Julian LeFay, widely regarded as the "Father of The Elder Scrolls," has died at age 59 following a battle with cancer. IGN reports: It was announced last week that LeFay, now co-founder and technical producer at OnceLost Games, had stepped back from game development after a lengthy battle with cancer, in order to spend time with his family and loved ones. A statement from OnceLost Games, published today, has now confirmed LeFay's passing -- "with profound sadness and heavy hearts."

Born in Denmark in 1965, LeFay began his career working on early Amiga and NES games, before becoming one of Bethesda's earliest employees in 1987. After working on a string of Elder Scrolls titles, his career next took him to Sega, and then ultimately to found OnceLost Games in 2019 to develop a new open-world RPG, Wayward Realms, that was successfully pitched on Kickstarter as a Daggerfall spiritual successor. "Julian LeFay was not just a colleague -- he was a visionary who fundamentally shaped the gaming industry as we know it today," OnceLost Games' statement reads. "Known as the 'Father of The Elder Scrolls', Julian directed the creation of legendary titles including Elder Scrolls 1 and 2: Arena, Daggerfall, and Battlespire. His pioneering work established the foundation for open-world RPGs and influenced countless developers and games that followed."

Bethesda also issued a statement, writing: "Without Julian, we would not be here today. If you had the opportunity to work with Julian, you were blessed to know a one-of-a-kind force of nature, who pushed everyone to create something special. His work and spirit will live on both in our memories and in our games."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sony is testing a Power Saver mode for the PlayStation 5, explaining in a new PlayStation Blog update that the option will permit games to run with lower power consumption. While the upcoming feature was revealed as part of the system update beta, the feature will not be available during the beta phase. However, when the feature does hit your console, players will gain access to a new option called Power Saver.

With Power Saver enabled, "supported PS5 games will scale back performance and will allow your PS5 to reduce its power consumption," explained Shuzo Kikuchi, VP of product management at Sony Interactive Entertainment. "If not enabled, or if games do not support the feature, the performance will not be scaled back and power consumption will not be reduced."

As for what scaled-back performance actually means, SIE indicates that VR mode will be unavailable and that "some gameplay features may be limited." So that's one very clear change, and one vague, game-specific change.

Microsoft is rolling out updates to the Xbox PC app and consoles that sync your cloud gaming history and progress across devices, making it easier to resume cloud-playable titles on PCs, handhelds, and other Xbox hardware. The Verge reports: Cloud-playable games are now starting to show inside play history or the library on the Xbox PC app. "This includes all cloud playable titles, even console exclusives spanning from the original Xbox to Xbox Series X|S, whether you own the title or access it through Game Pass," explains Lily Wang, product manager of Xbox experiences. Your recent games, including cloud ones, will soon follow you across devices -- complete with cloud-powered game saves. So if you played an Xbox game on your console that's not natively available on PC, it will still show up in your recent games list and be playable through Xbox Cloud Gaming on Windows.

Cloud-playable games on the Xbox PC app can be found from a new filter in the library section, and a new "play history" section will appear at the end of the "jump back in" list on the home screen of the Xbox PC app. "While the large tiles highlight games you've recently played on your current device, the play history tile shows games you've played across any Xbox device, making it easy to pick up where you left off," says Wang. This same play history section will appear on the main Xbox console interface, too -- which could mean we'll eventually see PC games listed here and playable through Xbox Cloud Gaming.

"I vibe coded a little game called Coldplay Canoodlers," reads the X.com post by gaming enthusiast/songwriter Jonathan Mann. "You're the camera operator and you have to find the CEO and HR lady canoodling. 10 points every time you find them."

Mann's post includes a 30-second clip from the game, which is playable here.

Forbes notes that the TikTok video of the couple's reaction has drawn more than 100 million views — and that the married-to-someone-else CEO has now tendered his resignation from his dataops company Astronomer (which was accepted). The company is now searching for a new chief executive, according to a statement posted on LinkedIn. ("Comments have been turned off on this post...")

"Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability, and recently, that standard was not met."

But songwriter Mann saw a chance to have some fun, writes Forbes: Mann used ChatGPT to make the "Coldplay Canoodlers" game, inputting such prompts as: "Can you generate an 8-bit pixel image of a stadium concert viewed from the stage" and "there should be a large jumbotron somewhere up in the stadium seats." He also entered rough drawings of the visual style he envisioned... The response to the game, Mann said in an interview, has been unexpected. "I have gone viral many times with my songs," he said. It's "very strange to have it happen with a game I made in four hours."
Songwriter Mann has been sharing an original song online every day for over 17 years. Last summer Slashdot also covered Mann's attempts to sell NFTs of his songs, and his concerns about SEC regulations. (This led him to file a real-world legal challenge — and to write a song titled "I'm Suing the SEC".) So with all the attention this weekend to his instant game, there was nothing to do but... write a new song about it.

