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Game

Shovel Knight developer’s Zelda-like game Mina the Hollower delayed

by admin October 7, 2025

Mina the Hollower, the next game from Shovel Knight developer Yacht Club Games, has been delayed but is “so close to being done”.

The Zelda-like adventure was intended for release on 31st October, but has been pushed back without a new release date, though the developer has stated it “isn’t a major delay” but just “a stretch of time to apply some final polish and balancing to make the game truly shine”.

“Our goal is to make sure our development team has the time and resources to deliver an incredible adventure and we will be giving you just that. That’s no hollow promise!” the studio stated.

Mina the Hollower: Release Date Announcement TrailerWatch on YouTube

“We don’t want to announce another release date until it’s submitted to platforms, so please hang tight as we reach the finish line.”

Yacht Club Games made its name with celebrated platformer Shovel Knight, which spawned a number of spin-offs.

Mina the Hollower is a change of pace, featuring a top-down adventure style reminiscent of Game Boy Zelda game Link’s Awakening in a gothic, Castlevania-esque world.

It continues the studio’s penchant for retro aesthetics, then. Victoria checked out the demo on Switch 2 a couple of months back and loved it.

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October 7, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Microsoft confirms Call of Duty DLC discounts with Xbox Game Pass now dropped in favour of reward points

by admin October 6, 2025

Microsoft has confirmed it’s dropped Call of Duty DLC discounts through Game Pass, with subscribers instead earning reward points.

As spotted by CharlieIntel last week, Game Pass Ultimate members could previously receive a 10 percent discount on Call of Duty add-on content. However, this discount has since been removed alongside Microsoft’s decision to increase the price of its top tier subscription.

In a statement shared with Eurogamer, Microsoft has now confirmed the removal of this discount, adding the change isn’t specific to Call of Duty.

The “Best Deal in Gaming” Just Keeps Getting Worse Watch on YouTube

“This is not specific to any one game and reflects all games and DLC purchases,” a Microsoft spokesperson said.

“Instead of a discount on the purchases, Ultimate and Premium subscribers will earn 10 percent and 5 percent – respectively – in points when purchasing select games and add-ons from the Game Pass library. Ultimate members continue to have 20 percent discount on select games from the Game Pass library. On top of that, all Rewards members will earn points when shopping games and add-ons on the Store, while Premium and Ultimate subscribers will earn even more, 2x and 4x respectively.”

Full details on the rewards programme can be found on the Microsoft website.

A further change has been made to the programme, though. Users are now no longer able to directly redeem earned points towards Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. Instead, you’ll need to earn enough points for a gift card in a denomination sufficient to cover the cost of the subscription, and use this to purchase.

Last week, Microsoft announced an increase in price of its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription along with a shake of its tiers.

While it includes benefits such as Fortnite Crew and Ubisoft+ Classics, the subscription now costs 50 percent more than before. This change to DLC discounts is another alteration that will impact subscribers for the foreseeable across DLC packs for all games.

The changes to Game Pass come despite Microsoft making record revenue from subscriptions last year.

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October 6, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

After the Xbox Game Pass price hike, is it time to cancel and start buying games again?

by admin October 5, 2025

Hello and welcome to another entry in our “The Big Question” series, in which we present an argument to you, the Eurogamer community, for further interrogation. This week: After the Xbox Game Pass price hike, is it time to cancel and start buying games again?

What’s all this about? Well, if you didn’t see the news from earlier in the week, Xbox has increased the price of its Game Pass offerings. The top-tier, Game Pass Ultimate now costs a not-insignificant £22.99 a month or about £276 a year! I’ve already commented on how an eventual Game Pass demise might be bad for game discovery, for those who use the service that way, and today we’re asking if it’s time to wave bye bye to Game Pass and start buying games again. Of course, there might also be a middle ground, if anyone is able to see nuance in a topic (unlikely, this is the internet!).

Today, I’m confused as I struggle to weigh up the true value proposition of Game Pass.

