Welcome to the second week of November, which we could call the calm before the storm, but it doesn't mean this is a bad week for new releases. This week's major release takes us fishing in a Lovecraftian inspired world with all that it entails. When it comes to this week's other games we once again have a lot of releases on a single day of this week, but we start off with a psychological horror survival game, followed by some sports management and a pixel graphics Warhammer game. We round off the week with a game that was more popular as a benchmark than a game and a space factory builder. Don't forget to check out this week's other releases as well.

Dreadmoor / This week's major release / Early access / Monday 9 November
Take the helm of a fishing trawler and explore a world flooded by a catastrophic human mistake. Coastal regions have sunk beneath the water, and much of the remaining land has been submerged underwater. Travel between scattered settlements, catch fish to trade, upgrade your vessel, and craft essential equipment. Face mutated creatures across sea and land and move carefully through a divided world where resources are scarce, and trust is fragile. Steam link

SteamOS is now officially on the list of Linux distributions Epic Games plans to support with its new Epic Games Launcher. In a statement to GamingOnLinux, Epic communications director Jake Jones said the launcher is still in Preview, and that Epic plans to "support as many Linux distributions as possible, including Fedora, SteamOS, Cachy, Omarchy, and more." It seems to be the first time Epic has explicitly named SteamOS, which runs on the Steam Deck and Steam Machine. For now, the Preview only ships as a.deb package for Debian and Ubuntu, though Epic says it is testing other packaging formats and will bring back the AppImage version this month. Epic first said a native Linux launcher was coming back in August, and the Preview arrived on October 14.

For Steam Deck owners, official support could mean an easier way into their Epic libraries without third-party tools like the Heroic Games Launcher. However, Epic hasn't said how the launcher will work in SteamOS's Game Mode, and Windows games will still need a compatibility layer. In the current Preview, the launcher handles that by downloading GE-Proton. As for Fortnite, Epic plans to bring it to Linux through the new launcher once EAC Linux v2 is ready, but the new anti-cheat relies on a signed kernel, Secure Boot, and several other security features. Back in October, Epic said the Steam Deck doesn't currently support what EAC v2 needs, and that it is talking with Valve about it. It looks like Steam Deck owners will get the launcher well before they get Fortnite.

Physical copies still make up close to a third of the console games people actually own, according to a new Newzoo white paper produced with support from G2A. The firm surveyed 6,166 "premium gamers" across the US, UK, Germany, Poland, Brazil, and Saudi Arabia in August, defined as players aged 18 to 55 who game at least monthly on PC or a current-gen console and bought or subscribed to at least one AA or AAA title in the past year. Of the console games these respondents paid for outright, 30.4% were physical. That share drops to 11% across everything they play, since free-to-play and subscription titles together account for more than half of it.

Apparently, the most common reason for buying physical is being able to play without a stable internet connection, followed by the feeling of owning something tangible and saving storage space. That last one carries a bit more weight now that game download sizes have ballooned, with GTA 6 needing up to 212 GB on its own. Reselling, trading, or lending games came in fourth, and that is something digital console purchases still largely don't allow. PC is a different story, with PC-only players reporting just 6% physical ownership, although GOG would like to change that.

GOG has long since confirmed that it was working on a Galaxy game launcher for Linux, but it has officially just previewed the updated GOG Galaxy launcher in a new announcement on X. According to the post, not only has GOG Galaxy received a proper Linux version for the first time ever, the macOS and Windows versions have also been updated with a new UI, faster loading, and new library management tools. The new launcher has yet to be made available to the public, even in testing, but the announcement video showed off the new game launcher's UI and announced a 2027 launch window.

GOG.com on XGOG GALAXY is officially heading to Linux. At the same time, we've reworked the client on Windows and Mac to be simpler, run faster, and give you cleaner ways to view your library. Most importantly, our core promise stays untouched: GOG GALAXY is entirely optional. Your games are yours to download and keep through offline installers, exactly as they've always been.

