Very much when we expected it, Blizzard has officially revealed Diablo 4’s next major expansion at The Game Awards. Lord of Hatred delivers a new campaign that continues the mainline story, picking up from where Vessel of Hatred left off. Mephisto, the eponymous Lord of Hatred, has seemingly finally escaped imprisonment to rule over Sanctuary.
It's been a busy year so far for a game that's over 10 years old. If you've not been following, last week, we asked "is there really going to be a new Witcher 3 expansion this year?", responding to comments from Borys Nieśpielak, a trusted source of Polish games industry information. Following his remarks, a Noble Securities analyst then added fuel to the fire this week.
Netflix has today confirmed that the fifth and final season of The Witcher will air on the streaming service this year. It follows Season 4 in rapid succession - that series having launched at the end of October last year.
The analyst who forecasted a Witcher 3 expansion release in 2026 has told me they're "100 percent certain [CD Projekt Red] will release significant new content this year".
More than five years after its troubled original release, Cyberpunk 2077 continues to be one of the most relevant open-world RPGs of the modern era. Much of its success comes from the believable relationships it quickly establishes between its key characters and V, but the pre-disaster prologue with preem choom Jackie was never meant to go on for too long.
The upcoming third season of HBO's The Last of Us TV adaptation will feature a new actor playing WLF member Manny.
Polish developer Rebel Wolves has unveiled the main musical theme for its promising dark fantasy role-playing The Blood of Dawnwalker, and surprise surprise, it sounds a lot like The Witcher 3.
UPDATE 4.10PM GMT: CD Projekt Red, for what it's worth, has told me it does not comment on rumour or speculation - the company's usual line.
The first week of January 2026 finds CD Projekt Red in the middle of a structural overhaul. After years of quiet work following the Phantom Liberty launch, the studio cleared its plate. They sold GOG, moved their entire tech stack to Unreal Engine 5, and started pushing The Witcher into a permanent release cycle.
On December 29, 2025, CDPR sold 100% of GOG.com back to its original co-founder, Michał Kiciński, for PLN 90.7 million ($25.2 million). The storefront is now independent again.
For players, this protects the DRM-free mission. Kiciński wants GOG to return to its original purpose: reviving classic games and ensuring digital ownership. The studio will still launch future titles like The Witcher 4 on GOG, but the storefront can now focus on its Preservation Program without needing to compete with Steam’s scale or answer to quarterly earnings reports.
Rumors from Polish industry insider Borys Nieśpielak and financial analyst Mateusz Chrzanowski at Noble Securities point toward a massive, paid expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt dropping in May 2026.
This DLC connects the original trilogy to the new saga. It focuses on Ciri after the main game ends. The marketing features the School of the Lynx medallion, a new Witcher order that represents a break from the dying traditions of Kaer Morhen. Playing as Ciri lets us see the founding of this school, which positions her as the anchor for Project Polaris.
The internal Warsaw team isn’t developing this. Fool’s Theory—the studio remaking The Witcher 1—is handling it. This team includes many lead developers who built the original Wild Hunt. They’re using the familiar REDengine to deliver a standalone-style expansion (projected at $30) while the main CDPR staff stays focused on the new engine for The Witcher 4.
The transition to Unreal Engine 5.x is the foundation for everything CDPR plans between now and 2030. The State of Unreal tech demo showed how this shift affects actual gameplay.
Nanite Foliage means the forests of Kovir (the rumored setting for Polaris) use high-fidelity geometry. Trees and grass no longer pop in as you get closer.
Lumen Lighting makes all lighting dynamic. If you cast a Sign or walk past a light source, the shadows and reflections update instantly without the performance hit of traditional ray-tracing.
FastGeo Streaming is a tool CDPR co-developed with Epic Games. It streams massive amounts of data instantly, which matters for the dense urban environments planned for the Cyberpunk sequel.
The current plan splits development geographically so The Witcher and Cyberpunk don’t fight for the same resources.
| Project | Lead Team | Current Status | Expected Release |
|---|---|---|---|
| W3 Expansion | Fool’s Theory | Finishing Touches | May 2026 |
| Polaris (W4) | CDPR Warsaw | Full Production | Late 2027 |
| Sirius (Multiplayer) | CDPR / Molasses | Conceptual | 2028 |
| Orion (CP2) | CDPR Boston | Pre-production | 2030 |
Over 400 people in Warsaw are working on Polaris. It starts a new trilogy that CDPR plans to release over six years. By using a shared UE5 technical base, they expect to release The Witcher 5 and 6 much faster than previous sequels.
The Boston hub is now home to the Cyberpunk sequel. Lead designers from Phantom Liberty are building the team in North America. They want to integrate multiplayer directly into the core experience this time, turning Night City into a social hub instead of just a single-player playground. The game entered pre-production in May 2025 with an expected release no earlier than 2030.
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Tales of Berseria Remastered is almost here on Nintendo Switch, and for those curious about the technical side of the game, Bandai Namco has shared details about the frame rate and resolution. For frame rate, the RPG targets 30 FPS. However, Bandai Namco indicates that this could temporarily change depending on what’s happening on screen. In case you’re curious, Tales...
The post Tales of Berseria Remastered details Nintendo Switch frame rate, resolution appeared first on Nintendo Everything.
The DRM-free PC game store GOG has been acquired by CD Projekt and GOG co-founder Michał Kiciński, branching it off from the CD Projekt Group and going private.
