overwatch 2 in order to fund the game’s external esports league. Clashing viewpoints meant Blizzard lost Kaplan. When something becomes a monster success, it seems that those who own the monster may be willing to sacrifice the people who tamed it in the first place, if the price is right.

“They didn’t let the team really focus on what they wanted to focus on,” Kaplan remembers. He notes that the Overwatch 2 that eventually released was very different to his own sequel concept, although he praises the team for their efforts in continuing the franchise.

The Failure of Second Place

During the hero shooter explosion of the mid-2010s, many studios tried to create their own Overwatch. Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege, launched a year before Blizzard’s behemoth, successfully kept its head above water, largely thanks to its unique niche of lethal action and destructible environments. But those who tried to ape Overwatch’s stylish characters and snappy arcade action were doomed to wither in its shadow. Amazon Games’ Crucible, EA’s Rocket Arena, Boss Key’s LawBreakers, and First Watch’s Rogue Company are all examples of hero shooters that have come and gone. None of them stuck for one defining reason: lack of innovation.

“Number one [in sales/player count] controls so much of the attention in a space that it’s almost not worth being number two, let alone five or six”, says Darrah. The PvP hero shooter mold has hardly been touched since Overwatch defined it. Instead, publishers have provided the illusion of innovation through marketing. “Oftentime the marketing spend for a triple-A game can dwarf the development cost”, Kaplan notes.

The high-profile case of Sony and Firewalk Studios’ 2024 hero shooter Concord was an unfortunate trifecta of these issues: despite a $400 million budget, it lacked innovation, and its attempts to promote itself through inclusion in Amazon’s Secret Level TV series weeks ahead of launch felt premature and overly-confident. But above all else, it came far too late. Concord began development in 2016, the same year Overwatch released. Had it released in 2019, or even 2020, perhaps it may have found its audience. But eight years on, you’re not competing with the Overwatch of 2016, you’re competing with Overwatch bolstered by almost a decade of development. On top of that, you’re also facing all the bodies on the road that tried to follow it… and the fact that the world has largely moved on from hero shooters, onto battle royale, and is hungry for the next big live shooter trend.

The Curse of Trend-Chasing

The fates of Anthem and Concord are a bleak reflection of the growing do or die mentality many publishers have begun to operate with when faced with the challenge of their assumed heavy-hitter opening to a softer-than-expected launch. We’ve already noted how BioWare was naturally going to struggle going toe-to-toe with Destiny, considering Bungie’s spiritual successor to the MMORPG had made over $325 million in five days back in 2014, becoming the biggest new franchise launch of all time. But, like Concord, Anthem suffered a protracted development that contributed to its poor chances: When it was released in 2019, many decried Anthem for ripping Destiny off. In actuality, it began life way back in 2012, before Destiny had been revealed to the world.

Darrah remembers the corporate shift that lit the fuse on Anthem’s downfall, which began shortly after EA’s success with FIFA Ultimate Team. “They wanted every franchise to be a billion-dollar franchise”, he said, recalling internal goals for every franchise to hit minimum 40% profit margins, and making minimum $50 million in profit. BioWare was very much not primed to achieve such financial results – even its beloved Mass Effect series was not the kind of dollar-raking blockbuster that EA demanded. The studio’s approach had to change to appease its masters. BioWare had to go live-service.

Darrah remembers the way Anthem was sold to EA: “What if we said it’s still BioWare, but it’s completely not BioWare?” That confusing elevator pitch was the start of what would be a painful journey for BioWare’s RPG artists. Anthem was pitched internally as ‘the future of storytelling’ by director Casey Hudeon, but no one at BioWare, including Darrah, understood what that meant, even as the project approached its launch.

While the very people making Anthem were concerned about its heading, Darrah believes EA’s interest in the project aligned with the same reasons why the publisher’s favourite BioWare game was its second set in Thedas: “[Dragon Age 2] wasn’t well received, didn’t sell as well as other BioWare games – but it was the balance of math in terms of finances that made their line go up,” he says. Anthem, with its live-service design, presented the opportunity for BioWare to push a line up.

Darrah wasn’t one of the original Anthem developers, but in October 2017 he was moved from working on Dragon Age: The Veilguard to shepherd (and essentially save) Anthem’s development. Many credit his leadership as the reason why Anthem even made it out of the door. It launched in February 2019 to poor review scores and significant technical issues, an unsurprising result given the game was essentially redeveloped within a year.

And yet Anthem became BioWare’s second fastest-selling game behind Mass Effect 3, earning over $100 million in digital revenue in the first month. As a pure product of commerce, Anthem ticked all of EA’s boxes. But live-service is not about those initial sales – it’s about the marathon that lies beyond. And while attempts were made to improve Anthem, its sub-standard design failed to hold player interest long enough to allow the improvements to flourish. All development ceased in 2021. As of this year, it’s totally unplayable.

While both Concord and Anthem would find themselves victims of a similar fate, the journey to that fate differs significantly. Anthem was afforded six years to find an audience. Concord was given less than two weeks. If Concord had released in 2019, perhaps it may have eventually found its footing and carved out its own niche, similar to Hello Games’ own journey with No Man’s Sky. But if Anthem had been released in 2024, can anyone imagine it truly lasting longer than Concord did?

In an ironic twist of fate, Anthem’s initial success only caused more friction between BioWare and EA. Dragon Age: The Veilguard’s development was directly impacted. Its initial concept contained live-service elements based on Anthem’s code per EA’s direction, only for it all to change course following Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order’s success as a single-player only game and Anthem’s ultimately short lifespan. Similar to Anthem, The Veilguard’s final shape was a confusing abstraction, a BioWare game in appearance only, lacking the studio’s key pillars of narrative depth and player choice. EA CEO Andrew Wilson’s comments that Veilguard may have fared better if it had stuck to the original live-service plans consequently not only feels like a kick in the teeth to BioWare, but casts a spotlight on the publisher’s fundamental misunderstanding of what creates the value of its franchises.

“Dragon Age has great games you can get 30, 40 hours from,” observes Kaplan. “But if you try to stretch an experience like that out to 100 hours or 1,000 hours, that game wasn’t designed to do that.”.

The battle scars worn by Anthem and Veilguard’s staff are reflective of an increasingly pervasive trend of major publishers assigning prestige single-player developers like BioWare or Rocksteady to replicate the profits of live-service studios.

“The realization that this type of game was a lottery ticket that could pay off really big shifted our industry around so much”, Darrah muses. That shift, of course, has often been in the form of mass restructuring and layoffs following an attempt to compete in the live-service arena.