No one can tell you what value is, but there’s no denying Game Pass Ultimate is now more expensive than the competition

£23 is a lot of money. Of course, this is somewhat relative, and you might argue that if you are someone with a £500 a month car lease, a £60 phone contract, and £40 a month sub to an artisanal cake delivery company, that actually it’s not much, really – but it is. In the world of entertainment subscriptions it’s a lot.

Netflix Premium, the most expensive tier offered by any streaming TV/Film streaming service, is £18.99 a month. Game Pass Ultimate is more expensive. PlayStation Plus Premium, the high-end option for PlayStation users, is £13.49 a month or £120 a year, which is a lot cheaper than Game Pass Ultimate. So, then you must look at the value, which is almost impossible to say anything definitive on as everyone is different – where I might see a smart addition to the service, others will see a way to charge more for something they don’t want.

For me, I do use the EA Play games as they get added to the catalogue, and I was subscribed to this separately before it was added to Game Pass Ultimate. I also will absolutely get my money’s worth from the Fortnite Crew perk that my son has been desperate for since Epic introduced it. Do I also want Day One Xbox published games? Yes, I do, and it’s probably my number one reason for preferring Game Pass to rival services. Better streaming quality for games playing via the Cloud? Maybe – the jury is still out on how good streaming has become.

Watch on YouTube

Is this enough to pay more than double the £11 for Game Pass Premium or eat the cost of a Burger King meal deal on top of the £13.49 for Sony’s best offering? Incidentally, GP Premium currently lists 373 games, PS Plus Premium (including classic games) is at about 550, and GP Ultimate offers 838. Quality counts for more, here, I’d argue, but there’s certainly some more value on display.

That’s a whole lot of talk without actually making any statements about my future with Game Pass. The recurring billing elephant in the room, and let’s lower our voices a little, is the fact that you don’t have to pay £22.99 a month for Game Pass Ultimate. Just yesterday I added a year to my membership for £135 via a proper UK games retailer that is widely used. No doubt this will increase somewhat in the near future, but I very much doubt I’ll ever pay the full price.

Do I think I’ll cancel Game Pass, then, and switch to buying games? It might shock you to hear it, but I already buy plenty of games. Not many Xbox games, but 10+ a year across Switch, PS5, and PC. I don’t think I’m going to cancel Game Pass and start buying Xbox games again as the service gives me and my family comparatively cheap access to a wide variety of games. It’s also just easy. The games in Game Pass are the games we have on Xbox – play all that take our fancy, and don’t worry about all the rest. I’ve always been quite tight (careful, is perhaps a better term) with money, and I’m not averse to making spreadsheets or performing some scrap paper maths, and £20 I can just file away – that’s my spending on Xbox, done, nice and neat.

-Tom O

The big question, then: After the Xbox Game Pass price hike, is it time to cancel and start buying games again?

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October 5, 2025 0 comments

Phil Spencer appears at the Xbox summer showcase 2025.

Game Reviews

Even The Ex-FTC Chair Is Slamming Microsoft’s Game Pass Price Hikes

by admin October 5, 2025

Microsoft’s unpopular Game Pass price hikes have caught the attention of Lina Khan. The former head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took to social media on Friday to once again criticize the company’s acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard. “As dominant firms become too-big-to-care, they can make things worse for their customers without having to worry about the consequences,” she wrote just a day after the price of Game Pass Ultimate rose to $30 a month.

It was Khan’s FTC during the Biden Administration that sued Microsoft to prevent the $70 billion Activision Blizzard deal from going through. The regulator argued that further market consolidation in gaming would harm consumers, and ended up taking the matter to court. A judge ultimately ruled in favor of Microsoft, but that hasn’t stopped Khan and others from criticizing the outcome in the years since.

“Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers,” she posted on X today alongside a chart showing Game Pass prices doubling since the trial concluded. “As we’ve seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand.”

Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision has been followed by significant price hikes and layoffs, harming both gamers and developers.

