February, 2025

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Dutch consumer foundation sues Sony for overpricing digital PlayStation games

Game Developer

The Dutch consumer foundation Massaschade & Consument alleges Sony prices digital PlayStation games at nearly double the cost of physical versions.

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Solo dev Esteban Hernandez spent 7 years on Creo God Simulator: “I’ve learned perseverance”

PreMortem.Games

Esteban Hernandez , the solo developer behind MKSM Design , has spent almost seven years bringing Creo God Simulator to life. What started as a passion project has grown into a full-fledged god game blending city-building, resource management and player-driven storytelling. I became a solo developer initially because I wanted to make games, plain and simple, he says.

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Get Started with Neural Rendering Using NVIDIA RTX Kit

Nvidia

Neural rendering is the next era of computer graphics. By integrating neural networks into the rendering process, we can take dramatic leaps forward in. Neural rendering is the next era of computer graphics. By integrating neural networks into the rendering process, we can take dramatic leaps forward in performance, image quality, and interactivity to deliver new levels of immersion.

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How Drama and Fake Ads Convert To Real Profits

Deconstructor of Fun

Dylan Tredrea is a product & publishing consultant with over 12 years of experience in mobile free to play games at studios such as Disney, Rovio, Zeptolab, & CrazyLabs. Dark War: Survivals (DW:S) bold betand its emerging successon more drama is an early indication even core audiences are increasingly acquired, retained, and monetized with highly dramatic narratives.

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Team Fortress 2 Source Code Released

Game From Scratch

GameFromScratch.com Team Fortress 2 Source Code Released Today as part of the Source SDK update, Valve have released the entire source code of Team Fortress 2, both client and server side. This source code is released under a non-commercial license which enables you to create from a mod to an entire game using the source code. Details The post Team Fortress 2 Source Code Released appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

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Release candidate: Godot 4.4 RC 1

Mircosoft Game Dev

We are entering the final stage of development for Godot 4.4, which is the Release Candidate : all features are in place, the most critical regressions have been tackled, and so were confident that its now ready for production use. But without very extensive testing from the community, we can never be 100% sure that the release is ready to be published as a recommended stable upgrade for all users.

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Crytek laying off 15 percent of workforce and placing Crysis 4 on hiatus

Game Developer

The company intends to focus on expanding extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown 1896.

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STARS REACH Kickstarter is live now

Raph Koster

T oday we are launching the Kickstarter for Stars Reach. Why a Kickstarter? Well, the funding climate is rough. But we have seen that players love what we are making. So we want to prove to the industry that people want a modern sandbox. An alternate world that feels alive, not like a static cardboard set. A game where different sorts of playstyles come together to make an immersive and dynamic galaxy.

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Supercell's Record Year: Crushing It, But At What Cost?

Deconstructor of Fun

Written by Michail Katkoff , founder of Deconstructor of Fun, a games industry veteran of 15 years, and a self-diagnosed Supercell fanboy. Supercells founder and CEO Ilkka Paananen dropped his annual blog post , and lets be honestits a masterclass in PR. The post announced 2024 as Supercells best year ever, and the numbers make a strong case: Revenue: 2.8 billion (+77% YoY) EBITDA: 876 million (+78% YoY) Monthly Active Users: 300 million, the highest since 2014 This is a massive turnaround from

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EA Release Command & Conquer Series Source Code

Game From Scratch

GameFromScratch.com EA Release Command & Conquer Series Source Code EA have just released the source code for several games in the Command & Conquer series ( Command & Conquer (Tiberian Dawn), Red Alert, C&C Renegade, and C&C Generals and Zero Hour ) under the GPL v3 license. They also added Steam Workshop support to several titles in the C&C The post EA Release Command & Conquer Series Source Code appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

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Why Endless Runner Games Are So Popular

Logic Simplified

Endless runner games are like those friends that are always available to go out; hassle free, always attention grasping and require little to no planning. Hailing from the casual gaming brigade, these games have become synonymous with the mobile gaming experience, delivering entertainment at your fingertips with just a few taps. These games appeal to a wide audience, from casual gamers seeking quick entertainment to hardcore players chasing high scores.

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Treyarch co-founder pleads guilty to crashing drone into firefighting plane during LA fires

Game Developer

Under his plea deal, Akemann will pay the $65,000 repair bill for the Super Scooper plane and perform 150 hours of community service for wildfire relief.

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SenAm Games is developing Al-Sirah, a game that educates young muslims about the Islam

PreMortem.Games

SenAm Games ‘ founder, Senad Hrnjadovic , has been involved in the games industry for years, but it was the Pokmon obsession of his two older children that made him realise the power of games as a learning tool. It got him thinking. In the shortest amount of time, the kids picked up a vast amount of knowledge about the Pokmons and their universe.

