Separately, the company has also launched an employee fundraising program with matched donations to benefit several other key charities: the Red Cross, UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders. “We sincerely hope that peace will be restored, and that those affected by the crisis will regain peaceful life as quickly as possible,” Square Enix said in a statement published to Twitter today. Numerous video game companies have announced donations in aid of the growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, caused by Russia’s devastating invasion of the country....

The news came as part of the company’s recent financial presentation, which revealed that one of Square Enix’s “medium-term business strategy” initiatives is to “boost game development capabilities by establishing new studios, [mergers and acquisitions], etc.” As spotted by Axios’ Stephen Totilo (thanks, NME), the company also revealed that the “objectives behind divestiture of select overseas studios and IP” - that is, the reason why it sold off its three western studios - was to “achieve sustained growth through selection and concentration of company sources, better align overseas publishing function with organisation in Tokyo, and transform group business portfolio”....

Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova comes out 14th October 2022 on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam and Google Stadia. The debut trailer is below: Star Trek: Prodigy launched in the US last year as the first Star Trek series aimed at younger audiences. It follows a group of young aliens who use an abandoned starship to explore. Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova is published by Outright Games and developed by Tessera Studios....

My Minecraft expert is nine years old, and she’s an expert in Minecraft in the way that only a nine-year-old can be an expert in a game. Minecraft is a ready metaphor for everything in her life, but she’s also deeply engaged in the minutiae of it. She has no fear of its depths and complexities. I went through a period of thinking it was sort of sad that she didn’t draw in the evenings as much any more or play with her doll’s house, but now I realise: she still does this stuff....

As such, those with a preference for Nintendo’s dual-handed clutch capsules will now be able to use them across their PC games in a number of different configurations. There’s support for individual Joy-Cons, which can be used as mini gamepad, and two controllers can also be combined into pairs - as is the case on Switch - for a more traditional controller configuration. Today’s update means Steam now fully supports the bulk of Switch’s official controller options, with Pro Controller compatibility having been introduced all the way back in 2018....

If you weren’t aware, Steam offers a refund for all game purchases, no questions asked, as long as your playtime is less than two hours and it’s within two weeks of purchase. It’s a ‌pro-consumer policy (or a cost-effective way to reduce the number of customer service staff, depending on who you ask), and the two-hour playtime threshold is intended to stop less trustworthy consumers from exploiting it. But while most AAA games easily exceed the two-hour length (looking at you, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla), smaller indie games with short stories can fall short....

Nemesis, as its name suggests, finally lets Stellaris players properly embrace their dark side by giving them the opportunity to initiate a crisis. Usually these are late-stage events that mark the arrival of powerful AI forces who’ll either perish in bloody battle or eradicate all known life, but Nemesis will let human players mastermind the galaxy’s devastating denouement themselves. First, however, they’ll need to perform nefarious deeds and accrue Menace, which is used to ascend through the ranks of evil, eventually unlocking the Aetherophasic Engine - a doomsday device powered with the dark energy created by consuming the stars....

Adobe image creator xcoolee spoke to IGN about their logo being ‘used’ by Capcom and shared they “were looking to sell exclusive rights for the image to Capcom, removing it from sale to other parties”. Here’s that stock logo: There is, of course, a chance that Capcom’s new logo baring a striking similarity to xcoolee’s Adobe Stock image is just a coincidence. But even if that does turn out to be the case, the new logo for Street Fighter 6 hasn’t exactly won itself scores of fans....

Genesis Noir, described as a non-traditional point-and-click adventure with a focus on “tactile puzzles and exploration”, casts players as No Man, a watch peddler embroiled in love triangle with other cosmic beings. As things turn sour, a gunshot is fired by a jealous god and the resulting Big Bang kickstarts creation, sending No Man on a jazz-infused quest across the lifespan of the universe to change the course of destiny and save his love....

The news follows the discovery earlier this month of trademarked logos and titles for five future Dark Pictures projects, but this seems to be an entirely new game entitled The Quarry. The filing, spotted by @the_marmolade, was made with the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office for a game called The Quarry, where trademark filings for both the name of the game and a logo graphic were submitted last week. Unsurprisingly, it’s for use across games software, entertainments services, and computer programming services, as noted by our friends at VGC....

Announced last summer, the moodily atmospheric Jett casts players as scout and ‘anchorite’ Mei as she becomes the first person to explore a mythic ocean planet in order to “carve out a future for a people haunted by oblivion” and search for something called “the hymnwave”. “Skim low over waves, roar up pristine coastlines and carve through otherworldly woods,” teases the developers. “Adapt to an intricate, systemic open world and persevere through adversity alongside an intimate ensemble cast in this story of courage, wonder and regret....

Though not formally confirmed by the developer Nightdive Studios, Steam has updated the game’s store listing to reveal a March 2023 release date and pre-orders are now open. The upcoming release was also spotted and shared by industry insider, Wario64, although some commenters were unsure if this is a real, concrete release date or just an end-of-year placeholder. Guess we’ll find out in March, eh? Describing itself as “the fully fledged remake of the ground breaking original from 1994”, System Shock will “combine cult gameplay with all-new HD visuals, updated controls, an overhauled interface and all-new sounds & music”, including the original voice actor of rogue AI HODAN, “one of gaming’s most iconic villains”....

Bandai Namco’s latest anime-aesthetic adventure launched this week, and it has already proved more popular on PC than any other Tales game released on Steam before it. Arise hit a peak concurrent players number of 45,680 yesterday - a number expected to grow over the weekend - which is more than the peak concurrents of the previous Tales games on Steam combined. According to SteamDB, the concurrents peak of 2017’s Tales of Berseria on Steam was 8085....

The scene then cuts to a close-up of a new model of Kazuya doing the same smile, before the teaser tells us all to “get ready”. You can see it for yourself at the end of the clip below. This brief preview of things to come was then quickly reshared by The Game Awards Twitter account. Putting two and two together, many fans now assume that Tekken 8 will be fully unveiled at The Game Awards 2022....

All episodes of the game were also free this time last year for the same reason. While the first episode is free all year round and the whole game is available on Xbox Game Pass, it’s nice to have the opportunity own the whole game to play on your own time. Tell Me Why tells the story of twins Tyler and Alyson as they reunite, after several years apart, to sell their childhood home in Alaska - a task that ultimately forces them to confront their traumatic past....

There’s something for everyone in our guide packed full of gifts for gamers. From PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch to Xbox Series X and Xbox One- you’ve come to the right place to find a range of must-have Christmas gifts, birthday presents and everything in between. If you’re in a pinch for time and want to see our best gifts for gamers, we’ve compiled all of our top picks for Switch, Xbox and PlayStation just below....

The DioField Chronicle is a new tactics game coming to PS4 and PS5 later this year, as well as PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It was announced at PlayStation State of Play back in March. Beyond that, we haven’t really heard all that much about it, so it was a pleasant surprise to see the tactics game pop up on the ESRB website (thanks, Gematsu), not least because it included a summary of the game, as well as details as to why the board classified it as a “Teen” game due to its blood, “mild suggestive themes”, and violence....

Ubisoft Massive said it’s also looking at new ways for players to progress their agent “with an emphasis on increasing build variety and viability”. This new update is still in the early stages of development, Ubisoft Massive cautioned, and will take several months to complete. So, it’s due out late 2021 at the earliest. “We will be taking this time to make sure we bring a meaningful change to the game,” Ubisoft Massive said in a blog post....

We’ve gone back to a few real gems, so for more catch-up reviews like this one head to the Games That Got Away hub, where all our pieces from the series will be rounded up in one convenient place. Enjoy! I had heard going in that The Forgotten City was a sort of first-person adventure game concerned with morality and the dense questions of right and wrong. And probably free will and the social contract and a bunch of other stuff I am generally too thick to understand....

Publishers and Developers