Destiny developer Bungie says it has addressed an issue where players have had their usernames changed by its "name moderation tool".

After "actively investigating" the issue for 24 hours, Bungie advised that while it had "identified the issue that was forcing a high number of Bungie name changes", it was "continuing to investigate" what happened and how "to address player accounts that were impacted".

Although Bungie acknowledged that a "high number of account names have been changed", the studio stopped short of confirming exactly how many players were affected.

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Last week, the Xitter account for H2M - a mod aiming to recreate the heyday of classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered - announced that they had received a cease and desist from Activision Blizzard, and would shut down the project. The 2022 version of Modern Warfare 2 lacked the original’s multiplayer, and H2M was so highly-anticipated that Steam sales of the 2016 FPS balooned in the lead-up to the mod’s planned release date. It didn't hurt that Activision had it on sale, of course, but the timing lined up so well that some fans speculated the discount was a deliberate bait-and-switch on the publisher’s part to profit from excitement over a mod they were already planning to shut down.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, I’ve been half reading in the garden and half staring in awe at my Kindle’s paperwhite doohickey and it’s ability to stay readable in searing sunbeams. I’m tempted to look up how it works but I don’t want to find out it’s made from the luminous, genetically-engineered husks of the workers that drop dead from dehydration at the fulfilment centers or something. To help distract me with yet more books, it’s Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider writer and Destiny 2 senior narrative designer, Dr. Hazel Monforton! Cheers Hazel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Last week, the Xitter account for H2M - a mod aiming to recreate the heyday of classic Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer inside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered - announced that they had received a cease and desist from Activision Blizzard, and would shut down the project. The 2022 version of Modern Warfare 2 lacked the original’s multiplayer, and H2M was so highly-anticipated that Steam sales of the 2016 FPS balooned in the lead-up to the mod’s planned release date. It didn't hurt that Activision had it on sale, of course, but the timing lined up so well that some fans speculated the discount was a deliberate bait-and-switch on the publisher’s part to profit from excitement over a mod they were already planning to shut down.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! This week, I’ve been half reading in the garden and half staring in awe at my Kindle’s paperwhite doohickey and it’s ability to stay readable in searing sunbeams. I’m tempted to look up how it works but I don’t want to find out it’s made from the luminous, genetically-engineered husks of the workers that drop dead from dehydration at the fulfilment centers or something. To help distract me with yet more books, it’s Dishonored: Death Of The Outsider writer and Destiny 2 senior narrative designer, Dr. Hazel Monforton! Cheers Hazel! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

Read more

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is supposed to be the big console and Game Pass exclusive for Xbox this fall, but it won’t be long until it comes to PlayStation 5 too, according to new reports. The port has been rumored for months and is the latest Xbox game to lose exclusivity amid Microsoft’s new multiplatform…

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Looks like the best-selling first-person shooter franchise will be making a return to Nintendo platforms.

In the wake of legal pushback from the FTC, Sony, and regulators from around the world, Microsoft Corp. has added an interesting stipulation to their 69 billion dollar acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Once the deal goes through, Microsoft not only promises to keep Call of Duty on its current platforms, but also bring it to the Nintendo platform in some form.

Phil Spencer, head executive of the Xbox brand and the CEO of Microsoft Gaming announced the news via Twitter:

Microsoft has entered into a 10-year commitment to bring Call of Duty to @Nintendo following the merger of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard King.  Microsoft is committed to helping bring more games to more people – however they choose to play. @ATVI_AB

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) December 7, 2022

Microsoft shocked the world with this $68.7 billion acquisition earlier this year. Since then, the company continues to reiterate their promise of keeping the successful FPS series on competing platforms. It is unknown what form Call of Duty will take on Switch since it could be remasters of older titles or simply porting COD Mobile. Interestingly, no Nintendo platform is specifically mentioned. It is also unknown when the 10-year commitment will begin; however, the buyout is expected to finish in March 2023. The last Call of Duty to be on a Nintendo platform was 2013’s Call of Duty: Ghosts on Wii U.

Are you excited for Call of Duty to come back to Nintendo? Comment down below!

Thought that Microsoft was going to drop $72 billion on Activision Blizzard and then allow the studio to continue operation with no interference whatsoever? So this is our “we’re not surprised” faces when the news came out that Microsoft is restructuring its expensive new toy to form a smaller team that will focus on creating […]

A new AA studio has reportedly been set up within Blizzard.

