Thursday, October 22

EA narrows to guns and football as BioWare closes

“Goods were sent with caravans that would take some fifty days for the journey from Ashur to Kanesh.” — Eckart Frahm;, in Assyria

Gaming Editorial

EA's 'next chapter' means fewer projects, fewer people and no BioWare

PC Gamer (Andy Chalk) · Oct 21

After closing BioWare, Electronic Arts published a memo setting out its plans, and PC Gamer's Andy Chalk reads it as cuts almost across the board. The company says it will do fewer things with fewer people, concentrating on Battlefield, Apex Legends, EA Sports FC and The Sims. Respawn and DICE are to collaborate on a future shooter, an American football game called Project Gridiron is in development, and Fight Night is returning. The Iron Man and third Star Wars Jedi games continue, but Project Lotus, widely assumed to be a precursor to The Sims 5, is paused and the Skate team is being cut. EA says a small BioWare team had been doing early Mass Effect development, and that it will not go forward, so the studio and its Edmonton workspace are closing.

Chalk notes the memo never mentions the roughly 400 layoffs Bloomberg reported. It is signed by Cam Weber and David Tinson, not CEO Andrew Wilson, whom EA confirmed is still in the job. He ties the plan to the Saudi PIF buyout, which left EA with $20 billion in debt, and cites former BioWare writer Patrick Weekes's prediction that guns and football games would survive while 'gay stuff' would not.

Counterpoint: Defenders of EA's approach would say that concentrating on proven franchises is ordinary financial discipline for a company carrying $20 billion in debt, and that linking the cuts to the owners' politics is inference, since the memo gives no such reason.

Continuing · Generative AI in games and modding

Future? No Thanks! creator admits limited AI use after calling AI 'technofascist'

Rock Paper Shotgun (Edwin Evans-Thirlwell) · Oct 21

Paulo Pedercini, the developer known as Molleindustria, has disclosed on his blog that his ecosocialist satire Future? No Thanks! used generative AI in a few places, Rock Paper Shotgun's Edwin Evans-Thirlwell reports. He says 99% of the code was written before AI was viable as a coding tool, and that ChatGPT or Claude helped with late debugging such as a broken shader and a loading glitch. About two minutes of ElevenLabs text-to-speech voices an automated toilet and a PA that mistranslates Roman idioms, which he says is deliberate parody. He says no art or writing is AI-generated, and that he swapped out AI-made placeholder music for royalty-free loops. The Steam page did not disclose any of this at release and now does.

Pedercini also deleted closing paragraphs that called being AI-free 'the only truly ethical position' while warning that enforcing it risks division, after angry replies on Bluesky. Evans-Thirlwell calls the game's use of AI more nuanced than cash-in games or investor-driven blockbusters, and writes sympathetically of Pedercini's position.

Counterpoint: Developers and players who hold a strict no-AI line, including many of the Bluesky critics, would say that disclosure after release undercuts the stance he publicly endorses, and that code and voice use is still use.

Previously: Aftermath covered Xbox manager Stirrup's exit from X and indie studios cancelling public playtests over AI clone fears. — Wednesday October 21 edition.

Continuing · Rising console prices and the next hardware generation

Respec: skip the pricey PS6 and Helix, because your PS5 will last

Respec (Tom Orry) · Oct 21

Respec's Tom Orry argues that buyers worried about next-generation prices can safely stay on current hardware. He cites a rumour, reported by VGC, that PS6 memory and storage alone cost $680. He then counts Sony's output: of 44 games Sony published on PS5 in about six years, he judges only seven to be full, good, exclusive-in-practice releases, among them Returnal, Astro Bot and Ghost of Yōtei. Since Sony now brings its games to PC and third parties will not ignore PC or Switch 2, he expects few PS6 exclusives. He points to PS4 support continuing five years into the PS5 era and to new upscalers (PSSR 2.0, QSSR, FSR 4.1.1) stretching current consoles. Xbox, he says, has bigger problems and has pushed multi-device compatibility, so abandoning Series consoles for Helix makes little sense.

He concludes that a current console should serve for many more years.

Counterpoint: Orry says the seven-game list reflects his own judgement, so a Sony fan would count differently, and players who buy at launch for performance or third-party releases would not accept first-party exclusives as the only measure of value.

Previously: Fortune reported an internal Helix price projection of $1,200–$1,800, which Aftermath called commercial suicide. — Wednesday October 21 edition.

