A possible social media ban for children in the UK could be expanded to games, the government's online safety minister has suggested.

Speaking to The Sunday Times (via Game Developer) Kanishka Narayan said that a ban on social media for teenagers—which is being considered by the UK following a social media ban being implemented in Australia—could include restrictions for online video game platforms like Roblox and Fortnite, an area that Australia's social media ban does not extend to.

Narayan didn't cite any specific games in his conversation with The Sunday Times, but he said that, following a recent visit to Australia, his primary concern regarding children's use of the Internet was over "stranger pairing", between children and adults they don't know.

Apparently, this issue was discussed, "mostly in the context of gaming platforms" rather than conventional social media like Tiktok, Instagram etc. "That will weigh quite significantly in my mind as we think about how we stop some of the most egregious harms for young people," Narayan added.

Narayan's statements were recently echoed on Sky News by Rachel De Souza, the Children's Commissioner for England. Speaking on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, De Souza said that young boys in particular are vulnerable to being exploited on gaming platforms.

"Boys often aren't on social media," De Souza said. "They're often spending three or four hours a day gaming. And these games often have features that allow a 55-year-old in Arizona to come in and speak to a nine-year-old."

Roblox in particular has been repeatedly called out for its failures to adequately protect its player-base—which is largely composed of children. The platform has been subject to numerous lawsuits over child safety concerns, while there have been "at least two dozen" people arrested in the US and accused of "abducting or abusing victims" they'd met on Roblox.

Roblox's responses to these lawsuits and allegations have varied in quality, but this month, the company will introduce new age-based account categories as it strives to "more closely align content access, communication settings and parental controls with a user's age." These are much-needed and long overdue features, though it's worth noting that this is only one reason why Roblox has been accused of putting its audience at risk of exploitation.

But is a wider social media ban that incorporates games the answer? Well, in March, the BBC reported that the effectiveness of Australia's social media ban had been questioned, with the country's Internet regulator saying that social media companies were not doing enough to comply with it. In response, a spokesperson for Meta said that the company was "committed to complying" with the ban, while claiming that accurate age determination was "a challenge for the whole industry."

Personally, I think a social media ban wrongly implies that children accessing social media is the problem, rather than vastly profitable tech giants failing to dedicate adequate resources to get their houses in order—an issue that affects adults as much as it does children in various ways. Whether or not a UK social media ban will actually come into force, and what form it will ultimately take, remains to be seen.

Paramount Skydance unveiled a new game studio earlier today, creatively called Paramount Games Studio, and promised to reveal its first game during tonight's Summer Game Fest showcase. And now we know—it's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin.

The Last Ronin is set in a future New York City, ruled by the grandson of the infamous villain Shredder, where a lone turtle fights to avenge the deaths of his brothers. The limited series is grim stuff, of course, but also critically and commercially acclaimed, and a game based on the property being developed by Embracer-owned Black Forest Games was announced in 2023.

I'm not sure about the status of that game, although I'd assume it's fallen by the wayside—there's no mention of it on the Black Forest website—but this one is being developed by PlatinumGames, known for Bayonetta, Nier: Automata, Ninja Gaiden 4, and—since we're on the topic—Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan.

The Last Ronin will be published by Paramount Games Studio, a new Paramount division that's essentially a combination of the company's two existing studios, Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media, according to a Variety report. The previously announced games in development at Skydance Interactive—Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and an untitled Star Wars game headed up by Amy Hennig—are still in development at the newly-formed outfit. Paramount Games Studio will be headed up by Tony Driscoll, the head of corporate strategy and development at Paramount.

"This isn't just about creating a new gaming division," Driscoll posted on LinkedIn. "It's about recognizing that games have become one of the most powerful forms of storytelling and community-building in the world.

"At Paramount, we're building games as a core content pillar alongside film, television, and streaming. That means investing in original worlds, deepening fan relationships, and creating experiences that can grow into the next generation of franchises."

The Last Ronin doesn't have a release target yet or a Steam page, but Paramount confirmed that it will be released on PC as well as console. For now, you can find ever so slightly more—and, naturally, throw money at some merchandise—at thelastronin.com.

The fated day arrives: Summer Game Fest is back, back again, with one world premiere after another to give 2026 a double-barrel of new games.

Here's a roundup of everything announced during the stream (with the exception of a few ads and small trailers for games we already knew about.)

For more of what's ahead this weekend, check out our full summer showcase schedule. And don't forget to watch the PC Gaming Show on Sunday!

Which rumors will come true for SGF 2026?

So far a few hints, leaks and rumors have us anticipating some big announcements:

• A Persona 6 announcement may be incoming
• Guild Wars teaser has fans hyped up about a potential Guild Wars 3
• Final Fantasy 7 Remake Part 3 set to appear at Summer Game Fest, according to leaker

RIP Highguard

Summer Game Fest won’t be ending on a live service game after the poor reaction to Highguard at The Game Awards.

"Not every game has to be for everyone"

"Some games become global blockbusters, but others find smaller passionate communities that love them deeply," Keighley says. "I hope you find your next favorite game today.

SGF 2026's first announcement: Resident Evil Veronica remake!

It's a very shiny first-person game set in Paris. An older woman beckons our camera-person into their brother's apartment. It's quite a mess. There's a creepy aura, but nothing outright sinister, at least at first.

Then... yeah, it gets sinister.

And it's... Resident Evil!

"Oh my god," someone shouts in the crowd.

