Naughty Dog's The Last of Us franchise featured a multiplayer mode in Factions, and while the studio planned to add multiplayer to the sequel, it abandoned those ambitions before release. A modder spent months this year working on a multiplayer mod for The Last of Us 2, but its lead has now said it's not going to be released due to a request from Sony to shut it down.

Modder @Speclizer_ said on social media that the mod was due to launch this month. However, they said they "recently received a letter on behalf of Sony Interactive Entertainment requesting for the mod not to be released."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_hZQn8_1WA

Speclizer said this is an "extremely sad" development, but they hope people who supported the project will stick with them for the next one. Their next project will be "something of my own" as opposed to an extension of an existing game.

"Thank you all for the incredible amount of support over the last year. I hope to bring you something bigger and better soon!" Speclizer said.

GameSpot has contacted Sony in an attempt to get more details.

Naughty Dog was set to expand The Last of Us into an online multiplayer experience in a very big way with The Last of Us Online. The game was in development for years with significant resources dedicated to it, and it was reportedly almost ready for release. However, in December 2023, Naughty Dog canceled the game, saying at the time that it was going to focus on single-player games instead.

Also at that time, Naughty Dog confirmed that it had two single-player games in development. One has been revealed to be Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet, while the other remains a mystery; many believe it's The Last of Us 3.

In other Naughty Dog-related news, studio head Neil Druckmann has confirmed that the studio has no creative involvement in the upcoming third season of HBO's The Last of Us. This is a big change, as Druckmann himself was personally and directly involved in the previous two seasons.

Actor Roger Clark played Arthur Morgan in Rockstar's celebrated 2018 Western Red Dead Redemption 2, and his performance was memorable for many reasons. In the game, Arthur suffers from tuberculosis, and he coughs a lot as a result. Was it challenging for Clark to perform those sequences in particular? Yes, but it was "not as bad as you'd think," Clark said in a recent interview, in part because sometimes Clark recorded when he himself had a bad cough.

Clark told Cade Onder that he had "five years to spread it out," regarding his voice-capture performance in Red Dead 2, and that's part of the reason why it wasn't as difficult as you might imagine. Additionally, Clark said if he was performing a "really bad coughing scene," this would be saved for the end of a given recording day, when his voice was already hoarse from all the work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGnING8zhg

Beyond this, Clark said over that five-year period, when he recorded his lines, he, like most people, got sick--and he used this to his benefit.

"In five years, there's plenty of colds. There was a lot of data we got that was pretty damn genuine. […] I'd be like 'Hey, I've got a cold, let me get in there.' And they'd be like, 'Okay.' […] Nice good bit of phlegm," he said.

In addition to his leading role in Red Dead 2, Clark is known for his roles in the games Fort Solis, Rosewater, and Marathon. He won Best Performance for his role as Arthur Morgan at The Game Awards in 2018.

With more than 87 million copies sold, Red Dead 2 is one of the top five best-selling games of all time. Rockstar's next big release is GTA 6, which launches in November for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Given the immense critical and commercial success of the Red Dead series, a third game from Rockstar (or actually fourth, counting Red Dead Revolver) is expected sometime down the road, but definitely not soon.

Lies of P was a big hit when it was first released, and several years after it was confirmed that a sequel was in development, a new trademark by developer Neowiz has popped up online. As spotted on the European Union Intellectual Property Office website (via ResetEra), the studio has registered a trademark for "Wonders of O," suggesting that the game will put own macabre spin on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz books.

The listing is for "interactive multimedia software for playing games," but beyond that, no other details on the game can be gleaned from the registration. Lies of P had previously hinted at a trip to the Emerald City; in the mid-credits sequence, a familiar pair of ruby-red shoes could be seen. Neowiz will have free rein to put a souls-like twist on the book--which entered the public domain in 1956--since the original story includes all manner of fantastical creatures. From flying monkeys to the Tin Man, the Wicked Witch of the East and the manipulative Wizard of Oz himself, there's plenty to work with here--and we've got a few ideas of our own for where Agent P can travel to next.

Following the launch of the game in 2023, Neowiz continued its twisted rendition of Pinocchio with the Overture expansion in 2025. A prequel, the expansion shed light on the events that led to the Puppet Frenzy massacre and subsequent collapse of the city of Krat. The game also came to Switch 2 earlier this year.

Neowiz has periodically spoken about its approach to crafting a Lies of P sequel, and in January, the developer said it was exploring how technology-based solutions, like AI, could be used to "automate routine operational tasks" during game development.

While the use of generative AI in games is a controversial topic in the West, in countries like South Korea it's actively used and considered an essential set of tools. "By processing data faster, our teams will arrive at better, more informed strategic decisions on how best to support our developers and engage with our community," Neowiz co-CEO Sean Kim said.

Diablo 5 will launch with more classes than any other game in the franchise, according to game director Joe Shely.

