Saturday’s gaming news is dominated by an early wave of praise for the new Call of Duty campaign, leaked footage of a cancelled Assassin’s Creed project, the bankruptcy of the Swedish studio behind Samson, a demo withdrawn over fears of AI copycats, a quick reversal in Wardogs, a large Dawnwalker patch, revived Analogue consoles and Konami’s measured view of generative AI.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s campaign wins early praise from players and critics
The story mode of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 became playable on 16 October for people who pre-ordered the game digitally, and the first wave of reactions has been strongly favourable. Players posting on social media and on the game’s community forums have described the campaign as brutal and intense, and many have put it alongside the most admired stories in the series, including the original Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. One widely shared comment called it the best campaign since the original trilogy, saying it blended the feel of recent entries with that of the older games. The reception stands in sharp contrast to last year’s release, Black Ops 7, whose campaign was among the most criticised parts of that game. User reviews on Steam currently sit in the Very Positive band, which suggests the goodwill is not limited to a small group of enthusiasts.
The campaign moves the action to the Korean peninsula. Captain Price returns to confront Makarov while a new antagonist known as The Archer emerges, against the backdrop of a war that breaks out between North and South Korea. A large part of the six-hour story follows a group of young South Korean marines, together with a handful of Americans, who are close to finishing their compulsory military service when the North launches a sudden invasion. Several missions depict a desperate attempt to defend a fictional city against overwhelming forces, while a later chapter stages a vast assault on a beach. One long mission strands the squad behind enemy lines and gives players several non-linear objectives, optional side tasks and a hideout for crafting better armour, weapons and camouflage, hinting at the forthcoming DMZ mode.
Critics have also responded well. IGN awarded the campaign eight out of ten, with its reviewer writing that the missions made them care about the series again and sent the current rebooted storyline out on a high note. The same review argued that a consistently strong run of missions manages to handle a crowded cast of characters successfully. PC Gamer, in a review that is still in progress, described the campaign as the most enjoyable it had played in the series for years and said it should not be skipped, crediting much of that to the new, ordinary soldiers at the heart of the story. That review did, however, raise reservations about the premise, arguing that the developer once again views a complex foreign conflict through a conventionally American lens, with an intelligence agency cast in a flattering light.
Barry Sloane, the actor who plays Captain Price in the current incarnation of the series, responded publicly as compliments about his performance spread. He thanked fans for their kind words, saying he had seen and read them and was grateful for them. Untagged spoilers about the ending have already started to circulate across social media feeds, and Sloane used the same message to ask players to keep their unfiltered reactions to themselves so that others can enjoy the game in their own time. He signed off with a line familiar to followers of the series. Infinity Ward designed this year’s instalment to bring the current Modern Warfare storyline to a close, which helps to explain why the studio took some bold creative decisions with the plot, and why fans are keen to protect the twists.
The early access period covers only the single-player portion for now. The DMZ extraction mode becomes available to digital pre-order customers on Tuesday, 20 October, and the full game, including its traditional multiplayer modes and the physical edition, launches on Friday, 23 October. The release covers PC, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S. Commentators have noted that a new Call of Duty always generates excitement, but the strength of the response to this campaign comes at a time widely seen as a low point for the franchise. Players who pre-ordered digitally can work through the whole campaign now, a few days ahead of everyone else, and early access to DMZ will give them a first taste of the new extraction mode before the wider launch. Activision and Infinity Ward have therefore had an unusually long window in which word of mouth about the story could spread before the multiplayer modes go live for the much larger audience expected next Friday.
Leaked footage shows a cancelled Assassin’s Creed game set in ancient China
Footage has surfaced online of what is reported to be a cancelled mainline Assassin’s Creed game called Assassin’s Creed Destiny, set in ancient China. The clips were found in the online portfolios of people who had worked on the project and were published by the gaming site MP1st. According to that report, the game was being built for current consoles and PC at TiMi Studio Group, which is owned by Tencent, in partnership with Ubisoft. Most of the material appears to come from a prototype assembled in February 2025. TiMi also worked on Assassin’s Creed Jade, a mobile entry in the series with a Chinese setting that was announced in 2022. Unlike Jade, Destiny seems to have been designed as a full-scale console game with a large open world, which is part of the reason the leak has attracted so much attention among the series’ fans.
