The boss of digital PC storefront GOG has weighed in on the conversation around Anthem's demise, saying that there may be a future in which fewer games could be developed and published if regulators demand that creators keep them alive forever.

Speaking to Eurogamer on January 15 after Anthem was laid to rest, GOG's managing director, Maciej Gołębiewski, said it's good that the discussion around game preservation is happening once again, but that the conversation gets a little tricky when talking about games that were designed as online-only experiences.

"There is a broader discussion to be had within the industry of what does an end-of-life cycle look like in games--what is a fair end-of-life cycle for a game?" he said. "Should it just be buried and killed and no one can access it any more, and people who spent five or seven years working on it cannot really look at their creation any more because the service turned off? There is a very interesting and very complicated discussion that Stop Killing Games probably kick-started out of frustration."

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Animal Crossing: New Horizons' big 3.0 update is now available, and it includes a new Resort Hotel for your island adventures. Once you gain access to the hotel, you can decorate rooms, plan outfits for guests, and more. In this guide, we show you how to unlock and find the Resort Hotel in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Make sure to check out all the new features of the 3.0 update, and we also have a complete Animal Crossing: New Horizons guide hub to help you make the most of island life. This offers starter tips, help with various features, and information on how to upgrade locations.

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The Arc Raiders winter event, Cold Snap, has concluded, and now developer Embark has shared some statistics about the milestones players achieved during it.

In a graphic shared on social media, the developer listed off what players did, including throwing 95 million snowballs. A total of 91 million players got knocked out by snowballs. Additionally, players used snowballs to take down Arc enemies--10,577, to be precise. What's more, 3.5 million players were knocked out due to the cold.

Embark also added fireworks to the game for the Cold Snap event, and players fired 2.9 million rounds of fireworks and threw 9.2 million firecrackers. Players were also feeling festive and relaxed, apparently, as a total of 108 players played instruments for more than 20 minutes without stopping during the event.

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Earlier this month, word leaked about a new Life is Strange game that's on the horizon. Now, Square Enix has confirmed that the next Life is Strange is coming soon, but players will need to wait another five days for the full details.

As noted on X, the latest installment of Life is Strange will be announced on a livestream on January 20, at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET.

Separate the real from the rumor... Join us for the exclusive reveal of the next Life is Strange game: https://t.co/29yzDsGCb5
January 20. 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm GMT / 7pm CET. pic.twitter.com/jYQphhU2e3

— Life is Strange (@LifeIsStrange) January 15, 2026

Thanks to the leak from the Pan-European Game Information, we know the name of the game is Life is Strange: Reunion. And as the title implies, it will reunite the leading character, Max Caulfield, with her best friend, Chloe Price.

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In light of Anthem's recent shutdown, the topic of games going away for good is once again a hot-button issue. Below, we examine this reality in a feature originally published in July 2025.

In a July 2025 shareholders meeting, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot made a salient yet obvious point about online video games: "You provide a service, but nothing is written in stone, and at some point, the service may be discontinued. Nothing is eternal." He added: "Support for all games cannot last forever."

This was in response to "Stop Killing Games," a consumer movement that rallies against purported "planned obsolescence" of online video games from publishers. Sparked by the shutdown of Ubisoft's The Crew, the movement has gained traction in the past year through petitions directly to European governments.

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Another Fallout show is in the works for Prime Video, though it'll be quite different from the popular scripted drama starring Walton Goggins. Amazon is developing a competition series with the working title Fallout Shelter, and the company just put out a casting call online.

According to the casting call, contestants (or "dwellers") will "live together in a top-secret vault" and compete in games related to "core attributes" from the Fallout universe. Loyalty and alliances between dwellers will also be tested, with an official Fallout X account describing the game as containing "escalating challenges, strategic dilemmas, and moral conundrums." Casting applications close on February 15.

Good morning, prospective Vault Dwellers! In order to best serve you in What Comes Next, we need volunteers for a very real, very scientific opportunity to beta test a better society. Visit this website if you’d like to join Fallout Shelter, a new series full of escalating… pic.twitter.com/hCr0TxmNOn

— FALLOUT⚡️ (@falloutonprime) January 15, 2026

British production company Studio Lambert, most famous for Undercover Boss, The Circle, and The Traitors, is behind the project. The studio also produced another reality competition tie-in to a dystopian streaming show, working on Squid Game: The Challenge for Netflix.

