EA staff worries over Saudi buyout, Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks, and Peak’s last major update

The characters of Peak help each other on a difficult climb

Image via Aggro Crab / Landfall

The Duskbloods sounds like a substantial design pivot for Dark Souls maker FromSoftware, and I couldn’t be more excited about the prospect. Over the years, I’ve (somehow) been assigned to cover Soulslikes in a myriad of ways. Some, like Lies of P, are pretty good and actually understand what makes parrying satisfying. Others end up becoming too tangled in their inspirations to fully let new ideas shine.

When FromSoftware announced Elden Ring Nightreign, a multiplayer-first experience, I was hesitant that the studio would veer a bit too much into not-quite-live-service territory. My doubts were dispelled after my first evening plunging through bite-sized expeditions with friends online. Then, FromSoftware announced The Duskbloods, a Switch 2 exclusive that pits eight players against enemies and each other.

Many sites published hands-on impressions yesterday, and the actual experience sounds even bolder than Nightreign. It has summons similar to Spirit Ashes in Elden Ring, you can bite the neck of staggered enemies to drain their blood, and it’s all structured in a battle-royale-esque format.

Considering Nightreign has already inspired developers to riff on its concept, I’m excited to see what kind of legacy The Duskbloods will yield in the future. There are plenty of previews out there for you to read, but I recommend starting with Game Informer’s for a thorough breakdown.

‘I feel dirty:’ EA workers trapped in a maelstrom of cynicism and doubt after Saudi buyout

via Game Developer // Senior news editor Chris Kerr spoke to multiple current EA employees who shared their views on the seismic $55 billion take-private. Now, with the company under control of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, many staff are deeply concerned about the future. There are worries that projects might not get approval unless they explicitly align with what the Saudi government wants, and some fear that the US publisher will be used as a means to launder Saudi government views through western media.

GTA 6 suffers third day of leaks, presumably from a playable build, a week before its Netflix stunt

via IGN // Rockstar Games has been particularly coy about Grand Theft Auto 6, but it hasn’t been able to stop third parties from seemingly sharing details ahead of time. In 2022, a hacker shared 90 minutes of presumed early footage, and the first official trailer circulated online a day before its scheduled premiere, prompting the studio to release it early. Now, Rockstar is staying silent while clips of the game continue circulating at an alarming rate, merely a week before the company’s big marketing stunt with Netflix. As it is the nature with leaks, you can’t take anything at face value, but there’s speculation that the people responsible of the latest wave might have an actual working build of the game, with the player shooting the word “LEEK” into a wall via bullet holes.

Compulsion Games pulls off management buyout and separates from Xbox

via GamesBeat // Compulsion Games, most recently known for South of Midnight, was one of the four studios jettisoned from the Xbox Game Studios ecosystem last month. Following a call for business partners after the spinoff, the studio has pulled off a management buyout and is now officially separated from Microsoft. People were theorizing that this was the case when the Steam version of South of Midnight flipped its ownership from its former parent company to the studio, but Compulsion didn’t provide clarification until today.

Kotaku has penned an all-encompassing interview with the creators of indie darling Big Walk

via Kotaku // Three of the five full-time members of House House, developers of multiplayer game Big Walk, were interviewed within the game itself. There are plenty of interesting bits across the entire piece, from how fast the prototype came together to the design philosophies around its puzzles. Most details are in the spoiler territory, so proceed with caution.

PlayStation Reboots ‘Horizon Hunters Gathering’ as Live-Service Strategy Struggles

via Bloomberg // PlayStation-owned Guerrilla Games is reportedly reworking its live-service game, Horizon Hunters Gathering, after negative playtest feedback earlier this year. It’s another example of how the company’s live-service efforts continue to stumble over time, with multiple project delays and cancellations, studio closures, and workers caught in rampant layoffs as a result. A vicious cycle that, somehow, continues being perpetrated.

The developers of Peak bid farewell with last major content update

via Aggro Crab and Landfall on Steam // The developers behind illustrious multiplayer sensation Peak released the final major update for the game on August 11. It adds a final ascent to the climb, as well as a plethora of additional features. Most notably, it’s a reminder that the team never envisioned Peak as a live service game, intending for post-launch updates to be a “cherry on top” of a finished experience. “We don’t wish for it to become a ‘forever game’ where we constantly add new things that bloat the experience, just to try to keep people’s attention,” reads the announcement. Remember when games were allowed to end in their own terms?

How Forbidden Solitaire brought solitaire games to the forefront

via Game Developer // Contributor Khee Hoon Chan has an excellent deep dive on the popularity of Forbidden Solitaire, which was a surprise for its development team. The interview has insights on finding satisfying twists on a proven, familiar formula, and carefully balancing the right tone for the experience during development. (As a disclosure, Khee Hoon and I are friends, but their work is always excellent regardless of bias, so it was worth the highlight.)

Neverness To Everness Devs Forget To Remove Watermark For Free Trial Of AI Software

via Kotaku // Players continue to scrutinize games in search of traces of generative AI use, a tech that has garnered a largely negative reception from developers in recent years, with many arguing that it is having a corrosive effect on the industry. 2026 gacha game Neverness To Everness is the latest example of this, and players didn’t have to dig too deep to find proof: an asset introduced in the latest update has a watermark for Doubao AI that someone apparently forgot to remove. As Kotaku reports, this comes mere months after the studio stated the game is “built on human creativity,” and it’s far from the only instance of AI-looking assets present.

About the Author

Contributing Editor, News, GameDeveloper.com

Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist and critic from Argentina. Video games helped him to learn English, so now he covers them for places like The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and more. He also runs Into the Spine, a site dedicated to fostering and supporting new writers, and co-hosted Turnabout Breakdown, a podcast about the Ace Attorney series. He’s most likely playing a rhythm game as you read this.