That's according to a report by Windows Central, which said Microsoft and Activision had allegedly "approved the creation of a new team" within Blizzard mostly made up of employees from mobile developer King.

Sources told the publication that the new studio will work on AA games "based on existing franchises within the Blizzard universes", highlighting games such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch, and StarCraft.

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Activision Blizzard has reportedly approved the use of generative AI tools including Midjourney and Stable Diffusion for producing concept art and marketing materials.

This is according to a recent investigation by Wired, which obtained an internal memo from Activision's then chief technology officer Michael Vance that approved the use of these generative AI tools. Vance left the role in January 2024 but still works for Activision as a fellow software engineer.

A former employee claimed the publisher "assured its artists that generative AI would be used only for internal concepts, not final game assets" and that "AI would not be used to replace them."

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Over 500 World of Warcraft developers have unionised.

By forming the World of Warcraft Game Makers Guild under the Communications Workers of America union (WoWGG-CWA), over 500 "designers, engineers, producers, artists, quality assurance testers, and more" have formed the "first wall-to-wall union at Activision Blizzard."

It also marks the largest wall-to-wall union at a Microsoft-owned studio, and is "further evidence of the growing effect to successfully organise the video game industry".

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Activision and Microsoft have reportedly approved the creation of a new "smaller" team within Blizzard Entertainment - mostly comprised of employees from Activision's mobile-focused King division - to develop new "AA" games based on existing Blizzard properties.

That's according to Windows Central's Jez Corden, whose sources say the new initiative reflects an eagerness at Microsoft to "explore and experiment" with smaller teams within the larger organisation, in response to the "monstrously ballooning costs" of AAA game development.

Corden notes Microsoft has seen success with the likes of Sea of Thieves and Grounded, both built by comparatively small teams - and, of course, 2023's Hi-Fi Rush, created by a small team within Tango Gameworks, was heralded as a "break out hit" by Microsoft after its release.

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Bungie is no longer working on Payback, a new project set in the Destiny universe once overseen by franchise bosses Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy.

That's according to reporting by Gamespot's Tamoor Hussain, Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who all state that Smith and Noseworthy are also now no longer at Bungie.

Details of Payback leaked online back in April, when it was described as "Destiny 3". There were questions at the time over whether the project was still in development. Now, Schreier has confirmed that Payback was more of a spin-off, and was cancelled "a while ago".

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Following yesterday's mass layoffs at Destiny 2 developer Bungie - in which 220 employees lost their jobs - a new report has claimed the cuts were a result of Bungie leadership 'overstating the studio's financial prospects' to Sony, which acquired the developer in 2022.

That's according to sources interviewed by journalist Stephen Totilo, who, writing in his GameFile newsletter, reports yesterday's job cuts were necessary to stem Bungie's continued financial losses. The studio is said to have repeatedly missed financial targets promised to Sony, and has reportedly lost money since the release of Destiny 2 expansion Lightfall in 2023.

Totilo claims yesterday's layoffs - the second round of job cuts in less than a year - had long been planned, and "couldn't be avoided" even if this year's Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, had "blockbuster performance". Bungie management reportedly concluded last year - amid poor sales and a dwindling Destiny 2 player base - it would need to "make deep cuts to show Sony's executives that it was taking its finances seriously", with the studio's autonomy - and management jobs - seemingly on the line if it failed to meet its targets.

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Following news of yesterday's layoffs at Bungie, CEO Pete Parsons has faced criticised from staff for spending millions on classic cars since the studio was purchased by Sony in 2022 and bragging about his lavish collection, as the company headed towards this week's latest brutal round of job losses.

Employees - some of whom are now unemployed - have shared links to an array of classic cars purchased via the Bring a Trailer website, with Parsons profile public and listing a vast number of auction wins. The earliest was in September 2022 costing $34,000; the most recent was 1st June this year costing $91,500, just a month before these latest layoffs. "How exciting!" wrote Parsons in a comment. "I have wanted a c1 since I was a little kid. My second hot wheel ever (in gold). Going to its forever home."

Parsons spent $79,000 on a vehicle in October 2023 just ahead of the previous layoffs, followed by three more purchases over the remainder of the year - including a Porsche costing over $200k. In total, Parsons appears to have spent $2,414,550 on vehicles.

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Current and former employees of Destiny 2 developer Bungie have responded to the news of devastating layoffs at the studio - which has seen 220 employees lose their jobs - aiming harsh criticism at the handling of the cuts amid calls for Bungie CEO Pete Parsons to resign.

