Skill Up

Our team are devastated by this news. Patrick was an incredibly kind, generous and talented person. He truly loved this industry, and was so excited to cover it every day. His passion and enthusiasm were infectious. Just a huge loss. Our thoughts are with his family now. RIP Patrick, and thank you.

Vince Zampella was the absolute best to ever do it. Literally. His impact across publishers, studios, franchises and genres was unmatched. Commercially and creatively he was an absolute juggernaut. A tremendous loss for this industry, and to those who were close to him. Rest in peace.

I think a lot of the discussion around AI isn't specific enough or informed enough, and that's why this piece from @edmondtran.bsky.social is so useful and important. These are actual concept artists spelling out in clear, unambiguous terms why Gen-AI is not only unhelpful, it's a nuisance.

UK Prime Minister Calls Rockstar Firings "Deeply Concerning" Scottish Labour MP Chris Murray said Rockstar didn't "reassure me they are following employment law and I share concerns about union busting"

If Rockstar really is union busting, they cannot be allowed to get away with it. Every ounce of pressure matters, and having the British PM weigh in is probably not something Rockstar's executives saw coming: thisweekinvideogames.com/news/uk-prim...

Valve Addresses Steam Machine Anti-Cheat Concerns, Says It's Working Towards Support Valve has spoken about potential anti-cheat issues on the Steam Machine which uses SteamOS and is not compatible with certain anti-cheats

But do be optimistic about improvements to anti-cheat compatibility: thisweekinvideogames.com/news/valve-a...

Valve Says No Chance Of New Game Bundled With Steam Machine A Valve developer has shot down the possibility of the company's new Steam Machine being bundled with a new Valve game like Half-Life 3.

Also, don't expect it to come bundled with Half Life 3: thisweekinvideogames.com/news/valve-s...

Steam Machine Price Will Be Close to PC of Similar Performance, Says Valve Valve has spoken about its approach to the Steam Machine's price point, saying it expects a cost equivalent to the PC components inside it.

Don't expect the Steam Machine to console-priced: thisweekinvideogames.com/news/steam-m...

YouTube video by People Make Games The Rockstar Workers Fired Before They Could Finish GTA 6

Absolutely essential viewing from @chrisbratt.bsky.social on Rockstar’s sackings, which appear to be the single most flagrant example of union busting in the history of the videogames industry. Rockstar has provided absolutely zero evidence to support any of their claims. youtu.be/c9nOwjeznjI?...

Oof

Silksong Release Date Surprise Was "A Little Callous", Says Hell Is Us Lead "As the 'GTA 6 of indie'... to shadow drop something like this is a little callous," said creative director Jonathan Jacques-Belletête.

Callous is a strong word but I do get where he's coming from. Obviously Team Cherry have the right to shadow drop a date, but given their blast radius it might have been better had other games (particularly smaller ones) had more heads up thisweekinvideogames.com/news/hell-is...

Idk tbh - definitely going to play it but not sure about a review yet. A lot dropping this month.

Oh we eating good this weekend. Review on the 25th of September #ghostofyotei

Not long now. In just a short time we'll finally be playing it (Garfield Kart 2 - All You Can Drift).

Such a great write up from @superdonk.bsky.social. He's a long time Skate enjoyer and honestly, his perspective is so illuminating since I only really remember the series for its funny bails. There's was so much more to it, and it seems as though big chunks of that stuff is missing in the reboot.

Man I know I'm bias AF but damn - this is such a great write up.

About 3ish weeks now.

I've spoken to or heard from about 12 creators in our space atm - all reporting the same thing, with the same timing. Something is up. No question at all.

Honestly this is my theory.

Their segment (and my discussions with plenty of other creators) is how I know I'm not crazy (and that YouTube are lying).

I mean - that's possible, but only a TINY fraction of my audience was in the under 18 bracket, and I really doubt that the AI machine is getting it so wrong that it's wrongly age gating 30% of my audience.

Idk what dial YouTube turned but they definitely did something. Viewership is inexplicably down around 30% for myself and many channels I watch/follow. I've never blamed the algorithm for anything in my 10 years on YT, but this is too obvious to ignore. Spoken to others who have noticed it, too.

Extremely excited to have @victoriatran.bsky.social on board as a monthly columnist, providing insight into the world of indie games development and community management. Fantastic first piece too, covering the plague of clone games that plagiarize the work of game makers.

This is how Zack Snyder should have marketed Man of Steel.

Played about 2 hours of the Battlefield 6 beta. Absolutely floored by how well it runs, how stable the netcode is, how excellent the maps are, how solid the gunplay/sound design is, how well classes/squads work. Could not be more of a contrast from the first impression of 2042 all those years ago.

Pretty big stuff out of Sony: an expected launch window for Marathon (this financial year), an announcement that Bungie will become a PlayStation studio in a more traditional sense, and acknowledgement of Sony's live-service blunders to this point.

As Video-Game Media Struggles, Star YouTuber Launches New Outlet Websites like Polygon and Kotaku are facing huge challenges, opening opportunities for newcomers

Ralph "SkillUp" Panebianco has built a successful YouTube career with more than one million subscribers. So naturally, his next move is... to start a video game website?

I spoke to Panebianco about his new venture ("no ads, no AI") and why he's doing it: www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

This is insane. Payment providers should not have the power to do this.

We asked the 1047 Games CEO how it could cost so much to maintain Splitgate 1. Here's what he had to say:

Splitgate developer 1047 Games is shutting down the original Splitgate, claiming that maintaining it was costing them 'hundreds of thousands of dollars'.

The game was averaging 130 peak CC players on steam. Can any game devs enlighten me as to how it was costing 1047 that much to keep the game up?

Just rolled credits on Donkey Kong Bananza. Utterly insane how back-loaded this game is. It simply never stops getting better from about the halfway point on.

Another generational W for Nintendo. Man, if this thing was day one on Switch 2 launch, it would have been a totally different conversation