Call of Duty has become an absolute hard drive hog in recent years, with 2023's entry managing to consume over 200GB of storage in some cases. That all might be about to change, however, as Activision has announced major changes to the way it'll be handing installs with this year's Black Ops 6, promising "smaller and more customised downloads" as a result.

Activision shared the news in a post on its Call of Duty blog, explaining its optimisation work will begin with a revamp of "the experience formerly known as Call of Duty HQ". This revamp is set to roll out over the course of several updates ahead of Black Ops 6's October launch, and will promises to introduce a streamlined interface, direct access to games, more control over downloads, and expanded texture streaming technology to reduce file sizes.

A first update to reorganise game content arrives on 21st August. Then, following Black Ops 6's open beta on 30th August, a new user interface and other "remaining updates" are scheduled for mid-October. After these "larger initial updates", Activision says future Call of Duty downloads will decrease in size and existing files will take up less space on players' device.

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Activision has banned over 65,000 players across Call of Duty: Warzone and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

The bans rolled out in the last few hours, purging thousands of "cheating and boosting" players from both Ranked and non-Ranked play alike.

"The Ricochet Anti-Cheat team has now purged the Ranked Play leaderboards in both Call of Duty: Warzone and Modern Warfare 3, banning accounts for cheating and boosting," Team Ricochet – the cheating enforcement team – said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Activision has published a 25-page white paper exploring the impact of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) on its multiplayer lobbies, determining that SBMM is better for all players.

As spotted by indie game developer and consultant Rami Ismail, the report – which can be read in full on Activision's official website – outlines an "amazing A/B test" where Activision "secretly progressively turned off SBMM and monitored retention… and turns out everyone hated it, with more quitting, less playing, and more negative blowouts".

Activision announced plans to launch the series of white papers back in April, and has already considered the impact connections and Time to Match has on online play.

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

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

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

Read more

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

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

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

Read more

Activision has published a 25-page white paper exploring the impact of skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) on its multiplayer lobbies, determining that SBMM is better for all players.

As spotted by indie game developer and consultant Rami Ismail, the report – which can be read in full on Activision's official website – outlines an "amazing A/B test" where Activision "secretly progressively turned off SBMM and monitored retention… and turns out everyone hated it, with more quitting, less playing, and more negative blowouts".

Activision announced plans to launch the series of white papers back in April, and has already considered the impact connections and Time to Match has on online play.

Read more

The sequel to The Super Mario Bros. Movie now has a firm 2026 release date.

In a "this is Miyamoto" social post ahead of today's Nintendo Direct, the Mario creator revealed the full release date for the animated film sequel: 24th April 2026, in Japan.

However, Nintendo also stated it will be released earlier in the US, 3rd April 2026, with "other countries and regions" during April 2026.

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

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

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

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Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Danny DeVito has been asked whether he'd take on the role of Wario in a Super Mario Bros. Movie sequel, after having been suggested for the role by Luigi voice actor Charlie Day and Mario performer Chris Pratt.

Day, who co-stars with DeVito in Always Sunny in Philadelphia, previously told Digital Spy he wanted the actor to take on the role of Mario's moustache-twirling, nose-picking nemesis in a future film.

Now, DeVito has been asked whether he'd accept the offer and, seemingly unwittingly, has replied with the perfect money-grabbing Wario response.

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Marathon, the 1994 video game that marked Halo and Destiny developer Bungie's first foray into the world of first-person sci-fi shooters, is - as Bungie previously said it would be - now available on Steam for free. And the remaining two titles in the series are due at a later date.

Marathon Classic, as the Steam release is known, has been developed by the team behind Aleph One - a fan-created engine based on the Marathon 2 source code - and promises "authentic gameplay using the original [Marathon] data files". However, it also features optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, "just in case," as the team puts it, "the original is too authentic."

"Alien forces have boarded the colony ship UESC Marathon in the Tau Ceti system, in orbit around humanity’s first interstellar colony," reads the scene-setting blurb for Marathon Classic. "The situation is dire, and as a security officer assigned to the Marathon, your duty is to defend the ship and its crew from the alien threat."

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Marathon, the 1994 video game that marked Halo and Destiny developer Bungie's first foray into the world of first-person sci-fi shooters, is - as Bungie previously said it would be - now available on Steam for free. And the remaining two titles in the series are due at a later date.

Marathon Classic, as the Steam release is known, has been developed by the team behind Aleph One - a fan-created engine based on the Marathon 2 source code - and promises "authentic gameplay using the original [Marathon] data files". However, it also features optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, "just in case," as the team puts it, "the original is too authentic."

"Alien forces have boarded the colony ship UESC Marathon in the Tau Ceti system, in orbit around humanity’s first interstellar colony," reads the scene-setting blurb for Marathon Classic. "The situation is dire, and as a security officer assigned to the Marathon, your duty is to defend the ship and its crew from the alien threat."

Read more

Marathon, the 1994 video game that marked Halo and Destiny developer Bungie's first foray into the world of first-person sci-fi shooters, is - as Bungie previously said it would be - now available on Steam for free. And the remaining two titles in the series are due at a later date.