EA has put 25 classic PC games on Steam with a very interesting story behind them. Seven of them are restored Anniversary Editions of Road Rash and six Wing Commander titles. The other 18, which include Theme Hospital, Strike Commander, both Crusader games, and eleven Ultima games, are on Steam for the first time, according to EA. The Anniversary Editions cost $9.99 and the rest go for $4.99, and Steam currently has them at 50% off until November 19. EA returned to Steam back in 2020 and has been slowly adding older classics since.

Apparently, it all started in March 2022, when EA producer Jim Vessella found a storage room at EA's Redwood Shores campus with nearly 20,000 old tapes, film reels, and CD-ROMs, including the master recordings for Wing Commander and Road Rash. By April 2026, around 6,000 had been digitized, and EA says that helped restore over 1,500 cutscenes. Much of the work happened on personal time, with Vessella using lunch breaks and evenings and Brian Barnes spending his weekends on Road Rash, the same pair that helped make the Command & Conquer source code public last year. Fan modders also played a big part, as the Wing Commander releases ship with community patches, and GOG's engineers built the Prophecy edition.

NVIDIA has released NVIDIA App 11.0.9.585, a small update that adds DLSS Override profiles for 19 games and Optimal Settings profiles for six. The list mixes older titles like PUBG: Battlegrounds, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and Dragon's Dogma 2 with Control Resonant, Silent Hill: Townfall, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, Gears of War: E-Day, and Star Wars: Galactic Racer, all of which were scheduled to launch in September or October. Oddly enough, 007 First Light was already listed in the main 11.0.9 release, and Active Matter showed up back in 11.0.8. NVIDIA doesn't explain the repeats, and it doesn't say which overrides each game supports either.

The changelog otherwise only mentions "various stability/security fixes" without any details. This build follows two bigger ones that added significantly more features. The main 11.0.9 release brought DLSS 4.5 Ray Reconstruction and per-game Resizable BAR controls, while 11.0.9.565 added RTX Spark support, a local MCP server for AI agents, and a faster Performance Mode for DLSS Frame Generation. As a refresher, DLSS Override lets GeForce RTX owners use newer DLSS models, or modes like DLAA, that a game may not offer on its own. It sits under Graphics > Program Settings > Driver Settings. Below is the full list of games.

Epic Games's recent proclamation of significantly faster launch times on its new vibe-coded Epic Games Launcher, followed by a Steam update making similar performance improvements, seems to have inspired Microsoft's Xbox to put in the work to improve its Xbox app for PCs, with a new announcement making several claims about improved performance.

Although the claims for the new Xbox App for PC are more ambiguous, with no startup times claimed and no test data supplied, Microsoft says that the new Xbox App launches up to 60% faster, while Home, Store, and Game Pass pages load up to 50% faster, and in-app windows are claimed to launch 65% faster. Perhaps more important than the performance improvements, however, Xbox has streamlined the app, with "simpler navigation, updated filters, and new ways to organize your games," in addition to a more prominent placement for the Friends tab, wider search that covers installed games, add-ons, and people, as well as a cleaner aesthetic that "make the app easier to scan and navigate."

Shortly after the official Fedora 45 launch, Bazzite 45 has launched, with a rebase to Fedora 45, Gnome 51.1, and KDE Plasma 6.8.2. The new Bazzite version lists updated OGC Linux kernels—7.2.15 for AMD and Intel, and 6.18.60 for NVIDIA users—and additional hardware support, including for the Acer Predator Atlas 8 and ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X20, but also for more peripherals, including the Logitech TrueForce racing wheel hardware. The Mesa driver version has also been updated to 26.2.6, InputPlumber has been updated, and CoolerController has been moved to the official docker container, while XWaylandVideoBridge has been removed in the name of stability and squashing KDE bugs. The rest of the actual updates are minor back-end changes, save one.

