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After the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I was afraid that we would never see a new game in the style of the 2D Zelda game. Yet, I have been proven wrong when this game was announced. To be very honest, I didn’t have very high hopes for this game. Especially since this game was announced this summer and released in late September. I felt that this game going to be a game to fill a gap while the developers are working on a much larger game. Now, the game is released, and I have played through a fair chunk of it. So, what is my opinion on this game? Well, that’s what I’m going to tell you in this first impressions article, while I all invite you to leave a comment of your thoughts and/or opinions in the comment section down below.

Renewing the Echoes

After a short introduction where you play as Link, the main story of this game is introduced. There are all consuming interdimensional rifts appearing all over Hyrule, and it’s eating various people in the kingdom.

Link gets eaten by one of those rifts while freeing Zelda and when Zelda tells her father, the king, about these rifts… A new rift appears and replaces the king with an evil clone of himself. Zelda gets thrown in the dungeon and there she meets a fairy named Tri. This fairy gives Zelda a special staff where she can summon objects into the world using echoes. With those echoes, she escapes the dungeon and sets out on an adventure to save Hyrule from doom before the land is fully consumed by the rifts.

Something I always love about the Zelda games is that there is a different core mechanic at the base of the game. In this game, we get two things. We got the rifts to another dark world, but we also got the magical staff, which we can use to summon various echoes into the world. These echoes mean you can tackle this game in various different ways. But I’ll talk more about that later in this article.

In terms of story, this game is hitting all the same beats as your typical Legend of Zelda game. It might be disappointing, to some, that in this game there is no voice acting anymore apart from the grunts and various emotional noises. Personally, I think it adds to the charm of this game. That’s because the characters in this game are way more expressive. While the story isn’t going to leave you at the edge of your seat of “what’s going to happen next”, it’s still well quite enjoyable, and the more expressive characters add quite a lot to the charm and atmosphere of the game.

Something I really like is how in this game, you are free to explore the world at your own peace. This game isn’t limiting you to go in a certain order. While this game isn’t fully open world like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, it’s somewhere in between. You can tackle parts in a different order. Like the first two major dungeons can be done out of order. Each area is its self-contained puzzle, and everything you need can be found in that general area.

In my introduction of this article, I said that I was afraid that was afraid that this game would be a short one where you were able to beat it in a few hours. That it was going to be a game that’s supposed to hold players over for the “next big 3D Zelda title”. To my surprise, this game is rather lengthy for a 2,5D Zelda game. It clocks in at 25 hours of casual playtime, which is, to my knowledge, one of the longest 2,5D Zelda games.

Climbing with beds

Something I find myself doing quite a lot while playing this game was climbing the area with beds. I summoned various beds stacked on top of each other to climb a wall. Since, I wanted to know if the developers hid a secret on that cliff face.

The exploration of this version of Hyrule is a blast to do. While you visit a lot of familiar places and meet your usual suspects like the Zora and the Gerudo, it’s a treat seeing them again. The only thing I missed a bit is showing the impact of the rifts. Something that this game only tells through dialogue was how things got impacted by the rifts. I wish it was shown a bit more visually. Like different animations of the characters before and after. But maybe, Tears of the Kingdom set the bar a bit too high for those expectations where each major area had a certain curse.

In terms of gameplay, this game really leans into the echoes mechanic. It also remembers that Zelda is a princess and didn’t really have combat training. So, you have to use summoned enemies to your advantage to let them fight for you. Now, you do have a sword, but you can only use it when your power meter has charge. I always reserved that for the dungeon bosses or when the situation got pretty dicey. Since recharging that meter is either done with potions or by defeating monsters from the rift world. These enemies aren’t exactly common in the overworld, and the energy bar drains fast.

In general, this game hits the same general gameplay beats as all other Zelda games. You go from dungeon to dungeon, learning a new technique or skill, defeating the boos and moving forward to another dungeon. There are also side quests in this game, that give you a nice reward. In this game, you also have a nice system to keep track of these side quests, like in Tears of the Kingdom. Something they also brought over from that game is the cooking system to a degree.

That’s something I personally feel mixed about. Maybe it’s me, but I feel the ingredients are quite rare to come by and there is no real way to farm certain ingredients like in Breath of the Wild. I have to admit that it adds a certain charm to this game, but I feel it’s a bit under implemented here. Like when you first meet the potion creators Deku shrubs, they talk about recipes… And I had a hard time finding any.

Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you can also eat most of the ingredients without cooking them. While I personally dislike the fact you have to do two clicks to consume an item, I do understand why they did it. To avoid you consuming them too much. Yet, this is a change from the two previous games and I honestly really feel it’s a set backwards. A fine solution would be to give the player an option to switch between both systems.

Grezzo playset

This game was co-developed by Grezzo. Their previous original Zelda game was Tri Force Heroes. But, this game looks very similar in graphical style to the remake of Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch from late 2019.

This game looks like a plastic toy set and it looks amazing. While I was playing this game, I felt amazed at how expressive they were able to make everything without breaking the illusion that this is a toy set brought to live by our imagination. I don’t have a lot of complaints about the visuals and animations. And most of my complaints aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.

Just like, I don’t have any complaints about the music and sound design of this game. If you take the music and sound design in a vacuum, you would say that it sounds just like very other Zelda game. It sounds like a remix of the familiar melodies we all know and love from the Zelda games. But, this isn’t a problem, since it sells the illusion that you are a child playing with a sort of Playmobil toy set of Hyrule and trying to recreate the sound effects and music of the game.

In terms of controls, this game plays like a dream. I rarely had problems with the controls and something I really like is the fact that with one press of a stick, you can see a view from on top when you feel the camera is blocking something. Now, there is one thing that I do have some things to criticize about. And that’s about the jumping.

