Creators of Reigns, Streets of Rage and Saturnalia launch Palestinian Voices in Gaming to support indies from Gaza and the West Bank

A group of game industry folks including Reigns studio Nerial, Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione and Streets Of Rage 4 outfit Lizardcube have launched Palestinian Voices in Gaming, an international volunteer network to support current and emerging independent Palestinian developers.

First convened in May 2024, the network are currently looking to connect Palestinian game devs with volunteers and funding partners. They’ll provide administrative help to any developer trying to get access to funding, and assistance managing resources and volunteer contributions, once secured. They aim to follow and boost each project from “production to announcement to publication”, and are already working with a range of smaller independent games, many of which explore recollections of pain and loss through speculative fiction and fantasy.

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Endless Legend 2’s demo had its critics – here’s how Amplitude are changing the early access build in response

I confess, after reading the comments on yesterday’s Endless Legend 2 early access impressions, I am mortally afeared that I’m one of those accursed “positive outliers” I keep reading about in the Gamer Witchfinder Almanac. Seemingly, a fair portion of you were turned off by the recent Steam demo. You may be interested, then, to read specifics about how Amplitude have changed the game in response to demo feedback.

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Umurangi Generation devs sign up Disco Elysium’s Furies to voice their new penguin open worlder, which looks like The Thing

There was really only one way to enhance the prospect of an Antarctic open world game with a choice of playable penguins that’s actually a fractious retelling of Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness, created by the developers of Umurangi Generation. And that one way was to hire Lenval Brown, narrator for Disco Elysium‘s special edition, to voice the first proper trailer. And also, make the trailer look a lot like John Carpenter’s The Thing. No further words from me are needed or desired. Find the footage below.

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Steam is now blocking NSFW updates for published adult-only games, according to a raunchy RPG developer

The great ‘dematuring’ of videogames continues with reports that Valve are now forbidding “post-launch NSFW content” for games on Steam, even those that are already “adult-only”. That’s according to Crimson Delight Games, the developers of fantasy RPG Tales of Legendary Lust: Aphrodisia. They launched it on September 15th with adult content warnings, after submitting it to Valve’s review process in August, and had planned to add sexy scenes through updates while working on a big DLC expansion for 2026.

These updates are not going to happen anymore, apparently because everybody’s favourite PG-rated cartoon villains, global payment networks, are putting pressure on Valve. Instead, the updates will need to be submitted as proper official DLC so that Valve can give them a formal review.

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Borderlands 4 gets a new PC patch to fix crashes, progression blockers and GPU-related problems

Gearbox have released another Borderlands 4 update for technical problems on PC, with a particular focus on game stability and crashes, though they’ve also fixed a progression blocker or two in the process. Unlike that other Borderlands 4 patch from earlier this week, this one has an actual changelog. Gosh, wait till Mark hears of this! Oh nuts, he’s already gone on holiday, presumably in sheer consternation over the shortage of bullet points. Look what you did, Randy Pitchford. Look what you did.

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Tencent accuse Sony of trying “to fence off a well-trodden corner of popular culture” with their Horizon copyright lawsuit

This afternoon, a choice of two raging videogame lawsuits to report on. Firstly, a snippet from the on-going courtroom scrap between former Unknown Worlds executives and Krafton over the state of Subnautica 2‘s development, in which the former accuse the latter of changing their story about why the executives were fired.

I’ve decided not to write that one up because it feels like we are entering the realm of potshots over minutiae, rather than learning anything genuinely new about Subnautica 2 or its creators, but if you’re interested, GamesIndustry.biz has your back. The parallel Tencent/Sony bust-up has the virtue of relative novelty. It gives me a whole different kind of headache. What’s going on with this one, then?

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Yes, Hollow Knight: Silksong has “some moments of steep difficulty” Team Cherry admit, but have you considered going for a pre-boss walk

Something Hollow Knight: Silksong-related has happened at an Australian museum again. This time, rather than the game being confirmed for an appearance back when it was still infinitely mysterious and sans release date, it’s Team Cherry devs addressing just how difficult their creation is, following plenty of post-release discourse on the subject.

This follows the metroidvania‘s first patch making a couple of its early bosses a bit easier to tackle, amid debate as to whether it’s just good and hard, or pushes into unnecessarily annoying slog territory via the likes of bench placement and hazards being able to deal out two masks of damage. As with every FromSoft game since time itself began with the release of Demon’s Souls, where you stand on that bickering will likely depend on how prepared you are to spend hours battling one foe over and over again.

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Endless Legend 2’s early access launch is a triumph of asymmetrical 4X design, but I do wish it were even stranger

As the ravening shitbeetles of the Edwinphage overran the coral fortifications of the neighbouring Aspect kingdom, filling the air with the moist crunch of mandible on polyp, it occurred to me that I don’t feel as much like a horrible doomsday cockroach as I should. We’ll circle back to that feeling. Endless Legend 2 launches into early access on 22nd September, and I’ve now spent around 20 hours with it. I’ve previously praised its new/reborn factions and retreating ocean mechanic, and I plan to carry on praising, but there are definitely some more comprehensive issues I’d love Amplitude to address as this splendid scarab of a turn-based strategy game rumbles toward 1.0.

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Would-be Disco Elysium successor XXX Nightshift morphs from an isometric RPG into a third-person ski resort murder mystery

Dark Math Games, one of the multiple studios staffed by former Disco Elysium developers to pop up and announce a very Disco Elysiumy RPG last year, have given their game a revamp. XXX Nightshift is now called Tangerine Antarctic, with the switch also bringing a shift from isometric perspective to third-person.

If you missed the recent flourishing of Disco spiritual successors created by ex-ZA/UMers, the others include Longdue’s RPG Hopetown and Summer Eternal‘s mystery project. Meanwhile, Disco writer Robert Kurvitz and artist Aleksander Rostov are making something for a studio called Red Info, and ZA/UM themselves are working on a new CRPG called Zero Parades. It’s all very easy to keep track of.

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Helldivers 2 devs Arrowhead pull new Rupture Strain bugs offline for five weeks to fix their, er, bugs

Helldivers 2 developers Arrowhead have opted to pull a recently deployed variant of the shooter’s Terminid bugs offline for five weeks, in order to fix issues with them. Yep, for now you can dive onto planets like Oshaune and explore some Into the Unjust update caves without having to worry about burrowing bugs jumping out to mercilessly kick your bottom.

Rupture Warriors have been the main source of Rupture Strain ire since their arrival at the start of this month, as their ability to pop out of the Earth and instantly murder unsuspecting troops has proven tough to counter. At first, those hosting sessions were most at risk of dying like this, but Arrowhead’s attempt to rectify the issue in Tuesday’s patch seemingly put everyone in each party in an equal amount of danger, though some players did dispute this was the case.

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