Monday, November 2
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Pittsburgh VR studio Schell Games has announced a second round of layoffs in 2026, following cuts in August. The studio did not say how many employees are affected.
gamesindustry.biz3h ago2 min read
IllFonic's Chief Creative Officer Jared Gerritzen explains how the studio built Halloween: The Game in Unreal Engine 5, from dynamic lighting to motion capture of original Michael Myers actor Nick Castle. The interview covers the shift away from baked lighting and the game's reactive NPC systems.
80.lv3d ago2 min read
Blender 5.3 can import, edit and render 3D Gaussian splats (gsplats), with support in EEVEE, Workbench and Cycles. The Blender developers blog covers the file formats, the Geometry Nodes attributes and the current limitations.
code.blender.org3d ago3 min read
Bloomberg reports that Electronic Arts shut down BioWare after choosing to fund a new Star Wars Battlefront game rather than Mass Effect: Universe. Game Developer relays the report, which ties the decision to debt from EA's leveraged buy-out.
gamedeveloper.com3d ago2 min read
Epic Games has deleted two restrictions from Section 6e of the Unreal Engine EULA, covering generative AI training and MetaHuman data use. The change applies to all versions of Unreal Engine.
reddit.com3d ago2 min read
Adobe's Substance 3D Painter 12.2 lets artists paint baking cages directly on models. In an interview, Product Manager Laurens Corijn describes why baking became a 2026 priority and how the feature was built.
80.lv4d ago3 min read
IO Interactive's new Hitman Elusive Target, The Host, features YouTuber Jacksepticeye as a villain. Two IO designers explain how the level and character were built.
80.lv4d ago3 min read
Godot 4.8 beta 2 is out two weeks after beta 1, focused on regression fixes. The 4.8 feature set is considered complete, so testers are asked to check for remaining regressions.
godotengine.org4d ago2 min read
JangaFX's node-based real-time VFX authoring tool IlluGen has reached version 2.0, with GPU particle simulation, mesh fracture and pivot animation textures. The current build is 2.0.1, and a new exporter writes particle caches for Unreal Engine's Niagara.
digitalproduction.com5d ago4 min read
At a developer conference in South Korea, Valve staff reportedly said Steam will not take hands-on steps against AI-made clones of games. They put the onus on developers to make games harder to copy and to build loyal communities.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
The Pokémon Company has announced that the Nintendo Switch and mobile versions of Pokémon UNITE will go offline on March 23, 2027. Aeos Crown 2027 qualifiers will still run before the shutdown.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
AMD released FSR "Redstone" SDK 2.4, extending ML-based FSR Upscaling 4.1 to Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs and select Ryzen processors with integrated graphics. It also adds Vulkan support at feature parity with DirectX 12 for upscaling and frame generation.
gpuopen.com5d ago3 min read
Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster explained how Star Wars: Galactic Racer was built across a core studio and three kinds of outside partner. The breakdown gives production teams a clear vocabulary for splitting work between studios.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
A community post says Epic has stopped adding features to Movie Render Queue as of Unreal Engine 5.8, and that new work will go to Movie Render Graph only. The claim is unverified here, but teams that render with MRQ should check their pipelines.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
A Vivrato report based on 101 interviews finds nearly all studio leaders in Europe and North America have used AI in some form during development. Most rate their pipeline integration at three out of ten or lower.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago3 min read
Flax Engine 1.13 has been released with .NET 10 and C# 14, DDGI specular reflections, occlusion culling and split-screen rendering. Reversed Z depth is on by default, so existing projects should be checked after upgrading.
gamefromscratch.com5d ago3 min read
Fortune reports that Xbox's next-gen console, Project Helix, is aimed at the 2028 holiday season with a projected price of $1,200 to $1,800. The figures come from unnamed sources and have not been confirmed by Microsoft in the material we have.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Sensor Tower data shows indies and new IP made up a larger share of the biggest PC and console launches in the year to August 2026. AAA and AA hit counts were flat.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago3 min read
BioWare announced it is closing, and early development on the next Mass Effect project is ending. Bloomberg reports EA is cutting about 400 jobs overall, around 50 of them at BioWare, and reshuffling other projects.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
Microsoft and AMD have announced that FSR 4.1, a machine-learning-based temporal upscaler, is coming to Xbox Series X|S. Developers will need to patch their games to use it, and no date has been given beyond "soon".
