[PATREON UNLOCK] Update Patch - May 2026

Update Patch News Roundup (04/05/26)

Welcome to the first Update Patch of May, a month in which the weather has an identity crisis in the Northern Hemisphere, struggling to decide if Spring has indeed started or if we’re still saying goodbye to Winter. The first few days of the month have treated us relatively well in the gaming industry, but there is still a studio closure to cover.

Nacon’s Insolvency Leads To Closure Of Studio Behind GreedFall

Per French outlet Origami, studio Spiders, known for GreedFall and Steelrising, is shutting down. The news came on the 28th of April, less than two months following the release of the studio’s latest title: GreedFall: The Dying World. Spiders took BlueSky to directly address the community a day after the news broke.

This closure comes due to the fact that Nacon, which owns Spiders, filed for insolvency in February of this year. Spiders was one of the two assets that Nacon was trying to sell however, according to the Origami report, the publisher and peripheral maker was expecting to find a buyer until the middle of April. No offers came, so we’re now forced to say goodbye to a beloved French AA studio.

Spiders released its first title back in 2013, Mars: War Logs. That started a long relationship with Focus Entertainment, which also published The Technomancer and Greedfall, the title which really put Spiders on the map. Nacon acquired the studio in 2019 and published the successful Steelrising. GreedFall: The Dying World came out of early access on March 10th of this year to middling reception, shortly after Spiders’ parent company filed for insolvency. 

According To CEO Asha Sharma, Xbox Has “Work To Do To Earn Every Player Today And Into The Future”

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma took to X on the day of Microsoft’s third quarter earnings conference call to say that “While we have made progress expanding the business and our margins, player and revenue growth has not yet met our ambition. We know we have work to do to earn every player today and into the future.” 

In the conference call, Amy Hood, CFO of Microsoft, mentioned that “Xbox content and services revenue decreased 5% and 7% in constant currency against a prior year comparable that benefited from strong first-party content performance.” This was despite the fact that there were new records for monthly Xbox active users during the quarter.

Hood closes her remarks on the gaming branch of the company by saying that they “expect revenue to decline in the low-teens, reflecting a prior year comparable that benefited from strong first-party content, as well as the recent price changes for Xbox Game Pass as we focus on delivering more value to gamers.”  We do have Forza Horizon 6 coming later this month, so we’ll see how things change as we progress through the financial quarter.

Sony Responds To Users Worried About Online DRM Checks

GameSpot heard back from an SIE spokesperson regarding worries around online DRM checks and what they might mean for users who play without internet connections. A Sony spokesperson said, "Players can continue to access and play their purchased games as usual. A one-time online check is required to confirm the game's license, after which no further check-ins are required." 

So, initial claims that PSN purchases would have to be validated online every 30 days were wrong; players who buy new digital titles will only have their purchase checked once, and they’d have to be connected to the internet to purchase a digital title, regardless. Physical copies of PlayStation games will not be affected.

Steam Controller Reviews Are Here

While there is no news on the much-awaited Steam Machine, we were flooded with reviews for Valve’s new controller, the Steam Controller, which shares the same title with its weird brother from 2015. Verdicts have been overall positive, but the price is a tough ask.

PC Gamer agreed with most other outlets and reviewers on the good points: good mouse inputs via the trackpads and repairability, but points out that $99/€99/£85/$149 AUD is not an easy sell. That puts the Steam Controller (2026) $25 USD above the PlayStation Dualsense and $35 USD above the Xbox Wireless Controller.  

It seems that, unless you really prefer the design and don’t mind the extra cost, you’ll only see this as a worthwhile investment if you’ll make good use of Valve’s trackpads for mouse controls from your couch or love using gyro controls to aim. Alas, without the Steam Machine coming bundled with it, the number of times you’ll run into those situations is likely limited, unless you have a PC set up without a mouse somewhere in your home. Steam Controller (2026) is now available for purchase.

Take-Two CEO Does Not Quell Concerns Regarding GTA VI Price Rumours

Per IGN, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick finally spoke on the elephant in the room that is GTA VI’s price. Unfortunately, he refused to confirm how much Rockstar’s giant will cost and made sure to keep his wording vague enough to keep us guessing.

“Consumers pay for the value that you bring to them, and our job is to charge way, way, way less of the value delivery”, said Zelnick. This would sound reassuring if he hadn’t followed it up with “what we think about is making the most spectacular piece of entertainment on Earth, in history.” Via that lens, the ridiculous rumoured prices reaching all the way to $100 USD are likely still “way less” than the “value delivery” when you’re delivering the best piece of entertainment ever created in human history.