It’s clear that live-service is perhaps the biggest challenge that video games have faced in a long time. Demanding huge amounts of development on never-ending timelines, they understandably encourage copycat designs as publishers attempt to create their money-printing machines. But, as we’ve seen in the format’s popularity cycles, it’s the early innovators that tend to reign… and the throne only allows for a temporary tenancy. The age of the MMO, MOBA, and hero shooter have all come and gone, and soon the sun will set on the battle royale. One of gaming market research company NewZoo’s latest reports showed a 27% decline in the battle royale sub-genre, with Fortnite and Apex Legends both suffering nearly a quarter drop in playtime growth themselves.

However, while battle royale may be the ultimate showcase for just how big live-service can be, its waning popularity is no indication of the end of live-service. We’ve been playing microtransaction-funded multiplayer games since the ‘90s, and while there are reports that free-to-play is facing decline, the revenue stream shows no sign of going away any time soon. PlayStation CEO Hidaeki Nishino’s recent recommitment to to live-service shows that even a disaster like Concord can’t deter the famously prestige single-player platform from forcing its way to success in the field. Meanwhile, Ubisoft has claimed the single-player model is outdated and EA’s Andrew Wilson proclaimed the future of single-player is live-service, all attitudes worthy of significant concern.

“I don’t think anyone wants to live in a world where there are only seven games - but that’s kind of where we’re headed if we keep pushing down this road”, Darrah laments.

Live-service isn’t an inherently bad thing. But, as with so many issues in the industry, there’s a friction between the people who make games and the people who profit from them.

“I always talk about games in terms of a pyramid,” says Kaplan. “They’re art, then entertainment, then business. If something’s not entertaining, there’s no business there. It fails. You can’t invert the pyramid.”

Like Ultima Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft, Destiny, Fortnite and Overwatch became the three pioneering pillars of what modern live-service games could be, following Kaplan’s pyramid of creativity. It’s difficult to argue against those games offering high-quality levels of innovation, be that Destiny’s unrivaled gunplay and phenomenal raid design, Overwatch’s exceptional hero interplay, or Fortnite’s unrivalled ability to reinvent itself on a seemingly monthly basis.

But that pyramid has so often been inverted, with many chasing the money-printing success of these three titles while failing to learn from many of the valuable lessons the trio all had to overcome to ensure their success. And with so many of the industry’s major players chasing the same trends in broadly similar ways, it feels like the sky is falling all around us.

The pyramid has become inverted. And so the big question is: can it be realigned before it's too late?

Next: Is it the beginning of the end for live-service games?

Sab Astley is a freelance writer who has written for IGN, Polygon, TotalFilm, Rolling Stone, Radio Times, and Metro UK.

Xbox has announced a new TV, movies, and entertainment division called XP. It will be headed up by Kayleen Walters, a Lucasfilm veteran who moves over from her most recent post as president of Minecraft maker Mojang, where she also served as an executive producer on last year's A Minecraft Movie.

XP brings together four "areas of investment": Xbox Pictures; Xbox Products; Xbox Partnerships; and Xbox Places. Microsoft said XP was set up to help Xbox become the number one entertainment and gaming company in the world, which requires broadening its big franchises beyond video games themselves. But it is not a production company. Rather, Microsoft wants to find the right partners to work across film, TV, physical experiences, and consumer products.

Microsoft has already seen significant success in the movie and TV space, with Warner Bros.' A Minecraft Movie breaking box office records, and Amazon's Fallout TV show setting records for Prime Video. Upcoming Xbox adaptations include movie sequel Minecraft Squared, Fallout Season 3, a Call of Duty movie with Peter Berg and Taylor Sheridan, and a Diablo animated series with Netflix. Microsoft's deal for Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid spiritual successor Physint includes film and TV rights, so expect an adaptation of that eventually.

XP is also about live events, and again, Xbox already has success there. Blizzard's BlizzCon saw a number of significant announcements, with 35,000 people at the physical event in Anaheim, California, and 12.5 million watching at home. The most recent Minecraft Live, which saw the announcement of the first new dimension for Minecraft in 14 years, reached more than 144 million people.

Meanwhile, Microsoft cited partnerships such as Gears of War's takeover with WWE, and Xbox's range of Ikea furniture. A Minecraft theme park is set to open its gates next year.

"XP was created from a simple but powerful belief: the world's most beloved gaming franchises have an opportunity to reach people far beyond the boundaries of the game itself," Walters said. "Fans don't just play our franchises. They watch them, wear them, attend them, celebrate them, and connect with them in countless ways. XP brings together the teams responsible for helping Xbox franchises show up in the world in bigger, more meaningful ways."

"XP is a play on 'Experience Points' and formalizes four investment areas for us: Xbox Pictures for film and television adaptations; Xbox Products for licensing and merchandise; Xbox Partnerships for sponsors and brand partners; and Xbox Places for our marquee broadcast and in-person events, theme parks, and other location-based experiences," Xbox CEO Asha Sharma wrote in a company-wide memo also posted to Xbox Wire.

"Our franchises can mean more to people than the time they spend playing them, and Kayleen knows how to build those experiences with the industry without losing what made people care about the franchise in the first place."

Microsoft noted the uplift its video games can get when movies and shows do well. For example, Fallout games on Game Pass saw a 5x increase in hours played during Fallout Season 1. Minecraft, meanwhile, saw over a 75% increase in weekly active users year-over-year since the movie released (as of April 30, 2026).

If this sounds a bit familiar, it's because Microsoft has tried this before. In 2012 (back in the Xbox 360 era!), Microsoft announced Xbox Entertainment Studios with an aim to produce TV shows that would air directly on Xbox consoles. XES revealed plans to create shows based on Gears of War, Fable, Forza, and State of Decay — not to mention, of course, the original version of the Halo TV show announced at E3 by Stephen Spielberg, who was set to executive produce. They even planned to make an unscripted street-soccer drama called Every Street United. The entire XES effort lasted just two years before getting shut down as the Xbox One's "all in one" message failed to resonate with gamers following its reveal in 2013.

As part of the changes, Mojang has a new boss. Maria Angelidou-Smith, who joins Xbox as CEO of Mojang, spent nearly a decade at Meta working on Facebook Groups before stints at Personio and Reddit, where she was Chief Product Officer. "She has built products used by billions of people and led product and engineering organizations through significant growth and change," Sharma said.

"She will bring that experience to Mojang while learning from the people who know Minecraft best. Her first order of business is for her to learn from the teams and communities that make Minecraft so special."

