An anonymous and inventive Nintendo fan has recreated the Game Boy classic The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening with a twist that separates it from the official 2019 remaster. The widescreen Windows remake adds high frame rate support and lets you zoom out to view a larger portion — or even all — of Koholint Island. But the game may not last long as Nintendo has a habit of crushing copyright-infringing fan games, even when crafted lovingly and offered for free like this one.

Spotted on X (alongside a writeup by Polygon), Link’s Awakening DX HD is a love letter to the 1993 original and its 1998 color re-release. The unofficial port recreates the quirky Zelda installment with 120 frames per second (FPS) support, which the developer describes as adding “unparalleled fluidity.”

The homebrew port also gets rid of the original’s transitions, which loaded a new screen every time you walked to the next one (old-school Zelda style). In this version, the camera pans fluidly as Links strolls around the island, something we imagine was no small task for the unnamed creator.

linksawakeningdxhd / itch.io / Nintendo

Zoom level, available in the in-game settings menu, lets you pan out to a 1:1, half or one-third pixel scale, allowing you to view as much as the entire island simultaneously. This isn’t a static perspective, either. Each visible section is fully activated (as if Link were on it in the original) and swarming with enemies. You can move around in the panned-out views, swinging your sword at Moblins and searching for the next task without pausing to consult a static game map.

The game’s developer posted the 90s love letter anonymously, likely to shield them (for a time, anyway) from Nintendo’s litigation-happy legal team. The 24 MB Link’s Awakening DX HD is a free download on itch.io, but we wouldn’t count on it staying there for much longer. Either way, you can watch a snippet of gameplay in the video below.

Meta has been promising as much for a while, and now Meta Quest 2, 3 and Pro owners can now stream hundreds of games through Xbox Cloud Gaming. You'll need an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership, compatible controller, solid internet connection and the most recent Quest software update. Then, you'll be able to snag the Xbox Cloud Gaming (Beta) app and hop into games such as Starfield, Cocoon and Halo Infinite on a large virtual screen.

Meta says you'll be able to choose from four virtual display sizes. You can opt to play games in an Xbox-themed virtual space or make it appear as though the display is floating in mid-air thanks to the Quest 3 and Pro's full-color passthrough features. As for supported controllers, Meta says Xbox gamepads, PlayStation 4 peripherals and the Nintendo Switch Pro all work. Support for the PlayStation 5's DualSense will be available at a later date.

This is the second major cross-platform collaboration that has arrived on Quest in the last couple of weeks. It's now possible to wirelessly play PC VR games on the headsets thanks to Steam Link support. While some folks were already able to access Xbox Cloud Gaming on Quest headsets via workarounds, the arrival of the app will make it much easier for anyone to dive in and play something when, say, they're traveling or someone else is occupying the TV.

By the end of this year, Netflix will have already released 86 games, and it has no plans to slow down its gaming ambitions anytime soon. The streaming company already has an initial lineup of titles to add to its library in 2024, including Game Dev Tycoon. In the oddly engaging indie business simulator, you can build your own gaming company and create your own video games. You can even research new technologies in your field and invent your own game types like a real developer. 

Sonic Mania Plus, which was originally released for consoles and for PC through Steam, will also debut on mobile through Netflix. The enhanced version of Sonic Mania adds Sonic's friends, Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, as well as a new mode to the game. Spry Fox is releasing the sequel to its life sim Cozy Grove, as well. Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit introduces new activities, including one wherein you can powerwash a ghost with a blowfish and new furry companions with abilities of their own. And if you're a fan of Barbie, fashion and dress-up games, there's Fashionverse, where you can style models and even create outfits for them. Netflix says it's an AI-enhanced title that puts 3D models against photorealistic backgrounds. 

In addition to announcing some of the games it's rolling out next year, Netflix Games has also taken a look back at its updates and releases for 2023. It launched 40 games this year, which already include the definitive edition of the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy that will be available starting tomorrow. The streaming company's gaming arm also debuted two internally developed titles: Night School's Oxenfree II: Lost Signals and Boss Fight Entertainment's interactive game, Netflix Stories: Love is Blind. Finally, the company started testing the ability to play its games on smart TVs and browsers in select regions with the intention of eventually making its titles playable on any device. 

