I would like to say this missive is brought to you from a dark, ventilated room where I lay upon a bed of ice packs. However, if all goes according to masochistic plan, I will already have been cycling for a few hours when this goes live. I need to get out of the house and onto the road before the sun's too high in the sky and the tarmac becomes an oven baking me from below.

The payoff at the other end? The first BBQ of the summer and, I sincerely hope, a tall glass of chilled water.

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With the days ticking down until July, when Xbox are said to be fully pulling the trigger on mass upheaval that could see studios closed and will almost certainly see jobs cut, bosses at one of the studios reported to have its future hanging in the balance have given some staff permission to openly seek new work. This, it's claimed, is the reason a bunch of devs at South of Midnight studio Compulsion Games have taken to LinkedIn ahead of any layoffs being confirmed to post that they're on the market for other jobs.

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Forget anything that happened to twist Elden Ring's Lands Between into the shape the Tarnished finds them in during their wander from boss to boss. All of it pales in drama to the corporate battle currently going on behind-the-scenes at FromSoftware's parent company Kadokawa. Their CEO, Takeshi Natsuno, has kept his job at the firm's latest annual meeting, despite ongoing attempts to oust him by an activist investor group who claim Kadokawa haven't wrung the maximum amount of cash out of Elden Ring's success.

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It's clear from Signet City's reveal trailer that it's going to be an unusual game. After all, you'll be playing a fungal brain parasite that influences multiple hosts across an algae-powered city.

But, when creator Gareth Damian Martin and I spoke, they didn't just want to talk about how their game worked – if anything, they seemed happy to leave that discussion until players could play it to find out for themselves. Instead, they wanted to say why they were making this game, and why they were doing it now.

After all, in an industry where game developers are closing up shop daily, making a first-person fungalpunk RPG isn't the safe bet.

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There's long been a bit of a rivalry between Destiny and Warframe's respective communities because of them both being shooty, sci-fi, MMOy joints. But when it comes to the community director behind Warframe, the recent end to new Destiny 2 updates and expansions is no victory, and mostly just finds the whole situation to be "devastating."

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I do sometimes shudder at the thought of how big Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth actually is, especially as someone who made a beeline for the main story on my playthrough for the most part. Its size does also allow for a lot of smaller details though, like one background (and I really do mean background) plot that follows the romantic relationship of a lesbian couple across the game's various locales. And according to game director Naoki Hamaguchi, the choice to depict characters like this was all in the name of enhancing realism.

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If you blinked for longer than usual between June 22nd and today, June 23rd, you might have missed Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader having a shiny new launcher fitted to it and that new launcher subsequently being taken right back off again. In between those two points was a loud chorus of boos from players keen to not have to deal with yet another launcher.

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Remember when, during Stranger Than Heaven's release date reveal at the Summer Geoffs, the word TUPAC flashed on screen in big capital letters during the climax of a trailer running down the history-hopping yakuza brawler's cast? Remember how afterwards, as you'd expect given the whole digital resurrection of a rapper who was murdered nearly 30 years ago thing, 99% of the chatter about the game was focused on that rather than the date or any other aspects of it? Yeah, well, that apparently isn't the goal of developers RGG in making the choice to cast celebrities like the deceased rapper.

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Following a serious revamp with the Test of Time update, Civ 7 devs Firaxis are ready to deploy the next raft of additions and tweaks to the strategy game. With the ability play as one society through an entire game now in place, this latest update delivers another classic Civ staple - the option to take on your mates on one PC via hotseat local multiplayer games.

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I think despite the mess that was the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, it wouldn't be right to say that CD Projekt Red's reputation was completely tarnished. It is still a game with a lot of cultural relevancy, and nobody can shut up about The Witcher 3 to such a degree that it's even getting a brand new expansion more than 10 years after the last one came out. Even still, it doesn't sound like joint CEO Michał Nowakowski is entirely convinced that the studio has managed to complete its redemption arc.

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Despite being a dad game, a pseudo-genre that has its fair share of problems in the way it depicts father-child relationships, Pragmata generally seemed to approach all of this fairly well. The consensus seems to be that space man Hugh was genuinely kind of a nice guy, and that his relationship with Diana was actually quite sweet. But as it turns out, the game's lead devs had to get a bit of a helping hand in writing Diana specifically, resulting in a group of women coming in to help as part of the "Diana Police."

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That there System Shock remake sure seems to have had one of the weirdest developments on any game around. There's the fact it took so long (almost eight whole years) having been delayed numerous times, but also the fact that at one point the FBI was called in on developer Nightdive. And now, it turns out that a group of devs within the studio banded together to form a sort of secret group to actually get it made.

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Hurrah! Today is a very fine Thursday, as one of the most tightly written sci-fi RPGs around is available to pick up for free for around a week. That'll be Citizen Sleeper, by the way, a dice-driven RPG that I'm sure all of you must already know and love, but for the selection of you that don't technically exist, I'm sure you'll be happy to be able to pick it up for the cost of a couple of clicks.

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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, overseer of a company which fired over 1000 staff just a few months ago, has laid out his vision for the games industry's future during a "time of both crisis and opportunity". As Epic revealed an Unreal Engine 6 packed with generative AI model support designed to "reduce the tedious work" that goes into making games, Sweeney painted a picture of a future in which the threat of Roblox eating the world is combatted by a bunch of game makers working with Epic to create a massive integrated everythingverse that's somehow totally different to Roblox's massive integrated everythingverse.

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A couple of months on from pushing to make some vital veteran additions to their team in order to get their massive Oblivion remake mod over the line, Skyblivion's developers are once again appealing for volunteers to aid in overcoming some "final roadblocks" standing the way of its release. Meanwhile, it sounds like the chances of another statistical breakdown from the modders running down exactly what's left to be done are low, with Skyblivion's implementation lead asserting that the mod's so close to the finish line such data's no longer "a super relevant way of displaying our remaining work".

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When Final Fantasy 7 Remake part two was officially revealed to be titled Rebirth, an immediate question arose for pretty much everyone: what will part three be called? That question has persisted since Rebirth came out, with way too many people suggesting Reunion despite the fact they did that one for Crisis Core (seriously, what's with that). The answer was finally revealed this month to be Revelation at Summer Geoff Fest, and as it turns out, we all found out at the same time as pretty much everyone that's working on the threequel.

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In the time-old tradition of marketing, EA have announced something ancient as though it's just been thought up by the boffins in the advertising lab. Their big new moneymaking wheeze to squeeze every last penny out of their games: billboards.

In a press release that stretches into essay-length territory, EA sing the praises of their new ad platform, which is "transforming how brands connect with audiences". Companies looking to hock their wares can now pay EA to plaster themselves over any and all in-game advertising slots.

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Mostly decent open-world ninja sim Assassin’s Creed Shadows is getting its last big update today, as Ubisoft begin the process of shooing players away from the year-old RPG and towards the gleaming, nipple-adding newness of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced. The Shadows patch even includes an unlockable outfit based on Edward Kenway’s pirate garb, displaced only 150 or so years out of its appropriate time period for your synergistic brand awareness pleasure.

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Xbox are reportedly closing or spinning off Psychonauts developers Double Fine, Hellblade studio Ninja Theory, and South of Midnight creators Compulsion Games, as Microsoft commence efforts to yet again "reset" their billion dollar gaming business after already laying off thousands of staff, cancelling games, and closing several studios over the past couple of years.

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