Game design is a daring and dangerous endeavor for Niklas Åkerblad, who creates under the name El Huervo. When he describes the artistic process behind ULTROS, a neon-speckled platformer set in a demonic cosmic uterus, he talks about pushing against the sharp edges of introspection and sanity, drawing from wells of creativity buried deep in his psyche. It sounds like he could’ve slipped and fallen down any of those wells at any second, never to be seen again.

“I had a pretty rigorous discipline when it came to creating the world of ULTROS,” Åkerblad told Engadget. “It involves deep meditation while working and maintaining 100 percent focus to be able to know when harmony is achieved when working with such a dense flow of shapes and colors. It is almost impossible to cerebrally analyze this process, but it is rather something you have to feel, thus any external disturbance can greatly impact the process. It is perhaps not something I recommend others do without proper experience in creating visual art.”

Niklas Åkerblad

At the same time, Åkerblad is extremely practical about the business of making games. He’s been in the independent scene for years, and he’s enjoyed incredible success as the collaborator who provided the cover art and other assets for Hotline Miami and its sequel. You know the vibe — grizzled but radiant, with the threat of violence in every other pixel. He also composed a handful of songs for those games, including “Daisuke” and “Rust,” and he went on to develop else Heart.Break(), a 3D adventure set in a digital city of hackers, artists and activists that implemented programming as a core mechanic. Else Heart.Break() came out in 2015 and was a finalist at the Independent Games Festival that year.

His latest project, ULTROS, is a 2D exploration of The Sarcophagus, a looping world in a black hole that cycles players through environments overrun by alien plant life and vicious demons. Every scene in ULTROS is packed with detail and brilliant color; the backgrounds are alive with monsters and organic machines. Streaks of black delineate the boundaries of walking paths, ceilings and platforms, contrasted against shifting rainbows of luminosity.

Hadoque

There’s a lot going on in ULTROS at any given moment, but the protagonist stands out with a glowing green helmet, vermilion cloak and an evolving arsenal of platforming gadgets. One lesson from else heartbreak() that Åkerblad fed into ULTROS was the idea that games can have way more fun with color palettes. ULTROS is purposefully packed with visual interest.

“I felt video games tend to not push the boundaries of colors so much beyond ‘green is good’ and ‘red is bad,’ and whatever metrics are used for loot tiers,” he said. “I feel that there is this misunderstanding in design that less is more, and my gut tells me it's the opposite and I worked very hard on ULTROS to prove my theory. Undoubtedly there will be those who do not agree with me, but I feel it has more to do with taste and personal or physical preferences than academic truth — if there is such a thing.”

As a cyclical Metroidvania title, ULTROS is completely different from Åkerblad’s previous projects, but it’s also undeniably El Huervo. Actually, in this case, it’s Hadoque — around 2017, Åkerblad and game director Mårten Bruggemann started building the prototype that would become ULTROS, eventually bringing in composer Oscar “Ratvader” Rydelius and Fe designer Hugo Bille. Other artists joined over the years, and they ended up calling themselves Hadoque, a loose organization of creators who could float in and out as a project called to them.

Hadoque

“We wanted our group to be associated with its own thing, so we decided on Hadoque,” Åkerblad said. “It's a cool name that looks a bit weird and it suits our vibe. Also, it allowed everyone to still have their own thing on the side and not be legally tied to anything if they wished to pursue other venues.”

El Huervo AB remains Åkerblad’s own corporate entity, useful for dealing with the bureaucratic aspects of making video games. Through El Huervo AB, Hadoque received backing in 2019 from the gaming fund Kowloon Nights, which has also supported titles like Sifu, Rollerdrome, We Are OFK, Sea of Stars, Spiritfarer and Tchia.

“El Huervo AB merely functions as a sort of bureaucratic condom, and Hadoque as a name to be used when a group of developers come together to make art as games,” Åkerblad said. “Sort of like a band name. People come and go, but the vision remains.”

ULTROS is a game about life, rebirth, aliens, monsters and peace, and it all plays out in a technicolor dreamscape of vicious creatures and gorgeous foliage. This is the palette of surreal sci-fi, to Åkerblad.

Hadoque

“The themes explored in ULTROS are of an existential and spiritual nature, and I find that surreal sci-fi is a good genre to explore these themes in, as it has a long tradition of doing so,” he said. “In this regard, Ursula K. Le Guin has been a huge inspiration. Hopefully, what we manage to evoke in players is a sense of introspection and comfort.”

Despite the amount of deep thought that he’s done about the nature of art, sci-fi and play, there’s no singular message that Åkerblad is trying to convey with ULTROS. Instead, he and the rest of the developers at Hadoque encourage players to identify their own journey as they cycle through The Sarcophagus. As Åkerblad put it:

“Please enjoy ULTROS any way you want and don't try to look for a ‘true’ interpretation, but rather find your own meaning. This goes for any art, I think, in general. Interpretation is purely subjective and I want to keep telling stories that invoke and allow this subjectivity to exist.”

ULTROS is available now on PlayStation 4, PS5, Steam and the Epic Games Store, published by Kepler Interactive.

For Engadget’s 20th anniversary, we put together a package of stories about the most pivotal pieces of technology from the past two decades, and mine was on Steam. It’s difficult to overstate how influential Steam is to PC gaming, or how rich the storefront has made Valve. As a private company with infinite piles of Steam cash, Valve has the freedom to ignore market pressure from consumers, creators and competitors. It famously has a flat hierarchy with no strict management structure, and developers are encouraged to follow their hearts.

This has all resulted in an incredibly rich studio that doesn’t produce much. It may be a tired joke that Valve can’t count to three in its games, but we’re not talking about Half-Life today. We’re talking about Valve’s history of buying exciting franchises and talented developers, playing with them for a while, and then forgetting they exist. Real fuckboi behavior — but it’s just how Valve does business.

Let’s take a look at Valve’s history of talent acquisition. One of its oldest franchises, Team Fortress, started as a Quake mod built by a small team in Australia, and Valve bought its developers and the rights to the game in 1998. Team Fortress 2 came out in 2007 and it received a few good years of updates and support. Today, the game has a devoted player base, but it’s riddled with bots and it’s unclear whether anyone at Valve is consistently working on TF2.

Portal began life as a student project called Narbacular Drop, and Valve hired its developers after seeing their demo in 2005. Portal officially came out in 2007, Portal 2 landed in 2011, and both were instant classics. There hasn’t been a whiff of another Portal game since, even though one of the series writers, Erik Wolpaw, really, really wants Valve to make Portal 3.

Of all the Valve franchises that have been left to wither and die, I miss Left 4 Dead the most. Turtle Rock started building Left 4 Dead in 2005, and by the time that came out in 2008, Valve had purchased the studio and its IP outright. Citing slow progress and poor communication, Turtle Rock left Valve before helping the company make Left 4 Dead 2 in 2009. Turtle Rock went on to release Evolve in 2015 and Black 4 Blood in 2021, and is now owned by Tencent. Meanwhile, I’m here, dreaming of that third Left 4 Dead game.

In 2010, Valve secured the rights to the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients, and hired its lead developer. Dota 2 came out in 2013 and became an incredibly successful esports title. Now, eleven years later, Dota 2 players are complaining about a lack of support and communication from Valve, especially in comparison with games like League of Legends.

Counter-Strike has received the most attention from Valve in recent memory, with the rollout of Counter-Strike 2 late last year. The original Counter-Strike was a Half-Life mod, and Valve acquired it and its developers in 2000. Counter-Strike 2 is the fifth installment in the series, released 11 years after its predecessor, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. After this recent attention, it’s about time for Valve to start ignoring the Counter-Strike community again.

Valve has quietly continued to make acquisitions. In 2018, Valve hired all 12 developers at Firewatch studio Campo Santo, who were at the time working on a very-rad-looking new game, In the Valley of Gods. This could turn out to be another spectacular, genre-defining franchise for Valve’s resume of acquired IP, but there have been no updates from that team in nearly six years. In April 2018, Campo Santo said they were still building In the Valley of Gods at Valve, and promised regular blog posts and quarterly reviews. And then, nothing.

Matt Wood worked at Valve for 17 years, where he helped build Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, CS:GO and both episodes of Half-Life 2. He left in 2019 and is now preparing to release his first independent game, Little Kitty, Big City. Wood told me in 2023 that Valve was “sitting on their laurels a little bit, and it’s like they weren’t really challenging themselves, taking risks or doing anything. Steam’s making a lot of money so they don’t really have to.”

Of course, Little Kitty, Big City is coming to Steam.

Steam’s unwavering success has helped turn Valve into a senior resort community for computer science nerds, where game developers go to live out their final years surrounded by fantastic amenities, tinkering and unsupervised. It’s a lovely scenario. At least developers there aren’t getting laid off — and I mean that sincerely. Steam is a great service, and Valve seems at least temporarily committed to the Steam Deck hardware, which is very cool. Still, I miss the games that Valve devoured. I have to wonder if the developers there do, too.

Valve’s treatment of legendary franchises and developers raises questions about its commitment to… anything, including Steam. What happens if Valve decides to pivot, or sell, or Gabe Newell retires and blows everything up? What would happen if Steam shut down? As a service with native DRM, all of our games would instantly disappear. Just like all those game devs.

This week's news

Playdate update

Playdate is one of my favorite gaming gadgets of the past decade, not only because it has an incredibly cute crank, but also because its low-res screen belies a buffet of strange and beautiful experiences pushing the boundaries of traditional play. Panic held a showcase for new Playdate games last week and the headliner was Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight, which is coming out on March 12. Pope is the developer of Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn, two incredible games, and Mars After Midnight is set in the doorway of a crowded alien colony. Pope’s games were made for Playdate, this time literally.

Yuzu and Citra are gone

A week after Nintendo threatened to sue the creators of Yuzu into oblivion, the popular Switch emulator has been pulled off the market as part of a $2.4 million settlement. To make matters worse for the emulation community, the lead developer of Yuzu announced that they are also killing the 3DS emulator Citra. Both emulators were open-source, so it’s likely we’ll see Citra at least maintained by the broader community. It’s not clear whether anyone is willing to take on a fork of Yuzu and risk a lawsuit.

Bonus Content

• Ghost of Tsushima will hit PC on May 16. It comes with all of its DLCs, and Sony says it’ll run on anything from high-end PCs to portable PC gaming devices.

• Capcom's Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is apparently coming out this year on PC, PlayStation and Xbox. It debuted at Summer Game Fest and looks pretty unique.

• Hades hits iOS as a Netflix mobile exclusive on March 19. There are currently no plans for an Android version, which sucks for me.

Now Playing

I found This Bed We Made while doing research for the GLAAD Gaming report I covered a few weeks ago, and I’m incredibly pleased about it. This Bed We Made is an exploration and narrative-driven game set in a 1950s hotel, and it’s absolutely oozing drama and mystery. The writing is fantastic, the characters are complex, and there’s a thrilling storyline running through the whole thing. It’s available on PC and consoles now.

Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you a story about the old bugaboo we used to call DRM.

Digital Rights Management was the beast under every gamer’s bed in the mid-2000s, an invisible bit of software baked into game discs that dictated and tracked player behavior under the guise of preventing piracy. DRM software, like SecuROM, limited the times a game could be downloaded and forced players to regularly connect to the internet for authentication checks, at a time when less than half of American adults had reliable broadband connections. DRM features soured the releases of BioShock, Mass Effect and Spore, and by 2010, anti-piracy software had rendered Assassin’s Creed 2 and Splinter-Cell: Conviction unplayable. When Microsoft attempted to release the Xbox One with always-on DRM features in 2013, intense vitriol from fans forced the company to reverse its plans at the 11th hour. There were lawsuits. DRM was a curse word.

Meanwhile, Valve was building out Steam. When it landed in 2003, the digital PC storefront was designed to streamline the patch process for games like Counter-Strike and make it easier for Valve to implement anti-piracy and anti-cheat measures. Steam was made to be a DRM machine. In 2004, with the release of Half-Life 2, Valve made Steam a requirement for every player, and even those who’d purchased new, physical copies of the game had to boot up the launcher first. There was some low-level grumbling, but PC players were used to being lab rats, and Half-Life 2 was good enough to drown out the dissent. Steam adoption skyrocketed. So, naturally, Valve turned it into a store for third-party games.

While other publishers were fighting with players over DRM features in individual titles and consoles, Steam quietly added dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of games each year. Today, Steam has 132 million monthly active users and an estimated 103,000 games, more than any other mainstream distribution service. Nearly all of these titles are playable only while connected to Steam — even after paying full price, even after downloading, even in offline mode. This has done nothing to stop Steam from becoming more essential to more players each year.

“Competition is good, but the PC market has no competition,” Super Meat Boy co-creator Tommy Refenes told Engadget in 2018. “There is only Steam.”

The widespread adoption of anti-piracy software marked an era in video games where players felt like they didn’t really own the products they were buying. And then, this practice became normal. Broadband saturation continued to climb, the market for physical media dissolved into pixelated dust and streaming entertainment media found its foothold. Today, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Epic Games and most major publishers have their own digital stores with proprietary DRM features. However, Steam is entrenched as the industry’s largest DRM machine because it’s the most popular digital games storefront, period. And if the last 20 years are any indication, that’s not going to change any time soon.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of our collective Steam libraries, representing trillions of dollars in purchased games, expelling a dusty sigh of relief. Because if Steam disappears, all of our games do too.

