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.
And Switch 2!
Digital Eclipse has done some pretty stellar compilations over the years, but one of its most overlooked efforts came in 2017 with The Disney Afternoon Collection.
Originally available on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, the compilation has now been rated by the ESRB for the Switch and Switch 2, though when we can expect to see it launch is anybody’s guess. The rating itself is attached to Atari which, as you’ll no doubt be aware at this point, wholly owns Digital Eclipse as a subsidiary.
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Rockstar has launched an official marketplace where creators can sell mods.
The Cfx Marketplace, described as a “curated digital storefront where talented FiveM/RedM creators can share and sell their work,” is currently only open to a select few creators, but players running their own servers can choose from hundreds of mods — some free, some not — to add new maps, scripts, characters, clothing, vehicles, and more to their games.
If the name Cfx sounds familiar, that’s because Rockstar acquired the modding team behind the wildly popular Grand Theft Auto 5 roleplay servers FiveM and RedM back in 2023. That came as something of a surprise given the company’s combative relationship with modders in the past.
Now, as part of that relationship, select creators worked with Rockstar to build and supply the new mod superstore as it rolls out “in phases to ensure the best experience for both creators and server owners.”
As one happy player said, the official marketplace makes it “much easier to find some trusted creators and hopefully more competition.” “Amazing idea! Hope this will be a better way for both creators and server owners to reach more people and find what they need,” added another.
Right now, there are hundreds of mods to choose from, some of which are free, and others, most typically bundles, are available for upwards of $450. The Attractions & Parks Bundle, for instance, includes a Theme Park, Water Park, and Maze Bank Theme Bank for $137.99.
Right now, most mods seem to be for GTA 5, but Cfx.re has mods for both Grand Theft Auto 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, so we may see more Red Dead 2 mods as the marketplace expands.
Grand Theft Auto is an enduring juggernaut, with GTA 5 having sold 220 million copies to date. Rockstar is yet to detail how GTA Online will change as a result of November’s release of GTA 6, but it seems likely the Cfx Marketplace lays the groundwork for a similar offering in whatever’s next for the game.
It also seems in preparation for whatever other plans Rockstar has for monetising GTA RP when GTA 6 comes out. GTA fans had begun speculating about what Rockstar RP servers would look like when the company announced it was working with Cfx.re back in 2023. That excitement then only increased when popular musician Faheem Rashad Najm a.k.a. T-Pain teased in 2024 that he was working on GTA 6 but had been asked by Rockstar to stop engaging with RP servers like nopixel.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
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.
Meta is laying off around 10% of staff at its Reality Labs division as part of sweeping cuts set to affect more than 1,000 people. This includes the closure of a number of VR-first studios, such as Twisted Pixel, the studio behind Deadpool VR, Resident Evil 4 VR developer Armature Studio, and Asgard’s Wrath maker, Sanzaru Games. According to Bloomberg, the cuts come as Meta pivots away from the Metaverse towards AI, phones, and wearable tech.
The cuts come just over four years after Facebook changed its name to Meta and went big on virtual reality and the Metaverse.
Letters reportedly went out yesterday (Tuesday, January 13) morning, and developers from the impacted studios shared their shock on social media throughout the day.
“I’ve just been laid off. It appears the entire Twisted Pixel games studio has been shut down. Sanzaru Games, too,” one now former member of staff said, while a designer wrote: “unfortunately, I was part of the layoffs today at Meta, and will be seeking a new role. To my Twisted Pixel Games family: it was an honor to work alongside you for 3.5 years and ship Marvel’s Deadpool VR. We made something really special together and no one can ever take that away.”
Twisted Pixel is the studio behind a number of popular Xbox Live Arcade games, such as 2009’s The Maw and ‘Splosion Man. It became a part of Microsoft Studios in 2011, and went on to release Xbox 360 Kinect-exclusive shooter The Gunstringer, and Xbox One game LocoCycle, before becoming an independent company again in 2015 and moving into VR game development.
Meta only acquired Armature and Twisted Pixel in late 2022, and Sanzaru in 2020. However, it is now seemingly shedding much of its internal VR business as Meta scrambles to recover billion-dollar losses and pivot to AI.
In a statement, Meta confirmed the three studio closures: “we said last month that we were shifting some of our investment from Metaverse toward Wearables. This is part of that effort, and we plan to reinvest the savings to support the growth of wearables this year.”
According to Reuters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg prioritized and spent heavily on the Metaverse, only for the business to burn more than $60 billion since 2020. The Reality Labs business also produces Meta’s Quest mixed-reality headsets.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
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!
A first round of hotfixes has arrived for Hytale, following the Minecrafty sandboxer’s arrival in early access form yesterday. Developers Hypixel have also offered some insight into which aspects of it they’re planning to prioritise working on in the coming months.
We go again.
After many years of waiting, fans of the Inazuma Eleven series were beginning to question if Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road would ever see the light of day. Fortunately, Level-5 dug deep and was able to finally release the title on the Switch and Switch 2 in November last year.
It’s already getting some updates (with more to come), but that’s not all – with the Level-5 president and CEO Akihiro Hino mentioning how he’s already started writing the scenario for a “sequel” to Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road. Yep, you read that correctly! We’ve even got a little detail about it.
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Following a studio closure last week.
A week after we heard about Ubisoft’s closure of its mobile game-focused studio Ubisoft Halifax, news has now surfaced about the third-party publisher laying off people at two other teams as part of ongoing cost-cutting measures.
According to a report from IGN, Ubisoft “expects 55 jobs” to be impacted at the Swedish Studios Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft Stockholm following a voluntary leave program in fall 2025 that apparently fell short of its target.
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Patch notes haven’t been shared just yet.
Following the surprise release of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for the Switch and Switch 2 last November, Aspyr said it would continue to update the Nintendo versions with patches over time to provide the “best possible experience for all players”.
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