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The UK Court of Appeal has ruled that unauthorized removal of RuneScape's in-game currency can be classed as criminal theft. Read more View the full article

Women in Games today has launched a new manifesto calling for "rebalancing gender representation and fairness across the global video games industry." Read more View the full article

GDC's full agenda is now available. Read more View the full article

GDC organisers Informa have said they have not seen any drop in planned attendance by overseas visitors, despite escalating industry concern over both costs and the current US political situation. Read more View the full article

Entertainment website IGN has announced a year-long editorial celebration to mark the brand's 30th anniversary, including a series of longform interviews with key figures from the games and entertainment industries, the return of LA event IGN Live, and a games and retro merchandise partnership with Humble Bundle. Humble Bundle and GamesIndustry.biz are both owned by IGN parent IGN Entertainment. Read more View the full article

Claim this key to receive 10,000 in-game Credits for Untrusted, absolutely free! Plus, the game is currently free to keep, but ... View the full article

Grab Untrusted for free on Steam! Untrusted is an online multiplayer social deduction game where you take on the role ... View the full article

The Game Developers Conference, now rebranded as the GDC Festival of Gaming, has released its 2026 State Of The Game Industry survey, revealing a broad range of insights from professionals across different sectors. Read more View the full article

Swedish games firm Paradox Interactive has reported a 162% decrease in its operating profit for the three months ending December 31, 2025 due to the poor performance of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Read more View the full article

Definitely Not Fried Chicken is free on the Epic Games Store this week! It’s a fun 3d business management ... View the full article

"The games industry has been the best and the worst of times for me," said Jessica Curry in an interview with Radio 4's Woman's Hour on January 28. "It's extraordinarily hard to exist as a woman, it kind of broke me in many ways." Read more View the full article

Nintendo dove deep this morning on its upcoming simulation game, Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream. The Switch game (notably not Switch 2, though Nintendo reminds that you can play it on Switch 2) is a sequel to the 3DS game Tomodachi Life that released in North America in 2014 for 3DS. You can read our review of that game here. Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream releases April 16. In the game you create Miis and watch them live out their lives on Yoomian Island as you interact with them and create scenarios for the characters to meet and interact. The original game was renowned for being bizarre, and though Living the Dream's reveal teased some of that strangeness, today's presentation focused on the more typical parts of the game. You create the characters using familiar Mii creation tools and can dictate their gender (male, female, or nonbinary) as well as their dating preferences. Unlike previous Mii creation tools, you can now create elements like face paint, and that customization seems to extend to nearly every facet of the game. You can design the exteriors of buildings, the ground, clothing, and even draw pets for the Miis to have. The presentation showed one Mii walking with a hand drawn dog. Once you have Miis you can select elements of their personalities, gift them quirks like the animations they use to eat, and even dictate familiar phrases they will use. You can also play god and place your Miis next to each other to force them to interact and hopefully become friends. You can even choose what they talk about by typing in topics, which an automated, robotic voice will dictate. You can also push characters to become roommates with up to eight characters being able to live together in one large house. You can also witness elaborate romantic scenarios. Miis can develop crushes on each other, profess their love, and even be turned down. A scenario in the presentation showed one character being confronted by multiple suitors and having to choose. The way the game works is the Miis are meant to be characters with their own agency so even though you choose elements like where they go and how they do something, like profess their love to their crush, it will be up to the characters to make the final decisions. At the end of the presentation, Nintendo showcased a wedding scene, and even showed a baby crawling on the ground. It's unclear if those elements will just be performative visual moments, or if there will be opportunities to create families that birth children who grow up to become their own Miis. The game happens in real time (meaning your Miis will be living their lives even when you're not playing), so it remains to be seen how that part of the game will work. Alongside all the character interactions, Nintendo also showed off how much control you have over the design of the island. It feels very Animal Crossing in this way. Different stores sell food, clothing, offer photo gallery opportunities, there is a news station that gives frequent updates, and you can also build and relocate everything on the island, and even change the land mass. In a complimentary way, it looks like Nintendo is trying to merge elements of The Sims (creating and watching characters live out their lives) and Animal Crossing (living on and designing an island while witness to interpersonal character interactions). We will see if the game can live up to the reputation of either of those franchises when it releases on April 16. View the full article