It’s pretty difficult sometimes to judge how high Zelda can jump. I had moments in combat where I wasn’t aware I could jump on a higher ledge until I saw an enemy jumping backwards on that ledge. I also got tripped up several times with how far Zelda can jump. Her jump is shorter than I think, and the amount of times I jumped into a pit misjudging the jump is quite a lot. Something that would have helped is something a small landing shadow when Zelda was coming down. Then again, that must have been a nightmare to implement… So, maybe I should keep her shorter jump just better in mind.

Now, something else. Something I really like is how this game has two difficulty modes. I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and I have to say, I’m happy that I did. This game can lure you into a false sense of security. I wouldn’t say that this game is hard, but it isn’t a cakewalk either. You really need to keep your wits about you and think fast sometimes.

Being aware of what’s around you is also quite important since this game loves to hide things in little side area’s and using the map system is a must. I love how you can put pins and such on the map. Yet, I have to admit that I still keep notes in my phone like: “treasure in Gerudo dungeon, need to check later”.

The more I play through this game, the more I realize that the critiques I can make about this game are more on the minor side. Like how it feels like a waste of time when you are scrolling through a long list of echoes when you just want to find one. An easy solution would be to give the player an ability to favorite certain echoes. But then again, the sort function in the quick menu has “most used”, “recently learned” … So, it’s kinda that.

Now, you have two save slots in this game. So, you can play through this game and let a friend or a sibling play through a different slot. Now, this game also autosaves for you frequently, in case you forget to save. The game also keeps like several autosaves in case you want to return to an earlier point.

Something I really like is how this game also has a quick travel system. The system works similarly like an owl statue in Majora’s Mask or a water vane in Link Between Worlds. It makes it easy when you feel stumped by a puzzle and want to return later. The fast travel locations are very fairly placed all over the land.

While I went quite critical in this game, the more I played it, the more it won me over. This game is a new 2,5D Zelda adventure game I hope we were going to see again. The last new, non remake 2,5D Zelda game was released almost 11 years ago. And, I’m so happy to see a return to this style. I’d love to see a this style also making an appearance very so often since it’s clear there are still various unique ways to explore Hyrule and tell a story about the Hyrule legend without going fully 3D.

Apart from a few small complaints you read in this article, I honestly don’t have any major complaints about this game. This is a game I’m going to finish for sure, since I’m enjoying my time with this title quite a lot. If you are into the series, I highly recommend this title to you. If you enjoy exploration and playing with unique mechanics, I also think this game is for you. This game is totally worth it’s price tag and it pleasantly surprised me.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

The Sunday Times has revealed the UK's top 30 wealthiest developers and gamers, including Rockstar's Sam and Dan Houser (#4), Frontiers' David Braben and Wendy Irvin-Braben (#10), and Rebellion's Chris and Jason Kingsley (#14), and Hello Games' Sean Murray (#17).

Other names on The Sunday Times Gaming Rich List include Felix "PewDiePie" Kjellberg (#25), Alastair "Ali-A" Aiken (#30), and KSI and The Sidemen (=#21).

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From the beginning of the hobby, there have always been many different methods to randomize how an uncertain event transpires in TTRPG. Because it is uncertain, there is a chance of failure. Because we have been trained from our very beginnings in life to seek success, many of us fear failure. What if I told you failure is a much more interesting outcome? (at least in TTRPGs)

For some, it might be a bit controversial. Getting to land that crit in the final boss to send them to their final slumber might be epic and rad af, but there are amazing stories to be told as well through failure. In fact, in many cases I would argue these stories are even MORE interesting than those that come out from successes.

Some time ago, I encountered this video from Dropout and Dimension 20’s Sam Reich, talking about why he prefers failure over success in TTRPGs. And you know what? I agree with him. So for that, I piled up all my reasons why and put them into this article. Feel free to debate with me in the comments if you believe I am right or not. How do stories begin in media? They start with a problem. How does the problem occur? That is because there was a failure either from one of the protagonists or the world itself. That is what creates a story interesting enough to deserve to be told. A story of a protagonist overcoming the odds after a failure, getting to learn from it, or maybe the other way around, succumbing to a path of corruption coming from that first domino piece. All in all, what is it that kickstarted it all? You know it – the failure!

Failure in life

There’s no better starting point than one’s own experience to begin my argument. We all experienced failure in our lives, in a bigger or lower scale. I am no different. In fact, you can search for some of the interviews I was done in the space, and you will find me talking about many of my failures. But I grew stronger from them all. I learned. I like to think I am a better person because of it, and will not trip with the same stone again. We all love the underdog story for a reason. We can see ourselves represented in it because (except for some crappy people) we have all been there. That is what makes our story interesting to tell. We better discover ourselves and get a good story from it through our failures.

Botching your check

A Natural 1, botching your roll, dropping the Jenga tower… however it is in the game you are playing that you get the worst possible result. Our character is going to have a terrible time. Look back in your memory lane to your most memorable moments in TTRPG. I am CERTAIN that at least one of those involves botching a roll. It may have derailed your whole campaign possibly. It has THAT level of impact at times. Not that a success may not have it, but failures are even more unexpected than successes, and that tells brilliant tales in my opinion.

Picture a normal battle against some bandits occurring. Basic, simple. Now, they place them in the middle of a gala, and have a ranger’s fire arrow start a fire due to a botched roll. By the next round, you are fighting bandits while rescuing people in a raging inferno of a mansion. That encounter went from boring to incredibly exciting only from the result of a roll. I am sure that will leave some consequences that will turn into an unexpected and incredible story going forward. As a simple example, the player characters may now be sought by the law for the disaster they caused, forcing them to become criminals from a mafia organization.

Learning and Character development

As stated before, I find nothing is better than failure as a learning experience. When you create your perfect cyborg in your futuristic game, it is when they get hacked due to a failure on their part and start to doubt their humanity that true character development starts for them. Overcoming a problem (success) may have plenty of impact in character progression, but where would that all be without a previous failure on the character’s part that put them there?

