Here's our second wave of Xbox Game Pass games for October 2026

Sam covers TV, movies, games and books at Polygon, making recommendations about what to watch and play while interviewing actors, writers, and designers about their work. She has spent 15 years working as a journalist and critic, with bylines across numerous publications including IGN, GamesRadar+, The A. V. Club, The Verge, and Windows Central. The indie horror game perfectly combines mood and mechanics

Umamusume: Pretty Derby fans in the U. S. were supposed to be treated to their first home concert this week during the game’s world musical tour. But an issue with getting visas granted in Trump’s America forced the last minute cancelation of the anime horse girl event. Fans have been distraught, but gacha game maker Cygames is trying to make it up to them with an unusually gracious refund policy. Umamusume: Pretty Derby is a game where you bet on races except instead of horses running it’s anime girls. The game has been a huge success and a passionate fan base has grown up around in since the 2025 release. Having won mobile GOTY at last year’s Game Awards, this fall’s concert tour was something of a victory lap for fans to be able to celebrate over 12 months of sports anime life sim gambling. But Cygames announced at the last minute that it was unable to get all of the paperwork necessary for its performers to enter LA for the concert series this week. “Thank you so very much for trying, it’s heart-breaking but we know you tried until the very end,” one fan wrote on X. “This is not the America I wanted to live in,” another wrote. Some blamed the Trump administration.

Christofer Sundberg's already thinking about life beyond Liquid Swords Over the weekend, Swedish reports revealed that Samson studio Liquid Swords have gone bankrupt less than a year after releasing their debut crimebrawler. Founder and former Just Cause lead Christofer Sundberg subsequently confirmed that Liquid Swords are headed for closure. However, he was also quick to make clear that he won't be disappearing from game development, announcing plans to form a new studio that he's now offered a bit more insight on.

Right, let's get one important thing out of the way first: I've played a fair bit more of Dawn of War 4's main campaign, after my initial impressions of a single mission last year, and I think it is very good. The action is as screen-filling as ever, the Orks are a delight, and the combat director, which sees individual combatants lock onto each other with bespoke animations when groups fight in melee, remains a genuine feat of RTS engineering. I'll have much more to say on that front soon, though I'd like a little more time with it first. And so, in the meantime, I bring huge* news.

CD Projekt Red loremaster Patrick Mills has revealed the exact year Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 takes place, amid speculation from fans about what it means for the ending of Cyberpunk 2077. According to Mills, Season 2 takes place not long after you bite the bullet and finally meet Hanako at Embers in Cyberpunk 2077. "Ok so the thing is that I am seeing a lot of people assuming S2 takes place before 2077 but it doesn't, it takes place in 2078," Mills confirmed in a post on Bluesky. "Moving things forward, time doesn't stop in Cyberpunk. "Mills previously posted about a misunderstanding he had seen in early reviews of the series, but wanted to wait until it was out before dropping a truth nuke. In Edgerunners Season 2, powerful corporation Arasaka doesn’t quite have the same pull it did during the events of Cyberpunk 2077, which is a hint that the anime takes place after the events of the game. There are also some other smaller and bigger details, but like the loremaster, I don’t want to spoil things for you. Now they know Edgerunners 2 is set just a year after the events of Cyberpunk 2077, fans are trying to work out what it means for the plot of the game.

I may have set my expectations for Dawn of War 4 too high, but it's a series that, to my mind, never retreads the same ground. It's therefore been disappointing to feel, having played it across two its campaigns that this long-awaited sequel may have taken too few risks - or been too reverent of the games that came before. Back in the hands of Relic Entertainment, the original Dawn of War was closest to a traditional RTS game. Yet its use of cover mechanics, unit customisation, and onscreen violence felt distinctly new compared to other games I was playing at the time. As someone who'd grown up on Age of Empires and Command & Conquer, seeing units pair off and take part in animated scuffles brought the battlefield to life, especially after spending years of Saturday afternoons sliding static Warhammer figurines around a tabletop.