Marathon Classic, as the Steam release is known, has been developed by the team behind Aleph One - a fan-created engine based on the Marathon 2 source code - and promises "authentic gameplay using the original [Marathon] data files". However, it also features optional widescreen HUD support, 3D filtering/perspective, positional audio, and 60+ fps interpolation, "just in case," as the team puts it, "the original is too authentic."

"Alien forces have boarded the colony ship UESC Marathon in the Tau Ceti system, in orbit around humanity’s first interstellar colony," reads the scene-setting blurb for Marathon Classic. "The situation is dire, and as a security officer assigned to the Marathon, your duty is to defend the ship and its crew from the alien threat."

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Halo and Destiny developers Bungie have released their classic shooter Marathon for free on Steam, with sequels Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity to follow. The Steam ports are the work of the celebrated Aleph One community developers, who've kept Bungie's old Marathon 2 game engine going as an open source project - and who still have PC ports of all three games available on their own site, if you'd rather not truck with Steam.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, after the success of Amazon's Fallout TV series, we discuss the TV and movie adapatations of video games we'd love to see next.

Not every video game series fits an adaptation, and even the ones which do might need some work. You need to adapt the game's story well - such as in HBO's The Last of Us - or find space to tell your own narrative without contradicting the game's own.

So which games do we think might fit the bill? Well, we have a few ideas - and how to go about them. Joining me this week to discuss are Eurogamer's Ed Nightingale and Victoria Kennedy. And if you're reading this, Jeff Bezos, please do give us credit whenever you're commissioning TV series with our ideas - thank you.

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This week on the Eurogamer Newscast, after the success of Amazon's Fallout TV series, we discuss the TV and movie adapatations of video games we'd love to see next.

Not every video game series fits an adaptation, and even the ones which do might need some work. You need to adapt the game's story well - such as in HBO's The Last of Us - or find space to tell your own narrative without contradicting the game's own.

So which games do we think might fit the bill? Well, we have a few ideas - and how to go about them. Joining me this week to discuss are Eurogamer's Ed Nightingale and Victoria Kennedy. And if you're reading this, Jeff Bezos, please do give us credit whenever you're commissioning TV series with our ideas - thank you.

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Early adopters of technology are only as active as their budget allows. Given that new and innovative devices are generally quite expensive at the onset, trying out new tech without the proper funds can often be futile. This was my experience with foldable phones. While I’ve been champing at the bit to get my hands on one of these malleable devices since the first Samsung Galaxy Fold hit the shelves in 2019, the price tags were consistently in the four-digit range — far too expensive to justify for an average smartphone upgrade.

The MacBook Pro (M3, 2023) is shaping up to be Apple's best laptop yet, and the best MacBook deserves the best 4K monitor to take advantage of the powerful new M3 chipset. Hooking up your MacBook Pro to an external display lets you turn your laptop into a full-fledged Mac desktop. The new MacBook Pro also has an HDMI port along with USB-C, making it compatible with the vast majority of 4K monitors on the market today. You don't have to sort through them all to find the right one for you, though. We've already done the lifting to round up the best 4K monitors for the MacBook Pro right here.

When Modern Warfare 3 released last year, it pulled in some serious numbers for internet service providers (ISPs). The game's launch and pre-load period resulted in record traffic across EE and BT, which the companies reported as the "biggest single game contribution to a broadband peak". But what does this really mean? And how do ISPs cope when gaming traffic spikes occur? I spoke with EE's director for gaming and future propositional development Sam Kemp to find out.

Inside EE's network - as with any ISP - are records of games and other media in a cache, or CDN. "CDN is a content distribution node inside our network," Kemp says. "Whether it's the latest Apple software release, the latest Fortnite download or the latest Call of Duty game, we work with all of our partners globally to bring all of that content into our network... so when you call down on that film, that game, those maps, it's already in our network." This enables ISPs like EE to provide these downloads as fast and as directly as possible, with metrics "we know are really important to gamers", Kemp says, like "jitter, packet loss, latency, packet sequencing".

He compares EE's work adjusting internet signals - specifically when gaming on a smartphone - to a musician tweaking the "fine-tuned dials at the end of a violin or guitar. If you turn them all in the right way, you get the best sound".

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Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, the iOS and Android version of Activision Blizzard's battle royale hit, is officially getting its worldwide launch on 21st March following a limited release in select counties over the course of the last year.

Warzone Mobile, which is being developed by Activision's Digital Legends, Beenox, Shanghai, and Solid State studios, initially launched in Australia back in November 2022. Following its roll-out across a number of other countries, Activision announced it would be getting its full release in autumn last year - but plans changed in October, when the publisher confirmed it had made the decision to postpone its launch to "spring" 2024 in order to "polish up" the experience.

With Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile's worldwide release now locked down to 21st March, Activision has started talking specifics, confirming the game will launch with two maps: Verdansk - which supports 120-player battle royale matches - and Rebirth Island, which supports 48-player battle royale matches using Gulag-free Resurgence rules.

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