Games

Members of ZeniMax Workers United, a union of over 300 quality assurance workers in Texas and Maryland, have voted to authorize a strike.

The vote, which passed with over 94 percent in favor of authorization, does not mean workers have gone on strike like SAG-AFTRA members have in the ongoing video game voice actors strike. But should contract negotiations break down, the ZeniMax union now has the permission to call a strike.

This authorization comes as contract negotiations between union members and parent company Microsoft continue into a second year.

We recently spent several hours playing Doom: The Dark Ages on a high-end PC (but NOT at max settings) and talking to the developers. What we have now is a much better appreciation of the technology, how idTech 8 improves over its predecessors - and what you should expect more generally from Doom: The Dark Ages. It's looking great!

If you prefer to read see: https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2025-doom-the-dark-ages-hands-on-tech-preview-id-tech-8-impresses-hugely-on-pc

Nvidia RTX 40-series GPU owners continue to face system stability issues, with reports of blue screen crashes (BSODs), system instability, and game-breaking bugs. While many users have been frustrated by these problems, Nvidia’s apparent primary focus on its new RTX 50-series cards has only added to their concerns. Now, a new issue has surfaced (via Overclock3D) that may be directly linked, where PC game developers are actively warning users against installing the latest 572.xx GeForce drivers, due to performance and stability issues.

Players using RTX 40 and even some RTX 30-series GPUs have reported problems after updating to the 572.xx driver. Newly released games, including inZOI and The First Berserker: Khazan, have been particularly affected, with players experiencing stuttering or frame drops. Developers of these games have gone as far as recommending users roll back to the older 566.36 driver, released in December 2024, to restore stability. The problem has been widely discussed across Reddit and various forums, with many pointing fingers at the latest Nvidia driver branch as the common denominator.

Jamrock Hobo got a hold of an internal presentation to this cancelled ZA/UM project. We could have had a Cuno & Cunoesse game. Looks like they made pretty good progress, too.

source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/assassins-creed-shadows-influencer-marketing-budget-hired-lombardi-hhfnf

12 employees have been affected, decision due to firm "weigh[ing] the future health of our studio against the month-to-month realities of game development"

Blizzard is reportedly receiving a number of pitches for new StarCraft video games from Korean studios.

In an article brought to the internet’s attention by X / Twitter account @KoreaXboxnews, Asia Today listed four Korean companies who are reportedly competing with each other to develop new games based on the StarCraft IP and secure publishing rights: NCSoft, Nexon, Netmarble, and Krafton. Apparently some of these companies have traveled to Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California, to make their pitches.

NCSoft, which is behind the Lineage and Guild Wars MMOs, is said to have pitched a StarCraft RPG of some kind (an MMORPG?). Nexon, maker of The First Descendant, has pitched a “unique” use of the StarCraft IP. Netmarble (Solo Leveling: Arise, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad) is hoping to make a StarCraft mobile game. And Krafton, the company behind battle royale PUBG and The Sims competitor inZOI, wants to make a StarCraft game “based on its own development capabilities.”

The closure of Monolith Productions, an innovative video game developer, shows what’s wrong with an industry in which game publishers have the ultimate power to shut down projects and fire workers.