GTA VI’s release date of November 19 is quickly approaching, though, so we’ll likely know the real price soon, for better or worse.

Update Patch News Roundup (11/05/26)

Update Patch is back with a weekly news roundup covering a more eventful seven days than the ones that kicked off May. This week, another entire AAA game leaked ahead of release, Nintendo finally announced the feared price raises for Switch 2, and more.

Capcom Shadowdropped A Free Resident Evil Requiem DLC

This past Friday, May 8th, Capcom released a regular update for Resident Evil: Requiem which, besides the expected list of fixes and tweaks one usually sees in a regular patch, also included an entirely new gamemode.

Capcom humbly describes Leon Must Die: Forever as a minigame, but it actually is a highly replayable roguelite mode. Controlling Leon Kennedy, players must fight through hordes of zombies, collecting guns and upgrades. The objective is to reach the final level and take down the boss before the timer runs out. The update is entirely free, and all players can access the new roguelite mode after completing the campaign.

We Might Soon Have A European Game Engine To Rival Unreal And Unity, But With A Catch

Via Video Games Chronicle, Arjan Brussee says he’s building a new game engine, which he emphasizes as being “European”. Brussee worked as a programmer for Epic in the 90s, co-founded Guerrilla Games and Boss Key, and then returned to Epic, where he was Director Product Management for Unreal Engine, among other roles.

Talking on the Dutch podcast De Technoloog, Brussee pointed out that there are no game engines created by Europeans that comply “with European rules and guidelines.” He specifically mentions that 3D engines are used for things beyond video games, like simulations for Defense.

While he doesn’t outline what complying to European rules and guidelines actually means (Unreal and Unity are sold in Europe and have European offices without troubles so its uncelar what he’s actually alluding to), he followed up on these points by saying, “If you are smart and know how to put a good framework of AI agents to work, you can do the work of ten or fifteen people”. Via his LinkedIn page, Brussee describes Immens as a company “building a new AI-first game engine.”

Valve (Somehow) Underestimated How Quickly Steam Controller Would Sell Out

Despite the fact that the Steam Deck spent months sold out upon release, Valve seemingly underestimated how fast its new Steam Controller would fly off its digital shelves. After the new peripheral sold out in under an hour, spawning hundreds of posts of scalpers selling them online, Valve addressed the issue three days later.

On May 7th, Valve announced that it would be selling the Steam Controller via a reservation system, which officially opened on May 8th. In it, Valve attempts to crack down on scalpers and bots, via the following limitations:

• Reservations will be limited to one Steam Controller per user.

• Once you receive an order email, you have three days (72 hours) to make your purchase on Steam.

• For now, customers who have already purchased a Steam Controller are not yet eligible to reserve another Steam Controller.

• Your account must be in good standing on Steam

• You must have made a purchase on Steam prior to April 27, 2026

Hopefully, all these measures succeed in getting Steam Controllers into the hands of players instead of scalpers.

Nintendo Finally Bites The Bullet: Switch 2 Is Getting More Expensive

Following in the footsteps of Xbox and Sony before it, Nintendo finally announced the expected price raises for Nintendo Switch 2. Here’s how things will change:

• United States: From $449.99 to $499.99

• Canada: From $629.99 to $679.99

• Europe: From €469.99 to €499.99

Although this announcement came on May 8th, these price revisions will only happen for the aforementioned regions on September 1st, a few months from now. Japan is getting them much earlier, on May 25th, and they’re not just limited to Switch 2. Nintendo is raising the price of the original Switch models there too, alongside increases to Nintendo Switch Online subscription prices.

The announcement mentions that NSO revisions are also planned in South Korea, but there is no mention of them reaching the West, at least for now.

Stop Killing Games Raises Concerns Over Age-Gating In Video  Games

Multiple countries have passed laws focused on restricting access to certain parts of the web based on age restrictions. Stop Killing Games specifically highlights the UK Online Safety Act, the UK Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and California’s Digital Age Assurance Act / AB 1043, but many more have been passed by countries all throughout Europe.

SKG signed a joint statement alongside 18 other organizations, including ExpressVPN, Mozilla, and Proton, titled “UK policymakers must prioritise addressing the roots of online harm, not undermining the open web”. SKG claims that the approaches taken in these laws often go “far beyond what is normal or proportionate”.