The leaked material places the story in 206 BCE, nine years after the 215 BCE setting of Jade, during the turbulent period in which the Qin dynasty gave way to the Han dynasty after a bloody civil war. Commentators have suggested that the plot would probably have centred on the rise to power of Liu Bang, who founded the Han dynasty. In the main mission shown, a female assassin searches for a mysterious artefact inside a sacred palace that Xiang Yu’s forces are besieging. An early version of a boss fight against the warlord himself also appears. Other clips show a male character using parkour to eliminate enemies, which suggests players may have been able to choose between two protagonists or switch between them as in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Much of the remaining footage comes from grey, unfinished test environments used to try out combat abilities. The most striking item is an umbrella that the player spins as a deadly weapon, and the clips also show stealth kills, assassins scaling castle walls and the series’ trademark leap of faith. The interface used ink-brush icons for abilities, along with yin and yang motifs, to tie the menus and on-screen information to the setting. Placeholder videos offer glimpses of different weapons and skills that never made it beyond the early stage. It remains unclear exactly when or why the project was halted, or how far development had progressed beyond the prototype stage before the decision was taken. Because the clips come from personal portfolios rather than an official release, the material offers a rare look at work that would otherwise have stayed hidden from the public entirely.
Assassin’s Creed Jade, meanwhile, is still in development, but Ubisoft has said little about it for years. A report in 2024 said the mobile game had been delayed until 2025, and it has still not received a release date. In March, Ubisoft mentioned the project, codenamed Jade, among several titles at different stages of development, and an executive said it would feature co-operative play. Some observers have expressed hope that elements of the abandoned console project might eventually find their way into the mobile game. The next major release in the series is Assassin’s Creed Hexe, which has itself been the subject of reports about troubled development, including claims that its makers reworked it to remove magical abilities. Tencent also holds a 25 per cent stake in Vantage Studios, the Ubisoft subsidiary that looks after several of the company’s biggest franchises.
The leak arrived during a difficult week for Ubisoft. The company proposed closing RedLynx, the Finnish studio known for the Trials series of motorbike games, and said the closure could affect up to 52 roles. Ubisoft also announced plans to cut 70 jobs at Ubisoft Singapore. Those cuts add to the long run of difficult news surrounding the publisher. For fans of the series, the footage is a reminder of how tantalisingly close a full Assassin’s Creed game set in ancient China appears to have come, even if it now seems unlikely ever to be finished. It also illustrates how much work in the games industry is never seen by players: projects are routinely cancelled after months or years of development, and their only public trace is often the material that former developers later include in their professional portfolios.
Samson developer Liquid Swords is declared bankrupt half a year after launch
Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio behind the open-world action game Samson, has been declared bankrupt roughly six months after the game was released. According to the Swedish business publication Breakit, the Stockholm District Court issued a bankruptcy order against the company on 12 October. Almost 30 employees are affected, and it appears that staff had gone at least two months without being paid before they themselves petitioned for the company to be declared bankrupt. Under Swedish rules, the state is now stepping in to cover the unpaid wages. The administrator handling the bankruptcy is reported to be hopeful of finding a buyer for the business, although no potential purchaser has been named. Samson, released in April, is the studio’s first and only game, and unless a rescue is found it may also prove to be its last one.
The studio was founded in 2020 by Christofer Sundberg, who previously co-founded Avalanche Studios, the company behind the Just Cause series. Samson, which had been in development since at least 2020, drew inspiration from gritty open-world crime games such as Grand Theft Auto and Max Payne. It casts the player as a man trying to pay off a debt and save his sister, combining brawling with driving sturdy but battered cars around a fictional city. One of its distinctive features is a daily cycle of debt repayment, which places real financial pressure on every job the player takes on. Development was not straightforward: half of the team was laid off partway through, and the game’s scope had to be reduced, which led to the unusual structure that it eventually shipped with in the spring.