Minecraft is, of course, one of the big Xbox franchises the company is doubling down on amid Sharma's ongoing "Reset," which has seen nearly 2,000 staff cut from the gaming business so far this financial year. Minecraft is the best-selling video game of all time, having shifted over 425 million copies. Its significant merchandising business became one of the top 20 globally.

The FBI arrested a Fortnite player last week after Epic reported threats he made over voice chat.

Epic reported Edward Frith, an avid Fortnite player from Alabama, over alarming messages spoken while playing Fortnite. He was later arrested when the FBI turned up at his house.

According to the affidavit (reported by Aftermath), Frith, who went by the username “WagesOfNinja,” said he was letting all his rage out because he wanted to “literally murder somebody” and that he thinks about killing “every day.”

"Let's see if the FBI is going to show up at my door because I'll shoot them motherf****rs too," Frith said, before the FBI showed up at his door. Frith’s other comments were just as disturbing, with the Fortnite player suggesting he was planning to end his life by charging at police.

Epic made what was described as a "voluntary emergency disclosure" to the FBI National Threat Operations Section (NTOS) Exigent Threat Research and Analysis Crisis Team (EXTRACT), relating to the statements. The developer then provided the FBI with an audio recording and transcript of the threats.

The Alabama resident was indicted for violating Interstate Threatening Communications on September 23. He was remanded into custody while awaiting a trial, after entering a plea of “not guilty” on September 24.

Epic Games announced a new voice reporting system for Fortnite in November 2023. The system allows players to clip audio and anonymously file a report whenever they catch another player violating the community rules.

"The only way Epic ever receives a copy of the audio clip is if voice reporting is on and a participant affirmatively reports the voice chat using the in-game voice reporting feature,” Epic said at the time.

Once reported, the last five minutes of communications are captured and the audio file is sent to Epic’s moderation team to review. Depending on the severity of the communications, players can face bans or, in this case, being reported to the feds.

Likewise, Fortnite players can report text chat, which is stored for 30 days. The Fortnite developer also uses autonomous systems to detect harmful language, such as “self-harm, child endangerment, and threats of real-world violence.”

Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images.

The AI video game clone explosion continues at pace. Now, someone has made Minecraft playable inside X / Twitter with working multiplayer. X user jaivin used AI to make Mojang’s Minecraft playable inside posts on Elon Musk’s social network, and is letting people buy in-game sponsorships with cryptocurrency.

“Tweetcraft is a block game in a post: every world is a link on X, and everyone who opens it plays together,” reads the official blurb. “Put your ad at the top of the server list, in a world’s sponsor leaderboard, or your logo on the Block Dragon.”

So, what’s going on here? Essentially, "Tweetcraft" is a custom browser-based Minecraft clone where you generate a shared world and post its unique link on X / Twitter, which acts as a shared entry point. Anyone who clicks on the link joins the same real-time multiplayer session. The game itself renders in your browser.

This “port” is, obviously, unauthorized, and will no doubt draw the attention of Microsoft’s lawyers sooner rather than later. Jaivin’s launch post has had 7.4 million views already. Various follow-up posts detail an explosion of popularity as people try it out.

Perhaps in a bid to downplay any potential trademark or copyright infringement, jaivin has called the game “Tweetcraft,” although it’s clearly Minecraft in shape and form. Jaivin also insisted that “Tweetcraft uses none of Minecraft's assets and is not associated with Mojang or Microsoft.”

Responses are similar to those we’ve seen over the last two weeks amid this AI-powered video game clone and “game-merging” mod explosion, which has spawned a number of viral gameplay clips of famous video game franchises mashed together. There’s a mix of excitement and disgust, with some saying a clampdown is inevitable.

“The name is brilliant because now you can lose two separate trademark lawsuits,” one person said of Tweetcraft.

“The ‘I do not own this music video’ description when uploading a music video on YouTube defense,” another said.

October has already seen GTA 5 and the original version of Halo on Xbox made playable on a browser, with more surely to come. The GTA 5 clone was hit by a takedown, as was a Fallout: New York game that was released in-browser.

Clearly, this Whack-a-Mole between IP owner and AI-generated video game isn’t sustainable, so the question will be what the video game industry does long term to prevent this sort of thing happening in the first place. Indeed, can it do anything? With AI models becoming increasingly powerful, the time it takes for unauthorized versions of established video games to appear outside of official platforms will reduce potentially to just hours or even minutes. With GTA 6 releasing on PS5 and Xbox Series X and S only, how long will it take for someone to use AI to make it playable on PC via a browser?

Rock Band was the foundation for some of my favorite childhood memories. I know for a lot of people that source was Guitar Hero, but the point stands: the game-ified version of rocking out is peak.

If you somehow weren’t already aware, Harmonix was acquired by Epic Games back in 2021. Now, Rock Band lives on in the form of Fortnite Festival.

Whether you’re already deep in the Fortnite world or have been aching for a chance to relive your Rock Band (sorry, Guitar Hero) glory days, I highly recommend picking up a guitar controller. All of the best ones are all on sale at Amazon for Prime Big Deal Days today.

CRKD and PDP Riffmaster Guitar Controllers on Sale for Prime Big Deal Days

Fortnite Festival is technically playable with a mouse and keyboard, but that's not nearly as immersive as shredding on what feels like a real instrument. Thankfully, companies like CRKD and Turtle Beach released a steady stream of high quality controllers that are specifically compatible with the musical Fortnite mode as well as Rock Band 4.

The main downside to this new generation of controllers is the cost, making Prime deals particularly welcome.

If you’re just looking for the best possible deal, I’d go with the classic PDP Riffmaster, which offers dedicated models for Xbox, Switch 2, and PS5. The console variants have ranging compatibility with PC, but all of them happen to be 40% off. The discounted $89.99 price tag brings the controller just $10 shy of its lowest price of all time.

IGN got the chance to review the PDP Riffmaster, saying it’s a “terrific bit of kit with excellent button feel, extremely impressive battery life, and some very sensible quality-of-life tweaks.” It’s a close match for the original Rock Band Stratocaster, though with a quieter strum bar. The collapsible neck also offers some portability for taking the band on the road.

We had equally glowing praise for the CRKD Gibson Les Paul controllers. These offer a little more customization through the CRKD app and the option of a lower latency wired connection, ideal for the Clone Hero fanatics. Another benefit with CRKD is more color options, with discounts ranging up to 30% off across PS5, Xbox, and multiplatform variants.

