A little over a year ago, Nexus Mods changed hands, with the new owner and lead developer promising to keep the ship running without changing the core philosophy of Nexus Mods. Now, in a year-one update blog, the new owner, Victor Folmann, has detailed his plans for the mod platform going forward.

One of the major points Folmann brought up in his update was the future of Nexus Mods, with planned changes including a wholesale redesign of the Nexus Mods infrastructure. According to Folmann, Nexus Mods "has been modeling mods as files," and he goes on to explain that "Mods are not files. Mods are systems." In order to address this, Folmann says that Nexus Mods will be redesigned to treat mods as systems.

The Dragon Age franchise has had its ups and downs throughout the years, with Dragon Age: Inquisition being BioWare's best-selling game to date, and, despite The Veilguard's mixed reception, the series still has loyal fans asking for more games, whether they be sequels or remakes. However, in a recent interview with FRVR, the series's creator, Mark Darrah, suggests that it is unlikely that Dragon Age will return in any form whatsoever.

Darrah explains that he had approached EA to make another game after Inquisition's success, but the gaming giant still took over a decade to release Veilguard. He also says that the lackluster performance of Veilguard means that a sequel is unlikely to be pitched at all, never mind be approved.

It was recently reported by MP1st that CD Projekt Red may be working with WayForward, the developer behind the 2.5D game series Shantae and RWBY: Arrowfell, on a new 2.5D brawler based in the Cyberpunk universe. The publication alleges that it has seen the portfolio of an unnamed former WayForward developer, who claims to have been working on the 2.5D brawler between 2025 end 2026.

The project is known internally as Gemini, and it would be based on the Cyberpunk Edgerunners TV series that has gained popularity on Netflix since its 2022 debut. It's currently unclear if the game is still in development or if it even made it out of the research and development phase, but the portfolio hinted that it was a brawler being designed as an online, multiplayer beat-'em-up game with rollback-safe architecture and online transport integration. The project even got so far as having its own Cyberpunk Edgerunners Gemini banner, which was included in the aforementioned portfolio.

Ubisoft recently tipped that there were two Far Cry games in the works. Although the game studio hadn't revealed what those two Far Cry projects were, they were believed to be Far Cry 7 and a new extraction shooter internally referred to as Maverick. According to a new report by Insider Gaming, Maverick has officially been scrapped, with a new game popping up in its wake.

Supposedly, the new game, codenamed Kodiak, has passed the conceptualization phase and entered production. It will be built on the same bones as Maverick—likely to avoid wasting already spent development resources, but it will no longer be an extraction shooter. Instead, Kodiak has been reported to be an open-world FPS in which "player interactions and player-driven stories take center stage."

The Rockstar Game Workers Union, a newly formed British workers union fighting for better working conditions and combating the recent firing of 31 workers at Rockstar, recently announced that it was working towards official recognition by Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive before the launch of GTA VI. According to a post by the RSGWU official Bluesky account, the union has had its first official meeting with Rockstar Games, which it describes in the post as "a step in the right direction."

Specifically, the union says that it has managed to "secure a roadmap for a speedy negotiation process," and that the next step is figuring out the bargaining unit, which involves defining which workers can be represented by the union. The union is aiming for voluntary recognition by the game studio, but says that it will pursue statutory recognition, which would result in legally obligated recognition once a sufficient number of workers have joined the union. The union is hoping for voluntary recognition in part because it allows for more flexible contracts and negotiations.

Lenovo has released its annual sustainability report for the fiscal year 2025/26, marking the 20th edition and concluding the company's first five-year set of ESG targets. Companies typically set ESG targets to guide their sustainable corporate development, but only a few achieve these goals. Lenovo, the world's largest PC vendor, reports that it has met most of its objectives. It now sources approximately 90% of its operational electricity from renewable sources, incorporates recycled plastic into every PC it ships, and remains on track for net-zero emissions by 2050.

The 125-page document contains the usual corporate responsibility content, but a few numbers stand out for hardware enthusiasts. Over the five-year period, Lenovo claims to have recycled or reused about 800 million pounds (approximately 363 million kg) of end-of-life equipment, including old PCs, keyboards, mice, servers, and other products. Around 300 million pounds of post-consumer recycled plastic are now used across Lenovo's product range. The company also noted that data centers, the largest consumers of energy, are now utilizing its Neptune liquid cooling technology to reduce energy use compared to air cooling. These figures are self-reported, but Lenovo supports its key climate data with third-party verification and Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) validation.