Parsons announced the studio would be laying off approximately 17 percent of its workforce earlier today, blaming "rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions." The news marks the second round of job cuts at the studio in less than a year, with approximately 100 employees having been laid off last October.

Following this latest round of job cuts, former and current Bungie employees took to social media to lambast the decision. Destiny 2's global community lead Dylan Gafner (AKA dmg04) called the move "inexcusable" in a post on X. "Industry leading talent being lost, yet again," he wrote. "Accountability falling upon the workers who have pushed the needle to deliver for our community time and time again."

Read more

Destiny developer Bungie has laid off another 220 staff, representing roughly 17 percent of the studio's workforce.

In October last year, the studio laid off 100 staff from its then 1200-strong workforce. That means Bungie has laid off around a quarter of its workforce in the past nine months.

The news was shared today in a blog post from Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, describing the decision as "some of the most difficult changes we've ever had to make as a studio".

Read more

Activision and Microsoft have reportedly approved the creation of a new "smaller" team within Blizzard Entertainment - mostly comprised of employees from Activision's mobile-focused King division - to develop new "AA" games based on existing Blizzard properties.

That's according to Windows Central's Jez Corden, whose sources say the new initiative reflects an eagerness at Microsoft to "explore and experiment" with smaller teams within the larger organisation, in response to the "monstrously ballooning costs" of AAA game development.

Corden notes Microsoft has seen success with the likes of Sea of Thieves and Grounded, both built by comparatively small teams - and, of course, 2023's Hi-Fi Rush, created by a small team within Tango Gameworks, was heralded as a "break out hit" by Microsoft after its release.

Read more

Bungie is no longer working on Payback, a new project set in the Destiny universe once overseen by franchise bosses Luke Smith and Mark Noseworthy.

That's according to reporting by Gamespot's Tamoor Hussain, Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb and Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who all state that Smith and Noseworthy are also now no longer at Bungie.

Details of Payback leaked online back in April, when it was described as "Destiny 3". There were questions at the time over whether the project was still in development. Now, Schreier has confirmed that Payback was more of a spin-off, and was cancelled "a while ago".

Read more

Following yesterday's mass layoffs at Destiny 2 developer Bungie - in which 220 employees lost their jobs - a new report has claimed the cuts were a result of Bungie leadership 'overstating the studio's financial prospects' to Sony, which acquired the developer in 2022.

That's according to sources interviewed by journalist Stephen Totilo, who, writing in his GameFile newsletter, reports yesterday's job cuts were necessary to stem Bungie's continued financial losses. The studio is said to have repeatedly missed financial targets promised to Sony, and has reportedly lost money since the release of Destiny 2 expansion Lightfall in 2023.

Totilo claims yesterday's layoffs - the second round of job cuts in less than a year - had long been planned, and "couldn't be avoided" even if this year's Destiny 2 expansion, The Final Shape, had "blockbuster performance". Bungie management reportedly concluded last year - amid poor sales and a dwindling Destiny 2 player base - it would need to "make deep cuts to show Sony's executives that it was taking its finances seriously", with the studio's autonomy - and management jobs - seemingly on the line if it failed to meet its targets.

Read more

Following news of yesterday's layoffs at Bungie, CEO Pete Parsons has faced criticised from staff for spending millions on classic cars since the studio was purchased by Sony in 2022 and bragging about his lavish collection, as the company headed towards this week's latest brutal round of job losses.

Employees - some of whom are now unemployed - have shared links to an array of classic cars purchased via the Bring a Trailer website, with Parsons profile public and listing a vast number of auction wins. The earliest was in September 2022 costing $34,000; the most recent was 1st June this year costing $91,500, just a month before these latest layoffs. "How exciting!" wrote Parsons in a comment. "I have wanted a c1 since I was a little kid. My second hot wheel ever (in gold). Going to its forever home."

Parsons spent $79,000 on a vehicle in October 2023 just ahead of the previous layoffs, followed by three more purchases over the remainder of the year - including a Porsche costing over $200k. In total, Parsons appears to have spent $2,414,550 on vehicles.

Read more

Current and former employees of Destiny 2 developer Bungie have responded to the news of devastating layoffs at the studio - which has seen 220 employees lose their jobs - aiming harsh criticism at the handling of the cuts amid calls for Bungie CEO Pete Parsons to resign.

Parsons announced the studio would be laying off approximately 17 percent of its workforce earlier today, blaming "rising costs of development and industry shifts as well as enduring economic conditions." The news marks the second round of job cuts at the studio in less than a year, with approximately 100 employees having been laid off last October.

