Quick Hits

• Arc Raiders goes pacifist (temporarily): Embark Studios will trial a PvE-only toggle from October 13th–20th, admitting "a large and growing group" of players refuse to hunt each other.
• Warzone de-clowns itself: Season one of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will add a cosmetic toggle to filter out the silly crossover skins.
• Switch 2 deals on both sides of the Atlantic: Hefty UK discounts just landed, while Woot's US sale has the best Switch 2 console deal of the year — but it expires today.
• Xbox's brutal week continues: Community reaction to the restructuring is raw, a leaker claims Halo is set for a full reboot, and Microsoft is disputing GTA 6 preorder skew.
• Pokémon TCG Pocket's next expansion, "Deluxe Pack: Mega," will guarantee a rare in every pack.

Pokémon & Nintendo

• The Pokémon Company has rolled out the red carpet for TCG Pocket's "Deluxe Pack: Mega" expansion, which guarantees a rare card in every pack — a genuinely player-friendly pull-rate shake-up.
• Kotaku catalogued the 15 highest-priced cards from the Pokémon TCG 30th Celebration set, and prices are landing far lower than expected — except for the "ridiculous" Mews, including a $4,000 RGB Mew. If you'd rather pull than pay, IGN reports Target has restocked rare TCG sets today, including 30th Anniversary ETBs at MSRP.
• Rumour mill: Nintendo Life reports Zelda movie rumblings suggest a first trailer might be around the corner — though it may just be wishful thinking following the 40th Anniversary Direct reveal that the film will be titled... well, Miyamoto already shocked us once.
• Nintendo Life spotted Switch 2 consoles heavily discounted in the UK — notable since Nintendo raised the price from its £395.99 June 2025 launch price earlier this year. Stateside, IGN says Woot's "Fall in Love with Video Games" sale has the year's best Switch 2 console deal, expiring today.
• In reviews, Nintendo Life's mini review of Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition on Switch 2 says it looks a little nicer but argues Square Enix needs to get with the upgrade path program. The week's Nintendo Download brings TOEM 2!, Garfield, and Mr. Do!, plus three sale picks worth grabbing.

Call of Duty

• The long-requested "realism" fix is coming: per Destructoid, Kotaku, and PC Gamer, Warzone players sick of being eliminated by Nicki Minaj or Seth Rogen operators will get a cosmetic toggle starting in season one of Modern Warfare 4 — one that can filter out cosmetics from past games like Black Ops 7 and cleanse Warzone's "Party City aesthetic."

Arc Raiders

• The week's biggest story for Raiders: Embark is officially testing PvE servers October 13th–20th, with a toggle that turns the extraction shooter fully cooperative. PC Gamer quotes the studio: "We can't ignore what the data is telling us" — while Rock Paper Shotgun frames it as Embark "bowing to the pacifists."
• Not everyone's celebrating: a GameSpot op-ed from a self-described PvE-only player argues dedicated PvE servers "miss the point" of what makes topside tense.

Indie Games

• Dressmaker, a cozy boutique-management and dress-design game, has crashed Steam's Top 10 best-sellers mere days after release, per IGN — the latest proof cozy sims are a commercial force.
• GameSpot announced Saraab: Beyond the Veil, a creepy adventure from solo developer Lubna Ahmed, arrives November 3rd.
• Steam's week-long Punk Games Showcase kicks off October 9 with over 400 curated games — GameSpot notes the festival "hates AI slop" and loves blowing up Nazis. Sign us up.

Steam & PC

• Beat Saber announced its "biggest update ever," adding hand-tracking and a punchy new mode — with Rock Paper Shotgun cheekily inferring the timing alongside swelling Steam Frame interest. Speaking of which, PC Gamer attempted a Steam Frame teardown (failed) and compared notes with iFixit's successful one.
• In an unusual reverse of the usual F2P migration, id Software's Quake Champions is ditching free-to-play to become a paid product eight years after launch, and its Microsoft Store version is being killed off, per Eurogamer.
• Somber news: Armed Fantasia, the Wild Arms spiritual successor led by former producer Akifumi Kaneko, has been cancelled four years after a successful Kickstarter that descended into delays and lawsuits, with Digital Bros involved per Rock Paper Shotgun.
• Wildcard of the day: PC Gamer reports aerospace engineers are using a Steam Deck to steer a Mars rover prototype.

Gaming Roundup

• The fallout from Xbox's restructuring dominates the industry conversation: Eurogamer rounds up community reaction — "It genuinely breaks my heart" — as a second wave of layoffs hit, with Hellblade studio Ninja Theory facing impending closure alongside upheaval at Rare and Obsidian.
• Destructoid reports a leaker's claim that Halo is set for a complete reboot — "lore is not going to be continued" — following the IP's move from Halo Studios to Activision.
• On the GTA 6 front, Microsoft pushed back on reports that preorders are "heavily skewed" toward PS5: per IGN, Xbox says its preorder share matches its share of the console market, responding to Sensor Tower data cited by GameSpot.
• Silent Hill: Townfall is out, and PC Gamer celebrated by ranking its staff on who'd survive the horrors of St Amelia. Meanwhile, PC Gamer also chronicled how Minecraft beat Minecraft after 2 billion years — yes, really.
• Free game alert via VGC: this week's Epic Games Store giveaways are Astrea and Mechabellum, free to claim for a week. And if you need hardware to run it all, IGN flags the Gigabyte A16 Pro 16" RTX 5070 Ti laptop down to $1,449 in Walmart's GeForce Week Sale before it ends.