Further Xbox layoff rounds reportedly planned for this month, November, and January, while a Game Pass overhaul is in the works

Tomas Franzese is the Weekend News Editor at Polygon, following and reporting on the latest goings-on in the gaming and entertainment spaces. During the week, you can find him working on Remastered, his newsletter about video game history and retro gaming, or contributing to GameSpot and other publications. Previously, Tomas was the Gaming Segment Lead at XDA and a Staff Writer at Digital Trends. Dawn of War is back and ready to fight for the Emperor

Embark on a new adventure with PlayStation Store’s latest promotion, Planet of the Deals, which is live now. Players can browse hundreds of PS5 and PS4 games featured in the deals and which are discounted for a limited time.* You can preview a selection of titles right now with the below list. Then, head to PlayStation Store to discover your regional discount pricing.

Molleindustria called on ChatGPT and Claude for a "tiny fraction" of code Prominent capital-p Political game developer and left-wing academic Paulo "Molleindustria" Pedercini has revealed that he used generative AI tools for aspects of recent ecosocialist satire Future? No Thanks!. According to Pedercini, "a tiny fraction of its code was written with AI support" towards the end of the project, specifically to assess and fix bugs.

Updated: Oct 21, 2026 11:29am UTCPearl Abyss has pulled back the curtain on the upcoming Crimson Desert DLC, Charting the Unknown, revealing what players can expect. Charting the Unknown adds new stories, ocean exploration, romance, business management and expanded housing to an already feature-packed Pywel. We have everything you need to know about the major additions below. The plot thickens… There are character focused stories for playable characters Kliff, Damiane, and Oongka, who, having put the fight for the Greymanes and Pywell to bed, set out on new paths. They’ll encounter allies and threats “both old and new.” Based on the new overview video, these new individual character stories will be relatively involved, with cutscenes pushing the plot forward. Expect a new story for each of the three playable characters. Ocean voyages and shipbuildingThe DLC expands the Great Ocean of Pywel area, which you might have crossed in the base game on the back of a dragon. After establishing the Greymane camp, you can unlock shipbuilding, then gather resources to build your own vessel and customize it before you set sail.

Image credit: Infinity Ward, Activision, Eurogamer. I, for my sins, enjoy parry mechanics. I use 'parry slop' lovingly as a shorthand to refer to action games I want to play which feature parrying as a predominant mechanic. I am also a Call of Duty campaign enjoyer, and those games rarely feature any melee combat, let alone something as advanced as parrying. So, to say I was genuinely surprised to see Modern Warfare 4 bring the two together would be an understatement.

Blake Manor! FF7 Remake Intergrade! Mouthwashing! Microsoft has revealed the second batch of games coming to Xbox Game Pass this month, and there are few genuine corkers, including the console debuts of The Séance of Blake Manor and Mouthwashing, and the addition of Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade - which only arrived on Xbox earlier this year.