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Crystal Dynamics Game Director Raul Siqueira told 80 Level how the studio is balancing the original game's isolation with optional hints in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. The design lets players tune combat, puzzle and exploration help separately.
80.lv5d ago3 min read
A solo developer has released an early alpha of Starship Space Program, a fan-made Starship and Super Heavy flight sim built in Unreal Engine for Windows PC. The developer shared technical details of the custom physics, scaled-space planet and Slate-only UI for other UE developers.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
Adobe has released Substance 3D Painter 12.2, which lets artists paint baking cage distances directly on a model. The update also adds new Polygon Fill selection modes, texture-set highlighting and better viewport sorting for overlapping transparent materials.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
CD Projekt Red's free Update 2.5 for Cyberpunk 2077 is set to launch October 22, according to 80 Level. It adds dual-wielding, Mod.io-powered mod support across platforms and a round of rendering upgrades.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
Electronic Arts has set out which franchises it will back after laying off about 400 people and closing BioWare. A new Fight Night is in pre-production, and early Mass Effect development has been discontinued.
80.lv5d ago3 min read
Xbox has revealed launch pricing for cloud playtime packs, which add hours on top of the new monthly cloud gaming limits on Game Pass. Players who stream a lot will pay more once the limits apply.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Fortnite is back on iOS in Australia after the Federal Court of Australia found Apple restricted alternative app stores and payment methods. Further App Store changes are due in March 2027, and Apple says it will seek a stay and appeal.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
A Fortune report, relayed by 80 Level, says Xbox is planning Project Helix hardware, a tiered Game Pass and further job cuts. None of this is confirmed by Microsoft in the source material.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
EA executives said Respawn and DICE will work together on a project. Variety's sources reportedly identify it as Star Wars: Battlefront 3, which EA has not confirmed in the material we have.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
11 bit studios environment artist Artem Ostapchuk described how the team built the terraforming pipeline for The Alters: Last Variable in UE5. The setup lets every level work in both barren and overgrown states.
80.lv5d ago3 min read
In an 80 Level interview, the producer and director of Final Fantasy Resonance describe how they blend pixel sprites with 3D scenes, lighting and a moving camera. The details cover sprite orientation fixes, scene blocking and VFX timing.
80.lv5d ago3 min read
A two-person team building Farm & Feast in Unity posted their process for adding GPU-driven pedestrians and traffic to an empty-feeling town. The post is a community write-up, not an official Unity release.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
Google-owned Owlchemy Labs has announced Hyper Visor, an XR arcade blaster for the Google Play Store, timed as a launch title for HTC's XREAL Aura. It is a sign of a VR-focused studio targeting a sunglasses-style device.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
UVgami is a free, open source tool that automatically UV unwraps 3D models. It is available as a web app, a desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux, and a Blender version.
gamefromscratch.com5d ago2 min read
The developers of INKURSION, a narrative platformer built in Unity 6 HDRP, posted the optimizations that made the game run on low-end hardware and Steam Deck. The biggest wins came from throttled planar reflection probes, batching and physics tuning.
reddit.com5d ago3 min read
Cyberpunk 2 Associate Game Director Paweł Sasko said during an October 21 livestream that about half of CD PROJEKT RED's quest team used to be modders. He called modding a gateway into game development.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
Croteam and Devolver Digital have announced Serious Sam: The Third Encounter, a new entry that continues directly from 2002's The Second Encounter. The game is in early development and has a Steam page and a teaser.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
Capcom says an unauthorised third party accessed customer information on October 19, affecting more than 11.7 million Capcom ID accounts. The publisher says its investigation into the scope of impact is complete and credit card data was not affected.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
A GamesIndustry.biz opinion piece says the newly private-equity-owned Electronic Arts has shut BioWare, cancelling its Mass Effect project as part of 400 cuts across EA. The author argues the closure caps a long run of management decisions.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
GameMaker has announced that its GMRT runtime will be free to use for all developers from January 1, 2027. Console shipping still requires an enterprise license.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
Valve says the Personal Calendar has graduated from Steam Labs and is now a full feature of the Steam Store. New developer documentation and a video explain how the calendar surfaces games.
steamcommunity.com5d ago2 min read
A developer who built the official HDR support for The Sinking City 2 has published a technical breakdown. It covers a new tonemapper meant to fix problems in Unreal's out-of-the-box HDR output.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
Gameloft Brisbane has described how Bluey's Happy Snaps builds its hand-drawn look in Unreal Engine 5 from layered 2D planes, SDF textures and custom shaders. The interview covers rigging, outlines and the 360-degree camera problem.