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One of the big draws of Marathon is the opportunity to embrace the Runner lifestyle. Expensive biosynthetic shells that house the consciousness of a person inside of them, each Runner shell is also highly customizable, and developer Bungie has outlined how players can fine-tune each one to help them survive Tau Ceti.

Each Runner shell is built to focus on a different gameplay archetype--like intel gathering, combat disruption, or combat healing--and their visual design makes them easy to distinguish from a distance, so you'll know how to deal with one in the heat of battle. Players can customize their Runner shell using the cores, implants, weapons, and mods they bring with them on each run, and they can also be visually customized with cosmetics earned from a variety of sources.

For example, players can go all in on agility, modifying the "Combat Anarchist" Vandal shell to be a scout that can triple-jump and quickly move across the map. Prefer to cause some chaos instead? Then you'll want to invest in mods that give you a tactical advantage in the air and allow you to cause some splash damage when you land. Cores--powerful standalone perks--also have the potential to be combined to create interesting effects.

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Early in your Hytale journey, you're going to need weapons. While you might just want to explore, gather some resources, and build the base you and your friends have envisioned for your Hytale multiplayer sessions, Hytale still features dangerous mobs that can strike at any minute. You'll need a way to defend yourself and even defeat those mobs, as they can drop some valuable materials that you need for other recipes.

Hytale offers a linear weapon progression system that lets you craft more advanced weapons as you discover rarer resources. However, learning the crafting recipes for those weapons, figuring out what they are, and even how to upgrade them are all things you need to know before you can really start exploring your map.

Table of Contents [hide]

• All weapon crafting recipes in Hytale

All weapon crafting recipes in Hytale

There are several different types of weapons in Hytale, and each of these types has several different variants that use specific resources. As you progress, you can upgrade your weapons to utilize rarer and rarer resources, which increases a weapon's strength and durability.

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When the Steam Machine is finally in the hands of players, it'll already have a large volume of compatible games with the "Verified" green checkmark, with Valve indicating to developers that they won't have to worry too much about the verification process.

Valve designer Lawrence Yang told outlet Game Developer in an interview that the Steam Machine Verified badge will require "fewer constraints" than Steam Deck verification. Yang added that "if your title is Verified on Steam Deck, it will be Verified on Steam Machine."

Games earn the Steam Deck Verified label after testing by Valve. Being verified isn't necessarily an indicator that a game will run flawlessly on the handheld device, but rather that it checks off requirements of full controller compatibility, proper display settings, and middleware support.

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The frighteningly excellent Resident Evil Village will creep its way onto Xbox Game Pass on January 20, but before that, Capcom made the survival-horror game available on the Xbox Ally and Windows PC via Xbox Play Anywhere as of January 15. However, you might want to wait before downloading it on any of those devices because the game is reportedly busted right now.

According to a Windows Central report, RE: VIII picked up Xbox Play Anywhere support despite not initially being announced for the service, which went live all the way back in September 2016. There are now over 1,000 games in the initiative--which lets you buy the game once and play it across Xbox platforms, Windows PCs, and some PC gaming handhelds (like the Xbox Ally)--and while RE: VIII is the latest, it also appears to be the most broken as the installation file isn't anywhere to be found on the Ally or PC.

As Windows Central noted in its January 15 story, the "install" button you can click on doesn't actually install the game. Instead, it downloads a 10MB container that doesn't contain the actual game. You can still sync your saves from Xbox Series X|S, but strangely, the game doesn't launch. When you try to launch it, you'll just receive a "This game has crashed" message on these devices, meaning Xbox Play Anywhere has broken RE: VIII's release for now.

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World of Warcraft players have long asked for communal Guild Halls to hang out with guildmates in between adventures, and it sounds like that dream is finally becoming a reality, as Blizzard has confirmed what new housing-related features are currently in the works.

In an interview with PC Gamer about the future of WoW player housing, many of the biggest names on the WoW development team, including Blizzard VP and executive producer Holly Longdale and senior game director Ion Hazzikostas, outlined what players can expect from housing in the months and years to come.

Among a long list of improvements and new features coming to housing in the near future are Guild Halls. According to PC Gamer, principal designer and housing lead Jesse Kurlancheek said Guild Halls are not only coming, but that they will go live "relatively quickly." They will not, however, be part of the upcoming Midnight pre-patch arriving on January 20.

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The ongoing RAM shortages and the associated increase in RAM prices are starting to affect other pieces of hardware that make use of fast memory. Graphics cards are especially susceptible, which has seemingly forced Nvidia to start discontinuing at least two 50-series cards that ship with 16GB of VRAM.

