With just hours to go until today’s Nintendo Direct broadcast, an updated ratings board listing suggests Hollow Knight could get an imminent Switch 2 release.
Team Cherry’s long-awaited game is now listed for Switch 2 with a February 5, 2026 release date, per the website of European ratings board PEGI. Hey, that’s today!
Nintendo is due to air its latest Partner Direct later today, at 6am Pacific, 9am Eastern or 2pm UK time. This third-party game showcase will include 20 minutes of announcements featuring titles headed to Switch and Switch 2 that aren’t developed by Nintendo itself — such as Hollow Knight.
Don’t tune in expecting a new Mario game announcement, then, but do keep an eye out for more news on other upcoming Switch 2 releases such as this month’s Resident Evil Requiem, and the promising-looking 007: First Light. Oh, and Hollow Knight now too. What will this new edition contain?
Alongside releasing Hollow Knight again on Switch 2, Team Cherry is now busy working on Sea of Sorrow, its first expansion to Hollow Knight: Silksong. Will we see more of this today as well? Time will tell, but as ever IGN will be reporting all of the major announcements live.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Approximately 15 years, two months, and 14 days ago, Quintin Smith (RPS in peace) lobbed the headline ‘Poker Night At The Inventory Released Today‘ onto this fine site. On this day, February 5th – approximately 479,821,535 seconds further on in time – I’m here to tell you Poker Night At The Inventory is coming back, baby.
Gosh, how is it February already? We don’t know about you, but January actually flew by this year, and looking at the stacked line-up of games for the next few weeks, we suspect we’ll be seeing March before we know it.
Yes, February is set to deliver a bunch of bangers for the Switch and Switch 2 (so much so that we’re kinda hoping the upcoming Partner Showcase doesn’t include any shadow drops!), so as per the norm, we’ll be going through 14 titles that we’re particularly excited for. You can check out the individual games listed below, but please do give the above video a watch for all sorts of lovely commentary from Alex and Mai.
As unhappy players fight to get refunds out of Steam, an update from one of the studio’s directors claims the “entire” development team working on the ill-fated MMO Ashes of Creation was reportedly laid off without notice or their January paychecks.
The shocking revelation comes from Intrepid Studios’ former director of communications, Margaret Krohn, who revealed in a lengthy post on Twitter/X that three days after originally being told around 100 developers would be losing their jobs, a “confusing email” arrived confirming “all” staff would be laid off. “It is still shocking,” Krohn wrote. “The entire studio gathered to try to understand what had happened and what it meant for our future.”
Earlier this week, Steam quietly withdrew Ashes of Creation from sale after its director and leadership team quit just weeks after it launched as a $50 Early Access game on Steam. The game’s director Steven Sharif said “much of” the senior dev team had quit “in protest,” claiming that its management board had asked him to do things he “could not ethically support.” According to Sharif, the Board then issued WARN Act notices — layoff warnings, in other words — to the remaining staff. It’s unclear who sits on this mysterious board.
According to a new public record request, we now know that the formal WARN Act notification was issued on January 31 and indicated that 210 employees were “affected” by the filing, 123 of whom worked in California.
“In the end, none of us are receiving our final paychecks, the 60-day notice and pay outlined under the WARN Act, PTO payouts, or other compensation owed,” Krohn explained.
“What matters most to me now are the people — both the players and developers. To my colleagues: this team is truly a family. The culture we built together is something I have never experienced anywhere else. In the midst of heartbreak and uncertainty, we have come together to review resumes, help with portfolios, share job leads, and support one another emotionally. That says everything about who we are as people.”
“To the players: the entire development team was working extremely hard, pulling long hours, and wishes with all our hearts that we could give you Ashes of Creation. There are no words that fully express how sorry we are that this journey ended this way. You should pursue a refund, you deserve it.”
Unfortunately, Steam doesn’t seem to agree. While you can find plenty of people across Discord and Reddit claiming to have received refunds despite having played more than two hours, there’s an equal number of players frustrated that their requests have been denied, and there seems to be little consistency across Steam’s Support team.
“They denied me with 2.3 hours played. Bought in December and denied because it ‘exceeds refund time,'” wrote one player, while another said: “I can’t believe it… and I’m hearing they froze/reversed the December payment to Intrepid so basically Steam have stollen [sic] my money.”
“How many hours did you have? I had 15 Hours played and got refunded on a manual process,” replied one. “[Steam support] said to me if I open another ticket about this they will close it without reading,” added this unhappy player who had failed to convince Steam of a refund despite several attempts.