Samson received a mixed reception. It holds a Metacritic score of 51, with a user score of 5.2, and its Steam reviews are also mixed. Many players complained about bugs and controls that were slow to respond. One Steam review argued that the game felt as though it belonged in 2010 rather than 2026, and said that months after launch the problems the reviewer had encountered were still not fixed. Critics who reviewed the game at launch praised the tension created by the debt mechanic but said that technical faults, such as important characters failing to appear and missions failing at random, undermined the stakes by making players lose jobs for reasons beyond their control. Other players were more positive, singling out the game’s atmosphere and the way it performed on the Steam Deck handheld PC.
Despite the studio’s financial difficulties, the team continued to support the game after release. Several patches have addressed serious bugs, and an update released as recently as this month adjusted the responsiveness of combat and brought a range of other fixes. Earlier updates added multiple save slots, tweaked street races into a reliable way to earn money at the end of each in-game day and introduced special cars designed for drifting. Observers have noted that the developers kept working on these improvements during a period in which they were apparently not being paid, which suggests considerable commitment to the project. It is not yet clear what will happen to it or to future updates if a buyer for the studio cannot be found by the bankruptcy administrator.
The collapse of Liquid Swords is the latest in a long series of studio failures and closures across the games industry, where many companies have struggled with rising development costs, tougher financing conditions and crowded release schedules over the past few years. Small and medium-sized independent studios that depend heavily on the success of a single game are particularly exposed when that game underperforms. Samson’s troubled launch, followed by months of fixes, appears to have left too little income to sustain the business. The case also highlights the protection available to Swedish workers, whose outstanding salaries are guaranteed by the state when an employer goes bankrupt. For Sundberg, a veteran of the Swedish games scene, the outcome marks a disappointing end to a venture he launched with considerable ambition in the year the pandemic began.
Drunken Goddess Reflux developer cancels its public demo over fears of AI clones
The developer of Drunken Goddess Reflux has cancelled a public demo of the game, saying it fears that copycats could use generative AI to replicate it and release an imitation before the real game comes out. Alliance Arts had planned to release the demo on Steam on 19 October. In a post on social media, the studio apologised for the short notice and said it would instead hold closed online play sessions for a limited number of participants. Drunken Goddess Reflux is a horror drinking game, described as shot-glass Russian roulette, in which the player faces a demon woman who is fond of them but also wants to claim their soul. The aim is to make her drunk enough to bring up her soul before she drinks yours, with the rules growing stranger as more alcohol is consumed by both sides.
Alliance Arts gave two reasons for its decision. First, it had intended to release the demo with some restrictions on posting and streaming gameplay videos, but concluded that its current team could not properly enforce those limits. Second, and more unusually, the studio said it was worried that the demo’s content could be used to imitate or replicate the game’s presentation and gameplay quickly with AI or other tools, and that such copies might reach the market before its own launch. It is not clear which of the two concerns weighed more heavily. Some commentators have also noted that presenting a game as opposed to AI, or warning of its harmful effects, has become something of a marketing tactic, though most accepted that the studio’s worries are likely to be sincere in this case.
The concern reflects a growing problem for independent developers. Copying other people’s games is an old practice, and mobile platforms have struggled with clones for years, but generative AI tools have greatly reduced the time and skill needed to produce convincing imitations. In March, a developer who shared a prototype of her game online saw it cloned within about five hours. In another case that month, someone released a copy of the Japanese game Typing Magician that had been created by feeding the original’s progress videos into a generative AI system. The developer of McPixel has also gathered numerous examples of independent games being copied almost instantly by AI cloners and released on Steam. A recent viral game about finding a needle in a haystack attracted so many imitators that the original became hard to locate in the store.
The practical effect, observers say, is that small studios may become more reluctant to share early versions of their work, which has traditionally been one of the main ways for them to attract attention, gather feedback and build a following before release. Public demos, particularly during Steam’s regular showcase events, are widely seen as one of the most effective marketing tools available to independent developers with small budgets. Withdrawing a demo means losing that exposure, and closed sessions inevitably reach far fewer players. If more developers follow the example of Alliance Arts, the open culture of sharing prototypes, progress videos and works in progress on social media could become noticeably more guarded, to the detriment of both creators and the players who enjoy following a game’s development from its earliest stages through to its release.