Following this latest round of job cuts, former and current Bungie employees took to social media to lambast the decision. Destiny 2's global community lead Dylan Gafner (AKA dmg04) called the move "inexcusable" in a post on X. "Industry leading talent being lost, yet again," he wrote. "Accountability falling upon the workers who have pushed the needle to deliver for our community time and time again."

Read more

Destiny developer Bungie has laid off another 220 staff, representing roughly 17 percent of the studio's workforce.

In October last year, the studio laid off 100 staff from its then 1200-strong workforce. That means Bungie has laid off around a quarter of its workforce in the past nine months.

The news was shared today in a blog post from Bungie CEO Pete Parsons, describing the decision as "some of the most difficult changes we've ever had to make as a studio".

Read more

Bungie have reportedly cancelled Payback, an unannounced project in the Destiny universe from former Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith and project lead Mark Noseworthy. Both Noseworthy and Smith appear to have lost their jobs in the course of Bungie's brutal cost-cutting this week, but Payback's cancellation pre-dates the layoffs. Envisaged as a Destiny spin-off, rather than Destiny 3, it was apparently dropped "a while ago".

Read more

This week's mass layoffs at Destiny studio Bungie were planned out months ago, former employees have told journalist Stephen Totilo at Game File (paywalled). According to Totilo, Bungie leadership "overstated their studio’s financial prospects to Sony" after the latter bought Bungie in 2022 for $3.6 billion. The latest cuts were necessary to prevent continued losses, says the report, after Bungie missed Sony’s targets following the release of last year’s Lightfall.

Read more

Hardened battle royalists will remember Caldera, the sandy island map of bunkers and palm trees in Call Of Duty: Warzone. It got shut down last year as Activision focused their efforts elsewhere, making the map unplayable. But you can now revisit those bullet-strewn beaches. In theory, anyway. Activision have released it as a 4GB open-source project that can be explored in a 3D model-viewing tool. That's cool. But among their reasons for doing so, there lies a predictably grubby logic: they want people to use the data to train AI.

Read more

Destiny and Marathon developers Bungie are laying off 220 people - around 17% of their total workforce - as studio heads try to offset a financial crisis brought on by "overly ambitious" expansion, individual project "misfires", and a wider economic downturn in 2023. Bungie are also transferring a further 155 roles to parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, and are spinning out an untitled incubation project - an "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe" - to form a new PlayStation studio.

Read more

Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has posted a lengthy blog on Steam about the transition from 6v6 player matches in the first Overwatch to 5v5 in the poorly received free-to-play sequel. It's a juicy read for armchair designers and lapsed Overwatchers like myself, packing in analysis of class roles and the shift from the free choice of heroes to single hero picks and enforced team compositions.

In broad strokes, Keller summarises how the Overwatch experience has drifted away from "player freedom and creativity in order to create a more balanced, consistent and competitive experience for players". It's possible, however, that Overwatch 2 will swing back in the other direction, as Blizzard are now "exploring how we can test different forms of 6v6 in the game to gauge the results", with a view to restoring some of the joyful chaos that saw entire teams of Reinhardts charging the objective in formation.

Read more

Bungie have reportedly cancelled Payback, an unannounced project in the Destiny universe from former Destiny 2 game director Luke Smith and project lead Mark Noseworthy. Both Noseworthy and Smith appear to have lost their jobs in the course of Bungie's brutal cost-cutting this week, but Payback's cancellation pre-dates the layoffs. Envisaged as a Destiny spin-off, rather than Destiny 3, it was apparently dropped "a while ago".

Read more

Yet again, some good food. Following the news earlier this week that 241 Bethesda Games Studios staffers had formed what was at the time the biggest wall-to-wall under Microsoft, The Verge reports that over 500 World Of Warcraft developers have voted to form their own union, alongside the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

Read more

The immersive sim has seen a revival in recent years. Not only from larger studios like Arkane, keeping the faith alive with their time loops and space stations, but also from a bunch of smaller developers bravely exploring a typically ambitious genre. RPS has always had an affinity for these systemically luxuriant simulations, historically lauding the likes of the original Deus Ex as the best game ever made. But given everything that has come since, is that still the case? Only one way to find out: make a big list.

Read more

This week's mass layoffs at Destiny studio Bungie were planned out months ago, former employees have told journalist Stephen Totilo at Game File (paywalled). According to Totilo, Bungie leadership "overstated their studio’s financial prospects to Sony" after the latter bought Bungie in 2022 for $3.6 billion. The latest cuts were necessary to prevent continued losses, says the report, after Bungie missed Sony’s targets following the release of last year’s Lightfall.