Reddit users have entire threads dedicated to discussions over which controller is better, which I’d recommend perusing for more hands-on insight.

What Is Fortnite Festival?

If you aren’t already familiar with Fortnite Festival, expect a couple key differences from the classic console era of musical games.

First, the game features online multiplayer with a massive player base. Second, the song list is never set in stone.

Every Fortnite Festival season includes its own mix of free songs, while players can also buy songs to keep permanently. Yep, we’re talking microtransactions, with the game mode even getting its own Battle Pass. The current season is headlined by Lil Tecca, with previous seasons headlined by the likes of Hatsune Miku, Metallica, and Chappell Roan.

Artstorm, developer of PvP naval warfare game Modern Warships, has admitted to using an independent artist’s creation as the basis for one of its ship designs. The plagiarism came to light yesterday when concept artist Alex Jay Brady posted the similarities between their creation and the ship model in-game.

Brady’s art, a design for an atomic ekranoplan carrier vessel, was shown side-by-side against the in-game model in Modern Warships, called the RF Bartini A-2000-7. Even a casual onlooker could see the similarities.

I did not give @ModernWarships permission to use my ekrano design, but I have to say she's looking great. Much more detailed than my sketches. Honestly if they'd just asked and sent me some $$$$ Id have had zero issue with them using it.

Its not to late to do the right thing guys https://t.co/E2K7z3rE9i

— Alex Jay Brady 🥶 (@AlexJayBrady) October 5, 2026

IGN reached out to Brady for more information. “For me the design is the same, with a few minor differences,” Brady said. “The location of the AWACs dish (and there being two, which I assume has something to do with the technical requirements of the game necessitating symmetry?) the number of engines etc…

“But as there never was a swing wing ekranoplan carrier (for good reason) and every detail aside from that is carried over from my design, it seems cut and dried. I have all the project files including, for example, the lines on the deck. The design makes little sense from a realism pov; the engines wash across the deck, the planes take off backward, not into the wind, I just didn't know anything about the subject when building it and they cloned all those mistakes wholesale.”

Since the tweet grew in popularity, developer Artstorm has reached out to Brady, who will consider “the issue closed” and the images added to their portfolio “as a roundabout piece of contract work” if they accept any offer made. Publisher Gaijin told IGN the Modern Warships team had responded to Brady on X, but declined to offer any more detail.

In a tweet reply to Brady, Artstorm said: “Fair call, and apologies from us. Your design was used as a reference without proper clearance. We’ll contact you directly to make this right.” Brady is currently waiting to see what the developer offers in exchange for using their work as a basis of an in-game design.

To unlock the carrier in-game, players would have to spend between $50-100 on gacha spins. Alternatively, players could purchase it with in-game currency, with the RF Bartini A-2000-7 averaging between 7,000 AC and 15,000+ AC (ArtCoins). The average cost of AC is roughly $100 for 1,300 to 2,000 AC. At this rate, a ship costing 10,000 AC would technically cost $500-700+, with a bit of wiggle either side depending on market price fluctuations.

Many Steam reviews of Modern Warships complain about the pricing of the free-to-play title’s more effective vessels. As one put it: “This game is absolutely terrible. The developers and moderators seem to be far more interested in making money from players than in making a balanced and enjoyable game. They are theives [sic].”

We're heading into the final hours of Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days sale and, amazingly, the Apple deals are holding strong. They're not weak deals, either, and you don’t even need to be a Prime member to take advantage of some of them. But they're going away soon, so if you want to get some of the lowest-ever pricing on a number of popular Apple products, ranging from Apple Watch to MacBook Air and iPad, it's time to buy. The sale ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on Wednesday, October 7.

Featured in this article

Here's a catalog of the best Apple deals available now. You can read on for details about each item and what makes this version special.

AirPods Pro 3 Are $80 Off

Save $200 Off M5 MacBook Air

Apple Watch Series 12 Is $50 Off

Apple Watch SE 3 Is $50 Off

iPad Mini Is $100 Off

AirPods Max Are $120 Off

The New 2026 Mac Mini Is $120 Off

Fortnite has quietly replaced a piece of in-game artwork after fans spotted its original version contained a Google Gemini AI watermark.

Epic Games added the music track "Meow" by Ironmouse, Sleeping Forest & HalaCG to Fortnite last month, with the telltale Gemini watermark in the track artwork's bottom right corner. This lay mostly unnoticed until last weekend, when its wider discovery prompted something of a minor kerfuffle on social media and Reddit.

As of this morning, however, this artwork has been replaced with an alternate version (with no Gemini watermark). But after closer inspection, it's worth pointing out that the Gemini usage was present in the track list's original art that Epic Games simply incorporated in-game. Go check the track on Spotify, and the Gemini mark is there, too. In other words, the Gemini usage here is the fault of whoever made the track art initially — not Epic Games.

So, why the switcheroo? AI-generated artwork in Fortnite is a contentious subject for fans who have pointed to previous dubious examples such as an in-game poster featuring a nine-toed character in a hammock to suggest that Epic Games was resorting to poor-quality AI work rather than using human designers. A more recent, official developer video then pulled back the curtain on Epic Games' AI use, showcasing how the company experiments with AI in the conceptual phase when creating characters and in-game locations.

All of that said, Epic Games has always shied away from strictly confirming any particular in-game art is AI generated, and has maintained at least a veneer of quality over the evergreen battle royale it continually toils to keep popular. To date, there hasn't been anything quite as egregious as Call of Duty's embarrassing and grotesque six-fingered Santa.

The fact that Epic Games has made the switch here is, if anything, a positive sign that it does not want to openly show artwork featuring obvious AI elements, such as that Gemini watermark, in Fortnite.

Meanwhile, over the weekend, Disney stated that its rumored desire to buy Epic Games was not something it was planning to act on — at least right now.

Mighty Mike Plays dad Dave has promised refunds and issued a lengthy explanation after the internet demanded more information about the YouTube ads allegedly purchased by his son and the drama that followed.

The saga began when a father took to his son's YouTube channel, Mighty Mike Plays, to announce that his child had allegedly used a company credit card to purchase $118,000 in video ads. It was a painful and highly relatable story that snowballed into a full-fledged internet spectacle when pricey AI-generated T-shirts and questionable details led many online to look for concrete answers.

The controversial father figure came clean in a new video titled "Allow me to Explain" that was uploaded to the Mighty Mike Plays channel last week (via Dexerto). Dave started the hour-long explainer – which has since been deleted and re-uploaded on a new YouTube channel called Coffee Time with Dave – promising that everyone who purchased one of those T-shirts would receive a refund.

