games news

• Banned Steam game Horses sells 18,000 units in 2 weeks and earns $65,000 – enough to break even but not enough to keep its studio from disbanding: "Fragmentation is a lasting consequence"

  18-12-2025 01:25 via gamesradar.com
  
  Horses, the controversial indie horror game banned on Steam and other platforms, has officially broken even, but just as developer Santa Ragione predicted, it hasn't earned enough of a profit to fund another game.Steam's banning of Horses, which Santa Ragione has repeatedly claimed wasn't transparent and was based on an outdated build of the game, initially seemed to give the game a visibility boost, and indeed, studio cofounder and Horses producer Pietro Righi Riva has said public outcry a
  
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• The Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle is coming to an end, but here's where you can still grab yours

  22-12-2025 15:48 via gamesradar.com
  
  Nintendo has halted the production of the Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle, which comes with the new handheld and a digital copy of the game at $29.99 less when bought separately. This news was originally shared by a leaked internal GameStop memo, which was later confirmed by the US retailer on social media that it was legit and that additional units were no longer being produced.It's not entirely surprising, as the Switch 2 bundle was slated as a "limited time production through Fall 2
  
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• My Hero Academia is making a surprise return for a 2026 special, along with a global concert tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary

  22-12-2025 15:48 via gamesradar.com
  
  My Hero Academia is not over just yet – a special episode is coming to our screens in 2026, completing the adaptation of Kohei Horikoshi's beloved manga. Get ready for another emotional epilogue alongside Deku and the rest of the gang, following the end of My Hero Academia season 8.In a special episode titled 'More', fans will get to explore the lives of the characters eight years after the dramatic events of the final season, and their graduation at U.A. High School. An adaptation of Chap
  
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• Fallout: New Vegas lead writer says "you can't just make your tyrants cardboard villains," but wonders if Obsidian "done a little too well" there

  22-12-2025 15:16 via gamesradar.com
  
  Fallout: New Vegas' lead writer, John Gonzalez, worries that he did too good a job when writing the fascist Caesar's Legion.Part of what made Fallout: New Vegas so engaging – and ultimately the best Fallout game – was the sheer number of factions and powers vying for the attention of your courier, and as a result, you can have a ton of different variants on the game's ending depending on who you sided with throughout the story. And while a lot of these options feature a ton of shades
  
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• The first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey teases Matt Damon's mythical journey in next summer's biggest movie

  22-12-2025 15:13 via gamesradar.com
  
  Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey has finally revealed a first full trailer ahead of its release next summer, and it's everything we were hoping to see. For the longest time, the closest thing we’ve had to an official look at Nolan’s next big movie was Matt Damon rocking some pretty impressive headgear and a toga. Now we finally get a good look at the star-studded epic, and we’re more hungry for it now than ever.Following the release of some official first-look pictures, the film
  
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• The Switch 2 Donkey Kong and Pauline amiibo is down to a record low price for a limited time

  22-12-2025 13:26 via gamesradar.com
  
  The Donkey Kong and Pauline amiibo has been immune to deals and discounts before today. Unlike the Switch 2 Legend of Zelda and Street Fighter 6 figures, the Donkey Kong Bananza NFC-collectible has never shifted from its full price, which makes this limited deal I spotted over at Amazon more a-peel-ing than ever.For a limited time, you can pick up the Donkey Kong and Pauline amiibo for $19.99 (Amazon), saving $10 off its full $29.99 price for the very first time. You won't be able to pick up thi
  
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• New Fallout season 2 trailer teases Lucy and her father's dramatic reunion

  22-12-2025 13:17 via gamesradar.com
  
  With its first episode now out, Fallout season 2 just released a new trailer teasing the rest of the season, including some key moments to come, like the dramatic reunion between Lucy (Ella Purnell) and her father Hank (Kyle Maclachlan). As the show heads to New Vegas, there is a lot to look forward to in the new episodes.The new trailer starts with the Brotherhood of Steel, as the leader of the Knights of San Fernando, Quintus, tells Maximus: "Together, we will fulfill our promise to make bette
  
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• Battlefield 6 gets unwanted Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 comparison as AI accusations fly against "hollow and low effort" new artwork

  22-12-2025 13:06 via gamesradar.com
  
  A number of major games from this year have come under fire for apparently using AI-generated assets in some form or another, including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and now Battlefield 6 might be among them. Players have discovered a growing list of instances in which artwork shows hallmarks of generative AI, leading to cynicism about its creation.One of the most prominent examples is for the spotlighted RPGs Vs Golf Carts mode in Portal. The image is a cartoon depi
  
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• GameStop confirms that Nintendo has discontinued the Mario Kart World Switch 2 bundle, meaning the racing game will soon be $80 or nothing

  22-12-2025 12:55 via gamesradar.com
  
  Nintendo has seemingly discontinued the Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundle, following a leaked internal memo and later confirmation from GameStop.A big saving grace for Mario Kart World – following its price backlash and general criticism – has been the fact that a majority of people only paid $50 for the game as a part of the Nintendo Switch 2 + Mario Kart World bundle offered at the system's launch. While $80 was a frankly ridiculous price point, especially in the aftermath
  
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• Hideo Kojima delivers gushing verdict on Avatar: Fire and Ash, including how it will impact his future work

  22-12-2025 12:43 via gamesradar.com
  
  As you may know, Hideo Kojima loves his movies. As a rule of thumb, his Twitter responses to his recent film experiences fall into one of two categories. A short review is an indicator of the Death Stranding creator politely sidestepping the fact he didn't enjoy the work. A longer review, meanwhile, has Kojima falling over himself to tell the world how much he loved it.Pleasingly, Avatar: Fire and Ash falls into the latter category, with Kojima delivering a 200-word-plus response to showcase his
  
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• Chainsaw Man officially announces season 2 and how much of the manga it will cover: "The greatest arc in the whole franchise"

  22-12-2025 12:19 via gamesradar.com
  
  Chainsaw Man season 2 has finally been announced, with animation studio MAPPA confirming that its official title will be Chainsaw Man: Assassins Arc. The announcement came with a first teaser and promotional images, which tease what's next for Denji and the Public Safety Division.The new season, based on the original manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, will follow the success of Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, which released in US theaters on October 24. The studio decided to make a movie befor
  
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• The cheapest Steam Deck is heading into retirement, and I'm already worried about handheld prices in 2026

  22-12-2025 12:14 via gamesradar.com
  
  The Steam Deck LCD model's days are now numbered, as Valve has discontinued the handheld that started it all. The good news is that the portable PC plug isn't being immediately pulled, but with the storefront giant now "no longer producing" the 256GB version, I suspect it won't be around for long in the new year.In a note added to the Steam Deck landing page, Valve says it is "no longer producing the Steam Deck LCD 256GB model. Once sold out, it will no longer be available." While you could argu
  
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• Avengers: Doomsday's next teaser will be even longer, and a 'scary' Doctor Doom trailer is also reportedly on the way

  22-12-2025 11:56 via gamesradar.com
  
  The next Avengers: Doomsday teaser will reportedly be even longer, with a future trailer set to contain "scary moments".As revealed by the Finnish National Audiovisual Institute Kavi – of all places – the second trailer for Avengers: Doomsday will be 99 seconds long, a slight bump up from the Steve Rogers-centric teaser from last week, which lasted 82 seconds.If you believe the recent reporting around the Avengers: Doomsday trailers, the second teaser (which will be attached to Avata
  
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• After a "worldwide search," the DCU's Brainiac has been found, and it's taking inspiration from a "creepy, wonderful" take on the Superman villain

  22-12-2025 11:24 via gamesradar.com
  
  James Gunn has finally (officially) confirmed that Brainiac is debuting in Superman: Man of Tomorrow, and that Lars Eidinger is set to play the "creepy, wonderful" villain. You might have seen Eidinger in the German show Babylon Berlin and Netflix's 2023 miniseries All the Light We Cannot See, and now he is joining David Corenswet in the superhero sequel, set to be released in 2027."In our worldwide search for Brainiac in Man of Tomorrow, Lars Eidinger rose to the top. Welcome to the DCU, Lars,"
  
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• Without Super Mario Bros, Hideo Kojima "probably" wouldn't have become a game dev: "When I saw that… I felt this medium would one day surpass movies"

  21-12-2025 16:32 via gamesradar.com
  
  Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding maestro Hideo Kojima, known for his grand and filmic blockbusters, was sucked into the game industry by an unexpected classic: Super Mario Bros.The four-decade-old platformer isn't the most obvious influence on Hideo Kojima's work when you look at the type of games he's put out for generations, but it's the one that led to him becoming a developer in the first place."[I] played it for a year. I was a college student. I skipped school to play at home," Kojima
  
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• Arc Raiders tester found that PvE players get put in friendlier lobbies while PvP ones are sectioned to aggressive matches by using two accounts

  21-12-2025 15:57 via gamesradar.com
  
  Arc Raiders players are just as capable of being surprisingly kind team players who'll help you survive the post-apocalypse as they are to backstab you and steal your chicken feed, but what if you could control who you encounter in-game? One raider decided to test it out.YouTuber Domi created two separate Arc Raiders accounts to find out if the game's matchmaking worked differently depending on your playstyle. One account would primarily be a PvP heavy, aggressive type - a shoot first, talk late
  
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• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 says the secret of the J'RPG's success is to "not care too much about the players" – "if you care about your game, it means you care about the players ultimately"

  21-12-2025 15:30 via gamesradar.com
  
  Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's leads explain their thoughts on why Sandfall Interactive's debut game was such a success, and it's to do with making a game for you.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game where the more you learn about the developers, the more its identity makes sense. Hearing the devs were big fans of Final Fantasy X and Lost Odyssey makes a whole lot of sense, and seeing the game director, Guillaume Broche's Devil May Cry challenge runs Verso's entire moveset being one big love let
  
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• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lead says the secret of the J'RPG's success is to "not care too much about the players" – "if you care about your game, it means you care about the players ultimately"

  21-12-2025 15:30 via gamesradar.com
  
  Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's leads explain their thoughts on why Sandfall Interactive's debut game was such a success, and it's to do with making a game for you.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is a game where the more you learn about the developers, the more its identity makes sense. Hearing the devs were big fans of Final Fantasy X and Lost Odyssey makes a whole lot of sense, and seeing the game director, Guillaume Broche's Devil May Cry challenge runs Verso's entire moveset being one big love let
  
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• Metal Gear Solid 2 is "often mistaken for a story about AI," Hideo Kojima says, but it's actually about "what human life would become" in the digital age

  21-12-2025 15:14 via gamesradar.com
  
  Hideo Kojima has shot down a common Metal Gear Solid 2 interpretation that reads into the game as a story about AI. To the famed auteur, his sequel is more about what happens to society in the digital age."MGS2 is often mistaken for a story about AI, but it's about digital society," Kojima said in an interview with Wired Japan. "MGS1 was about DNA. That's when I thought about the shift from analog to digital. In digital society, everything is preserved. Like social media today. Even graffiti rem
  
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• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's controversial GOTY wins at The Indie Game Awards retracted after the RPG's use of generative AI

  21-12-2025 14:33 via gamesradar.com
  
  Sandfall Interactive and publisher Kepler Interactive have been enjoying a record-breaking awards run with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - which recently took home more trophies than any other title in The Game Awards history - but at least two of its awards elsewhere have been revoked.The Indie Game Awards 2025 took place on Thursday, where Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won both Game of the Year and Debut Game. Both awards were already a little controversial since Clair Obscur isn't exactly what yo
  
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• Bethesda lead says the biggest difference between a fantasy RPG like Skyrim and a sci-fi RPG like Fallout is how you piece together the story

  21-12-2025 11:30 via gamesradar.com
  
  Fallout and Elder Scrolls writer Emil Pagliarulo has explained the difference in writing between the two series and why Fallout may be a bit harder to deal with.In dense RPGs like Bethesda's Fallout and Elder Scrolls games, there are a ton of decisions to be made, and in cases like the Obsidian-published Fallout: New Vegas, there are a ton of potential outcomes and different factions vying for you to help them out, and it's never exactly clear who is the right choice to side with for the good of
  
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• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 lead writer "didn't think of it as writing an RPG" – "I thought of it almost like writing an HBO drama"

  20-12-2025 21:16 via gamesradar.com
  
  The award-winning writer of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, has explained that she didn't approach the game as if she were writing a RPG.Clair Obscur: Expedition 33is undoubtedly the biggest game of 2025, so much so that its award show sweeps are becoming a meme in itself. And a huge part of the reason it's such a massive game is thanks to its fantastic story, which has already taken home awards at the Golden Joysticks and The Game Awards. However, that may be partly down to
  
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• Bethesda was scared of making Fallout 3, but by Fallout 4 it had chilled out: "we don't have to be so reverential now"

  20-12-2025 19:57 via gamesradar.com
  
  Fallout 3 lead writer Emil Pagliarulo explains Bethesda was nervous when creating the game, but by Fallout 4 the team had chilled out.It may not feel like it since it's made roughly the same number of entries as Interplay did in its seven years, but Bethesda has owned Fallout for almost two decades now (having gotten the license in 2004, before purchasing it outright in 2007). 2008's Fallout 3 immediately sent the franchise from a beloved cult hit PC game that had been dormant for a while straig
  
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• "Last year we were the 'Manor Lords publisher', this year I think we're something more": Heroes of Might and Magic company sold over 4.5 million copies two years in a row

  20-12-2025 17:28 via gamesradar.com
  
  Strategy game publisher Hooded Horse has been on a roll lately with back-to-back hits, like Manor Lords and 9 Kings, and some really exciting upcoming games, such as Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. And, now, CEO Tim Bender has released some really interesting stats about the company's performance.In a LinkedIn post, Bender revealed that the publisher had "sold over 4.5 million copies across all stores" over the last year, with its catalogue being added to Steam Wishlists more than 8.5 mill
  
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• Arc Raiders legend dedicated to collecting rubber ducks has now amassed an army of 4,200 of them with no end in sight

  20-12-2025 17:03 via gamesradar.com
  
  The Arc Raiders player who campaigned for Embark Studios to recognize each and every rubber duck has now collected an army of the little bath toys, and they have no plans to stop.Just last month, one particular Arc Raider known as BigBootyTom on Reddit shared their pretty impressive collection of 600 rubber duckies and called on Embark to patch the game. You see, previously, raiders could only display nine of them in their dens. After BigBootyTom's cries, every single duck became visible in raid
  
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• Death Stranding's Hideo Kojima wants to "pioneer a new genre," not "focus much on existing ones," but he'd still like to make a Western or space game

  20-12-2025 16:27 via gamesradar.com
  
  Death Stranding and former Metal Gear Solid director Hideo Kojima is known for pushing boundaries and toying with ideas you don't often see in multi-million dollar blockbusters. But it's a conscious effort as the famed director has now said he's not really interested in working within existing genres.When asked what genres he'd like to tackle next, in an interview with Wired Japan, Kojima said, "I want to pioneer a new genre, so I don't focus much on existing ones."Before the first Death Strandi
  
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• Dispatch cut a KPop Demon Hunters-style character who "looked like a Saja Boy undercover," devs say: "We should do that for Season 2. If there is a Season 2."

  20-12-2025 15:31 via gamesradar.com
  
  Dispatch almost included a character that would've fit right into the world of Netflix's animated musical phenomenon, KPop Demon Hunters.Dispatch writer and AdHoc Studio co-founder Pierre Shorette revealed as much in an interview with Eurogamer, explaining that the team had an idea for a hero called Winter, a "K-pop star" with a "Korean idol-y face" who "looked like a Saja Boy undercover."Nick Herman, game director and fellow studio co-founder, instead disagreed and recalled that Winter "dressed
  
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• Steam will always dominate over the Epic Games Store because people don't want to "cheat on [their] home library with some other shop," says Witchfire lead

  20-12-2025 02:05 via gamesradar.com
  
  One game developer has a theory on why Steam has remained the dominant PC storefront for so many years despite the existence of high-profile competitors like the Epic Games Store.Witchfire creator Adrian Chmielarz, who co-founded Polish studio The Astronauts in 2012, partially credits the success of Witchfire with its early days as an Epic Games Store timed exclusive, but he didn't shy away from criticisms in an interview with FRVR. Chiefly, he compared Steam very favorably to the Epic Games Sto
  
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• The Switch 2 could be getting two smaller game cartridges as publisher reveals and then backtracks the existence of a cheaper path to physical launches

  20-12-2025 01:01 via gamesradar.com
  
  Nintendo could soon be offering two new Switch 2 cartridges for publishers wanting a cheaper option to give their games a physical launch.Right now, the only two options publishers have for distribution on Switch 2 are the console's traditional 64 GB cartridges, the game-key cards often maligned in game preservation communities, and of course, purely digital launches. It seems that may be about to change, though, if a leak from R-Type Dimensions 3 publisher Inin Games is to believed - despite th
  
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• First Stranger Things season 5 volume 2 clip features a new plan to take down Vecna – that involves a certain "wizard" and his newfound powers

  19-12-2025 23:03 via gamesradar.com
  
  The first clip for Stranger Things season 5 volume 2 has arrived – and Joyce is feeling a little overzealous. However, after the ending of volume 1 episode 4... we can't really blame her.Warning: Spoilers for Stranger Things season 5 volume 1 below!In the brief clip, which Matt and Ross Duffer brought exclusively to The Tonight Show, an impassioned Joyce is giving the gang her brand new plan to defeat Vecna. Of course, it involves Will and his newfound "wizard" powers (though technically,
  
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