Read more

Hardened battle royalists will remember Caldera, the sandy island map of bunkers and palm trees in Call Of Duty: Warzone. It got shut down last year as Activision focused their efforts elsewhere, making the map unplayable. But you can now revisit those bullet-strewn beaches. In theory, anyway. Activision have released it as a 4GB open-source project that can be explored in a 3D model-viewing tool. That's cool. But among their reasons for doing so, there lies a predictably grubby logic: they want people to use the data to train AI.

Read more

Destiny and Marathon developers Bungie are laying off 220 people - around 17% of their total workforce - as studio heads try to offset a financial crisis brought on by "overly ambitious" expansion, individual project "misfires", and a wider economic downturn in 2023. Bungie are also transferring a further 155 roles to parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment, and are spinning out an untitled incubation project - an "action game set in a brand-new science-fantasy universe" - to form a new PlayStation studio.

Read more

Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has posted a lengthy blog on Steam about the transition from 6v6 player matches in the first Overwatch to 5v5 in the poorly received free-to-play sequel. It's a juicy read for armchair designers and lapsed Overwatchers like myself, packing in analysis of class roles and the shift from the free choice of heroes to single hero picks and enforced team compositions.

In broad strokes, Keller summarises how the Overwatch experience has drifted away from "player freedom and creativity in order to create a more balanced, consistent and competitive experience for players". It's possible, however, that Overwatch 2 will swing back in the other direction, as Blizzard are now "exploring how we can test different forms of 6v6 in the game to gauge the results", with a view to restoring some of the joyful chaos that saw entire teams of Reinhardts charging the objective in formation.

Read more

Yet again, some good food. Following the news earlier this week that 241 Bethesda Games Studios staffers had formed what was at the time the biggest wall-to-wall under Microsoft, The Verge reports that over 500 World Of Warcraft developers have voted to form their own union, alongside the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

Read more

The immersive sim has seen a revival in recent years. Not only from larger studios like Arkane, keeping the faith alive with their time loops and space stations, but also from a bunch of smaller developers bravely exploring a typically ambitious genre. RPS has always had an affinity for these systemically luxuriant simulations, historically lauding the likes of the original Deus Ex as the best game ever made. But given everything that has come since, is that still the case? Only one way to find out: make a big list.

Read more

Crash Bandicoot's N. Sane Trilogy - which comprises the remasters of the first Crash Bandicoot, as well as Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back and Crash Bandicoot: Warped - has certainly not crashed and burned.

Last night, the Crash Bandicoot team revealed that the trilogy has now sold through 20m copies worldwide. "Whoa! Thank you to our community of Crash players for this memorable milestone," the team wrote on social media platform X.

To celebrate, a number of Crash Bandicoot games are now on sale on PlayStation, with deals running until 3rd July. For example, you can currently scoop up the Crash Bandicoot - Crashiversary Bundle for £43.99. It usually retails at £110.

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Look, who knows when we’ll see Fallout 5 - there’s an increasingly less-than-zero chance we’ll all be living in a real post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland by the time Bethesda get around to revealing anything, if their deliberately slow approach to The Elder Scrolls 6 (it’s been nearly THIRTEEN years since Skyrim) is much to go by. Still, even without a full sequel, Fallout is all around us - in multiple seasons of a television show, in Fortnite, and now in Call of Duty.

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Look, who knows when we’ll see Fallout 5 - there’s an increasingly less-than-zero chance we’ll all be living in a real post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland by the time Bethesda get around to revealing anything, if their deliberately slow approach to The Elder Scrolls 6 (it’s been nearly THIRTEEN years since Skyrim) is much to go by. Still, even without a full sequel, Fallout is all around us - in multiple seasons of a television show, in Fortnite, and now in Call of Duty.

Read more

With Destiny 2's The Final Shape expansion now here, officially bringing the ten-year Light and Darkness saga to a close, developer Bungie has turned its attention to the future, sharing more on what's next for its live-service shooter - including a tease of the mysterious Codename: Frontiers, whatever it may be, coming next year.

When Bungie revealed The Final Shape last August, it announced 2024 would bring a significant shake-up to the way Destiny 2 content is delivered. Instead of four yearly Seasons, it said it would release three "larger, content-packed" Episodes, each featuring standalone stories split into three six-week-long Acts.