Degrees of success and failure

Part of these problems occur due to the binary types of results most of the popular TTRPG offer. You either succeed or fail. There is not much of an in-between point according to the rules. If the GM adds one, that’s more of a house rule or optional rule. However, nowadays we have plenty of narrative-first games like Powered by the Apocalypse games that bring with them the chance of more often than not moving the story forward, but with something else going wrong or happening. These degrees of success and failure are added into the games to solve this problem by adding more failure into the mix, instead of being mostly a 50/50 chance, or granting more success than failure.

Conclusion

As you see throughout the article, I have provided several reasons why I believe a botch is more interesting than a critical success. I tie it with how failure works in the narrative of a story, and indicate how a moment of utter failure helps in most cases characters and the setting around them grow in ways it wouldn’t normally. There are great things to come out of successes and critical successes, of course! I just want to open this debate and see what y’all have to say from your experience.

So… what’s your take? Do you believe I am a GM that likes seeing my players suffer? Do you agree with me wholeheartedly? What’s your position in this debate? Let me know in the comments below!

Virtuos has acquired British indie game developer, Third Kind Games.

Virtuos says the acquisition will enhance its "AAA co-development capabilities and establish a new foothold for Virtuos in the UK."

The buyout will not affect the game's management, as Virtuos says Third Kind - which employs over 70 in Leamington Spa, UK, and has worked on games like Fable, Forza Horizon 4, and Sea of Thieves - will continue to be led by its nine co-founders, all of whom formerly worked at Activision.

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Space Ape has shut down Rival Kingdoms, saying it had been "a privilege" to have run the RTS game penned by Rhianna Pratchett for almost a decade.

The developer said it had no plans to sell or transfer the mobile game to another company, revive it, develop a sequel, or permit players to play the game on private servers.

Whilst the developer stopped short of revealing why it had decided to shutter the game, a statement posted on its website said, "all games have a life cycle, and Rival Kingdoms is no exception."

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Opinions on Peter Molyneux vary.

For some, he's a whimsical raconteur responsible for some of the most inspirational games in this industry.

For others, he's someone who wilfully misleads fans and has somewhat sullied his reputation with ill-advised pivots into motion controls, Kickstarter and NFTs.

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Speaking at Devcom today, Red Meat Games creative content strategist Judy Ehrentraut discussed the importance of ethically training generative AI models, and how certain tools can be utilised during game development.

"AI is the biggest buzzword and it's either hyped as the new way to solve every productivity problem, or it's received with a groan," Ehrentraut acknowledged.

"I think both of these takes are really valuable, because disruptive technologies are not necessarily good or bad. It depends on how they are used, and it really depends on the approach that we take and whether it's ethical or not."

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As part of our series of daily podcasts from Devcom and Gamescom 2024, GamesIndustry.biz editor-in-chief James Batchelor is joined by Execution Labs co-founder and former IGDA Montreal executive director Jason Della Rocca.

Drawing on Della Rocca's years of experiences working with indie developers, we discuss the biggest challenges these studios face in today's market, from the impact of layoffs and studio closures to the shrinking indie publisher scene.

And don't worry if you missed this week's GI Microcast, which was released yesterday - you can find all the details and listen in here. This week, Chris and James discussed the Epic Games Store's mobile launch, The Plucky Squire's brave release date, and more.

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Developers that relegate their storytelling to cutscenes and linear dialogue are severely limiting themselves in how they tell stories — and likely driving players away.

That's according to Kelsey Beachum — best known for her narrative work on Mobius Digital's seminal 2019 title Outer Wilds, but who has also written for Dying Light 2, The Outer Worlds and Groundless, among others — as she delivered the opening keynote at Devcom in Cologne today.

Her opening example was the classic Super Mario Bros, where the story boils down to Toad telling Mario that the princess is in another castle. Illustrating this as a timeline, she marked these moments in red as they bring a complete halt to gameplay: the player is no longer involved.

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Speaking at Devcom, Stray Fawn co-founder Philomena Schwab shared how the Zurich-based studio has survived for the past eight years, from refusing to partner with a publisher to the importance of community support when developing a game.

Schwab emphasised that Stray Fawn prides itself on being an independent studio, with no publisher or external investors.

Even when its first game, genetics survival title Niche, started getting publisher interest after crowdfunding success, the studio continued to decline offers. This was due to previous experience from making a mobile game which had a publisher that didn't go so well.

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Climax Studios has opened a new location in Edinburgh.

The studio opened its doors in February, and has been recruiting a team over the past few months.

The co-developer plans to continue hiring to further support the studio and "better collaborate with partners" which include firms such as Microsoft and Sony.

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As the Devcom developer conference kicks off in Cologne today, the organisers have shared the results of this year's speaker survey, with almost 90% of respondents stating they believe AAA games can succeed without additional purchases.

In a survey of 100 speakers, out of 300 industry experts who will take the stage over the next two days, 89% said AAA titles can be "financially successful just by being Buy-to-Play."

The result comes after years of scrutiny over add-on-purchases within the AAA games spaces, including loot boxes (such as EA's Ultimate Team modes for its sports games), battle/season passes, and progress boosters such as XP multipliers and crafting resources.

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Trigger warning: This article contains references to rape and sexual assault

Games industry performers have raised concerns of being asked to act out explicit sexual content without notice.

In a recent report by BBC News, actors said that the "cultural secrecy around projects" results in scripts not being shared until the day of filming.

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Ubisoft has made another round of layoffs, this time cutting staff from two of its US studios.

A total of 45 employees have been let go across the Assassin's Creed publisher's San Francisco studio and Red Storm Entertainment, which is based in Cary, North Carolina. It is unclear which departments have been affected.

"Yesterday Ubisoft San Francisco and Red Storm Entertainment informed their teams of a restructuring that resulted in 45 employees leaving Ubisoft," a Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN in a statement.

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North Beach Games has announced the opening of a new studio in Prague, and development of Stranded Deep 2.

