Nintendo reportedly look set to net so little from their Palworld lawsuit you'll wonder why they bothered

As with most suits of this nature, the one Nintendo filed against Palworld developer Pocketpair has been going on for a while now. Almost two years, in fact, specifically over infringement of patent rights related to specific mechanics, as opposed to anything like copyright. Nintendo suffered a bit of a loss earlier this year, and now it sounds like the whole thing might only net them what is essentially pocket change (for a billion dollar company, anyway).

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"There's nothing worse than an AI-generated pitch": Bloober, Jagex, 11 bit and indie devs on the bruising hurdle of funding a videogame prototype

Among the worries faced by game developers seeking a publisher is the gamble of a prototype – that is, "a playable build that meaningfully shows what’s good about your game – a proof of concept", in the summary of Suspicious Developments boss Tom Francis. Specifically, Francis says a "prototypable project is one where you can build that in an amount of time you can afford to lose".

Few independent devs have bags of time to lose, and there's no guarantee the labour will be rewarded. And yet, many publishers today won't even come to the table unless they can get their hands on a playable slice of a game. At Digital Dragons in Krakow this year, I spoke to people from 11 Bit, Jagex and Bloober Team, together with a couple of independent teams, about the seeming necessity of prototypes and the associated temptation to knock them together using generative AI.

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What are we all playing this weekend?

The weather has been an unpredictable mess of downpour and blazing sun this week, but Saturday feels like it could be the turn. Another chance for the sun to yank on the starter cord of summer and get that season's engine thrumming.

I simply refuse to have to turn back from another walk around the park because 10 metres from my front door the lovely sunshine is replaced by pelting rain.

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"Pay the gravity tax": In crushing strategy game Asema, your factories will become a vortex if they grow too vast

I like a factory simulation that fervently embraces the basic evilness of factory sims, these games about wrapping a smoking, clanking straitjacket around a realm of organic colours and unsuspecting resource deposits. Or in the case of Asema, around the wonders of the interstellar abyss, and whatever life it contains. "You are old, one of many," goeth the blurb. "There may be an infinite amount of your kind in the cosmos, older than stellar dust. But for you, the only space that matters is the one you can silence."

Gosh, that's a sentence, isn't it? Up there with "Sins of a Solar Empire" in terms of billowing nihilism. What else have you got to offer, Asema? You say you're replacing our beloved conveyor belts with huge railguns, so as to launch resource packages between factory nodes suspended in a 2D gravitational simulation? Yes, I think the grasping starbarons who read Rock Paper Shotgun would enjoy hearing about this.

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Stop Killing Games-backed California bill targeting online game shutdowns "isn't going to be an easy thing" to enforce, says the politician behind it

The main politician behind the Californian bill backed by the Stop Killing Games campaign that's currently making its way through the state's legislature has admitted that ensuring it's enforced likely won't be a walk in the park. Still, Assemblymember Chris Ward is hoping that if passed, the bill - which would see publishers shutting down servers for online games forced to provide full refunds or a version of the game players can keep on playing independently of said servers as part of the process - will have an impact which extends beyond California itself.

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Bounce 2 is a sequel to an Atari "PONG killer" that I'm pretty sure never existed

There's something fishy going on here. Imagine you're me for a moment (sorry, I'm sorry, it'll be over soon). I'm having a browse on Steam, looking for anything a bit different, when you see a vibrant, CRT-interlacing ridden Atari-esque looking game called Bounce 2. I click on, and discover it's a sequel to a 1983 Atari 2600 game called Bounce that was designed to be a PONG killer, only to release during the infamous video game crash. Except I think none of this is true! Well, apart from the bit about Bounce 2 existing.

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Valor Mortis' acrobatic new demo makes me want to believe it's a soulslike prequel to Ghostrunner

I thought I was pretty up to date on Valor Mortis, the Napoleonic first-person fencing soulslike underway at Ghostrunner devs One More Level, but it turns out I’d missed the four seconds of flesh magic hook-grappling in this prior trailer. As such, the swinging and wallrunning elements of the new, much-expanded demo ambushed me like British archers ambushed the French at Agincourt. Yes, I’m aware I’m about four hundred years off that simile being applicable.

Also, there’s another new trailer, and a release date: September 24th 2026. Hang on, that’s the same day as Control Resonant. And Silent Hill: Townfall. And one only one day before Onimusha: Way of the Sword. Which I’m not as interested in as the other two, but still, man.

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