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Creators

KICK Unveils Refreshed Design Inspiring Creators to Livestream ‘From Every Angle’

by admin September 29, 2025

September 28, 2025 — KICK, the world’s fastest-growing livestreaming platform, today debuted an all-new, maximalist-inspired design that embodies the unfiltered creativity that has propelled the platform to more than 1.5 billion Hours Watched this quarter, nearly triple last year’s number.

“At its core, KICK is about live human-generated content and interactivity, from every angle”, said Ryan Webb, Head of KICK Operations. “The new design captures the bold authenticity of KICK’s creator-first community, emphasizing real-time human connection and infinite content possibilities.”

The refreshed design will be on full display next month at the annual gaming and esports festival DreamHack Atlanta, where KICK is an official partner. Visitors will find a custom KICK booth, immersive gameplay experiences, and limited-edition merchandise.

“We want streamers to tap into their originality and pursue fearless self-expression,” said Webb. “KICK is the home of unrivalled creativity, and our maximalist design reflects that.”
The design refresh arrives on the heels of a surge in KICK growth. Some highlights:

Over 75 million users, almost double the figure a year ago
Hosted MrBeast’s charity event, raising $12 million for clean water and setting a Guinness World Record for a charity livestream

Since its launch three years ago, KICK has disrupted the livestreaming industry, tilting the landscape in favor of creators. Its equitable 95/5 subscription-revenue split and early adoption of multistreaming monetization have fueled its expansion and drawn some of the world’s most-watched streamers to the platform. They include Asmongold and NinaDrama of the U.S., Gaules of Brazil, and Korekore from Japan.

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September 29, 2025 0 comments

YouTube TV could lose Fox channels this week

Gaming Gear

YouTube gives creators who spread covid misinformation a chance to return

by admin September 24, 2025

Google has announced it will reverse a major content moderation decision: YouTube will offer channels that were banned for spreading covid and election misinformation in 2020 a pathway back onto the platform.

In a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee, Alphabet’s lawyers claimed that the Biden administration had previously “pressed the Company” to remove user-generated Covid-19 content that had not violated Alphabet’s policies, and that the “political atmosphere” had forced their hand. “It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content,” they wrote.

Stating that YouTube’s Community Guidelines around election integrity and covid-19 content had evolved significantly since 2020, Alphabet said that, in order to reflect their “commitment to free expression,” they would offer an opportunity for creators to return to YouTube if the rules they’d broken back then “are no longer in effect.” YouTube will also stop using third-party fact checkers, which the GOP and the MAGA influencer world previously argued undermined conservative content that spread misinformation.

“YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse,” Alphabet continued.

YouTube also posted a separate statement on X clarifying the nature of the program, calling it a “limited pilot project that will be available to a subset of creators in addition to those channels terminated for policies that have been deprecated.”

House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has subpoenaed Google and Alphabet several times over the years, most recently to ask whether the Biden administration had pushed them in any way to suppress “free speech”. On Tuesday, he celebrated Alphabet’s policy change in a thread on X, stating that YouTube was making “amends” to the American people by giving deplatformed content creators such as Dan Bongino, now the deputy director of the FBI, a way back on. “This is another victory in the fight against censorship,” he wrote, and laid out Google’s other political concessions, such as joining the American right-wing in opposition to European content moderation laws, which they claim censor American free speech.

Alphabet is also currently dealing with antitrust lawsuits from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, which have not let up under the Trump administration. Itrecently got a slight reprieve in its search results trial, when a federal judge ruled that Google is allowed to keep Chrome despite holding an illegal monopoly on search engines. In another case, after being found guilty of holding an illegal monopoly in digital advertising, Google is now arguing in federal court that its lucrative ad tech business should not be broken up.

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September 24, 2025 0 comments

Esports

How big is Baby Steps? Creators joke they don’t want you to see it all

by admin September 23, 2025

Just how big is Baby Steps? Well, we spoke to the creators to find out, and they warned against any one person trying to see and do it all. Nate’s poor legs can’t hack a 100-hour grind.

Baby Steps is now out in the wild, and thousands are exploring its vast open-world void of objective markers. While there is a golden path of sorts to follow, it’s all about getting lost off the main track and seeing what secrets are out there. If you can stay on your two feet, that is.

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But after veering off course for 20 hours or so, you might be wondering just how big the game really is. How much content is there crammed into this one open world? How many challenges have you still not found? And most importantly, how many hats are there to find?

While we don’t quite have all the answers, we caught up with the game’s creators to glean some insight and learn about the sheer scope of the experience.

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How big is Baby Steps?

