š® Gearbox CEO On Borderlands 4 Launch, Battlefield 6 Battle Royale Launch and More Info On Insomniac's Wolverine and Venom...
Gearbox CEO On Borderlands 4 Launch, Battlefield 6 Battle Royale Launch, More Info On Insomniac's Wolverine and Venom, AC: Black Flag Remake Might Have More RPG Elements and more!
Hello friends,
Today is September 25th 2025 and I hope youāve had a great week š
In todayās news:
š® Gearbox CEO On Borderlands 4 Launch
š® Battlefield 6 Battle Royale Launch
š® More Info On Insomniac's Wolverine and Venom
š® AC: Black Flag Remake Might Have More RPG Elements
ā” Lightning Round!
š«” True Tribute!
š Personal Update
All of this is brought to you in a 5 min format ā²ļø
Letās dig in!
š® Gearbox CEO On Borderlands 4 Launch
Borderlands 4 is officially live, and itās not doing very well if the reviews are to be believed. This caused Randy Pitchford to snap back at some people who decided to criticise the game.
The game launched with āMixedā reviews on Steam and some major concerns with the community. If those reviews are to be believed, the game is great, but you can barely play it if you donāt have top-of-the-line hardware to run it. Understandably, people are upset, and they are talking about it. Pitchford took note of that and started responding to some of the posts. The level of response from the CEO can be described as āunprofessionalā at bestā¦
The most notable conversation happened on X, where one of the users was pointing out some valid issues they were having, to which Randy Pitchford responded:
You can do whatever you want. The game is the game. Please get a refund from Steam if you aren't happy with it. You made an analogy to a vehicle. I would not put a Ferrari engine in a monster truck and expect it to drive like a Ferrari. If you tell me about your specification, I can help you optimize your performance. I'm sorry you don't like being told to use DLSS, but that is the way. If you're not happy using the tools available to you to improve frame rate and you're not happy with the frame rate you have, you should play a different game. The game is awesome and it is designed to be just fine of an experience at 30fps and feel great at 60fps. We also have provided a lot of options for you to make different trade offs between frame rate, resolution, and graphics features than we would make and we encourage you to use those tools to optimize to your taste. Would you like help tuning your experience better to your liking?
So, essentially, you have two options: either buy a new PC or not play this game / refund it. Quite an interesting performance from the CEO of the company whose project is struggling. And there are 2 aspects of this. I understand that he tries to protect his team, but I think he is choosing all the wrong tools to do this. This is definitely not helping either the team, the company or the project; itās doing the opposite.
What do you think about this whole situation?
š® Battlefield 6 Battle Royale Launch
Battlefield 6's release date is just around the corner, and people canāt stop talking about it. And among other interesting things, a few reports surfaced recently saying that the Battle Royale mode may be targeting an October 28th, 2025, release date.
The original report was shared by the ModernWarzone account on X:
SOURCES: Battlefield 6 Battle Royale is currently planned to launch on October 28th, 18 days after the launch of the game.
This date is subject to change as always, especially with the BR currently in testing in BF labs, but Iāve heard it is the current plan for launch.
As far as I know, itās still not 100% confirmed whether this mode will be free, as it was originally advertised, or if it will be just another mode for the game. Also, as Battlefield Studios is currently performing a bunch of playtests for the mode, everything is subject to change.
I canāt stop being excited about it. I think itās the first game since Warzone and Apex that has the potential to dethrone Fortnite and, more importantly, PUBG from the Battle Royale genre and become the next big thing. From what I saw online, it looks kind of fun, and Iād love to give it a shot when it comes out!
What are your thoughts on Battlefield 6?
š® More Info On Insomniac's Wolverine and Venom
It looks like Insomniac Games is starting to come back to life, and sometime soon we can actually start seeing some things about their upcoming projects.
According to Insider Gaming, which recently got some exclusive information on Marvelās Wolverine, the game is aiming for a 2026 release window and, as we mentioned earlier, might appear during the next Sony State of Play, which, at the time of writing, is still undetermined.
As for Venom, yet another project in the pipeline for Insomniac that we know virtually nothing about, itās ongoing. There are bits and pieces floating around that suggest that Eddie Brock will become the protagonist in the upcoming title. Anti-Venom will also be a part of this game, but it isnāt the one we saw Peter using in Marvelās Spider-Man 2.
Also, there are reports that Spider-Man 2099 will be featured in one of the upcoming projects, but itās unclear at this point whether it will be Venom or perhaps Spider-Man 3.
