Video Video games Weekly: Silksong and Gamescom

Welcome to Video Video games Weekly on Engadget. Anticipate a brand new story each Monday or Tuesday (or Wednesday, no matter), damaged into two elements. The primary is an area for brief essays and ramblings about online game tendencies and associated matters from me, Jess Conditt, a reporter who’s lined the business for greater than 13 years. The second comprises the online game tales from the previous week that it’s essential to find out about, together with some headlines from outdoors of Engadget.

Please take pleasure in — and I am going to see you subsequent week.

On a planet shrouded in fable, in a land surrounded by lore, on a mountain draped in thriller, in a cave suffocated by secrets and techniques, the legend sleeps. For six years, the legend has slumbered whereas wild tales spiral round it, twisting and increasing and entwining. New phrases have been born and previous phrases infused with developed meanings: Believer. Doubter. Silkpost. The lies have grown so thick they’ve turn out to be corporeal, spreading trickery with a reputation and a lifeless smile.

For six years, the legend has slept whereas the lots roiled, all of them ready for the sign to awaken and know fact. All of them ready for a bell that can ring, lastly and clearly, on Thursday, August 21, 2025.

Skong. Skong. Skong.

It’s a particular time within the Silksong subreddit. After years of silence round its sequel, Hole Knight: Silksong, Group Cherry has scheduled a livestream with a “particular announcement” in regards to the recreation for August 21 at 10:30AM ET. Not solely is that this thrilling for Metroidvania followers in every single place, but it surely’s additionally doable that this announcement marks the ultimate moments of the Silksong subreddit as we all know it. An odd cocktail of recreation delays, inconsistent updates and hyper-focused cult fandom has cultivated an enchanting little universe in r/Silksong, full with its personal guidelines, villains and heroes. It’s a spot the place clown wigs are commonplace and contributors have turned trolling right into a role-playing artform. A LARPform, if you’ll. It’s a spot that’s persistently made me snigger each time it’s appeared in my feed over the previous yr or so.

Forward of Thursday’s particular announcement, this sub is experiencing the final gasps of determined myth-making and hopeless anticipation earlier than it transforms into one thing else completely, armed with precise details about the sequel, gameplay movies and possibly even a agency launch date. Or, dare I say it, a shock launch. For only a second longer in r/Silksong, something is feasible.

After which it’ll be over. It doesn’t matter what occurs throughout Thursday’s livestream, the day will come when Silksong comes out and the drip-feed of silkposts dries up utterly. However for now, our face paint is prepared. Typically it’s simply good to acknowledge the insanity and the great thing about the second, earlier than it slips away for good.

The information

Information from ONL 2025

Gamescom 2025 kicked off on Tuesday with Opening Night time Dwell, a showcase hosted by Geoff Keighley and the oldsters behind The Recreation Awards, and there have been loads of pleasant morsels on show. Engadget UK Bureau Chief Mat Smith is on the bottom at Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, to play upcoming titles and speak to builders, however for now, listed below are our headlines straight out of ONL 2025:

And our headlines from Gamescom 2025 up to now:

Gamescom 2025 runs by August 24.

ROG Xbox Ally lands in October

Microsoft is slowly establishing its handheld period with information that the ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X will likely be out there on October 16. There’s nonetheless no official phrase on how a lot they’ll price, however there are hints: As noticed by Wario64, Greatest Purchase not too long ago listed the Xbox Ally at $550 and the Xbox Ally X at $900, and these fall according to our predictions, which have been primarily based on the costs of current ROG Ally handhelds. Alongside the discharge date, Microsoft introduced the Handheld Compatibility Program, an initiative aimed toward optimizing video games for moveable units and informing gamers about how nicely they carry out. It’s primarily Steam Deck Verified, however for Xbox handhelds, and it’s one more signal that Microsoft’s moveable gaming ambitions stretch past only one {hardware} producer.

The PS5 will cost more tomorrow than it does today

First Nintendo and Microsoft raised the costs of their newest consoles, and now it’s Sony’s flip. Sony on Wednesday introduced the next value will increase for the PS5 household:

Normal PS5 with a disc drive: $550, up from $500
PS5 digital version: $500, up from $450
PS5 Professional: $750, up from $700

Sony blames the will increase on a “difficult financial atmosphere,” echoing sentiments from its contemporaries. The value hikes come at a time within the {hardware} technology after we’re used to seeing consoles get cheaper, which simply makes this entire factor extra irritating.

Rod Fergusson is in charge of BioShock again and already making big changes

There have been indicators of turmoil at BioShock 4 studio Cloud Chamber for some time now, together with information earlier this month that the sport failed a evaluation with 2K executives and was due for a whole narrative revamp. Now, we’re seeing much more fallout. Former Gears of Battle and Diablo head Rod Fergusson has left Blizzard to steer improvement of BioShock 4 at Cloud Chamber, and his appointment comes alongside information that 80 people at the studio are being laid off. That is truly the second time Fergusson has joined the event of a BioShock recreation on the final second — he equally swooped in and minimize points of BioShock: Infinite at Irrational Video games in 2012.

The race by improvement hell between Judas and BioShock 4 continues.

Blizzard’s cinematic and narrative team is unionizing

Microsoft is the house of one other online game union. Employees with Blizzard Leisure’s Story and Franchise Improvement workforce, which handles in-game cinematics and lore for titles together with Overwatch and World of Warcraft, voted this week to unionize beneath the Communications Employees of America. This covers about 169 builders and it marks the fourth unionization effort from Microsoft’s gaming groups, becoming a member of QA employees at Activision, ZeniMax and Raven Software.

Steam censorship is breaking PayPal

PayPal isn’t a sound method to purchase video games on Steam in sure nations any longer. Steam in July eliminated tons of of video games with grownup and NSFW themes from its storefront, and up to date its insurance policies to ban “content material that will violate the principles and requirements” of its cost processors. This was extremely obscure and raised rapid issues round monetary censorship, particularly when mixed with a associated culling of thousands of games from Itch.io. Now, it’s confirmed that PayPal has terminated its partnership with Steam in a number of nations, affecting any denomination “apart from EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD.”

Valve says it’s being pressured by cost processors together with Visa, MasterCard and PayPal to take away sure video games and implement puritanical censorship insurance policies, and this has already resulted in not less than one recreation being unjustly removed from the platform. That recreation, VILE: Exhumed, is now available as shareware.

Roblox is changing its rules after so, so many child-safety lawsuits

Roblox is locking down its system for sharing and viewing user-generated video games following a wave of lawsuits accusing builders of failing to guard their younger userbase. All unrated experiences, or user-created video games, will likely be restricted to the developer and anybody actively engaged on them, somewhat than being out there to anybody over the age of 13, as is at the moment the case. This variation and others, together with a brand new system that routinely detects and tracks “violative scenes” on particular person servers, will roll out over the approaching months.