The Game Awards are done and the video game marketing machine is winding down for the year, but this industry never fully stops. This week, we’re taking a look at what The Game Awards could have done better (a few things, it turns out) and breaking down some of the biggest announcements from last week’s show.

This week’s stories

Light No Fire

We’re gonna talk about The Game Awards a lot this week, but one of the biggest announcements from last Thursday’s show was the existence of Light No Fire, a new title from No Man’s Sky studio Hello Games. It’s a planet-sized, multiplayer game about exploration and community-building, and it uses procedural generation to fill every valley and mountaintop with life. At least, that’s the promise. There’s no release date for Light No Fire just yet, but Hello Games has been working on it for five years.

The rest of The Game Awards

Also at The Game Awards, we saw the reveal of a Blade game from Arkane Lyon, OD from Kojima Productions, Windblown from Dead Cells studio Motion Twin, and Exodus from Archetype Entertainment, a studio composed of BioWare, 343 and Naughty Dog veterans.

As for the awards, best narrative went to Alan Wake 2, best debut indie game went to Cocoon, and esports coach of the year went to Potter. Indie game Baldur's Gate 3 won game of the year, while Sea of Stars won best independent game over Dave the Diver, a title that was never indie to begin with. Got it? Good. Moving on.

Free Radical Design shuts down

Free Radical

UK studio Free Radical Design, which was working on the TimeSplitters revival, laid off more than 80 people and shut its doors on Monday. It marks another round of layoffs under Embracer this year — the holding company announced in June that a $2 billion funding deal fell through, and it’s spent the last few months closing studios and firing staff at places including Saints Row developer Volition and Chorus maker Fishlabs.

We can do better

The Game Awards

The Game Awards last week ran for three hours, hosted by organizer Geoff Keighley. It was fancy and packed with movie stars — which, honestly, is pretty weird for a show that’s supposed to be about video games. Between abundant ad breaks, rushed speeches for winning developers, and ample stage time for celebrities, this year’s Game Awards didn’t feel like a celebration of the industry.

I’m not the only one who noticed the imbalance. After The Game Awards, plenty of developers, players and critics expressed displeasure with its pacing and priorities. Of the show’s 180 minutes, speeches from award winners took up just 10 minutes, and developers were prompted to ‘please wrap it up’ after just 30 seconds.

Meanwhile, Jordan Peele and Hideo Kojima were given nearly 7 minutes to talk about their upcoming project that looks like it’s more movie than game. There were appearances by Simu Liu, Matthew McConaughey and actors from TV shows based on video games. The Game of the Year award was presented by Timothee Chalamet, for some reason. Gonzo the Muppet even got 2 minutes.

Keighley rushed through most awards by reading the categories and winners directly into the camera back to back to back. Announcement trailers were indistinguishable from ad breaks, and there was no time spared for the industry’s most relevant issues, like the upheaval of mass layoffs, the fight to establish unions, and the medium's relationship with conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

These topics would feel drastically out of place at The Game Awards, and that alone is an indictment of the show. If there’s no room to discuss, celebrate and condemn these topics at the industry’s most public-facing event, what are we even doing here?

The Game Awards organizers have done a great job replacing the embarrassment that was Spike’s VGX with a show that looks more like The Oscars — but the video game industry is not Hollywood. Where are our luminaries? What are our issues? How are we innovating? Making video games more like movies is not the goal — unless you’re Kojima, I guess.

There are a bunch of other events that give time to video game creators and broader conversations, such as the Game Developers Choice Awards and its Independent Game Festival competition, The Spawnies from Spawn on Me, Gamedev.world from Rami Ismail, and Day of the Devs. And there are always the showcases from indie publishers like Annapurna Interactive, Devolver Digital and Panic throughout the year. But with E3 officially dead, Keighley's two big shows — Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards — are now the premier industry events on the gaming calendar. There's a responsibility that comes with that position, and his organization clearly needs to strike a better balance.

Now playing

It’s been a strangely stressful time, so I’ve been relaxing with couch co-op in Halo: The Master Chief Collection. It’s familiar and comfortable, and the toggle between old and new graphics is still an absolute delight. I’d love to discover some new couch co-op games, so let me know in the comments if you have any favorites.