Reviewed on: PlayStation 5 Platform: PlayStation 5, PC Publisher: The Game Bakers Developer: The Game Bakers Release: January 29, 2026 Rating: Teen There’s a popular trope in media that the lone hero who persists against all odds should be celebrated without limits, and that any amount of endurance and sacrifice is worth it to surpass and succeed, no matter the cost to self or others. Cairn is the rare narrative that says something more nuanced, simultaneously celebrating the triumph against seemingly impossible odds, while also painting the painful picture of obsession and selfishness that are often left unspoken. That would be noteworthy enough on its own, but with its mountain-climbing adventure, The Game Bakers team has also crafted a deeply engaging open world to explore, accompanied by breathtaking visuals and music, and featuring my favorite new control mechanic in years. As we join pro climber Aava, she’s on the cusp of tackling her greatest challenge: solo climbing the seemingly insurmountable Mount Kami, an imposing beast of a peak. With little preamble or guidance, the player is forced to learn on the job about strong handholds, judicious piton placement, and foraging of resources to survive, even while Aava inexorably pushes her way higher. The bulk of playtime is spent on the wall, inching Aava up one scrambling grab at a time. Nerve-wracking and tense, you control the specific placement of each foot and hand as you select tiny crevices, hard-to-spot outcroppings, and brief moments of respite to recover stamina, even as wind and rain batter against the cliff face. The freeform and slow-paced traversal is intensely rewarding, and I was still striving to master it a dozen hours into my journey. Cairn manages that rare feat, making me feel truly immersed in an experience I would never dare to attempt, and giving a glimpse into the tiny triumphs a real climber must feel every time they pull themselves up those last desperate inches to a plateau. Mount Kami is like one massive puzzle to solve, or a single, improbably long boss fight, with many strategies for success. You choose your climbing line. Maybe you inch slowly along a treacherous ledge to reach an inviting angled scramble of loose rock. Or dare that seemingly sheer straight line, trusting to well-chalked hands to manage the shortcut. While there are boundaries to the world, I still found significant freedom in charting my own course. Cairn also offers ample opportunities for emergent moments of beauty – shooting off a handful of found fireworks from camp, seeing the stars reflected in a secluded lake, or witnessing an animal who has never seen a human before – take a different turn, and those moments might never transpire. In between climbs, frequent stops along the way reveal hidden secrets. Some are forgotten caves, remnants left behind by failed Kami climbers, or caches of food or drugs that might give you the edge to continue. But the more interesting secrets come through intermittent injections of character cinematics and dialogue, both from those Aava meets on the mountain and from audio messages sent from those on the ground. For both Aava and those whose lives she learns about, the narrative explores themes of loss, the hard words we leave unspoken, and the way that people run away from the things they love – sometimes to the literal ends of the Earth. As the plot thickens, it’s easy to question if everything we’re witnessing is still real, or perhaps some existential hallucination accompanying impending death on a lonely defile. Cairn is not a casual narrative game. The climb is hard, and survival is difficult. Food and water are sometimes scarce. Aava’s fingers bleed, and you must manually wrap them with climber’s tape at the weather-battered bivouac sites you might find along the way. No matter the difficulty (for which there are thankfully many ways to customize), the final hours are a brutal stretch that left me exhausted and excited in equal measure. The return on that investment and challenge makes the climb worth it, up to and including one of the most affecting and vulnerable endings I’ve seen a game pull off. Like Aava on the wall, Cairn has occasional stumbles that hold it back. Frame glitches and pauses sometimes break the immersion. The usually immaculate climbing mechanic sometimes breaks and creates weird interactions or falls – especially frustrating on greater difficulties. Checkpoints can be too far apart in that frustrating-but-not-fun way. The free-rotating camera can have brief moments that lead to frustration. Even with some minor missteps, Cairn is a stunning and surprising masterpiece. I’ve rarely encountered a game with such a slow overall pace that nonetheless kept me on the edge of my seat. Gameplay is buoyed by a subtle, emotionally powerful musical score and a uniquely textured art style that enhances both the game’s beauty and one’s ability to read its many pockmarked walls. When all its merits were added together, I was constantly drawn back to the climb to see the next vista. Cairn is challenging as a game and as a story; because, and not despite its many differences from other games you’ll play this year, it deserves your time and attention. Score: 9.25 About Game Informer's review system View the full article