The game is being made for PC, and the cancellation means far fewer people will be able to try it ahead of release than the studio originally planned. Alliance Arts has framed the closed sessions as an alternative rather than an outright end to previews, which suggests it still wants players to experience the game before launch while keeping tighter control over who sees it and what is recorded. Some observers worry that cancelling demos in this way effectively rewards the cloners by making studios more secretive. Either way, the case is likely to fuel the wider debate about how platforms such as Steam should handle the rising number of AI-generated imitations, and whether stores should do more to verify the origins of new releases and protect original creators.
Wardogs developer scraps its Blue Team bonus after a single day
Bulkhead, the developer of the early access multiplayer sandbox shooter Wardogs, has abandoned a controversial experiment just one day after the start of the game’s second season. Season 2 introduced extra cash and experience rewards for anyone who played as Lonestar, the faction known to players as Blue Team, in an attempt to repair its poor reputation and dismal win rates. The bonuses were modest on paper, at five per cent extra cash and 2.5 per cent extra experience, and the studio had expected them to be too small to matter much for the typical player. In practice, the incentive drew a wave of the most skilled and committed players to Blue Team, which quickly went from being the weakest faction to dominating matches. The studio had intended the bonus to run for about a week before reviewing the results.
Bulkhead’s chief executive, Joe Brammer, announced the cancellation in a video and was unusually blunt. He said the studio had been wrong and admitted, in stronger language, that it had made a mess of things. The top players had been collecting thousands upon thousands of in-game dollars from the bonus alone, which threatened to upset the game’s progression balance, because cash is the main means of upgrading equipment. Gear that normally takes a long time to unlock, including the strongest armour and some of the most frustrating weapons, was suddenly appearing on the battlefield. The rush to join Lonestar also caused practical problems: players would leave servers once the Blue Team slots were full to try their luck elsewhere, and matches were delayed because too few people remained to fill the other two teams.
The bonus has already been removed in a hotfix. Brammer said the only criticism that had annoyed him was the claim that the studio had not tackled Blue Team’s underlying problems. He pointed out that the developers had rebalanced the entire spawn arrangement on the Bakuriani map and had tested the changes extensively, finding that they had evened out the difference between the factions. He said the studio should simply have trusted that work, but that it had tried something, it had not worked, and it was holding its hands up. The spawn changes, which appear to have been more effective at improving the faction’s win percentage than the cash incentive, will remain in place for the rest of the season, along with the other new features introduced in the update.
Bulkhead is also dealing with a separate exploit that emerged on the first day of the season. Players discovered that they could rapidly gather small amounts of experience by repeatedly driving vehicles in and out of a faction’s headquarters. Combined with the season’s more generous rewards for logistical tasks, which count safe round trips, this allowed some people to unlock powerful late-game vehicles such as tanks far earlier than intended and to overwhelm opponents. As a temporary fix, the studio has slowed vehicle progression back to the rates used in the first season while it works on a longer-term solution. The second season also added a new rain system that affects gameplay and a feature that allows players to bet in-game cash on their own performance in a match.
Wardogs remains in early access, and such early problems are to be expected while the developers experiment ahead of the full 1.0 release. The game has sold strongly since it arrived, and Bulkhead has been scrambling to keep pace with its popularity. The studio has also been working to ensure the game runs well on consoles, where it is due to launch with version 1.0, and has acknowledged holding back some features so that it can perform properly on the Xbox Series S. The episode shows how much a seemingly small change to rewards can alter player behaviour in a competitive game built around progression. Whether the remaining balance changes are enough to make Lonestar a popular choice without extra incentives will become clearer over the coming weeks of the season.
The Blood of Dawnwalker’s first major update adds a new Story mode and animal petting
Rebel Wolves has detailed update 1.1 for The Blood of Dawnwalker, its dark fantasy role-playing game, and the patch is expected to arrive next week. The update brings a new Story difficulty with additional help in combat, while the setting previously called Story is renamed Forgiving. That means the game will now offer an easier option than its previous easiest option. The studio shared the patch notes on social media on 16 October, and several of the changes match plans that game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz described in interviews last month. Alongside the new features, the update promises more than 1,100 other improvements and fixes, covering areas such as combat targeting, the camera and movement through the world, so it is the most substantial patch the game has received since its launch.