Since the launch of the Steam Deck, Valve's Proton translation layer used to play Windows games on Linux systems has been instrumental to the rise of many gaming distributions, and Linux developers like the CachyOS development team, have made their own forks of Proton, which often include new fixes and tech that the Valve version still does not have.

This is the case with the latest build of proton-cachyos, which now bakes in support for NVIDIA's Reflex latency reduction API via the vkd3d-low-latency DX12-to-Vulkan translation layer. Previously, other versions of vkd3d included AMD's Anti-Lag feature, but not Reflex. The Reflex implementation in proton-cachyos can work on both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, but not on Intel GPUs, however it still depends on in-game support to work on both brands.

Following recent layoff announcements from Microsoft, which will affect 25% of Bethesda's staff, the game studio has sought fit to address some player concerns surrounding some of its major franchises. In the statement posted to X, Bethesda confirmed that there are currently two Fallout game remakes—Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas—in the works at the studio, with Fallout 5 being the studio's "long-range destination."

After a recent statement from Bethesda CEO, Jill Braff, stating that Bethesda would be working alongside other studios under the ZeniMax umbrella and across Xbox Game Studios, rumors emerged that Obsidian Entertainment was working on its first Fallout game since the 2010. This has been reinforced in this latest statement, with the studio saying that it is working with Obsidian Entertainment on "a new Fallout project," which is likely in reference to that Fallout game that was given preference over Avowed 2 in recent rumors.

The development team behind RPCS3, the open-source PS3 emulator for Linux, macOS, and Windows, has just announced in a post on X that the emulator can now play 75% of the PlayStation 3's game library, which accounts for 2,681 games of the console's 3,559 published games, according to the official compatibility list.

Notably, there are no games on the compatibility list that have zero compatibility, and only 0.06% of the platform's games are "Loadable," which means they initialize but only load a black screen. 1.69% of PS3 games are rated "Ingame", which means they make it into the game, but won't load past the menu, and 22.93% of PS3 games are playable to some extent but cannot be completed due to some game-breaking bug or poor performance.

Since Marathon launched in early March, the PvPvE extraction shooter has been having a rough time with player retention, dropping from a peak Steam concurrent player count of 88,337 players shortly after launch to daily peaks of just around 5,000-6,000. Bungie recently announced that it would be testing a much-requested PvE-only mode, with the new roguelite Vault Breaker game mode going live from July 21 to August 4.

Now, in a recent developer blog post, Bungie explained that the Vault Breaker test is simply the first step into the PvE gameplay and confirmed that it will be taking the PvE gameplay a step further in Season 3. It's unclear whether this will build on the existing Vault Breaker game mode or if it will be a new PvE game mode entirely. Bungie has said that it will use lessons and feedback from Vault Breaker in the design and development of what it calls the "full PvE mode," however.

Bosgame, a technology-based electronic product brand, has demonstrated distributed inference of the DeepSeek-V3.1 671B-parameter model on its AI MAX+ 395 7-Node Cluster. Built from seven Bosgame M5 AI Mini PCs connected through USB4 Direct Connection, the system presents a scalable approach to private AI deployment and local large language model (LLM) inference.

As AI models continue to expand in parameter size and complexity, a single AI PC may lack the memory and computing resources required for advanced workloads. While traditional AI servers can provide the necessary computing power, their high deployment costs and infrastructure complexity can limit adoption. Enterprises and developers are therefore exploring scale-out architectures that support larger models while providing greater flexibility than conventional AI server deployments.

AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) announces the appointment of Alan Smith as the newest AMD Corporate Fellow, recognizing his contributions to GPU architecture and technical leadership that have helped advance AMD AI computing.

"Alan's technical leadership in GPU architecture was critical to achieving AMD's product success across HPC, AI for science and data center AI computing," said Mark Papermaster, executive vice president and chief technology officer, AMD. "His appointment as Corporate Fellow recognizes the depth of his technical contributions and his commitment to execution excellence and exemplifying AMD's engineering culture of innovation and collaboration."

After layoffs racked the studio in mid-2025, following the launch of Splitgate: Arena Reloaded, 1047 Games branched off into a Titanfall-inspired movement shooter that would launch into early access as Empulse in late June 2026. Now, three weeks after Empulse hit virtual shelves, the studio has conducted yet another round of layoffs, with news breaking via employees. One employee, Max McCoy, the principal technical sound designer who worked on both Splitgate: Arena Reloaded and Empulse, confirmed the layoffs in a LinkedIn post, stating that "I was caught up in the layoffs at 1047 Games today. It's been rough to see all of the layoffs across the industry, and to have this be my second layoff in under two years is unfortunate." The studio itself has yet to comment on or announce the layoffs publicly.

