The UK government will ban social media accounts for under-16s from Spring 2027. It’s still unclear how video games will be impacted, but “livestreaming” and “online services like gaming” are explicitly mentioned in the Government’s fact sheet.
EA Advertising will offer partners a way to “weave your brand into the very worlds gamers know and love. Help build immersion with playable experiences, native placements, and more”.
Marcus Wassmer, development lead at Epic Games, announced that Unreal Engine 6 will unify both UE5 and Unreal Editor for Fortnite into a single product. The blog goes into further detail regarding the vision for the new engine.
Stuart Muckley, Sitara Shefta, Ben Gunstone, Gemma Brown, Dan Hett, Marco Alessandro, John Tearle, Greg Howson and Tim Repa-Davies have been added to TIGA’s board of directors, in a move that the trade body says will strengthen its “ability to advocate for and support” games companies across the UK.
Roblox has launched two new accounts aimed at increasing security for children on the platform. Roblox Kids and Roblox Select introduce additional reviews for games available to players under the age of 16.
Xbox Game Studios’ Head of Studios Craig Duncan and Chief of Staff Louise O’Connor have left the business. The news comes shortly after CEO Asher Sharma announced a significant “reset” of the Xbox business.
So many games, so little time to play them. The stark reality of my Steam account neatly mirrors the latest Steam Next Fest. As I write, we’re not even at the midway point, and there are already almost 5,000 demos posted; the precise figure doing the rounds is a frankly absurd 4,931.
This number is so daft that PC Gamer worked out you’d need more than 90 days, dedicating just 30 minutes to each one, to clear the pile. Now, I love games, but I’ve work, friends and a family to consider too. I think I’ve managed about ten demos so far.
That sheer abundance is both a triumph and a tragedy. It’s a glorious shop window for indie developers and a relentless battle for our attention all at once. With this many demos, even genuinely good stuff gets forgotten within days, and for every title turbocharged by Valve’s efforts, hundreds are dead on arrival.
So what stood out? My personal favourites are EMPULSE — a wall-running 6v6 shooter I’m far too slow to play competitively, but one whose mechs gave me flashbacks to a time when I was decent at Titanfall — and my first proper hands-on with Jonathan Blow’s Order of the Sinking Star, because anything with Blow’s name attached calls to a certain breed of puzzler, and his touch looks utterly undiminished. Beyond mine, the demos everyone’s talking about share a knack for the instantly legible, SAND: Raiders of Sophie sells itself in a single image, a customisable walker-mech striding across an ocean of sand while Mistfall Hunter simply out-polished the entire throng of Dark and Darker lookalikes.
And that, I think, is what these winners did differently. It isn’t that they’re the most accomplished games in the event, it’s that I could explain each one instantly to a mate. I didn’t need an hour to “get” them, which matters enormously when there are 4,931 rivals queueing for the same sliver of attention. In a week this crowded, a game you can’t pitch in a sentence has already tanked.
The summer sale kicks off next week, so my Steam problem is about to get considerably worse before it gets better.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.