The organization specifically mentions that the broad restrictions can directly impact ways in which communities can keep video games alive after their publishers and/or developers leave them behind, like private servers and modding communities. SKG also highlights the case of Urban Dead, a free browser-based MMO that shut down after over 20 years due to requirements by the UK Online Safety Act.

Forza Horizon 6’s Full Game Leaked Two Weeks Ahead Of Release

Remember when Death Stranding 2’s PC port leaked prior to release back in the middle of March? Well, it happened again, but this time it was even earlier. Forza Horizon 6, Xbox’s biggest release of the year, came even earlier to pirates via piracy-focused subreddits. The game was posted to one of them on Sunday, May 10th. 

The entire game, all 155 gigabytes of it, was accidentally uploaded unencrypted to Steam. This one is even stranger than DS2 because FH6 isn’t even available to preload now. The leak happened nine days prior to release and, worse still, four days prior to the advanced access that players get via the game’s Premium Edition, which costs a whopping 119.99€.

At the time of writing this, Forza Horizon 6 has been cracked by pirates, so players who illegally download the game actually have access to it before those who shelled out over 100€ for their pre-order. Microsoft hasn’t responded to this leak.

Update Patch News Roundup (18/05/26)

Welcome back to our third news roundup of May. Subnautica 2 and Forza Horizon 6 (for Premium Edition owners) are both out and successful, and, thankfully, they brought with them a week of mostly good news.

Subnautica 2 Sells Over 2 Million Copies In Hours

After an incredibly turbulent development period with public disputes between Unknown Worlds Entertainment and Krafton, Subnautica 2 exploded onto the scene upon release. The sequel to the 2018 survival game sold over 2 million copies in its first day, despite being available through Xbox Game Pass.

As GameRant pointed out, this almost surely confirms that Subnautica 2 will reach the revenue targets needed to receive the bonus that was stipulated when Krafton acquired Unknown Worlds Entertainment. The bonus is capped at $250 million USD, which, despite many efforts to avoid it, Krafton will almost surely be paying soon.

Forza Horizon 6 Beats Its Predecessor On Steam Through Premium Edition Alone

In spite of the fact that it was cracked more than a week prior and even though it is coming to Xbox Game Pass day one, Forza Horizon 6 is doing numbers. At the time of writing, the latest entry in the Horizon series has reached a peak of over 180k players on Steam, even though it is still only available to those who purchased its $120 USD Premium Edition.

That puts it at over 100k more concurrents than its predecessor on Steam before the standard $70 USD edition even arrives. Alongside these impressive numbers, Gamesradar+ highlighted that Forza Horizon 6 has become the highest-rated Metacritic game of the year so far. At the time of writing, it is sitting at 92, based on 65 critic reviews.

Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings MMO Is Reportedly Cancelled

What is a worse sign than Embracer Group? It's Embracer Group collaborating with Amazon Games. To the surprise of very few people, the announced Lord of the Rings MMO, a joint project between the two companies, has reportedly been cancelled. Eurogamer broke the news, saying that the cancellation is “now all-but confirmed”.

The game was being developed by the team behind Amazon’s New World, which had almost entirely moved to working on this new project since the MMO stopped being updated. In his comment to Eurogamer, Amazon’s head of games said that they “remain excited about the IP”, but did not mention any projects they might be working on. Players who want to explore Middle-Earth online are still only left with 2007’s The Lord of the Rings Online.

eBay Rejected “Unsolicited” Offer From GameStop, Describing It As “Neither Credible Nor Attractive”

Per the BBC, eBay has rejected GameStop’s $55.5bn USD offer to acquire it. The offer was initially met with skepticism from seemingly everyone, especially experts, who were quick to point out that not only is eBay the much larger company of the two, but that GameStop’s proposed half-cash, half-stock offer wouldn’t have added up to $55.5bn.

In spite of the obvious mathematical mismatch, this rejection is unlikely to be the end of the story. GameStop’s CEO Ryan Cohen reacted to the rejection in an interview with Piers Morgan, stating that eBay is “run by a bunch of losers” and that shareholders should have a say in GameStop’s offer.

Xbox Goes All Caps?

We might’ve been referring to Microsoft’s gaming division wrongly this entire news roundup. According to The Verge, Xbox is apparently rebranding as XBOX, going all-in on the all-caps approach. Weirdly enough, this decision seems based on a public poll run by CEO Asha Sharma on X. 64.8% of the 19,176 votes chose XBOX over Xbox.