As per the announcement post on the Universal Blue Discourse page, as of Bazzite 45, Bazzite has become accepted by Epic Games as a signing key provider, and the development team behind Bazzite has added a Linux EAC V2 readiness checker to Bazzite 45. The checker automatically updates the latest Linux EAC V2 requirements and compares the requirements to the current kernel and BIOS configurations—specifically kernel and module signing, Secure Boot, TPM 2.0, measured boot, IOMMU, kernel lockdown, kexec, and BPF LSM. If there are any incompatibilities, the user will be notified by the readiness checker.

Ubisoft has made an offer to buy Arkane Lyon, the French studio behind Dishonored, Deathloop and the upcoming Marvel's Blade, according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. At least two other gaming companies have put in offers of their own, though their names haven't come out yet. Apparently, Xbox is also weighing a sale to the studio's own management, much like how Double Fine and Compulsion Games went independent earlier this year. No deal has been agreed so far, and Xbox reportedly told Bloomberg that it is still exploring options ahead of a December deadline.

That deadline exists because of French labor law. Arkane Lyon's future was put under review in July as part of Xbox CEO Asha Sharma's "reset," and France's Florange Law required Microsoft to look for a buyer before it could close the studio. The consultation was first set to end on November 13, but Microsoft extended it by a month to December 13. Around 217 jobs are on the line. Insider Gaming, which says it confirmed the bid independently, adds that Ubisoft had been interested "for some time," even before Arkane's situation became public over the summer.

Valve now requires developers to launch their game through the Steam client and run it for at least five minutes before submitting it for review, as part of several new additions to Steam's pre-release checklist. It doesn't have to be the developer playing, since anyone's playtime counts, as long as it was logged within the past seven days, or since the last build upload if that's older. Apparently, Valve keeps getting builds that were never run through Steam at all, which is how games end up with broken launch options or missing depots.

The changes are meant to cut down Steam's review backlog. Valve says store page and build submissions have jumped over the last few months, and it's quite obvious why that would be. For Valve, build reviews that usually take three to five days are now taking up to 12 business days, largely because games that fail basic checks have to be reviewed again. Other new checks include at least five screenshots tagged as gameplay, a test save written to Steam Cloud for games that support it, a list of required redistributables like DirectX or Visual C++, and complete achievement setup.

The RPCS3 team says its PlayStation 3 emulator now has zero games in the Loadable compatibility category. In a post on X, the developers said Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 is now Ingame, thanks to an SPU accuracy fix from contributor Yahfz. It looks like that game was the last one in the Loadable list, which is reserved for titles that only show a black screen with a framerate counter in the window title. As for the fix itself, it is fairly technical. RPCS3 now recreates the SPU thread loader and the arguments the PS3's LV2 kernel leaves in Local Store at the start of each SPU group, before the code image loads. According to the team, that stops the loader from getting corrupted.

Ingame, of course, only means the game runs, with no guarantee of being playable from start to finish. It can still have serious glitches or poor performance, so H.A.W.X. 2 is probably not fully playable yet. RPCS3 announced an empty Loadable list once before, around the turn of 2023, so the category has clearly refilled since. When we reported on RPCS3 compatibility back in July, 0.06% of the library was still Loadable back then. Moreover in that time, the Playable category has also jumped from 75% to 80%, which is great news for enthusiasts of PS3 games. The Intro category reportedly holds around 22 titles, many of them PS Move games. That list will probably be the tougher one to clear.

Welcome to November and we kick off this month with a somewhat slow start, as even this week's major release is technically a re-release of a game that's over 20 years old. The rest of this week's new releases includes a lot of early access games and kicks off with a pack of hounds in space, followed by a family friendly, multiplayer life/farming sim and an open world MMORPG. This is followed by an extended medieval city builder and we end the week with a haystack and you get to guess what you have to find in it. Don't forget to check out this week's other releases as well.

