New York Attorney General Letitia James has sued Valve in the New York Supreme Court, arguing that loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2 constitute illegal gambling under state law. The complaint, filed in late February, targets Valve's key-and-case system specifically — the CS2 loot box process is compared directly to a slot machine, complete with an animated spinning wheel landing on a cosmetic reward. Those cosmetics aren't just digital trophies, either: the CS skin market has reportedly surpassed $4.3 billion in value, with rare skins selling for thousands of dollars on the Steam Community Market. The AG's office, which bought and flipped at least one Counter-Strike knife skin during its investigation, argues that virtual items with real-world resale value qualify as "prizes" under New York gambling law — a legal distinction that previous lawsuits have struggled to land.

The suit seeks a permanent injunction to stop Valve offering loot box mechanics, along with disgorgement of profits and fines. This isn't Valve's first rodeo with gambling lawsuits — it defeated a wave of them back in 2022, where the crux was the distinction between third-party grey market sites and Valve's own systems. This time the AG is arguing Valve's own systems are the problem. If the case succeeds, the precedent could reach well beyond Valve; loot boxes remain a cornerstone of revenue across the industry. Valve hasn't commented publicly.

Research firm Gartner is predicting that the sub-$500 entry-level PC segment could effectively vanish by 2028, driven by a memory shortage that's already making waves across the industry. The firm also forecasts a 10.4% decline in worldwide PC shipments in 2026 — though given the current state of the DRAM supply chain, some analysts think even that number is optimistic. Dell's own CEO flagged the memory situation at CES, describing it as "pretty significant" heading into the year.

For PC gaming specifically, the concern is the floor. Entry-level builds are how a huge portion of new PC gamers get in — if the cheapest viable configuration crosses a threshold that price-sensitive markets can't stomach, that's a real accessibility problem. It's a prediction, not a certainty, but the underlying memory crunch is already real and already pushing component prices up. Worth keeping an eye on.

Paradox is marking Cities: Skylines' 11th anniversary by releasing a new expansion for the original game — Race Day, which lets you embed circuit racing tracks into your city layout. It's the first new content for CS1 in about two years, which makes it either a sweet anniversary surprise or a quiet acknowledgment that Cities: Skylines 2 still hasn't managed to replace its predecessor in most players' hearts. Probably a bit of both.

City Skylines 2 launched in 2023 to high expectations and a rough reception — performance issues, missing features, and a community that kept drifting back to the original. Paradox keeping City Skylines 1 alive with fresh content feels less like a victory lap and more like a practical response to where the player base actually is. Still, if you've got a meticulously planned city gathering dust, Race Day sounds like a decent excuse to fire it back up.

Bandai Namco's teased mystery RPG is Echoes of Aincrad — a new action RPG set in the Sword Art Online universe, and notably the first entry in the franchise where you play a character you've created rather than stepping into Kirito's shoes. It's launching July 10 on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam, with preorders already live. Not a lot of details beyond that yet, but the custom character hook is a meaningful departure for a franchise that's been Kirito-centric for its entire run.

Bungie has confirmed that Marathon — which launched March 5 at $40 on PS5, Xbox, and PC — will have mandatory seasonal wipes every three months, and the list of what you lose is not short. Each reset strips players of all their gear, extracted weapons, in-game currency, faction progression, and player level. Bungie's framing is deliberate: everyone starts each season with nothing, which keeps extractions feeling genuinely risky and loot feeling meaningful rather than routine. The studio is leaning harder into this than Arc Raiders, which made wipes optional. Here, there's no opting out.

What carries over: cosmetics (earned or purchased), in-game milestones and achievements, Codex lore entries, and faction unlocks — so you won't be re-doing intro quests every season, just the progression within them. Season 1, "Death is the First Step," runs through June; Season 2 "Nightfall" follows after that. Each season adds free content including new runner shells, zones, weapons, and events. Bungie's bet is that the wipe system makes the final weeks of each season particularly chaotic — players with nothing to lose tend to bring their best gear in and not worry about extraction. We'll see if that loop holds.