And minutes ago on X.com, Mann also posted a new update about his game.

"I turned it into an NFT."

"Took some time," Mann explained later. "But I vibe coded my own ERC-721 contract and minted the game as a playable NFT. (Plays great on OpenSea)."

Steam has begun banning games that violate the payment rules of banks and card networks, targeting adult content in particular -- especially titles with extreme or controversial themes. Engadget reports: The new clause states that "content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steam's payment processors and related card networks and banks, or internet network providers" is not allowed and could result in removal from the platform. In other words, if credit card companies get mad about something, they could actually have the power to ban a game. The clause goes on to say that this will affect "certain kinds of adult-only content."

This has likely already resulted in many games being pulled off the platform. SteamDB doesn't give a reason for these removals, but the timing does match up.

"Steam quietly welcomed another indie game this week, but this one is distinctly different for a lot of reasons," writes Notebookcheck: Dogwalk, which debuted on July 11, is the kind of short, gentle experience that almost forces you to smile. Developed by Blender Studio, the game introduces players to a gorgeous winter landscape. You play as a cute, fluffy dog, with a small child in tow...

What's particularly interesting here is that Dogwalk is more than just another charming indie project. It's Blender Studio's showcase for what's possible using fully open-source tools. The entire project — assets, animations, and code — is made with Blender and the popular Godot Game Engine. Unlike industry giants such as Unity or Unreal, Godot is completely open source, meaning it doesn't require developers to pay royalties or follow strict licensing agreements. This should make it great for small studios and independent creators, as it lowers the entry barrier to game creation.

Dogwalk is 100% free, which fits neatly into its open-source philosophy

"A Nintendo Switch 2 user reportedly got his brand-new console banned by Nintendo after buying used Switch 1 games and patching them on his console," reports Tom's Hardware: According to Reddit user dmanthey, they purchased four used titles off the Facebook marketplace, inserted them into the Switch 2, and had them all updated. When they turned on their handhelds the following day, they received a message saying that they were restricted from Nintendo's online services and that they couldn't even download the games they had already bought...

[T]hey were able to prove their innocence by pulling up the Facebook Marketplace listing for their games and sending the photos of their purchased cartridges. According to the Redditor, the process was painless and fast, and it was "so much easier than getting support from Microsoft or Sony...." Other users warned, though, that this isn't always a guaranteed resolution.

Nintendo is known for being protective of its intellectual property and delivers harsh penalties to anyone caught violating it. We've already had several reports of users getting banned for using Mig Flash, even on their own ROMs. And while it's not true that getting banned turns your Switch 2 into a brick, it will still prevent you from accessing the company's online services, which severely restricts its features and usability.
"Nintendo attaches unique codes to its Switch game cartridges to prevent piracy," notes Engadget. "However, bad actors can copy games onto a third-party device, like the MIG Flash, and then resell the physical game card. Once Nintendo detects two instances of its unique code being online at the same time, it will ban any accounts using it..." This anti-piracy policy isn't new — Nintendo has long had a reputation for fiercely combating any type of piracy — but it has become relevant again thanks to the recently released Switch 2, which offers backwards compatibility with original Switch titles. The company even recently amended its user agreement to allow itself the power to brick a Nintendo Switch that's caught running pirated games or mods.

iFixit has harsh words for Nintendo's $85 Switch 2 Pro controller, calling it a "piss-poor excuse for a controller" due to its difficult repairability, use of outdated drift-prone joysticks, and poor internal accessibility. The Verge reports: Opening the controller requires you to first forcefully remove a faceplate held in place by adhesive tape before a single screw is visible. But you'll need to extract several other parts and components, including the controller's mainboard, before its battery is even accessible. As previously revealed, the Pro 2 is still using older potentiometer-based joysticks that are prone to developing drift over time. They do feature a modular design that will potentially make them easier to swap with third-party Hall effect or TMR replacements, but reassembling the controller after that DIY upgrade will require you to replace all the adhesive tape you destroyed during disassembly. You can watch the full teardown on YouTube.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Straight Arrow News: Hollywood video game performers ended their nearly year-long strike Wednesday with new protections against the use of digital replicas of their voices or appearances. If those replicas are used, actors must be paid at rates comparable to in-person work. The SAG-AFTRA union demanded stronger pay and better working conditions. Among their top concerns was the potential for artificial intelligence to replace human actors without compensation or consent.