Sharma hinted at this rebranding via another X post, showing that the official Xbox X account was not XBOX. The company’s website also appears to be XBOX.com now, but all-caps are still to arrive in most other places. The PC app is still Xbox, and every reference to the company in the official website also remains with only the first letter capitalised. We’ll see if there is an official announcement coming.

Update Patch News Roundup (25/05/26)

Hello and welcome to the last Update Patch of May. Summer has arrived in Portugal, but the sun didn’t bring with it good news. Bungie and Ubisoft are in trouble, Sony is officially turning its back on PC players, and more in this week’s edition of UP.

Riot Games Sending Mixed Signals

This was a weird week for Riot Games. The official X account for the studio decided it was a good idea to retweet a post claiming that the latest Vanguard update (Riot’s proprietary anti-cheat) was bricking DMA firmwares, forcing cheaters to do a clean OS reinstall. Not only that, the account retweeted it saying “congrats to the owners of a brand new $6k paperweight”.

Players reacted negatively to the joke with concerns about what Vanguard and its Kernel-level access could do to their computers, which prompted a quick response from Riot Games, seemingly walking back its previous tweet. In it, the company states that Vanguard’s update does make DMA devices useless for VALORANT, but does not impact their functionality in other software and does not impact general users.

Furthermore, they asserted that “Vanguard does not damage hardware or disable your devices”, explaining that the previous joke wasn’t about “bricking” PCs, but specifically about DMAs used to cheat in VALORANT.

Warhorse Studios Is Working On A Middle-Earth RPG And A New Kingdom Come

Following last week’s news of Amazon cancelling its promised Middle-Earth MMO, Lord of the Rings fans can rejoice this week as Warhorse Studios, known for Kingdom Come Deliverance and its sequel, confirmed it is working on “an open world Middle-earth RPG”.

This was rumoured for a while, but it is now officially corroborated by the studio itself. Warhorse is also working on a “new Kingdom Come adventure”, but it isn’t clear if that is KCD 3 or some other story in the same world.

Destiny 2 Will Receive Its Final Update In June

Nine years after its original release, Destiny 2 will receive its final update in June, just a couple of weeks from now. Bungie confirmed the news via a post titled “Destiny 2: every end is a new beginning”. The studio claims that the end of Destiny 2’s development will lead to a “new journey”.

That journey will, according to Bloomberg, start off with layoffs at Bungie. The studio is focusing its efforts on its recent live-service extraction-shooter, Marathon, and there are no plans for an eventual Destiny 3. Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier mentioned on BlueSky that the studio didn’t start work on the sequel due to “how much money it would take”.

Destiny 2 is the latest casualty in the modern MMO scene, following the previously mentioned cancellation of Amazon’s Middle-earth MMO and the end of support for New World. 

Sony Officially Confirms To Employees That PlayStation’s Single-Player Games Will Be Exclusive Again

Following weeks upon weeks of rumours, Jason Schreier officially broke the news that Sony was indeed returning to its original approach of keeping its titles exclusive to PlayStation consoles. According to the Bloomberg reporter, Hermen Hulst told staff that its “narrative single-player games will now be PlayStation exclusive”.

The wording is relevant here, as it leaves the door open to a variety of possible titles. Multiplayer releases like 2024’s Helldivers 2 will almost surely remain multi-platform. Jury’s still out on whether we’ll get any single-player games that aren’t narrative-focused leaving the platform. With rumours claiming that Xbox might also return to exclusives under Asha Sharma’s leadership, we might be returning to the old normal, with exclusives never leading their platforms.

Ubisoft Is Struggling With Record Losses

Ubisoft has been struggling in recent years. While they’ve been theoretically releasing massive titles, none have been doing well. 2024 was a rough year with the ridiculed Skull and Bones and the poorly received Star Wars Outlaws. While 2025’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows was better in the eyes of critics, it didn’t sell as well as previous titles in the franchise. Anno 117: Pax Romana was a similar story.

All these failures have culminated in what is Ubisoft’s biggest annual loss, according to France 24. The studio reported an annual loss of $1.7 billion USD for 2025-26 and seems to be putting all eggs in Black Flag’s basket. The beloved entry in the Assassin’s Creed franchise is being remade and will be released on July 9.  It is the only major Ubisoft release that has been announced so far.