One of the most requested additions is a way to change character builds. A new item called the Draught of Mind Rebirth makes the player forget all their Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism abilities, so that the time spent learning them can be put towards a different set of skills. This will allow players who regret earlier choices, or who simply want to try a different style of play, to rebuild their character without starting the game again from the beginning. The update also lets players pet dogs and cats, a feature that has become something of a tradition among role-playing fans and that some observers have greeted with good humour. According to the patch notes, players will even be able to choose the direction from which they approach an animal before stroking it.
The patch also tackles a number of technical issues. It includes an update to the frame generation technology used by the game, along with dedicated settings to control it, which should help players on a range of hardware achieve smoother performance. In addition, the Japanese version of the game on Steam will now show blood and gore without censorship, bringing it into line with other regions. The large number of smaller fixes is aimed at bugs and rough edges in many parts of the game, from the way the camera behaves during fights to how the character moves around the world. Rebel Wolves is a Polish studio founded by veterans of CD Projekt Red, the company behind The Witcher series, and its first game has been widely compared with that celebrated role-playing series.
The Blood of Dawnwalker launched in early September on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S, published by Bandai Namco Entertainment. It was well received by critics, who praised its unusual structure, in which the player has a limited amount of time to complete the main story, as well as its freeform approach to quests and its characters. One review described it as a familiar dark fantasy adventure made by alumni of CD Projekt Red, but one with bold and provocative ideas of its own that was mostly enormously successful. The game’s main character can switch between human form by day and vampire form by night, and that duality shapes both combat and exploration. The human form is noticeably weaker, which has made some daytime encounters a stiff test for players.
The decision to add a gentler difficulty reflects a wider trend in the industry towards giving players more control over how challenging a game is. Many studios now offer modes aimed at people who are mainly interested in the story and want to see the plot through without repeated failures in combat. By renaming its existing easy mode rather than removing it, Rebel Wolves keeps the original balance available for players who were happy with it while adding a further step down. The arrival of a respec option should also make experimentation more attractive, since players will no longer be locked into their early decisions about abilities. With the patch due next week, the studio will be hoping that the changes encourage lapsed players to return and draw in newcomers who had been put off by the game’s difficulty.
Analogue revives its Super Nt and Mega Sg retro consoles with modern upgrades
Analogue, the company known for premium hardware that plays original game cartridges, has announced upgraded versions of two of its earlier consoles: the Super Nt+ and the Mega Sg+. They are revised editions of the Super Nt and Mega Sg, which first appeared towards the end of the 2010s and play Super Nintendo and Sega cartridges respectively. Like the earlier models, the new machines do not rely on software emulation. Instead they use an FPGA chip, a type of reprogrammable hardware, which Analogue says it designed in-house from scratch over more than a decade of development. The company promises zero lag and total accuracy, with output built specifically for 2D games at a resolution of up to 1080p on modern widescreen televisions. Both consoles have a redesigned look that Analogue describes as industrial in style.
Compatibility is broad. Analogue says the Super Nt+ works with more than 2,200 Super Nintendo and Super Famicom games, as well as the original controllers. The Mega Sg+ is described as fully compatible with a library of over 2,180 cartridges for the Sega Genesis, Mega Drive, Master System, Game Gear and SG-1000, along with the Mycard adapter, and it can also connect to the Sega CD add-on. Each system has two ports for the original wired controllers, and both come with two cartridge cleaners to help keep ageing games in good condition. The machines also include USB-C and USB-A ports at the rear, which can be used for additional wired controllers or for audio and video accessories. The USB-C power supply and cable are included in the box, so buyers will not need to source their own.
The most significant new feature is wireless controller support. Both consoles include a built-in 2.4GHz receiver, which Analogue says works with several controllers and arcade sticks made by 8BitDo, including its recreations of the original Super Nintendo and Genesis pads, as well as Bluetooth support. Players can also now swap cartridges without switching the console off: they simply need to quit the current game and change it. The consoles can be turned on and off using a controller, and an in-game menu lets players adjust audio levels, resolution and screen size. Games are shown in their traditional aspect ratio with black bars at the sides. The upscaling stops at 1080p, unlike the 4K output of Analogue’s Nintendo 64 console, and the company’s founder argues that two-dimensional games built from large pixels do not need a higher resolution.