“this might be the end of Mighty Mike Plays…” is the funniest thing you could say in front of your dad after putting him 118k in debt and getting him fired

— Mako Fukasame 🦈👩‍🏫 | Vershion AU (@MakoFukasame) September 15, 2026

"Dave here. A.k.a. Devoted Dave. A.k.a. Dazzling Dave. A.k.a. Dependable Dave, and the list goes on," Dave said. "I want to give you guys an update: First off, I'm going to say that everyone that got a shirt got refunded whether they asked for it or not. So, whether you wanted a refund or not, you got it."

The full video covers allegations related to the Mighty Mike Plays drama and also covers a lot that has nothing to do with it at all. Dave's headline he wants to share, though, is that this all blew up so much faster and so much bigger than he ever expected it to be.

He explained that he thought he was simply "venting" about his son's spending with a story that sounds like the kind of thing you'd tell a friend at a bar. Millions of views and a sea of video responses later, and it's clear it didn't pan out the way he ever imagined it would.

"I remember thinking, like, you know, I wonder if this video will hit 10,000 views," he said. "That's kind of where I thought it would cap. I didn't think it would go so viral. Everything happened real-time, organically, and I obviously didn't handle everything the right way, essentially, but just to make it clear: I didn't come to YouTube to ask for help. I wasn't looking for any sort of help."

Part of the reason why the internet gathered with Minecraft fans to help out is because Dave said the $118,000 hole his son put in his company card resulted in him being fired. He also stated he had just 30 days to make up for the missing money, but in the new video, Dave has clarified some of those details.

Instead of losing his job, Dave suggested he technically was not fired in a traditional sense, with that part of the story being a "simplified version" of what actually happened. The reality, he said, is that "the contract between company A and company B just got terminated," adding, "isn't that the same thing?" As many had suspected, he doesn't just own his own company – he owns 12.

"Yeah, I own my own company. So what?" Dave clarified. "In fact, you guys didn't even see – I have like 12 companies. Not all of them are productive, as we speak. Some of them are just collecting dust, and just because someone has a company or is a CEO doesn't mean that, 'Oh, OK. Just by having those titles you're actually conducting a profitable business.'"

He continued: "But just to clarify, I consider that being fired. If my company lost a contract with this important company, then, I mean, how is that not being fired? Fine. I'll be more specific next time."

As for those controversial T-shirts and why he's issuing refunds, Dave said he "didn't want to sit around and let these actual scammers sell people who wanted to be involved in this story." His plan for an official merch page, which allegedly put him "another $10K in the hole," still drew much ire from the internet, at least partially due to its prolific use of AI-generated designs. He explained why he's issued refunds – even if not all that many people found something to buy.

"In retrospect, was AI and the merch the way to go? Was the price the way to go? No," he said. "Look, I'm going to admit when I was wrong: That was not the move. I shouldn't have used AI. Although, at the time, I know I defended it. There is a now-infamous deleted post, which I crashed out."

He later added: "I do agree now, and if I could go back, I'd do it differently, but again, I didn't have the luxury of time. Time was running out. We had to figure something out, so yeah, I had AI create some designs. I still feel like those designs were flawless, gorgeous, beautiful, superb, and there is about 100 people who got free shirts."

It's unclear if Dave's explanation video will be enough to satisfy the many online who looked into the Minecraft YouTube channel after the events surrounding it kicked off last month. If this is the first time you're hearing of Mighty Mike Plays and the drama surrounding AI-generated T-shirt designs, there's no need to fear. We broke down everything you could ever want to know about the story right here.

RuneFest 2026 is over, and we’ve got a roundup of everything announced at Jagex’s big show celebrating its long-running fantasy MMORPG.

RuneScape 4

This year saw a number of significant announcements, none bigger than confirmation that a fourth RuneScape MMO is in the works. Jagex hasn’t officially called it RuneScape 4 (RS4 is the working title), but we know it’s built on Unreal Engine and is designed to use the latest technology and design, so it really does sound like a next-gen RuneScape game. There’s no information on when it will be released, but the teaser trailer is below.

New RuneScape animated adaptation

Jagex announced a new RuneScape animated adaptation, in partnership with YouTuber Charlie White, aka MoistCr1TiKaL, and production company Lyrical Media. No word on what this is exactly or when it will be released, but it’s happening!

RuneScape Reignited

Jagex announced RuneScape Reignited, which launches December 2. Jagex called it a “defining moment” for the 25-year-old game, designed to rekindle interest among lapsed players and get existing players excited. There’s a Remastered Journey and Adventure Guide, a fresh economy, and brand-new hi scores. Players can get full Reignited Access without membership from December 2-12. The long-awaited Plugin API launches this month, with players getting an early hands-on ahead of official release. The debut trailer is below:

We also got what Jagex called “the biggest roadmap in the game’s history.” 2027 content unfolds in three story arcs, all of which tie into long-running storylines. Hoard of Dragons (January) offers a sequel to the popular Dragon Slayer quest, City of Gnomes continues the gnome storyline, and Secrets of Karamja introduces a new endgame raid. Also coming is an Agility skill rework, new skilling and solo bosses, new area expansions, and a new Grandmaster Quest.

Old School RuneScape

Old School RuneScape, meanwhile, got an updated roadmap. The Golden Gates to Menaphos are opening finally after 20 years, alongside a suite of fan-demanded content. The Fractured Archive, a new endgame raid, launches October 20. Hardcore Worlds launches November 4. And next year will also see the continuation of the Fairytale questline, Quest month, Dungeons of Gielinor, a Mining and Smithing rework, Chosen Commander, and the Tower of Xorphoros.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds

The recently released spinoff, RuneScape: Dragonwilds, saw the announcement of the Blood Crystal Saga and updated plans for 2027. The Luminance update is a prelude to 2027’s Blood Crystal Saga, and launches in December this year. This features the introduction of the Elves into RuneScape: Dragonwilds, new elven-themed customisation options for player characters and buildings alike and the Prayer skill.

The Blood Crystal Saga kicks off in 2027 starting with the Song of Rebellion in early 2027. These updates feature enemies like Moss Giants, Kebbits, and Implings, the Hunter Skill as well as new areas for players to explore, new quests and gear as well new decorations for houses inspired by the classic RuneScape city of Prifddinas.

Expect quarterly updates, which will include new Skills such as Hunter and Slayer, as well as monthly updates featuring side quests, weapons, decorations and quality of life improvements. Official modding arrives on Dragonwilds in 2027 through a new partnership with CurseForge — complete with dedicated creation tools and an in-game mod browser and installer, available across all platforms including console.