Tickets have gone on sale for the Develop: Brighton, which will be taking place in Brighton from 14-16 July. GamesIndustry.biz is once again a media partner of the event, and as part of that our readers can benefit from a 10% discount on ticket prices. Read more View the full article

UK high street retailer GAME is reportedly on the verge of collapse once again. Read more View the full article

Tech giant Microsoft has reported a 9% decrease in revenue from its games arm, something that it attributed to first-party performance and a massive dip in console sales. Read more View the full article

Facebook parent company Meta's Reality Labs metaverse-focused division generated $2.2 billion in revenue for the 12 months ending December 31st, 2025, but clocked up a $19.2 billion operational loss. Read more View the full article

The head of Amazon Game Studio, Christoph Hartmann is reportedly leaving the company. Read more View the full article

You know his name. Bond, James Bond. But who is the man behind one of the most infamous three-digit numbers in the world? That is the question IO Interactive needed to answer going into the development of 007 First Light, a game that tells the origin story of Agent 007. During our trip to IO Interactive's Copenhagen headquarters for the latest issue of Game Informer's cover story, we sat down with the team to learn how they went about crafting a young version of James Bond. 007 First Light development took place during an unusual time for the James Bond film franchise; it's been nearly 14 years since the last James Bond game, and there is currently no live-action James Bond actor, giving IO Interactive the opening to do what they wanted to do: craft their own original story starring their own original Bond. "It’s very important for us to have part of ourselves in the story and in the characters that we create, yet still being very respectful to the source material, to the IP," game director and IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak says. "I don’t think we would have necessarily had the same energy and the same vision and the same results if we were to do a gamification of a movie. That freedom of creativity was very important to us, and we are so, so grateful for our partners that we’ve been given that opportunity." In adapting a new version of the iconic superspy, IO Interactive needed to walk a fine line between creating something new and distinct while honoring the legacy of one of the most iconic characters in pop culture. "Everyone knows Bond," narrative and cinematic director Martin Emborg says. "It's a generational thing by now: 63 years of movies, books from the '50s… it's huge. Everyone knows how he takes his drink, everyone knows what he drives, and what he wears. So, it’s really interesting to do an origin story. 'Who is the character? Who is the man behind all this stuff?'" But rather than drawing inspiration from iconic depictions like those of Connery, Brosnan, or Craig, IO wanted to examine the consistent attributes across all media, not just the films. Emborg tells me that as soon as he learned IO was making a Bond game about six and a half years ago, he went out and bought the box sets of the movies, books, and even read the comics. "Bond is a character where there's been versions of him through the decades," Emborg says. "I think it's not particularly helpful to look at how other people have interpreted the character. It's better to look at the DNA and then say, 'How are we making a contemporary version of this character?' Obviously, yeah, you look at the movies [and books] – how could you not?" Through this process, IO successfully drilled into what makes him James Bond, regardless of age. Then, the tricky part: How do you create an inexperienced version of a man whose experience defines him? IO Interactive tried to find what his most defining traits are and then envisioned how those would be expressed through youth. "I think his core traits that he's born with are he has a lot of wits, he's a very smart guy, he has guts, obviously," Emborg says. "All these qualities are changed by the virtue of him being a young man. Wits, in this case, he’s a hungry mind. He’s whip-smart, but he doesn’t have that kind of experience. Yet, in terms of guts, you can definitely say, as a young man, he skews more reckless, whereas with a more seasoned 007, it’s a calculated risk. Yes, he will jump out of an airplane, but this guy does it just because that seems like the next best thing to do to catch the bad guys." Another quality IO Interactive identified in James Bond is a coldness that permeates many of his interactions. Though I get a glimpse of how IO's Bond remains cool and collected under pressure during my hands-off demo, he doesn't yet have a full grasp on how he comes across. "Our guy isn’t there yet, so I think, if anything, he has more heart in this version than he might have as a seasoned man," Emborg says. "Charm – the quintessential Bond quality – he has in spades, but it’s not weaponized yet. An older Bond will use that tactically, and I think a younger Bond, maybe isn’t even aware that he’s projecting all this charm." To depict this version of Bond, IO Interactive cast Patrick Gibson, who most recently played a young version of Dexter Morgan in the Dexter prequel series, Original Sin. "He has a great youthful energy to him," Emborg says. "He has a kind of built-in impatience, which is perfect for the character. Like, 'Okay, what’s next? What are we doing now?' But he also has a great gravity that he can tap into. He can get really insanely focused at the drop of a hat, which is really, really impressive. And then he has great comedic timing, and he’s just a lot of fun to be around. I think he checks all the boxes." We'll have to wait and see how well IO Interactive's version of James Bond pans out, but in our demo, he felt like a fitting transposition of the famous Bond attributes to a younger version of the character. Thankfully, we don't have terribly long to wait, as 007 First Light arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC on May 27. For more on 007 First Light and our other most anticipated games of 2026, be sure to check out our latest issue. If you're a Game Informer subscriber, you can read the full issue right here. View the full article