Both machines cost $219.99. The Mega Sg+ will be available in three variants, styled after the Japanese, European and American versions of the original Sega console, while the Super Nt+ comes in Classic, SF and Black editions. Pre-orders open on Monday, 19 October, through Analogue’s website, and the consoles are due to ship in December. Analogue’s hardware has often been in short supply, with its Pocket handheld in particular frequently out of stock since its release, so interested buyers are likely to watch the pre-order window closely. The company has built a loyal following among collectors and enthusiasts who prefer to play on original cartridges rather than through downloaded copies or emulation software, and the return of its 16-bit machines gives a second chance to those who missed the originals.
The announcement comes at a time of strong interest in retro gaming, as the original hardware from the 1990s grows older and less reliable and many consoles from that era become harder to keep in working order. Analogue argues that dedicated hardware can preserve the experience of classic games more faithfully than emulation, while making it easier to connect them to modern televisions. Its rivals include official compilations and mini consoles from the platform holders themselves, as well as a range of cheaper devices aimed at the same audience. The revived Super Nt and Mega Sg, with their added wireless and convenience features, are aimed at players who want an authentic experience without the inconvenience of old cables and power supplies. Whether the supply can keep up with demand ahead of the festive season remains to be seen.
Konami’s president says people, not AI, matter most in making good games
Hideki Hayakawa, president of Konami Digital Entertainment, has said he does not expect generative AI to change the games market dramatically. His comments appear in the Konami Group’s integrated report for the financial year that ended in March 2026, and were first highlighted by the Japanese publication Dengeki Online before being translated into English. Hayakawa was responding to the widely held view that AI will make game development much easier to break into. He argued that the barriers to entry have already been lowered by the spread of general-purpose game engines and of user-generated content, so AI is unlikely to bring a major change on that front. He added that even if AI improves production efficiency, the most important factors in making entertaining and innovative games remain people and creators, rather than the tools they use.
Hayakawa described the collaboration between developers from different backgrounds as a kind of chemical reaction that produces new gameplay ideas, and said this is not something that can easily be replaced by technology. He did not rule out the use of AI altogether, however. He described technological change as an opportunity and said that, even with what he called epoch-making innovations, Konami provides systematic support so that its creators can understand new technologies, properly assess the risks they may bring and apply them safely to game development. Observers have interpreted this as a sign that the company is open to using AI as a tool to assist its staff rather than as a replacement for them, while keeping the final creative decisions firmly in human hands, though they also note that the company’s position could change in future.
The remarks set Konami apart from some of its peers. An executive at Electronic Arts recently spoke of applying AI to everything as a way to help creativity and production pipelines, while the chief executive of Take-Two Interactive has talked about AI-driven non-player characters capable of more natural conversations. Several other large companies, including Epic Games and Microsoft, have also embraced the technology in various ways. Konami’s comments were welcomed by commentators critical of the spread of generative AI in games, some of whom described them as a refreshing dose of common sense from a company head. The response is notable because Konami has often been criticised by fans in recent years over its handling of well-loved franchises and its relationship with prominent creators who have left the company.
The debate over AI in games has intensified throughout 2026. Supporters argue that the technology can speed up repetitive work, reduce costs and allow small teams to create larger projects. Critics, including many developers and voice actors, worry about job losses, the use of artists’ work to train AI systems without permission and a flood of low-quality content. Other stories this week underline those tensions, including a studio cancelling its public demo over fears that AI could be used to clone its game, and a publisher withdrawing a re-release from sale after accusations about the use of AI tools. Against that backdrop, statements from major publishers about their approach to the technology are being followed closely by players, workers and investors alike, and are increasingly treated as a signal of how each company sees its future.
Konami is behind some of the best-known series in gaming, including Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill and its long-running football franchise, eFootball. In recent years it has returned to several of its classic properties with remakes and new instalments, a strategy that has been well received by many fans after a long period during which the company focused more heavily on other businesses. Hayakawa’s comments suggest that the company sees the skills of its development teams as central to that revival. The integrated report, which sets out the group’s strategy and results for investors, also covers its other operations beyond video games. How far Konami’s stated priorities shape its actual use of AI in future projects is likely to be watched closely, particularly as competition for players’ attention intensifies across the industry.