Inside sources have claimed that Bungie is working on a third project—codename: Gummy Bears—alongside Destiny 2 (their bread and butter IP) and the still mysterious Marathon reboot. Several media outlets keep close tabs on activity at the Sony Interactive Entertainment-owned studio—"Gummy Bears" is believed to be a "light-hearted" and "colorful" alternative to the other multiplayer experiences in Bungie's stable. Paul Tassi (writing for Forbes) believes that Bungie's "Matter" concept is synonymous with "Gummy Bears"—past job adverts have outlined a "team-based action game" that takes: "inspiration from fighting games, platformers, MOBAs, life sims, and frog-type games, wrapped up in a lighthearted, comedic world."

TheGamePost has chosen to follow up on their previously leaked summertime information with another major claim—multiple sources have alleged that Epic's Unreal Engine forms the technical foundation of "Gummy Bears," a team-based combat title with isometric gameplay. Switching to an outside toolset would be quite an unusual move for Bungie—the veteran development house has relied on its (extremely mature) Tiger Engine for more than a decade. One insider placed emphasis on the new IP being built in Unreal Engine 5 for current-gen platforms. PlayStation-specialist site Insider Gaming has contacted Sony for comment on the situation, and conducted a quick investigation: "As far as the accuracy of this report, Insider Game has yet to verify it with its independent sources. However, a quick look at Bungie's career page shows a job listing for an "Unannounced Project" where the required skills include the ability to code in C++. This is the programming language used for Unreal Engine."

The Call of Duty RICOCHET Anti-Cheat team announced earlier this month that their newly updated system was capable of detecting "third-party hardware devices that alter the Call of Duty gameplay experience" - this makes reference to a plethora of gaming input modification devices including the Cronus Zen/Max, XIM Apex and FPS Boost Strike Pack. All readily available from direct stores, Amazon and various e-tailers. These hardware modules are hooked up to a gamepad or mouse plus keyboard combination, and allow the user to bypass the legitimate control input detection on the host hardware, be it a games console or PC. Stock scripts and macros can be utilized - for example - to boost in-game aim assist to unprecedented levels, mitigate weapon recoil, and add support for mouse and keyboard in otherwise non-compatible games. Anti-cheat software suites have been unable to detect the extra layer of code, since it runs on an external device - until now.

CoD's security team elaborates on their cheat spotter: "Since our previous progress report, TeamRICOCHET has developed and tested a detection for third-party hardware devices that alter the Call of Duty gameplay experience. These devices act as a passthrough for controllers on PC and console and, when used improperly or maliciously, can provide a player with the ability to gain an unfair gameplay advantage, such as reducing or eliminating recoil. Testing is complete: This detection is deployed globally on all platforms. Users across PC or console who are detected to be using third-party hardware devices to impact the Modern Warfare II or Warzone 2.0 gameplay experience will first see a warning about the improper use of these devices..."

We're about to enter the third month of the year and after last week's loaded release schedule, it appears that we're back to more of an average week of new game releases. This week's AAA title is an RPG game from Japan and we also decided to include a DLC in this week's roundup, simply because it's for a very popular game which often has over 100k PC players online, not taking console players into account.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty / This week's AAA title / Friday 3 March
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is a dramatic, action-packed story of a nameless militia soldier fighting for survival in a dark fantasy version of the Later Han Dynasty where demons plague the Three Kingdoms. Players fight off deadly creatures and enemy soldiers using swordplay based on the Chinese martial arts, attempting to overcome the odds by awakening the true power from within.

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Whether Activision-Blizzard's split from Destiny and Destiny 2 developer Bungie was caused by an overzealous grip on Bungie's creative vision or not is something that will likely never be clarified. But one thing is for certain: in the stock market, it doesn't really matter how something happened, but really what the effects are of it happening. And Bungie splitting from Activision-Blizzard means that the industry behemoth now finds itself with one less IP under its belt, thus constraining its revenue sources to a couple of high-profile IPs. Less sources of income = less versatility and resilience to market fluctuations, and that is something Activision-Blizzard was immediately hit back for from investors.

The company's stock decreased by as much as 11% in the wake of the Bungie split, from a high of $51.35 down to a low of $45.19, as investors reduced their trust in the company's profit volume and momentum. It has since recovered, but is still some 9% down. Whether Activision actually expected this much of a fall or not only the company knows. It'll be interesting to see the company's next financial report, though.

Researchers at the University of York have discovered a link between young people's ability to perform well at two popular video games and high levels of intelligence. Studies carried out at the Digital Creativity Labs (DC Labs) at York found that some action strategy video games can act like IQ tests. The researchers' findings are published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

The York researchers stress the studies have no bearing on questions such as whether playing computer games makes young people smarter or otherwise. They simply establish a correlation between skill at certain online games of strategy and intelligence. The researchers focused on 'Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas' (MOBAs) - action strategy games that typically involve two opposing teams of five individuals - as well as multiplayer 'First Person Shooter' games. These types of games are hugely popular with hundreds of millions of players worldwide.