Wildlight Entertainment has confirmed that Highguard is shutting down on March 12, less than seven weeks after its January 26 launch. The closure has been coming for a while: the studio laid off most of its staff just 16 days after release when Tencent — reportedly the studio's primary backer — pulled funding after the game failed to hit the numbers needed. From a peak of nearly 97,000 concurrent Steam players at launch, Highguard had slipped to a few hundred daily. For a free-to-play shooter dependent on marketplace spending, that's terminal.

It's a rough ending for a game that had a rough time from the start — a poorly received Game Awards reveal in 2025 that the studio was turned "into a joke from minute one," according to a laid-off developer. Wildlight's skeleton crew did manage to ship a final update before the lights go out, adding a new hero and other content for the players still showing up. Over two million people tried Highguard across its run; that it couldn't convert any meaningful fraction of them into regulars is the story of the whole thing.

Ubisoft has officially confirmed the Assassin's Creed Black Flag remake, putting an end to a string of leaks and rumours that had been circling for a while. One notable change from the original: the game is dropping "4" from the title and will simply be called Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. Beyond the confirmation itself, Ubisoft hasn't shared a release date or much in the way of detail.

The original Black Flag from 2013 remains one of the franchise's most beloved entries — open-world piracy, naval combat, sea shanties, the general freedom to just be a pirate. The director of the game has since described watching Skull and Bones' tortured development as "bizarre," given it was "essentially the same stuff re-shipping 14 years" after they already made it. A remake of Black Flag, done well, should be an easy win for Ubisoft — a studio that could genuinely use one right now.

Skate studio Full Circle has confirmed layoffs, calling it a restructuring to "better support Skate's long-term future." The timing is uncomfortable — it landed right after the Season 3 roadmap dropped, and players are already unhappy about a decision to lock part of the new tutorial island behind a premium pass. Season 3 is still launching March 10.

Remakes and remasters hit 138 million downloads across platforms in 2025, according to Sensor Tower data. The industry figured this out years ago, but the numbers keep confirming it: nostalgia is a reliable business.

Iron Galaxy set off a Fallout: New Vegas remaster frenzy after posting a very specific New Vegas "Please Stand By" screen in a company meeting photo. They denied it the next day — signing off with "pardon us as we retreat back into our vault" — which convinced absolutely no one. A New Vegas remaster feels increasingly inevitable at this point, whether Iron Galaxy's involved or not.

That supposed GTA 6 leak that did the rounds recently? Turns out the footage had been sitting on someone's phone for four years before they released it. It's old pre-release material, not anything current — more of a historical artefact than a genuine reveal.

The Trump administration is reportedly debating forcing Tencent to divest its gaming stakes, including full ownership of Riot Games and a 28% stake in Epic. The discussions are framed around national security and data concerns, and appear connected to leverage ahead of Trump's planned April summit with Xi Jinping. Nothing decided yet.

The Division 2 just got a big 2026 roadmap for the franchise's 10th anniversary, including crossplay between PC and consoles, a new Central Park DLC, a new Incursion, and a rebuilt extraction-survival mode called Survivors. Player counts reportedly jumped 400% after the announcement. Not bad for a seven-year-old game.

EA is launching an official Creator Marketplace for The Sims 4, letting creators sell custom content directly to players through an in-game storefront. Good news for those creators. The rest of the Sims modding community will have opinions about it.

Minecraft's first 2026 content drop has a name, and it's focused on baby mobs. It's part of Mojang's newer approach of smaller, more frequent drops rather than one big annual update — which, if this one is anything to go by, will be very cute.

CS:GO is back on Steam as a standalone game, more than two years after being replaced by Counter-Strike 2, and it's already back on the most-played charts. The return is widely linked to Valve's ongoing loot box lawsuit in New York — and worth noting: the relisted CS:GO won't be licensed for esports use.

Diablo 4's Season of Slaughter is making the Butcher a playable character. The franchise's most iconic jump-scare enemy — the cleaver-wielding horror that's been ambushing players since Diablo 1 — can now be turned on everyone else. Feels right.