The entirety of Blizzard’s 500-strong World of Warcraft development team have unionised, making it the largest group within Microsoft’s gaming teams to do so thus far.

Around 1750 employees within Microsoft’s gaming teams are now unionised, Bloomberg reported yesterday, including those working on Blizzard’s veteran MMO.

World of Warcraft developers will now be represented by the Communication Workers of America (CWA), which celebrated the inclusion of Blizzard staff yesterday in a statement which dubbed the joining as the “first wall-to-wall union at Activision Blizzard”, and “a key inflection point in the broader movement for video game worker organising industry-wide”.

Blizzard unionisation leaders have said they want to improve standards of pay, as well …

Stardew Valley creator Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone has said he’ll “never” charge money for a DLC or update “for as long as I live”.

Earlier today, the developer posted on social media site X to say console and mobile ports of the Stardew Valley 1.6 update are “still in progress”, following the PC release back in March.

“The ports and next PC update are still in progress,” said Barone. “I know it is taking a long time, it’s on my mind every minute. I have personally been working on the mobile port every day. I will announce when there is any meaningful news (eg. a release date). Hope you’re having a good summer.”

Newscast: Does the loss of day one launches make Xbox Game Pass pointless?

…

As Diablo 4’s Vessel of Hatred expansion inches ever-closer, Blizzard has shared first gameplay and details for its new Spiritborn class during a lengthy deep-dive livestream.

In lore terms, the Spiritborn comes from the jungles of Sanctuary’s Nahantu and is described as “an apex predator with a deep connection to the spirit realm”. From a gameplay perspective, though, the Spiritborn is a dexterity focused class built around a spirit-infused martial arts move set – combining aspects of Muay Thai, taekwondo, karate, kickboxing, and boxing – that promises to make for Diablo 4’s “fastest, most aggressive” class yet.

It has multiple gap-closers built into its basic attacks, several movement skills with “very high damage”, plus various ways to upgrade its evades -…

Nexon’s all-new free-to-play sci-fi shooter The First Descendant has clocked up 10m players in seven days.
Marking the occasion, Nexon says the milestone “means everything to us”, and thanked players for their “tremendous support and love”.

Newscast: Does the loss of day one launches make Xbox Game Pass pointless?

…