There’s no clear answer, and there may never be. Baby Steps is a unique case, in that depending on your skill, and a little bit of luck, your time spent might be vastly different from someone else.

For one player, it might take 20 hours to cruise through the main path. For another, it might take 50 if they struggle. Factoring in detours and optional content only makes the equation even more complicated.

For developer Gabe Cuzzillo, he joked that the game is simply “too big” when we interviewed him. In fact, he advised against trying to conquer each and every little challenge. “You shouldn’t do that,” he said with a laugh.

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In terms of a raw hour count, Cuzzillo suggested it could take “maybe 100 hours” depending again on your level of skill.

The real differentiating factor is just how you struggle with the game’s more difficult tasks. Some obstacles aren’t too much of a challenge, but others could have you stumped for hours on end, losing progress each time you fall. So, not only do you have to put the time in, but you really have to master the game’s awkward movement too.

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“Yeah, if you were really to see everything, you’d be doing some very hard stuff,” Bennett Foddy stressed.

“But we’re trying to let people have enough options to dial in the intensity for themselves. You can have a pretty chill one or exploring every inch. It would be pretty spicy to see everything.”

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Creators of Reigns, Streets of Rage and Saturnalia launch Palestinian Voices in Gaming to support indies from Gaza and the West Bank

by admin September 19, 2025

A group of game industry folks including Reigns studio Nerial, Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione and Streets Of Rage 4 outfit Lizardcube have launched Palestinian Voices in Gaming, an international volunteer network to support current and emerging independent Palestinian developers.

First convened in May 2024, the network are currently looking to connect Palestinian game devs with volunteers and funding partners. They’ll provide administrative help to any developer trying to get access to funding, and assistance managing resources and volunteer contributions, once secured. They aim to follow and boost each project from “production to announcement to publication”, and are already working with a range of smaller independent games, many of which explore recollections of pain and loss through speculative fiction and fantasy.

Dreams on a Pillow | Image credit: Rasheed Abu-Eideh

As you might expect, the network is a response to Israel’s on-going mass killing and dispossession of Palestinians in Gaza, which has now formally been defined as a genocide by a UN inquiry, together with the long-term killing, oppression and mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and inside Israel’s own borders.

“The dehumanisation of Palestinians is tied to their rare visibility in the cultural sphere,” the organisers note on their website. “This dehumanisation costs lives – as the world remains indifferent to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to the surge of violent oppression across the West Bank and inside Israel.

“We want to push against the dehumanisation of Palestinians, not simply through representation but also through professional and economic support, so that Palestinian game developers may tell their own stories and reach global audiences.”

Being 2 | Image credit: Iasmin Omar Ata / Delta

Among the Palestinian game developers PVG are working with is Iasmin Omar Ata, whose forthcoming sci-fi adventure novel Being 2 is set in a Palestinian space colony. “You would have to fix the space colony during a black out, which would lead to flashbacks/hallucinations allowing to see past memories of Palestine,” reads a summary from the developer’s portfolio.

Another partner developer, Yusra, is working on RiYafa (pictured in this article’s header), an underwater experience “that combines testimony and symbolism to tell the story of her family and community based in the West Bank”, in the words of a press release.

Yasmine Batniji’s Pomegranates is also set in the future. “Travel to the year 2048 and play as a memory keeper in the reclaimed and rebuilt Gaza City,” reads the summary. “You will be tasked with tracing echoes of the current war at the renovated Al-Ahli hospital.” You can find a version of it on Itch.io.

Image credit: Yasmine Batniji / Gabbah Baya

Lastly, there’s Rasheed Abueideh, creator of Liyla and the Shadows of War and the forthcoming Dreams on a Pillow. Nic interviewed Abueideh about the latter game last year – amongst other things, they discussed the absence of support structures for Palestinian game developers in the occupied West Bank. “You need to experiment many things, and you have to make many iterations to reach something that is beautiful and people can actually enjoy,” Abueideh told Nic. “And to do this, you need an ecosystem that helps you.”

If you’d like to apply for support from the network, you can do so via this form. If you’d like to sign up as a volunteer, you can do so here.

The games industry at large has a… complicated relationship with Palestine. While many large publishers halted game sales in Russia following the outbreak of a murderous invasion of Ukraine, there hasn’t been a similar wave of divestment from Israel, even given some well-supported accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

In particular, Microsoft and Xbox are the subject of a boycott in response to their alleged collaborations with the Israeli military to surveil and target Palestinians using cloud technology and generative AI. Nic and I recently interviewed a number of people participating in the boycott, amongst them a former Microsoft developer who called attention to Microsoft’s “double standard” toward internal discussion of Israel and Palestine. Microsoft declined to comment on this allegation when approached by RPS.

