I don't know exactly why, but the idea of setting up trade routes is like catnip to me. Little horse-drawn wagons? Shipments of lumber or wool or vegetables? Resources trundling between cities? Yeah, I'll play a game where that happens.Let Them Trade, as you can probably guess from the title, is all about that trading life. You build little medieval cities on a beautiful map, assign them specialties like farming,...

It's been six years since 2K Games confirmed that BioShock 4 was in development at newly formed studio Cloud Chamber, and despite all that time passed it sounds like we've got a lot of waiting left. A new Bloomberg report says the in-progress game recently failed a review by 2K executives, leading to the removal of studio head Kelley Gilmore and shift of creative director Hogarth de la Plante to...

A month after Microsoft pulled the plug on an in-development MMO at ZeniMax Online Studios, new studio head Jo Burba has posted an update promising that The Elder Scrolls Online remains safe and secure."Please allow me to assure you, the ESO community, that the game isn’t going anywhere, and the studio is continuing to work hard on new features, adventures, and improvements," Burba wrote. "We said that there’s big changes...

After teasing the idea of paid subreddits for "exclusive content or private areas" last year, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said in a thread discussing the company's latest earnings call that work on the feature has been sidelined (via The Verge). Instead, Reddit is prioritizing its existing strengths—like being one of the few ways to still get useful search results in the era of steadily degrading Google quality."To stay focused on...

Paizo's tabletop RPG Pathfinder has made it into videogames several times, and while we don't talk about the MMO, Owlcat's CRPGs have done its flavor of crunchy classic fantasy justice twice now. Pathfinder's science-fantasy spin-off Starfinder is about to take its turn being digitized in an upcoming videogame by Barcelona studio Epictellers Entertainment.Starfinder: Afterlight will be a singleplayer RPG with turn-based combat both on the ground and in spaceships, using...

OpenAI's business model is, at bottom, pretty simple. Sam Altman gets up on a stage somewhere, burbles a few lines about how AI is going to radically upend society and cure cancer, and then shareholders fall over themselves in a frenzied rush to thrust money upon this economic miracle-to-be. OpenAI sells subscriptions to users, sure, but the real profit is in the promises.As reported by the New York Times' Dealbook,...

Two weeks after Valve confirmed it had removed a pile of NSFW games from Steam because of pressure from credit card companies—and one week after Itch.io followed suit—Mastercard has released a statement denying responsibility for the takedowns, saying it "allows all lawful purchases" to be processed through its systems."Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports...

The Spartans have annoyed Nemesis, the Greek goddess of retribution, and now the ancient world is filled with monsters and undead. Unfortunately, this demonic deity is after your head, too. No need to stress, though: Titan Quest 2 (the sequel to 2006's mythological ARPG) is a pretty chill time, and it just snuck out in early access today.It might be considerably prettier than its predecessor—with the caveat that it's visually...

During yesterday's Battlefield 6 multiplayer reveal showcase, DICE producer Jeremy Chubb said the studio wanted to return to the "atmosphere and grit that made Battlefield 3 and 4 iconic games," but "needed to take that aesthetic to an entirely new level." Based on the content of the 23-minute presentation, it seems like EA is measuring that new aesthetic height based on a single metric: helicopter violence.While watching last week's Battlefield...