Final Fantasy XIV's Evercold expansion adds a new NPC race, new creatures and new gear (Official). The official art shows a cat-like character in overalls, a huge creature above the clouds and 8 outfits. More comes at the Tokyo Fan Festival keynote on Friday, Oct 30, at 9pm CT.

The Daily Echo, Sun Oct 25 ☀️ 🏭 Factorio 2.1 is stable. Wube's Friday Facts (Oct 23, Official) landed two years after Space Age, with quality-of-life fixes and space logistics. PC Gamer reports Wube calls it the last major update. 13,825 people were playing on Steam at 12:55am CT. 🃏 The FBI and Santa Ana police are on the PSA card theft. PSA (Official) says 6,451 graded items were stolen from a FedEx truck on Oct 13, and it has now published the full list, deactivated the certs and refunded grading fees. TheGamer counts 2,978 Pokémon and 898 One Piece (Reported). 🎮 Today is the last full day of Steam Next Fest, which ends Monday at 12:00pm CT (Official). Polygon reports Valve's most-played demos include Worst Class Ever, Fart Together and Frostrail, and Funcore Games says Worst Class Ever has passed 300,000 players (Reported). 🗡️ Knightmare is getting a free, officially licensed point-and-click game on PC in 2027. VGC reports it brings back the original cast, including Hugo Myatt as Treguard, with hand-drawn art and "no use of AI whatsoever" (Reported). 🏀 NBA Live Mobile shuts down Tuesday, Oct 27. EA's service updates page lists it as NBA Mobile 26 (Official), and GameRant reports it is the last EA basketball game with live servers.

Wuthering Waves is giving players 10 free pulls for logging in, through Nov 11 (Official). Log in on 1 day for Radiant Tide x5 and Premium Tuner x100, and on 3 days total for another Radiant Tide x5 and Crystal Solvent x5. The game had 9,299 Steam players at 11:20pm CT.

Modern Warfare 4's Oct 24 update fixes a DMZ bug where a party leader could pull teammates out of a match and get their Active Duty Operators marked MIA, per Infinity Ward (Official). It also fixes the vanishing Exfil helicopter and too-far bomb defuses in Search and Destroy.

Halloween week check-in: Dead by Daylight has 48,280 players on Steam right now, nearly four times Phasmophobia's 12,532 (Official, Steam data, as of 6:55pm CT). Lethal Company is at 3,811.

Both of Commander Shepard's voice actors are now backing #SaveMassEffect, and the petition is fewer than 4,000 signatures short of its 150,000 goal. 🎙️ Mark Meer, the voice of male Shepard: "I like it too. Hold the line." (Official) 🎙️ Jennifer Hale, the voice of female Shepard: "my space brother is wise" (Official) 📈 The petition has 146,334 signatures as of 4:52pm CT, up from about 120,000 this morning. 🏢 It asks EA to fund the next Mass Effect with another team or license the IP, after EA announced Oct 21 that BioWare is closing. 👍 Meer's post and Hale's first post each have more than 11,000 likes. Source: Change.org

PAYDAY 2's h3h3 Character Pack is getting hammered on Steam: 18% of its 204 reviews from the last 30 days are positive, against 38% of 1,381 all-time (Official, Steam data as of 4:25pm CT). The pack added Ethan and Hila Klein as heisters in 2017.

A second giant GTA 6 mural is going up in Los Angeles, on the Wilshire Professional Building, per GTA 6 Countdown (Reported). Only the top band is painted so far: a purple sky, birds and part of the logo. The first LA wall was finished Oct 16. GTA 6 launches Nov 19 (Official).

Helldivers 2's "Malevelon Creek Memorial & Interrogation Center for Human Rights" is now under construction, and Arrowhead credits players for securing the resources (Official). It lands in the Memoriam Eternal campaign, two days before in-game Liberty Day on Oct 26.

Dispatch's cast want a Season 2, per a DomTheBomb clip of the game's official commentary (Reported). AdHoc hasn't announced one. The commentary came free for Deluxe owners in the Oct 22 anniversary update (Official). On Episode 2: "Let's make a Season 2... we've decreed it."

Fortnite x One Piece is official: Epic's teaser shows the Going Merry sailing out of the clouds, ending on both logos (Official). No date yet. Per HYPEX, the Straw Hat Crew is one of next season's Pirate Crews, with A$AP Rocky, Lil Uzi Vert, and Hatsune Miku (Rumor).