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September 19, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Fortnite creators will soon be able to sell in-game items to make more money, but are Creative Mode offerings like Steal A Brainrot what players want?

by admin September 18, 2025

Epic will soon allow Fortnite developers to sell in-game items from their Fortnite islands, allowing creators to make more money.

This will begin in December 2025, and for the first year developers will earn 100 percent of the V-Bucks value from sales – usually this is at 50 percent.

The news comes as Fortnite’s Creative Mode of fan-made content is proving exceptionally popular – recently, the Fortnite version of Roblox meme game Steal A Brainrot had more concurrent players than Epic’s official maps.

The Power of Megazord | Fortnite Battle Royale Gameplay TrailerWatch on YouTube

Fortnite’s Creative Mode first launched back in 2018, and allows players to create their own maps and modes. Epic then offers a payout based on engagement – last year it paid out $325m to creators, with seven receiving over $10m.

Since Creative Mode’s release, Epic has revealed, players have spent over 11.2bn hours across 260,000 creator-made islands, resulting in $722,000,000 paid to creators.

The amount of money creators will make in Fortnite is only going to increase when they’re able to sell in-game items directly from their islands, in addition to receiving an engagement payout from Fortnite’s item shop sales.

Epic has a formula for calculating the V-Bucks value in US dollars each month, which takes all real-money spending towards V-Bucks (in dollars), subtracting platform and store fees, and dividing by total V-Bucks spent. With creators usually earning 50 percent of V-Bucks value from sales, this equates to 37 percent of retail spending. Roblox offers 25 percent, by way of comparison.

In addition, Epic will add a Sponsored Row to Fortnite’s Discover, meaning creators can pay for increased visibility by bidding for placement in the row. That’s a further investment in generating more in-game sales.

Epic has also announced Fortnite Creator Communities, to allow creators to share updates directly with players on the web and within Fortnite. Creator posts will be text and image-based and allow for sharing information and gathering feedback – much like on Steam.

Image credit: Epic

But despite the huge success of creator islands, is this really what Fortnite players want?

Take Steal A Brainrot. It’s proven to be a phenomenal success – as Dexerto reported, it had 24 million players in a single day across both Roblox and Fortnite versions. While the Roblox version peaked at 23.4 million players in a day, Fortnite’s version contributed 542,000. That vastly outweighs Fortnite’s primary Battle Royale modes that generate around 100,000 players during peak weekend play.

“They are promoting AI slop, copy and paste creative maps more than their own BR season,” wrote one player on reddit. “This is going to prove to be extremely unhealthy for the game in general I believe, and with the already low player counts this season Epic needs to do something to steer back to the basics, this metaverse stuff has RUINED Fortnite. This game has become a corporate shell of what it once was and I believe the remainder of this year will very much so make or break Fortnite as a whole.”

“Stuff like this cluttering the overview makes me disinterested in random creative maps. Those who put genuine effort into their maps often get hardly any attention,” wrote a user on a separate reddit post. Others point to the casual nature of user-made maps, as well as the high XP offered, as reasons for players to flock over.

Still, this new update for Fortnite creators is further shifting the game away from its Battle Royale roots into a Roblox-rivalling metaverse.

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September 18, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Epic will let Fortnite creators sell in-game items in latest attempt to compete with Roblox

by admin September 18, 2025

Creators building experiences in Fortnite are getting a new way to earn revenue. Epic says developers will soon have the ability to make and sell in-game items in Fortnite, and earn a cut of the V-Bucks users spend to buy them. Previously, developers only earned money through Fortnite based on the amount of time users spent on their “islands,” the in-game name for third-party experiences creators can offer through Fortnite.

Developers will be able to create their consumable and durable in-game items using soon-to-be-released tools in Unreal Editor for Fortnite and a new “Verse-based API,” according to Epic. The company also plans to be generous with the revenue split its offering, at least at first. Developers “will ordinarily earn 50 percent of the V-Bucks value from sales in their islands,” but from December 2025 through the end of 2026, they’ll get to keep 100 percent.

Epic says its 50 percent cut — notably more than the 30 percent popularized by Apple’s App Store — is to help “contribute to server hosting costs, safety and moderation costs, R&D and other operating expenses” of running Fortnite. It’s also a make-good of sorts, since Epic claims it’s been “investing and operating the business at a loss.”