The first of these, Echoes, launches tomorrow, 11th June, picking up immediately after the events of The Final Shape. It all unfolds on Nessus, where there are ancient secrets to unearth and a mysterious new enemy to encounter. Echoes will then be followed by Revenant later this year (Bungie's previous roadmap said between July and October), and comes with a vampire-hunting theme as players, in the role of a Slayer Baron, take on the Fallen. There's also a new potion crafting system - featuring combat and loot potions - alongside the new story elements, quests, and rewards set to feature in all three Episodes.

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Apparently it’s 2012 all over again, and publishers are once more attempting the move of requiring always-on internet connections to play single-player games. That’s been revealed to be the case for Call of Duty: Black Op 6's single-player campaign, not just on PC as it has been for years, but now on consoles too.

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A Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 campaign that looks like Mission: Impossible by way of an Adam Curtis documentary, a Gearsof War prequel that shows fans E-Day and the birth of the series’ iconic “Lancer” chainsaw gun, and a trailer that showed Perfect Dark isn’t just still alive, it’s potentially thriving. Microsoft’s…

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Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, the first in the best-selling military shooter since Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, looks like a cross between a ‘90s political documentary and a Mission Impossible movie in its new trailer. The game will launch on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC on October 25, 2024.

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The host of E3 replacement Summer Game Fest, Geoff Keighley, kicked off the showcase’s fourth year by doing what many have called on the veteran industry insider to do for months: use his biggest platform to acknowledge the current state of mass layoffs, cuts, and cancellations at some of gaming’s biggest publishers…

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I've set aside some time this evening for Destiny 2's latest expansion The Final Shape, which launched last night. My pal Liam suggested we play this evening because Bungie's servers would inevitably go up in flames the moment it launched. And what do you know? The right decision was made. Are we smug about it? Yes. Anyway, the good news is that Bungie have put out a few of those fires, though there are still a few bugs to fix.

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A federal court has awarded Activision £11.3m ($14.4m) after it ruled in favour of the publisher's lawsuit against cheat makers EngineOwning and Garnatz Enterprise Ltd, and 11 individual people.

As spotted by VentureBeat, the lawsuit, which was filed at the beginning of 2022, accuses the companies and individuals – Valentin Rick, Leonard Bugla, Leon Frisch, Marc-Alexander Richts, Alexander Kleeman, Leon Schlender, Bennet Huch, Ricky Szameitat, Remo Loffler, Charlie Wiest and Pascal Classen – of profiting from cheats and giving an unfair competitive advantage to players prepared to pay for auto-aim and auto-fire software cheats.

At the time, Activision said it sought "to put a stop to unlawful conduct by an organisation that is distributing and selling for profit numerous malicious software products designed to enable members of the public to gain unfair competitive advantages", and described EngineOwning as a "German business entity... engaged in the development, sale, distribution, marketing, and exploitation of a portfolio of malicious cheats and hacks for popular online multiplayer games, most prominently the COD Games".

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series that highlights some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also about having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and if you want to read more, you can - you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Which was the first game to have a dash move in it? The earliest I can think of is the Mega Man series. But was that a slide or a dash? Because although they serve similar functions, I think they're distinct things. It's tricky! Today of course, dashes are synonymous with action games, and even other kinds of games, and it's probably more common to play games with them than without them. Dashes have become a fundamental part of our gaming lexicon. But the question is, which dashes have been the most memorable - which dashes are the best?

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Bungie has won its court battle against cheat and mod site, AimJunkies.

As reported by journalist Stephen Totilo, AimJunkies, aka Phoenix Digital, was instructed to pay the Destiny 2 developer $63,210 in damages – that's the revenue the company is thought to have earned selling the cheats – setting a new precedent in what's thought to be the first lawsuit wherein a jury has ruled on a game-cheating case.

The jury threw out AimJunkie's countersuit that Bungie had illegally accessed one of its computers, but founder David Schaefer says they will "fight this" and appeal the verdict.

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Here it is, Guardians: our first look – well, hear, technically – at Keith David's Commander Zavala in Destiny 2: The Final Shape.

We already knew that Bungie had no plans to remove Zavala from the Destiny 2 story given he was "central" to the upcoming The Final Shape expansion, but this is the first time we've heard Zavala voiced by David. Up until now, Zavala's voice work had been recorded in advance by his original voice actor, Lance Reddick, who sadly died last year.

The line is brief, yes – "I used to think I'd give anything to bring you back", is all he says – but it's especially powerful given the team had to unexpectedly recast the commander after Reddick, who was a committed and celebrated Destiny player himself, died.

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