Shely revealed more details about what to expect from Diablo 5's launch roster during a BlizzCon 2026 panel, following the game's surprise reveal (and Spring 2029 release window) as part of BlizzCon's opening ceremony. During the panel, Blizzard revealed three of Diablo 5's classes: Monk, Demon Hunter, and the new Plague Knight.

"Diablo 5 is going to launch with more classes than ever before," Shely said. "And I don't just mean more classes than another Diablo game at ship. I mean more classes total."

That means Blizzard is aiming for nine or 10 classes in Diablo 5 at launch, depending on whether or not they are counting Diablo 4's newly revealed Amazon class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HaSFXR7tU

Shely elaborated on how the team was viewing classes, and the number of them coming right out the gate, in a group interview attended by GameSpot at BlizzCon.

"What that does...it allows us to, if you started playing Diablo in Diablo 3, you probably know the Demon Hunter, and you can jump into Diablo 5 and have an experience that's familiar and new at the same time," Shely said. "It's a new representation of the class. It's going to be different, but you're still going to have twin crossbows. We're going to pay off that nostalgia you have and that feeling of what that experience was like. Having a lot of classes lets us do that in a way we haven't been able to do before. It also affords us the opportunity to explore new classes like the Plague Knight."

With work on Diablo 5 in full swing, Blizzard confirmed Diablo 4 won't receive new expansions going forward. It will, however, continue to receive new seasonal content. Season of Hell's Legacy goes live September 15 and sees the return of Deckard Cain. The iconic Horadrim from previous Diablo games will task players with taking on echoes of the Prime Evils, including Diablo himself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FfJppNJsNY&t=7s

On paper, Zach Cregger directing a Resident Evil movie sounds like a smart move. The director has earned critical acclaim for his work on spooky flicks like Barbarian and Weapons, while Resident Evil is experiencing a resurgence thanks to several years of hit games. But that's a pairing that almost never came to be, as after the dismal box office performance of 2021's Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, movie distributor Constantin Films--who own the film rights to Resident Evil-- wanted to give the franchise a chance to rest before greenlighting a new project.

That all changed when Cregger approached the company, as Constantin Films CEO Oliver Berben said that he already had ideas in mind for the Resident Evil movie he wanted to make. This was prior to the release of Weapons, as Barbarian had shown that the former member of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U Know was a heck of a horror movie director; his follow-up film put him on the Hollywood map as a rising star behind the camera.

"Zach Cregger actually approached us, together with Roy Lee (a producer on Cregger's movies). He basically came to us,  and asked if this franchise, if this IP, was available," Berben said in an episode of The Town. "And it was really strange because at that time, first of all, we were in that situation that we said, 'Okay, we're going to leave it alone. We're going to need to find a completely new way on how to adapt this for the future.'  And on the other hand, Zach, just only came out of Barbarian.  So it wasn't at all that everybody was jumping on it immediately."

https://youtu.be/mNrW3GF-TeY

"He came to the table and he had this idea. In his head, he knew exactly what he wanted, and he presented it to (Constantin Films co-president) Robert Kulzer in a cafe in Beverly Hills. And he knew the whole movie. He knew everything he wanted to do, and it was so different from everything we had done so far that we started digging into it. It was more moody, more like the game. He's a gamer, he loved playing the games. So he came to this from a completely new direction."

Berben added that Cregger had not seen the live-action movies directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, and that Cregger's pitch of a "normal guy" thrown into a nightmarish situation won over the studio's leadership.  It's not too long to go now before Resident Evil hits theaters--September 18--and ahead of its release, Cregger has been doing the media rounds to talk about the movie. The director recently spoke about how Resident Evil was originally a funnier movie before he dialed back the jokes, and he even took time to weigh in on the physical media debate for video games--spoiler: he's fine with digital games, even if he's aware of potential pitfalls with them.

If box office predictions are on the money, Resident Evil could scare up the best opening weekend in the entire film franchise, as analysts are estimating that it could make between $40 and $50 million in North American alone.

The Resident Evil movie from Barbarian and Weapons director Zach Cregger releases on September 18, and now he's revealed a key detail about what people won't experience in the movie. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger shared what he learned from test screenings, and that was that an earlier version had too much humor.

People who saw Barbarian and Weapons know that those spooky movies had humor sprinkled in, and Cregger himself comes from a comedy background with his role in the sketch comedy group Whitest Kids 'U Know. He and co-writer Shay Hatten apparently imbued a bit too much comedy in Resident Evil, so they dialed things back for the final version.

"I learned [from test screenings] that people really liked the movie, but they thought it was too funny. So over the course of my testing, I stripped out as much of the jokes as possible,” Cregger said. “I then found that not only did the audience enjoy the movie more, but I also liked the movie a lot more. A little bit of humor goes a long way in a horror movie, and there’s not a single joke I took out of this movie that I miss.”

Be that as it may, as a big fan of Cregger and his work in WKUK, I sure hope one day we get to see the Resident Evil: WKUK Cut, or at least learn more about these jokes that were left on the cutting room floor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNd1gb19A-c

Also in the interview, Cregger discussed how he understands he cannot please everyone, especially a group as passionate as gamers. He previously said he felt like his press tour was more of an "apology tour" because he's not delivering the movie some fans wanted. However, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Cregger said he is not interested in pleasing everyone; instead, his North Star is making the kind of Resident Evil movie he wants to make.