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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.4 beta 3

Mircosoft Game Dev

Woah, another beta build already? Youre not imagining things, its only been a week since our last release. The team is fully in the swing of getting release-blockers merged, so were able to expedite output. Whats more, our community has been on the ball with submitting regression reports; thanks to everyone whos involved themselves! While progress has been at a rate were all excited about, its not over yet!

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The Struggles of Studying Game Design

Game Wisdom

The Struggles of Studying Game Design Josh Bycer josh@game-wisdom.com It’s a new year and that means it’s time to once again ponder the nature of game design. Given all the YouTubers, streamers, and now even professors teaching design, you may think that the act of studying games has become … The post The Struggles of Studying Game Design appeared first on Game Wisdom.

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Lua Game Engines in 2025

Game From Scratch

GameFromScratch.com Lua Game Engines in 2025 Today we have compiled a list of the best Lua game engines and game frameworks (and a few miscellaneous game development options) for game development in 2025. This is the third in a series of posts exploring the game engine options available for the most popular programming languages. We have The post Lua Game Engines in 2025 appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

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Take-Two Interactive reports strong Q3 FY2025 Results, prepares for blockbuster 2025 lineup

GamesIndustry.biz

Take-Two Interactive announced its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, reporting net bookings of $1.37 billion, a 3% increase from the previous year and within the company’s projected guidance. The company also reaffirmed its full-year net bookings outlook of $5.55 billion to $5.65 billion, citing strong performance from its core franchises and an upcoming release schedule set to drive significant growth.

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Netflix has laid off staff at Oxenfree developer Night School Studio

Game Developer

The U.S. studio launched Oxenfree II in 2023 under the Netflix bannerbut the streamer's long-term plans for its video game business remain unclear.

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In Guntouchables enemies power up with the upgrades that you leave behind

PreMortem.Games

In Guntouchables by Danish indie developer Game Swing , enemies randomly power up from the upgrades that a team of four players cant lift out of the levels. This leads to some unexpected and quite frankly, explosive situations as the game progresses. Game Swing was founded in 2013 by five Danish game design students. Back then the company was called Reign Bros, but a few years later they decided to change the name.

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Release candidate: Godot 4.4 RC 3

Mircosoft Game Dev

We are almost ready to release Godot 4.4 officially! As we are in the Release Candidate stage and focus only on critical regression fixes, the pace of merging pull requests has nearly stopped but a lot of good stuff is already being queued for the next release cycle. In the meantime, the communication team is doing an amazing work to finalize the contents of the release page, so that you can all (re)discover the highlights of Godot 4.4 with an exciting format!

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Local testing to cloud deployment: development workflows in Amazon GameLift

AWS Games

In todays competitive gaming landscape, delivering a seamless multiplayer experience is crucial for an optimal game play experience. Game developers face numerous challenges in managing game servers such as scaling servers to meet player demand, managing game deployment pipelines and optimizing server fleets for costs. From initial development to scaling for global player bases, Amazon GameLift addresses these challenges by providing robust server hosting and scaling solutions.

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Beehave Behavior Trees for Godot

Game From Scratch

GameFromScratch.com Beehave Behavior Trees for Godot Today we are looking at BeeHave, and addon for the Godot game engine (Godot 3 and 4 versions exist) that implement behavior trees in Godot. Behavior trees are commonly used for visually representing and designing AI behavior, which often makes it easier to reuse. Beehave provides this functionality using Godot’s The post Beehave Behavior Trees for Godot appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

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Bungie recently revealed that the red war campaign in destiny 2 is unavailable, even internally. They said its due to outdated code. How often does that happen in live service games? And what sort of decisions are made that leads to all the work seemingly being put down the drain?

Ask a Game Dev

Most content built during a particular hardware generation is available and functional during that hardware generation because things don't change too much. Whenever we have a major hardware generational shift, it's often nearly an extinction-level event because developers must upgrade our hardware and our software to match and exceed the new level of performance.

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Iron Galaxy lays off 66 developers in 'last resort' lifesaving effort

Game Developer

The longtime support developer hoped to withstand this winter's wave of industry layoffs, but 'ran out of room' to survive.

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Solo dev Lente lives and works on a boat and that shows in her game Spilled!

PreMortem.Games

Young Dutch indie developer Lente is something of a free spirit. Never really comfortable in the education system, she dropped out of college twice before embarking on her debut game, Spilled! , last year as a solo developer. Growing up living on a ship made a profound impression on her, leading her to buy an old boat for herself. After renovating it together with her mother, she now lives and works there.