Personally, I think itās great that there are so many projects in the works with Insomniac Games. I absolutely loved both Spider-Man games, and the studio has more than 30 years of game development behind their backs, so they are definitely going to have something amazing planned for everything. Canāt wait to see more during State of Play.
Are you looking forward to more Insomniac games?
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š® AC: Black Flag Remake Might Have More RPG Elements
While we are on the subject of new projects, according to a recent video posted by Jeux Video Magazine, the still-unofficially-confirmed Assassinās Creed Black Flag remake might be more RPG-heavy than the original one.
The video is in French, so itās a bit hard to understand, but according to what others could translate, the story will cut the modern-day parts and add more to protagonist Edward Kenwayās pirating. It also mentions that the gameplay will be more RPG-based, similar to Origins and Shadows. And the release is scheduled for early 2026.
Of course, as usual with those kinds of materials, take it with a grain of salt, especially because Ubisoft hasnāt even confirmed the game in the first place.
It all kind of makes sense to me. A lot of people liked RPG elements in those games, including me. And Black Flag is considered by most people to be one of the best parts of AC in general, so it figures that Ubisoft would want to mix and match those two together. The thing that concerns me is that it takes them this long to actually acknowledge they are working on it. I see only a few potential explanations. Either they are still trying to figure out the approach and what to actually do with this remake (which is unlikely), or the risk of this game being cancelled is very high.
Either way, letās see what happens!
ā” Lightning Round!
1ā¦2ā¦3ā¦Go!
š® Valve Continues The Crusade Against Mature Games
Probably the biggest platform for selling video games recently started a crusade against adult games, and recently another rule against them was released.
Specifically, they instituted a new rule that prevents Early Access releases on the platform in case the game contains āmature themesā, and the developers started getting the following emails:
Your app has failed our review because weāre unable to support the Early Access model of development for a game with mature themes. Please resubmit when your app is ready to launch without Early Access.
Earlier this year, they also changed the rules with regard to content that may violate the rules and standards set forth by Steamās payment processors, related card networks and banks.
It will be interesting to know the bigger reason behind itā¦
š® MindsEye Actor Believed The Game Could End His Career
Alex Hernandez, an actor who played the protagonist in the infamous MindsEye game, recently shared that because the game flopped so badly, he actually thought that his career was over.
In a recent podcast episode of FRVR he shared that:
I was like, āI might never work in a game again.ā
One of the caveats of being the face on the box is that people rightly or wrongly will associate all of their opinions and, more importantly, their emotions, about this game with my face.
It doesnāt seem to be the case, but it does sound like he wonāt be participating in another game project any time soon š
š® Palworld Is Gearing Up For 1.0 Release
And yet another game is gearing up for the 1.0 release despite a pending lawsuit.
In a recent video, Pocketpairās Communications Director and Publishing Manager, Bucky, went on a trip down memory lane and talked about the path the game took since the original release in Early Access and then talked about whatās ahead for the 1.0 update.
According to what he said, Palworld 1.0 will be a significant milestone for the team, and they have āa truly massive amount of contentā planned for this update. However, they donāt want to rush the update and instead lay a proper foundation. The developers will share some sneak peeks about Palworld 1.0 in the āvery near futureā.
It will be interesting to know if there are any changes considering the legal battle on their hands š
š«” True Tribute!
Today I wanted to salute
and !Iāve been meaning to play Alters for a while, but never got to it despite this game being developed by 11 bit studios, which I absolutely love. So, itās good to have people like
who can share a perspective on the game and some feedback. By the looks of it, it plays just as I imagined it would be, but also kind of funny. Now I definitely have to try it. Great review, as usual!š Personal Update
While Iām still extremely busy, I had some time to try Arena Breakout once again, now that they are finally on Steam with some of my friends.
And, well, I have to say, they indeed worked on this game while it was in Early Access. You no longer encounter a cheater in every single game, the economy is a bit more balanced now that theyāve disabled the ability to buy an in-game currency with real money, and the game has pretty much retained all its initial features, so thatās a good thing.
And Iām not sure what they did to their servers, but even with 100+ ping, it all works ok, so I might be giving this one another few weeks and see where this is going š
This is all the news I have for you folks today.
Thanks for making it this far! š
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Have a great week!
Alex from Gamedev Relay.
My favorite part about Black Flag was the ending. What a way to end a story.
Although I only watched the game's cutscenes on YouTube. I dropped interest in playing Assassin's Creed somewhere near the beginning of Brotherhood.
Some people don't change. Randy Bitchford, for example :D