As we’ve seen across sectors, increasing market consolidation and increasing prices often go hand-in-hand.

As dominant firms become… https://t.co/FoI50tlEsL

— Lina Khan (@linamkhan) October 3, 2025

A similar point was made when Microsoft raised prices last year. “Microsoft’s price increases and product degradation—combined with Microsoft’s reduced investments in output and product quality via employee layoffs, see FTC’s February 7, 2024, Letter—are the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger,” the FTC wrote last July when it was still appealing the merger.”

Microsoft promised regulators Game Pass prices wouldn’t go up

Khan isn’t the only one going “I told you so” this week. Shortly after the latest Game Pass price hikes were announced, players started circulating the company’s old quotes back during the Activision merger fight. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority also tried to block the deal over pricing concerns.

“Game Pass prices will not increase as a result of the Merger, and certainly will not increase to a point that offsets the substantial benefits of Activision titles coming to Game Pass on a day and date basis,” the company claimed back in 2023. “This is especially so given Game Pass will continue to be constrained by B2P [buy to play].”

In the years since, Microsoft appears to have done exactly that, adding Call of Duty to Game Pass but jacking up the price as well, even though players can still choose to buy the game à la carte for $70 on console and PC.

Microsoft might argue that $30 a month is a fair price to pay for subscription-based access to Black Ops 7 and hundreds of other games. It’s impossible to know without access to rest of the Xbox math, most of which Microsoft stopped reporting to the public years ago. All we know is that according to Microsoft, Game Pass was profitable and generating $5 billion in revenue a year, even before the latest price hikes.

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October 5, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

Kingmakers, the medieval battle game with modern weapons, has been delayed

by admin October 5, 2025

Redemption Road’s absolutely bonkers-looking medieval shooter, Kingmakers, was slated to launch in Early Access on October 8, but now its release has been pushed back with no new date in sight. The developers posted an update on Steam to say that the scheduled launch, just days away, “will no longer be possible,” going on to explain that they need “a bit more time on content polish before we feel good about charging money for it.”

A statement posted by the developers of Kingmakers announcing that the game is delayed

(Redemption Road Games)

Kingmakers has generated a fair amount of hype since it was announced last year, and it sits among the top wishlisted titles on Steam. The game sends players “back in time to a war-torn medieval era with a vast arsenal of modern weapons,” from guns to tanks. And if you’ve seen the trailers, you know it’s not just the concept that’s bananas — the gameplay we’ve been shown so far is completely over the top. In its statement about the delay, the team said that Kingmakers is “an incredibly ambitious, uncompromising game, and we don’t want to cut any planned features, for the sake of getting it out the door earlier.”

“With Kingmakers, we set out to push the Unreal Engine 4 codebase to its absolute limits, while still providing true 60fps to midrange PCs, without the need for fake frames,” the team wrote. “We are an 80% engineering team, who got into this business to push technological barriers. We currently have tens of thousands of soldiers, each with AI and pathfinding that rivals what you’d expect from a AAA third person shooter. When you walk away from a battle, it continues to play out. Nothing is faked.”

The developers haven’t provided any update on what the timeline looks like now beyond the fact that the game won’t be ready for October 8. But, they added, “We will be presenting a half hour long deepdive on Kingmakers gameplay very soon, with a comprehensive overview of everything we’ve been working on.”

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October 5, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

The Bloodlines 2 voice cast features actors from Cyberpunk 2077, Hitman, Vermintide, and Game of Thrones

by admin October 5, 2025

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 – Voice Cast Reveal – YouTube

Watch On

When the original Bloodlines throws John DiMaggio at you right there in the tutorial you know you’re in for some quality voice-acting. The whole cast was stacked with actors familiars from games and TV like Grey DeLisle, Steve Blum, Fred Tatasciore, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Dee Bradley Baker—the list goes on.

Bloodlines 2 may not have Bender from Futurama in it, but the recent voice cast reveal does highlight a few familiar voices. Like Jane Perry, who you may know as Diana from the Hitman series, Selene from Returnal, or Rogue from Cyberpunk 2077, playing the refined Lou Graham.

Or Bethan Dixon Bate, who I spent dozens of hours with across the Vermintide games where she plays Sienna, and who also played Vlaakith in Baldur’s Gate 3 and Princeps Orla Gemnon in the Warhammer TV animation Kill Lupercal. She’s Mrs. Amelia Thorn in Bloodlines 2, running a cafe called Wake the Dead whose sign warns customers DO NOT ASK FOR PUMPKIN SPICE.

If you played The Chinese Room’s previous horror game Still Wakes the Deep you’ll have heard Alec Newman as its protagonist Cameron “Caz” McLeary, though he was also Adam Smasher in both Cyberpunk 2077 and the anime spin-off Edgerunners, and Paul Atreides in the TV version of Dune. He’s Gideon Hall in Bloodlines 2.

One more I was surprised to see: Richard Brake, who you may know for TV and film credits like the Night King in Game of Thrones and Joe Chill in Batman Begins—he was also Corporal Dean Portman in the Doom movie—playing the Nosferatu Willem Axel. (That’s the guy wearing a bomb vest.)

The other thing this trailer shows off is lip-syncing that looks better than what we’ve seen in previous promotional material for Bloodlines 2. The characters still emote in a much more subdued way than they did in the first game, but that seems like a deliberate decision to keep things low-key, at least in the scenes shown here.

Whether it’s actually any fun to play remains to be seen. We’ll find out when Bloodlines 2 launches on October 21.

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October 5, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

‘Payday’ Dev Starbreeze Kills Co-Op ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Game

by admin October 4, 2025

After the success of Baldur’s Gate 3, there’s been talk of Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast releasing more games based on Dungeons & Dragons. Bad news for fans looking forward to that: one of them, a title codenamed “Project Baxter,” has been fully canceled.

The title was in development over at Swedish developer Starbreeze, best known for the Payday franchise and 2012’s Syndicate. In a recent announcement, CEO Adolf Kristjansson said the “difficult but necessary decision” came as the studio is prioritizing a full revamp of its co-op heist franchise Payday. As such, “Baxter” development has been ended, and some of its assigned developers will be “redeployed across Starbreeze’s projects.” Others will be let go and given help by Starbreeze to find employment elsewhere.

“Baxter” was first announced in 2023, with Starbreeze at the time stating it’d feature “signature cornerstones” of its prior works like a live-service model and cooperative play. While the studio’s been quiet on it since then, the game would’ve released sometime in 2026 for “all major platforms.” Around this time in 2024, Starbreeze showed off concept art with a tease that it would show more in the near future.

Dungeons & Dragons is no stranger to live-service games: before Baldur’s Gate 3, there was a co-op-focused reboot of Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance in 2021, and its online servers shut down this past February. Wizards of the Coast, which owns D&D, also cancelled five unannounced games prior to Baldur’s release, some of which were likely D&D games. At the time of writing, a single-player action game from Giant Skull set in the D&D universe—and led by Star Wars: Jedi director Stig Asmussen—remains in development.

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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October 4, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Is Nine Sols currently hiding an entirely new game within itself? Yes, but I don’t know why yet

by admin October 4, 2025

Remember last month when Nine Sols developer Red Candle Games started teasing… something… related to the Metroidvania? That something leaned much more into the studio’s horror origins, and as it turns out has developed into a whole entire ARG. I won’t dive into every last detail of said ARG, you can go down that rabbit hole yourself. However it has led to something interesting: Red Candle Games have hidden an entirely new game within Nine Sols.

To unlock this game within a game isn’t particularly complicated. After making sure you have the game installed, head to the Betas tab in the game’s properties. Here, just type in “shanhaiarchive” and a download will start letting you play what is essentially a completely different, relatively short, first-person horror game. According to the devs themselves, this strange little game tasks you to save someone called Yuuki – the beta branch itself is titled “yuukimindscape.” It’s also worth noting that this appears to be a limited-time event, so if you might want to carve out some time for it.