It's unclear how many employees were caught up in the latest round of 1047 Games layoffs, but it seems as though the launch of Empulse, the studio's latest shooter, has not met expectations. Despite showing promise with positive early reviews, both on Steam and from media, and a development philosophy that seemed to listen to player feedback during the early access period, Empulse peaked at 2,860 concurrent players three days after launch and has not recovered since, with daily peak concurrent players currently sitting at around 1,200-1,400. The original Splitgate, the game that put the studio on the map initially, peaked at 67,724 concurrent players in August 2021, for comparison.

Despite the recent success of both Frostpunk 2 and The Alters, 11 Bit Studio has confirmed that it is laying off 20 employees in a round of layoffs that it says is necessary for upcoming development phases of projects currently in its portfolio. This was confirmed in a recent statement to Game Developer, in which the studio explained that it had avoided larger-scale layoffs by transferring staff internally to other projects. In 2025, the studio was reported to have 299 employees, meaning this 20-employee layoff comprises around 6-7% of the studio's overall manpower. A studio representative also explained in a statement that 11 Bit Studios's financial situation was stable, but that the studio was downsizing in preparation for upcoming production cycles.

Part of the statement by 11 Bit Studios reads:

We need to adjust new project teams to current needs, manage our expenses carefully and maintain cost discipline. Regarding the transfers and numbers, we managed to ensure internal transfers for most of our employees so they could continue their careers within the company. However, for the roles that, unfortunately, could not be carried over into new projects at their early stages, we had to make the difficult decision to part ways with around 20 employees.

Palworld officially exited Steam Early Access on July 10 with a massive 1.0 update that dropped a host of new game mechanics, new areas, and new pals to collect, raise, train, or put to work. The 1.0 update, which landed on a Friday two and a half years after its Early Access launch, seems to have been very popular, with SteamDB reporting a whopping 855,459 peak concurrent players on launch weekend. Steam reviews following the update have also been immensely positive, with July 10 alone seeing a spike of 1,877 new positive reviews on Steam. Palworld's 1.0 launch success has also placed it in fourth place in the global Steam Top Sellers chart, which measures game success by revenue.

The Palworld 1.0 update addressed many bugs and added plenty of features across both the game's single-player and multiplayer gameplay modes, including new traversal modes, new crafting features, and new pal breeding and base-building options, among many more. These sweeping changes, however, have not all been received positively. Some users in the game's Steam reviews complained about new key binds that can be confusing or inconvenient, while others complained about the increased map size and lack of massive online multiplayer features making the open-world game feel empty. Despite the handful of negative reviews, player counts have remained high, even well into the Monday after the launch weekend, which is when there is usually an observable dip in player retention.

It seems as though Criterion Games has officially addressed the questions about the future of Need for Speed that arose after its 30th anniversary rebranding as "a Battlefield studio." In a recent interview with IGN, Vice President of Battlefield Studios Europe, Rebecka Coutaz, has basically confirmed fans' fears that Need for Speed is all but dead. When asked about the potential future of its racing games following the rebranding, the VP responded that "We are solely focused on Battlefield," indicating that, 2022's Need for Speed Unbound would likely be the last entry into the studio's racing IP. This comment likewise spells doom for the Burnout franchise, which hasn't had a new entry since 2018 with the Burnout Paradise Remaster, if you can even call that a new entry.

The absence of Burnout and Need for Speed leave a notable gap in the racing game market that games like Forza and the DiRT series don't necessarily fill, thanks to the combination of street and track racing and stunt driving. A quick gander at SteamDB reveals that, aside from the live-service push, the reason for moving away from Need for Speed as a franchise may be due to declining player interest. On Steam, Need for Speed Unbound peaked at a disappointing 14,063 concurrent players at launch and has since plateaued at around 1,000-1,500 peak concurrent daily players. Battlefield 6, on the other hand, currently sits at around 50,000 daily concurrent players, previously peaking at an all-time high of over 740,000 concurrent players.

JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the global leader in standards development for the microelectronics industry, today announced the publication of JESD330-4: Standard Package High Bandwidth Memory (SPHBM4). SPHBM4 uses the same DRAM dies as HBM4, commonly used in artificial intelligence accelerators, with a new interface base die that enables mounting on standard organic substrates rather than silicon substrates. JESD330-4 is available for download from the JEDEC website.

