Epic Games has put a beta version of a rebuilt launcher into testers’ hands, and the company is making a bold performance claim. According to Epic, the new client reaches the store page from a cold start 46 percent faster than Steam does. That is a specific, measurable boast, and it sets the terms of the comparison. A cold start is exactly what it sounds like: launching the application from a closed state, with nothing already loaded in memory. It is the slowest and most frustrating version of the experience, and it is the one users notice most, because it happens when they have decided to play something and want to get on with it. The project has been described as “vibe coded”, a label that suggests a fast, improvisational approach rather than a slow corporate rebuild. Whether that is an honest description or a piece of marketing framing, it signals that Epic wants...
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House House has decided not to bring Big Walk to Xbox. The Melbourne studio has linked the decision to its support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, known as BDS, which campaigns for economic and cultural pressure over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Big Walk is a cooperative game, and the announcement concerns the Xbox version specifically. Choosing to skip a console is a significant step for an independent studio, because reach is usually the difference between a project finding an audience and struggling to. It is a decision that puts a political position ahead of a straightforward commercial one. BDS is a long-running campaign with several strands, including boycotts of companies and institutions it identifies as complicit. Artists and studios that align with it generally do so as a statement of principle rather than a calculation about sales, and the effects on their businesses can be mixed. Supporters see it as a moral...
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Tomb Raider turns 30 this month, and the anniversary has produced a fittingly archival project. The Creation of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000, by Daryl Baxter, examines the years when the series moved from a debut phenomenon into a franchise with expectations attached. That period is often described as a peak, and not only because of sales or coverage. It was a stretch in which the games were being made quickly, by teams learning on the job, with technology changing under their feet. The book is presented as an oral history, which means the story is told largely through the recollections of the people who were there rather than through a single author’s argument. The subtitle’s years matter. By the late 1990s, Tomb Raider had become a global brand, and Lara Croft had crossed from games into the wider culture in a way few characters had managed. That visibility brought pressure. Each sequel had to be...
Read More4J Studios has given Reforj a date to aim at, at least on PC. The open-world survival sandbox will be playable on PC through an exclusive playtest beginning in the first quarter of 2027. The announcement was made at Game Republic New Horizons. A playtest is not a launch, and the distinction is worth keeping in mind. It is a chance for a studio to put an unfinished build in front of players, watch how they behave, and find the problems that internal testing misses. For a sandbox game, that feedback is especially valuable, because the whole point is that players will do things the designers never planned for. It also sets expectations: a test build is an invitation to comment, not a promise that everything shown will survive. Survival sandboxes are built on that idea. You gather, craft, build and explore, and the appeal comes from the freedom to set your own goals...
Read MoreDean Hall, the designer best known for DayZ, has released a new tool for other developers. Brutal is an open-source framework for game development, built through a partnership between two of his companies, Ahwoo and RocketWerkz. Open-source frameworks occupy an odd place in game development. They are not engines in the usual sense, and they are rarely the thing players talk about, but they shape how teams structure their work: how systems talk to each other, how data is stored, how quickly a prototype can become something real. A good framework removes repetitive decisions. The choice to make it open source is the interesting part. It invites scrutiny, contributions and reuse, and it also means the project can outlive the company that started it. For a small team, that is a way to build credibility quickly. For the wider industry, it is a small counterweight to the tendency for tools to be locked behind...
Read MoreCall of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is days away, and it arrives on Xbox Series X and Series S as well as PC. For Microsoft, it is one of the largest releases of the year; for Activision, it is the latest chapter in a franchise that has become an annual fixture. It is the kind of release that tends to dominate a launch window, and the sort of game many people buy simply because everyone else will be playing it. The campaign centres on Captain Price, whose history with the series stretches back to the original Modern Warfare era. Modern Warfare 4 continues that thread, and for longtime players the appeal is partly nostalgic: the same voice, the same tone, and the same fondness for enormous set pieces. Release timing is the thing most people want to know, and it is also the thing most likely to cause confusion. Launches are rarely simultaneous everywhere....
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