Developer Jagex has announced a fourth MMO in the long-running RuneScape franchise, as well as an animated adaptation.

At RuneFest in Birmingham, England, Jagex offered a glimpse at this new MMO, which it said was built “for a new generation of players.” It’s still in early development (a release isn't expected for at least a few years), and it doesn’t have an official title (Jagex is going with RS4 as a working title for now), but it will “bring the world of Gielinor to life in Unreal Engine, combining the depth, freedom and community-led spirit that have defined RuneScape for 25 years with the technology and game design possibilities of today.”

Jagex currently operates RuneScape itself, Old School RuneScape, and spinoff RuneScape: Dragonwilds. RuneScape has seen a number of major updates tied to sequel names, including a rename to RuneScape 2 in 2004 and RuneScape 3 in 2013. But both were dropped in favor of, simply, RuneScape, and it is now treated as an ongoing live service. It's tempting, then, to call this new game RuneScape 4, and it may end up justifying the name, but Jagex has yet to rubber stamp any title.

Indeed, we hardly know anything about this new RuneScape MMO, but with the mention of Unreal Engine, the expectation is it will have modern visuals and design. An image from the concept teaser and the concept teaser itself are below.

Here's the official blurb on the fourth RuneScape MMO:

Headlining RuneFest was the first glimpse of an ambitious new chapter for RuneScape: a fourth RuneScape MMO, built for a new generation of players. Still early in development, the as-yet-unnamed title will bring the world of Gielinor to life in Unreal Engine, combining the depth, freedom and community-led spirit that have defined RuneScape for 25 years with the technology and game design possibilities of today.

In a blog post, Jagex explained that it has announced RuneScape 4 so early because it wants to build on the tech development it made for Dragonwilds, and lean on the community co-development it established through RuneScape and Old School. The developer insisted RS4 is not a replacement for either RuneScape, Old School, or Dragonwilds, each of which has its own dedicated team and will continue to see investment. "We’ll be designing RS4 to sit alongside them as an additional way to experience RuneScape and the world of Gielinor," Jagex said.

"In fact, we think having different RuneScape experiences can make the whole family stronger," the developer continued. "Players may spend most of their time in one game, move between several, or discover Gielinor for the very first time through RS4. The ambition isn't to replace the RuneScape games you love. It's to make the RuneScape universe bigger."

Jagex also confirmed RS4 will be set in Gielinor, as you'd expect, and in the Sixth Age. "But we're beginning somewhere that RuneScape players have only recently started to discover - and that is Ashenfall. An area first explored in RuneScape: Dragonwilds, and a landmass to the north-east of the Gielinor.

"RS4 will take place years after the events of Dragonwilds and the destruction of the Dragon Queen Kuldra. Time has passed, the world has moved on, and Ashenfall has changed with it. But Ashenfall is only the beginning.

"Our ambition is for this adventure to grow far beyond Ashenfall over time, moving into places you know and love, as well as opening up new places and stories across Gielinor."

RuneScape is of course one of the longest-running video games in the world. Jagex says it’s seen over 300 million player accounts created in the 25 years since RuneScape first launched. But the company’s plan is to expand the franchise into new genres and even adaptations. For example, at RuneFest Jagex also announced work had started on a new RuneScape animated adaption, in partnership with YouTuber Charlie White, aka MoistCr1TiKaL, and LA-based production company Lyrical Media. Here’s the official blurb:

Additionally, Jagex unveiled plans to expand RuneScape beyond games, partnering with creator and internet phenomenon, Charlie White aka MoistCr1TiKaL as well as acclaimed LA Based production business Lyrical Media, to bring the world, characters and stories of Gielinor to life in a new exciting animated adaption.

Jagex announced a lot more at RuneFest today. Here’s everything we saw.

The official social media account for the popular RPG-dating sim Love and Deepspace issued a warning to players after announcing some fictional cocktails with potentially disastrous real-world consequences if actually consumed.

On September 28, Love and Deepspace revealed five ‘Shimmering Blend’ cocktail recipes as part of an in-game event, each themed around one of the game’s dashing romanceable characters. While they’re pretty to look at, you shouldn’t actually make some of these, as they include garnishes that are poisonous to humans.

For example, one of these drinks is made of pomegranate juice, with a garnish of cinnamon and datura. Another features sweet peach juice with a flame lily garnish and gelatin sheets.

There’s nothing wrong with peach and pomegranate juice, but these floral garnishes are making some players anxious that a fan might actually try to out the recipes themselves. Datura is a highly poisonous plant and is considered psychoactive; when consumed, it produces side effects like delirium, fever, tachychardia, and hallucinations.

Flame Lilies are also dangerous, as all parts of the plant contain a chemical called colchicine; while it’s used for medicinal purposes, it can be lethal, causing symptoms like fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and even hypovolemic shock, which causes the loss of lethal amounts of blood and bodily fluids.

It didn’t take long for concerned fans to point out these dangerous plants, fearing that some players might try their hand at making the cocktails for real. Commenters flooded the replies with calls for the Love and Deepspace account to delete the post completely, with one writing, “Delete this. This is literal poison. Nobody make this.”

Safety Notice: All drinks shown are fictional and for in-game purposes only. Do not attempt to recreate or consume them in reality.

— Love and Deepspace (@Love_Deepspace) September 30, 2026

“Hey, so some of these flowers are literally poisonous. Be careful. This is so reckless to post this,” another said.

"Don't try to recreate these drinks, they contain toxic plants!" yet another warned. "I can't believe this is posted as 'recipes.'"

Not long after, the LaDS account added a follow-up post with a safety notice, which reads: “All drinks shown are fictional and for in-game purposes only. Do not attempt to recreate or consume them in reality.”

In addition to calls from fans to delete the posts, the LaDS social media accounts continue to be flooded with photos of canceled love interest Valko, who was announced and subsequently canned before he was even released. This prompted an impressive movement from the game’s playerbase, who created shrines to the character and even gathered outside the developer’s physical offices to make their voices heard.

Former NFL coach Mike Tomlin spent 19 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers and won Super Bowl LXIII, and now he's added another major accomplishment to his resume: becoming a Minecraft YouTuber.

The former coach gave football fans a little something different when he launched his new YouTube channel earlier this week. With a profile picture taken in front of NBC's Football Night in America logo, watchers probably weren't expecting Tomlin's first upload to see him confess how his love for architecture and family led him to work on a Minecraft city he spent 12 years building.