JESD330-4 SPHBM is architected to operate at the same aggregate data throughput as HBM4 using fewer pins by operating at a higher frequency. Where the HBM4 interface has 2048 data signals, when published, SPHBM4 will define 512 data signals with 4:1 serialization to achieve the same bandwidth. This change allows the relaxed bump pitch required for connection to organic substrates.

Intel today announced a €5 billion ($5.7 billion) capital investment at its Leixlip campus in Ireland, marking the next phase in the site's capacity expansion. Global demand for AI and high-performance computing is driving the need for advanced silicon to power AI Factories, and Intel is scaling capacity in Ireland to deliver Intel Xeon 6 and next gen Intel Xeon built on its Intel 3 node. This strategic investment expands current production output, advances research and development activities and utilises capacity across existing cleanroom space, strengthening Europe's semiconductor supply chain and serving industry need.

The expansion involves upgrading existing fabrication facilities and the installation of leading-edge manufacturing equipment. Key infrastructure enhancements include the expansion of the automated track system to integrate disparate campus modules into a singular, high-velocity production environment.

Following the recent confirmation that layoffs related to Asha Sharma's Xbox reset have resulted in significant layoffs at ZeniMax-run studios—amounting to 50% of Id Software's workers and 25% of Bethesda's—OneBGS, the CWA-affiliated Bethesda Game Studios Union, has announced that its workers has organized marches outside Bethesda's studios in Montreal, Canada; Austin and Dallas, Texas; and Rockville, Maryland. CWA representatives said in an email seen by Game Developer that the layoffs have affected as many as 440 unionized workers at Bethesda and ZeniMax, and the union says that the protest will start on July 15 to fight for the rights of its workers.

"Microsoft and ZeniMax leadership have made the devastating decision to slash over 440 positions across BGS, ZOS, id, ZWU (QA) and ZeniMax corporate (including CTO and CSUR). Because we organized and certified our unions, we have hard-won legal rights and protections that non-unionized studios simply do not have. The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won't let that happen. Our next steps are to mobilize. We need every single member visible and unified."

It's no secret that Xbox is undergoing massive changes, including everything from mass layoffs to studio closures, but it seems as though studios and developers are starting to feel the less obvious repercussions to the recent hardships at Xbox. According to a recent report by IGN, the layoffs at Bethesda may result in delays or crunch during the development of Elder Scrolls 6, which was announced as far back as 2018. One Bethesda worker commented to IGN that "their [the workers] loss will have a substantial and cascading effect on the game and morale of this studio," while another said that "it's been a mix of every discipline: programmers, artists, and designers." Overall, it seems as though morale is low at Bethesda following the recent layoffs and the subsequent removal of a memorial set up to commemorate workers who were caught up in the layoffs.

One worker expressed concerns over how the workload will be handled with fewer workers around, saying "There is a fear that we are going to be replaced by cheaper, contracted labor, or we will hire folks to replace them that will need to be onboarded (our tools are proprietary, other devs aren't going to know how they work) resulting in more delays, and we'll need to crunch to make up the time," adding that the Elder Scrolls 6 developers "were already running a tight ship and are worried about this delaying the game (though a final release date was not yet chosen as far as we know)."

It has been known for a while that, as part of the new Xbox reset strategy under new CEO, Asha Sharma, Xbox would be leaning into Xbox exclusives more and more going forward, with it being understood that "Xbox exclusive" referred to both PC and Xbox Series consoles—given that the upcoming Helix console is a console-PC hybrid. Now, a new report out of Bloomberg claims that Microsoft will take Sony's approach to exclusives by releasing single-player titles, especially its AAA first-party and high-budget games, as Xbox exclusives. Meanwhile, multiplayer games will remain multi-platform, as many of Xbox's games have been for years. When Sony recently made a similar switch, it was widely criticized, even by former Sony execs, because the timed exclusives had little to no impact on console sales.

Allegedly, the goal of the strategy shift is to strengthen Xbox's platform sales, after the gaming giant's focus on Game Pass failed to deliver meaningful results. Reportedly, Game Pass subscriber numbers peaked around 30 million at the end of the 2026 financial year, which is 47 million behind the 77 million goal that was set in 2017 when the subscription was launched. The recent changes at Xbox and Microsoft have also led to mass layoffs, the loss of a number of studios, which will either be bought out or go independent, and cancelling a handful of unannounced games. It was also recently revealed that Xbox Game Pass contracts and negotiations with external studios had been placed on hold, although there's no clear indication whether those negotiations and contracts have since been resumed.