There’s no plans to change GOG’s business model, which continues to focus on providing a source for classic games, now with a dedicated preservation programme to ensure a select library continue to run on modern systems, and to sell all titles (old and new) without DRM.
While now independent of CD Projekt Group, they have immediately penned a deal to ensure that CDPR games remain on GOG going forward.
So, why the change? Was GOG in trouble? All parties say that no, it was doing well and is profitable on its own terms, but the CDPR want to focus fully on developing games.
“With our focus now fully on an ambitious development roadmap and expanding our franchises with new high-quality products, we felt this was the right time for this move,” said Michał Nowakowski, Joint CEO of CD Projekt. “For a long time now, GOG has been operating independently. Now it’s going into very good hands — we are convinced that with the support of Michał Kiciński, one of GOG’s co-founders, its future will be full of great projects and successes.”
Kiciński was a co-founder of both CD Projekt in 1994, and then also their digital storefront Good Old Games (rebranded simply as GOG) in 2008. He left the company at the end of 2010, but has remained one of its largest shareholders, with 9.99%, and his brother is a chair on the board.
In the announcement, he said, “CD Projekt and GOG share the same roots and values: freedom, independence, and a genuine sense of ownership. I believe that CD Projekt, with its exceptional AAA games, will stand, as always, behind the GOG offering — making GOG the best place on the planet to purchase The Witcher and Cyberpunk games, both existing titles and the new ones we all anticipate so much.
“GOG and Michał Kiciński are aligned by a shared belief that games should live forever,” said Maciej Gołębiewski, Managing Director of GOG. “In a market that’s getting more crowded, more locked-in, and forgets classic games at an increasing pace, we’re doubling down on what only GOG does: reviving classics, keeping them playable on modern PCs, and helping great games find their audience over time.”
Source: GOG
Multiplayer games are unique in that they can last for years and years, even decades in some cases, but the excitement of a brand new release cannot be truly matched by DLCs or expansions for existing titles. Luckily, 2026 looks very interesting on the front of new multiplayer games releases. They're also quite varied, offering a variety of settings and gameplay formulas that are likely to entice many players throughout the year. Other Wccftech's Most Anticipated 2026 Games per genre: Role-Playing Games, Indie Games, Platformers, DLC/Expansion, Action, Shooters, Horror, Sports/Racing, Fighting, Adventure Games, Strategy/Simulation Marathon (March 2026 - PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X) […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/wccftechs-most-anticipated-multiplayer-games-of-2026-new-online-worlds/
British developer Playground Games will be the absolute star of the Xbox Developer Direct 2026, with the first in-depth look at the long-awaited Fable reboot and the proper reveal of Forza Horizon 6, a sequel to a massively successful game that is estimated to have been played by over 50 million users. Sure, there's also Game Freak's Beast of Reincarnation and even a rumored 'secret' fourth game, but those two games are going to be the centerpiece of the showcase due to air on January 22. Officially, both Fable and Forza Horizon 6 are only announced for PC and Xbox […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/playground-fable-rumored-launch-day-date-ps5-forza-horizon-6-wont-wasnt-ready/
GameStop, the largest retailer dedicated to videogames, is reportedly shutting down hundreds of stores in the United States. The reports started appearing on social media and were quickly conflated into one very long list on the 'GameStop Closing List' blog, which reckons there are at least 410 GameStop stores confirmed to be closing and another 11 reported but as of yet unconfirmed. This is only the latest round of closures for the retailer headquartered in Grapevine, Texas. In the annual 10-K SEC filing issued in February 2025, the company stated: We have also initiated a comprehensive store portfolio optimization review […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/gamestop-reportedly-shutting-down-hundreds-us-stores/
The award-winning cRPG Baldur's Gate 3 couldn't possibly run on the original Nintendo Switch, as evidenced by a test made with a modded console that featured twice the amount of RAM (8GB instead of 4GB), with the game still bringing this 'Switch on steroids' on its knees. However, the Nintendo Switch 2 is a completely different beast. In some regards, it is even superior to the Xbox Series S, as Studio Wildcard's Lead Programmer just told me in an interview, and the Xbox Series S does run the game, albeit not very well. Additionally, there have been successful Switch ports […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/we-would-have-loved-baldurs-gate-3-switch-2-wasnt-our-decision/
It's been over two years since Ubisoft Massive confirmed that it would be making The Division 3, and that series creator Julian Gerighty would be at the forefront of the project. Since then, Ubisoft has released major updates and expansions for The Division 2, and at Gamescom 2025, we even got a major reveal of what the company has planned for the franchise, with a new survival extraction game called The Division 2: Survivors and an upcoming mobile MMO title called The Division Resurgence. As for The Division 3? Ubisoft did not mention it at the time, but during yesterday's […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/the-division-3-in-production-will-have-as-big-an-impact-as-division-1-ubisoft-massive/
Hooded Horse, a publisher that made a name for itself when it picked up Manor Lords and has since been known to have a keen eye for strategy and city-building games, has drawn its line in the sand on GenAI tech. In an interview with Kotaku, Hooded Horse's chief executive officer, Tim Bender, made it clear that the publisher will not sign studios that use GenAI. The studio has even gone so far as to add a "no f***ing AI assets" line into its contracts, banning any studios that work with it from using generative AI technology in the process […]
Read full article at https://wccftech.com/publisher-hooded-horse-added-no-fing-ai-assets-to-its-contracts-calls-genai-cancerous/