World of Warcraft: Forever / This week's major release / Wednesday 4 November
WoW: Forever is an invitation to take your first steps in a legendary world of untamed frontiers, warring factions, untold perils, and unseen mysteries. Experience an Azeroth that grows from the roots of WoW's first age, continually evolving through regular content patches and updates that promise never-ending adventure.

As usual, generative AI appears to be splitting the gaming industry in half. While Valve recently acknowledged the issue of AI-generated clones on Steam—although declined to actually do anything about it—Roblox just published a shareholder letter in which it boasts that "AI-enabled game creation, automation in code generation and AI supported asset creation are leading to an explosion of content" since it launched its AI assisted game builder tools.

The letter adds that over 80% of its top 100 games by hours played in the month of September were AI assisted, while the raw number of games created with its Build generative AI platform topped 70,000 since Q2. Usage of Roblox's AI tools for game development more than tripled among top creators. It also notes that in Q3, two games "created almost entirely with AI" managed to break into the top 20 Roblox game ranking by concurrent player count.

Since Valve launched the Steam Deck, there has been no question that its user-friendly UI has been one of its biggest selling points, with its openness and publisher-agnostic approach coming in a close second. A new Decky Loader plugin makes use of this openness to implement both the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S home screen user interface layouts on the Steam Deck, effectively replacing the stock Steam UI. The projects are available for free on GitHub (as decky-ps5-dashboard and decky-xbox-dashboard, both from the same user. The project lead, kromossomom-debug on GitHub, is a self-described AI user, notably not self-identifying as a developer, and Claude is openly listed as a contributor in the projects, so it's safe to assume they're mostly vibe-coded.

Decky PS5 Dashboard features the rounded UI elements from the PlayStation UI, with square game tiles and a screenshot from the highlighted game as the dashboard background, and it includes info cards under the highlighted game, with detailed HowLongToBeat data shown in the card alongside user play-time, review scores, achievements, and game install size. It also implements the PS5's Media tab, accessible with L1/R1, and it implements the PS5 color scheme across the Steam UI menus.

While the PS5 Linux project appears to be moving ahead despite the original creator's departure, an enterprising group of developers has adapted that project and Bazzite to turn the PlayStation 5 into something approximating a Steam Machine. Being that it is built on the same foundations as the PS5 Linux loader, the same limitations apply, meaning that it will only work on jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles running on firmware versions 3.00-13.60, and there are other compatibility limitations documented in the installation guide on GitHub.

The particular variant of Bazzite being used is Bazzite-deck, which was originally built as an alternative to SteamOS for other x86 gaming handhelds, like the Lenovo Legion Go and ASUS ROG Ally, so by default it boots into Steam Gaming Mode on the PS5. It also offers an optional desktop mode running a full installation of KDE Plasma, which would conceivably allow the PS5 to work as a desktop workstation, as well. Between the desktop mode and Bazzite's handheld gaming mode, consoles running this software mod would have access not only to Steam games but to other game libraries, like GOG and Epic Games.

This Halloween week, GFN Thursday is delivering a fresh batch of gaming treats. Something wicked this blade comes. S-GAME's Phantom Blade Zero launches on GeForce NOW today, bringing a scarily good blend of martial arts and punk fantasy to the cloud. There's also something on the horizon for adventurers: World of Warcraft: Forever arrives Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 3 p.m. PST, with a launch-week access reward coming for GeForce NOW members.

This week's lineup also includes nine games streaming from the GeForce NOW library, alongside new mod support for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Remastered. That means more options to play, with no downloads or installs to haunt gamers' devices. There's another sweet update for gamers in India: The option to sign up for four-month Performance and Ultimate memberships is launching tomorrow. Visit the GeForce NOW website for more information.

Epic Games recently promised expanded Linux support for Easy Anti-Cheat, outlining a new set of standards and native Linux security features that would need to be adopted by Linux distribution developers who wanted gamers to be able to access EAC Linux v2 games. As is par for the course for the distribution, CachyOS has come out swinging as one of the first, if not the first, Linux distribution to explicitly announce support for EAC Linux v2.