Epic Games' lawsuit against Google has had a much different turnout from its courtroom battle with Apple. A federal jury has sided with the video game developer and has found Google to be in violation of US antitrust laws when it comes to how it runs the Play Store. According to The Verge, the jury has unanimously agreed that Google held an illegal monopoly on app distribution and in-app billing services for Android devices. Further, it found the company's distribution agreements with other video gaming companies, as well as its deals with device manufacturers to pre-install its apps on Android devices, to be anticompetitive. 

In its complaint, Epic said that Google had silently paid game developers hundreds of millions of dollars to make their titles downloadable from the Play Store in an initiative that was originally known as "Project Hug." It alleged that the company had paid Activision Blizzard $360 million to abandon its plans of creating a competing app store, which the game developer subsequently denied. Google, which Epic said came up with the incentive program after it released Fortnite outside of the Play Store, also reportedly inked deals with Nintendo, Ubisoft and Riot Games. 

The jury has come to the conclusion that Epic Games has been negatively affected by Google's actions, but we've yet to know how its victory will change the latter's practices. In a statement posted on X, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said the court will start "work[ing] on remedies" in January. Judge James Donato, who's overseeing the case, will be making the decision whether to order Google to give developers the freedom to introduce their own app stores and billing systems for Android devices. In the case of Epic's lawsuit against Apple, the court ruled that the iPhone-maker didn't violate US antitrust laws, but it ordered the company to allow App Store developers to direct customers through third-party payment systems. 

Google, however, doesn't intend to go down without a fight. Wilson White, Google VP for Government Affairs and Public Policy, told Engadget that the company plans to challenge the verdict. "Android and Google Play provide more choice and openness than any other major mobile platform," White said. "The trial made clear that we compete fiercely with Apple and its App Store, as well as app stores on Android devices and gaming consoles. We will continue to defend the Android business model and remain deeply committed to our users, partners, and the broader Android ecosystem."

Alan Wake 2 won big at last night’s The Game Awards and the developer wasted no time to capitalize on that momentum. Remedy just announced that the game is getting free DLC next week, December 11, in the form of a New Game Plus mode. This has been a long-requested feature for fans of the title. Well, if by long-requested you mean within the past two months. 

Alan Wake 2: The Final Draft will include a brand-new ending for the story, though you must first beat the game in the traditional way to access it. Remedy says this ending will “spark speculation and theories from dedicated fans.” The updates go beyond the last act, however, as The Final Draft will feature new lore videos and manuscript pages and, of course, tougher enemies.

These enemies will populate a new Nightmare difficulty level. The baddies in the original game were already notorious bullet sponges, so we’ll see what happens with the DLC. Once you beat the game, you’ll be able to access New Game Plus. Also, you’ll have all of your weapons, charms and character upgrades from the first playthrough.

Alan Wake 2: The Final Draft will be available on all platforms, including PS5, Xbox X/S and PC. Set your calendars for December 11 and get ready to venture back into Bright Falls. In related news, the titular hero recently popped up in Fortnite as part of a cross-promotional campaign.

The Game Awards is over and done with, leaving an empty theater in Los Angeles and plenty of happy game developers placing pointy statuettes on their mantels. To that end, Larian Studios and its massively successful RPG Baldur’s Gate 3 was the big winner of the night, taking home the prize for game of the year, player’s choice, best multiplayer game and more.

Remedy’s Alan Wake 2 was also on fire, winning best game direction, best narrative and best art direction, among others. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom paraglided away with the statue for best action/adventure and the RPG Sea of Stars won for best indie game, with Cocoon being awarded best debut indie game.

Okay. Now that the actual awards are out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. The main reason people watch The Game Awards is for reveals and trailers, and this year didn’t disappoint. There were over a dozen announcements, and here are the best and brightest of the bunch.

Light No Fire

Boy oh boy, a new title from Hello Games, the makers of a little-known space sim called No Man’s Sky. The studio has finally announced a follow up, which has been in development for five years. Light No Fire, another three-word monosyllabic game name, is being billed as the “the first real open world” title, a lofty promise that Hello may be able to pull off. The world is allegedly the same size as Earth, with secrets and mysteries around every corner. It’s also multiplayer, which is neat. Who knows when this one will come out, but it looks gorgeous.

