Take-Two Interactive have sold their publishing label Private Division to an unnamed party, along with five of Private Division's "live and unreleased titles". The GTA 6 publisher have also finally confirmed that they have shut down OlliOlli World and Rollerdrome devs Roll7 together with Kerbal Space Program 2 creators Intercept Games, months after performing mass layoffs at both studios.

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A few months ago, the rumour took root that GTA 6's release date would slip back from 2025 to 2026. An anonymous insider averred that studio heads were "worried" about the new open world game's progress - hence, perhaps, Rockstar's decision to mandate a full return to in-office work. Pshaw, say publishers Take-Two CEO. They announced a fall 2025 launch in March and have just doubled down on it in their latest financial briefing, with CEO Strauss Zelnick subsequently going on the tellybox to say that Take-Two are "highly confident in the timing", though he still has nothing to share about GTA 6 on PC.

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When multiplayer fishing game Webfishing came out last month, it offered a relaxing hangout zone for cats and dogs. Everything revolves around catching, selling, and collecting the fish that gather in the rivers of a small island. It also lets you customise your character with clothing. Mostly simple hats and shorts, but some options let players celebrate their sexuality, such as a rainbow-adorned t-shirts, or titles that hang above your character which simply say "Trans" or "Bi". All this led one player to complain there was no "Straight" title. So, the developer added one. It costs 10 grand.

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Life simulation game Inzoi will launch on PC via Steam early access on 28th March 2025, publishers Krafton have announced. Billed as a potential Sims 4 usurper, and equipped with syrupy Unreal Engine 5 visuals, it was originally slated for launch this year.

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Roblox is making changes in an attempt to keep younger players safe in the online platform. Beginning later this month, children under the age of 13 will no longer be able to search, discover or play unrated experiences within Roblox, and will be unable to access social hangout experiences.

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I first played Taiko no Tatsujin in an arcade (in Japan, because I am very cool), where it's controlled by hitting a recreation of an actual taiko drum. It was fun enough that I wish there was a taiko drum peripheral available for PC now the series is on our platform.

Taiko no Tatsujin: Rhythm Festival is out now via Steam, where it offers over 70 songs to drum through, and a subscription service through which to unlock over 700 more. Maybe I should try to get my Donkey Konga drums working on PC, but I'll probably settle for playing it with a gamepad.

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Could tower defence be the ultimate "it's Friday and I am here in body only" genre? I haven't really thought about it before, but Rift Riff's effusively laidback crowd control has me pondering those optimal moments in any tower defender when the incoming horde hits the flamer-MG triangle just right, and you can settle back comfortably into the role of clockwatcher.

Rift Riff encourages this behaviour by being nice to look at. Created by a trio of developers including Hidden Folks designer Adriaan de Jongh, it's a world of spacey, sun-carved mountains, forests and monoliths. The towers resemble the sacred architecture of Monument Valley, and the colour scheme and general ambience remind me of Cocoon. There's a demo, if you fancy it.

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Amplitude Studios, developers of many a game with "Endless" in the name, have split with publisher Sega to become independent again, with ownership of the studio reverting to its original founders and "other members of the team". The developers say everyone is parting "on good terms" and that the last eight years of getting published under Sega has been "amazing". But there are other businessy reasons, of course. Namely, Sega have been trying to trim down their European studios for the past year, and Amplitude is just the latest bunch of devs affected by that.

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"The cool thing about bombs is that you can hide them in anything," is probably my favourite Oppenheimer quote of all time, and in the case of Ian Hitman, it does raise an important question: with so many everyday objects equal to the rubber duck in its unthreatening aura, yet more inconspicuous, why choose to put an explosive in this one?

The simplest answer is that’s it’s a recurring bit of levity, a holdover easter egg, elevated to the status of key mission item in Hitman: Codename 47 before being given pride of place as an explosive in the World Of Assassination games. But to ascribe such unassuming purpose to the duck is to ignore its revelatory power. We must go deeper.

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Alright everyone, let's put this new comments section through its paces. I want to hear deep and detailed roundups of everything you've been playing over the past two weeks this time! We're gonna make our tech team weep. Here's what we're clicking on this weekend!

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Good news, everyone: I'm off work all this week. I know, I know - a whole seven days with zero Edwin bullshit. What a prospect. Allow yourself a moment to savour the idea. I'm so thrilled for you! The Maw, sadly, does not understand the concept of "time off". Its hunger is as constant as the tide, as unrelenting as my retreating hairline. So before I disappear into a beam of sunshine, here's this week's list of new PC game releases.

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It was the 20-year anniversary of Halo 2 at the weekend, which saw the shooter's modern counterparts celebrating with classic multiplayer maps and long-lost levels. But also emerging from the dust of time are insights to the sequel's development back in 2004. Rolling Stone interviewed two key designers of the game and made a fun discovery. The Flood (the sickly pale alien infestation that briefly turns Halo into sci-fi horror) was partly inspired by a colourful and innocent children's book about a nice elephant.

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Great God Grove is, in a word, bonkers. I’ve stopped a small community from completing a blood ritual, played the role of matchmaker to a group of lonely hearts that involved organising a date with god, and plastered a statue with paint as part of a revolutionary movement to uplift the power of art. My time with GGG has been a pick n’ mix of colourful escapades, and together with its story of godly woes, striking art style, vacuum-based puzzle-solving, and nightmare-inducing puppet work, I’m now a die-hard LimboLane devotee.

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The Steam Deck OLED – which is like a Steam Deck but better in almost every way – is getting a new, if potentially more smudge-susceptible Limited Edition. A successor to the translucent version that only went on sale in the US and Canada last year, the Steam Deck OLED: Limited Edition White offers both a snowy look and, for those of us outside North America, the chance to actually buy one. It’ll go on sale November 18th, in all the countries that the Steam Deck currently ships in.