The announcement comes by way of a discussion on CachyOS's GitHub. Although its developers have yet to fully implement the new features, CachyOS's maintainers and developers are quick to note that the linux-cachyos-eac kernel will be a fully optional feature for the desktop environment, and that it will be opt-in. That's an important point, because some of the features required for EAC Linux v2 have been quite controversial in Linux gaming circles.

GOG, formerly Good old Games, which CD Projekt Red recently sold to the platform's original co-founder, has stuck to its convictions on DRM-free game publishing, with its latest release, Control Resonant, coming to the platform with no DRM and with the typical downloadable game files that GOG provides. The game also features native cloud saves on GOG Galaxy. The DRM-free launch of Control Resonant comes just over a month after the game's initial launch on Steam, and both the standard version of Control Resonant and the Deluxe Edition are available on GOG. Other versions of Control Resonant on PC use standard Steam DRM.

[Editor's note: Our handheld performance review and in-depth review of Control Resonant are now live]

No Man's Sky had a rough start to life, with Hello Games having had to put in nearly a decade's worth of work to right the ship and get the game to "Very Positive" reviews on Steam. Now, following a handful of significant gameplay and content updates since that success, Hello Games has announced the Forsaken update, a new content update to No Man's Sky that builds on the game's exploration, building, and research mechanics.

The Forsaken update, officially version 7.10 of the game, adds a minimal HUD mode for a more immersive experience, minimizing the compass, hazard protection bars, and mission notifications. Hello Games says this mode is especially suited for experienced players. On the gameplay and content side of things, however, the update also introduces "Haunting Mementos," a new set piece that sees gamers searching the abandoned wrecks, infested outposts, and derelict freighters in deep space for "bizarre, horrifying biological samples."

Valve has a growing AI problem on its storefront, and it's not only that game developers are using AI, which is a point of contention for many gamers but not necessarily the biggest concern for developers. Instead, game developers are increasingly reporting that their games are being cloned by developers using AI to clone games from short demos or PR materials ahead of the original game's launch. There has also been an outcry over the number of low-effort AI-generated or AI-assisted games bringing down the overall quality of Steam Next Fest. As reported by Inven, during a recent panel at the Steam Indie Connect developer event, Valve's Tom Giardino and Marc Wilkinson addressed some of these concerns by developers.

Tom Giardino via InvenWe don't want to be gatekeepers telling developers which tools they should or shouldn't use...Rather than relying on a single mechanic that someone can easily copy, you need to keep growing your game by adding features, personality, and creativity that stem from your own perspective

Epic Games has more and more leaned into AI to accelerate game development, with the gaming giant recently announcing that it was switching to AI-first development and adding a slew of new AI-powered features in Unreal Engine. Now, Epic Games's Tim Sweeney has responded to a Kotaku article about Epic Games issuing a DMCA take-down of an AI-created Fortnite clone, effectively explaining that the studio will soon allow AI training on "outputs of Unreal Engine and MetaHuman."

Sweeney explained in the post on X that, while it currently restricts AI training on outputs from Unreal Engine and MetaHuman, the company is "working to remove this restriction from EULA terms, though each game using these tools is released under terms of the developers' choosing, which can allow or restrict AI training." This has largely been met by backlash from the gaming community, who reject Sweeney's framing it as a copyright issue and describe it as hypocritical for Epic to take down an AI-generated Fortnite clone but also train its AI models on output created by Unreal Engine developers. It's not currently clear if the training data will be kept for Epic's own AI models alone or if it will also be sold to third parties for AI training.

