Eidos Montreal, developers of the most recent two Deus Ex entries, have laid off 124 staff. At the same time, they've announced that they're "parting ways" with veteran studio head David Anfossi, who'd been in that post for just under 13 years.

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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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A new Life is Strange game doesn't always feel particularly odd given its sort of steady turn into a franchise. The last one was only in 2024 with Life Is Strange: Double Exposure, bringing back the original game's Max Caulfield. This wasn't necessarily a welcome return for all, and ended up being somewhat of a mixed bag. And now we come to now with a potentially odd entry, Life is Strange: Reunion, which is out today. As the subtitle suggests, and where the oddness comes in, Reunion reunites Max with the surprising return of Chloe Price. Big spoilers ahead for Double Exposure, by the way!

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Having re-launched Splitgate 2 as Spligate: Arena Reloaded late last year, 1047 Games have now kicked off early work on a new shooter. Details are scarce aside from the fact you'll be able to move around in it and that 1047 CEO Ian Proulx reckons it should appeal to fans of Titanfall and Call of Duty Blops 3. Oh, and that you can sign-up for to playtest it now.

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It sounds like Sony are continuing to do what they presumably coldly view as cost cutting. According to Jason Schreier, often known for his insider information, and a leak shared in a ResetEra thread, Dark Outlaw Games, a studio set up by former Call of Duty lead Jason Blundell, is being shut down. It's unclear how many people this includes at this time.

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If you’ve tried to go back to Final Fantasy XI at any point or even tried to start the game completely new… well, you know it’s not an easy thing to do. The game has a tutorial quest, but it hasn’t been updated in years, and that’s without dealing with things like maps being expensive. So […]

One of the things that I observed ages ago about Final Fantasy XIV’s Dawntrail expansion was that our patches were each adding one big new thing aside from what’s expected. Sure, a given patch would have the new raid (alliance or normal) and new dungeon and so forth, but in addition you get one thing. […]

Do you hear the cackle of a witch in the woods? Do you sense the disquieting presents of a ghoul in the closet behind you? Do you feel that you’re never too old to dress up in a costume and demand treats from strangers? Then it’s time to pull out your best glamour and partake […]

This week’s Massively Overthinking is inspired directly by something MOP reader Zulika said last month in comments about Smed’s new MMOFPS. “More and more I am just glad past me was around to experience MMOs starting in 2000.” OK, obviously Zulika was throwing deserved shade on some of 2025’s excesses, but let’s talk about more […]

So there was a fun meme that was going around about four years ago in which an image of Final Fantasy IV was posted as “what people think Final Fantasy looked like 20 years ago,” followed by a picture of Final Fantasy X as “what Final Fantasy actually looked like 20 years ago.” Of course, now it’s […]