Latest game development news from across the industry
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Gamefromscratch
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11 hours, 8 minutes ago
Graphics and tools teams get the most from these drops: Babylon.js 9.28.0 improves render correctness and adds root-motion support for animation groups, while also smoothing OBJ AssetContainer and Gaussian Splatting behavior. Aseprite’s patch fixes a tilemap paste crash and layer/sprite copy issues, which matters for pixel-art workflows. Stride’s CLI and samples updates mainly reduce setup friction and keep starter content/versioning aligned for teams on newer .NET paths.
Steamworks Development says Steam will start phasing out its manual Discounts & Events calendar in early 2027, replacing fixed promo slots with more dynamic, personalized recommendations. Valve says the test surfaced 10x more games in a day and lifted visits, wishlists, and cart adds. Existing Weekend, Midweek, and Daily Deals will still run.
Game Developer reports that former Dying Light franchise lead Tymon Smektała has joined Bloober Team’s horror imprint, Broken Mirror Games. The move strengthens a label already focused on genre projects, and it signals more senior production and franchise experience inside Bloober’s horror pipeline. For teams building horror, it’s another sign that established IP and specialist leadership remain a strong draw.
XBox Wire says NBA The Run’s first seasonal update is live now, and it’s a substantial one for players who care about match prep and roster depth. Wave One adds five 2000s-era legends, new camera options, practice and private matches, plus licensed music and tuning changes. It’s free, with the legends also sold as a $9.99 DLC bundle.
Game Developer reports that Naughty Dog is already signaling new The Last of Us projects after Intergalactic wraps. For developers, the takeaway is that the studio is keeping one of PlayStation’s biggest IPs active while it shifts focus to a new original game. The exact format and team makeup haven’t been disclosed.
GDC Festival of Gaming shares a new GDC Side Quest clip with Sam Carlisle of XDS Spark, focusing on the practical line between outsourcing and co-development. For studios planning external support, the distinction matters: co-dev usually means deeper integration, shared ownership, and tighter production alignment than task-based vendor work.
XBox Wire says Xbox Insiders are getting early access to Mythic Achievements, a new layer on top of the platform’s achievement system. The feature marks games where players have cleared every original achievement, and it retroactively applies to eligible completed games, including some Xbox 360 titles.
Game Developer reports that Control Resonant director Kyle Rowley is pushing back on excessive “yellow paint” in level design. His argument is that players should feel ownership over what to do with world elements, rather than being steered by obvious visual breadcrumbs. For developers, it’s a reminder that readability and hand-holding can easily tip into over-signposting.
XBox Wire says Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 is getting a PC trailer alongside tech updates. For developers, the headline is less about the reveal itself and more about the continued emphasis on platform-specific presentation and technical messaging around a major shooter launch.
GameFromScratch reports that Pixi Labs has unveiled Trexel, a new 2D app built on PixiEditor and aimed squarely at game developers. The pitch centers on seamless texturing for repeating assets, with the first beta planned for early 2027. For teams shipping stylized or tile-heavy content, that could mean a more focused texture workflow.
GamesIndustry.biz argues indie studios need to build for volatility, not just a hit. The piece points to 2025 successes like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but says most teams need runway, prototypes, and collaboration to survive. It also warns that publishers are less of a safety net than they used to be.
Game Developer reports that Arc Raiders' breakout success has left Embark struggling to keep pace without burning out its team. Aleksander Grøndal says the studio kept overshooting capacity as millions of players arrived, forcing a hard look at how to balance live demand with staff wellbeing.
Tim Ruswick lays out six design pillars that can make a game feel better almost immediately, especially for teams still finding their footing. The focus is less on content volume and more on clarity, pacing, and player perception. For developers, the takeaway is that feel is often a systems problem, not just a polish problem.
GamesIndustry.biz reports that a handful of indies are deliberately launching on November 19, the same day Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives. Fairy Mount’s Flame, Forest and Flood and Devolver’s Volvy’s Adventure: Reslimed are treating the date as a statement, betting that a different audience and some smart marketing can still cut through.
Godot Engine says 4.8 dev 7 is the last feature snapshot before freeze, shifting the branch to bugfixes and regressions ahead of beta. For teams tracking engine upgrades, this one adds symbol renaming, animated decals, non-allocating physics queries, native touch UI support, and AccessKit on iOS and Android.
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GamesIndustry.biz reports that Sony will skip CES 2027, ending a run that began with the show’s first event in 1967. For game developers, that likely means one fewer stage for PlayStation hardware reveals and a continued shift toward Sony’s own digital showcases and creator-focused messaging.
Defold 1.13.2 adds rich text to labels and GUI nodes, letting teams build more expressive UI without extensions. Defold says the update also expands Bullet 3D access in Lua, adds mesh collision shapes, and improves font handling, editor automation, and platform fixes.
Box2D details a new inscribed-sphere culling scheme for SAT that can cut expensive convex-hull contact work before edge-pair tests even run. The approach uses cheap dot products and Gauss-map arcs to reject faces and edges early, which should matter most in dense piles of complex polytopes.
Unity has announced External Dependency Manager, an official UPM package for Android and iOS native library resolution. The move gives mobile teams a maintained replacement for Google’s EDM4U, with Unity saying existing XML dependency files should carry over. Google will deprecate EDM4U on October 26, 2026.
LunarG says Vulkan SDK 1.4.363.0 is out for Windows, Linux, and macOS, with KosmicKrisp now a Vulkan 1.4-conformant ICD on Apple silicon. That makes macOS a first-class target for the same validation, capture, and config workflow used elsewhere. The release also adds vkprofiles and fresh extension headers.
The Cherno shows how AI helped finish Hazel’s multiplayer server work, turning a long-running backend task into something shippable. For teams building online games, the practical takeaway is less about hype and more about using AI to accelerate boilerplate, unblock implementation, and keep momentum on infrastructure-heavy features.
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