80.lv5d ago3 min read
In an interview excerpt shared on r/gamedev, Shigeru Miyamoto said AI follows earlier tool shifts and gives people a reason to think harder about what creating means. He also warned against mistaking the satisfaction of doing the work for making something good.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
A co-creator of the 1987 Amiga/arcade game Sidewinder says he used Claude Code with Opus 5.5 to rebuild it in WebGL with AI-remastered art and sound. His write-up is a candid account of where the AI tooling worked and where it failed.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
Unreal Engine 5.8.4 shipped on Oct 20 but omits fixes made after Oct 5. Meanwhile the ue6-main branch renames parts of UnrealBuildTool's public C# API and triggers large recooks, per a community weekly roundup.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
Total War VP Roger Collum says the delisted Shogun 2 – Complete Edition was not a Creative Assembly developed game and skipped its internal reviews and QA. The studio says the generative AI concerns are being investigated.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Microsoft has pushed back the end of its French consultation process over Arkane Lyon by a month while it looks for a new owner. Development on Marvel's Blade continues in the meantime.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Undead Labs, maker of State of Decay, has become employee-owned after Xbox moved to divest it, according to CEO Philip Holt. He told GamesIndustry.biz the studio will finish State of Decay 3 with publisher funding and no outside investors.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago3 min read
Puck reports that Netflix offered Microsoft $500 million over seven years for Xbox film and TV rights, and that Xbox asked for $800 million. Neither company has confirmed the figures, and the deal has reportedly been withdrawn.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney has again criticized Valve's AI disclosure requirements for Steam games. His latest comments, made in replies on social media, frame the policy as partisan, and the source reports no change to the policy itself.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
ActionForge is a free web app for rigging, retargeting and editing character animations, all processed locally in the browser. It covers ground similar to Mixamo, with direct animation editing and export presets for major engines.
gamefromscratch.com5d ago2 min read
Bristol-based Auroch Digital, developer of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 and Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!, has started a redundancy consultation covering around a quarter of its roles. The studio says market conditions are behind the restructuring.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
A Change.org petition asking for the Mass Effect IP to be licensed to another studio has passed 210,000 signatures, according to 80 Level. It follows EA's announced plan to shut down BioWare permanently.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
Microsoft has opened a time-limited Voluntary Exit Offer to eligible staff in the US, UK, Canada and India, with Xbox among the participating teams. The Verge reports up to 60,000 employees could be eligible.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Microsoft has launched a time-limited Voluntary Exit Offer for eligible employees, including those in Xbox and Windows + Devices. Reuters, citing an anonymous source, reports that about 60,000 people are eligible.
80.lv5d ago2 min read
Sucker Punch Productions, developer of Ghost of Yōtei, has reportedly cut staff, with a former employee putting the number at 24. The report rests on an internal email obtained by Aftermath, and Sony has not yet confirmed it.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Warhorse Studios, developer of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, says a cyberattack gave an unauthorised party access to company systems and data. The studio is investigating with cybersecurity experts and is not giving interviews.
gamesindustry.biz5d ago2 min read
Ghost of Yotei developer Sucker Punch has laid off 24 employees. The studio's email to staff cites market challenges and the needs of its next project.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
The IWGB says Rockstar Games employees will vote on recognizing the IWGB Rockstar Game Workers Union from November 12 to November 26, 2026. The vote lands close to the November 19 release of Grand Theft Auto VI.
gamedeveloper.com5d ago2 min read
A solo developer posted Steamworks figures for two demos in Steam Next Fest (Oct 19-26). Impressions rose sharply for both, but wishlist results differed widely.
reddit.com5d ago2 min read
At a Steam Indie Connect event in Korea, Valve staff addressed AI clones, low-quality games in Steam Next Fest and the Steam Frame. The account comes from a write-up shared on Reddit.
reddit.com5d ago3 min read
Warhorse Studios, the developer of the Kingdom Come: Deliverance games, says a cyberattack gave unauthorized access to its systems and data. The studio is still working out the full extent of the breach.
gamedeveloper.com6d ago2 min read
NVIDIA has detailed the developer tooling for RTX Spark, its new Windows PC platform built on a Blackwell RTX GPU and Grace CPU. The post covers DLSS, ACE, RTX Kit, Nsight, an Unreal Engine 5.8 branch and a MotionBricks update.
developer.nvidia.com6d ago4 min read
3D Environment Artist Arjun Perayil detailed how he built the Hearth and Hillside scene in Unreal Engine 5 for 80 Level. The breakdown covers blockout, landscape materials, a vertex-painted master wall shader and hand-built vegetation.