NetEase appears to have shed several roles from its Montréal studio. Read more View the full article

Ubisoft's unions STJV, CFE-CGC, CGT, Printemps Ecologique, and Solidaries Infortmatique are calling for "a massive international strike." Read more View the full article

Claim Hero Orion in Hero Wars, plus gold, emeralds, and tons of other rewards! Please note this giveaway is for ... View the full article

Scott Pilgrim EX, the new retro brawler by Tribute Games, the team behind TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion, has a new trailer revealing a March 3 release date. In addition, two new playable characters have been revealed. Today’s trailer showcases two more former enemies of Scott who will help him clean up the streets of Toronto: Matthew Patel and Robot-01. Matthew Patel is one of Ramona’s formerly evil exes, and his combat style emphasizes crowd control and manipulation. This is due to his ability to summon demon hipsters to distract enemies and lay traps on the field. Patel can also manipulate fire and summon supernatural arms. Robot-01 was created by the Katayanagi Twins to harm Scott, but it now uses abilities, like firing long-range blasts and rocketing across the screen, to aid him. Robot-01 can also rain explosive projectiles, acting as a screen-clearing attack. See how Robot-01 and Patel hold their own in the trailer below: These two new faces join a playable roster consisting of Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Lucas Lee, and Roxie Richter. Up to four players can play locally or online to bash their way through an original adventure, which features new music from Anamanaguchi, the band behind Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game’s soundtrack. Scott Pilgrim EX is launching on March 3 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC. You can learn more about the game by checking out this deep-dive feature into the game’s creation and our hands-on impressions. Be sure to also check out our interview with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley from last December, where he discusses his three favorite games of all time. View the full article

Amazon has announced a second round of layoffs in two months, impacting 16,000 roles across the company. Read more View the full article

Jack Emmert has returned to Star Trek Online developer Cryptic Studios as its CEO. Read more View the full article