How much 100 percent or 50 percent of “V-Bucks value” actually equals in real money unfortunately isn’t as simple as converting Fortnite’s digital currency to dollars, though. Epic offers the following explanation for how it calculates V-Bucks value:

To determine the V-Bucks value in US dollars in a given month, we take all customer real-money spending to purchase V-Bucks (converted to US Dollars), subtract platform and store fees (ranging from 12 percent on Epic Games Store to 30 percent on current consoles), and divide it by the total V-Bucks spent by players. Fortnite’s average platform and store fees are currently 26 percent (with specific fees ranging from 12 percent on the Epic Games Store to 30 percent on console platforms). So, 50 percent of V-Bucks value translates to ~37 percent of retail spending, and 100 percent of V-Bucks value translates to ~74 percent.

Alongside the new ability to create in-game items, Epic says Fortnite developers will be able to pay to be featured in a new “Sponsored row” inside Fortnite‘s Discover feed. And to better engage new and returning players, developers are also getting access to new tools for creating community forums and sharing updates on their islands.

All of these changes are in service of further extending Fortnite‘s ability to act as a platform for games and social experiences, rather than just a battle royale game (with racing, rhythm game and LEGO spin-offs). Epic clearly wants Fortnite to be Roblox, and reap the benefits of having an active community of adult and child users creating experiences for its platform. Cultivating that audience has led to all sorts of child safety problems for Roblox, but Epic clearly views the risks to be worth it.

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September 18, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Bayonetta and Devil May Cry creator Hideki Kamiya believes Japanese publishers are “more understanding toward creators,” as layoffs continue to rock the games industry

by admin September 15, 2025

Japanese publishers are “more understanding toward creators,” said Hideki Kamiya, which partly explains why there have been fewer layoffs in the Japanese games industry.

Speaking to VGC, the Bayonetta and Devil May Cry creator discussed the current state of the industry and the difference between eastern and western studios.

“What it feels like when working with Japanese publishers is that the development culture feels closer to mind, and they tend to be more understanding toward creators,” said Kamiya, who’s worked with multiple publishers on both sides of the globe.

Okami sequel – Project Teaser TrailerWatch on YouTube

“I think of game development as a kind of invention,” he continued, using the likes of Bayonetta’s Witch Time and Okami’s Celestial Brush as examples. “My goal is always to build in a unique mechanic that only that game can have. On the Japanese side, my impression is that they see you’re trying to make a new invention. They understand the struggle of trying to give birth to something new, and they watch over the process with patience.”

By comparison, western publishers prefer the “sense of safety following an established format”.

“That’s where I see there’s a difference with publishers,” said Kamiya. “For foreign companies, if you’re trying to invent something new, because the shape of it isn’t clear yet, there tends to be pressure, like ‘show us something that’s taken shape more’. And if you look at the games themselves, like how first-person shooters were the popular thing for a while, I get the impression that they feel a sense of safety following an established format.”

Kamiya used Scalebound as an example – the Xbox One exclusive was a joint project between PlatinumGames and Microsoft but was ultimately cancelled. Here, the team was building a system to control both a human protagonist and a dragon simultaneously. “But there was no clear reference or format for us to follow for a game like that,” said Kamiya. “And I think that’s why it was easy for some to have doubts.”

And while Kamiya doesn’t believe Scalebound would’ve been published had it had a Japanese publisher, he did admit “it would’ve been different.”

“Japanese companies tend to be more open to new challenges, and I think the conversations would have been more positive, like, ‘Okay, so how should we approach this together?’,” said Kamiya. “For me personally, overseas publishers seem to have a much stronger desire to see a finished product as quickly as possible. If it had been a Japanese publisher, I feel they might have given us more leeway.”

Speaking on his desire to protect his new studio from layoffs, Kamiya said: “We really have a deep commitment to keep the company going for [our staff], who we’re grateful to. Of course, I understand there are circumstances that force large companies to make layoffs, but for us, that’s a route that we don’t want to go down. We want to take care of our staff.”

Kamiya has recently founded a new studio, Clovers, which is developing a sequel to Okami with Capcom. Back in March he joked about resurrecting Scalebound.

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September 15, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Roblox announces new AI tools for creators

by admin September 11, 2025

Roblox Corporation has announced a suite of new tools designed to help creators “bring to life compelling content, scale their audience, increase their earning potential, and build successful businesses.”

The company announced the “new innovations” during its 11th annual Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) on September 5, 2025, revealing a number of AI updates that aim to “offer creators artistic freedom, enhanced functionality, and smarter development assistance.”

As part of these AI updates, Roblox Corporation is “advancing generative AI with 4D object creation.”

The company clarifies that, in this case, the fourth wall is interaction, with this new tool allowing for “interaction between objects, environments, and people, providing models with built-in functionality.”

This 4D Objects tool will have a limited release and is coming in Q4 2025.

The company is also building upon the AI-powered real-time text chat translation tool it released in February 2024.