It’s a chilling thought — Steam’s demise would enact immediate, catastrophic chaos across the video game industry, gutting players’ libraries and cutting off one of the most direct points of sale for developers of all sizes. Steam feels too big to fail, and Valve operates it as such. Valve is a private company valued at $6.5 billion in 2021, and CEO Gabe Newell, himself, is a billionaire. The studio is similar to Nintendo in that it’s able to ignore gaming trends and carry on doing whatever it wants at any given time, while Steam prints money and its most ardent fans cheer the studio on with friendly memes. Hail, Gaben!

Steam popularized the 70/30 revenue split, giving developers on the platform 70 percent of the money their games generate and pocketing the rest. Apple and Google copied this formula with their mobile app stores. When it debuted in 2018, the Epic Games Store shaped its entire marketing campaign around taking on Steam and dismantling its rev-share ratio, claiming it was exploitative and unfair, especially to indies. Epic offered every developer an aggressive split of 88/12, and CEO Tim Sweeney literally dared Valve to match it.

Valve barely blinked. The studio shifted its Steam payout schedule slightly, offering a 75 percent cut on games that made more than $10 million, and 80 percent on anything that brought in more than $50 million. Epic eventually shifted its attention away from Valve and moved to a more vulnerable target in the rev-share space: Apple.

“If you were running a store without competition and you were making billions of dollars a year, how much time and energy would you dedicate to making it better?” Refenes asked in 2018, during the launch of the Epic Games Store. “How much money would you spend to improve the experience for everyone that uses it, if the end result is you would make the same or possibly less money? My answer is, The minimum amount of time, effort and money required.”

Valve has become more hands-off with Steam as it’s aged. In the platform’s early days, developers would pitch their games to actual people at Valve, who would launch a handful of projects on the storefront every week, ensuring plenty of attention for each title. For small studios, getting a game on Steam was like hitting the jackpot. This changed in 2012, when Valve implemented Greenlight, a process that allowed players to choose which games would make it to Steam (after developers submitted a $100 entry fee). Greenlight eventually evolved into Early Access — a system still around today and the standard on other platforms too — and the number of games on Steam rose astronomically in just a few years.

In 2013, Steam added 435 new games, according to Steamdb. In 2017, it added 6,947 games. This was a tumultuous period for developers, especially those who started production when Steam was a curated space, but ended up releasing their games into an unregulated and oversaturated marketplace.

Indie developers Ben Ruiz and Matthew Wegner began building the stylish brawler Aztez in 2010, and it received a ton of pre-release hype. Aztez finally went live on Steam on August 1, 2017, but was immediately lost in the crowd.

“There were 40 other games that launched on August 1,” Wegner told Engadget in October 2017.

Ruiz added, “If I was paying attention to Steam, maybe I wouldn’t be so blindsided by what happened, but I’m also not necessarily sure what I would’ve done differently. If I’d have known like, oh, it’s a saturated market now — what the fuck do you do? …There’s a billion indie games that come out on Steam every single day.”

Today, Steam is a self-sustained game-distributing machine with more than 100,000 titles and counting. Getting on Steam no longer equates instant success for any developer, but it’s a necessary aspect of most release plans. There are other options: GOG, operated by The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 publisher CD Projekt, is one of just a few digital distributors committed to DRM-free game purchases; large publishers like Ubisoft, EA and Microsoft all have Steam-like storefronts and the Epic Games Store has a superior revenue split for developers. Still, giants like Microsoft and EA find it necessary to simultaneously release their games on Steam, handing Valve a cut of each purchase in the process.

As a private company raking in endless piles of Steam cash, Valve has the freedom to operate on its own timeline. The company famously has a flat hierarchy with no strict management structure, and developers are encouraged to work on pet projects or just generally follow their hearts.

As a result, Valve is an incredibly rich company that doesn’t produce much. Its games are legendary, but there’s a running joke in the industry that Valve can’t count to three: Half-Life 2: Episode Two and Team Fortress 2 came out in 2007. Left 4 Dead 2 came out in 2009. Portal 2 came out in 2011. In 2020, the VR game Half-Life: Alyx landed as an entrée into Valve’s Index headset, which came out the previous year and cost $1,000. The studio is still ignoring an extremely disruptive bot invasion that began consuming TF2 in 2020, despite consistent pleas for support from dedicated players. In December 2023, Valve replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with Counter-Strike 2, interrupting an ESL Pro League tournament in the process.

Meanwhile, many of the writers who helped create Valve’s most iconic franchises left the studio around 2017, after years of inactivity. In 2018, Valve hired all 12 developers at Firewatch studio Campo Santo, who were at the time working on a very-rad-looking new game, In the Valley of Gods. There have been no updates from that team since.

Steam’s unwavering success has helped turn Valve into a senior resort community for computer science nerds, where game developers go to live out their final years surrounded by fantastic amenities, tinkering and unsupervised. It’s a lovely scenario, really. It’s just not particularly productive.

Matt T. Wood worked at Valve for 17 years, helping to build Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2, CS:GO and both episodes of Half-Life 2. He left in 2019 and is now preparing to release his first independent game, Little Kitty, Big City.

“Valve talks a lot about, like, you can do anything you want,” Wood told Engadget in 2023. “And it’s like, well — that’s never true. Valve has a direction, and they have a trajectory. And so, for me, it was realizing that the direction that Valve was going in was not a place that I wanted to be long-term. …They were sitting on their laurels a little bit, and it’s like they weren’t really challenging themselves, taking risks or doing anything. Steam’s making a lot of money so they don’t really have to.”

Little Kitty, Big City is coming to Steam, of course.

Valve is supremely skilled at making money off of other people’s work, and Steam epitomizes this trait. The company did the same thing with Steam Machines back in 2014 too: Valve created a Steam Controller, but it never actually built a Steam Machine. Instead, Valve licensed its name to PC manufacturers, and these companies built boxes to beam Steam into people’s living rooms. Valve offloaded manufacturing costs while collecting market data about actual demand for quasi-PC, quasi-console hardware. Valve never ended up making its own box (unless you view the Steam Deck as a Frankenstein hybrid of the Steam Controller and Steam Machines, which I do).

The Steam Deck is the most exciting thing to come out of Valve in decades, and that’s largely because the company actually seems dedicated to improving and supporting it. Valve seemingly gave up on VR hardware after the Index, but less than two years after the release of the Steam Deck, Valve dropped an OLED version featuring a gorgeous screen and other improvements.

The Steam Deck is, of course, all about Steam. Just like Half-Life 2 was a clever ruse to get more people registered on Steam back in 2004, the Steam Deck is positioned to dominate the handheld PC market in 2024, and it comes with Steam installed.

Today, digital distribution is the backbone of the industry (which I guess makes DRM the spinal fluid), and Steam is the undisputed leader in this space.

Steam’s legacy is a vast and varied landscape of games serving millions of individual libraries, some thousands of titles deep — all of which can disappear with a snap if Valve decides to stop, sell or pivot. It’s a storefront that set the standard and refused to stop growing. It’s entire studios of artists and writers devoured, and beloved franchises left to rot. It’s a stranglehold that allows Valve to ignore market pressure from consumers, creators and competitors.

Behind the curtain of the video game industry, there’s Steam, constantly churning, powering everything.

To celebrate Engadget's 20th anniversary, we're taking a look back at the products and services that have changed the industry since March 2, 2004.

Let's all take a breath. Layoffs are still churning in the video game industry, even as the frigid winter air is beginning to thaw. Amid the turmoil of these past few months, there are still things to be excited about: new games and hardware, the evolution of established franchises, and plenty of small teams building surprises to shake up the status quo. Look at all of the rad things happening over at Playdate for just one example of positive momentum in video games (we'll talk more about this next week).

Breathe in, breathe out.

Now, let's dive back into the news cycle:

This week's stories

PlayStation layoffs

The layoffs crisis in video games isn’t slowing down, and the latest company to announce drastic staffing cuts is PlayStation. Sony on Tuesday fired roughly 900 people from its PlayStation division and fully shut down its London Studio, which had been building a co-op multiplayer game for PS5. Insomniac, Naughty Dog and Guerrilla all lost employees, despite being behind some of the platform’s most successful games in recent memory. First-party studio Firesprite was also hit by the layoffs, and it reportedly had to cancel a live-service Twisted Metal project. It’s barely March, but already more than 7,000 video game workers have been laid off in 2024; last year, more than 9,000 people in the industry lost their jobs to layoffs.

Happy Pokémon Day!

February 27 was Pokémon Day, and in celebration, Nintendo revealed two new games: Pokémon Legends Z-A and Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. Pokémon Legends Z-A is set in Lumiose City, which you might remember from Pokémon X and Y on the 3DS, and it looks like it features Mega Evolutions. Pokémon Legends Z-A is due to hit Switch in 2025. The other title, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, is a mobile game that should land on Android and iOS devices by the end of the year. It’s exactly what it sounds like — Nintendo is putting the physical card-opening mechanic inside your phone, complete with flashy animations and addictive sound effects when you rip off the digital packaging. You’ll also be able to engage in quick battles. Nintendo has clarified that Pocket will not have NFTs, but it is described as “free to start,” so expect microtransactions.

Random PR roundup

It’s been a strange and slow week here in Engadget video game land, so I thought we’d have some fun this episode. As tech reporters, we receive ridiculous emails from startups and PR agencies literally every day, and even though we don’t end up covering many of the proposed products, some of the messages themselves deserve a moment in the spotlight. Many of the pitches we get are just silly or tone deaf, but some of them are outright dystopian. And honestly, I thought you all might enjoy seeing some of the weirdness that hits our inboxes.

This is all meant in good fun — I appreciate the communications teams who are just trying to sell their stuff in creative ways. The real enemy here, as always, is capitalism.

So, here are some emails that recently found their way into my inbox and made me go wut:

GameScent - New Groundbreaking Device Enhances Player Immersion by Releasing Gameplay Corresponding Scents

“As players dive into a game, GameScent’s patent-pending adaptor captures audio in real-time. These real-time audio cues are processed by GameScent's innovative AI to release scents that correspond with the on-screen action. Inhale the smoky aroma of battle, the exhilarating scent of speeding race cars, the calming fragrance of a forest, or the fresh smell of rain after a storm.”

Unsurprisingly, this little doodad comes with replaceable scent cartridges, though it's unclear how to actually buy those at the moment. Scents include gunfire, explosion, racing cars, blood, sports arena and other brotastic flavors.

Is this... cool? There's definitely a fun idea here about the future of immersion, right? Or I've completely lost the plot. Either could be true.

Seeking Products for Pickleball Stories? (Samples Available)

Ma'am, this is Engadget.

Deconstructeam Delivers a Valentine's Day Surprise of Cosmic Proportions

This was for the game The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, and the surprise was a huge dildo. I thought the whole email was cute, actually — it was tasteful and coyly advertised a giveaway in partnership with a well-known adult toy company. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood is a sexy game and it stars a muscular behemoth the size of a planet, so it all made sense. It just didn’t fit in our general news feed, ya know?

(Story Idea:) Here’s Doom Running On A Robotic Lawn Mower: Yes, A Robotic Lawn Mower! (You Have To See It To Believe It!) (Video Included)

"I am reaching out with a great story that is sure to go viral… This spring, Husqvarna will make the iconic 1993 video game DOOM, available to play on the company’s robotic lawn mowers."

I find this email charming because it’s just a traditional, infomercial-style email with lots of unnecessary exclamation points and parenthesis. I respect it. But seriously, are we still doing this Doom thing? Next you’ll be asking me if this lawn mower can run Crysis and making jokes about Leeroy Jenkins, and I’m just here in 2024, begging for some new references.

The best part of this one is the fact that, after I added it to my list of silly emails, we actually hit this as news on Engadget dot com. Who's the joke now? (It's me).

Meet My Regina | PC Preview – Dickhead-Destroying Extravaganza Cookie Cutter

“I’ve got something to show you, Jessica.

She’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever held between my legs.

She’s small but tough and can take a beating.

And everyone knows she’s smart because she has a British accent.

She’ll giggle if you tickle her just right.

And she even glows in the dark!

Are you ready to meet her?

Well, are you?

Don’t be shy now.

Good. Well, here she is!”

I asked to be removed from this list.

Bonus Content

• In more layoffs news, Until Dawn studio Supermassive Games fired about a third of its workforce, or roughly 90 employees, and the team is reorganizing. Also, indie studio Die Gut Fabrik, which created Sportsfriends, Johann Sebastian Joust and Saltsea Chronicles, has halted production amid funding issues and developers there are looking for other jobs.

• Nintendo is suing Yuzu, a popular and long-running emulator that allows players to put their Switch games on other platforms. Nintendo argues that the app is "facilitating piracy at a colossal scale,” and says it illegally circumvents DMCA protections. Nintendo wants Yuzu shut down and the company is seeking damages.

• Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth finally comes out on February 29 and our review from Mat Smith is live now. He’s a really big Final Fantasy nerd, and he really liked Rebirth.

Now Playing

Home Safety Hotline is the perfect game to play at your desk, on the PC, so you can let the mid-90s computer interface fully engulf your senses. In this game, you take calls from people complaining about pests and paranormal creatures invading their homes, and using a detailed reference guide, you identify what’s going on and help them sort it out. Or, you get it wrong and get fired while a family of three screams for their lives on the other end of the line. There’s also a broader meta-horror unfurling in the background, and I’m having a lovely, spooky time sorting through all of it. Home Safety Hotline is out now on Steam.

No one is suggesting that Microsoft should stop making video game hardware. What we've been considering, here in the dark and twisted Engadget Slack channels, is whether Microsoft should keep making generationally distinct consoles in the traditional hardware cycle. Basically, does Xbox need a box? Microsoft has been busy building the foundation of a platform-agnostic, cloud-first future for video games, and it consistently falls behind both Sony and Nintendo in the console race. So why are executives trying to get us excited about a superpowered 10th-gen Xbox?

Maybe Microsoft is hesitant to reveal a drastic ecosystem change after the chaos around the Xbox One and its always-on DRM features in 2013. After an outpouring of negative feedback at the idea of a persistently online console, Xbox had to rapidly reverse its launch plans, while Sony took the PlayStation 4 on an early victory lap. This fumble set the stage for the next decade of console sales, and it's a lesson that would stick with any studio — especially one that's trying to make streaming and cloud gaming the norm.

That's understandable, but it doesn't change the fact that accessible, affordable (and probably handheld) hardware makes a lot of sense for Microsoft's current vision and investments. More than an expensive console, at least.

This week's stories

A delicious Elden Ring entrée

Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree expansion will come to PlayStation, Xbox and PC on June 21. This one has been a long time coming: FromSoftware announced the DLC in February 2023, leaving plenty of time for players to get super psyched for more masochism. A new, three-minute trailer for Shadow of the Erdtree shows off sprawling locations and epic bosses inspired by chaotic combinations of animals, insects and elements. The expansion costs $40 and pre-orders are live now.

Borderlands by Cate Blanchett

I’m just gonna come out and say it: I think Cate Blanchett makes a great Lilith. The first trailer for this summer’s Borderlands movie is out and it looks like Mad Max meets Guardians of the Galaxy — which is Borderlands in a nutshell anyway. The film stars Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Hart, Jack Black and Ariana Greenblatt, it’s directed by Eli Roth, and it’s due to hit theaters on August 9.

Xbox should exit the console business

Last Thursday, Xbox executives made it clear that they weren’t about to abandon the traditional hardware market, and they teased a next-generation console that will represent “the largest technical leap you will have ever seen.” That’s cool, but considering Microsoft’s position in the industry, it doesn’t feel like Xbox needs to be making consoles any more.

After acquiring half of the industry, Microsoft is now a mega-publisher of games, with over 30 in-house studios. Many of these development teams are world-renowned, with rich, multi-platform histories. It’s also the operator of one of the largest game subscription services in the world, Game Pass.

Game Pass grew wildly during the pandemic, but subscriptions have stagnated. In court documents from April 2022, Microsoft revealed it had 21.9 million Game Pass subscribers and 11.7 million Xbox Live Gold members across its consoles, for a total user base of 33.6 million. Last week, Microsoft revealed Game Pass has 34 million subscribers, which includes PC Game Pass and Game Pass Core, the new name for Xbox Live Gold. Even assuming PC Game Pass had zero subscribers in 2022, this means Game Pass subscriptions grew just 1 percent over the past 22 months. The more likely scenario is that the total number of subscriptions actually shrank over this period — though it’s at least possible that more people are paying for the full-price service than before.

Microsoft’s plan for this console generation was clear for all to see: Sell hardware and upsell a subscription service populated by its own games. Turns out, it’s tough to sell Game Pass to someone without an Xbox, and not enough people are buying Xboxes. Microsoft stopped reporting hardware numbers during the Xbox One era, but analysts peg the combined sales of the Xbox Series consoles at around 25 million. Meanwhile, Sony has sold more than 50 million PS5s, and Nintendo has sold around 140 million Switches. This gap appears to be growing every day, and it’s far more pronounced in Japan and Europe than in the United States. If Microsoft wants to grow Game Pass, it seems like it’ll have to be on platforms outside of Xbox.

This week, Xbox confirmed plans to bring four formerly exclusive games to PlayStation and Nintendo consoles, and for years executives have been pitching an ecosystem where Xbox — and Game Pass — is playable on anything with a screen. Microsoft has a powerful cloud network that even Sony uses for game streaming, plus it owns more than 30 studios. Long-term, Microsoft is positioning Xbox to be a platform-agnostic, software-publishing powerhouse with the industry’s most stable streaming network at its back.

In this landscape, it’s surprising to hear Xbox talk about building a hyper-powered console for the next generation. I’m not advocating for Microsoft to ditch the hardware market — it makes sense for the company to focus on handheld devices and affordable streaming boxes that support Game Pass and cloud play. Xbox is working toward a future where its games and Game Pass are available everywhere, which raises a clear question about its current plans: Why bring an expensive next-gen console to a war that is actually about software, subscriptions and streaming?

Bonus Content

• Sony president Hiroki Totoki told investors last week that the company would be more aggressive in bringing its PlayStation titles to PC.

• Xbox has confirmed which of its games are coming to other consoles: Grounded and Pentiment will come to PlayStation and Switch, while Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush will only arrive on PS5. Both Sea of Thieves and Grounded will support crossplay across all platforms.

• Now for a totally different port: The Pokémon Company has scheduled an anniversary stream for next Tuesday at 9AM ET. It might be a bit early for a gen-10 reveal, but a Switch remake of Black & White seems like a safe bet.

Now Playing

If you’re a Switch or PlayStation player curious about all of these Xbox games coming to your consoles, I have one easy and clear recommendation: play Pentiment. Obsidian’s narrative-driven, tapestry-looking game is a surprise and a delight, and I’ve had a lot of fun playing it on Game Pass recently. It's out now on PS4, PS5 and Switch, and I’m sure it’s just as great on those platforms.

The first Activision Blizzard game to join Xbox Game Pass will be Diablo IV, and it's due to land on March 28. The move means Diablo IV will be playable on Xbox and PC at no extra charge to Game Pass members — of which there are 34 million, Xbox announced today. 

This is just the first step in Xbox's broader plan to offer Activision Blizzard titles in its monthly subscription service, now that Microsoft fully owns the studio.

"There will be even more to play as we begin to fulfill our commitment to offer Activision and Blizzard games with Game Pass, both new releases and classic games from its legendary catalog," the Xbox Wire reads. Xbox plans to share more information about additional Activision Blizzard titles hitting Game Pass "soon."

Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard in October 2023, after nearly two years of antitrust investigations from authorities in the United States and abroad. The deal was worth nearly $69 billion, the largest in Microsoft's history. As part of negotiations with regulators, Microsoft agreed to offload the streaming rights for Activision Blizzard games onto Ubisoft, opening the door for their inclusion in Game Pass, Ubisoft+ and other cloud services.

In the US, the FTC is continuing to investigate the acquisition and recently accused Microsoft of misrepresenting its plans for Activision Blizzard following a round of layoffs in January that affected 1,900 employees across the company's gaming segments.

There aren't enough games with queer characters and themes — and GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ media advocacy group, has the statistics to prove it. GLAAD's first annual report on the video game industry found that nearly 20 percent of all players in the United States identify as LGBTQ, yet just 2 percent of games contain characters and storylines relevant to this community. The report highlights three critical truths: Representation matters a lot to LGBTQ players, the remaining gaming audience largely welcomes these themes, and new generations of gamers are only becoming more open to queer content.

GLAAD has the numbers, so let's take a deeper look alongside a few bits of gaming news from the past week:

This week's stories

Xbox rumor mill

Xbox is preparing to address a bunch of rumors on Thursday about the company’s plans to bring its exclusive games to PlayStation, Switch and other platforms. The rumors have centered on major releases like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Starfield, but according to The Verge’s Tom Warren, the first titles scheduled to make the leap are Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment. Nothing has been confirmed yet, but Xbox’s top gaming executives, Phil Spencer, Sarah Bond and Matt Booty, will chat about all of it on the next installment of the Official Xbox Podcast, which drops at 3PM ET on Thursday.

Ubisoft pledges to be good again

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said on an investor call last week that the studio is officially going to make good games again. Talking about the company’s positive third quarter, Guillemot said it “marks the beginning of our turnaround to consistently creating and delivering high-quality, long-lasting games,” which sounds like a tacit admission that Ubisoft hasn’t been producing great games recently. This is something I’ve talked about a lot — it feels like the studio has been coasting on NFTs and free-to-play mobile titles since a period of financial turmoil in 2015, and I’m actually excited to see a return to its weird, more focused roots. Assassin’s Creed Mirage and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown were great first steps. Ubisoft plans to reveal more details about Star Wars Outlaws, the new Assassin’s Creed set in Japan and its mobile lineup in May.

Gaming has never been gayer

“The game industry is out of step with contemporary media in terms of LGBTQ representation, and it is failing its LGBTQ customers.” That’s one of the breakout lines from GLAAD’s first annual gaming report, which analyzes the state of the video game industry from the perspective of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender players in the United States.

In its survey, GLAAD — the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy group — found that 17 percent of the total gaming audience identifies as LGBTQ, or about one in every five players. This figure falls in line with statistics for Gen Z. Still, just 2 percent of all games on the market contain LGBTQ content, a saturation level that falls miserably short of those in film, TV and other forms of media.

GLAAD ran the numbers itself: In November 2023, the Xbox store had 146 games with LGBTQ content, while PlayStation offered a list of 90 titles with these themes, and the Switch eShop had 50 games tagged LGBT. Steam had 2,302 English-language games under its LGBTQ+ tag, but that figure dropped to 1,506 when filtering out “adult only sexual content” titles. All told, queer games composed roughly 2 percent of the stores’ libraries.

In contrast, GLAAD found that almost one in three films from the top distributors in 2022 contained an LGBTQ character, and LGBTQ characters appeared as series regulars in 10 percent of primetime scripted broadcast shows in 2022 and 2023. GLAAD Associate Director of Gaming Blair Durkee said that, with queer representation at just 2 percent, gaming remains woefully behind other entertainment industries.

The report also tried to identify why this gap exists. It suggested some developers simply don’t think about including LGBTQ people, or they worry about pushing away a core audience that they assume is hostile toward LGBTQ content. However, the report says, “This imagined core audience is a myth,” considering LGBTQ people compose nearly 20 percent of the market on their own. Critically, GLAAD found that more than 60 percent of non-LGBTQ players weren’t bothered by queer protagonists in their games, and 70 percent said they were fine with titles that presented the option to play as an LGBTQ character.

So this type of representation doesn’t bother most straight, cisgender people, but it means a lot to LGBTQ players. 72 percent of LGBTQ players said that seeing characters of their gender identity or sexual orientation portrayed well made them feel better about themselves, and this number was even higher among younger players. Overall, 36 percent of LGBTQ players reported that video games helped them discover their sexual orientation or gender identity, and this percentage rose to 41 percent among LGBTQ players of color. More than 40 percent of queer players said video games helped them cope with a lack of acceptance in the real world. These issues are more prominent than ever amid an avalanche of anti-LGBTQ legislation: Already in the first few weeks of 2024, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed or passed in the US, a majority of which target transgender youth.

While GLAAD found that 66 percent of all LGBTQ gamers said they use gaming to express themselves in ways they don’t feel comfortable doing in the real world, this statistic rose to 75 percent for players living in states with proposed or active anti-LGBTQ bills.

The real key is that more gamers identify as LGBTQ than ever before, and resistance toward these themes is waning with each new generation of players. I’m part of the LGBTQ community, and I can say that overall, the GLAAD report rings true. It feels like the industry is saturated with games that weren’t made for me, and there’s an immense joy that comes with discovering a new title that speaks to my own life or lets me play in a world that doesn’t involve traditionally straight-male power fantasies. Queer people have fantasies, too, and the GLAAD report highlights how forgotten these stories have been in games. It’s not a matter of LGBTQ people asking for all games to be gay — we just want proportional access to fantasy and escape. Personally, I’d love to see more LGBTQ people in positions of authority in video games, a recommendation that GLAAD makes in its report as well.

And really quickly because I can already hear the keyboards melting: Woke ideas will not destroy the gaming industry, but stagnation will, and as the GLAAD report points out, we’re much closer to that reality than anything else.

Bonus content

• FromSoftware's parent company has acquired Acquire, the team behind Octopath Traveller.

• The FTC accused Microsoft of lying about its intentions with Activision Blizzard after enacting a huge round of layoffs at the end of January, and the FTC is continuing to investigate potential antitrust issues around the acquisition. Microsoft responded by saying its plans changed, so there.

• Microsoft’s gaming layoffs included 86 jobs at Skylanders developer Toys for Bob, effectively shutting down the studio.

Now playing

Children of the Sun is a dark and trippy puzzle game that makes shooting a mechanic of elegance. Players find an angle, set up the shot and then control the path of a single bullet as it takes out every enemy on-screen. This is my kind of shooter. Children of the Sun is available on Steam as a demo only for now, and it comes from solo developer René Rother, published by Devolver Digital.

“The game industry is out of step with contemporary media in terms of LGBTQ representation, and it is failing its LGBTQ customers.”

This sentiment has felt true for years, and now the statistics in GLAAD’s first annual gaming report prove it. The media watchdog and LGBTQ advocacy group today published GLAAD Gaming: The State of LGBTQ Inclusion in Video Games, offering a comprehensive breakdown of the industry from the perspective of queer players and developers.

According to GLAAD, 17 percent of the total gaming audience identifies as LGBTQ, or about one in every five players. This figure falls in line with statistics for Generation Z. Still, just 2 percent of all games on the market contain LGBTQ content, a saturation level that falls miserably short of those in film, TV and other forms of entertainment media. GLAAD found that 28.5 percent of films from the top 10 distributors in 2022 contained an LGBTQ character, and LGBTQ characters appeared as series regulars at a rate of 10.6 percent on primetime scripted broadcast shows in 2022 and 2023.

For the gaming stats, GLAAD ran the numbers: In November 2023, the Xbox store had 146 games with LGBTQ content, while PlayStation offered a list of 90 titles with LGBTQ themes, and Nintendo’s Switch eShop had 50 games tagged LGBT. Steam had 2,302 English-language games under its LGBTQ+ tag, but that figure dropped to 1,506 when filtering out “adult only sexual content” titles. Together, these games composed less than 2 percent of the Xbox, Playstation and Switch digital libraries, and they made up just 1.7 percent of Steam’s offerings (without the adult-only content). For context, it’s estimated that about 1 percent of all games released in the 2010s included LGBTQ themes.

“Despite the significant progress we’ve seen, gaming remains woefully behind other forms of entertainment media when it comes to representation,” GLAAD Associate Director of Gaming Blair Durkee said.

GLAAD’s report identified the following reasons behind the lack of LGBTQ representation in video games:

“Some reasons for exclusion are passive. Often, game companies have not considered that they should represent LGBTQ people, nor do they see us as a major part of the core gaming audience. Some reasons for exclusion are active. Companies worry about pushing away a core audience that they assume are resistant or hostile to LGBTQ content. This imagined core audience, however, is a myth, and it is one of the reasons it was paramount for GLAAD to create this gaming report. LGBTQ gamers are a significant part of the existing active gamer market and, by and large, non-LGBTQ gamers are not nearly as resistant to this content as many assume.”

More than 60 percent of non-LGBTQ respondents said they weren’t bothered by LGBTQ protagonists and NPCs in their games, and 70 percent said they were fine with titles that presented the option to customize a bisexual, gay or lesbian character. Resistance toward these themes is waning with each new generation of players, GLAAD found.

One of the report’s key takeaways is the idea that developers seem to be building games for an outdated stereotype, rather than the reality of the market. Straight, white, cisgender men definitely play video games, but the actual gaming audience is much more diverse and it’s only become more variable.

“The lack of LGBTQ representation in video games is often explained by the assumption that the stereotypical core video game consumer is a white, heterosexual, cisgender man between the ages 18 and 34,” GLAAD said. “However, our data shows that 17 percent of active gamers are LGBTQ, a 70 percent increase from the 10 percent counted in Neilsen’s 2020 report.”

This figure is even higher for younger players, the next generation of gamers. Roughly 25 percent of players under the age of 35 identify as LGBTQ, a higher concentration than reported in the human population as a whole. This trend drives home another conclusion of GLAAD’s gaming report — the idea that LGBTQ players are drawn to games in particular because they offer an immersive outlet for expression, experimentation and escape.

“The interactive nature of games, the opportunity to build community in gaming, and the long history of LGBTQ game industry professionals makes this medium a uniquely powerful tool for LGBTQ people to safely discover, connect, and express themselves,” GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said. “Particularly for LGBTQ gamers, gaming can not only be an escape and source of entertainment, but also an important outlet of self-expression.”

In the GLAAD survey, 72 percent of LGBTQ players said that seeing characters of their gender identity or sexual orientation portrayed well made them feel better about themselves, and this number was even higher among younger players. Overall, 36 percent of LGBTQ players reported that video games helped them discover their sexual orientation or gender identity, and this percentage rose to 41 percent among LGBTQ players of color. Notably, GLAAD found that gamers of color are less resistant to titles with queer content than white players.

More than 40 percent of LGBTQ players said video games helped them cope with a lack of acceptance in the real world. At the same time, 51 percent of LGBTQ players said they wanted video games to do more in terms of inclusion, and 74 percent wished for more opportunities to explore and express their true selves in games.

“Games are a medium in which players can be anything, but the game industry has continued to rely on very narrow representational options,” GLAAD said.

Transgender content faced the most resistance among all respondents. Concerning LGBTQ players, 63 percent said they were more likely to buy a game that supports a bisexual, gay or lesbian protagonist, while 46 percent said the same about a transgender main character. However, 94 percent of LGBTQ respondents said they were just as likely or more likely to purchase a game that includes the option to embody a transgender protagonist. Among non-LGBTQ gamers, 80 percent responded the same way.

The importance of representation in video games has only grown amid an avalanche of anti-LGBTQ violence and legislation in the United States. In the first weeks of 2024, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed or passed in the US, a majority of which target transgender youths. This is already a dramatic spike from 2022 and 2021, both record-setting years in terms of anti-LGBTQ legislation.

Queer players are more likely than their counterparts to use gaming as an escape, according to GLAAD, and this is even more true for people living in states that have proposed or passed anti-LGBTQ legislation. While 66 percent of all LGBTQ gamers said they use gaming to express themselves in ways they don’t feel comfortable doing in the real world, this statistic rose to 75 percent for players living in states with proposed or active anti-LGBTQ bills.

“For these LGBTQ gamers, gaming is necessary to cope with real-world discrimination and targeting,” GLAAD said in its report. “Game developers need to understand the role gaming plays for LGBTQ gamers in the United States and especially LGBTQ gamers in states where they are disproportionately targeted and attacked.”

Researchers offered the following recommendations for increasing LGBTQ representation in games:

• The percentage of games with LGBTQ representation should be proportional to the share of gamers who are LGBTQ.

• Game developers should strive for representation that promotes inclusivity and acceptance.

• The game industry should take responsibility for making their communities more inclusive.

• The game industry should consult LGBTQ media content experts.

• LGBTQ game industry workers should be hired in positions of authority.

Amid all of the percentages, GLAAD identified a clear pattern in its first gaming report: Representation matters a lot to most LGBTQ players, and the majority of the remaining audience isn't too bothered by queer content. Sometimes, it's even preferred.

“We are nearly invisible in game representations, despite being a significant percentage of gamers,” Ellis, GLAAD’s president, said.

The report’s survey data was collected in collaboration with Nielsen Games and includes responses from 1,452 active PC and console players in the US, with a boost sample of LGBTQ gamers to ensure accuracy for the community-specific questions. The survey was distributed between June and August 2023.

One week after Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees in its gaming division, the Federal Trade Commission is accusing Microsoft of contradicting its pledge to allow Activision Blizzard to operate independently post-acquisition. The FTC filed a complaint in a federal appeals court on Wednesday, arguing that last week's downsizing, which affected employees of Activision Blizzard, "contradicts Microsoft’s representations in this proceeding." The FTC is asking for a temporary pause of Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard as it further investigates potential antitrust issues.

In its arguments to the FTC, Microsoft said it would treat Activision Blizzard as a vertical acquisition and suggested that it wouldn't need to institute layoffs, since there would be no redundancies. On January 30, Microsoft announced it was cutting 1,900 jobs across Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and Xbox after identifying "areas of overlap" specifically between Microsoft and Activision Blizzard. This is the core of the FTC's complaint.

"Microsoft’s recently-reported plan to eliminate 1,900 jobs in its video game division, including in its newly-acquired Activision unit, contradicts the foregoing representations it made to this Court," the FTC's complaint said. "Specifically, Microsoft reportedly has stated that the layoffs were part of an 'execution plan' that would reduce 'areas of overlap' between Microsoft and Activision, which is inconsistent with Microsoft’s suggestion to this Court that the two companies will operate independently post-merger."

Though the UK's Competition and Markets Authority approved Microsoft's $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard in October, the FTC hasn't seen satisfaction regarding its own antitrust concerns. The FTC is still challenging the acquisition, which means there's a possibility that Microsoft will be forced to divest all or part of Activision Blizzard.

In Wednesday's complaint, the FTC argued that the recent layoffs also undermine its own ability to order relief for employees who were negatively affected in the acquisition.

Microsoft's layoffs join an avalanche of mass firings in the video game industry, specifically in the past few months. An estimated 10,500 people in video games lost their jobs in 2023 — and already in 2024, 6,000 workers have been laid off.

The production pipeline for mainstream video games has always been hectic. The AAA factory is powered by rigid marketing plans and periods of soul-sucking crunch, and while this process has resulted in incredible games over the years, it's also been detrimental to developers' mental health and long-term job stability. Layoffs have long been baked into the video game industry, but in recent months, this trend has been running in overdrive, and it's happening at studios of all sizes.

This week's stories

Kojima Films

Hideo Kojima is partnering with Sony to build a new game that’s actually more like a movie. Of course, you could say this about any of Kojima’s games since Snatcher, but this time around, he’s doing the Hollywood thing on purpose. The new project is codenamed PHYSINT., and it’s a return to Kojima’s action-espionage roots, but it’s definitely not Metal Gear. Apparently it’s going to blur the boundaries between film and games, and it’ll take advantage of Sony’s connections in movies and music. Kojima Productions will start working on the new IP after finishing Death Stranding 2, which is set to come out in 2025. Kojima is also building OD, an Xbox movie — sorry, game — made in collaboration with horror director Jordan Peele.

Xbox on other platforms

It looks like Xbox is preparing to release some of its exclusive titles on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms. A handful of reports rolled out this week suggesting Starfield, Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Sea of Thieves and Gears of War are all slated to hit PS5 or Switch in the near future. Xbox head Phil Spencer neither confirmed nor denied the reports, and instead teased an event next week that should clarify the studio’s multiplatform plans.

Layoffs in 2024

Both Sony and Microsoft have delivered their first showcases of 2024, highlighting all of the big, shiny games coming out soon, like Hellblade 2, Avowed, the Silent Hill 2 remake and Stellar Blade. The trailers for these titles are as vibrant as ever and the marketing beats are just as breathless — but, man, it’s really hard to get excited about video games right now. Rampant layoffs have cast a shadow over the industry, and even if 2024 turns out to be a banner year for video game debuts, it still feels shitty.

In the first month of 2024, an estimated 6,000 people in the video game industry lost their jobs. This figure is steadily climbing and it’s building on a rash of layoffs in 2023, when an estimated 10,500 video game jobs were cut. I don’t want to just drop these numbers without context — 2022 saw about 8,500 layoffs and this was considered terrible. 2023 eclipsed this total and, just six weeks in, 2024 is on track to do the same.

Here are some stats from January alone: Riot Games laid off 530 people, or about 11 percent of its workforce, and closed down its experimental publishing label. Devolver Digital laid off 28 people at Artificer, a team it purchased in 2021. Dead by Daylight studio Behaviour Interactive lost 45 people. Sega of America fired 61 workers. Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees across Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax, and Xbox the same week that it became a $3 trillion company. Unity plans to drop 1,800 employees by March, and this is on top of the 1,000 jobs that the studio eliminated in 2023. Embracer Group gutted the team behind Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and laid off 97 people at Eidos Montreal, canceling a new Deus Ex game in the process. The holding company already terminated about 1,000 jobs in 2023 and its restructuring efforts are expected to last until March.

Recent layoffs have affected studios of all sizes, and they’re happening even as the industry’s leading companies grow financially. If it sounds like I’m repeating myself, that’s because I am — I reported on the layoffs crisis at the end of last year, and things have only become more concerning in the first weeks of 2024. The video game industry received an influx of attention and cash during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and today’s layoffs are a response to a period of unchecked growth and corporate consolidation.

All of this instability provides an unsettling backdrop for the hype coming out of the video game industry this year. It’s tough to get excited about Xbox’s Avowed when we know people lost their jobs during production, and it’s hard to enjoy Devolver’s next edgy showcase when it just downsized a studio it didn’t need to buy in the first place. 

At the same time, we’re seeing how unionization can help protect the people who make video games. Though dozens of people lost their jobs at Sega of America this year, the studio’s AEGIS-CWA union negotiated to save some roles and offer severance to temp workers. Unionization efforts have been on the rise since 2021, and the appeal of collective bargaining is only clarifying as the firing squads take aim.

Bonus Content

• The futuristic action-RPG Stellar Blade is coming out on April 26, exclusive to PS5.

• Dave the Diver, the pixelated non-indie game that somehow got nominated for Indie Game of the Year, is coming to PS4 and PS5 in April, and it’ll get Godzilla DLC in May.

• Johanna Faries has replaced Mike Ybarra as the president of Blizzard. Ybarra quit during Microsoft’s downsizing in January, and Faries was previously the head of Call of Duty under Activision.

Now Playing

Now that I can actually talk about it, I want to say that Persona 3 Reload is absolutely delicious. The Morning After host Mat Smith wrote our review, go give it a read if you’re a freak like us.