First Gameplay Look At Dreams On A Pillow

On May 15th, 2026, exactly 78 years after the 1948 Palestinian Nakba, Dreams on a Pillow got its first gameplay trailer. The game, developed by a team of Palestinians led by Rasheed Abuiedeh, is a “pseudo-stealth, puzzle adventure game inspired by a Palestinian folktale about a young woman called Khadra”. It is the developer’s second time trying to shed light on his country’s history of suffering, following 2014’s Liyla & The Shadows Of War.

Dreams on a Pillow aims to share “untold stories of Palestinian history woven through Khadra’s dreams, haunted by her nightmares and the harsh displacement”. Liyla & The Shadows Of War came out during the 2014 Gaza War. Abuiedeh’s second game will likely be released during Israel’s genocide that has been ongoing since October 2023. Stories about Palestinians in entertainment are rare and far between (even more so in gaming), so this is definitely one to highlight.

Abuiedeh and team are crowdfunding Dreams on a Pillow on LaunchGood and are, at the time of writing, still over $300k USD short. You can support them directly here.

Update Patch News Roundup (02/06/26)

May is finally behind us, and although it scorched Western Europe with bizarrely high temperatures, it did leave us with some good news. Witcher 3 will be getting an expansion over a decade after its original release date, Rockstar Games unionised and Krafton will almost surely be $250M USD poorer.

Rockstar Games Has Unionised

According to Rockstar Intel, GTA 6 developers announced the Rockstar Game Workers Union with the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain (IWGB). This comes following the firing of nearly 40 employees last year, which IWGB claims was an act of union-busting.

According to the newly-formed union, Rockstar’s alleged union busting “charged others to” unionize. The collective has three simple starting demands: “pay transparency, flexible working, an end to crunch”. We will see what this means as the legal battle between IWGB and Rockstar Games unfolds in the coming years.

February 2027 Is The New Release Date For Fable

Given that they’ve been waiting for a new title since 2012, Fable fans are likely used to being patient by now. Perhaps that explains why the community seems to be taking the news that the new Fable reboot (in development since 2017) was delayed to February 2027.

Xbox’s announcement via X mentions that the delay isn’t due to the game needing more time, but because 2026 is already packed with both first and third-party Xbox titles. Despite the new release data, we will apparently get a “major new look at Fable” at Xbox Games Showcase on June 7.

Steam Deck Is Back In Stock, But With A Catch

As you might’ve noticed from the mixed bag of news that we’ve been bringing you these past few weeks, 2026 is a year of balance. A good piece of news is seemingly always followed by a bad one. Valve gave us yet another exhibit of this when the company told us that the Steam Deck was finally back in stock, but with a very different price point.

Steam Deck OLED 512GB is now $789, and the 1TB model is $949. That is an increase of $200 and $300, respectively. Valve blames “the current state of component costs and other global logistical challenges” across the industry.

RIP Nvidia Control Panel

Nvidia’s charming Control Panel, which seemed permanently stuck in its Windows XP era, is officially dead. We’ve known for a while that the Nvidia App would eventually replace it for good, but this transition was officially confirmed in the most recent Nvidia driver release: 610.47.

“After 20 years of dedicated service, the classic NVIDIA Control Panel is officially retiring for Game Ready and Studio Drivers,” the company wrote. The reason being that all features present in the Nvidia Control Panel are now “modernised and transitioned” to the App. You can keep using it for the foreseeable future if you already have it installed, but it will not get any more updates.

Krafton Is Almost Surely $250 Million Poorer

According to The Korea Economic Daily, Subnautica 2’s Early Access success has almost confirmed that the publisher will have to pay up to the promised $250 million to Unknown World’s former shareholders. 

The Korean publication confirmed that Krafton agreed “to pay $3.12 for every $1 (...) every time the studio’s revenue topped $69.9 million a month”. Back on  May 20th, The Alinea Insight newsletter estimated that Subnautica 2 had grossed over $100M with over four million copies sold. Since that was only one week after release, who knows what the final number will be once a month has passed, but it will surely be well over $69.8M.

A New Witcher 3 Expansion, 12 Years Later

Over a decade after its original release date, the excellent Witcher 3: Wild Hunt will get a new expansion. This isn’t just a DLC; it is specifically described as the “third expansion” coming to the title. CD Projekt Red is co-developing it with Fool’s Theory, a studio known for The Thaumaturge.

Songs of the Past will be the third and final Witcher 3 expansion and is coming sometime in 2027. We don’t know much about it for now, other than the fact that it will still star Geralt of Rivia as its protagonist, not Cirilla. CDRP promised to share more details about the expansion in “late summer 2026”. I can already feel the wind howling.