It's out in 2027.

As that Napster/Facebook guy would've said: "Drop the 'Code.' It's cleaner."

There's a new hand-animated Cuphead coming, and also an 8-bit throwback

Keighley loves any opportunity to get Muppets into his show, which is one thing we have in common.

This snippet from what will presumably be "Cuphead 2" doesn't show us any gameplay, but it lets us know that Studio MDHR is working on both that new Cuphead, and a spin-off 8-bit style platformer, Mighty Cuphead Adventure. We do get a little gameplay of that.

A quick look at the sequel to one of the best PC games of all time

Alien Isolation 2's creative leads take the stage to talk about the sequel. "This time we're unleashing the alien on an unsuspecting colony world... Kurosaki Station is a new hunting ground for the ultimate apex predator."

Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda is on-hand for the showing of his new game

genDesign's Project Robot was teased last year, but we're getting more now. It's very nice looking, with lots of desolate landscapes, giant robots and, yep, climbing.

And third-person shooting? That's unexpected!

We've also got a name: genAtlas.

This SGF is rolling out the heavy hitters early.

Blood Message gets a dramatic trailer, but no release date

The Chinese action RPG will be at this year's SGF Play Days demo sessions over the weekend, so we'll have more to say on it soon!

Tupac is in Stranger Than Heaven?

Stranger Than Heaven is out in January 2027.

Uhhh. I guess the Tupac estate is farming out the late rapper's likeness.

Snoop Dogg is on stage to talk about his role in the game, as well as Tupac's. "It just made sense to put him in the game because his likeness and his spirit lives on," Snoop said.

HAEX is coming in 2027

Next up is an extended look at HAEX, from developer Dead Astronauts. It's a first-person shooter with a heavy dose of sci-fi. Big obelisks, lots of cubes, some magical-looking movement abilities. I'm getting Annihilation vibes.

Pronounced "Hex" by the way.

Our first montage: Mortal Shell 2 and Sand: Raiders of Sophie playtests

The Mortal Shell 2 beta is on Steam now, while Sand: Raiders of Sophie is advertising its server slam. Something to play this weekend in between presentations.

PlatinumGames is making a Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronan game

Well that's a pretty good pairing, eh?

This is the teased announcement from the newly formed Paramount Game Studios. The TMNT action game from Platinum should have tons of potential, though many of Platinum's key creatives have left over the last few years.

Here's the official tagline: "In a future, battle-ravaged New York City, a lone surviving Turtle embarks on a seemingly hopeless mission seeking justice for the family he lost."

It's got a website, too!

Fortnite's "Shatter" event kicks off after Summer Game Fest at 7 pm Eastern

Fan-favorite Ben Starr took the stage to talk about a big moment in Fortnite's story, and you can play through it tonight.

Bandai Namco's new mech game is Gundam, but not your usual Gundam

Is this the first Gundam with aliens in it? Because those sure look like aliens.

The tagline: "Suit up for humanity. Pilot your mobile suit and fight for survival in 2027."

Former Naughty Dog devs are making a military shooter for players who 'love high agency singleplayer, story-driven games'

Dev studio That's No Moon unveils the game it's been working on for several years now. An elite military duo are on a mission of some kind, with the trailer emphasizing the character banter as much as the surprisingly technical-looking shooting and sneaking.

There's a sci-fi horror twist at play here too, though.

"We've completely rethought how cover and traversal work together and created a system that rewards tactical thinking, stealth, and repositioning. It's called adaptive cover. With adaptive cover, our player character Layla dynamically adjusts her stance to react to the complex terrain and the enemy's line of sight," say the developers.

We'll have more to read on CrossFire on PC Gamer soon.

Control Resonant shows off a new trailer, still looks fire

Still coming out this September.

"A modern evolution of the MMO:" It really is Guild Wars 3!

Guild Wars 3 confirmed. Beta playable in fall 2027.

"If you yearn for horizons unexplored, for fellowship and purpose, for a cause worth dying for, to you, we can promise: Magic."

Pretty good voiceover for an MMO announcement a decade+ in the making.

"The time is right for the next evolution of the MMORPG" says ArenaNet studiohead

"And that game is Guild Wars 3."

The new MMO will be launching on PC and PlayStation 5.

"Guild Wars 3 is an epic world that's both beautiful and fun to explore, where the joy of movement is powered by your character's momentum, and combat will usher in an entirely new type of MMO experience."

Now this is podracing... with a story

Hope you were looking for a campaign in your podracer, because it looks to be a significant portion of the new Star Wars Galactic Racer, which is out on October 6.

Spooky comes in 2 forms: Sci-fi and fishing

The next pair of trailers offer two flavors of horror with End of Abyss, out October 1, and Last Harbor, which looked like a fishing game at first, but is actually a lot more sinister.

"You’re stranded on a boat during a zombie outbreak in the beautiful San Juan islands of Washington State. How will you survive an open-world archipelago, where the living are just as much of a threat as the dead?" asks the description.

Virtua Fighter: Crossroads is "surprising in scale and scope"

The Virtua Fighter revival isn't just a traditional arcade fighting game!? Crossroads looks to be taking a page out of Street Fighter 6's story mode book, which is fitting since that campaign had a lot in common with the Like a Dragon series.

And guess who's making Virtua Fighter? Yep, it's Like a Dragon studio RGG.

It's out next year, in 2027.

Mafia: The Old Country is getting a story expansion on August 14: Man of Honor

"That was indeed a young Don Salieri from the original Mafia," says Keighley. "Man of Honor expands Enzo's journey in The Old Country this August."

Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Désilets reveals new game: 1666 Amsterdam

Well if that isn't Assassin's Creed Hexe, it sure looks hexed.

"1666 has been a monumental and emotional journey," Desilets says.

"Instead of explaining features, I'll simply say this. As of right now, the prologue is free to download on Steam and Epic Games Store. It's a 30 minute story experience. I'll leave you with a glimpse of what's to come when we leaunch on early access later this year."

Bloober Team is making a Saw 3v1 multiplayer horror game

Saw Genesis—finally, we get to find out why the Saw guy does Saw stuff.

Here's the rundown:

"Step into a brutal 3v1 multiplayer experience where one player becomes the Judge, a precursor to Jigsaw, and three others fight to survive as the Accused. Manipulate the trial from the shadows or work together to escape a deadly maze of traps, pressure, and impossible choices.

"Set in the grim aftermath of World War I, SAW: Genesis delivers short, intense matches, oppressive atmosphere, and a twisted vision of redemption through pain and sacrifice. The game is co-developed by Anshar Studios and Broken Mirror Games and published by Bloober Team."

Star Wars Zero Company gets a release date: August 27

There's a good bit of story and gameplay in this trailer. Plus, surprise! Anakin Skywalker is in it.

Read our in-depth Star Wars Zero Company cover story for much more on the game

The Blood of Dawnwalker continues to look good

The vampire RPG from former Witcher devs is already dead center on our radar. Like Zero Company, we also have an in-depth feature you can read here.

It's out in September.

There's a new Among Us, and an Among Us TV show?

Everything is sus.

There's now an Among Us animated series starring some funny people: Yvette Nicole Brown, Patton Oswalt, Elijah Woods, Debra Wilson, Randall Park and more. It's on Paramount Plus.

Also a new game, called Among us Story: On Guard.

A tease of a new "story mission" coming to 007 First Light this year

Cyberpunk Edgerunners characters star in a new Wuthering Waves crossover

Not the most exciting place to see Lucy and Rebecca show back up, I have to say.

Monster Hunter Wilds expands into the sky with Ascendance

We knew an expansion was inevitable, and here it is. Wilds is doing a floating islands thing, adding a whole new sky region, it looks like.

Capcom calls it a "massive" expansion. It's out in 2027.

Chinese action game Swords of Legends shows off a boss fight

This one already has a Steam page. The list of impressive Chinese action RPGs with intricately choreographed martial arts is not short.

Hot Wheels Infinite Rush revealed, out September 24

It's another Hot Wheels racer, and it looks nice!

Attack on Titan 3 is out in July

When Geoff said this next game would cover "the entire story of a famous anime," I was hoping for, I don't know, a great Trigun game or something? But here's another Attack on Titan game.

Man I wish those things had skin.

Clutch, from ex-Forza Horizon devs, leans into story

The new racer looks to be distinguishing itself from Forza Horizon with a story-driven racing campaign.

"A cinematic, open-world, action-driving game from the team at Maverick Games - lead by former Forza Horizon Creative Director, Mike Brown, and other senior leads on the franchise," reads the official line. It's still a ways away, scheduled for a spring 2027 release.

PalWorld 1.0 is coming on July 10, 2026

PalWorld continues to look extremely Pokemon at Summer Game Fest, and it's got not just an update coming, but the update.

A surprise cinematic trailer for a new PalWorld update looked so Pokemon I wasn't sure it wasn't until the not-a-Pokeball appeared on screen. More of a Pal Orb?

The Wolf Among us 2 is actually coming out

We got a new trailer for The Wolf Among Us 2, with sees the return of protagonist Bigby investigating some grisly murders.

The revived Telltale series has a date. Er, year: 2027.

There's also a remaster of the original episodic adventure coming out near the end of this year.

Cyberpunk and body horror combine in the next game from Stellar Blade's developers

The flashy beat 'em up started with quite a subdued narrative sequence before going full-blown action. The giveaway that Shift Up was involved came when our heroine threw off her cowl to display a skin-tight sci-fi body suit.

Stellar Blade Blood Rain is "early in development" from the same team, continuing the story of the first game with a new protagonist, says Keighley.

Tifa joins Street Fighter 6

Final Fantasy 7's brawler joins Arjun and Bosch and Yasmine in Street Fighter 6 year 4.

The big SGF 2026 finale is a first look at Final Fantasy 7: Revelation, out day 1 on PC spring 2027

The end of the trilogy is officially titled Revelation. Did anyone have their money on that name? (I thought it'd be pretty funny if they came out and announced it was called "Final Fantasy Seven...teen" instead. Alas!)

FF7 remake trilogy producer Hamaguchi took to the stage to talk a bit about Revelation, and say it's launching simultaneously across platforms. That's great news for us on PC, considering the delays on the first two entries in the trilogy.

Here's Hamaguchi:

"The central theme of this title is resolve. Cloud and his companions each confront their own destinies and find the resolve to march toward the final battle. I, too, have carried a promise in my heart throughout this journey. The resolve to see this series through to its very end. We're committed to delivering this experience in its ultimate form. Please stay with us and witness what lies beyond that resolve."

Airship exploration is confirmed. You can go everywhere, and you can parachute off the deck to pop down to the open world seamlessly.

Vincent and Cid are combat buddies

Vincent's gunplay in battle gets shown off, as well as his ability to transform into beast mode and team up with Cid Highwind.

Characters now get custom armor with the "FIT" system, adding on to the existing gear systems.

The Weapons are back

Yep, the FF7 megabosses return.

That's a wrap on Summer Game Fest!

The stream's still going, though: Keighley's presentation has switched over to Day of the Devs, which will showcase a whole bunch of cool new indies.

New Blood Interactive has brought a retro survival horror game to the show that combines 2D pixel art and live action cutscenes.

One last SGF announcement: Sonic's CrossWorlds crossovers with Evangelion, Godzilla and more

Here's one segment I had to skip over for time during the livestream: Sega's crossover announcements for Sonic Racing CrossWorlds.

The blue blur's basically going full metaverse here with crossover characters and tracks from:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (July)
• Avatar Legends (October)
• Godzilla
• Evangelion

"Well, I guess we won the console war," PC Gamer's Evan Lahti declared back in 2020. It was a time of clear skies and hope: Microsoft had embraced Steam, Sony was bringing first-party games to PC, and we were all waving flags and pounding vodka shots atop silent tanks in Red Square. Metaphorically, anyway.

But now it looks like the fight is back on. Sony is backing away from its strategy of releasing PlayStation exclusives on PC, and now Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has hinted that Xbox is reconsidering its own approach to exclusives.

"We're the number two publisher in the world and in order to be a great publisher, you must have your games reach large audiences to play," Sharma said during a recent Bloomberg interview. "At the same time, we're increasingly becoming a platform. In order to be a platform, you must have exclusive content and services. And so, we're looking at that very closely. I think that we have to be very thoughtful about each title on how we want to think about it and learn from similar cases in the industry, and that's what we're doing."

Like the unceremonious axing of the 'This is an Xbox' marketing campaign, Sharma's statement is a clear repudiation of former Xbox president Sarah Bond, who said flat-out in October 2025 that "the idea of locking [games] to one store or one device is antiquated for most people."

A potential refocus on exclusives is also obviously more about Xbox's dealings with PlayStation than PC. Shortly after Bond's comment, Microsoft announced its Halo remake for PlayStation, and man, it was over: As PC Gamer's Morgan Park put it at the time, "Though he shared joint custody with PC gaming in moments, Master Chief was Xbox ... His olive green armor practically was the console's logo in superhuman form. Now he's just the guy from Halo."

But now it sounds like maybe it's not as over as we thought. The direct impact on PC gamers may not be all that great, especially given Sharma's April acknowledgement that "our presence on PC isn't strong enough."

But we've all heard that one before—maybe more than twice, depending on how long you've been on this ride. If Microsoft really is "recommitting" to Xbox as a console, I don't think that, for instance, a future shift back toward more timed-exclusivity windows for big releases is beyond the question. Rockstar is holding back on a PC release of Grand Theft Auto 6 because PC players aren't GTA's "core" audience, which is baffling but also reflects the ongoing console-centric viewpoint of many game industry decision-makers.

It sounds like the situation at Xbox is still very fluid, as they say in polite circles when nobody really knows what's going on, and what actually comes of it is anybody's guess. But those heady days of inter-platform peace and prosperity, with the PC as gaming's great unifier, sure do look to be over, and one way or another, some of that fallout is going to land on us.

The average PC gamer has to wrangle all sorts of different digital storefronts and launchers if they want to play games without leaving the house, and most of them truly suck. Steam's UX is head and shoulders above the competition.

But GOG has long been a valid contender—both with its DRM-free storefront focused on archaic software, and with the collection-syncing GOG Galaxy launcher. Its successes haven't resulted in anything like Steam's Canada-sized user numbers, however, and even with new owners it remains an uphill battle taking on Goliath.

New Blood CEO Dave Oshry, who heads the studio publishing games like Dusk and Ultrakill, said in an interview with RPG Site that GOG's lack of comparable success goes all the way back to when Steam first "opened the floodgates" by adding classic games to its storefront.

"Steam would be for your new games and GOG would be for all your old games, right? Then Steam let anybody put anything on there," he said. "All of a sudden who needed GOG anymore?"

He praised GOG for its features, saying its one-click mod installers and "being able to host things like Fallout London" are worthwhile selling points. "For guys like me, I don't mind moving files around and shit, modding the old way, but we're getting to a point now where people are either too old or too young and don't know how modding works," he said.

However, he argued that it's not enough to make converts of most people. "The problem is it's still 1 to 5% of the sales on Steam, where it used to be closer to 5 or 10% … Everybody roots for GOG, right? We want GOG to be a great thing, and GOG's great. It's just that I don't have a reason to use GOG or GOG Galaxy instead of Steam."

Oshry did mention that GOG's new owner has "been outspoken about what he wants to do, just providing a better experience," but also added that he recently played The Journeyman Project games on GOG, and getting it working on a modern system "was a pain in the ass. But I got them running. I played them for five minutes. I got my nostalgia fix, and I uninstalled it." That and Fallout London are the only games he has installed on the platform.

To be fair to GOG, it does have other draws—it's possible to bypass the launcher entirely and save your games locally without any DRM, which is still a valuable distinction in a world where Steam is selling retro games with strings attached. It also has lots of classics Steam doesn't offer despite the floodgates being open, such as Diablo 1, Ultima Underworld, and the old-school versions of the first three Resident Evil games.

Oshry had a harsher critique of the Epic Games Store, which he told RPG Site "can't beat Steam just with free giveaways and high developer percentages. You could give developers 100% of the royalties if you wanted, but if nobody's buying. What's 100% of zero? Like, who gives a shit?" In the past, Oshry has said that giving out a game for free on Epic may work best as a way to market it on other platforms.

"I love their preservation efforts and everything they're trying to do," Oshry said of GOG, "But they need enough people to give a shit, or how long are they even going to be around?"

Indie duo Talha & Jack Co are working on a disturbing, transgressive horror game in Abide, and they are keenly aware of the risks involved with such a project in today's climate. "Horror seems to be under pressure from censorship, some subtle and some blatant," The duo wrote on Abide's Kickstarter page.

"Sites are delisting mature rated games and recently a horror game was taken off some of the biggest marketplaces." The game in question was Horses, a thematically challenging, gruesome game taken off both Steam and Epic.

When I spoke to Talha Kaya and Jack King-Spooner about Abide, I wanted to hear more of their thoughts on the state of gaming censorship as they work on a game that could prove particularly vulnerable to the delisting actions we've been seeing from major storefronts.

"I bought, played, and liked Horses. I think it’s a good game," said Kaya. "I also met with the developer and the publisher at an event during development and didn’t sense any ill-intent in their making of the game. They struck me as people who just want to make something a bit different.

"I understand some of the themes and imagery were too much for some people. But I think it’s clear no portion of the game is pornographic in nature. I believe it deserved shelf space on the most popular digital stores. It’s okay to not like it, or even find it problematic, that shouldn’t stop it from being available."

King-Spooner similarly enjoyed the game and thought it should be more widely available, but even argued that its developers could have gone further with the game's disturbing scenes. "I liked Horses but it pulled a lot of punches in my unhinged opinion: Genitals censored, cut away for the genital mutilation," he said.

King-Spooner lamented that "it's pretty sad and pathetic that a game with difficult content can’t get on the larger marketplaces," attributing it to people believing "you should disengage your brain when playing a game" or even "the hang up of games being a modern kid’s toy."

It was a nice change of pace to hear serious talk of Horses beyond what it means for gaming industry censorship, something PCG contributor Maddi Chilton advocated for in her critical appraisal from late last year. In contrast with King-Spooner, though, Maddi felt Horses' greatest failing was one of pacing: It didn't allow for enough tension, silence, or even boredom between its most harrowing scenes.

Talha & Jack Co's Abide is currently fundraising on Kickstarter with less than a week left to make its initial funding goal. I've already been hooked by its gruesome evolution on the duo's claymation presentation, as well as their intriguing pivot from surreal fables to psychological horror.

As with many first-generation PC gamers, Stephen Kick was exposed to the hobby through id Software's gateway drug Wolfenstein 3D. "I went over to a friend's house and they had their home computer, the big bulky white CRT," says the cofounder of remaster specialists Nightdive Studios. "I just remember being blown away by those 'realistic' sound effects and amazing 3D ultra-realistic graphics … it was an awakening of sorts."

Today, Kick has become one of the most diligent curators of PC gaming's early years, with Nightdive refreshing and reviving countless PC classics like Doom, Quake and System Shock 2. In 2023, the studio also produced a remake of the original System Shock, which received near-universal critical acclaim after a long and difficult development.

Nightdive's most recent project was Blood: Refreshed Supply, a second overhaul of Monolith Productions' debut shooter that came bundled with two of its best mods: "That was an extremely fun collaboration that we want to continue on with our future releases," Kick explains. "If you've got a mod that you've put a lot of your work into, and a lot of your heart for a classic game that hasn't been remastered yet, come talk to us."

Kick put down his virtual dust cloth to chat with me about what he's been playing on his PC lately, which took us from the fortified gardens of Popcap to the deepest, darkest jungles of Valve.

What game are you currently playing?

It's a game I've been playing for probably over a decade at this point. It's Dota 2. Before Nightdive officially started, I was living at my in-laws' house. They had a spare room where my fiancé and I were living, basically to get back on our feet, and we had our computers up there, and we were doing contract work for friends and some companies like doing 3D modelling just to make some extra money.

I saw that Valve was having a competition for this new game that they were coming out with called Dota 2, where you could design and 3D model a set for one of the characters and they would offer it as an in-game reward that [people] paid money for. It was a microtransaction thing, and it was for an art focused website, I think it was called Polycount.

And I was like "Oh, this is really cool. Maybe if I win, I can make some extra money." That was basically my gateway into it. So I downloaded it and picked a character, I built an outfit for it, and I submitted it. I didn't win, but it was such a fun learning experience and it got me into the game.

Maybe that was really their intention, because I've been playing ever since. My wife and I play. My brother-in-law, he plays. There's a bunch of people in our family that play, and so we get together at the end of the day and we all hop in, we play a game. It's become kind of like a family activity, almost.

I traditionally will play a support role, so like position five. I like to heal, disable. I like to provide vision, protective auras against magic and physical damage. I like to initiate, sometimes, battles. My favourite thing to do is, when I'm playing with a bunch of strangers, is basically, like, Captain. So I'm on the mic and I'm going "Hey, I'm gonna buy a smoke, everybody meet at this triangle. We're gonna smoke, we're gonna gank, and then we're gonna go kill Roshan, and then we're going to take a tier two, or we're going to push high ground."

Everybody listens to me. I can usually direct the game in such a way that we're all working together, and your chances are dramatically higher that you're gonna win if you can wrangle all these cats together. And it's just so satisfying.

What was the previous game you played, and is it still installed?

I've been playing this game called Witchfire. I started getting into roguelikes when Hades came out, and that game just totally consumed me. I was just obsessed, you know, just that mechanic, the loop of just dying and coming back and trying again and getting a whole new set of powers and things to mix—let's figure out what works best for your play style.

I just became enamoured by that. And Witchfire is almost like that, but a first-person shooter in a grim, dark fantasy setting. You get put on these islands that are inhabited by witches and demons and ghosts, and you basically have to cleanse the island. The art style and visuals are just fantastic.

It's been on my hard drive forever too, because it's in early access. So I'll go in and I'll play for a couple days, and then like "Oh, OK, now I gotta wait" because either there's not anything left to do, or I'm just not good enough. And I'm like "Well, if I can't beat this, they're gonna rebalance this, and then I'll try again."

What is the oldest game (by release date) currently installed on your PC?

It's got to be Doom + Doom II. That's always on there. We worked on the remaster with Bethesda, of course.

It's almost like a time machine. You go and you play it, and suddenly you're in front of the beige beauty again. And you're putting off doing your chores and your homework, and all the other responsibilities kind of wash away.

What is the highest number of hours you have in any given game, according to Steam?

Clocking in at 8,544 hours, it's Dota 2. I just recently got my 5,000^th win. So, there you go.

It's interesting, being in a family dynamic at home, where my son comes home from school at 2, 3 o'clock. We hang out, we have dinner, he goes to bed, and then my wife and I, we hop on and play a couple of games of Dota before bedtime. And all the stuff we have to worry about just kinda goes [away].

You have to think so quickly, and you have to be totally focused on what's going on to be successful, that there's no intrusive thoughts coming in. Whereas I feel like if I'm playing a singleplayer game and it's a more narrative experience, there's always that voice in my head that's like "You should be doing something more productive."

What game will you never, ever uninstall?

I have uninstalled Dota a couple times—and I hate for this all to be about Dota, but I feel like it's an important part of my life at this point. I did uninstall it a couple times because I got too, I don't know what the word is, I just got too serious, and losing would really affect my attitude. So I would just uninstall it and not play it for a month.

I feel like I've made leaps and strides personally because of this game. It's helped me communicate a lot better. I think it's made me a better leader. I do still get extremely frustrated sometimes when people aren't playing up to my expectations, but I don't lash out at them. I try to be positive and encouraging and offer suggestions if they're willing to take them on, how to improve what they're doing so we can hopefully win.

I can still be toxic from time to time, though, mostly with the other team. I play sports a lot, and that was very competitive for me at one point. And there's a part of the game where you can like shit talk, you can get under somebody's skin and you can kind of get them off their game. You can get an advantage, right? And I take that approach to Dota sometimes and I can get people off their game. But you have to be tactful. You can't just throw insults at them. You have to be cheeky.

Back to the question you asked, Plants vs Zombies. That's so fun. My son went through a big obsession with that. He had it on his tablet, and we put it back on our phones and stuff, and we would sit around and we would play Plants vs Zombies, and we would help him be like "Hey, look, if you put the sunflowers here and you build in this order, you'll have economy." We were trying to teach him strategy and it was really fun. That's always on my computer.

What's a piece of non-gaming software installed on your PC that you simply couldn't live without?

It's probably Photoshop. I create a lot of artwork just on my own, just for fun. My second monitor is actually a Cintiq. I go through these phases where I'll just have the Cintiq in front of me and the monitor will be over here during work. And that really helps me focus, if I'm drawing or doing something like that while listening to something, like a book on tape.

I've kind of developed this art style that you'll see on my Instagram, where it's generally like a face or a character study or something like that, completely front view, symmetrical, kind of like a tribal design, almost. So it's like big bold, dark lines with bright colors. And there's just something very relaxing about sketching it out, and then doing like crisp, clean line work on top of it and then getting to colour it in.

The other stuff that's on there is mini painting. I create decorations for Halloween, props and all kinds of stuff when I'm not working. My current ambition outside of Nightdive and everything like that is to do a YouTube maker channel.

How tidy is your desktop screen?

It's tidy. I know where everything is at any given time, thankfully. It's getting a little bit hectic for my tastes. On this [left] side, it's all very clean. It's all my game icons and my software over here. And then over here [on the right], it's just like the stuff that I'm currently working on, that I don't want to have to navigate too often to get to. But there'll be a point where I'll go "OK, well, I'm gonna spend the next hour copy and pasting and putting things where they belong". And then I'll never look at them again.

On Thursday, February 19, Roblox was sued by Los Angeles County for allegedly failing to guard the children that play it from predators. A press release from the county argues that "while Roblox markets itself as a safe digital space for creativity, it is in reality an unsafe online environment that has become a breeding ground for predators."

The release continues with a statement attributed directly to county counsel Dawyn R. Harrison, who filed the suit. "This is not about a minor lapse in safety," said Harrison. "It is about a company that gives pedophiles powerful tools to prey on innocent and unsuspecting children. The trauma that results is horrific, from grooming, to exploitation, to actual assault. This needs to stop." The complaint can be read in full here.

This is not the first time Roblox has caught this sort of heat. A class action suit back in 2023 sought to combat a "misperception that Roblox is safe" for children, saying widespread sexual content and grooming are serious issues in the game.

In one harrowing case, a pedophile abducted and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl after grooming her via Roblox. Numerous states have sued Roblox over child safety concerns, including Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas.

While the Roblox Corporation has consistently pushed back on the notion that it runs, as one research firm called it, a "pedophile hellscape," and improved its safety features over time, it's also done plenty to reverse any gains. Last year, Roblox CEO David Baszucki proposed the game make room for a dating hub despite its overwhelmingly young playerbase.

A few months later, he spoke a tense, baffling interview with the New York Times and dropped the megaton soundbite that he thought of Roblox's child predation issue "not necessarily just as a problem, but an opportunity as well."

As far as this specific suit is concerned, Roblox responded with a statement issued to L.A.'s Fox11. "We strongly dispute the claims in this lawsuit and will defend against it vigorously. Roblox is built with safety at its core, and we continue to evolve and strengthen our protections every day," the statement reads. "There is no finish line when it comes to protecting kids, and while no system can be perfect, our commitment to safety never ends."

The scale of this issue is hard to fathom. Players spent well over 10 billion hours in the game last year alone, accounting for two thirds of the gaming industry's growth outside of China in 2025. Roblox's engagement stats rival Steam and dwarf the likes of Epic and Battle.net. At least one industry analyst reckons that huge swathes of Gen Alpha gamers may not ever "grow out of" Roblox.

After struggling to compete with the PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, Microsoft's gaming division has spent the last few years trying to remake the Xbox brand into a software label first and foremost: it started with Steam releases and cloud streaming, continued with the painful "This is an Xbox" ad campaign, and culminated in phrases like "We're able to honor the Halo legacy on PlayStation" which could only be read as admissions of defeat. Now with the abrupt retirement of longtime boss Phil Spencer, incoming Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma has said that the company "will celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console."

What, exactly, does that mean for the last few years of Microsoft's gaming strategy?

Maybe it means precisely nothing. It's the sort of reassuring but nonspecific language we expect from executives who want to soothe fan (and more importantly, investor) worries that shit's about to get cray cray. And Xbox leadership has repeatedly stated it will continue making consoles, though we have to imagine that the RAMpocalypse has made some plans that seemed on solid ground just a few months ago now much less certain.

The full text of Sharma's introductory message to her team, made public on Microsoft's blog, follows the carefully polished C-suite playbook of implying a bold sense of direction while committing to nothing in particular. In Sharma's words, Microsoft Gaming will:

• "Recommit to our core Xbox fans and players" while also "enter[ing] new categories and markets where we can add real value"
• Move with "urgency because gaming is in a period of rapid change," but also "not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop"
• "Celebrate our roots with a renewed commitment to Xbox starting with console" yet simultaneously "expand across PC, mobile and cloud … [and] break down barriers so developers can build once and reach players everywhere without compromise"
• "Return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place," while Microsoft is worth some $3 trillion.

It seems very unlikely that the gaming division of a company so devoted to AI and cloud computing will pull back from putting its software on as many devices as possible to "recommit" to selling games on a single console. It seems just as unlikely that it would stop selling its PC games on Steam, when years of work on the Xbox app have yet to result in an interface that anyone particularly likes.

Perhaps there's a hint here that Microsoft is ready to jettison its all-in-on-Game-Pass strategy, now that it's abundantly clear the service will never pull in the tens of millions of anticipated subscribers and that it might have even cannibalized sales of the games Microsoft spent billions of dollars to acquire.

I mean, really, what else could Sharma's statement "We are witnessing the reinvention of play" possibly mean?

Okay, it could mean literally anything.

But if I may pick out one single phrase that I think I can accurately translate from CEO speak into human language, it's this line, from near the letter's end:

"We will invent new business models and new ways to play by leaning into what we already have: iconic teams, characters, and worlds that people love. But we will not treat those worlds as static IP to milk and monetize. We will build a shared platform and tools that empower developers and players to create and share their own stories."

Emphasis above is mine, and here's what it means:

The kids love Roblox, and they make all the games themselves! How do we get a piece of THAT?

You have no doubt heard about the very major shakeup at Xbox today: Longtime boss Phil Spencer is retiring, presumed heir apparent Sarah Bond has resigned, former AI executive Asha Sharma is now in charge, and Matt Booty, head of Microsoft Studios, is now chief content officer. It's the kind of thing that makes you think about the downstream impact, particularly given the instability that's gripped the game industry over the past few years, but Booty says there's nothing to worry about because this does not mean layoffs are happening immediately.

After enthusing about Microsoft Gaming's new CEO, Booty wrote, "We have good reasons to believe in what’s ahead. This organization and its franchises have navigated change for decades, and our strength comes from teams who know how to adapt and keep delivering. That confidence is grounded in a strong pipeline of established franchises, new bets we believe in, and clear player demand for what we are building."

Then, the relevant bit: "My focus is on supporting the teams and leaders we have in place and creating the conditions for them to do their best work. To be clear, there are no organizational changes underway for our studios."

The word "layoffs" doesn't actually appear in Booty's message, or in any of the others posted by Spencer, Sharma, or Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. But as we've learned over the past few years, game industry executives love to deploy euphemisms and 25-cent words when talking about layoffs and their justifications for them—so when Booty says "no organizational changes," he means nobody's being shown the door.

Does that mean layoffs won't happen downstream of all this? Of course not: This is a major shakeup, and new leadership means new ideas and priorities. And Microsoft certainly hasn't been shy about taking a knife to its gaming operations when the mood strikes. In the wake of its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which then-CEO Bobby Kotick promised "will benefit consumers and workers," Microsoft imposed literally thousands of layoffs across its gaming business. Booty's message is good news for the moment, then, but how long it holds is another matter entirely.

Long-time Microsoft Gaming boss Phil Spencer has retired, and Xbox president Sarah Bond has resigned. Filling their shoes will be Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty, who has been promoted to chief content officer, and a newcomer to Microsoft's gaming division, Asha Sharma, who will take over for Spencer as the new CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

Sharma's credentials instantly raised eyebrows: She's moving to Microsoft's gaming division from its "CoreAI" products division—stuff like Azure AI services—and does not have a background in games.

In a letter shared with Microsoft employees, Sharma got ahead of fears that she'll push generative AI tools on Microsoft's many game studios, which include among others Activision Blizzard, Bethesda, id Software, MachineGames, Obsidian, inXile, Double Fine, Ninja Theory, and Mojang.

"As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future [of gaming], we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop," wrote Sharma. "Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us."

What Sharma describes is arguably already occurring at Activision, which has used generative AI to make art that appears in Call of Duty—though perhaps not often enough to call it a "flood" yet.

In her letter, Sharma also promises a commitment to making "great games."

"We must have great games beloved by players before we do anything," wrote Sharma. "Unforgettable characters, stories that make us feel, innovative game play, and creative excellence. We will empower our studios, invest in iconic franchises, and back bold new ideas. We will take risks. We will enter new categories and markets where we can add real value, grounded in what players care about most."

Microsoft's gaming business has had a tumultuous 2020s so far. On one hand, it added giants Bethesda and Activision Blizzard to its now huge portfolio of publishers and studios, and there's been no shortage of cash for its executives. On the other, it has canceled numerous games, closed recently acquired studios such as Arkane Austin, laid off thousands of workers, and struggled to sell Xbox consoles.

It's difficult to identify a specific change of strategy in Sharma's letter, as PCG's Wes Fenlon discusses in more detail here. The commitment to making great games is paired with a promise to "build a shared platform and tools that empower developers and players to create and share their own stories," which sounds Roblox-ey. Sharma also promises "the return of Xbox" and a renewed commitment to the console, but says that "gaming now lives across devices, not within the limits of any single piece of hardware."

Regarding generative AI, Microsoft has invested billions into the technology, and has been experimenting with game development applications, such as with its Muse AI model, which it called "a major step toward generative AI models that can empower game creators." Microsoft's AI boss also recently said that he expects the technology to be capable of "most, if not all, professional tasks" within 18 months, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that "we need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs. sophistication."

Microsoft said in a blog post last September that it (or humanity in general) has a "need for greater efficiency and productivity" and that "AI is unlocking our human potential with advances in workflow automation."

As you may have heard, Roblox is big—but the scale of the platform's dominance over the attention span of a significant portion of the world's populace can be hard to comprehend. Thankfully, a report on 2025 games industry trends from analyst Matthew Ball puts Roblox's relative prominence in concrete terms.

And that prominence is, well, terrifying. According to an early access release of Ball's report, Roblox accounted for more of 2025's games industry growth and player engagement than the combined totals from some of the world's biggest gaming platforms.

As has been the case since 2022's descent from the industry's pandemic peak, Ball says data from analytics sources like Ampere, Newzoo, and Circana indicate that games industry revenue growth, particularly outside of China, was stagnant in 2025—but not for Roblox. Roblox alone accounted for 67% of all non-China growth, as its share of total consumer spending in 2025 across PC, console, and mobile exceeded 4.5%.

It goes without saying, but a single platform being responsible for over two-thirds of an industry's growth indicates a massive financial influence, and it's not hard to see how: According to Ball, Roblox was attracting over 150 million daily active users in 2025—a 69% increase over 2024.

And those users were spending more time in Roblox than they ever have. In 2025, players spent over 10 billion hours in Roblox each month, more than the hours spent on Steam, PlayStation, and Fortnite combined. Ball says that Roblox is even "starting to challenge Netflix for total hours of use," and while Netflix's engagement growth has slowed to around 1% each year, Roblox has been ranging between 25% and 70% engagement growth since 2022.

Individual Roblox games are even outperforming the entire catalogs of some of the industry's biggest publishers: Grow a Garden's average monthly hours of engagement in 2025 outpaced the 2024 monthly combined average of all Blizzard games.

For those of us familiar with Roblox's long-standing controversies of child safety, labor exploitation, and predatory monetization that have attracted a continuing succession of lawsuits and state investigations, those statistics may possess a deeply sinister air. But while the executives of countless industry C-suites are undoubtedly pondering how to contort their existing projects into UGC platforms in an effort to simply make a Roblox of their own, Ball says success in today's games industry isn't just a matter of trying to emulate what Roblox does.

"To find growth, we have to acknowledge: There is no 'videogaming industry,'" Ball writes. "There are many."

In other words, while it's tempting to lump all of gaming into a singular industry pool, it is—in reality—a constellation of peripherally-related markets, all operating according to unique dynamics between which theories and strategies don't necessarily transfer cleanly or successfully: "The result is that different companies in the 'videogaming industry' exist in very different universes and experience fundamentally different growth prospects," Ball says.

Roblox is, essentially, an industry all its own. And chances are, the Roblox industry won't easily accommodate another.