It’s been a month since Gamescom 2025 lowered its shutters and sent ninety thousand nerds squeezing into the tiny Cologne tram station outside. In newsworthiness terms, a month’s time is roughly equivalent to five millennia, so this roundup of all the games I played at the show (but haven’t already covered elsewhere) comes with an admission of tardiness.
Also: excuses. Who knew Silksong would come out while I was still unpacking?
Two thoughts kept occurring to me while playing through the first few hours of Baby Steps, the new masocore QWOPlike from Gabe Cuzzillo, Maxi Boch, and Bennett Foddy. The first was a Dara Ó Briain bit where the Irish comedian talks about hiring a personal trainer and, after complaining about being sore following a workout, he's told "That's because you're using muscles you haven't used in years!". To this, he replies: "Then why the fuck are we wasting our time with those> muscles?!"
"That's not a minotaur, that's just a guy with horns," yells one of the YouTube commenters on the reveal trailer of Minos. They might be right with their Monty Python-esque accusation, but regardless of how much the maze-building roguelike and its developers Artificer have put the cat amongst the Greek mythology-loving pigeons, the demo that's currently out for it is good fun.
Yesterday, a group of moneyfolk including private equity firm Silver Lake, Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, and Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners unveiled plans to acquire Electronic Arts for an estimated $55 billion.
The buyers are committing $36 billion of their own equity (briefly and inexpertly, "equity" is the value of your assets after you deduct anything you owe), including the value of the PIF's existing investments in EA. They're making up the rest of the total thanks to a $20 billion loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank. How will they manage that massive debt? According to the Financial Times, who cite unnamed insiders, they're gambling on the deployment of generative AI tools as a gigantic cost-saving measure.
Update: It's now live, full notes here.
Original story continues below:
Civ 7 beefy update 1.2.5 arrives today, September 30th. Developers Firaxis have laid out its major tweaks and additions, which include new map types and city states, plus a revamp of the construction interface and a hefty helping of balancing.
The polarising 4X strategy nation-builder has gotten the likes of auto-explore and world wonder reworks in its last couple of monthly updates, with Firaxis having settled in for the long haul after an initial flurry of post-release tweaking. 1.2.5 is the first update the game's gotten since an undisclosed number of workers - "dozens of people", according to Game Developer sources - were laid off at Firaxis earlier this month, in what publishers 2K told RPS was a "staff reduction" as the studio "restructures and optimizes its development process for adaptability, collaboration, and creativity".
