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Last June, Jagex - the developers of medieval MMO Runescape - found themselves at odds with players after deciding not to create any new content for Pride Month. Disputed internally at the studio before the discussion then leaked online, the decision appeared to be a retreat in the face of a world turning on minority groups.
Following up in September, Games Industry asked Jagex CEO Jon Bellamy if he stood by the call to simply re-run existing Pride-themed quests and events. "Ultimately, my job is governance and protection as much as anything else, and so sometimes those kinds of harsh decisions have to be made to protect the imminent future of the game," he told them. "If there are tough decisions to be made next year, we'll make them. If the world has changed a bit and the environment is different, we will react accordingly."
Five months on and with this year's Pride Month on the horizon, we've asked if the environment is different.
This is probably a sentence that could be said literally any day of the week, but a new cosy farming sim is on the block, this time taking the form of Starsand Island. The flavour on this occasion is of the anime variety, with some slightly goofier farming mechanics (i.e. turning your watermelon patch into one singular, 10 foot tall watermelon), some very Pokemon Legends: Arceus looking combat, and some appropriately cute animals to hang out with. And there's skateboarding! But never do launches go all that smoothly, as developer Seed Sparkle Lab have had to do a dash of damage control regarding some concerns over the game.
I hope you like warlocks. Well, if you're someone who regularly delves into Diablo, I hope you at the very least don't detest warlocks with all of your hellish heart. Because yesterday evening's Diablo 30th anniversary shindig was rather heavy on warlocks, with the class coming to not just Diablo 4's next expansion, but also Diablo 2 and Diablo Immortal. Meanwhile, Diablo 2: Resurrected has moseyed on over to Steam.
I still haven’t left the starting area in Skull and Bones, but it’s a relief to know that as and when I do, I’ll have some big molluscs to bombard alongside those boring galleons. Ubisoft’s open world Jolly Rogerer forges bravely on with another season of updates, Eye of the Beast, despite Ubisoft recently jettisoning a bunch of games and studios in their efforts to buoy up the share price. Yes, this is the same Skull and Bones that has 320 in-game players on Steam as of writing, and a worryingly Biblical user review average of 66.60%.
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Pearl Abyss‘ Will Powers has revealed during a chat with the Gaming Interviews YouTube channel that the open world featured in Crimson Desert is “absolutely massive,” going so far as to reveal it stacks up favourable against genre titans Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.
I don’t think numbers really do it justice because, how big is that in terms of scope and scale? But what we can say is that the world’s at least twice as big as the open world, the playable area, of Skyrim. It’s larger than the map of Red Dead Redemption 2.
The continent of Pywel is absolutely massive, but size doesn’t really matter if there’s nothing to do. Open-world games are about doing things, having activities, having distractions. So we wanted to create a world that’s not only massive, but is also incredibly interactive.
You choose the type of character you want to play as in terms of your progression within the systems in the game. And then through head canon you’re having this very different experience than other players because of the scope and scale of the game. You’ll be distracted by something, you’ll go on this quest line, you’ll have an experience that’ll be radically different than someone else, even though they’re playing the same game and the same canonical storyline that you both are going through.
Crimson Desert is currently in development for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S, and was originally pitched as a prequel to Black Desert Online. The game takes place in a medieval fantasy world known as Pywel, where players follow a hardened mercenary who is plagued by burdens of leadership and past memories.
The narrative focuses on Greymanes Kliff, Oongka, Yann, and Naira, during a period where Pywel is experiencing great tension and conflict among its people. This already fragile period is disrupted further by an attack by the Black Bears, a rival faction to the Greymanes, killing many of its members. In the aftermath, Kliff and the survivors are scattered, and so it’s up to him to reunite with his comrades and rebuild the Greymanes, before confronting the Myurdin, the leader of the Black Bears.
Crimson Desert launches on March 19, 2026. We went hands-on with the game back in April 2025, so be sure to read our impressions of some of the Crimson Desert’s bosses here.
[Source – Gaming Interviews YouTube via IGN]
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A preliminary employment tribunal hearing has seen the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB) request that a judge grant interim relief to the 31 UK-based GTA 6 developers fired by Rockstar, reportedly following discussion of changes to Rockstar's company Slack policies by staff on Discord. The union, which filed legal claims against the company over the dismissals last year, continue to assert that they were a form of union busting. Rockstar, meanwhile, have released a fresh statement claiming that the root of this is simply stopping info about GTA 6 from leaking.
I found the opening 15 minutes of EvoCreo’s demo to be a laugh riot, mostly because I accidentally named my character “Help”, not “Helen”. This lent a certain urgency to all the routine scene-setting and tutorial dialogue. Help, Farmer Whatshisname is looking for you! Help, I’m adding a map feature to your tablet! Help, there are over 170 Creos to discover! Given that RPGs can be sluggish at first, I think I’m going to adopt this as standard practice going forward. Nothing gets you over the opening hump like the impression that everybody you speak to has just escaped from a burning house.
As the Bob Dylan song goes, how many lush alien planets must a Man presumptuously land on and turn into poorly optimised Toyota plants before he finally decides he’s sick of being an extractivist piece of shit? Dylan was being rhetorical, but I studied at the school of Homer Simpson, and want you to give me an actual figure. I’m going to say: four and a half. If you’ve yet to hit your personal quota, well, here’s StarRupture out now in early access.
No, I'm not busy. Ignore the very famous actor acting moody in the corner, he'll be quiet if you pay him no mind. Also, do like I am and just pretend my holo-phone doesn't have a million urgent messages about some relic sitting in its inbox. Just sit here on the sofa, in this Cyberpunk 2077 flat, and watch as the big flying thing with Dogtown's military dictator's face on it floats between my futuristic kitchen and lounge, thanks to a new mod.
Warning: Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 lie ahead.
Cyberpunk 2077's narrative really kicks into gear when, after a job gone wrong, metal-infused merc protagonist V realises they're now living in the shadow of a Keanu Reeves-shaped clock. Despite this, you're free to while away hours doing a million things other than confronting your urgent mortality problem. It's something even CD Projekt themselves have joked about.
GTA 5 voice actor Ned Luke - aka Michael de Santa - got swatted for the eighth time over Xmas. I don’t mean that somebody belted him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. I mean that somebody put in a hoax call to emergency services in a bid to have armed police sent to his house. The latest incident happened this December while Luke was streaming GTA Online with Rob Wiethoff, the voice of John Marston in Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption 2. YouTuber IceBladeNinja has the whole clip for you to watch below.
