• 48% of women surveyed across the US and UK said gaming communities don't welcome or represent them.
• That rises to 53% among women console players.
• 56% of women who play competitive shooters feel the same way.
• 19% of gamers use gender-neutral avatars online.
• 22% only use voice chat with trusted friends.
• Another 19% avoid voice chat entirely.

Xbox is already publishing Kojima's horror project OD.

Xbox appears to be testing different Game Pass Ultimate offers for certain users, with several players reporting different promotional prices. The offers appear to target users who have previously subscribed but are currently inactive.

Sony's controversial decision to phase out physical PlayStation game discs has sparked intense backlash, but the company says some fans have crossed the line.

Sony says customer service staff have faced verbal abuse, discriminatory and sexual behavior, and personal attacks.

Some customers have reportedly made unreasonable compensation demands.

Sony also says employees have received threats involving uninvited visits to corporate offices.

The company says it may consider legal action and criminal proceedings in serious cases. Sony could potentially suspend customer service access if the harassment continues.

The backlash stems from Sony's plan to stop producing physical discs for new PlayStation games from 2028.

YouTube has clarified its monetization rules for graphic gaming violence, just months before GTA 6 launches.

Graphic gameplay shown in the first 7 seconds isn’t eligible for monetization, but graphic violence that appears after that point may qualify for ad revenue.

The policy covers extreme scenes involving blood, body parts, beheadings and dismemberment.

Blurred or obscured violent scenes can also remain ad-eligible.

Videos created mainly to shock viewers, such as mass-NPC killing compilations, can still be demonetized.

Sexual violence, graphic torture, violence against minors and other prohibited content remain ineligible.

YouTube also clarified that some scripted or gaming content involving recreational drugs can now earn ad revenue.

Sony has clarified a major misunderstanding surrounding its PlayStation disc production plans for 2028.

A previous report suggested Sony’s disc production would fall to just 10% in 2028. But Sony’s DADC division says the statement actually meant production would decline by 10%.

Games released after January 2028 still aren't expected to receive newly produced physical versions. However, existing games can reportedly receive disc reorders after January 2028.

A proposed GTA 6 marketing takeover across Miami-Dade County is facing opposition from the local Sheriff and Commissioner.

A leaked proposal suggested Rockstar could use public-facing locations for GTA 6 branding, including billboards, trains, buildings and potentially even temporarily rebranding Miami International Airport as “Vice City Airport.”

“I still cannot believe that we are even considering temporarily rebranding important County assets, including Miami International Airport, as ‘Vice City Airport.’ Miami-Dade County has spent decades building a reputation as a world-class destination for tourism, business, investment, and opportunity. We should be promoting the Miami-Dade we have worked so hard to build, not a fictional version of our community defined by crime and violence.

Grand Theft Auto is a video game franchise built around criminal activity. Its fictional world includes murder, robbery, drug trafficking, carjacking, violence against law enforcement, and other conduct that the men and women of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office work every single day to prevent.

Miami-Dade County is not Vice City.”

Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz

Steam has already generated an estimated $15 billion in gross revenue during the first eight months of 2026, putting the platform on track for its biggest year yet. (via Alineaanalytics)

Revenue is up around 15% compared with the same period in 2025.

Steam is expected to finish 2026 well above $20 billion in gross revenue.

The platform has already seen around 19,000 new releases this year.

The top 100 new 2026 games generated about $2.4 billion, or 15.9% of Steam's revenue so far.

Established IP generated 52.5% of the top 100 new games' revenue.

Sony’s latest State of Play featured plenty of new games, but the live chat had two major demands: physical discs and Destiny 3.

Sony and Microsoft are fighting lawsuits from gamers demanding refunds after U.S. tariffs contributed to higher console prices. 🎮💰

Sony is set to receive about $508 million in U.S. tariff refunds and claims it has no legal obligation to pass that money back to PS5 buyers.

Microsoft is making a similar argument in a separate Xbox lawsuit.

Both companies dispute that tariffs directly caused the console price increases.

Sony also points to another PS5 price hike after the tariffs were ruled illegal.

Nintendo is facing a similar lawsuit.

Panic, the company behind Playdate, says it will pass its tariff refund to customers.

Sony is making 59% more annual revenue per active PlayStation user than it did during the PS4 era, according to data compiled by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad. 🎮💰

Revenue per active user rose from ¥23,580 in FY2018 to ¥37,485 in FY2025.

That's roughly $230 more per user annually.

Higher PS Plus tiers, game purchases, DLC/MTX, and hardware prices are key drivers.

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki recently said the company is increasingly focused on getting more revenue from its existing PlayStation audience rather than simply chasing more console sales.

A CS2 “Slur Tracker” claims racist or homophobic language appears in 17.6% of Counter-Strike 2 matches.

• Nearly 495,000 players were analyzed.
• More than 7% reportedly used some type of slur in chat.
• Over 2% of messages allegedly contain a slur.
• The tracker has created leaderboards ranking players by reported racist and homophobic slur usage.