Cyberpunk 2077 has 156,529 playing on Steam right now, per Steam, with a 24-hour peak of 162,021, per SteamCharts. Free Update 2.5 landed Oct 22, and it's 70% off at $17.99 (Official). That peak beats 2022's Edgerunners surge (136,724) and is the highest since October 2023.

PS6 cartridge claims have no source, and Sony's own plan is digital-only games from January 2028. - A viral claim that PS6 will swap Blu-ray for solid-state cartridges is unsourced - Sony has not revealed PS6 hardware or any cartridge format - Sony hasn't set a PS6 release date, citing memory shortages, and Polygon says 2028 or 2029 is reportedly on the table (Reported) - Disc production for all new PlayStation games ends in January 2028 (Official) - After that, new games come out in digital formats only, on PlayStation Store and at retailers (Official) Source: PlayStation Blog

PS5 owners say some physical games won't launch from the disc until the console installs a system update, per Pirat_Nation (Reported). Per Sony, a disc with newer system software guides you through the update, and the console can update from the disc with no internet (Official).

Tomb Raider turns 30 tomorrow (Official), and Aspyr marked it today with an anniversary trailer (Official). - Lara and Jonah join The Crew Motorfest in a PvE crossover with puzzles, artifacts, a T-Rex encounter and five exclusive vehicles (Reported) - G.I. JOE x Tomb Raider is a five-issue comic series, and issue 1 is out now (Reported) - Two 8BitDo controllers are out today, and Fanbrix has an officially licensed 4,355-piece Croft Manor brick set (Reported) - Dark Horse's 'Chronicles of the Tomb Raider' hardcover arrives Oct 27 (Reported) - Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis launches Feb 12, 2027, per PlayStation Blog (Official) Source: @monstervine

Mass Effect's #SaveMassEffect petition is at 119,861 signatures on Change.org as of 9:29am CT, and its goal is now 150,000 (Reported). It asks EA to keep funding the series or license it to another studio. Per IGN, it had 52,783 Friday morning, so it has more than doubled since.

Call of Duty's Steam app, had 220,449 playing at 9:05am CT on MW4's first Saturday, its most since launch, per Steam. Up from a 141,723 peak Oct 22 and about 190K Friday. Black Ops 6's Steam launch-weekend peak was 306,000, per charlieINTEL (Reported).

The Daily Echo, Sat Oct 24: Square Enix says Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven has passed 1 million copies worldwide, counting shipments and digital sales. It's the first SaGa game to reach a million since SaGa Frontier in 1997. Official from Bethesda: Fallout 76 has passed 25 million players, with its 8th anniversary coming up. Next is World Pets, a free update on Dec 1 that lets C.A.M.P. pets join you in the Wasteland. Reported by Kotaku: Capcom asked Ultimate Frame Data to "consider removing or disabling access" to its Street Fighter 6 hitbox data by Oct 30, calling it data "not ordinarily visible or accessible through normal gameplay." The site's SF6 page now shows Capcom's letter instead. Reported by ModernWarzone: Infinity Ward says "Possum news" for MW4 DMZ is coming next week. Possum lets a fully dead player self-revive once per match, and players have called it broken. Infinity Ward hasn't said what's changing. Official from TRAILMARK Games: Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forest, an action-adventure RPG set in the world of Erin Hunter's novels, is out now on Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. Physical copies are out on Switch 2 and PS5.

GTA 6 reviews will reportedly go live Nov 18, the day before launch, with Metacritic scores expected around 5-6am CT, per ResetEra poster BlackBate via Notebookcheck. Review codes reportedly haven't gone out yet. GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2 also got reviews one day early.

Mass Effect fans are now calling for a boycott of every EA product, and the #SaveMassEffect petition has passed 76,500 signatures. - The petition was at about 50,000 at 11am CT, so it added roughly 26,000 signatures in about five hours. - Reddit threads urge fans to stop buying from EA until it brings Mass Effect back or sells it to another studio. - One fan's boycott post lists Respawn, DICE, Motive, Criterion, Maxis and EA Sports among the studios they'll skip. - EA announced Oct 21 it's shutting down BioWare, the 30-year-old studio behind Mass Effect and Dragon Age, and canceled the next Mass Effect. - IGN says analysts and former BioWare bosses doubt EA will listen. Source: @IGN (Reported)