Tencent's GTA gamble flops, physical media fades, and Steam's new hit

Tencent reportedly spent six years and hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to turn Last Sentinel into a Grand Theft Auto competitor, and failed. The scale of that misfire lands alongside a broader industry conversation about where the money is going: Sony has reported that 82% of PlayStation sales are now digital, prompting the former Blizzard boss to note the purchasing trend from consumers is clear — even as some in the industry say they wish physical media had survived.

A new action game is making serious noise on Steam, pulling nearly 1,800 reviews at 92% positive after just one week, with players flagging it as extremely challenging. That kind of word-of-mouth run is a contrast to Ubisoft's NFT tactics game, which has been quietly surviving on the margins and is now shutting down in October. Path of Exile 2's developers, meanwhile, claimed a different kind of win: after a year and a half of testing, they finally convinced Nvidia to fix a driver bug — reportedly by shipping the company an entire PC.

Dragon's Dogma 2 is getting a fan-requested hard mode via a Dark Arisen update, and Nintendo Switch Online is adding unreleased Virtual Boy games alongside Super Mario Sunshine. Slay the Spire 2 pushed out a balance patch targeting a major exploit and toning down the Silent. On the card game front, the Palworld tabletop spinoff is already being hit by scalpers before it finds its footing.