Roblox Corporation plans to roll out real-time voice chat translation next year, which will allow those who speak English, Spanish, French, and German to voice chat, with the AI tool translating their words into the listener’s native language.

In addition, these updates will add text-to-speech and speech-to-text application programming interfaces (APIs) to the platform.

The text-to-speech API is currently in limited release and can convert text to audio from ten preset voices. The speech-to-text API, on the other hand, allows users to trigger actions with verbal commands, which Roblox said “powers a new level of immersion and accessibility.” A limited release of this tool will be rolled out “by the end of the year.”

These new AI capabilities also include assistant improvements. Assistant, which allows Roblox creators to use plain language to code, is “more agentic and context aware,” but it will also become compatible with the model context protocol (MCP) later this month.

“This is significant because in addition to operating as an MCP server, assistant will be able to act as a client and orchestrate work across popular third-party services like Figma and Blockade Labs,” Roblox said.

Alongside these AI-based tools, Roblox Corporation unveiled advancements to performance and fidelity “to expand into new genres and novel types of gameplay,” including avatar improvements, a new server authority mode, and enhanced engine performance.

The company also announced a new short-form video experience, Roblox Moments (beta), that aims to help creators grow and engage their audiences, and an increase to its Developer Exchange Program (DevEx) rate, which will see creators earning 8.5% more when they turn their earned Robux into cash.

According to Roblox Corporation, in the 12 months ending June 30, 2025, Roblox creators earned over $1 billion via DevEx and “are on track to exceed this in 2025.”

“Our goal is for developers to have the opportunity to transform their ideas into growing businesses,” said Nick Tornow, Roblox senior vice president of engineering.

“Time and again, we see that when we give our creators powerful tools and opportunities, they create things that inspire us by pushing the boundaries of creative possibility.

“At Roblox, better tools, including many with AI capabilities, will help creators get from idea to shared reality faster.”

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September 11, 2025 0 comments

5 Things We Loved, 3 Things We Didn't About 'Wednesday' Season 2 Part 2

Product Reviews

The Creators of ‘Wednesday’ Tease Their Season 3 Plans

by admin September 8, 2025

The second season of Netflix’s Wednesday came to a close earlier this week, and with season three on the way, creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar have just one objective: “Make it the best season of [the show] we possibly can, and continue digging deeper into our characters,” according to Millar.

In a recent Tudum blog, the duo teased some things viewers can expect the third time around. While keeping mum on spoilers, they told audiences to examine season two’s final episode, which lays “a nice breadcrumb that leads audiences to wonder…what the new adventure for Wednesday will be.” Things ended with Nevermore Academy shut down, giving Wednesday the freedom to go with with Fester and Thing to find Enid up north. But finding her missing ahem, friend isn’t the only thing she’ll have to contend with: in the episode’s final moments, Wednesday’s maternal aunt Ophelia, who she previously had a vision about, used her blood to write of the Addams’ daughter’s death.

What’s coming for Wednesday that Ophelia knows about? Millar and Gough didn’t say, but they promised viewers would see and learn more of the Addams’ extended family. More light will also be shed on Nevermore—maybe paving the way for a spinoff starring another Addams? Either way, Millar and Gough called the show “such an alchemy of writing, directing, acting, crew, streamer, studio, and fans. We remain grateful and excited to continue this journey and tell these stories with all of our partners.”

No release window for Wednesday season three yet, but we’ll have more on it as news emerges.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

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September 8, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

The Binding of Isaac creator’s Mewgenics finally gets a release date, almost 13 years after it was announced

by admin September 5, 2025

Mewgenics finally has a release date! The endless cat breeding RPG from The Binding of Isaac’s Edmund McMillen will be released on 10th February, 2026 on PC. That’s over 13 years since its original announcement!

Alongside this announcement, McMillen (one half of the Mewgenics team) released a gameplay reveal on his personal YouTube account. It’s a whopping 50-minutes long, and showcases how the much-anticipated indie will actually play. You can check it out yourself down below.

For those unaware, Mewgenics has been on a bizarre development journey. First revealed in 2012 after the smash hit Super Meat Boy, the game was described as the “strangest project” McMillen had ever worked on. However, this version of Mewgenics was shelved and ultimately cancelled, with McMillen focusing on The Legend of Bumbo until 2018 when he acquired the rights for Mewgenics from Team Meat and began development on the game alongside Tyler Glaiel.

Watch on YouTube

So it’s been a wild one. Still, it’s awesome to see Mewgenics nearly at the finish line. McMillen and Glaiel are well-respected for good reason. Here’s to a future full of weird and wonderful cats

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments