Endless pile of Needle In Haystack games begins to emerge, as viral hit imitator's devs claim their code was nicked by a genAI-using clone

This is gonna get confusing real fast, so I need everyone to lock in for the sentence you’re about to read: the devs behind Needle In A Haystack, which is a clone of the original viral haystack game, Needle In A Haystack Simulator, have accused the developers of another clone of the original haystack game, titled A Game About Needle In A Haystack, of copying their code, as the copy of the copy contains exactly the same error messages as their game “word for word.” Even just typing that gave me a headache, so let’s rewind a bit. This isn’t the first time we’ve covered copies of Studio Bitdot’s viral haystack game, Needle In A Haystack Simulator. After several clips of Studio Bitdot’s incremental sorting sim went viral across social media in August, Steam users noticed that several similarly titled games, with inventive titles such as A Needle In a Haystack and Story of The Needle In a Haystack, had suddenly appeared on the platform overnight. As of writing, I count at least fourteen clones of Studio Bitdot’s original game on Steam. One such game is studio NoGlyph’s Needle In A Haystack, which was released on Steam on September 29.

Umamusume: Pretty Derby premiered in Japan in 2021 as an endearing blend of fandom culture, horse racing, and multitalented singing-and-racing anime girls. Perhaps more surprising was how its developer, Cygames, were able to channel that into a global success in 2023 with the game’s international release. However, it appears the company’s latest attempt to capitalize on this success is under threat, as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns are hindering attempts to get the visas necessary to bring voice actors to the U. S. for a planned concert later this week. Umamusume’s appeal comes both from its gameplay, which sees players train their horse girls (based on real horses) to victory, as well as its music. In the universe of the games, these girls are also music idols, with success on the track being rewarded by a short concert featuring original music. The success of the game has even led to a number of live concerts successfully selling out arenas across Japan. Cygames announced the franchise’s first ever World Tour earlier this year in response to the success of the franchise at home and abroad.

Bullet-dodging PlayStation shooter Saros has welcomed a sizeable Zenith update today, which has the twin aims of making the game both more accessible for those who haven't played it (or are struggling to get into it) and more replayable for those who have. The headline additions are a quickfire boss-rush mode, a New Game Plus mode, an entire new layer of modifiers to make runs easier and harder, and - very appealingly - a slow-mo option to slow the game down.

Saros, Housemarque’s super-tough psychological shooter, is probably still my favorite game of 2026 thus far, even as some post-launch interviews may have thrown a cold bucket of water on the fire in my soul about it. Despite that, I still absolutely loved my time with the game, dodging and weaving through multi-colored projectiles and learning about the no good, very bad things that brought protagonist Arjun to the dangerous world of Carcosa. If you missed the game when it first came out in April, now’s a perfect time to jump in because not only is the game on sale on the PlayStation Store, but it’s gotten a free update that brings a ton of new features and challenges, as well as some helpful tools. The Zenith update features a lot of post-game content, such as a New Game+ mode that is designed to be more difficult than your first playthrough, the addition of new modifiers that let you tweak the difficulty to be either easier or more challenging, and a boss rush mode for those who want to try to face Carcosa’s biggest and baddest in rapid succession. What’s most exciting to me, however, is that there’s new story content in the form of Visions Arjun can collect in the New Game+.

France was rocked over the weekend by some of its most intense rioting in years amid protests over an ongoing cost of living crisis. And in Nice along the Southern coast, one game store employee named Pierre went viral for trying to chase away rioters in front of a shattered Micromania. Video shared on X showed the man standing in the doorway of the shop next to an image of Goku from Dragon Ball Z before briefly leaving his perch to try to chase away some of the people contributing to the chaos. At one point as he’s walking back to the store someone nails him with an aerial kick from behind, shocking the crowd of onlookers. He gets back up and continues standing in the doorway of the Micromania as someone else hands him back his glasses. He told French radio broadcaster ICI that what he did was probably dumb and he did it without thinking. “I can’t seem to intellectualize what happened. Maybe that will come later,” he said (via a machine translation). “I think I shouldn’t have done it in the first place. It was stupid.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4’s campaign is available now in early access, and is arguably the strongest the series has been since its 2019 revival. Those who have played it will be aware that a lot of its heroes and villains meet their end in one of the darkest COD entries to date. It makes it all feel like a bow being tied on this particular storyline. Activision has confirmed a new Call of Duty subfranchise outside of the traditional Modern Warfare and Black Ops rotation is in the works, further signalling that it may be the end of this particular road. But is that Activision’s plan, or if MW4 turns out to be a smash success, will the developer be tempted to head back to Captain Price and gang well one more time? The final mission of the campaign, taking place during the middle of the game’s credits, appears to suggest it might be the end of the line for the saga and one of its most beloved characters. It begs the question: Is this the end of the rebooted Modern Warfare story? “It's a good question, and you'll not love the answer,” Jeff Negus, narrative director at Infinity Ward, told IGN. “I don't know.