Jurassic Park: Survival

It’s been a couple of years since a new Jurassic Park game, and more than that for a proper adventure title. Jurassic Park: Survival actually takes place one day after the events of the first film, and looks to feature plenty of stealthy action as you hide from hungry dinos. There’s no release date, but it’s launching on Xbox X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

OD

Did you think Hideo Kojima would be spending all of his time on Death Stranding 2? Heck no. The legendary developer has also been busy preparing the cinematic horror game OD, previously called Overdose. It’s described as something “no one has ever experienced or seen before,” which is entirely possible, given Kojima’s pedigree. Filmmaker Jordan Peele is also on board, as are actors Sophia Lillis, Hunter Schafer and Udo Kier. Details are scant, as it’s a Kojima joint, but the game will release for Xbox X/S and PC at some point.

Marvel’s Blade

That’s right. Everyone’s favorite vampire hunter is getting his own video game. Even better? It’s being developed by Arkane Lyon, the talented team behind Deathloop and Dishonored 2. Sure, the dev also made Redfall, but maybe Arkane can take some of the best parts of that vampire shooter and translate it to Marvel’s hero. There’s no release date and no announced platforms for this one.

Exodus

This is the first game from Archetype Entertainment, a studio staffed by former developers from Bioware, Naughty Dog and other AAA developers. Exodus is a sci-fi RPG that deals with the effects of time dilation, the notion that time passes more slowly to those experiencing high-velocity space travel. It looks cinematic and gorgeous, with a major emphasis on player choice. Exodus has no release date, but it's in development for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Monster Hunter Wilds

Capcom is busy working on a new Monster Hunter entry. Monster Hunter Wilds is a direct followup to Monster Hunter World and it looks to feature all of the big, bad beasties you can shake a sharpened stick at. It’s on the way to PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, with more information coming this summer.

Windblown

Motion Twin, the developer of Dead Cells, is back with another roguelike. Windblown looks to be a fast-paced release that promises “a whole new level of speed to the action rogue-like genre.” It’s also not a sidescroller, which is a definitive break from the Dead Cells formula. Windblown launches in 2024 for PC, though consoles are likely to follow.

Big Walk

Looking to relax? House House, the developer behind Untitled Goose Game, has got you covered. Big Walk is, well, a multiplayer walking sim with plenty of secrets to uncover. Cooperation is a major part of the game as you and your friends work to explore the wilderness. Big Walk is slated to arrive on Steam and the Epic Game Store in 2025.

No Rest for the Wicked

No Rest for the Wicked is the new project from Moon Studios, the team behind Ori and the Blind Forest and its sequel. It’s a top-down action RPG, departing from Ori’s metroidvania roots, set during the middle ages. The graphics are stunning, which is no surprise considering the developer. It's due to hit early access on Steam in the first quarter of 2024, and will eventually launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

Pony Island 2: Panda Circus

Indie developer Daniel Mullins made a name for himself with Inscryption and the original Pony Island. Now he’s back with Pony Island 2: Panda Circus, a game that’s not actually about ponies. The trailer is weird and creepy, as one would expect, with sudden shifts from a 3D adventure to a 2D point-and-click and back again. Voice actor SungWon "ProZD" Cho is also on board. The game may not be released until 2026, so put on your waiting cap.

Sega Embraces its Roots

Sega dropped a trailer for not just one game, but a whole bunch of games based on classic IPs. You can look forward to forthcoming reboots of Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage and Shinobi. Wait, that’s not all. There’s also Space Channel 5 and Panzer Dragoon. Everything old is new again. But, where’s Seaman?

Final Fantasy XVI and God of War Ragnarok Get DLC

The DLC faeries were good to us this year. There’s a God of War Ragnarok update launching next week, bringing a new roguelite game mode to Sony’s hit adventure. We also got a surprise drop for the first Final Fantasy XVI DLC. Echoes of the Fallen, set before the base game’s final battle, is available now, with a second DLC planned for next year. To that end, Square Enix dropped a trailer for next year’s installment, The Rising Tide.

Everything Else

Those were the biggest announcements, but not all of them. The Game Awards also saw a title reveal and trailer for Supermassive’s Dead by Daylight spinoff, The Casting of Frank Stone. There was an announcement trailer for a remake of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and one for the music-tinged VR title Thrasher, by the makers of Thumper. Finally, we got an actual release date for Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones, February 16, and a surprise launch for Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox systems.