80.lv6d ago3 min read
Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on X that Epic is working to remove the EULA restriction on training AI with output from Unreal Engine and MetaHuman. Individual games can still allow or restrict AI training under their developers' own terms.
gamedeveloper.com6d ago2 min read
GameMaker has announced that its next-generation runtime, GMRT, will be free for commercial use from January 1, 2027. Source code access will extend to every license tier, while console export rules and tier pricing stay the same.
80.lv10d ago2 min read
Unity has released MethodReload, an experimental package that swaps in edited method bodies without a domain reload, in the Editor and on IL2CPP development players. It covers small gameplay tweaks only and runs a subset of C#.
unity.com11d ago3 min read
A community roundup of recent Unreal Engine source commits says the ue6-main branch no longer supports the VS2022 compiler. It also lists fixes on ue5-main, including one for a Mac editor crash, that 5.8 users may want to cherry-pick.
reddit.com13d ago2 min read
Swedish studio Liquid Swords, maker of Samson, is in bankruptcy and its administrator is taking bids for its IP and development assets. All 27 employees are being dismissed.
gamesindustry.biz13d ago2 min read
Members of Activision Quality Assurance United-CWA have authorised a strike if necessary, saying Activision has not bargained in good faith. Activision disputes that and says it has made meaningful progress.
gamesindustry.biz13d ago2 min read
Environment artist Zeqi Mu described in an 80 Level interview how he made a forest ground material from procedural nodes alone in Substance 3D Designer. The write-up covers a spline-based root system and the Shape splatter v2 node, and may be useful for artists building tileable organic materials.
80.lv13d ago3 min read
Godot 4.8 Beta 1 is out, with a reworked editor UI, a native Trail3D node and mip-level texture streaming. It is a beta and not for production use, per GameFromScratch.
gamefromscratch.com13d ago2 min read
PEGI is moving existing digital-only games that include paid random items, such as loot boxes, up to a PEGI 16 rating if they currently sit at PEGI 3, 7 or 12. Publishers with affected titles should expect rating changes through October.
gamesindustry.biz13d ago2 min read
RocketWerkz and Ahwoo, both founded by Dean Hall, have announced the open source release of BRUTAL, a C# framework for building your own engine or game from scratch. It is free for commercial use, but it asks for more hands-on programming than an engine like Godot.
gamedeveloper.com13d ago3 min read
Brunch Studio has posted breakdowns of the Valorant: Through the Cracks cinematic, which introduced the Summit map. They show the Maya and Houdini work and how the shots changed from concept sketch to final render.
80.lv13d ago2 min read
Wizards of the Coast has declined to voluntarily recognize a union drive by its Dungeons & Dragons and Studio X teams. Staff will vote in a National Labor Relations Board election instead.
gamesindustry.biz13d ago2 min read
A developer has released Ultimate Jelly, a jelly shader for Unity 6 on the Asset Store, and explained how it works in a Reddit post. The approach centres on a thickness texture and has four quality levels, including one aimed at XR and mobile.
reddit.com13d ago2 min read
The Japan Actors Union has published guidelines on unauthorised generative AI replication of voice work, centred on consent and extra pay. It also says it wants the rules adopted industry-wide and backed by legislation.
gamesindustry.biz13d ago2 min read
Epic has released the Unreal Engine 5.8.4 hotfix with fixes across the editor, rendering, Movie Render Pipeline, MetaHuman and platform tooling. Visual Studio 2026 users get native .slnx solution handling, and one known issue is already listed.
forums.unrealengine.com13d ago3 min read
A Reddit user compared Steam games that passed 200 reviews with ones stuck under 10 and found five store-page habits that separated them. The poster says the data shows correlation only, and the post also promotes the author's own free page checker.
reddit.com17d ago2 min read
Dean Hall's studio RocketWerkz has made its in-house BRUTAL framework publicly available, free to use in commercial games with credit. It is a framework rather than an engine, built on C# and Vulkan.