The most successful requests seem to be via human checks, so players are still suggesting that those looking for a refund check the box to “request a refund,” but instead contact Steam via the “I have a question about this product” box. That way, your request will be routed to a member of customer support, and not an automated service.
19,576 backers pledged $3,271,809 on Kickstarter to help make Ashes of Creation a reality, the most ever raised on the platform for an MMO. Refunds via Kickstarter seem unlikely given the game launched in Early Access form.
Meanwhile, Sharif popped up on Discord briefly on February 4 to write: “It is certainly heartbreaking to see the impact to the people I care about both my developers and community, but given what has transpired and the lack of facts available to the public, the reputational impact is something that cannot be avoided until the record is set straight with the proper public filings. Unfortunately that takes a little bit of time.”
While you can’t buy Ashes of Creation from Steam right now, its website is still live and accepting payment for cosmetics. While the site is typically updated several times a month, only one update was posted in the whole of January, and that was alluding to a developer diary livestream coming up on February 13. It’s not clear who will host that given reports the entire team has been laid off.
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.
Following The Witcher 4‘s big reveal at 2024’s Geoff Awards, it predictably took modders about five minutes to revamp The Witcher 3‘s Ciri into her older monster slaying variant. Now, one of them’s had a crack at going a step further by designing a short questline offering a taste of Geralt’s non-quite-daughter slaying monsters in Kovir and Poviss, with help from CD Projekt’s RedKIT tools.
Sony has highlighted the performance of PlayStation 5 exclusive Ghost of Yotei, insisting it outsold predecessor Ghost of Tsushima during the same period, and made a “significant” contribution to its financial results.
Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei went on sale October 2, 2025, and sold 3.3 million units as of November 2 (at the 32 day mark). Reporting its financials for the quarter ending December 31, 2025, Sony failed to provide an updated sales figure, but did highlight the game in its webcast, reviewed and transcribed by IGN.
“In the studio business, Ghost of Yotei, a tentpole title we released in October, exceeded the sales of the previous title in the same period of time and significantly contributed to the financial results of the quarter,” Lin Tao, Sony’s chief financial officer, said.
“Our established live service titles like Helldivers 2 and MLB The Show also contributed stable recurring revenue.”
The statement here is a little vague (we assume “same period of time” reflects each game’s first quarter on sale, which would be the first three months of availability), but Sony sounds happy with Ghost of Yotei either way. How exactly does it compare to Ghost of Tsushima? Ghost of Tsushima, which was initially released for PlayStation 4 on July 17, 2020, sold 2.4 million copies in its first three days, then hit 5 million after 118 days (just shy of four months). Latest sales figures provided by Sony show Ghost of Tsushima on 13 million copies sold, including sales of the PC and PS5 Director’s Cut, as of August 11, 2024.
We should consider that Ghost of Tsushima came out on the PS4, which in the summer of 2020 had a much bigger install base than the PS5 does today, and released into the stay-at-home gaming boom fueled by lockdowns. Ghost of Yotei also sold for $70, which means its dollar sales are greater compared to the cheaper Ghost of Tsushima, whose standard edition launched at $60.
Meanwhile, multiplayer add-on Ghost of Yotei: Legends comes out at some point this year, which will undoubtedly give Ghost of Yotei a shot in the arm. And we all know that Ghost of Yotei, like Ghost of Tsushima before it, will eventually launch on PC in Director’s Cut form. Perhaps there will even be a PS6 version, whenever that console rolls around.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Despite AMD’s assurances to the contrary, Valve have announced that they’ve pushed back release plans for the new Steam Machine, Steam Controller, and Steam Frame VR headset. Alas, my curse of publishing news posts roughly 0.0045 seconds before a major situation change continues to ruin my life – sometimes I wish I’d never beaten the warlocks in that Titanfall 2 pub match.
In saying this, there have been some posts circulating online about the current date listed on the Switch eShop. If you haven’t already noticed in recent months, the title has currently got an “estimated release date” on the storefront of “2030”.
Following its release on Switch and Switch 2 last December.
There was some shock earlier this week when Nintendo’s financials seemingly confirmed that neither the Switch or Switch 2 version of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond had cracked one million sales. So, how about the combined figures?
Well, Game File journalist Stephen Totilo has now reached out to Nintendo and got an official confirmation from a representative that the “combined sales” of the two titles have surpassed the one million mark. Here’s the message relayed on social media:
