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Epic says it's 'looking into' it after pigeon dating sim maker says she's not received royalties in 2 years
https://www.pcgamer.com/epic-says-its-looking-into-it-after-pigeon-dating-sim-maker-says-shes-not-received-royalties-in-2-years/
Hato Moa, the pseudonymous creator of weird, wonderful, and warbling pigeon dating simulator Hatoful Boyfriend, has a problem. She says she's not received any royalties from the 2014 HD remake of the game ever since Epic picked up Mediatonic—the studio behind it—in 2021.
On September 29, in the wake of a wave of layoffs at Epic, Moa tweeted her condolences to affected employees hoping the "lovely talented people from Mediatonic" would "find a better place soon". This seems to have put Moa in mind of her own relationship with Epic, because she soon followed that tweet up with one remarking that she had received "no royalty payment for Hatoful Boyfriend from Epic since they acquired Mediatonic back in spring 2021," noting that it seems unlikely "sales have been zero for two years".
>> Note that even she admits that it won't be a lot of money, but that's beyond the point here.

Naughty Dog reportedly lays off contract workers as troubled The Last of Us spinoff shooter faces an uncertain future
https://www.pcgamer.com/naughty-dog-reportedly-lays-off-contract-workers-as-troubled-the-last-of-us-spinoff-shooter-faces-an-uncertain-future/
A Kotaku report says Naughty Dog, the developer of The Last of Us and Uncharted games, is the latest studio to lay off employees, with at least 25 contract workers being told that they'll be let go at the end of October. The report also says that The Last of Us multiplayer shooter spinoff announced in 2022 is in trouble, and while it hasn't been cancelled at this point, its fate remains uncertain.

Minecraft's first mob vote candidate for this year is a tiny, handy crab
https://www.pcgamer.com/minecrafts-first-mob-vote-candidate-for-this-year-is-a-tiny-handy-crab/
In yearly tradition, Minecraft is letting us choose what kind of creature will be included in its next major update. The mob vote is back for 2023: Ahead of the yearly Minecraft Live show on October 15, we'll be able to cast our votes on three different mob hopefuls, which Mojang has begun introducing today.

This party game is like Jackbox, except you're causing or preventing humanity's extinction—you can probably guess which side I picked
https://www.pcgamer.com/this-party-game-is-like-jackbox-except-youre-causing-or-preventing-humanitys-extinctionyou-can-probably-guess-which-side-i-picked/
Maybe it's the fact that I've just finished my umpteenth playthrough of Final Fantasy 7, but sometimes I get the feeling that one of us should summon Meteor and end all this nonsense once and for all. Climb the kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower, and all that. I know I'm not the only one who occasionally drifts into strange fantasies about the end of the world, though—a game that just came out on Steam not only lets you do exactly that, it turns those idle fantasies into a party.
Project Planet - Earth vs Humanity features one player as the planet. Like, the actual Earth—big role. This player (the good guy, obviously) is tasked with saving the place from destruction by reducing the human population to zero like a full-blown JRPG baddie. They do that by expending their force to inflict disasters and trigger crises that the other players have to deal with.

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide class overhaul patch is live, and it sure seems like the massive update everyone was waiting for
https://www.pcgamer.com/warhammer-40000-darktide-class-overhaul-patch-is-live-and-it-sure-seems-like-the-massive-update-everyone-was-waiting-for/
In August, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide developer Fatshark gave me an early look at an update that the studio didn't think players were expecting: a complete change to the leveling system, adding RPG-style skill trees unique to each class. That update went live today, replacing the old, much simpler progression system with a more flexible array of abilities and bonuses. The patch also includes a list of balance changes so long it had to be split across two posts on the Darktide forums.
Players on the Darktide subreddit, who were extremely down on the game at launch last November, seem delighted with the update, and Darktide has hit its highest concurrent player numbers since January.

5 years after it closed for good, Gearbox confirms that the hero shooter Gigantic is coming back for a 'limited time throwback event'
https://www.pcgamer.com/5-years-after-it-closed-for-good-gearbox-confirms-that-the-hero-shooter-gigantic-is-coming-back-for-a-limited-time-throwback-event/
Gigantic is—or was—a free-to-play "strategic hero shooter" that went into full release in July 2017 and almost immediately fell into misfortune. In November 2017, developer Motiga was closed, and just a couple months later publisher Perfect World announced that the game would suffer the same fate in July 2018. But now, improbably and unexpectedly, it looks like it might be making a comeback: Gearbox has confirmed that invitations to a "limited time throwback event" are legit.

Get ready to meet your next favorite videogame crab in The Dungeon Experience
https://www.pcgamer.com/get-ready-to-meet-your-next-favorite-videogame-crab-in-the-dungeon-experience/
The Dungeon Experience is a videogame about a theme park dungeon held together by strings. The theme park, I mean, not the videogame. It's got an uncanny animatronic barbarian and cardboard cutout monsters, the Lake of Pain is an inflatable kiddie pool, and the host is a mudcrab. Co-creator Jacob Janerka tells me he's workshopping a pitch to sum up this unusual concept. "The Dungeon Experience is like The Stanley Parable," he says, "but the narrator is a talking crab who reads self-help books and has a hundred-dollar budget."

Payday 3 dev says it's making 'a bunch of changes' to the game's detested progression system 9 days after saying it had no plans to do so
https://www.pcgamer.com/payday-3-dev-says-its-making-a-bunch-of-changes-to-the-games-detested-progression-system-9-days-after-saying-it-had-no-plans-to-do-so/
Payday 3 has had, shall we say, a rough launch, and one of the main sources of player protest has been its progression system. Heisters just aren't thrilled that your infamy points—the things you accrue to unlock new weapons, cosmetics, and what have you—are tied exclusively to the game's challenges. It can mean that players whose goal is to unlock new gear are better off completely ignoring their heist in order to focus on blasting as many cops as possible to tick off 'kill 20 enemies with this gun' challenges. A little backwards, for a Payday game.
Despite the clamour from the Payday community, Starbreeze said in a livestream nine days ago that it had no intention of revising Payday 3's progression system. (...)
Well dry your eyes, because as of another update stream from yesterday (spotted by MP1st), Starbreeze has decided that, actually, it might be a good idea to take another look at that progression system after all. (...)

Titanfall community predicts the future, reckons Titanfall 3 is a dead cert based on patch note hints and a Red Hot Chili Peppers song from 1999
https://www.pcgamer.com/titanfall-community-predicts-the-future-reckons-titanfall-3-is-a-dead-cert-based-on-patch-note-hints-and-a-red-hot-chili-peppers-song-from-1999/
There must be something in the water. A few days ago, we covered the GTA fans that are looking to the moon for answers about the next big GTA 6 announcement, and now it's Titanfall players' turn. What are they doing? Convincing themselves that a playlist update is actually a reference to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song that is actually a reference to the inevitable upcoming announcement of something massive, probably Titanfall 3.