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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.4 beta 4

Mircosoft Game Dev

We knew from the beginning that aiming for a late-February release was an ambitious timeframe, but the community has risen to the challenge and kept development right on track! As such, you can expect this to be our final beta release of the 4.4 period, with release candidates set to come out shortly after. In practice, this means that all further changes will be strictly regression fixes, so the content available here will be largely reflective of the 4.4 release.

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Amazon GameLift achieves 100 million concurrently connected users per game

AWS Games

Demonstrating the extreme scalability of Amazon GameLift , Amazon Web Services (AWS) has benchmark tested support for up to 100 million concurrent users (CCU) for a single gamea groundbreaking feat for the AWS managed solution. Amazon GameLift alleviates developers game server hosting concerns by dynamically scaling backend resources. The test also showcased how Amazon GameLift can add 100,000 players to a game each second and spin up more than 9,000 new compute instances each minute.

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s&dBox Game Engine by Facepunch

Game From Scratch

GameFromScratch.com s&dBox Game Engine by Facepunch Today we are checking out s&dBox, a new “game engine” and spiritual successor to Gary’s Mod by Facepunch (who also created the hit game Rust). While Gary’s Mod enabled gamers to create cool experiences to share and interact with, s&dbox takes it a step further, by not only having the The post s&dBox Game Engine by Facepunch appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

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A follow up to your answer about veilguard (was really hoping you would touch on that one). Why do game companies that have a “bad” release always seem to start from the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to restructuring and recouping losses? Why fire low level devs who did their best with what they had, when the companies have people in senior positions making hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) that they could just cut from? Why do the trenches always get the punishment first?

Ask a Game Dev

The short answer is because s**t rolls downhill. For a longer and more nuanced answer, there's multiple factors to consider. The main issue is that the company is trying to cut costs immediately. This is usually for two major reasons: Reassure investors to keep them from dumping the stock and driving down the company's value Save as much money as they can from their current stockpile for other projects still in development.

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Report: NetEase laid off Marvel Rivals' Seattle developers

Game Developer

NetEase may have conducted layoffs ahead of its reveal trailer for Marvel Rivals' next characters, Human Torch and the Thing.

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Epic Games introduces new cycle-based submission process for MegaGrants

PreMortem.Games

Recently, Epic Games has made a significant change to the way developers, creators, and innovators can apply for Epic MegaGrants. Since 12 February 2025, the program has transitioned from an always-open application model to a cycle-based submission process, accepting applications only twice a year. According to the website , the move is designed to streamline reviews, improve transparency, and provide applicants with clearer timelines regarding the status of their submissions.

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Release candidate: Godot 4.4 RC 2

Mircosoft Game Dev

Last week, we released the first of our Release Candidate builds, a state suitable for production settings. This is the second entry, and already shaping up to be our last, as all relevant release blockers have been dealt with! While we prepare for the stable releaseno more than a weeks time from nowlets enjoy one last roundup of changes. Please, consider supporting the project financially , if you are able.

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Take-Two's Strauss Zelnick on tariffs, AI and GTA 6

GamesIndustry.biz

As Take-Two Interactive reported strong results for Q3 FY 2025 and readied investors for a blockbuster year that includes the release of Rockstar's long anticipated Grand Theft Auto 6, Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two Interactive, took the time to talk to GamesIndustry.biz about the results and some of the biggest issues facing the industry in 2025.

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More Layoffs and Restructuring at Unity

Game From Scratch

GameFromScratch.com More Layoffs and Restructuring at Unity After several years of layoffs following their 2020 IPO that cumulated in the ousting of CEO John Riccitiello, it had seemed that Unity was finally on solid footings going forward. Under new CEO Matthew Bromberg the state of Unity seemed to be heading in the right direction. Unfortunately, as reported The post More Layoffs and Restructuring at Unity appeared first on GameFromScratch.com.

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Surface-Stable Fractal Dither on Playdate

The Astronauts

Rune Skovbo Johansen has a really sweet Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering technique, where the dither dots “stick” to 3D surfaces, yet the dot density adapts to the view distance and zoom level. Some people have asked whether this would be a good technique for Playdate, given that the screen is one-bit color. And so I had to try it out! Here’s a video: And here’s the code: github.com/aras-p/playdate-dither3d.

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nDreams opens new VR studio after shuttering two others

Game Developer

The company's latest opening, Compass, has been unveiled following the closure of nDreams Studio Orbital and nDreams Studio.

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Fly into the unknown with Void Sails by Ticking Clock Games: “We’re self-funding our debut”

PreMortem.Games

Void Sails by indie developer Ticking Clock Games is a single-player action-adventure RPG that takes players on a thrilling journey through mysterious worlds, where they captain a flying ship across uncharted space. The game’s story is rich in lore, offering a narrative where every decision can either bring you closer to hidden truths or drag you deeper into madness.