Under a deal announced in a media release, studios such as Activision and Electronic Arts are now required to obtain written consent from performers before creating digital replicas of their work. Actors have the right to suspend their consent for AI-generated material if another strike occurs. "This deal delivers historic wage increases, industry-leading AI protections and enhanced health and safety measures for performers," Audrey Cooling, a spokesperson for the video game producers, said in the release. The full list of studios includes Activision Productions, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, Electronic Arts Productions, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Llama Productions, Take 2 Productions and WB Games.

SAG-AFTRA members approved the contract by a vote of 95.04% to 4.96%, according to the announcement. The agreement includes a wage increase of more than 15%, with additional 3% raises in November 2025, 2026 and 2027. The contract expires in October 2028. [...] The video game strike, which started in July 2024, did not shut down production like the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike in 2023. Hollywood actors went on strike for 118 days, from July 14 to November 9, 2023, halting nearly all scripted television and film work. That strike, which centered on streaming residuals and AI concerns, prevented actors from engaging in promotional work, such as attending premieres and posting on social media. In contrast, video game performers were allowed to work during their strike, but only with companies that had signed interim agreements addressing concerns related to AI. More than 160 companies signed on, according to The Associated Press. Still, the year took a toll.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: Researchers at Princeton University, Boston University and other institutes used machine learning to predict the strategic decisions of humans in various games. Their paper, published in Nature Human Behavior, shows that a deep neural network trained on human decisions could predict the strategic choices of players with high levels of accuracy. [...] Essentially, the team suggests that people behave more rationally while playing games that they perceive as easier. In contrast, when they are playing more complex games, people's choices could be influenced by various other factors, thus the "noise" affecting their behavior would increase.

As part of their future studies, the researchers would also like to shed more light on what makes a game "complex" or "easy." This could be achieved using the context-dependent noise parameter that they integrated into their model as a signature of "perceived difficulty." "Our analysis provides a robust model comparison across a wide range of candidate models of decision-making," said [Jian-Qiao Zhu, first author of the paper]. "We now have strong evidence that introducing context-dependence into the quantal response model significantly improves its ability to capture human strategic behavior. More specifically, we identified key factors in the game matrix that shape game complexity: considerations of efficiency, the arithmetic difficulty of computing payoff differences, and the depth of reasoning required to arrive at a rational solution."

The findings gathered as part of this recent study also highlight the "lightness" with which many people approach strategic decisions, which could make them vulnerable to parties looking to sway them towards making irrational decisions. Once they gather more insight into what factors make games and decision-making scenarios more challenging for people, Zhu and his colleagues hope to start devising new behavioral science interventions aimed at prompting people to make more rational decisions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Epic Games, buoyed by the massive success of Fortnite, has spent the last few years throwing elbows in the mobile industry to get its app store on more phones. It scored an antitrust win against Google in late 2023, and the following year it went after Samsung for deploying "Auto Blocker" on its Android phones, which would make it harder for users to install the Epic Games Store. Now, the parties have settled the case just days before Samsung will unveil its latest phones.

The Epic Store drama began several years ago when the company defied Google and Apple rules about accepting outside payments in the mega-popular Fortnite. Both stores pulled the app, and Epic sued. Apple emerged victorious, with Fortnite only returning to the iPhone recently. Google, however, lost the case after Epic showed it worked behind the scenes to stymie the development of app stores like Epic's. Google is still working to avoid penalties in that long-running case, but Epic thought it smelled a conspiracy last year. It filed a similar lawsuit against Samsung, accusing it of implementing a feature to block third-party app stores. The issue comes down to the addition of a feature to Samsung phones called Auto Blocker, which is similar to Google's new Advanced Protection in Android 16. It protects against attacks over USB, disables link previews, and scans apps more often for malicious activity. Most importantly, it blocks app sideloading. Without sideloading, there's no way to install the Epic Games Store or any of the content inside it.

Auto Blocker is enabled by default on Samsung phones, but users can opt out during setup. Epic claimed in its suit that the sudden inclusion of this feature was a sign that Google was working with Samsung to stand in the way of alternative app stores again. Epic has apparently gotten what it wanted from Samsung -- CEO Tim Sweeney has announced that Epic is dropping the case in light of a new settlement. Sweeney said Samsung "will address Epic's concerns," without elaborating on the details. Samsung may stop making Auto Blocker the default or create a whitelist of apps, like the Epic Games Store, that can bypass Auto Blocker. Another possibility is that Epic and select third-party stores are granted special access while Auto Blocker remains on for others, balancing security and openness.

