What’s next for GOG? Publishing games, maybe, but its new owner isn’t in any rush

Right at the end of last year, Cyberpunk and Witcher developer CD Projekt Red sold off its game distribution company to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński (who is also the co-founder of CD Projekt itself, so, go figure). With this sort of new owner, the plan is generally to stick to what it knows best, i.e. sprucing up old games and making sure any game on the platform is DRM-free. But in a new interview, Kiciński also shared his interest in the platform doing some publishing.

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As if making the System Shock remake wasn’t tough enough, someone apparently called the FBI on Nightdive during development

It is not news to anyone that Nightdive Studios’ System Shock remake took a while to make. The remake started development in 2015, with a successful Kickstarter project held for it the following year. After a few engine changes and attempts at making the thing, it finally released back in 2023, a good eight years after development had started. But such a long wait is absolutely not worth calling the FBI over, folks, are we being serious right now? Which is, apparently, a thing that happened to Nightdive.

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Playing Hytale on the Steam Deck takes some classic PC spannering, but the effort is rewarded

Right up until its early access release, Hytale’s chances of Steam Deck-enabled portability were anyone’s guess. Even the blocky sandbox’s developers Hypixel seemed unsure, announcing a SteamOS-friendly native Linux version (good!) but forgoing an actual Steam release (less good!) and warning Deck owners of Hytale’s absent controller support (definitely not good!).

However, as fellow cube enthusiast Minecraft would know, the Steam Deck doesn’t always let something like an apparent lack of basic functionality keep it down. The device itself provides all the tools you need to get Hytale up, running, and playable, and while the process is hardly a one-click install, the fruit of your toils is a game that Valve’s handheld PC can happily keep going for hours.

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Forza Horizon 6’s release date might have raced onto the streets faster than planned, thanks to an ad

What’s that screaming around the bend, tyres squealing and RPMs peaking? It’s Forza Horizon 6’s release date arriving ahead of schedule, assuming a pop-up ad allegedly spotted in Forza Horizon 5 is the genuine article. If that’s the case, then the open-world racing series’ trip to Japan is booked to arrive in May this year.

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Anthem could be revived as a trad BioWare singleplayer RPG for $10 million, says former Dragon Age producer

BioWare’s misbegotten mech-me-do Anthem died this week after EA pulled the official servers. It’s a sad day for people who saw promise in the game’s sci-fi world and flight mechanics, however spoiled by the always-online looter-shooting, and a happy day for people who really hated being called “freelancer” in community bulletins. I was an actual freelancer when Anthem came out in 2019, and I didn’t get no mech suit. At least when the Destiny developers call you a Guardian, it feels sort of romantic, rather than like rubbing your nose in your own economic precarity.

Anyway, ‘officially unsupported’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘gone for good’. In one of his many tell-all videos, former Anthem executive producer and Dragon Age/Mass Effect kingpin Mark Darrah has outlined a plan for bringing Anthem back as a single-player RPG, with a “conservative” budget of $10 million.

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Games Workshop ban staff from using genAI in Warhammer, saying they’re not “excited about it yet”

Let the runes of protection blaze upon the vestments of the machine spirit; let psalm pervade circuitry and obliterate the Enemy’s designs; let fire and catechism fall upon the creeping ruin of Abominable Intelligence. Brothers! The hour of motion is at hand. Games Workshop have banned their employees from using generative AI tools to create or design Warhammer stuff, because their senior management don’t consider the technology very “exciting”. Their CEO also seems irked about software companies shoving generative AI into every new device or system update, whether it’s desired or not. The tech-priests are coming for your candy ass, ChatGPT!

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Hytale’s out now and its devs are advising those suffering download issues or errors to keep plugging away

Hytale‘s early access went live a short time ago as I write this. While plenty of folks look to have gotten in already, its devs have issued some guidance for the many others who’ve reported running into error messages or having their downloads stick.

The team lead by Hypixel co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme who’ve swiftly resurrected the Minecraft-esque sandbox after buying the rights from Riot Games had predicted launch day might see some teething troubles due to a bottleneck of eager Hytalers, and it certainly seems those concerns weren’t misplaced.

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“Lore should not be a strict set of rules,” says Hytale developer in a tribute to player “archaeology”

Minecrafty fantasy sandbox Hytale will finally launch into early access today, a few months after being rescued from cancellation by Hypixel server co-founder Simon Collins-Laflamme. In development for over a decade, it’s a bid to “redefine the block-game genre” that features procedurally generated biomes and RPG-style dungeon delving. Unlike the earliest instalments of Minecraft, it will also ship with some pretty fleshed-out lore.

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Fallout: London hasn’t developed into a Fallout 4-esque hub of new quest and expansion mods so far, and its lead has theories why

Who mods the mods? A bunch of people, or so was the hope of Fallout: London developers Team FOLON when they released their total conversion of Fallout 4 back in 2024. So far, there’ve been plenty of tweaks and smaller scale additions to the mod’s version of the post-apocalyptic English capital, but no new quests or world expansions of note.

Things playing out that way to this point – despite Team FOLON having been very open in encouraging other modders to have a go at making such creations – is something Fallout: London project lead Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter’s clearly aware of, and he’s offered a few theories as to why it might be the case.

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