An open-source project called nxnative lets Nintendo Switch games run natively on Apple Silicon, without an emulator in between. Built by developer seedds, the tool takes a user's own game files and prod.keys and turns them into an app for iPhone, iPad, or Mac. YouTuber Andrew Tsai put it to the test on Macs, where Monster Hunter Rise held a locked 60 FPS on a base fanless M1 MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM. Unicorn Overlord, Dragon Quest XI S, and Dark Souls Remastered also ran, though Doom Eternal refused to boot.

Since the Switch and Apple's chips both use the Arm64 instruction set, nxnative rewrites the game's code to run directly on the Apple chip, swaps the Switch's Horizon OS for a small stand-in host, and rebuilds Nintendo's NVN graphics API on top of Metal. Shader translation is borrowed from Ryujinx, the Switch emulator that Nintendo shut down in 2024. The approach itself comes from d2r-mobile, which did the same for Diablo II: Resurrected. The README now lists around 70 tested games, mostly aimed at the iPhone 15 Pro or newer and iPads with M1 or later, and Mac apps need an extra build step. There's also no online play or amiibo support.

After plenty of rumors, Epic Games has finally made it official: One Piece is coming to Fortnite. The official Fortnite account on X posted three straw hat emojis on October 24, along with a short teaser showing the Going Merry, the Straw Hat Pirates' first ship, sailing out of the fog before a joint Fortnite and One Piece logo appears. The collaboration is tied to Treasure Hunters, a pirate-themed mini-season that kicks off on November 1 and closes out Chapter 7 before Chapter 8 arrives. The same account also posted "The greatest adventure of all! 11.1" that day to tease the start date.

It looks like that's about all Epic has shared so far. There's no word on which characters will show up as skins, what's coming to the Item Shop, or whether the content goes live on day one or later in the season. People were quick to point out that the ship in the teaser looks like the anime version, not the one from Netflix's live-action series, so the collab will probably lean on the anime, though Epic hasn't said so. Treasure Hunters also looks set to bring Pirate Miku and Kasane Teto, based on teasers from their official accounts. Of course, this isn't the first time the Straw Hats have touched Fortnite. Netflix and Enthusiast Gaming put out a One Piece Creative map back in 2023 to promote the live-action show, though it had no skins. Players can expect more details as November 1 gets closer.

Welcome to the last week of October and we end this month with what looks to be a big release for those that are into martial arts action RPGs. This week's regular releases are a bit of a mix, starting off with a co-op cooking game, followed by a pixel graphics action RPG and some potentially stolen property. We round off the week with an open world Sci-Fi survival game and a first person dungeon crawler action RPG. Don't forget to check out this week's other release as well.

Phantom Blade Zero / This week's major release / Thursday 29 October
Framed for murdering his master, Soul suffers a devastating wound to the heart, leaving him just sixty-six days to live. Alone and hunted, he roams the Wulin, determined to unravel a conspiracy that has ensnared the martial world. Through rain and blood, kindness and vengeance, he embarks on a journey where love and hatred intertwine in search of a heart. Steam link

The PS5 jailbreaking scene keeps making progress almost on a weekly basis. A jailbroken PS5 can now download Windows games from a Steam library and run them locally on the console, with no PC streaming involved. The tool behind it is Playden for PS5, an alpha launcher from developer leolobato that adapts the macOS version of Playden. It lets users sign in to Steam with a QR code, browse their library, download games, and launch each one from its own tile on the PS5 home screen. Under the hood, it relies on prospero-win, a PS5 port of Wine, with DXVK handling the graphics side. Unlike Linux on the PS5, there's no separate OS to boot into, since Playden runs as a regular PS5 app.

Development is moving quickly. The first public release landed on October 12, and version 0.5.0 added Direct3D 12 support through VKD3D-Proton, which, according to the release notes, opens the door to games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Deep Rock Galactic. Version 0.6.0 followed this week with USB and FTP game imports, 120 Hz output and a 4K resolution option. Of course, this is still very much experimental. The compatibility list has a decent number of working games, mostly older and indie titles such as Half-Life 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and Vampire Survivors, but plenty of others crash or refuse to start.