A "more interesting outcome," according to Ars, would be for Samsung to pre-install the Epic Games Store on its new phones.

Nintendo plans to maintain its "traditional approach" to game development while managing rising costs during the Switch 2 transition, company president Shuntaro Furukawa said during a recent shareholders meeting.

"Recent game software development has become larger in scale and longer in duration, resulting in higher development costs," he said, adding that "rising development costs are increasing that risk" in what has always been "a high-risk business."

Nintendo's development teams are "currently devising various ways to maintain our traditional approach to creating games amidst the increasing scale and length of development," Furukawa said. The company believes, he said, "it is important to make the necessary investments for more efficient development."

The early Switch 2 lineup reflects increased ambition, with Mario Kart World introducing open-world structure to the racing series and Donkey Kong Bananza adding destructive elements to 3D platforming. Mario Kart World sells for $79.99, $10 more than most Nintendo games, while the Switch 2 costs $449.99, a $100 increase over the Switch OLED.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The sweeping layoffs announced by Microsoft this week have been especially hard on its gaming studios, but one Xbox executive has a solution to "help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss": seek advice from AI chatbots.

In a now-deleted LinkedIn post captured by Aftermath, Xbox Game Studios' Matt Turnbull said that he would be "remiss in not trying to offer the best advice I can under the circumstances." The circumstances here being a slew of game cancellations, services being shuttered, studio closures, and job cuts across key Xbox divisions as Microsoft lays off as many as 9,100 employees across the company.

Turnbull acknowledged that people have some "strong feelings" about AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot, but suggested that anybody who's feeling "overwhelmed" could use them to get advice about creating resumes, career planning, and applying for new roles.

Valve has achieved near-total dominance of PC gaming distribution through Steam, but the victory appears to have left the company adrift, Financial Times argues. The platform controls an estimated 70% of PC game sales while generating billions in revenue, yet Valve releases major new games at what observers call a "glacial pace."

Founder Gabe Newell has largely retreated from the company's operations, reportedly living at sea on one of his five ships and pursuing side projects like brain-computer interface startup Starfish Neuroscience. The much-anticipated third Half-Life game became "the video game equivalent of Samuel Beckett's Godot" before being quietly cancelled.

Attempts to challenge Steam have failed repeatedly. Epic Games Store, powered by Fortnite's success, "has failed to really impact Steam in any meaningful way," according to industry analysts. Microsoft runs what analysts describe as a "somewhat unambitious store," while EA shut down its Origin launcher earlier this year. Gaming analyst Michael Pachter notes that major tech companies could displace Valve "but nobody cares" enough to mount a serious challenge.

Court documents suggest Steam's revenues will exceed $10 billion next year, leaving Valve with unprecedented profits but unclear direction for a company that appears to have run out of worlds to conquer.

Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross, two pivotal creative forces behind HBO's The Last of Us adaptation, have stepped away from the series before work begins on Season 3. Druckmann is focusing on new projects at Naughty Dog, while Gross hinted at other upcoming creative endeavors, leaving showrunner Craig Mazin at the helm. Ars Technica reports: Both were credited as executive producers on the show; Druckmann frequently contributed writing to episodes, as did Gross, and Druckmann also directed. Druckmann and Gross co-wrote the second game, The Last of Us Part 2.

Druckmann said in his announcement post: "I've made the difficult decision to step away from my creative involvement in The Last of Us on HBO. With work completed on season 2 and before any meaningful work starts on season 3, now is the right time for me to transition my complete focus to Naughty Dog and its future projects, including writing and directing our exciting next game, Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, along with my responsibilities as Studio Head and Head of Creative. Co-creating the show has been a career highlight. It's been an honor to work alongside Craig Mazin to executive produce, direct and write on the last two seasons. I'm deeply thankful for the thoughtful approach and dedication the talented cast and crew took to adapting The Last of Us Part I and the continued adaptation of The Last of Us Part II."

And Gross said: "With great care and consideration, I've decided to take a step back from my day-to-day work on HBO's The Last of Us to make space for what comes next. I'm so appreciative of how special this experience has been. Working alongside Neil, Craig, HBO, and this remarkable cast and crew has been life changing. The stories we told -- about love, loss, and what it means to be human in a terrifying world -- are exactly why I love this franchise. I have some truly rad projects ahead that I can't wait to share, but for now, I want to express my gratitude to everyone who brought Ellie and Joel's world to life with such care."