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"Imagine you buy a pinball machine, and years later, you enter your den to go play it, only to discover that all the paddles are missing, the pinball and bumpers are gone, and the monitor that proudly displayed your unassailable high score is removed". As reported by Polygon, that's an argument put forth by a new lawsuit against Ubisoft, filed by two Californian players of The Crew. They're suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over shutting down the racing game's servers, rendering it unplayable.

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After nearly a year of public beta honing, the Nvidia App – Team Green’s new one-stop shop for desktop GPU management – is out in full. Not alongside the upcoming RTX 50 series, as rumoured, but right-now-today-this-minute. I’ve been testing out the launch version and while it’s not without some dud features, it does agreeably achieve its stated goal of combining the functions within Nvidia Control Panel and GeForce Experience. And if installing it means never having to use the latter again, well, that’s 149MB well spent.

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What would it take to turn Texas, a Republican stronghold, into a blue state? According to data from SurveyMonkey, just remove all the gun owners from the Lone Star State and it would have gone to Hillary Clinton in 2016. You can do the same thing in liberal California. Remove all the non-gun owners and the state would have voted for Donald Trump.

That’s how divisive the issue of gun control is in American politics.

SurveyMonkey found that no other demographic — not race, religion or gender — so perfectly divided voters. In the 2016 election, 47 percent of Trump supporters said gun control was an issue important enough to influence their vote. That’s compared to just 27 percent of voters who supported Hillary Clinton.

But what does this divide mean? How is it impacting gun control policy, and how might this issue change in light of recent mass shootings like Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown? To discuss the data, join a PBS NewsHour-hosted Twitter chat at 1 p.m. EDT Thursday with data journalist Dante Chinni (@Dchinni), professor and chairman of political science at the University of Kansas Don Haider-Markel (@dhmarkel), and Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump (@pbump).

Have questions? Tweet them using #NewsHourChats.

The post Twitter chat: How the gun control debate mirrors larger issues of partisanship in America appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A Labour minister confirmed that the application process for Personal Independence Payment is being 'kept under review'

The International Space Station will burn up and splash down into the Pacific sometime around 2030. What could possibly go wrong? And will we ever see anything like the ISS again?

Brown dwarfs could be hiding dark matter inside their cores – if they are, there would be signs that could help us track it down

A newly spotted asteroid named 2024 RW1 burned up in the atmosphere over the South Pacific, creating a spectacular bright flash in the sky over the Philippines just hours after first being detected

News of the asteroid 2024 RW1 impacting near the Philippines may have come as a shock this week, but space agencies and astronomers around the world are keeping an eye out to protect us

Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan–ATLAS, is expected to grace our skies from mid-October. Abigail Beall is hoping for a dazzling display

As the space industry evolves, we need a new set of international regulations to decide who is responsible for safety, the number of satellites in space, and more

Medically evacuating an astronaut from space is difficult and expensive, and a new model predicts that one in three long-duration moon missions may require it

A computer simulation suggests that some collisions between exotic, hypothetical stars would make space-time ripple with detectable waves

The first 18 satellites of a planned Chinese mega constellation are brighter than all but 500 stars in the sky, raising fears of a huge impact on astronomy

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

SpaceX claims the fifth test flight of its Starship rocket will happen “within days”, but the Federal Aviation Administration has not yet approved the launch

Asteroids that regularly fly between Earth, Venus and Mars could provide radiation shielding for human missions to explore neighbouring planets

Data collected by the Zhurong rover and orbiting satellites suggests the existence of an ancient shoreline in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars

In order to figure out how something came from nothing, we first need to explore the different types of nothing

SpaceX is preparing for the sixth test flight of Starship, the world's most powerful rocket. Next week's launch – if successful – will be the fastest turnaround yet

The first ever full-scale demonstration of a nuclear reactor designed to passively cool itself in an emergency was a success, showing that it should be possible to build nuclear plants without the risk of dangerous meltdown

Devices that let people with paralysis walk and talk are rapidly improving. Some see a future in which we alter memories and download skills – but major challenges remain

Plans to create an interactive AI model of the legendary code breaker Alan Turing are reckless and problematic, says Matthew Sparkes

A new procedure turns an alloy of nickel and titanium into a material as strong as steel but 20 times stretchier – and one application could be building planes with shape-shifting wings

The author of Sapiens has turned his attention to the information networks that shape our societies, but when you stop and think about what he's saying, it's obvious

‘Battle of Technologies’ sees electric vehicles and combustion cars compete at the highest level. Who will win?

Google DeepMind claims its AlphaChip AI method can deliver “superhuman” chip designs that are already used in its data centres – but independent experts say public proof is lacking

AI chatbots from Google and Microsoft sometimes parrot disinformation when answering questions about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – but their performance depends on language and changes over time

Smartphones have indeed created an "anxious generation", but it isn't young people, it is their parents, argues neuroscientist Dean Burnett

Gears just a few micrometres wide can be carved from silicon using a beam of electrons, enabling tiny robots or machines that could interact with human cells

A new way to store numbers in computers can dynamically prioritise accuracy or range, depending on need, allowing software to quickly switch between very large and small numbers

What happens if AI is trained to write choral music by feeding it a specially created vocal dataset? Moving new exhibition The Call tackles some thorny questions about AI and creativity – and stirs the soul with music

An AI-assisted robot can listen to spoken commands and assemble 3D objects such as chairs and tables out of reusable building blocks

Agents are being offered double the normal commission to help shift apartments throughout capital cities.

Treat yourself to a Becky Lynch book signing, games with the Dropout stars, Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and so much more!

Just in time to watch with the whole family over Thanksgiving.

He just can’t help it.