"You know, 12 or 13 years ago, when my kids were in middle school, they'd be in their room all weekend and have friends over. They were obsessed with playing this game, Minecraft, that I knew nothing about," he explained as his son and channel operator, Dino, sat in the background. "I got interested because I just was mesmerized by what could occupy their attention for such large periods of time."

He admitted he lacked the "stick control" to handle something like Minecraft's Survival mode but still managed to find enjoyment in Creative Mode. That's where Mojang's systems really started to click.

"I like to build," he said. "I've always had an interest in architecture, and so forth, so I started doing this creative city. It was a means of spending time with them. They participated all over this city. All my kids have buildings."

However, as his kids went off to high school and college, their interest in Minecraft waned. For Tomlin, it was just beginning. In 2026, after 12 years of building, the sandbox phenomenon has become therapeutic for the former NFL coach, and what he's built has the internet in disbelief.

"This is where it all started for me," Tomlin said as a blocky blue pond surrounded by detailed city buildings faded into view. His tour then begins with a closer look at a hotel. This one building features a fully fleshed-out interior with labeled rooms, a lobby, a ballroom, a pool, bathrooms, and more. Tomlin even factored in how lighting might affect the views in some of these rooms – and that's just one of many locations he's made.

"I was always inspired," he added. "I'd go places, and I'd see things and buildings, and I get inspired, I go home, and I work on it."

Tomlin then referenced the off-campus housing around universities that he recreated after dropping Dino off at college. The color, floor plans, and other memorable elements all came from these memories, with much of his creation also built around different bodies of water.

Tomlin stepped down as the Steelers' coach in January 2026, with today's video showing how he's spent at least some of the downtime since. He spent years in the NFL, but it's his work as a Minecraft YouTuber that has everyone talking today.

Mike Tomlin has been working on his Minecraft world for over a decade

It’s UNREAL pic.twitter.com/XWxu9zMinY

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) October 1, 2026

Aaron Rodgers: “CALL THE F*CKING PLAY!”

Mike McCarthy: “F*cking asshole”

*Loses to the Cleveland Browns*

Meanwhile, Mike Tomlin: pic.twitter.com/axnE3655rT

— NFL Memes (@NFLMemes) October 2, 2026

Steelers down 20 in a playoff game.

Mike Tomlin: pic.twitter.com/J4u56digNW

— Donny Football (@DonChed54) October 1, 2026

Mike Tomlin leaving the presser early to go finish building the Executive Spa in his Minecraft world pic.twitter.com/yHF2FOzeiZ

— ant ☘️ (@anthshiesty) October 1, 2026

"I'm obsessed why is he genuinely a better builder than me," content creator @Krtzyy said.

"Mike Tomlin becoming a Minecraft YouTuber was not on my bingo card for 2026," one X/Twitter user said.

Tomlin signed off, promising to take a closer look at his city in future videos. He also teased plans to show off something that "I think you're going to find interesting." Despite being maybe the most creative celebrity gamer to come out of 2026, the ex-NFL coach isn't the only notable name to share their love for gaming in the last year. Obsession breakout Inde Navarrette garnered attention for her The Last of Us and Call of Duty streams a few months ago. Newly announced X-Men star, Samara Weaving, is also a big gamer.

Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images.

Disney has responded after rumors suggested it was interested in buying Fortnite developer Epic Games.

Disney president and chief creative officer Dana Walden touched on the company's relationship with Epic during an interview with Bloomberg Live. When asked if there have been talks about expanding their previously established relationship with a full-on acquisition, she said that strategy isn't something Disney is entertaining, at least right now.

"Well, I think that it was pretty obvious that we had very serious conversations about an investment and an equity stake," Walden responded. "Those are not the conversations we're having right now, but we have a great partnership and a number of launches coming up over the next two years that are going to demonstrate the value of this partnership."

The relationship referenced here was solidified when Disney announced it acquired a $1.5 billion stake in Epic back in early 2024. It was a massive play that it promised would result in collaborations across Fortnite and more in the future.

"Our exciting new relationship with Epic Games will bring together Disney’s beloved brands and franchises with the hugely popular Fortnite in a transformational new games and entertainment universe," then-CEO Bob Iger said. "This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion. We can’t wait for fans to experience the Disney stories and worlds they love in groundbreaking new ways."

We're still feeling the shockwaves of that deal, but some suspected it could evolve into more than a simple partnership. Tech reporter Alex Heath said in March 2026 that some Disney executives were "waiting for that moment" to go all in on an acquisition. Then, in April, Bloomberg reported that Epic was working on an extraction shooter featuring Disney characters with plans to launch in November 2026.

We're now kicking off October with no official mention of that unannounced project, but that doesn't mean Disney x Epic is going anywhere any time soon. While an acquisition isn't in the cards, Walden's promise regarding "a number of launches" set to arrive in the next few years suggests there is plenty more to talk about.

We'll have to wait and see how the two entertainment giants work together moving forward. In the meantime, you can read some of the other ways Disney and Epic have bolstered their relationship, including a Disneyland-exclusive Fortnite skin and officially licensed Star Wars minigames.

I have spent the last three days scrolling through some of the most insane mod videos I've ever seen. Modders are taking games that have been decompiled with Claude, and mashing them up with other games. As the week has gone on, there have only been more clips of these mods pouring out on X/Twitter.

One person created a mashup of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty: World at War; another combined Escape From Tarkov with Skyrim. There’s even one that takes Insomniac’s Spider-Man and combines it with Batman Arkham City, where the player is able to swing around Batman’s turf.

These mods are everywhere online right now, though they thankfully haven’t filtered into modding websites like Nexus Mods yet. But, with the sheer volume of these mods and with how accessible Opus 5.5 is, it feels like it’s only a matter of time before the gates are fully torn down. And if that happens, it could change the face of the modding scene entirely.

Why Now?

Claude Opus 5.5 launched last week, promising cheaper tokens and more efficient code work. I'm sure that Anthropic meant for it to be used by professionals, but gamers have used it to create some of the weirdest mods I have ever seen.

Opus is a model that can power AI agents, which can be deployed to create entire games from the engine, to the art and enemy behavior. Brendan Jowett has a great video on YouTube of the model in action: He develops little slices of video games and compares them directly with the same tasks from OpenAI’s Astra 6 model. While the results of both are far from what you’d expect from a fully featured game, Claude’s new model has clearly come a long way.