Also worth noting is that this game-within-a-game may spoil some story elements of Nine Sols, so if this has you so curious that you want to play it even if you haven’t played the original, keep that in mind if you’re particularly spoiler averse. I’ll avoid going into any of that here so that you can experience it all as fresh as possible.

It’s still not particularly clear if this is leading to something else, like a sequel or a spin-off of some kind, but I’m deeply into it. Nine Sols felt like quite the change in tone for Red Candles Games, their first two works Detention and Devotion both sitting in the horror genre, so I’m finding this quite a clever use of their own skills.

In any case, Nine Sols is half off on Steam from now until October 6th as part of the autumn sales, so it’s a good time to get on board the mystery train.

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October 4, 2025 0 comments

Russell Adler walks in front of an oil fire.

Game Reviews

Black Ops 6 On Game Pass Cost Microsoft $300 Million In Lost Sales

by admin October 4, 2025

Last year’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 was the first entry in the hit multiplayer military shooter to launch day-one on Game Pass in what reportedly turned out to be an expensive experiment for Microsoft. According to Bloomberg, making the game available for free to paid subscribers on console and PC cost the tech giant $300 million in lost sales of the 2024 best-seller. That data point adds some interesting context to Microsoft’s controversial decision to hike the price of Game Pass Ultimate by 50 percent this week.

A defining feature of Game Pass was the decision early on to release first-party games like Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite on the service day-and-date. Bloomberg reports that this move was “controversial internally” due to the likelihood of cannibalizing sales of big games that take a lot of time and money to develop. The Verge reported last year that a similar debate arose around the decision of whether to put Call of Duty on Game Pass or not.

The former long-time head of Activision, Bobby Kotick, went on record during the 2023 FTC trial over Microsoft’s acquisition of the company saying that he didn’t think adding games like Call of Duty to subscription services made “commercial sense.” “I have a general aversion to the idea of multi-game subscription services,” he said at the time. “Maybe part of it is being in Los Angeles and having large, big media companies move their content to these subscription streaming services and the business results have suffered.”

But following the acquisition, Microsoft did exactly that. According to Circana’s U.S. market data, sales of 2024’s Black Ops 6 were 23 percent higher than Modern Warfare 3 sales over the same period, but 82 percent of those sales were on PlayStation compared to Xbox and PC. Subscription gaming services also saw a 16 percent jump year-over-year following the release of Black Ops 6.

If the move cost the company $300 million in lost sales, Microsoft would have needed around 15 million players to subscribe to Game Pass Ultimate for one month to make that up, or just 1.25 million over the course of an entire year. The numbers would be more dramatic for the even cheaper Game Pass PC tier where Call of Duty is also now available day-and-date. The price hikes this week change that math. Now, even if Black Ops 7 saw a similar drop in sales, Microsoft would need only 10 million new sign-ups for Ultimate in November to fill the gap, or just 834,000 over the length of a year.

This week’s Game Pass overhaul shows Microsoft is essentially continuing to back off its original day-one commitment. Game Pass Premium is the same price Game Pass Ultimate was a few years ago, but will only get first-party Xbox games a year after they’re out and it’s not guaranteed to get Call of Duty games at all. This might not be the last major change we see to the service in the near future, either. The company is reportedly testing a “free” ad-supported tier that will be exclusively cloud gaming and could keep raising prices on the higher tiers if it thinks a core audience will stick around.

Bloomberg reports that Microsoft CFO Amy Hood has “asked Xbox to find other ways to increase profit.” Instead of growing its share of the gaming market, the company now seems content to extract more from those already paying it.

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October 4, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

ICYMI: the week’s 7 biggest tech stories from Xbox Game Pass’ price hike to foldable iPhone teasers

by admin October 4, 2025

This week has rounded off September, or Tech-tember as we call it, with the last few events of the month, from Amazon to Google’s big hardware and software reveals.