A report by Hardware Unboxed states that several GPU manufactueres have designated both the RTX 5070Ti and the 16GB version of the RTX 5060Ti as "end of life," meaning that no new stock is being produced. At CES 2026, Asus, one of the largest AIB partners Nvidia works with, confirmed stock of the two cards was difficult to acquire from Nvidia and that current stock of both cards would be the last until further notice.

The report mentions that Asus is not alone in this decision, and that several other manufacturers and retailers (specifically across Australia) have noted the same for existing stock of both SKUs. The RTX 5070, which features 12GB of VRAM, seems unaffected for now, while cheaper cards with 8GB of VRAM, such as the regular RTX 5060, will continue to be produced. That leaves the RTX 5080 and RTX 5090 as the only cards part of this generation of Nvidia GPUs that ship with 16GB or more VRAM, with both still only available at inflated prices.

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The use of generative AI in video games has been controversial to say the least, but when it comes to art, the blowback has been even stronger. One game currently being accused of using the technology is Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, as the new trailer for the fighting game's upcoming second season of DLC characters is being picked apart online. Viewers and commenters have pored over the trailer, claiming that the character designs are inconsistent and that certain visual elements contain generative AI. The biggest smoking gun, according to viewers, is a quick shot of series antagonist Geese Howard, who appears to be missing an entire foot.

Other instances of generative AI pointed out include Blue Mary's motorcycle missing several vital components--and being a completely different model from what she normally rides--and Kim Jae Hoon having noticeably different wardrobes between his cinematic and gameplay character models. We have reached out to the developer, SNK, for details on the trailer and will update this post as soon as we hear back.

If Fatal Fury is using generative AI, it wouldn't be the first game to do so. Activision confirmed that AI tools were used in the development of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, but it has insisted that the creative process "continues to be led" by humans. Meanwhile, fans believe that Battlefield 6 features AI-generated art, and the Indie Game Awards rescinded the awards given to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 after it was discovered that developer Sandfall Interactive used AI-generated assets during the game's production.

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Remember Bully Online, that fan-made mod that introduced online multiplayer to Rockstar Games' Bully, which launched in mid-December 2025? Well, if you didn't get the chance to play it when it came out, then you never will, because it has been shut down forever.

According to a Discord post by a moderator named Yubari, everything--the Bully Online project, the official Discord server, script development, source code, webpages, launcher, and all Bully Online account data--has been permanently deleted as of January 14. The YouTube video announcing the project's release has been privated, the Ko-Fi page has been removed, and any other Bully Online-related material is also unavailable. The ship has faded into the fog, if you will.

There's no explanation for why this happened just yet. However, Yubari noted that "this was not something [the team] wanted." YouTuber, developer, "massive Bully fan," and Bully Online project lead, SWEGTA, posted on X on January 14 that he'll "make a proper statement on the situation" in a YouTube video he'll post on January 21.

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Even after 35 years, Super Mario World players are unearthing weird new possibilities in the SNES game. The latest is an unsettling ending in which Yoshi can actually eat Princess Peach, leading to Mario and his green companion just staring at each other until the end of time.

Supper Mario Broth showcased the grim finale for Super Mario World on X, noting glitches are needed to achieve this conclusion. For instance, Super Mario World players might know that bringing Yoshi into the last battle with Bowser shouldn't be possible. Well, it's not without a glitch putting the green dinosaur in the reserve item box--which houses power-ups like the Cape Feather or mushroom. The latter comes into play to consume Peach, as timing is important to have Yoshi trying to eat that as the mushroom falls and then it's replaced with the princess. Basically, this isn't an easy trick to pull off while defeating Bowser.

Using a combination of glitches in Super Mario World, Yoshi can be taken into the final battle, where he can eat Peach upon Bowser's defeat. With Peach gone, the ending will not play, and Mario and Yoshi will simply stare at each other forever. pic.twitter.com/nEHGOWnmAw

— Supper Mario Broth (@MarioBrothBlog) January 14, 2026

This isn't the first time Supper Mario Broth has highlighted a hilarious and hidden factoid about a popular Nintendo game. In September, the account pointed out that Toad NPCs are capable of stealing cars in Mario Kart World.

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Bad news for fans of The Jumping Burger: the PlayStation Store has excised the game, along with over 1,000 similar titles published by the same developer, in what appears to be an effort to clear the storefront of shovelware.

German publisher ThiGames had its entire catalog of at least 1,196 games silently delisted. The company, as pointed out by streamer and "trophy hunter" RobThanatos on X, published the fourth-highest number of titles on the PlayStation Store. ThiGames has yet to publicly acknowledge the removals.

One quick look at any of these games and it's easy to conclude that they're nothing more than easy ways to farm trophies. "Gameplay" of The Jumping Burger consists of pressing or holding the cross button to make a burger jump up and down, earning a Platinum trophy for players in less than five minutes. A totally separate game called The Jumping Burger: Turbo shortened this process down to less than a minute and a half.

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Ahead of its upcoming release, Prime Video has revealed a first look at Tomb Raider star Sophie Turner. The live-action adaptation is currently in production, and Turner's outfit puts a modern spin on Lara Croft's signature adventure gear. Clearly inspired by the early Tomb Raider games, Turner's outfit consists of rugged shorts, red sunglasses, a turquoise top, and a pair of pistols--standard equipment for dangerous archeological expeditions.

Get your artifacts out. Lara's on her way… #TombRaider #WardrobeTest pic.twitter.com/kDcWhtlR4d

— Prime Video (@PrimeVideo) January 15, 2026

Turner was confirmed to star as Lara Croft in late 2024, and she'll be joined by several other notable actors. Sigourney Weaver. Jason Isaacs, Martin Bobb-Semple, Bill Paterson, Paterson Joseph, Jack Bannon, John Heffernan, Sasha Luss, Juliette Motamed, Celia Imrie, and August Wittgenstein will also star in the series. This is the second big piece of casting news this week, as Prime Video announced this week that Sons of Anarchy actor Ryan Hurst will play Kratos in its live-action God of War TV series.

For her preparation, Turner recently said she has been training up to eight hours a day, five days a week, since February 2025, to physically prepare for the demanding role of Lara Croft. She has also been playing the old games and reading the Tomb Raider comics, but she has avoided watching the Tomb Raider movies starring Angelina Jolie so that she can put her own unique spin on the character.

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As though life in Valheim's viking purgatory isn't already fraught enough, one player is filling his server with Dollar General stores and chain restaurants, to the exasperation of his friends. Just like in real life, the dreary, fluorescent-lit box stores started with just a single location, and have since spread to multiple biomes across the server.

The saga started when X user Greg the Sorcerer, as picked up by PC Gamer, posted a screenshot of a Dollar General store lovingly recreated in Valheim, saying he was "pissing off my friends in Valheim by building Dollar Generals." The attention to detail in the store is pretty impressive, with an eye-catching glowing sign on the front facade and fluorescent lighting in the interior.

Pissing off my friends in valheim by building dollar generals pic.twitter.com/zjAZNPdauh

— Greg the Sorcerer (@gregthesorcerer) January 11, 2026

Complete with obnoxious florescent lighting pic.twitter.com/ZoyQVtJg0F

— Greg the Sorcerer (@gregthesorcerer) January 11, 2026

Greg's friends started popping up soon after, with user Paladin Posting sharing a screenshot of the same building with the caption: "WTF is a Dollar General. Why is it in my Valheim server." Another user, Woman Mage, also shared a view of the building from a different angle with the caption "this is just absurd."

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Animal Crossing: New Horizon's free 3.0 update has dropped earlier than expected, bringing new features including the Slumber Islands, Resort Hotel, and the return of Resetti. One feature players didn't see coming is the brand-new movement system, which allows players to move precisely one square at a time, allowing strafing and even a cute little hop.

The new style of movement has been added to aid in construction and decorating. The options are mentioned as part of a tutorial in the Island Designer app, though some players managed to discover the new feature on their own.

One player posted to Reddit after finding that pressing L now makes your character jump, while others discovered that this was only part of the new movement function, which allows precise movement one square at a time by pressing and holding L.

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This year marks the 15th anniversary of Re-Logic's Terraria, and the developer is still making new content for the game after all of this time. For months, Re-Logic has teased the release of the next update, Terraria 1.4.5. Now, the release date is set for later this month.

On the official site for Terraria, Re-Logic announced that Terraria 1.4.5 will launch on January 27. The studio noted that the latest delay was caused because it needed to, "resubmit a few things, which pushed us back a bit further than expected."

Re-Logic hasn't shared a full list of the new features or improvements coming with the latest update, but it has teased a few during the game's monthly news updates. As an example, villagers will no longer need a house in order to show up in the game. However, they will ask the player to build them a house if there isn't one already.

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