"If I tried to please everybody, I’d end up pleasing nobody. That much is obvious,” Cregger said. “I just have to be okay with people voicing their opinion. I’m a grown-up. When I took this on, I understood what I was walking into. So it would be weird for me to act surprised or bent out of shape that the thing that was obviously going to happen is now happening.”

He went on to say there are fans of the games who "specifically love the lore and the characters and the nitty-gritty details of the backstory." But Cregger's movie tells a different story, involving no characters from the games.

"I’m not putting any of the legacy characters into this movie. So if that is what you love about these games, then you’re going to feel a certain way about it. 'Here comes yet another Hollywood movie, and they’re once again not doing Leon and all the characters I was hoping they were going to do,'" he said.

The Resident Evil movie releases on September 18, with screenings starting a night earlier. The film is expected to be a huge hit, potentially achieving the biggest opening weekend in franchise history.

Cregger has a number of other projects in the works, including his next movie, the sci-fi deep-space movie, The Flood. He's also discussed a Weapons prequel about Amy Madigan's Aunt Gladys character (for which she won an Oscar), though he will not direct it.

Amidst a flurry of rumors and teases, a brand-new StarCraft game was officially revealed at BlizzCon 2026. While the series started off as a real-time strategy experience, the new StarCraft is switching gears and has been billed as an open-world shooter. While it won't be out for several more years, Blizzard did reveal several details about the game, along with a slick cinematic trailer to set the stage for what's to come. Here's a closer look at everything we know about StarCraft so far.

StarCraft release date https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw

You're going to have to be patient, as Blizzard is targeting a 2030 release date for StarCraft. Why was the game revealed so early? Blizzard general manager Dan Hay said that the company had made enough progress on the game to officially announce it and gather feedback from the reveal. "There’s a moment when you're making a game where you're like, 'Have we landed the emotion? Do we feel like we have enough of the verve, the identity, and the feel of it to start to share it?" Hay said to GameSpot. "About a year ago, we started to feel like we were there, so we were like, ‘Okay, it’s time to show it. It’s time to get feedback.'"

StarCraft platforms Holt is clearly going to have a long and successful career as a Dominion Marine.

While official platforms have yet to be revealed, it's a safe bet that StarCraft will probably launch for PC. But what consoles could it land on? By 2030, we're expecting to be playing on Sony's PlayStation 6 and Microsoft's Xbox successor, Project Helix, so we might be looking at a next-gen game when StarCraft eventually launches.

StarCraft gameplay "Give me something to shoot."

Unsurprisingly, StarCraft's only public footage currently is a cinematic trailer. What we do know is that this will be a major departure from the RTS days of StarCraft, as the game will be a third-person experience focusing on single-player and co-op elements. Hay explained that players will be able to build their reputation and rapport with in-game characters as they step into a Marine's power armour. There's also a big focus on the power fantasy of being one of these Dominion soldiers

"Combat has to feel powerful," Hay explained. "You're in this armor; you're a living tank. You have to feel powerful. When you hold that Gauss rifle, and the thing weighs something ridiculous, you have to feel like you’re just pushing through the Zerg. The Zerg have to feel like those raptorial claws are going to shuck you like an oyster in that thing. So you have to feel the weight of all that."

Hay added that the goal is for players to feel not only a sense of discovery when they set out, but a "notion of disruption" to their actions in the world around them.

Is StarCraft a live-service game? "I vote we frag this commander."

Yes and no, by the sound of things. While the focus is primarily on giving players a single-player open-world adventure to enjoy, Hay said that StarCraft's story will have a definitive conclusion, and that Blizzard wants it to feel like a "boxed product" that players can return to whenever they want. "We like a named character, right?" Hay said. "When it comes down to this, we want to be able to make sure that what you have is a character that has a name, a character that people in the world can know. What it does is it makes the story have a little bit more life to it."

StarCraft story Well that didn't last long.

Speaking of the story, Blizzard is keeping a tight lid on the narrative. The cinematic trailer hinted at new Dominion recruits being thrown into a meat-grinder against Zerg forces--and you'll also encounter the Protoss. Hay has confirmed that StarCraft is set 70 years after StarCraft 2: Legacy of the Void--that won't be confusing, a leap forward in time that could allow for some bold storytelling and new characters to emerge.

Even with the Protoss reclaiming Aiur, the reformation of the Dominion under Valerian Mengsk, and Zagara aiming to lead the Zerg into an era of peace, nothing is ever certain in the StarCraft galaxy and it's going to be interesting to learn what happened in those decades.

Resident Evil movie director Zach Cregger has shared his thoughts on the ongoing debate and discussion about physical media in games. He wasn't speaking directly about Sony's decision to end support for physical game discs in 2028, but rather commenting generally on the matter.

Speaking to IndieWire, Cregger said he is "not a physical media guy" today. He said he was previously, but he is a person who often loses or damages the physical media he owns, and he doesn't have enough space for all the discs and boxes he might collect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOhRtPbr8mI

Cregger said he is "not bent out of shape" about downloading games because "at least it means it's always going to be there when I need it."

At the same time, Cregger said he's aware that companies can "just delete it" even after someone has paid. "And, yeah, that's too bad. I don't like that," he said.

Sony's decision to end support for physical games may make sense financially, but it's upsetting people who still buy physical media, and there are many of these people. In the last year, Sony sold many millions of physical game discs. But starting in January 2028, discs from Sony and other companies will no longer be supported, so everyone will have to buy games through the PlayStation Store.

The move to end support physical game discs on PlayStation is really about profitability and control, experts say. Microsoft recently announced a disc-to-digital program for Xbox, but many believe the company's next-gen platform, Project Helix, will not support discs.

Something else at play here is that, if next-gen consoles are indeed priced at $1,000 or more, Sony and Microsoft may sell fewer of them. But by eliminating discs, Sony and Microsoft can make up some of the difference by selling digital games exclusively, and these have fatter margins.

The Resident Evil movie, which is backed by Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions, is set for release on September 18.

There's been speculation for months over who could be voicing the GTA 6 cast, but nothing has been officially confirmed, either by developer Rockstar or any of the starring talents, until now.

At the BAFTA TV Tea Party, held at The Maybourne Beverly Hills in California, actor Stephen Root was in support of his Emmy nomination for his role as Wyck in Apple's Widow's Bay. However, when asked about the rumors around his involvement in GTA 6, Root confirmed (via AP) that he does appear in the game.

"Yeah, you're going to see me in there," he confirmed. "I think from the first rollout of GTA that they were doing almost a year ago they had my character in there, and there were too many people that knew me from King of the Hill and my voice. So, I think that secret kind of got divulged then."

https://youtu.be/kTFxs3AcBCQ

"I'm so happy to be involved with it; it's an amazing thing to look at," he added.

Root, who is known for voicing King of the Hill's Bill Dauterive and playing Milton Waddams in Office Space among hundreds of other credits, will play Brian Heder. Although he didn't confirm as much in the interview clip from AP, Root's distinctive voice makes him easy to pick out from the various GTA 6 trailers.

Root played Office Space's Milton Waddams.

Brian is a veteran drug smuggler working around the Leonida Keys area and also seems to be protagonist Jason Duval's landlord--although he doesn't charge him any rent.

Rather than just a random NPC, Brian seems to be a key figure in the story of GTA 6. He's got his own profile on the official GTA 6 website, for a start. That profile notes that Brian's still moving drugs through his boatyard with his third wife, Lori, but prefers to let others do his dirty work.

GTA 6 will be released on November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, and Rockstar is hard at work fighting drones and hackers to keep the game's secrets safe.

StarCraft's reveal trailer squarely put the focus on the Terrans, who later in the cinematic face a terrifying confrontation with the Zerg. The franchise's three franchises--including the Protoss--have always been a central element of what distinguishes StarCraft from other strategy games. Although the Protoss were effectively absent from the trailer, they are a foe you will face at some point.

GameSpot spoke with GM and creative director Dan Hay at BlizzCon and asked him about how the three factions will interact with each other. Although he was expectedly coy on specifics, he did offer up some thoughts.

"The answer to that question is I absolutely unequivocally can't say," Hay said. "But what I can do is tell you what I would want as a player. I'll hint at sort of not what we're doing, but some of the things that we think about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw&pp=0gcJCf4LAYcqIYzv

"Of course, what you want to be able to do... you think about the Protoss and how reverent we are. They're older, and there's a mystique and a grandness to them, right? They have just a completely different flavor. Then you have the Zerg, and the Zerg are just numberless; they're infinite from the standpoint of they just overwhelm you with sheer organic power. Then you have the Terrans, that are this group of... they're working their way through the sector in kind of a haphazard and industrial way. We want that feeling.

"We want it to not all just be one taste. So we want to have moments where you're fighting things that are organic, and then moments where you're fighting things that are this wonderful legacy and that are ancient. I want to tell you a lot more, but I can't."

Hay did point out something that was easy to miss in the trailer: a small hint of the Protoss. 

"You saw more than the Zerg in the trailer," he said. "If you look a little deeper, there's a moment when the thing opens and you hear that great horn go off. If you look in the background—just in the background, adjust the lighting just a tiny bit—you'll see some architecture that is very not Terran and very not Zerg. It's there."

Hay also confirmed a third-person perspective for StarCraft. While the trailer may not reflect gameplay, it does showcase one way that could impact the feel of the game, as we see the Terran soldier look up in terror at the size of a Zerg Overlord, something you ordinarily only see from an isometric camera view in past StarCraft games.

He also said StarCraft will have a "single-player focus" and offered some insight into why the game was announced now despite arriving in 2030.