The problem with the examples in Jowett’s video is that while the models are good at piecing together disparate parts of a game, enemy AI (lol) and art assets are lackluster to say the least. In one of the slices, a space combat sim, the space fighter flys at a diagonal angle, while moving in a straight line ahead, and shooting. In another slice enemies completely ignore the player character.

As good as Claude Opus 5.5 seems to be, it’s still lightyears away from developing something like a true mashup of Minecraft and Elden Ring from scratch. But the model doesn’t have to start from scratch.

The big, driving force behind a lot of these mods is decompilation, where people are pointing Opus at a game and letting the agent break it down to its source code (here’s a handy blog if you want to really get in the weeds). Just earlier today, we covered Halo: Combat Evolved being decompiled and ported to run natively in a browser. Once that step is complete, it takes little effort to take that source code and work huge swaths of games into other games as mods, and with very little input from the user.

Couple that with the relatively affordable tokens, and it shouldn’t be surprising that X/Twitter’s generally pro-AI users went wild with it, creating hundreds of mashups. And it doesn’t seem like it’s slowing down any time soon; what started off as a weird video that my boss sent me on Tuesday has now evolved to the point where I can’t even open X/Twitter without seeing a deluge of these mods.

Piracy?

The obvious problem with all of this is that these models are breaking open games developed by real people, getting the source code and then just mashing stuff together without consideration or permission from the original developers. That’s nothing particularly new – the modding scene is definitely no stranger to mashups, all the Thomas the Tank Engine mods are proof of that. However, this trend might be breaking into new territory, thanks to decompilation.

This could be another reason none of these mods have made their way onto any distribution platforms. Nexus Mods doesn’t outright ban AI-generated content, but it doesn’t let people use AI tools to upload content that they don’t have the rights to.

In a blog post from 2023, Nexus laid out its rules around AI generated content. The policy states that, “In order to prevent any issues with your mods, we encourage you to avoid using these tools unless you have explicit permission to use all the assets. This is particularly true for AI-generated voice acting but also covers images, models, code and anything else that you can use this technology to create.”

Every single one of these passthrough mods are using images, models, and code that the people generating them don’t have the rights to. But it’s only a matter of time until some platform holder allows these mods to be hosted, and I’m sure a massive legal battle will happen immediately afterwards.

The Modding Community Hates This

Way before all of these Claude-authored mod videos started cropping up online, people had been creating mods by hand for years, typically out of pure love for the game. It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that a lot of mod authors aren’t fans of this phenomenon.

Mod authors have been expressing their frustration on X/Twitter as this has been happening. “I mod games and I'm not shy about the fact that I use AI to do it. I hate this bullshit ‘trend’. Pure slop, there's nothing creative about this at all,” kran27_ posted. “AI has a lot of potential in the modding scene, but the shit that's getting the clicks is this jingling keys bullshit.”

Kran wasn’t alone, with discountmodder ready to just leave the scene, saying, “Dude I'm really disappointed. If this becomes the permanent state of modding, this may be my last project. I don't wanna be involved in an AI slop-factory.”

I can’t escape the feeling that most of these mashups are born from people just playing with a new AI model and seeing what will happen, and I hope that this weird trend will die off soon. Modding is one of the best parts of PC gaming, and there is a lot of incredible content that people make just because they love a game. Some of the best games started off as mods, after all, and without them we never would have got the likes of Half-Life or League of Legends.

I hope that this is just a trend, rather than a sign of where the modding scene is heading. Fortunately, because these mods seemingly only exist to farm engagement on Twitter (at least so far), you don’t have to worry too much about them if you just want to start a new modded run of The Witcher 3 Remastered. If anything, it just means that if you want to avoid AI content, you need to pay even more attention to who you’re getting your mods from.

Acclaimed filmmaker Guillermo del Toro confirmed that he was involved in early concepts for a BioShock movie, but said the project was ultimately scrapped after a “disastrous” phone call.

Speaking with IGN as part of the IGN30 Icons series, del Toro admitted that he “never” wants to make a video game again — and while he was previously open to adapting existing games into films, his last attempts at doing so ended in disaster.

It’s been long-rumored that del Toro was involved in a movie adaptation of BioShock that never got off the ground. Back in 2017, he even admitted that he’d love to see the game’s story brought to the silver screen after a previous attempt, with Gore Verbinski attached, never got made.

Years later, he has officially confirmed his relationship with a BioShock adaptation, though it never saw the light of day — and it seems there was some drama behind its premature demise.

“You know, I tried,” he told us when asked if he’d ever want to make a film adaptation of a game. “We had a very contentious call about a couple of games. I find that the dynamics of a video game are very different than a movie. They may be cinematically similar in terms of the camera moving and this and that, but the storytelling is very different, because you're not solving puzzles. You're not assembling.

“When we made the structure for Insane, we created what I call a mandala. You have to give the illusion of an infinite sandbox and you lead audiences to the right or to the left through their ‘own decisions,’ but you sort of have to corner them. So it's a very different thing.

“So adapting it, BioShock, we had a couple of calls. They are probably one of the most disastrous calls I've ever had. So no, f**k no.”

While he didn’t go into detail about what made these calls so “contentious” and “disastrous,” the conversations seem to have put a sour taste in his mouth — which is a shame, because a BioShock movie with del Toro at the helm sounds like the best thing since sliced bread.

It’s one of his favorite games, after all, a fact that he also shared with us in this same interview. It’s one of several titles that he listed off the cuff, though not the most surprising one; that title goes to Angry Birds, which del Toro says he plays almost every day.

And although Del Toro has been involved with several major video games over the years (PT, Death Stranding), he told us he’s hesitant to make his own games after Insane, his planned trilogy of dark, cinematic games, never got released.

“Never again,” he told us. “No, not at all — we developed Insane, and then that went down. A lot of the ideas later, I saw stuff that was done in other video games that was similar. And I went, ‘Well, somebody did it. That's great.’ But we were aiming really high.”

Speaking of PT and Death Stranding, The Pan’s Labyrinth creator has expressed no shortage of love for Kojima’s games, calling him a “pure artist” and admitting that the grand majority of PT was entirely Kojima's idea.

“I mean, I'm glad to get on the ride for free, but everything that ended up being PT, it was him,” he said. “…I love that man. He's one of those guys you meet that you go, you might as well be in the Renaissance. You are in front of a pure artist and he cares about one thing, stories. That's it.”

Our full, extended interview with Guillermo del Toro is available to watch now. If you're hungry for more interviews, you can check out a previous episode of the IGN30 Icons series, where we chatted with Ken Levine, creator of famed games like System Shock 2 and its spiritual successor, BioShock.