This one-of-a-kind PS5 console was customized with the PS1’s retro gray finish, and classic quad-color PS logo. Even the DualSense controller was given a late-90s makeover, with a cute plug cover for the PS5’s front USB-C port to mimic the first-ever PlayStation’s controller.

No, this won’t go on sale. It’s a farewell gift for SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) President and CEO Jim Ryan, who is retiring in March 2024. At a thank-you party this week, the outgoing PlayStation boss was honored by many industry legends, including the “father of PlayStation” Ken Kutaragi, Gran Turismo’s Kazunori Yamauchi, Team Asobi’s Nicolas Doucet and, of course, Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.

It was a gaming-heavy 24 hours, actually. This year’s Game Awards barraged us with new trailers and game news. Surprise, free DLC, an RPG set on an entirely procedurally generated world and a... Blade game?

— Mat Smith

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The biggest stories you might have missed

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Meta’s Threads is getting searchable hashtags that aren’t quite hashtags

The company is trying to prevent “engagement hacking.”

Meta’s latest update for Threads brings the long-awaited ability to search for topics, with tags. Although the feature is under the familiar # symbol, Threads’ tags are slightly different to hashtags. Instagram head Adam Mosseri explained Threads tags can contain spaces and special characters, and can only use a single tag per post, so choose wisely.

Continue reading.

The makers of No Man’s Sky will simulate a whole planet for Light No Fire

Hello Games’ new title is an Earth-sized multiplayer RPG sandbox.

TGA

UK indie studio Hello Games has announced its next game, Light No Fire, which will bring the procedural generation of No Man’s Sky to an entire planet on an incredibly detailed scale. It will combine open-world exploration with multiplayer community building, set on a planet the size of Earth, apparently. Light No Fire has been in development for five years by about a dozen developers at Hello Games, but there’s no release window yet.

Continue reading.

Google admits it staged a Gemini AI demo video

There was no voice interaction, nor did the demo happen in real time

Google

As Google scales up its AI battle with OpenAI and ChatGPT, the company has now admitted one demo, shown in the video “Hands-on with Gemini: Interacting with multimodal AI,” was edited to speed up the results. The interactions, too, weren’t based on voice but text input.

The demo used “still image frames from the footage and prompting via text,” rather than having Gemini respond to — or even predict — a drawing or change of objects on the table in real time. It’s all a little less impressive and comes when Google’s most cutting-edge AI models don’t differ hugely from OpenAI’s latest GPT tricks.

Continue reading.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on Xbox Series X/S

The official Game of the Year is finally on Microsoft consoles.

Developer and publisher Larian Studios had pledged to release the Xbox version of this year’s Game of the Year by… the end of the year and said it would reveal the exact date at The Game Awards. True to its word, Larian announced the Xbox version of Baldur’s Gate 3 is out right now.

The delay was due to a technical problem with the Series S, and the inability to make the game’s split-screen feature on the lower-powered console. However, Larian said it had a solution to support split-screen on Series X, but not Series S, and had permission to do so from Xbox bosses.

Continue reading.

Xbox-only gamers have had to patiently bide their time until Baldur's Gate 3, one of the biggest titles of 2023, hit Microsoft's consoles. The RPG came out of early access on PC in August and it landed on PS5 the following month. However, technical issues held up the Xbox Series X/S version until now. 

Developer and publisher Larian Studios had pledged to release the Xbox version by the end of the year and said it would reveal the exact date at The Game Awards. True to its word, Larian announced that the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 is out right now. 

Along with Alan Wake 2, Baldur's Gate 3 had the most nominations (eight) of any title at The Game Awards 2023. It ultimately won four: Best Role Playing Game, Best Community Support, Best Multiplayer Game and the big one, Game of the Year.

The Xbox delay was due to a technical problem with the Series S. As Larian's director of publishing Michael Douse wrote in July, "We cannot remove the split-screen feature because we are obliged to launch with feature parity, and so continue to try and make it work.” However, Larian said the following month that, after meeting with Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. it had found a solution that would allow it to support split-screen on Series X but not Series S.

UK indie studio Hello Games is building something that it's calling "more ambitious" than No Man's Sky. The studio's next game is Light No Fire, and it brings procedural generation to an entire planet on an incredibly detailed scale.