We also watched the internet implode as Xbox Game Pass got a major price hike, leading many to question if the subscription is still a good deal for them.

To catch up on all of this and more, scroll down for our recap of the week’s seven biggest tech news stories.

1. Samsung teased the foldable iPhone

(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)

For ICYMI, we don’t normally include reports based on leaks and speculation, as while they can be right on the money, they can also be way off the mark – even from often reliable sources. We’re making an exception here as Samsung Display’s president Lee Cheong has said that the company is preparing to mass produce foldable phone panels for a North American client, and only one company comes to mind as this mysterious buyer: Apple.

That’s because the long-awaited foldable iPhone is rumored to be launching next year, and Samsung Display has long been making its other iPhone screens.

We’ve heard numerous rumors about what the foldable iPhone might look like, but expect something thin – it might even be thinner than the 5.6mm iPhone Air when unfolded. Pricing-wise, the most recent leaked price we’ve heard is $1,999 (around £1,500 / AU$3,050).

(Image credit: Meta)

The much-hyped Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses are finally available to the public in the US, and you can even book a demo to give them a whirl.

This wearable is essentially Meta’s existing Ray-Ban smart glasses with a screen attached, offering additional functionality such as on-screen navigation, notification pop-ups, and even support for video calls.

But with pairs starting at $799, you probably want to try them before you buy them. That’s why, using Meta’s official scheduler page, you can find a retailer near you offering 25-minute demos. Just be prepared to wait a while, as demos are already booked up for months – although as more stores offer the specs and roll them out to more regions, it should become easier to book a demo slot.

3. We judged an AI ‘actress’

(Image credit: Xicoia)

Tilly Norwood is an AI ‘actress’ from “the world’s first artificial intelligence (AI) talent studio,” Xicoia, and she burst onto the scene via social media to look for agent representation.

5. Amazon announced new hardware

(Image credit: Amazon)

On Tuesday, Amazon held a huge hardware event in New York, and we were right there in the audience, bringing you the full lowdown on every device as it was announced.

Some of the highlights included the Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, which feels just like writing on paper, integrates with OneDrive and Google Docs, new Echo smart speakers and smart displays, three new Fire TVs, and updated Ring cameras and doorbells.

Everything is infused with AI courtesy of Alexa+, and we were able to get our hands (and ears) on everything to bring you our first impressions as soon as the presentations were over.

6. Google Home got an AI update

(Image credit: Jacob Krol/Future)

Google’s smart home tech is finally set to get the much-anticipated Gemini update, which will bring more conversational interactions, improved assistance for setting up your automations, and better object detection for your smart cameras.

Unfortunately, for the best features, you’ll need to start paying for a Google Home Premium subscription – yours for $10 a month or $100 a year (the Standard tier), or $20 a month or $200 a year (the Advanced tier).

The good news is you won’t need to upgrade to the new Google Home Speaker (though you can if you want), as the update will be supported by all of Google’s home tech launched in the last decade.

7. Xbox Game Pass got a price hike

(Image credit: Xbox)

Microsoft set the internet on fire by announcing big changes coming to Xbox Game Pass. That is that a top-tier Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription now costs $29.99 / £22.99 / AU$35.95.

This means that a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate – at $359.88 – costs only a little less than an Xbox Series S – with its recently increased $379.99 price.

Now, Ultimate does come with some useful benefits. It now includes a Fortnite Crew membership (which nets you skins, 1,000 V-Bucks per month, and the Battle Pass), Ubisoft+ Classics (curated classic Ubisoft games), and shorter wait times and 1440p resolution when streaming.

That said, many gamers haven’t taken this news well, with the page players would use to cancel their subscriptions crashing. Yikes! Don’t worry completely about the price rise, as you can still get Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $19.99 per month for now – while stock lasts.

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October 4, 2025 0 comments