Continuing · License plate readers and police search warrants

EFF publishes a state-level playbook against license plate reader surveillance

EFF Deeplinks (Rindala Alajaji) · Oct 21

EFF's Rindala Alajaji sets out a legislative framework for states, arguing that ALPR networks run by vendors such as Flock Safety, Motorola's Vigilant and Axon amount to nationwide tracking infrastructure. EFF says the cameras have been used to search for immigrants, track protesters and women seeking reproductive care, and by officers stalking former partners, with search reasons logged as 'LOL' and 'LMAO'. Six states passed ALPR limits in 2026: Connecticut, Kentucky, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington. EFF's first preference is a flat statewide ban with decommissioning, data deletion and vendor certification.

Failing that, it proposes restricting use to real-time hotlist matching with a warrant, banning data storage, and banning placement near hospitals, purchases of ALPR data and predictive use. It also wants 30-day public notice before procurement, a statewide registry, audits, a private right of action and the exclusionary rule. State law should be a floor so that localities can still ban the cameras, and the group would exempt standalone traffic-enforcement cameras from these bans.

Counterpoint: Police agencies and vendors, whom EFF itself identifies as the technology's main promoters, say ALPRs are an essential tool for solving violent crime, and would argue that a ban or a storage prohibition removes the investigative value that justifies them.

Previously: EFF argued police should need warrants to search stored ALPR data, citing San Jose's 261,711 searches in a year. — Tuesday October 20 edition.

EFF: interoperability mandates and security can coexist

EFF Deeplinks (Rory Mir) · Oct 22

EFF's Rory Mir rebuts the claim by large platforms that opening their systems to rivals puts users at risk. He notes that Apple invoked security against the EU Digital Markets Act's Article 6(7) interoperability duty, as it did against right to repair. Google made a similar argument against third-party app stores, and this year the Ninth Circuit rejected it in Epic's case against Google. Mir points to cross-platform RCS with Message Layer Security as an example where mandated common standards produced end-to-end encrypted messaging between Android and iOS. He argues that independent experts rarely have the access to test companies' security claims.

He concedes that retrofitting interoperability into closed systems needs care, especially for components built on trusted access, such as browser engines. EFF urges the European Commission to give technical guidance and to consider tiered leniency, while not letting security concerns indefinitely delay compliance.

Counterpoint: Apple and Google maintain that curated control reduces malware and privacy risk, and security specialists who work on privileged components would say opening them to third parties carries risks that case-by-case review may not contain.

AI & Industry

Continuing · Microsoft's Xbox studio closures and divestitures

Xbox plans three more layoff rounds through January

Polygon (Elijah Gonzalez) · Oct 21

Polygon reports that Xbox's 'reset' will continue into 2027, with further layoff rounds planned for October, November and January.

Previously: Sharma's town hall call for new IP came against cancellations and spin-offs at Obsidian, Double Fine, Compulsion and Ninja Theory. — Wednesday October 14 edition.

Continuing · Generative AI in games and modding

Vivrato survey: 97% of studio leaders use AI in development

GamesIndustry.biz (Sophie McEvoy) · Oct 21

A Vivrato survey of studio leaders in the EU and North America found 97% have used AI in some form during development, and 94% in at least one of nine production stages, according to GamesIndustry.biz.

Previously: Aftermath's take on Xbox manager Stirrup's exit from X, plus indie studios cancelling public playtests over AI clone fears. — Wednesday October 21 edition.

Continuing · Grand Theft Auto 6 approaches release

Shooters and sports games face most player loss to GTA 6

GamesIndustry.biz (Sophie McEvoy) · Oct 21

New data reported by GamesIndustry.biz suggests competitive shooters and sports games, such as Call of Duty and EA Sports FC, are most at risk of losing players when GTA 6 launches next month.

Previously: Sensor Tower data showed GTA 6 preorders far ahead of other recent AAA games. — Wednesday October 21 edition.

Continuing · Sony ending physical discs for new PS5 games

Resident Evil Requiem reportedly earned more from PlayStation discs than all Xbox versions

Eurogamer (Connor Makar) · Oct 21

Eurogamer reports that physical PlayStation copies of Resident Evil: Requiem may have outsold every Xbox version of the game, in a report that also surfaces other physical-sales figures. The piece frames it against Sony's move toward a discless future.

Previously: Ken Kutaragi called anger over the end of discs a 'mentality issue' and said continued printing isn't economically reasonable. — Tuesday October 20 edition.

Indies and original IP took a bigger share of 2026's biggest games

GamesIndustry.biz (Lewis Packwood) · Oct 21

Sensor Tower research commissioned by GamesIndustry.biz finds indies and original IP made up a much higher proportion of the biggest PC and console games of 2026 than of 2025.

