Does anyone know how to drive this thing?

I was born in the early ’90s, and thanks to a life marked by periodic socioeconomic turmoil, I’ve come to accept—as any reasonable person would—that blatant dysfunction is the hallmark of a healthy and developed economy. The free market doesn’t have seatbelts or brakes, and that’s why it works. If there’s any wreckage that might…

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2 months after releasing Zero Parades, Studio ZA/UM is laying off employees: ‘Its commercial performance has not enabled us to sustain a studio of our current size’

Two months after the release of Zero Parades: For Dead Spies, the followup to its stunning detective RPG Disco Elysium, Studio ZA/UM says the game hasn’t sold as well as needed, and as a result it’s laying off employees. “While Zero Parades: For Dead Spies was released to critical acclaim, its commercial performance has not…

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Retiring Valve programmer says ‘at least one’ of the studio’s beloved game modes was made in secret to avoid pushback from peers

Programmer Christopher Green has had a long career in the games industry, with a development history that included Amiga’s Flight Simulators, Ultima Underworld, and Magic: The Gathering Online before ultimately working at and retiring from Valve—twice. Green had previously made a six-year attempt at retirement starting in 2017, but returned to Valve for another go…

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Todd Howard checks his calendar, sighs quietly, and tells us all again that he doesn’t have a grudge against Obsidian or Fallout: New Vegas

If there’s one thing we know about Todd Howard, it’s that he doesn’t hate Obsidian. We know this because he keeps telling us. He keeps telling us because Fallout fans won’t stop speculating that secretly, deep down in his heart of hearts, Todd Howard hates Obsidian. How often has he denied hating Obsidian? A quick…

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‘We’re interested in having the whole PC catalog as our ‘launch exclusive”: Valve talks exclusives and the advantages of an open platform

The living room PC is a certified thing now, and not just for those of us with extra long HDMI cables. The Steam Machine is “out” for the dozens of people who’ve picked up the $1,000 cube, but before that, folks were already making their own living room machines that run SteamOS. Anyone can make…

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Blizzard finally caved on Diablo 4’s disastrous new season with a patch that reverts almost everything players hated: ‘Not every idea lands exactly as intended’

In what feels like an inevitable move to combat an avalanche of criticism over the new Diablo 4 season, Blizzard has dropped an emergency patch that alleviates all the frustrations at the cost of undoing the entire point of it. The Season of Death Awakening has the usual stuff you’d expect from a Diablo 4…

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Marathon game director leaves Bungie just 4 months after launch: ‘I’ll be heading to something new, somewhere else’

Just four months after the release of Marathon, game director Joe Ziegler has announced that he’s leaving the game, and Bungie, effective today. His role will be filled by Del Chafe III, previously the assistant game director, who along with creative director Julia Nardin will “guide Marathon into the next chapter with an even better…

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