Taking Care of Business

Amazon Game Studios looks to be getting out of the MMO business entirely, handing Western operations of Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark back to their respective developers. In two blog posts, Amazon Game Studios outlined its plans to transition both games to their South Korean creators in the coming months. For Throne and Liberty, that transition will happen in Q4 2026 as NC (formerly NCSoft) takes over, while Lost Ark's transition will happen in early 2027 and see Smilegate fully take the reins. While Amazon didn't develop the two games directly, it did publish both titles and handled live-se

Hello! Eurogamer's week of features celebrating the intersection of queer culture and gaming continues today as Kelsey Raynor discovers a very different Elden Ring to the one they were expecting. And you can visit our Pride Week hub to catch up on Pride Weeks past. Read more

Video games like Her Story, Fez, and Tunic beg the player to take detailed notes to keep track of the story. But journaling or note-taking games are part of a long tradition that goes back to the game manuals of the 80s and 90s. Back in the day, games like The Legend of Zelda had incredibly beautiful, detailed manuals that helped the player navigate difficult puzzles and learn about lore, when memory on consoles was short. Polygon's Clayton Ashley details the history of taking notes in games, and some of his recent favorites that continue the tradition.

In a grim week for the games industry where Microsoft laid off 1,600 people (with 1,600 further job cuts hanging over the heads of Xbox employees) one decision stood out as especially egregious. Id Software, developer of Doom and Quake, was forced to lay off 136 people – more than half of its workforce. Read more

Bethesda Game Studios union workers have announced plans to protest the recent mass layoffs impacting Microsoft's Xbox division, telling members, "The company wants us to accept this as a done deal and quietly disappear. We won't let that happen." Read more