PHP patches two remote code execution flaws after disclosure leak

Simon Willison · Oct 21

The PHP Foundation's security release covers the whole 8.x line and fixes two remote code execution holes, with exploits circulating since a leak in coordinated disclosure, Simon Willison notes. The CVE IDs surfaced on Tuesday with a wrong release time and a CVSS score of 10.0 when the actual score is 9.2, and anyone running PHP is urged to upgrade.

Former Disney inventor launches AI theme park personalization platform

Blooloop (Bea Mitchell) · Oct 21

Blooloop reports that a former Disney inventor has launched an AI-powered platform for personalizing theme park visits.

Continuing · Game industry layoffs and studio closures

Netflix Games reportedly hit by layoffs

This Week In Videogames (Maddie Agne) · Oct 21

This Week in Videogames reports layoffs at Netflix Games, with only 3.5% of subscribers reportedly playing games monthly, about 10% short of 2026 engagement goals.

Previously: Don't Nod entered safeguard proceedings with up to 85 jobs at risk. — Wednesday October 21 edition.

Physicist Christopher Stubbs joins Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust

Anthropic · Oct 21

Anthropic has added Christopher Stubbs, an experimental physicist and former Dean of Science at Harvard, to its Long-Term Benefit Trust. He works in observational cosmology and precision measurement and has advised the US government on national security and arms control.

Science & Archaeology

Skulls from China identified as Denisovan

Nature (Rachel Fieldhouse) · Oct 21

Nature reports that archaeologists have identified skulls from China as belonging to the Denisovans, giving a first view of what these ancient human relatives looked like.

Rare Olaf the Holy coin turns up in Norwegian Viking hoard

Live Science (Tom Metcalfe) · Oct 22

A large Viking Age hoard found in Norway contains a rare silver coin bearing Olaf the Holy, one of the country's first Christian kings, and Live Science says it may have been held by the king himself.

Mosaic floor uncovered at Kültepe-Kanesh

Archaeology Magazine (Jessica Esther Saraceni) · Oct 21

Türkiye Today reports that a mosaic floor more than 2,000 years old has been uncovered at Kültepe-Kanesh in central Anatolia, near Kayseri.

Drone survey finds rock art sites in Australia

Archaeology Magazine (Jessica Esther Saraceni) · Oct 21

University of Sydney researchers used a drone survey to identify rock art sites in Australia, according to a university statement relayed by Archaeology Magazine.

Silverpit Crater confirmed as asteroid impact that raised a huge tsunami

ScienceDaily · Oct 21

Scientists have confirmed that the Silverpit Crater, buried 700 meters below the North Sea seabed, was made by a 160-meter asteroid 43 to 46 million years ago. The impact is estimated to have thrown rock and water 1.5 kilometers high and caused a tsunami over 100 meters tall.

Famous solar-storm train delay actually happened in 1848

ScienceDaily · Oct 21

Researchers have shown that a train delayed by a solar storm, long dated to 1841, was in fact delayed in 1848, correcting an early record of space weather. The finding is a reminder of the continuing threat storms pose to power grids and satellites.

Sound & Music Tech

Continuing · Synth firmware hacking and open-source firmware

M-VAVE FM-1 gets official 20-voice multi-timbral firmware

Synth Anatomy (Synth Anatomy) · Oct 21

M-VAVE's official firmware v16 turns the $70 FM-1 into a 20-voice multi-timbral FM synth with an improved sequencer. It follows weeks of discussion about alternative firmware for the box.

Previously: A hardware-level MS2000/microKORG emulator built from machine code joined the firmware recompilation trend. — Wednesday October 21 edition.

Roland TR-1000 firmware 1.5 adds keyboard mode and better routing

Synth Anatomy (Synth Anatomy) · Oct 22

A year after release, Roland's TR-1000 hybrid drum machine gets firmware 1.5 with a keyboard mode and improved routing, among other changes.

Atomosynth's Mochika X7 is a semi-modular analog synth from Peru

Synth Anatomy (Synth Anatomy) · Oct 21

Peruvian maker Atomosynth, founded by Alfredo Aliaga, has released the Mochika X7, a semi-modular analog synth with two oscillators, a delay and a sequencer.

UJAM releases free Detunicorn hypersaw synth

Sonic State · Oct 21

UJAM has released Detunicorn, a free synthesizer plug-in built for large hypersaw sounds, as a Halloween giveaway.

Allen & Heath Qu mixers get V1.2 firmware

Sonic State · Oct 21

Allen & Heath's Qu V1.2 is a major feature update for the latest generation of Qu mixers, adding workflow enhancements.