EA’s Saudi takeover will be "a real waste" if it turns the publishers into a "sequel-and-mega-franchise machine", Helldivers 2 studio boss says

Well, it's happened. EA's thumbs up from the European Commission, the $55 billion leveraged buyout by Saudi Arabia, Silver Lake and Jared Kushner-founded investment firm Affinity Partners has gone through. With the publishers now privately owned and saddled with a bunch of debt, questions loom about what their future will look like.

The CEO of Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead, Shams Jorjani, hopes the answer won't be EA narrowing further into "a sequel-and-mega-franchise machine".

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Big Walk isn't an open world hangout sim, it's a secret Predator game, or it would be if House House would quit fixing the voice volume

You may have heard that Big Walk, the 12-player open world bumble-a-thon from Untitled Goose Game developers House House, is "a cooperative multiplayer adventure about teamwork and talking". You may have been tempted to call it a "hangout game", or the "antidote to friendslop". You may have read that it's a "sleepy, post-apocalyptic Center Parcs resort", in which players kick rolling lamps around and solve puzzles that involve rocks with keyholes. Such laughable fabrications! Big Walk is actually a serial killer training simulator.

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EA have gone private, as Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner's investment groups complete their $55 billion acquisition

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, equity firm Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner's Affinity partners have completed their $55 billion acquisition of EA Sports FC, Battlefield, The Sims, Mass Effect and Dragon Age publisher EA. This comes following a filing from EA to the US Securities and Exchange Commission last week, and confirmation that the European Commission had no intention to stop the deal.

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13th century Mongolian courier sim The Legend of Khiimori becomes a battle against supernatural "poison of the earth spirit" with its Corruption Update

Up to this point, The Legend of Khiimori is a game I've primarily known as that pretty chill-looking Mongolian mail delivery game heavy on horses. Sure it's clearly got some survival elements to it, but the main draw has always - and from what Edwin's told me based on his time with it - been in galloping across pleasant plains.

However, with Khiimori's latest update, those plains have become infected by a supernatural scourge.

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Assassins Creed Black Flag Resynced's Kraken wheel will no longer be "wheely expensive" following the latest update, which will also teach you how to throw cash

Is that a blowpipe on your back or are you just happy to see me. Ah, it isn't a blowpipe, because you've used the latest in an ongoing flow of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag Resynced updates to hide your blowpipe so it doesn't ruin your outfit. No, I don't want you to throw me some money to make up for that joke not working, now that you've actually been through the tutorial for that mechanic and aren't saving up for an overpriced ship wheel.

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Microsoft will let devs bring more Xbox 360 games to PC in the coming years via backwards compatibility, leaked document suggests

Microsoft, they of the recent mass layoffs and reported Israeli military links, are reportedly set to offer devs a chance to bring their Xbox 360 games to PC as part of an ongoing backwards compatibility push.

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The Soulslike genre has grown stale after Elden Ring, and only FromSoftware can take it to strange new places

Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a cliché, a person first compelled to write about games because I slew Dark Souls’ Gwynn, Lord Of Cinder and sat quietly for a moment before thinking to myself, “Hit me, come on, hit me!”. No, I was not okay. But my understanding of games shifted in that tiny university room: they could be overcome, not just completed. FromSoftware’s dark fantasy lands, with their puzzle-box intricacy and dribbly residents, ushered in the "Soulslike" as other developers sought to cash in on masochists like me.

Here I am, still a masochist, still someone who adores a Souls and/or ‘like, but who stares at the offerings nowadays and thinks, "Please, someone hit me". These games have stagnated, to the point where it feels like we’re all waiting for FromSoftware to emerge from the fog and beat our asses in a way we’ve not quite seen before.

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