If you walked away from the StarCraft reveal excited for the franchise to return, but unsure what this new game even is, you're not alone. Aside from being described during the BlizzCon Opening Ceremony as an open-world shooter, Blizzard didn't share much else. In an interview with GameSpot, Blizzard GM Dan Hay provided a few more details, including the fact that it's a third-person game.

The StarCraft franchise, having taken the form of real-time strategy games previously, has typically used an isometric perspective. When it came to choosing what perspective to offer in the new shooter, it sounds like it wasn't a difficult decision.

"Oh, that's easy," Hay said when GameSpot asked him about whether StarCraft will be a first- or third-person game. "I want to be able to see my armor. First thing we did is we built it, put it on a turntable, and spun it around like, 'Ah, awesome, cool!' I want to be able to see it, so third-person, right?

"That doesn't mean that we don't have the license to, in a couple of spaces, do a little bit different and whatnot, but third-person: You get to see your armor, you get to see the full weight of everything you have, and then you get to see stuff that's in my head that I can't tell you."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw&pp=0gcJCf4LAYcqIYzv

Hay spoke to us a great deal about the fantasy of having this armor to protect you. Asked about character progression or customization, he said, "If I was to get—in theory, hypothetically, purely hypothetically—this is what I would want: I would want to be able to make sure that my armor can be made better, stronger, and different. I would also want to be able to make sure that I could make it feel like mine. I would want it to be a visitation of the legacy of the things that I had done. I would want to show that it looked different from the first moment that I got it to the last moment I got it. So, read into that how much you will hypothetically, but that's what I would want as a player."

"We have to make sure that we're thinking about—and I have to be careful not to talk about this too much—combat has to feel powerful," he added. "You're in this armor; you're a living tank. You have to feel powerful. When you hold that Gauss rifle, and the thing weighs something ridiculous, you have to feel like you're just pushing through the Zerg. The Zerg have to feel like those raptorial claws are going to shuck you like an oyster in that thing. So you have to feel the weight of all that.

"We take that very seriously. We know that people who are out there are going to be going, 'The teaser was amazing, super cool, the story sounds great, but we want to see that combat. We want to feel those moments. We want to feel the exploration, the sense of discovery, and we also want to feel this notion of disruption—that when I go out into the world, it pushes back in a way that I wasn't expecting, and then I have to figure out a new way to play.' It's how our world works."

Hay also revealed to us that StarCraft is a single-player game (or single-player is at least the focus) and shared why Blizzard decided to reveal it so soon, given it won't be out until 2030.

StarCraft is "focusing on single-player," StarCraft creative director and general manager Dan Hay and associate manager of development operations Anna Lee Hertling said in an interview with GameSpot.

One of the biggest announcements of BlizzCon 2026 was the return of StarCraft, described as an open-world shooter and slated for a 2030 release. Aside from its impressive reveal cinematic, there wasn't much additional information about how StarCraft would play or what the shooter reboot of the RTS franchise would entail.

Now, we have some more details. When asked whether StarCraft would be single-player or co-op, Hay said the team is "focusing on single player." 

"We are focused right now on the conversation of focusing on single-player, focusing on that Marine fantasy, and then making sure that we think about what it is to be that character," Hay said. "That's what we're saying for now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw&pp=ygUSZ2FtZXNwb3Qgc3RhcmNyYWZ0

He said players will not create their own character but play a named character that can "build a reputation and a rapport" with other in-game characters. He said the game's story will have a beginning, middle, and an "end," and that Blizzard wants it to feel like a "boxed product." Thought it's story will have an end, Hay said Blizzard wants the game to be one players can visit, explore, leave, and come back to.

"We like a named character, right?" Hay said. "When it comes down to this, we want to be able to make sure that what you have is a character that has a name, a character that people in the world can know. What it does it it makes the story have a little bit more life to it."

Hay continued: "What you want to be able to do is have people--and I have to be super careful, Anna Lee will abosultey stop me if I talk too much about the story--but there's nothing...I think about a TV show like Deadwood, which is one of my top five favorites. What I love is the idea that all of those characters know each other and they have a reputation. You go in, and they know each other on a Tuesday; they know each other on a Thursday afternoon at like 3:08, right? What you want is to have a named character that can build a reputation and a rapport with these characters, and that we can have feel like they're part of this world."

Other tidbits shared by Hay during the interview include the fact that StarCraft will be third-person rather than first, as well as why Blizzard decided to announce it now, four years in advance.

Thanks to rumors and reports, the announcement of a new StarCraft game taking the form of an open-world shooter did not come as a complete surprise at BlizzCon's Opening Ceremony. What is surprising is when it's coming: 2030. That's a long time from now, and we've heard other developers lament announcing their games too soon. So what made Blizzard reveal StarCraft so far in advance?

"We totally get the question. You walk that kind of knife's edge of how much do we want to show, when do we want to show," Blizzard GM Dan Hay told GameSpot at BlizzCon. "We've been working on it for a little bit now, and we feel like we've got something that we wanted to show. We felt like this was the right moment. As we're building out the story, the characters, and kind of the feeling of the worlds that we're building, we felt like, 'You know what? We've got enough to show.'"

Hay said that with Blizzard being confident in what it's developed so far, it didn't want to further delay going public and getting the benefit of putting it in front of fans.

"There's a moment when you're making a game where you're like, 'Have we landed the emotion? Do we feel like we have enough of the verve, the identity, and the feel of it to start to share it?'" Hay continued. "About a year ago, we started to feel like we were there, so we were like, 'Okay, it's time to show it. It's time to get feedback.'

"What's super important about it is you want to put it out there, get people to feel the emotion and the value of it, and you want to be there live to be able to get a sense of how they feel about it. We were in the room; it felt great. People were going nuts."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIu2tGCCKQw

Feedback from fans at this point can only be surface level. Although we know the new game, known at least for now simply as StarCraft, is an open-world shooter, we've yet to see any gameplay--the reveal took the form of an extended cinematic setting up the vibe, but not tipping Blizzard's hand in terms of how it will play. Blizzard confirmed to GameSpot that StarCraft will be a third-person, single-player game, but that's not much to go on.

Still, Hay said he sees value in attaching a date to the project and having developers examine their decision making through that target.

"Yeah, we also know that the date of 2030 is one of those things where--I like a date," Hay said. "I like the idea that there's something out there for us to go after. It helps us sometimes when you get into a meeting and you're thinking about the creative, and you go, 'All right, well how long are we going to wax poetic on this? How long are we going to think about this?' The answer is, 'Can we get all this done by that date?' If the answer is no: Let's rethink, let's refocus, and let's make sure we're thinking about players wanting to get this at the highest level of fidelity possible, but in a reasonable amount of time. That's why we picked that date."

A new StarCraft game that currently feels out of reach isn't a new thing; StarCraft: Ghost infamously was in development for ages but ultimately never came out. Although Hay was not at Blizzard during that era (he spent many years working on the Far Cry franchise at Ubisoft), we asked what Blizzard could take away from Ghost in order to avoid repeating that situation. Although he had little to say about that, he did share more about Blizzard's vision for the new StarCraft.

"I think our focus is we're building a new team. We've got a whole bunch of energy to it from the standpoint of this really comes from what we call a creative ache, right?" Hay said. "We really started with--when you think about the genesis of it--what's the story we want to tell? How do we want to make this game unique and different? The answer is, in previous versions of StarCraft, you were up above, looking down at the battlefield, and you had the deployment of many Marines and many different factions. This time, we were like, 'What if it was just one? What if you only got one suit? What if you had to take care of it?'

"We use the analogy of: You know that first time you get your first car? The first car was probably not great, but it was amazing because it was your first car. What happens when you get this thing and you have to take care of it? What happens when you start to see a world that has opportunity and discovery, but things that you can also pick up and maybe make your armor better? How do you go out into the world and start to take care of this thing and push against it?

"Then you start to think about, 'Wait a minute, I'm in this armor.' You saw it in the teaser: The character in the teaser gets the armor and is feeling super powerful and everything, and it's a 10-foot-tall thing that weighs a thousand pounds. You think, 'There's nothing that I can't beat.' Then you watch his face as the doors open, and you hear that growl of the Zerg. You watch his face--and we spent a ton of time just on the facial expression--of just loss, just the understanding of the distance between what we believe we can do and the reality of what life teaches us. We captured all that in that moment on his face of, 'I might be in trouble here.' But he put up a valiant effort.

"Then you realize: Okay, our story is darker. It's grittier. It's a little bit meaner; it has more stakes and more bite to it. So we thought that that was a great place to start: Put your boots on the ground and say, 'Can you do better than the character in that teaser?'"

Hay also revealed to us that StarCraft is third-person with a single-player focus, and yeah--you'll fight the Protoss, too.

Diablo 4 won't receive more expansions moving forward, as Blizzard shifts its focus to the newly revealed Diablo 5 instead.

As revealed during BlizzCon 2026's opening ceremony, Diablo 5 is slated to be coming in Spring 2029 and is set 100 years after Diablo 4 in a world where the titular Lord of Terror reigns supreme. In an interview with PC Gamer, Diablo game director Brent Gibson said there were no plans for additional Diablo 4 expansions, as the team is instead "focused on seasons [for Diablo 4] and getting to Diablo 5." He added that Blizzard told the "story of Hatred" culminating in the Lord of Hatred expansion, and now it's moving forward to tell the "story of Terror."

That doesn't mean support for Diablo 4 will end anytime soon. It sounds like Diablo 4's seasons will lead into the events of Diablo 5, even though the latter takes place a century later. That gives Blizzard room to set up Diablo 5's story, though Gibson said Blizzard doesn't "have a perfect picture" where it will all go because it wants to see how fans "react season to season." 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FfJppNJsNY

Diablo 4 is the only Diablo game to have received more than one expansion. Prior to release, Blizzard said it would receive "annual" expansions, though that quickly didn't come to pass. The game's Lord of Hatred expansion was released in April of this year, around a year-and-a-half after Diablo 4's first expansion, Vessel of Hatred. 

It's not a new expansion, but Diablo 4 is receiving a new class. The Amazon will join Diablo 4 as a standalone DLC next year. Diablo 4 Season 15, Hell's Legacy, begins September 15, and will see the return of iconic locations, items, Deckard Cain. The iconic Hordadrim will task players with battling memories of the Prime Evils from previous Diablo games, including Diablo himself.

Diablo 5 isn't coming until Spring 2029, but Blizzard has already revealed three of the game's playable classes.

Two of them will be familiar to Diablo 3 fans: the Monk and Demon Hunter. The third will be an all-new class, the Plague Knight. The Plague Knight sounds similar to Death Knights from Blizzard's other fantasy franchise and are described as "walking death" that spread disease and pestilence wherever they go, then consume it to increase their power. 

Blizzard revealed plenty of new details about Diablo 5 during a panel and subsequent blog post following the game's cinematic reveal as part of the BlizzCon 2026 opening ceremony. In addition to the three classes, Blizzard outlined the state of Sanctuary in Diablo 5 and how players will navigate it. Rather than journeying to towns, players will instead build a wandering caravan of survivors in a world that's been destroyed, and currently ruled, by Diablo himself. According to a developer blog post, Diablo 5's world will be "procedural," where terrain, monsters, and points of interest will change in the wake of the Lord of Terror's influence.

As for the survivors that players will call allies, Blizzard said they will serve roles as vendors and companions. Two examples of companions that will accompany players are a former Sister of the Sightless Eye and a lost treasure goblin searching for meaning "in a world where greed has lost its meaning," Blizzard said. 

Though Diablo 5 is still early in development, there was some information about how it will play compared to Diablo 4. An early look at the game's inventory screen and items is extremely reminiscent of Diablo 2. Blizzard said it's a goal for items in Diablo 5 to be "readable, memorable, and worth chasing across hundreds of hours." Like in Diablo 2, items will take up more space in one's inventory depending on their size. Blizzard also confirmed item sets will return, as will Diablo 2-style runes and runewords. 

Blizzard may be putting the focus on Diablo 5, but there is still new content coming for Diablo 4. A new class, the Amazon, will be sold as a standalone DLC pack in the first half of next year, and the game will continue to receive new seasonal content. Diablo 4 Season 15, Hell's Legacy, goes live on September 15 and will see the return of Deckard Cain. The iconic Horadrim will task players with confronting remnants of the Prime Evils, including Diablo himself.

World of Warcraft Forever is Blizzard's next iteration on WoW Classic, one that will add new content in the form of zones, quests, dungeons, raids, and even a new playable race while keeping the old-school MMORPG's world and gameplay intact.

Revealed during BlizzCon 2026's opening ceremony, WoW Forever is Blizzard's attempt to give WoW Classic fans the "forever" game they've wanted for years. However, instead of the MMO progressing to the game's subsequent expansions and their new areas, as Classic has in the past, WoW Forever will instead keep the focus on WoW's original two continents, Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.

Within that Classic backdrop will be up to 1,000 new quests, Blizzard said, as well as revamped zones, and three entirely new zones that fill out areas present on the map in vanilla WoW but were never accessible to players. There will be nine new dungeons to explore, two raids, and an additional PvP battleground. A new playable race is also part of the package: the Skyborne elves. One of the new playable zones will be their starting area, Blizzard said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEMrosrAVH0

In addition to all-new content, Blizzard will be revamping classes with new talents and skills, as well as allowing for new class and race combinations. An option to toggle HD visuals and old-school graphics will also be included. Blizzard will continue to update WoW Forever with new content, but won't raise the level cap past 60.

Unlike modern WoW, WoW Forever won't be focused on the endgame experience. Blizzard said many of the new dungeons and quests will be for characters under level 60. That aligns with what Blizzard said were its core principles in how it approached development of WoW Forever--that it should be about the journey, not the destination; the world itself is a character; and the game's social aspects should be a focus.

For those who want to continue experiencing the original version of Azeroth, the normal version of WoW Classic will still be playable.

Players won't have to wait long to experience this new version of Azeroth themselves. A playable beta will go live September 17, with the full version of WoW Forever launching November 4.

A new Warcraft 3 campaign exploring the origins of the Forsaken and the formation of the Undercity will be live later today, Blizzard announced as part of its BlizzCon 2026 opening ceremony announcements.

Titled Forsaken Kingdom, the DLC campaign will put a spotlight on the last days of Lordaeron after it fell to Arthas and how it became the home of the Forsaken many players are familiar with in World of Warcraft. The campaign will be available in Warcraft 3: Reforged, Blizzard's once-maligned remaster of 2003's RTS classic. While the new campaign costs money, the 3.0 update for Warcraft 3: Reforged is free and also releases today. The update adds new visual improvements and quality-of-life features.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1kXClUCyuA

This is just the latest update to Warcraft 3: Reforged that looks to salvage its poor reputation. In 2024, Blizzard released a 2.0 update as part of the franchise's 30th anniversary that sought to address many of the common complaints players have had with the remaster since its 2020 launch. Reports from the time indicated Warcraft 3: Reforged was the victim of budget cuts and rocky development, and even saw Blizzard expand its refund policy in the wake of its release.

Forsaken Kingdom will be the first new Warcraft RTS content since the release of the original Warcraft 3's Frozen Throne expansion in 2003. Earlier this year, Blizzard made it so players could access the classic version of Warcraft 3 through Battle.net without the need to also launch Warcraft 3: Reforged.

As is BlizzCon tradition, a new World of Warcraft cinematic premiered during the BlizzCon 2026 opening ceremony, setting the stage for the MMORPG's next expansion, The Last Titan.

In a departure for BlizzCon, that glimpse was just about all fans learned about the new expansion, with Blizzard instead looking to put the focus more on the final content patch of the game's current Midnight expansion.

That update, titled Eclipse, will consist of a climactic showdown with the franchise's current main villain, Xal'atath. An in-game cinematic shown during the ceremony revealed Xal'atath's true objective, to merge with Azeroth's worldsoul and become unstoppable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI09FbRmCtc

Blizzard additionally teased a new standalone game mode, and yet another expansion Remix experience, will also be coming to Midnight before the expansion's end.

As for The Last Titan's setting, it takes players back to Northrend, the continent previously seen in 2008's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Much like how Blizzard revamped Silvermoon City and the Blood Elf lands of Quel'thalas in Midnight to great results, Northrend will be completely rebuilt from the ground up. Blizzard said more details about The Last Titan will be shared next year.

The Last Titan was first announced at BlizzCon 2023, when Blizzard made the unprecedented move of announcing an entire trilogy of expansions all at once. Collectively, Blizzard called the three expansions The Worldsoul Saga, with a goal of bringing together many of WoW's disparate storylines from over the last 20 years into one fitting conclusion.

As the end of the trilogy, The Last Titan has a lot of expectations to live up to that the main storyline of WoW's two previous expansions, The War Within and Midnight, haven't exactly met. Regardless, it will still be exciting to see how Blizzard ties two decades' worth of story involving the Void, the Titans, and Azeroth herself together into one cohesive package.

New class additions to Hearthstone don't come often, but the next one has been announced during BlizzCon 2026's Opening Ceremony: The Monk is coming to the card game, leaving just the Evoker as the lone class to be left out.

The Monk's upcoming addition was one of several major pieces of news for Hearthstone revealed. A new expansion called Reign of the Black Empire that is set 10,000 years in the past will focus on the Black Empire and a struggle between the Old Gods and the Titans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib5EMar4b1E

If that excites the lore enjoyer in you, you'll also be happy to hear that the Journal is being transformed into The Journey. This is meant to give a more narrative-driven wrapper to the game, as it'll seek to tie the story together between expansions, modes, and limited-time events. The Journey will grow as you play through Reign of the Black Empire, tying together quests, achievements, and more elements of the game.

As far as the Monk goes, we don't know much in terms of how they'll play. We only got a short teaser for the new class, which marks the first such addition since the Death Knight arrived in 2022. The game originally launched with nine characters before later adding Demon Hunter and then Death Knight. The Monk will arrive in March 2027, with more details coming next year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hldzvHmT-ow

Other new features coming to Hearthstone include a new keyword, Assemble, which lets you effectively merge two minions into one, which sounds similar to Magnetize; you can pick specific text from their descriptions to create new combos. A new minion type, Aberrations, was also revealed, with their deaths feeding the gods in some way. Aberrations will be specific to Battlegrounds, which is also getting a 2v2 main ranked mode.

Reign of the Black Empire releases on October 20.

Diablo 5 is coming in Spring 2029, and it will take players to a world where Diablo himself reigns supreme.

Announced via a short teaser during the BlizzCon 2026 opening ceremony, Blizzard revealed it's already at work on the next installment of the series. Set 100 years after the defeat of Mephisto in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred, Diablo 5 will see the Lord of Terror return. However, instead of stopping him from destroying all of Sanctuary, he will actually have already won. 

Blizzard teased Diablo 5's story will revolve around what heroes have to become in a post-apocalyptic world that is already destroyed. More details will be shared about the game's lore, classes, and gameplay features, during a Diablo 5 panel as part of this weekend's convention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HaSFXR7tU

Should Diablo 5 actually release in 2029, it will be the shortest gap between Diablo games in the franchise's history. There was a 12-year wait for Diablo 3 after Diablo 2, and another 11 years between Diablo 3 and 4. Diablo 5, in comparison, is slated to come just six years after Diablo 4--still a long time, but much shorter given the franchise's track record.

Blizzard has been on record saying it wants to create new Diablo games faster. In an interview earlier this year, Blizzard said that "over the next 30 years, maybe we get some out faster."