80.lv17d ago2 min read
Sega and Creative Assembly are temporarily withdrawing the Shogun 2 remaster days after launch, following heavily negative Steam reviews over AI upscaling and performance. The case shows how quickly player reaction to AI-processed assets can force a remaster off the shelves.
gamesindustry.biz17d ago2 min read
German developer Fishlabs has cut jobs in its development and support teams, according to GamesIndustry.biz. The studio has not said how many people are affected.
gamesindustry.biz17d ago2 min read
Unity's blog describes how a four-person team builds Foxy Dumplings for PC, consoles and mobile from one project and one branch. The write-up covers architecture, input, profiling, cloud saves and a move to Unity 6.3 LTS.
unity.com17d ago4 min read
Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster says Star Wars: Galactic Racer was made by a core team that stayed small, with outside studios scaling capacity in three tiers. He warns the model has to be built into a studio from the start.
gamesindustry.biz17d ago3 min read
Veteran World Designer Nathan Cheever has published a follow-up on 80 Level on how to plan open-world cities, using Mafia 3's New Bordeaux as the main example. It is a practical look at settling routes, landmarks and world states before costly environment art begins.
80.lv17d ago3 min read
CD Projekt Red says it has a coherent world vision for Project Hadar, its first fully original IP. The team is prototyping gameplay, but the project has not entered pre-production, so a release is still years away.
80.lv18d ago2 min read
Ubisoft has begun talks with its Works Council on a proposed voluntary departure plan across its Düsseldorf, Berlin and Mainz studios. The cuts would be about 100 roles and extend the company's ongoing cost-reduction effort.
gamesindustry.biz18d ago2 min read
Epic Games has put a rewritten version of its launcher into preview, and says it was built with AI. One early Reddit report says Unreal Engine project access has regressed, so Unreal developers should check it before switching.
reddit.com18d ago3 min read
Maxon has released ZBrush 2027.0, adding a UV Editor based on Cinema 4D's technology and support for Selection Sets. ZBrush for iPad 2027.0 gains Spotlight and 3D Layers, narrowing the gap with desktop.
cgchannel.com18d ago3 min read
Epic Games says it is reworking Easy Anti-Cheat to give Linux protection closer to Windows, and that Fortnite will follow on Linux. Other developers are meant to get the same improvements, which could matter for multiplayer games that skip Linux and Steam Deck.
80.lv18d ago2 min read
Bloomberg reports that Epic Games has delayed its Star Wars and Marvel shooter as the project shifts to an "AI-first" model. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney confirmed a company-wide AI pivot but did not address the Disney game.
gamedeveloper.com18d ago2 min read
Rockstar Games has published the launch trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI about 35 days before its November 19, 2026 release. It is a 90-second spot captured on PlayStation 5, and PC remains unannounced.
80.lv18d ago2 min read
BiteTheBytes has announced World Creator 4, a major update to its GPU-based terrain generator, due in November 2026. It adds planetary-scale terrain, node-based editing, a real-time renderer and a planned macOS and Linux port.
cgchannel.com18d ago3 min read
Godot 4.8 has reached beta 1 and is fully in feature freeze, so work now goes to regression fixes. The snapshot rounds up the whole 4.8 cycle and lists the breaking changes to check before you test.
godotengine.org18d ago3 min read
Valve has updated Steam's achievement system with Achievement Sets, archiving, and a new Steamworks editor with bulk tools. Developers can use them now on new and existing games without updating the game or the Steamworks SDK.
steamcommunity.com18d ago3 min read
A r/gamedev user compared Steam games that passed 200 reviews with games stuck under 10, and found gaps in pre-launch announcements, screenshots, About-page media, languages and tags. It is a self-reported, correlational analysis, but several of the factors cost little to change.
reddit.com18d ago2 min read
Foundry has released Mari 8.0, its 3D texture painting software, adding more than 50 Node Graph nodes, new mask tools and trackball navigation. Team subscription pricing has risen by $60 a year since Mari 7.5.
cgchannel.com18d ago3 min read
Rockstar Games leadership told Bloomberg that the engine, tools and team built for Grand Theft Auto 6 will let it ship future games faster. Headcount has roughly doubled since Red Dead Redemption 2 launched in 2018.
gamesindustry.biz18d ago2 min read
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