Light No Fire is an open-world exploration and community-building game set on a planet the size of Earth, blending RPG elements with sandbox survival. It's a multiplayer experience on an ancient and fantastical planet, with climbable trees, hills and mountains, and secrets to discover at every turn. It's "the first real open world," according to Hello Games co-founder Sean Murray. 

Light No Fire has been in development for five years, by about a dozen developers at Hello Games. In the title's first trailer, it looks like the team took an entire planet from No Man's Sky and filled it completely with life, resources and mysteries. 

There's no release date for Light No Fire and no confirmed platforms, and the game was kept in complete secrecy until its reveal at The Game Awards on December 7.

Hello Games is synonymous with No Man’s Sky, a sprawling and incredibly popular space-exploration sim that landed in 2016 and only got better with time. But before the indie studio scored a huge marketing deal with Sony for No Man’s Sky — before one of its founders was meeting with Steven Spielberg and appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert — Hello Games was known for the cartoony sidescroller Joe Danger.

UK developers Ryan Doyle, Grant Duncan, Sean Murray and David Ream founded Hello Games in 2009, after quitting their jobs at major studios like EA and Criterion. This was before the modern indie boom, at a time when XBLA was just getting started and Steam had only a handful of indie games.

"Actually breaking away and doing your own thing was a stupid thing to do at the time," Murray told me in 2016.

For nine months, the Hello Games quartet worked on Joe Danger, a 3D sidescroller starring a happy-go-lucky dirtbike daredevil, and they tried to lock down a publisher. No one was interested.

"Everyone turned us down," Murray said in 2016. "Sony turned us down, and Microsoft and so many places."

Out of money and resigned to giving up on their indie dreams, Doyle, Duncan, Murray and Ream went to the pub.

"We came up with this stupid idea," Murray said. "I had a house, and so I sold my house to pay for the rest of development. … The way I looked at it was like, I had bought that house because I had worked at EA, so it was like blood money. Like a blood diamond. You gotta sell that; that's bad karma."

And he really did. Built on loans and the money from Murray’s house sale, Joe Danger came out on June 9, 2010, and it was a hit. Hello Games followed it up with Joe Danger 2: The Movie in 2012. By then, the studio was an established indie hit-maker and it had relationships with major publishers. In December 2013, the team revealed something entirely unexpected: No Man’s Sky, a multiplayer game the size of the universe and filled with galaxies of procedurally generated planets to explore.

Hello Games

The next summer, No Man’s Sky had a tentpole moment at Sony’s E3 press conference, and the AAA marketing machine was activated. Sony leaned heavily on Hello Games to bolster its image as an indie curator, and over the next two years, the buzz around No Man’s Sky reached astronomical heights. Spielberg, Colbert, Kanye West and Elon Musk all got involved in their own ways, and No Man's Sky was a household name years before it launched.

By the time the game came out, it was impossible for it to live up to the hype. No Man’s Sky promised a universe of procedurally generated planets to explore, teeming with minerals and creatures and other players to encounter, but at launch on August 9, 2016, it was buggy and empty. The bones of a fantastic game were there, but some players felt so misled by Sony's intense marketing campaign that they filed a lawsuit against Hello Games.

The team kept working on No Man’s Sky, releasing bug fixes, updates and expansions, including a VR version. Over the years, the vision that players were initially sold clarified in-game, and the online rage died down until it was fully replaced by admiration. Since launch, No Man’s Sky has won multiple high-profile awards, including Best Ongoing Game at The Game Awards 2020. This year, it’s nominated at The Game Awards in the Best Community Support category.

Hello Games

"It's become so much simpler two years out from launch," Murray told me in 2019. "At launch, we were so focused on trying to please the partners that we were working with, trying to market our game, trying to live up to expectations that we were really struggling to meet."

No Man’s Sky in particular is Murray’s brainchild, and he was the face of the game as it rose and fell and rose again in public perception. He and the rest of the Hello Games team — which is bigger than four developers nowadays — have kept silent about their internal projects, and it’s easy to understand why.

"They are super talented and I didn't want to just move on and let that be their legacy," Murray said in 2019. "It's really nice for them to be able to say to people, 'I worked on No Man's Sky,' and people to be really happy and positive about it now. That is something that they deserved."

This history makes today’s reveal of Light No Fire even sweeter. Fourteen years after that fateful night in the pub, Hello Games is a testament to persistence.