March 2026

Aaron Paul’s performance as Dispatch’s Robert “Mecha Man” Robertson III could hit a lot of notes. Robert could be sarcastic and cynical, but surprisingly compassionate; his story offers romance and chances for heroism. But what Dispatch developer AdHoc didn’t offer was any opportunities to derail conversations by deliberately choosing to stay silent, something players could…

One of the really interesting things that leapt out at me about Valve’s response to New York’s lawsuit against it wasn’t really about the lawsuit at all, but about comments made by the state about the negative impact of violent videogames—the sort of thing that sounds like it was ripped straight from the headlines of…

Real item crafting is finally coming to Diablo 4. I say “real” because the way you can modify items right now is so simplistic compared to what’s on the way in the Lord of Hatred expansion next month. The two developers I spoke to while visiting Blizzard HQ in January convinced me we won’t be…

Two weeks after the state of New York sued Valve for “letting children and adults illegally gamble,” Valve has fired back with a defense of its practices, saying it doesn’t believe the containers in its games constitute gambling under the state’s laws and expressing disappointment that the attorney general’s office would opt to pursue the…

Back in my day there were only three channels on TV and one Minecraft update per year. For years, Mojang’s schedule revolved around the annual title update crammed with new mobs, new biomes, blocks, and enemies. That mindset changed in 2021, its general manager says, when the Caves & Cliffs update grew so ambitious that…

In a new talk at the Game Developers Conference Valve has shared some Steam data that, among other things, shows a lot of developers are making a lot of money. The March 10 presentation was given by communications lead Kaci Aitchison Boyle and Tom Giardino, who works on the business side of things, and various…

Microsoft continued the rollout of its future Xbox plans at GDC today in a talk hosted by VP of next generation Jason Ronald. Titled “Building for the Future with Xbox”, the talk centered around Project Helix, the codename for the next Xbox console that will bridge the gap between a console and traditional PC. Ronald…