The new studio is led by CTO and creative director Sam Edwards (Beam Team Games, creator of Stranded Deep), and general manager Tomáš Pšenička (Keen Software House, creator of Space Engineers).

The core development team will work primarily on-site in Prague, with support for remote staff working globally. It will focus on creating and supporting survival crafting games.

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Riot Games has re-organised its leadership in its esports and entertainment segments.

Current esports president John Needham has been appointed president of publishing and esports, and will "create new integrated experiences" that will combine its esports, music, and creative publishing sectors.

Needham was hired as managing director of Europe in 2017, and has since held various leading roles. Prior to Riot, he was head of European publishing at Lionhead and CEO of Cryptic Studios.

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Adam Boyes is leaving Iron Galaxy after eight years with the developer.

Boyes announced his departure in a blog post, in which he detailed that he'll be leaving his position by the end of the year.

Boyes became CEO of the studio in June 2016 having previously held leadership roles at PlayStation, Capcom, Midway Games, and Electronic Arts.

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Perforce's latest annual State of Game Technology report claims the top three issues game developers currently face are funding, collaboration, and time for innovation.

Over a third of the 576 respondents - who categorise themselves as practitioners, senior management, and executives working in gaming, media/entertainment, automotive, and manufacturing - said that collaboration was difficult, claiming that "moving large files" was more of a hindrance to collaboration than remote working.

90% thought that the availability and access to senior leadership was more important than "the ability to work remotely" (81%).

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The games industry is "showing signs of a recovery" from "record-breaking layoffs, closures, and business turmoil."

That's according to DDM's Games Investment Review, which reports "a sizeable uptick" in investments, recovering ground lost in 2023.

Whilst mergers and acquisitions (M&A) remain "low" – even taking out last year's anomalous $68.7bn generated by Microsoft's acquisition of Activision – and not a single quarter in 2023 surpassed $1.3 billion, both Q1 and Q2 in 2024 have "each reached over $2.2bn."

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Leaders from Rare and Dlala will join a special panel to discuss how to support and lead development teams during times of intense change.

The panel will end this year's GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit, which will take place at London's Royal Institution on September 18. Tickets are on sale here.

Rare studio boss Craig Duncan and chief of staff Harriet Manson will join Dlala CEO Aj Grand-Scrutton and COO Gemma Foster in a discussion around the rapid rate of change happening inside and outside of the games industry, such as on-going challenges posed by economic, political and global unrest. With Rare sharing insight from within a major Microsoft-owned AAA studio, and Dlala discussing their experiences on the indie side, the discussion will centre on the role of leadership in helping their employees navigate change, and will offer actionable advice and tips for leaders and HR professionals.

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It's going to be a busy week in Cologne with both Devcom and Gamescom attracting games professionals from around the world.

The former event kicks things off with a two-day conference that will see more than 250 speakers discussing some of the biggest challenges in the industry today across over 200 sessions.

There's a lot to wade through in the full program, so the GamesIndustry.biz team has selected our highlights of some of the sessions we think will be most interesting.

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Mad Crusader has announced it will invest $30 million in premium AA game IPs developed in its incubation program.

The Cyprus-based company will share the investment in four rounds within two years, which will support graduates in developing initial concepts into commercial IP products.

Investors and residents of the incubator program "will have an equity stake in the product, and an equity share in Mad Crusader's game development holding."

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TerraTech developer Payload Studios has announced a wave of layoffs affecting 25% of its workforce.

CEO and founder Russ Clarke shared the news on LinkedIn, citing the "struggles of affecting the wider industry" for the decision.

"We tried very hard to avoid this, and I won't pretend that we got everything right over the last few years – but ultimately the games market has been very tough in recent times, and shows little sign of getting easier," Clarke wrote.

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Eschatology Entertainment has raised $11.3 million in series A funding, led by Krafton.

The funding round also included participation from GEM Capital and The Games Fund, both of which invested $4 million in the game studio in 2022 which supported initial development and hiring.

This new investment will be used to help launch the release of its first title, a Souls-like first-person-shooter set in the apocalyptic Wild West.

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FRVR has closed a $12.7 million funding round, led by Iberis Capital, in partnership with Indico Capital Partners and Lince Capital.

The company said the "significant investment is a testament to the confidence that FRVR's new and existing investors have in the company's vision and execution."

The funding will enable the company to "further develop its AI-powered game creation platform" which the firm says "has the potential to disrupt the status quo and provide a new level of speed creation and distribution for developers and non-developers."

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Boss Team Games - the publisher behind 2022's Evil Dead: The Game - has teamed up with John Carpenter to make two new horror games based on Carpenter's horror series, Halloween.

Carpenter - who says he is a "huge gamer" himself - is said to be "intimately involved" with productions.

In partnership with Compass International Pictures and Future Front, both games will be based on the 1978 original movie, and at least one is being built in Unreal Engine 5.

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By the time Assassin's Creed Shadows launches this November, the game would have been in development for four years.

It's the longest development cycle for the series so far, and 25% longer than its acclaimed predecessor, 2020's Assassin's Creed Valhalla.

"It's great to work on a game that comes after something with the pedigree of Valhalla," explains lead producer Karl Onnée. "But obviously there are great expectations. We always want to go better, which is what we're trying to do with Shadows. We are pushing the limits of what we can do."

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Generative AI platform Reforged Labs has raised $3.9 million a seed funding round led by global venture capital firm DCM.

The firm, which provides AI tools to game studios for video advertisements, aims to use the funding to further develop its technologies so it can extend its services to more clients.

Reforged Labs saw additional contributions from Y Combinator, Epakon Capital, Goodwater Capital, Phoenix Fund, and Asymmetry Ventures.

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PUBG publisher Krafton has acquired Tango Gameworks and the Hi-Fi Rush IP from Xbox as part of a 'strategic agreement'.

The firm says it is working with Xbox to enable a 'smooth transition' so that the Tango team can "continue developing the Hi-Fi Rush IP and explore future projects".

Tango Gameworks was one of four Bethesda studios that Microsoft announced plans to shut down back in May. It was formed by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami in 2010, and was responsible for The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2 and Ghostwire Tokyo, before launching Hi-Fi Rush in 2023 to critical acclaim. Xbox acquired the studio in 2021 as part of its $7.5 billion purchase of Bethesda parent company Zenimax.

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Xsolla has opened a new office in Montreal in partnership with advertising firm GameAddik.

This is the Xsolla's first office in Canada, and will serve as its operations hub for the region. It aims to expand operations by hiring up to 50 new regional employees over the next two years.

The firm is planning to hire roles across business development, customer support, and technical services.

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VR developer and publisher Thirdverse has appointed Masaru Ohnogi as its new CEO.

Thirdverse said the appointment will "realise its mission of creating a new virtual world for one billion people", and "strengthen its overseas growth strategy," with Ohnogi continuing to oversee the US studio.

Ohnogi joined Thirdverse in October 2020, where he has served as director and CBO. Before then, he worked at WebMoney, Lupicia, Gcrest America, TinierMe, and gumi.

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Oxide Games has appointed former Nickelodeon and Paramount VP Adrian Wright as general manager.

Oxide says Wright's appointment to the Maryland-based studio will direct Oxide's "studio strategy and oversee operations" and "focus on bringing together talented developers who actively pursue the creation of innovative games in the strategy genre."

In his prior roles, Wright licensed games to development studios, including Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles and Spongebob titles, as well Paramount's upcoming A Quiet Place adaptation.

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Tollan Universe developer Foretold Studios is reportedly struggling to pay its staff.

According to a report by Game Developer, the problems date back to at least last September, with current and former staff accusing CEO Michael Kuvshynov of failing to communicate transparently with staff about alleged cashflow issues, and actively recruiting new hires whilst owing outstanding wages to current and former employees.

Staff who worked at Foretold state they're still owed several months' pay, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. One said that they had to "beg" for $200 to cover basic needs, and whilst Foretold did eventually acquiesce, initially the CEO wanted to pay them in cryptocurrency.

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Former Raid: Shadow Legends and Hitman developers have banded together to form Chamo Games.

Chamo was founded in September 2023 by former IO Interactive COO Zoher Toutanji and Plarium's ex-creative director, Roberto Schiavulli.

Though based in Malmö, Sweden, the team – which already employs 25 developers – works remotely and includes talent from Riot Games, CD Projekt Red, and Ubisoft. It is currently working on a "non-lethal FPS" for which it intends to hold monthly playtests.

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Author and leadership expert John C. Maxwell famously said, “The single biggest way to impact an organization is to focus on leadership development. There is almost no limit to the potential of an organization that recruits good people, raises them up as leaders, and continually develops them.”

Experts confirm that there are clear benefits to fostering leadership by encouraging employees’ professional growth and nurturing and developing company leaders. A culture of leadership development and innovation boosts employee engagement by 20 percent to 25 percent, according to an analysis in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Companies are 22 percent more profitable, on average, when they engage their employees by building a culture of leadership, innovation, and recognition, according to Zippia research.

Developing professionals into strong leaders can have a lasting impact on a company, and the IEEE Professional Development Suite can help make it possible. The training programs in the suite help aspiring technology leaders who want to develop their essential business and management skills. Programs include IEEE Leading Technical Teams, the IEEE | Rutgers Online Mini-MBA for Engineers and Technical Professionals, and the Intensive Wireless Communications and Advanced Topics in Wireless courses offered by the IEEE Communications Society. IEEE also offers topical courses through its eLearning Library.

Tips for leading teams

IEEE Leading Technical Teams is a live, six-hour course offered both in person and virtually. Addressing challenges that come with leading groups, it is designed for team leaders, managers, and directors of engineering and technical teams.

“Participating benefited me and my employer by enhancing my leadership skills in inspiring others to achieve the goals of our organization,” says Stephen Wilkowski, a system test engineer at CACI International in Reston, Va., who completed the training. “I found the leadership practices assessment to be very valuable, as I appreciated the anonymous feedback received from those who I work with. I would recommend the training to anyone desiring to improve their leadership skills.”

Attendees participate in the 360° Leadership Practices Inventory, a tool that solicits confidential feedback on the participant’s strengths and opportunities for improvement from their team members and managers. The program encompasses instructor-led exercises and case studies demonstrating the application of best practices to workplace challenges.

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Training on wireless communications

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Happy Tuesday and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week's stories include:

• A federal appeals court slaps down the federal government's odd argument that it doesn't have to compensate landlords for its eviction moratorium because the moratorium was illegal.
• Vice President Kamala Harris sets a first-term goal of building 3 million middle-class homes.
• A Michigan judge sides with property owners trying to build a "green cemetery."

But first, a look at an under-the-radar federal regulation change that might make it easier for builders to create more small multifamily "missing middle" homes.

Code Games

In his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy Joseph Schumpeter praised capitalist mass production for bringing almost every basic commodity, from food to clothing, within the affordable reach of the working man. The one exception he highlighted was housing, which he confidently predicted would soon see a similar collapse in prices due to mass-produced manufactured housing.

As it happens, manufactured housing production—which is built in factories and then shipped and installed on-site—peaked in the mid-1970s and has been limping along as a small share of overall home construction ever since.

Nevertheless, the dream that cheap, factory-built homes can deliver lower-cost housing has never died.

It's certainly alive and well in the current White House.

This past week, the Biden-Harris administration released a "fact sheet" of actions it was taking to lower housing costs. It included an in-progress regulatory change that would allow two-, three-, and four-unit homes to be built under the federal manufactured housing code set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

"The HUD Code creates economies of scale for manufacturers, resulting in significantly lower costs for buyers," says the White House in that fact sheet. Letting small multifamily housing be built under the HUD code will extend "the cost-saving benefits of manufactured housing to denser urban and suburban infill contexts," it says.

IRC, IBC, IDK

The proposed change comes at an interesting time for small multifamily housing construction.

Across the country, more and more states and localities are allowing more two-, three-, and four-unit homes to be built in formerly single-family-only areas.

That liberalization of the zoning code (which regulates what types of buildings can be built where) has set off a follow-on debate about which building code (which regulates construction standards) newly legal multiplexes should be regulated under.

Currently, the options are either the International Building Code (IBC) or the International Residential Code (IRC).

The IBC and IRC are model codes created by the non-profit International Code Council, which are then adopted (often with tweaks and changes) by states and localities.

The IBC typically covers apartment buildings of three or more units, while the IRC covers single-family homes. Neither is particularly well-suited for the regulation of smaller multi-family buildings that cities are now legalizing.

The IBC, for instance, requires expensive sprinkler systems that don't do much to improve fire safety in smaller buildings but can make their construction cost-prohibitive.

Zoning reformers have responded by trying to shift the regulation of smaller apartments into the IRC. But that raises its own problems, says Stephen Smith of the Center for Building in North America.

"It's a complicated thing to do because the IRC is not written for small multi-family. It's written for detached single-family," he says. "For traditional apartment buildings with a single entrance and stairs and halls and stuff, it's not really clear how the IRC would work with that."

The White House's proposed changes open the possibility of sidestepping this IRC-IBC dilemma entirely by letting builders of manufactured, multifamily housing opt into a single, national set of regulations.

A Floor or a Ceiling?

The question then is whether this will actually make life easier for builders.

The effect of HUD regulation on the production of single-family manufactured housing is a topic of intense debate.

Prior to the 1970s, manufactured housing was governed by a patchwork of state and local building codes. In 1974 Congress passed legislation that gives HUD the power to regulate manufactured housing.

Critics of HUD regulation argue that its initial implementation caused the steep decline in manufactured housing production in the 1970s.

In particular, they point to the HUD requirement that manufactured housing must sit on a steel chassis as a regulation that increases costs and decreases production.

Brian Potter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Progress and writer of the Construction Physics Substack, contrastingly argues that HUD regulation has actually helped keep the cost of building manufactured housing down.

The production of all housing, not just manufactured housing, plummeted in the 1970s, he notes. Since the 1970s, the costs of non-manufactured, site-built housing have skyrocketed while the costs of building manufactured housing have risen much less, he points out. Potter argues that the effect of the steel chassis requirement is also overstated.

To this day, manufactured housing is the cheapest type of housing to produce when comparing smaller manufactured housing units to smaller site-built single-family housing units. The HUD code has less expensive requirements and allows builders more flexibility in the construction of units.

"The most interesting and attractive thing about the HUD code is that HUD code homes tend to be much, much less expensive than single-family homes," says Potter.

The hope is that allowing newly legal duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes to be built under HUD standards would reduce costs compared to building them under IBC or IRC regulations.

Degrees of Change

While the HUD code has been in existence since the 1970s, its explicit exclusion of manufactured, multifamily housing is a relatively recent development. In 2014, HUD issued a memorandum saying that only single-family housing can be built under the department's manufactured housing standards.

In a 2022 public comment on the proposed updates, the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform argues that the 2014 memorandum was in error and that HUD actually has no regulatory authority to cap the number of units that can be built under the code.

According to the White House fact sheet, the Biden administration's proposed updates to the HUD code would once again allow up to four units of housing to be built under the code once again.

If the HUD code critics are correct, then this will make a minimal difference. Under this theory, builders would just have another cost-increasing building code to choose from. If folks like Potter are correct, however, this should allow builders to opt into less demanding regulations. We might therefore see an increase in the number of two-, three-, and four-unit homes built.

Building code liberalization will still only be effective in places where zoning code liberalization has already happened. Cities and states still have every power to zone out multifamily housing and ban the placement of manufactured housing.

Where cities have made those "missing middle" reforms, however, it's possible the White House's proposed regulatory changes will increase the production of manufactured, multifamily housing while policymakers figure out whether how to change the IBC or IRC to allow more site-built multiplexes.

If the CDC's Eviction Moratorium Was Illegal, Do the Feds Have To Pay for It?

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) banned residential evictions for non-payment of rent in 2020, property owners responded with a flurry of lawsuits, arguing that the federal government owed them compensation for what amounted to a physical taking of their property.

While those lawsuits were ongoing, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in August 2021 that the CDC moratorium was an illegal overstepping of the agency's authority.

This armed the federal government with an audacious response to all those property owners' claims for compensation: Because the CDC's eviction moratorium was illegal and lacked federal authorization, the federal government wasn't required to pay any compensation.

Incredibly, the Court of Federal Claims agreed with this argument—citing past cases that immunized the government from having to pay compensation for clearly illegal, unsanctioned acts of its agents—and dismissed a property owners' lawsuit in the case of Darby Development Co. v. United States.

But this past week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with property owners and reversed that dismal.

The appeals court ruled that the CDC eviction moratorium, while illegal, clearly did have the endorsement of both Congress and the executive branch.

"Taken to its logical conclusion, [the government's] position is that government agents can physically occupy private property for public use, resist for months the owner's legal attempts to make them leave, and then, when finally made to leave, say they need not pay for their stay because they had no business being there in the first place," wrote Judge Armando O. Bonilla in an opinion issued earlier this month.

The case is now remanded back to the federal claims court.

"The government should not be able to hide behind its own illegality to avoid paying damages for that very illegality," Greg Dolin, a senior litigation counsel at the New Civil Liberties Alliance (which filed an amicus brief in the Darby case) told Reason.

Kamala Harris, Supply Sider?

In a speech this past Friday laying out her economic agenda, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris criticized state and local restrictions on homebuilding for driving up prices.

"There's a serious housing shortage in many places.  It's too difficult to build, and it's driving prices up. As president, I will work in partnership with industry to build the housing we need, both to rent and to buy. We will take down barriers and cut red tape, including at the state and local levels," said Harris, promising to deliver 3 million units of housing that's affordable to middle-class families by the end of her first term.

It's always refreshing to hear a politician accurately diagnose the cause of America's high housing costs as a matter of restricted supply. It's even better when politicians promise to do something about those supply restrictions. Harris' remarks are rhetorically a lot better than the explicit NIMBYism coming from Republican presidential contender Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, Harris' actual housing policies, including downpayment subsidies and rent control, will only make the problem worse. Downpayment subsidies will drive up demand and prices while leaving supply restrictions in place. Rent control has a long, long record of reducing the quality and quantity of housing.

Harris' speech was also peppered with lines attacking institutional housing investors who are providing much-needed capital for housing production.

Town's Ban on 'Green Cemetery' Is Dead

If the government doesn't like your cemetery, can it just ban all cemeteries? The answer, at least in Michigan, is no, no it can't.

In the case of Quakenbush et al v. Brooks Township et al, a state circuit court judge sided with a married couple who'd sued their local government when it passed a ban on new cemeteries with an eye toward stopping their development of the state's first "conservation burial forest."

"We're excited and feel vindicated by this ruling. We are delighted that the judge understood that Brooks Township's ordinance violated our right to use our property," said Peter and Annica Quakenbush, the plaintiffs in the case. They were represented by the Institute for Justice.

Quick Links

• Jim Burling, the Pacific Legal Foundation's vice president of legal affairs, has a new book Nowhere to Live covering the legal history of zoning in America, the courts' acquiescence to this restriction on property rights, and all the attendant consequences of high housing costs and homelessness that have flowed from it.
• A new paper published on SSRN estimates that a 25 percent reduction in permitting times in Los Angeles leads to a 33 percent increase in housing production.
• Calmatters covers the killing, or severe injuring, of various bills introduced in the California Legislature this year that aimed to pair back the California Coastal Commission's powers to shoot down new housing production. Read Reason's past coverage of the Coastal Commission here and here.
• Hawaii has legalized accessory dwelling units statewide, but they haven't made building them easy.
• If you build it, prices drop.

*UPDATED* (and still true)

When you build "luxury" new apartments in big numbers, the influx of supply puts downward pressure on rents at all price points -- even in the lowest-priced Class C rentals. Here's evidence of that happening right now:

There are 21 U.S. markets where… pic.twitter.com/BF9GY0YiFY

— Jay Parsons (@jayparsons) August 13, 2024

The post Code Games appeared first on Reason.com.

On Monday, co-founder of Arkane Studios and the current WolfEye Studios President revealed a smidge of what their second title will be like.

Since the release of their debut title, Weird West, in March 2022, WolfEye Studios has remained incredibly tight-lipped about their future plans. This is until Monday, when the Creative Director and President of the studio, Raphael Colantonio, let out a small tidbit about what their next game can look like. Below is an X (formerly Twitter) post from Colantonio that alludes to their next game.

Colantonio says, “Fans of the previous 1st person games I was involved with (Dishonored and Prey) will be happy.” Considering the Creative Director said specifically 1st person, it’s almost an announcement that WolfEye Studios’ next game will be from the first person POV. Although the same studio developed both titles, Dishonored and Prey featured vastly different gameplay mechanics, storyline elements, and characters and couldn’t be more different outside of the general FPS gameplay.

It’s worth mentioning that WolfEye Studios’ previous title, Weird West was from a Diablo IV-like viewpoint and featured werewolf transformations. Underneath the post, Colantonio does expand on what he meant with his comparisons to Dishonored and Prey. A fan, MonokumaGK replied to the post asking “Why you did not mention Arx Fatalis and Dark Messiah as “previous 1st person games (you) were involved with”?” Colantonio replied, “I could have mentioned them too. But only so many characters in a tweet.”

Outside of confirmation that WolfEye Studios is indeed working on a new title, Colantonio has only revealed that their next game will likely be from a first-person perspective. Fans should note that WolfEye Studios still hasn’t made any formal announcements regarding the title, so fans should take this news with a grain of salt until further information is released.

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The post Level Up Your Skills and Game Business with Xsolla Academy Online appeared first on Gaming Debugged | Gaming Site Covering Xbox, Indies, News, Features and Gaming Tech.

In a vote on June 26, Microsoft employees who worked at Bethesda Game Studios voted to unionize. Microsoft acknowledged 241 union members on July 20, and the studio will now be affiliated with Communications Workers of America (CWA). According to reporting by IGN, the new union would negotiate with Microsoft for a new contract that would prevent any workplace abuses or exploitations. Bethesda Game Studios is the famed developer of several popular franchises including Fallout and The Elder Scrolls, and was Microsoft's biggest acquisition prior to their industry-shaking purchase of Activision-Blizzard-King in 2022.

The news of the studio's move to unionize is welcome, as other AAA companies have instigated mass layoffs for talented teams, with NDAs preventing them from sharing portfolios containing relevant assets. Bethesda Game Studios has also had its share of troubles with shutdowns and workplace controversies from its parent company. In May 2024, IGN reported that Microsoft shut down at least four Bethesda-owned studios and would not provide updates for games like Redfall despite retailing a DLC. The most that players could expect to receive is "the value of a purchased upgrade."

Bethesda employee controversies

In 2018, the development of Fallout 76 involved a high "human toll" with 10-hour, 6-day workweeks and employees not given time to rest and recharge if placed on that team. Contracted QA testers, in particular, were reportedly underpaid despite several being coerced to work on weekends, and the extra pay did not compensate for the physical and emotional demands. Paid employees would monitor and time the contractors' breaks. Complaints to upper management achieved nothing and Fallout 76's buggy release led to increased pressure and even death threats from frustrated players.

A 2022 report from Kotaku condemned this crunch culture and how it encourages burnout in creative fields, leading to entitlement in upper management and lower-quality output. Several employees even reported developing chronic conditions such as tinnitus and back pain, with low morale settling among the team. No one was trying to protect those working to find the bugs and remove them; in some cases, the recommended fixes were never applied.

Another troubling workplace incident saw a Bethesda employee posting an eight-paragraph pro-life rant on Slack in 2022 following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. This rant contributed to what some employees felt was a work environment where affected employees, including those queer or identifying as female, already felt tension and hostility rooted in sexism and ableism as they inquired about what protections they would receive regarding contraceptives and abortions. Neither ZeniMax Studios nor Microsoft offered comments when Kotaku reached out to them. The existence of an unsafe environment is often cited as a reason for low morale in the workplace.

Possibilities of unionization

Unionization is one method to protect game developers and employees from these sudden layoffs, crunch culture, and hostile work environments. Workplace union protections may assist those who have gaps in their portfolios owing to NDAs or whose work may never see the light of day if a game gets canceled. Most importantly, vulnerable employee positions like QA testers could receive competitive wages and appropriate allocation of hours on projects that require large amounts of input and testing.

With luck, Bethesda Game Studios will report positive changes in the workplace. Concrete improvements could help prevent a repeat of the Fallout 76 controversies as well as chronic health conditions that overworking can cause. Employees can take pride in working at the company, rather than lose the spark that made them enter gaming with a desire to create. Unionization at Bethesda Game Studios was a long time coming and may represent a continuing trend in the industry.

Mobile developer Jam City has been affected by layoffs.

A representative confirmed to Polygon's Nicole Carpenter that 10% of its staff were made redundant last Friday (August 2), estimated to be around 85 people.

Carpenter shared an email sent to staff by Jam City CEO Josh Yguado, who attributed the decision to the current market situation.

Read more

Paradox Interactive has indefinitely delayed Prison Architect 2 ahead of its initial release date this September.

In a blog post, the development team behind the sequel cited that the game needed improvement in its performance and content.

"Our continuous internal reviews and beta test groups have highlighted areas that we need to focus on more which we need to address before launch to ensure players get a good experience in the game," it wrote.

Read more

Developers who have created games for Apple Arcade are "unhappy", according to a new report.

Mobilegamer.biz asserts that studios have reported issues with getting timely responses from the Apple Arcade team, poor tech support, and problems with discoverability.

One indie developer alleged that they had to wait up to six months to get paid, "which almost put them out of business".

Read more

Former Unity and Scopely developers have banded together to form Outer Haven Games.

The team – which is based in California, USA, and consists of founders Austin Ashcraft, Stephen Fong, and Chuck Beaver, who lead on product, business, and creative, respectively – is already working on an "anime-inspired RPG" called Techno Infierno.

The team is rounded out by Kevin Cullen and Eric Ackerman, who both join Beaver in the creative team.

Read more

Devcom Developer Conference is offering 200 sessions from over 250 speakers when the conference kicks off on August 19 at the new Confex Conference Center at the Koelmesse.

Confirmed speakers include Larian Studios' cinematic director, Jason Latino, Sony Santa Monica's game director Mihir Sheth, and Stéphane Roy, Former Vice President & Studio Head at WB Games Montreal.

Other panels include a discussion about creating complex romances in games with Adrienne Law (Larian Studios), Helen Hindpere (Disco Elysium), Meghna Jayanth (Sable, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Sunless Sea, Boyfriend Dungeon, This War of Mine), hosted by Sarah Makdad (A Plague Tale: Innocence, World War Z, What the Golf?).

Read more

Bungie is laying off 220 developers. That's 17% of its overall headcount.

Bungie boss Pete Parsons says the cuts are needed "to make substantial changes to our cost structure and focus development efforts entirely on Destiny and Marathon."

"This morning, I’m sharing with all of you some of the most difficult changes we’ve ever had to make as a studio," Parsons wrote in a statement posted to the studios' official website.

Read more

'Survive until 2025.' The phrase still echoes around the games industry as it faces ongoing layoffs and studio closures.

At Develop:Brighton this year, GamesIndustry.biz invited an array of developers, studio heads, managers, and more to share their advice on how to endure the turbulent times we're experiencing. Here's what they had to say:

CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson kicked things off by sharing a survival story from the Eve Online developer's early years, which still applies to those trying to find funding in 2024.

Read more

Warner Bros has hired Yves Lachance to lead its Montreal games studio, appointing him video president and studio head for the developer.

He will lead the management for all disciplines across the studio, as well as working closely with Warner's publishing teams and other internal studios. He will report to WB Games' senior vice president for production and studios Ben Bell.

Lachance joins after more than eight years at Bethesda Game Studios Montreal, a studio he helped launch in 2015.

Read more

Fable developer Playground Games has seemingly expanded to a third studio.

Playground's About Page makes reference to "two world-class studios in Leamington Spa", UK; one its original headquarters, and a "new studio on the other side of town."

However, its LinkedIn page notes there are three – the HQ referenced above and "our new studios on the other side of town."

Read more

Web-based mobile distribution platform Dotplay has secured $1 million in a pre-seed funding round.

Led by venture capital firm Transcend Fund, the investment will be used to develop its platform further and expand its core team of developers and engineers.

Dotplay was co-founded by CEO Iskander Pataudi (former director of core product at AppLovin's Lion Studios) and CTO Bartosz Alksnin (former lead developer at King) in March 2024.

Read more

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) – which includes members from a range of high-profile game developers and publishers, including Activision, Bethesda, Blizzard Entertainment, Sega, and ZeniMax – says it stands in "complete solidarity with striking members of SAG-AFTRA."

The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) called a strike last week after it failed to reach an agreement with the convenience bargaining group over rights and protection concerns raised by the industry's exploration of AI technologies.

"We fully support SAG-AFTRA’s demand for explicit, enforceable language that ensures all video game workers are safeguarded against potential exploitation and displacement caused by AI technologies," the CWA said in a statement.

Read more