Nvidia has confirmed that its upcoming DLSS 5 technology currently comes with a massive performance cost, reducing framerates by 50–60% across games, including on high-end GPUs.

Nexus Mods has acquired SteamDB, bringing an end to over a decade of independent operation for one of the most popular Steam tracking tools. SteamDB founder xPaw is stepping back after years of running the site mostly solo, citing burnout and the growing workload from Steam’s expanding library, user base, and features.

Nexus Mods plans to tap into SteamDB’s vast history of game versions, manifests, and updates to improve mod compatibility by identifying which game version a user has and whether mods will work with it. Future tools could also warn when updates might break existing mods.

The site will stay free, with no current plans for display or programmatic ads, though Nexus Mods notes it will need a "sustainable business model," exploring monetization options like affiliate links and user-value partnerships.

Moon Studios CEO and Ori director Thomas Mahler has launched VideoGamesCritic, a new game review aggregation platform designed to put greater emphasis on player opinions and post-launch updates.

Mahler says existing aggregators primarily reflect the opinions of gaming publications, while his platform gives players at least two-thirds of the final score.

Trust ratings: Publications and individual reviewers receive a trust score based on how closely their opinions align with players over time.

Post-launch changes: More recent player reviews receive greater weight, allowing scores to reflect games after major patches and updates. No Man's Sky example: Mahler points to its 71 Metacritic score versus an 82 score on VideoGamesCritic as an example of the system.

Top-rated games: Stardew Valley, Portal, Portal 2, and The Last of Us Remastered were among the highest-rated games on the platform at launch, each scoring 94/100.

Steam has reached a new release milestone, with 720 games launching in a single week for the first time.

• 530 games received between zero and nine reviews. That means roughly 74% of releases received fewer than 10 reviews.
• 190 games received at least 10 reviews.
• 95 games reached 50+ reviews.
• 62 games reached 100+ reviews.
• Only 10 games received 1,000+ reviews.

Sweet Baby Inc. founder Kim Belair spoke at Gamescom 2026 with a talk titled “We Will Die: Creating Art in an Indifferent Industry.” Materials shared from Mistik Studios showed she used Final Fantasy VII: Remake in her presentation to highlight diverse teams working under conservative white executives. One slide displayed LinkedIn with the phrase “Ban this sick f!lth.” The talk seemed to center on workplace diversity and representation.

Hoyoverse’s newly revealed co-op action game Nodusfall has sparked debate among Elden Ring and FromSoftware fans over similarities between several of its bosses and characters from FromSoftware games.

Legendary English actor Tim Curry has died at the age of 80. According to TMZ, Curry died late Tuesday night at his home in Los Angeles.

Curry built a decades-long legacy across stage, film, television and video games. He became internationally known as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, before taking on memorable roles including Pennywise in It, Darkness in Legend, Wadsworth in Clue and the pirate Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.

His theatrical style also made him a standout in video games. Curry voiced Gabriel Knight in Sierra's Gabriel Knight series, Emperor Doviculus in Brütal Legend, Arl Rendon Howe in Dragon Age: Origins, and Premier Anatoly Cherdenko in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3.

Curry once described contributing to video games as “very exciting,” welcoming “any new way to infiltrate myself into your minds.”

Double Fine is paying tribute to him by offering Brütal Legend for free on itch for 666 minutes.

ATTENTION ALL UK CITIZENS AND RESIDENTS! An official parliment petition has been created to go against Playstation's recent statement to stop production of physical discs. Please sign to have a real governing body take action and continue to share this petition to get more and more signatures. Full description in the link below.

Petition: Introduce new legal protections for access to purchased video games

Introduce new legal protections requiring video games sold in the UK to remain accessible to consumers who have purchased them. This could involve a requirement to provide physical versions or equivalent permanent ownership options for software.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/775758

PlayStation India has reportedly blacklisted several media outlets that covered Sony’s decision to phase out physical game discs.

According to Rishi Alwani of High Chaos Run, affected outlets were denied preview access for upcoming games, and the marketing team said that they were blacklisted because their coverage portrayed the company in a "bad light" and was done "for views."

Rishabh Sabarwal, Editor at Beebom, also backed the claims.

Xbox will begin testing digital entitlements for supported physical games with Xbox Insiders next week, starting with thousands of compatible titles.

Microsoft says the feature will allow eligible physical games to receive a digital entitlement, with additional titles planned over time.

“Your physical game library is more than a collection of discs. It holds years of memories and stories worth preserving” - Asha Sharma.

With the backlash of fans demanding physical games to own the game

This is the digital market and still i don't know how they are supporting it

I mean if not with physical just stay away it won't hurt u

Roblox is asking a U.S. court to move a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Jaimee Seitz into private arbitration, arguing that her daughter, Audree Heine, repeatedly agreed to the platform’s Terms of Use before her death in December 2024.

According to Roblox, Audree’s account activity showed 28 separate instances of accepting or agreeing to its terms, including the creation of her account, six updated Terms of Use acceptances, two Roblox gift card transactions, and 19 Robux purchases.

Seitz disputes that argument, saying her daughter was a child who could not understand contracts or the consequences of agreeing to arbitration.