I'll be honest right off the bat. As a single player Elder Scroller, the Elder Scrolls Online's never managed to hook me for more than a few hours. I've given it a couple of goes, usually during periods when it's gone free to play, but have always bounced off its vast MMOiness. Might the slew of fresh additions coming across the next couple of years be able to change that and finally convince me to spend significant time with ESO in the same way I have Fallout 76 in the past few years? The answer could be yes, if the naval combat and underwater exploration Zenimax have just revealed are as fun as they sound on paper.

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With the first few months of its latest target release year drawing to a close, the modders behind Skyblivion are looking to make some "final" and "vital" veteran additions to their team in order to get the ambitious remake of Oblivion in Skyrim's engine over the line. This comes after a delay late last year, which saw Skyblivion's arrival pushed to 2026, following some accusations from a former dev that it was being rushed out of the door.

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Much of the time, using social media is like fondling a wasp's nest, but sometimes, sometimes, social media is Nice. For example, Firaxis narrative director Cat Manning recently started a Bluesky thread "of small practical pieces of advice developers just starting out or unfamiliar with a genre might not know". The replies and quote-posts include thoughts from people with credits on fairly big games.

Inevitably, they run the gamut of approachability. At one end of the spectrum, you have Apex Legends engineer Jay Stevens jauntily observing that "a navmesh is a very handy thing to have, even in a multiplayer game without NPCs", which I maybe half-understand, and sounds like it could be the opening to a Broadway song of some kind. More digestibly, you have former Marvel's Avengers and current Legacy of Orsinium developer Keano Raubun commenting that the "biggest bang for buck in (open world RPG) game writing will always be NPCs having funny ambient conversations amongst themselves".

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Epic Games' mass layoffs led a programmer with terminal brain cancer to lose his life insurance, leaving him and his family struggling to find new coverage. Following news of the situation breaking, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has said the company have reached out to the programmer - Mike Prinke - and that they "will solve the insurance".

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There is a significant danger that this article will have aged terribly. You see, I asked everyone what they were playing this weekend on Thursday, rather than the usual post-lunch scramble on a Friday. You see, I took Friday off to travel to Wales to spend a long weekend with my family. Who knows what happened between my polling of the team on Thursday and Friday? Perhaps Valve surprise released Half-Life 3 and everyone is playing that instead. Maybe they all went off videogames in the interim.

I can only hope they thought to go into the CMS and update the article accordingly. Otherwise, I'll look like a right plonker.

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Following Epic Games' mass layoffs, a Fortnite producer has said that the devs left behind "cannot even fully understand" the sort of impact the job cuts will have on the game during this year and into the future.

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Epic Games have announced that they're laying off over 1000 staff today, March 24th. In the wake of that news, the publishers have announced that three Fortnite modes are being permanently sunsetted. Meanwhile, one of the studios Epic own - Horizon Chase developers Aquiris - have announced plans to pull downloads for the first two games in their arcade racing series offline later this year.

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Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite and the Unreal Engine, have announced plans to lay off more than 1000 staff. In a company-wide letter, CEO Tim Sweeney blamed both "industry-wide challenges" and "challenges unique to Epic", including a downturn in Fortnite's popularity.

In addition to the layoffs, the company have made more than $500m in cuts by reducing contracting, marketing, and closing open roles. Sweenet says this puts the company "in a more stable place."

Sweeney, a strong advocate of AI, says the layoffs "aren't related to AI".

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Diablo-ish Minecraft spin-off Minecraft Dungeons has a sequel, and said sequel's coming out at some point in 2026. What's it about? Well, Mojang say, "all was well until it wasn't". Wait, lads, that's pretty much the setup for every sequel and arguably story humanity's ever produced. Aye, Mojang say, but the mild-mannered villagers are on fire, so you'd better get your diamond sword polished.

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He isn't even hiding who his favorite child is anymore

Miyamoto wants fans to think about "'what kind of world Nintendo will expand on now,'" not what games it might make next

Pokemon Legends: Z-A is only one week away from launch, and while trailers and its news cycle stopped a while ago, the datamine "season" has now officially begun, thanks to the game's pre-load on the Nintendo store and a few copies in the wild. Unlike leaks, which can be volatile if the sources are not trustworthy or things change internally before launch, datamining is mostly very accurate because it takes information from the game's code. At the time of the so-called TeraLeak, everything pointed to 26 new Mega Evolutions in Pokemon Legends: Z-A, with Mega Zeraora being the 27th and allegedly scrapped. Now, a reliable dataminer by the name of Kaphotics on Twitter, who has provided a lot of data regarding Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, confirmed that data for Mega Zeraora is in the game, and also for Mega Darkrai and Mega Heatran.

This Newegg Nintendo Switch eShop deal has arrived just time time for Pokemon Legends Z-A, and I ain't mad about it.

Fortnite Crew seems to be staying as it is

ANC is common with high-end gaming headsets, but how does it work, and is it actually important for the best audio experience?

I'm still wondering what that "big surprise" Square Enix teased last month is