Split Fiction Is a Knockout Hit

Hazelight strikes again with another must-play co-op experience.

Author

Robert Scarpinito
March 07, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

Josef Fares might be one of the wildest public-facing developers out there, but he sure does stick to a vision and make great co-op experiences. Split Fiction is his studio’s latest project, and for all intents and purposes, it’s a must-play for any co-op gamers out there thanks to its innovative mechanics.

A Sony support studio, Visual Arts, suffered layoffs this week. The studio primarily plays support for other studios, though those projects include the now-defunct live-service project that was in the works at Bend Studio.

High-profile layoffs have been the name of the game for nearly two years now, and it’s not just in the gaming space. The tech sector as a whole has grappled with restructuring, downsizing, and other corporate euphemisms. Regular readers of this newsletter are all too familiar.

In related news, Ballistic Moon, the studio behind the Until Dawn remake, has effectively lost almost all of its staff this week. It’s unsurprising, after the weak response to the Until Dawn remake, but it’s also a case that begs the question, who was asking for that remake? What was the product and marketing strategy behind that?

But hey, if you’re still running a PS3 connected to the internet, you probably saw a software update. It’s nothing major—just some minor performance updates.

Previously, it broke 37M concurrent users around the time Black Myth: Wukong released, and this week, more than 40 million is the new record to beat. Is it because Monster Hunter Wilds quickly became the game with the fifth-highest player peak in Steam history? Maybe. It did already sell 8 million copies, after all.

Astro Bot, Balatro, and more continue to rack up the nominations, with BAFTA’s full list of award nominees out now. The BAFTA Game Awards are scheduled for April 8, so we have a full month to wait before seeing who wins.

Windfelder joined Kosmos in 1995, the same year Catan was first published. Now, 30 years later, he’s retiring, while Catan continues to be a tabletop mainstay and powerhouse.

A+ headline, no notes. But the worst-kept secret in skateboard video games for the past week has finally been made official. And the best part? You can shred some half pipes as the rippin’, tearin’ Doom Slayer.