Crimson Desert reportedly initially started out as an MMO but later pivoted to a single-player open-world game, although it still has much of its MMO DNA, even though it launched as a single-player title. According to Pearl Abyss CEO, Heo Jin-young, at a recent corporate briefing, the studio is currently evaluating the possibility of an online mode for Crimson Desert.

Jin-young commented that it is still too early to make any conclusive statements about what form a multiplayer Crimson Desert will take, with the CEO clarifying that, although he has noted significant interest in multiplayer, the studio is conducting technical and gameplay feasibility studies to determine if multiplayer is possible and how to implement it. Jin-young expressed that he thinks there is room for a multiplayer mode, and he notes that online gameplay could increase player retention and the game's longevity on the market.

Obsidian has famously been caught up in the recent Xbox reset, with the game studio losing as much as 25% of its staff to layoffs. According to recent insider reports out of Bloomberg, one of the consequences of the headcount reduction appears to be a narrower focus, which in this case has resulted in the effective cancellation of Avowed 2. The publication's sources say that the studio made the decision to cancel Avowed 2 due to the lackluster commercial performance of the first game in the series. The studio had previously hoped to build the Avowed franchise by rapidly developing the game's sequel on top of tech it already had.

In lieu of Avowed 2 and the other canceled projects, Obsidian will now begin development on a new Fallout game led by Josh Sawyer, who previously worked on Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas, which would go on to become a fan-favorite Fallout game. The success of New Vegas is likely the reason that Sawyer and Obsidian have been tasked with developing another Fallout game, and insiders claim that Sawyer had been working on a separate game that was structurally and thematically similar to Fallout.

IO Interactive recently confirmed that the end of "a relationship with an external partner," now known to be Xbox Game Studios, meant that the studio would no longer have the funding it required to work on a game known as Project Fantasy with its current staff. On July 7, IO Interactive expanded on the round of layoffs it previously confirmed, announcing in a post on X that it would be closing its Istanbul studio and laying off an undisclosed number of staff. It stands to reason that the studio's Istanbul staff will all be affected by the layoffs, but it has not been confirmed whether layoffs will extend beyond that studio. The studio closure comes not two months after the launch of the highly successful 007 First Light, which managed to sell an astounding 1.5 million units in just 24 hours.

[Editor's note: TechPowerUp's in-depth Performance Review and Handheld Performance Review of 007 First Light are now live]

Additionally, IO Interactive confirmed in the post that its Project Fantasy is still in development and that it has "regained full ownership of the project," suggesting that it will have more creative freedom and financial responsibility for the game. The post reiterates that the company is dedicated to Project Fantasy, but there are questions about the future of the studio's other IPs, like Hitman and 007. Project Fantasy is being developed as an online fantasy RPG inspired by tabletop RPGs and built with multiplayer and co-op gameplay as a core component. The full statement by IO Interactive follows.

Following recent rumors of the same, Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma announced on July 6 that Microsoft's gaming division would be cutting its workforce by as much as 20% in the 2027 financial year as part of a year-long restructuring at Xbox. The layoffs started with 1,200 employees on the day of the announcement, and Sharma blames the layoffs on declining Xbox revenue, stating that "our business is not healthy," and that Xbox is "operating at margins that are 3-10× lower than comparable platform and publishing businesses." She goes on to acknowledge that Xbox sales for the Series X|S console generation has been low, and that Xbox used Game Pass, multi-platform launches, and an expanded content portfolio as an attempt to compensate for the low install-base and in order to grow the brand's presence.

As part of the plan to "reset" Xbox, Sharma confirmed that Compulsion Games and Double Fine Productions will become independent studios, while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will be bought out and have started the acquisition process to be bought out by new ownership, where Senua and State of Decay 3 will continue development. Xbox is also looking to cut Arkane Lyon loose, although it doesn't seem as though a definitive plan has been put in place yet. Unspecified changes are also coming for Activision, Bethesda/ZeniMax, Blizzard, King, Mojang, and Xbox Game Studios, but Sharma has promised that these changes will not impact publicly announced first-party games. The restructuring will also result in a simplification of management at Xbox, with management layers reduced to a maximum of five and three where possible. Sharma claims that the "flatter organization" will help build success at Xbox, and she plans a "50% reduced vendor spend," across the company.