Chris Stockman, the Design Director of the first Saints Row game, has called on Rockstar to look beyond the USA once work has been set on the inevitable sequel to Grand Theft Auto VI in an exclusive interview with Esports Insider.

Speaking ahead of the release of the highly anticipated title, Stockman spoke of his frustrations with the gaming industry but backed his former rivals to hit the mark with their return to Vice City.

However, the development lead for the original Saints Row did set out some ideas for how he’d like to see the creators of the GTA series freshen up its tried-and-tested formula.

Since founding Bit Planet Games in 2014, Stockman has poured his creative energies into VR gaming and explained how his team continues to push the envelope with their work on the Ultrawings series and their most recent release, Super RC.

Read the full interview below.

Stockman: It’s definitely a new frontier in the sense that there are all new problems to solve that haven’t been solved yet, and I find that fascinating. It’s a chance to be a big fish in small ponds.

It’s changed in the last 10 years quite a bit. The dynamics have shifted. The demographics have shifted.

The quality bar has gone way down. Our team [at Bit Planet Games] comes from that old school mentality where quality is paramount. It doesn’t matter if it’s indie or not. We really focus on quality and big scope games, even as an indie, and the VR market just does not care.

It’s all about social groups for 10 to 15-year-olds. They jump from game to game, whatever is the hottest thing right now, and it heavily relies on the social components. Social is first. Everything else is a very distant second.

There’s no way these AAA titles are going VR. The markets have shifted to the point where everybody expects free. If you don’t deliver that, it’s a tall hill to climb over. That’s just the way it is. 

PC VR never took off, and that’s not surprising considering the barrier of entry was extremely high. Standalone VR, there’s no friction there. You’re not tethered. It doesn’t require a multi-thousand-dollar PC to run. That’s where all the kids are at, and the kids don’t have money, or at least most of the kids, so the VR gaming market has turned into the App Store.

The race to the bottom happened. We’re there. Everything’s free. It’s all about monetising the whales. It makes me want to go work in big tech and retire in a decade.

I’ve made VR games for 10 years. I don’t think someone like Meta is getting out of VAR anytime soon. Maybe I’ll go work for them and collect stock and retire in a decade. If I had done that 10 years ago after we shipped Ultra Wings 1, I would have been retired by now.

I know a few people who have retired and it’s really about the stock. You can’t predict what stock is going to do gangbusters in the next decade, but it feels a safer bet than keeping on rolling the dice and trying to catch lightning in a bottle. 

The indie market is like that too, even in flat-screen gaming. You’re fighting against hundreds of games that release on Steam every week. It’s really, really tough. I’m very pessimistic about the whole video game industry at this point. 

Stockman: I think it’s just Rockstar. They’ve never failed.

I remember back in the days when they’d release that ping pong game just to test their animation system before they launched GTA IV. If you just look back into the history of Rockstar products, they’ve never missed. I have a hard time believing they’ll miss this time. They’ve spent forever and so much money.

I almost think they would just rather not release it and just keep pumping out GTA: Online content because that doesn’t seem to be letting up.

I think it’s going to do amazingly well. GTA: Online 2 or whatever it’s is going to be called will be another 10-year gravy train. 

They’re a one-release-every-five-years type of company. That’s crazy. But they seem to have the magic.

They’re kind of the only players in town for this type of game or this type of genre for the big, old, epic games.

Stockman: Yes. I think that if they get bought out by Microsoft or somebody else like that, I absolutely think you should be worried about that.

To diverge a little bit, I think that’s what it would take for another storefront like Epic to gain dominance. A big misstep like that. If Gabe did sell it to someone, or sells it to big tech, I think Microsoft would be the only ones willing to buy it at this point. 

Do I think that will ever happen? I’d say I’m 60-40% on that. They don’t need the money. They’re rich beyond their wildest dreams. They have a near monopoly on the PC game market, or at least the distribution market. It would take something crazy to happen. I don’t even know the scenario in which something like that would happen.

I don’t know if he has any kids or what the succession strategy is for that sort of situation, but I think anything can happen. At some point, given that it’s privately held, Gabe could just wake up one day and say, ‘you know, F this. I’m out taking my ball and going home’. 

He could do it, and no one would be able to stop him. If Microsoft were to buy Steam, oh my gosh, I don’t think it would be the overnight kiss of death, but I think it would be a slow death spiral.

Stockman: I don’t know. Maybe. Is the IP worth that? DOTA, I guess, is probably worth a fair bit. Team Fortress and Counter-Strike, Half-Life. I think Microsoft are getting out of games, though, personally, so I don’t think they would even be willing to entertain a deal on those grounds. Maybe they would because you’d be stupid not to, but I bet they would because they so desperately want to own a storefront, and the Microsoft storefront is not a thing.

I bet Gabe takes it public before he sells it. That’s my guess. That, of course, has risks involved too. Suddenly, it’s no longer privately held, and you have shareholders, and you have to release quarterly reports, and there’s a whole load more trouble than what it’s worth. But if he retires and he decides I’m out, then what does he care? You know, it’s someone else’s problem.

Stockman: We were very fortunate back then when I joined Volition. They were already in very early pre-production of what became Saints Row. It started out as a PlayStation 2 game. Then it shifted into something next gen. 

They were really trying to figure out what the game was gonna be, and I came on board, and they said they wanted me to come up with a vision for multiplayer. I remember in the very first meeting, what I pitched was not ambitious enough. I played it safe. They told me it was not ambitious enough. Go back to the drawing board.

I came back with something wildly ambitious. It’s funny, looking at GTA:Online now, what I pitched took a very similar route, where I wanted the whole city to be the playground. The difference is you basically had the whole city with your team of 16 players, and then you could split off and go into the modes. 

I was most proud of this idea that you could form gangs, which were equivalent to clans, earning money based on your performance. Even if you lost, you got some money and you use that to buy your outfits. I became almost like bragging rights based on your clothing and what you wore. 

Every single one of the modes we shipped was a brainchild of mine, they approved it, we got a bit more money for it and then they promoted me to head up the entire project. That was my trajectory to head up Saints Row.

Stockman: GTA: Online has turned into this role-playing thing. I never would have envisioned that. It has sections where there’s a narrative too, and through the role-playing, people form their own narratives too. It’s turned into this whole game in and of itself. I watch TikTok streams of people playing as cops or emergency services, and it’s quite amazing. 

In terms of the wider games industry, I think narrative is still very important, and given the rise of AI it’s going to become even more important. I don’t think AI can replace humans in crafting really immersive narrative experiences.

I’ve played around with AI a bit. For narrative stuff, it is pretty terrible. I’m not saying it’ll never happen, but trying to craft stories by typing in a prompt is pretty terrible.

Stockman: It could. I just don’t think it will. Gamers will be expecting visual fidelity that can’t be done with VR unless you’re tethered to a very powerful PC, and I don’t think we’re there yet.

Maybe in a decade, we might get there, but even then, motion sickness will still be a thing. There are already games that are like trying to replicate GTA on Quest, and they all look pretty terrible. There’s no style to them. I think it turns off my generation and maybe the generation just below me.

I’m going to go on a limb here and say no, but I think there’ll be mods. There are already mods now for VR in GTA V, but I never see anybody use them. Not for VR. It’s entirely playable. It’s not made for it, so you’re going to have some jank, but no one streams it. You’ve got to question why.

I don’t think PC VR is a thing. I don’t think it will ever be a thing other than maybe for the smallest of the markets.

Stockman: When I found out that they were rebooting Saints Row, I spoke to an old friend of mine who was my old boss for Saints Row 1. He was the producer, and I was learning about what they were doing, and I thought, man, this is a terrible idea. 

What is it trying to be? You’re rebooting it, but why are you rebooting it? There’s a lot of characters in the series that people love. It wasn’t Saints Row at all. Just call it something else at that point. There’s a level of expectations for a Saints Row game, and they missed the mark on all of them.

What I would have done was to take the franchise back to the 70s and do a period piece, a prequel of how the gangs from the first one started. You’re running around with a crew of teens that ended up as the main characters for the first game. You could really go all in on the 70s theme with big Afros, bell-bottoms, and the music of that whole period. 

I’d have taken it into a different direction so you’re not competing with the modern-day GTA games. You’re zaggng when everyone else is zigging, so to speak.

Stockman: That’s what I would do. I would stick with it being an open-world game. I love open-world games. I love making them. It’s just so much fun and so much about the sum of their parts, so to speak. I would say it’s what I’ve been pretty successful at in my career at making them.

What’s the umbrella company that owns the Saints Row IP now? [Embracer Group], if you’re listening to this, contact me. Let’s go. I can bring much of the old band back together who worked on Saints Row 1. I could turn that IP around with a decent budget. They don’t even have to fund it. I could get other outside people to fund it. I could turn the franchise around. I know I could.

It would be a story in and of itself. I’ve even thought about going to my pals and Meta to say, hey what about doing a Saints Row VR project? I think with the technology coming in the future, I think an open world game could work, but it’d have to be heavily stylised. We wouldn’t be trying to compete with GTA, but I don’t think anyone can compete with GTA anymore.

I think you could back it with Quest 4’s technology, and it could look pretty good. It’s not gonna look as good as Saints Row 1, but it’ll be close-ish. You bring Saints Row back to its roots, or go and do the 70s prequel I was talking about and blow it out the box.

I’ve thought about it. To try and resurrect the IP and be the first real quality open world story slash sandbox game for VR, going it in bite-sized chunks that VR is so good at in five or 10 minute core loops. I’ve thought about it. I think it would be amazing, and it would have its own identity. 

I’m not trying to one-up GTA, but you could essentially be the GTA 800-pound gorilla of VR. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I think I could do it, let’s put it that way.

Stockman: Maybe that’s the thing that they haven’t revealed yet? 

I think there’s a lot of stuff they haven’t revealed. That could be interesting, although it’s very tough. Saints Row 2 did it. You can play the whole game co-op, but it’s a very tough thing to do, especially given how narratively-driven the GTA series is. But if anybody could do it, Rockstar could. 

I think there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know about GTA VI that we’ll find out within the next six months. A lot.

Stockman: Honestly, I can’t pick a weakness. I just hope that they offer more choices in the story for how you can progress through the game.

Give us a little bit more player agency so I can steer my character or characters down one direction to change the outcome of things, rather than playing through a very long 50-hour movie.

Player choice is what I would lean towards. We talked about doing that on Saints Row 1. We tried to incorporate a tiny bit of it, but it ultimately ended up as what order you took the gangs down. It didn’t really change anything. If I had been on the sequels, I would have done more of that.

I would have had multiple gangs, but it’d be interesting if you took down one gang; it changed the story structure quite a bit depending on complexity, because that goes down a really deep rabbit hole. Think Mass Effect. It becomes a spider web. That’s the kind of thing I would like GTA to start exploring with elements of a choose-your-own-adventure.

Stockman: Saints Row has always been a bit ridiculous. Even the first one, when we had insurance fraud and stuff like that, which was just over-the-top fun with physics. That was not realistic in any stretch of the imagination.

I think the problem, and I’ve said this before, is that they just kept trying to one-up themselves with the ridiculous content and at some point, where do you go after you’ve gone to hell and fought aliens, where do you go from there?

I guess that’s why they had to reboot it, but then again, people love Saints Row 3 and they’re widely considered to be the pinnacles of the series.

Personally, I would consider Saints Row 3 to be the pinnacle of the series because the production values were through the roof compared to the previous two. It was a bit less of an open world and more structured. But even Saints Row 2 started venturing off into crazy territory.

I guess I just never would have done it. I would have preferred to keep things relatively grounded in a pseudo-reality. I was actually against naming it Saints Row because I felt it was too restrictive. Saints Row was a place in the world. It was a neighbourhood in the world. The name loses meaning if you’re not in that area. Maybe I’m overthinking it. 

I just feel that naming games is very important. Grand Theft Auto is a brilliant name because you could go anywhere with it at any time, and it still means something. Saints Row, I felt was too restrictive. 

I would have gone the route where each game went through different time periods, but you could carry some characters over as part of the same universe, almost like Assassin’s Creed, but not go ridiculous with it like they did. I think that would have been interesting in a gang-themed open world series of games.

I think the Saints Row franchise could still be alive if we’d done that but I could have been totally off base. I just don’t like to play it safe.

I think maybe even Rockstar is afraid to do that now because of what happened to the Mafia series when they did the period piece idea. It was not well received. Mafia 3 was set in the 60s, which was a turbulent period in the USA politically, which may have contributed to it but I like games that are daring and different. I would have absolutely gone down that road. 

Stockman: Absolutely. Why are we stuck? Is it because they want to sell as many copies as possible, and they don’t want to go to different non-American cities? There’s a world of huge cities out there that are very interesting. London. Tokyo. Rio de Janeiro. There’s almost too many to list.

I believe they think it wouldn’t sell if they moved the games away from America, and it cost so much money to make that it’s too big a risk that they don’t want to take. But it’s like they keep mining from the same locales. San Andreas, Vice City, Liberty City, and that’s it. Is that it for America? I know we went to their version of San Francisco in San Andreas, but where’s Dallas?

I would like them to mine from a different  location rather than just dipping their toes in the same three cities over and over and over again.

Stockman: The budgets are unsustainable. Big tech has kind of ruined it. You have a brain drain going on where people are leaving for big tech, and the creativity is switching to indies now. 

But it’s so easy to make games now that everybody and their mom can kind of pump something out, so now it just becomes way harder to get noticed. 

Games will always be a thing, but It’s tough to break in, and I think with AAA budgets, something’s going to have to change. It’s going to get far worse rather than better.

Stockman: Don’t hold your breath. I don’t think we’re ever going to get it at. I think they’ll sell off BioWare or whatever is left of it. Maybe they’ll sell off the Mass Effect IP. 

I think the future of EA is going to become Madden, EA FC and Battlefield with College Football and the NHL game. And that’ll be it. They’ll microtransaction the hell out of everyone because that’s what people do these days, even if you pay $60-80 for a game.

Stockman: They’re the only ones that can get away with it. 

I don’t think it’s a rising tide that floats all boats. I think that there’ll be a tremendous amount of backlash if everyone switched to $100. Not all games are created equal. I think GTA is the only one that can get away with it, and I hope they do. I really hope it’s $100. I think it deserves to be $100.

The scope and magnitude of this production deserves that price tag, but not everything is treated equally. It would be a disaster if everyone tried to match them.

Stockman: No, but one of my best friends worked at Rockstar in New York at their headquarters, and he worked there during the development of Saints Row. He’s long since gone, but he worked on San Andreas.

I would talk to them and ask what does Rockstar think about what we’re making? And I can’t even remember the conversations that we had, but he told me that they were aware of what we were doing and that they were keeping a close eye on it. 

We did pioneer some stuff in the first Saints Row that all open-world games ended up taking on. We did the first GPS system, where you could lay out a waypoint and it would guide you there. Everyone did it after that. 

We got to be on a next-gen platform, launched at a time period where there weren’t a lot of games that came out at the time, and it was new tech. We had day-night cycles. We had a lot of new things that no one had seen in that sort of open world series. I’m not taking sole credit for any of these little bitty things because it’s not like that. We all take stuff from each other.

Rockstar probably thought of us as an annoying fly. They were always the 800-pound gorilla and we were just trying to make something that was the alt version of GTA.

We were just incredibly fortunate to also be a pretty fun game to boot.

Stockman: Yes, but that’s without knowing how much he contributed as a writer. I think there’s a possibility that you’ll lose some of the edginess or maybe some of the really biting satire that GTA is so good at. That’s a factor that can’t easily be replicated by another writer. 

It’s very possible that we’ll lose some of that, and it becomes more, less edgy, I guess, and more straight and grounded in reality. 

I’m looking forward to it. I’ve always been a big fan of the series. I remember when GTA III came out on the PlayStation 2, and I was working at another game company at the time. I brought it into the office, and I loaded it up, and we just sat around it and said, ‘my god, this is the future of games’. 

It was just eye-opening. It was so revolutionary. I miss those days. I miss that.

Stockman: I guess making it an even more massive world than it already is. Make San Andreas of GTA V look like a playground. Just something incredibly massive.

If the story dynamics changed throughout the game so you can make things drastically different, that would be groundbreaking for a game of this scale.

I don’t think they’ll bring it back, but I remember in San Andreas, you could eat and get fat or not eat and get skinny, or work out and gain muscle, and I wish they could have kept that in the game to make your character your own.

Stockman: That’s one of the reasons why I got into VR. I felt like it takes me back to the roots of creating more interactions and the cool things you can do with your hands, to feeling like you’re really a part of the world and you’re not just playing a role and less on graphical fidelity. You’re doing the things that otherwise would just be button presses on a controller. 

You’re picking up stuff. You’re interacting with things. The Ultra Wings series, and Ultra Wings 2 specifically, is probably my favourite project to have ever worked on and the one I’m most proud of because the scope is huge. It was the first open-world game of its time for the Quest platform. 

The interactions inside the aircraft, flying the different aircraft, was unparalleled. We didn’t make a flight simulator, we made a flight game. In every flight simulator, you’re always 30,000 feet in the air or thousands of feet in the sky, and the terrain doesn’t matter. You’re not flying past buildings because all the aircraft go at real speeds. Try flying an aircraft at hundreds of feet in the air through a city and see how far that gets you. It’s impossible. You’d crash 100% of the time.

So we made the world and the areas that you fly around just as important a part of the gameplay as flying the aircraft themselves, and it made the topography of the islands critical to the game itself. The vehicles never moved at realistic speeds like their real-world counterparts did, but it didn’t feel slow because it’s all relative. You’re close to the ground. It feels a lot faster

The dogfighting, like we had multiplayer, taking place between skyscrapers, it was just so wildly different from anything else out there. People still play it to this day. Multiplayer is still played by groups of people. There’s no progression system in multiplayer. There’s no modes, there’s none of that. It’s just pure dogfighting. Now here we are, two plus years later, and people are still playing it.

Stockman: It’s been an interesting development cycle. Let’s put it this way. When we first came up with the idea, it was really meant to be Ultrawings, but with RC cars. You start with a basic car. You do some stuff to unlock the other cars. You paid 20 bucks, you went down this gameplay loop, and that was the game.

As things evolved and the market changed, and we were finding out what was fun and what wasn’t, everything shifted into becoming more of a racing sandbox game. We changed the business model to become what we call a la carte gaming where you pay one fee to get a part of the game, and then you buy the cars separately. We’ll see how it goes. No one’s kind of done this before the way we have.

It’s a very interesting game. It’s racing, but there’s a lot of track elements and craters, and it’s a lot of fun and incredibly intuitive to build the tracks with your hands, almost Lego-style, snapping things together and then being able to test drive it instantly. Then you can take it online and race against other people in online multiplayer. I hope people like that. It basically means that you have an unlimited number of tracks available to you. It’s not like any racing game for that matter, Track Mania aside.

It’s the most complex game our team has worked on. It’s not open-world, but the multiplayer side of it is very complex.

As the Customs and Monopolies Agency (ADM) introduces a new framework that will cut the number of licensed operators from 407 to just 52, the Italian online gaming market is about to undergo a significant upheaval.

On November 13th, 2025, the shift will go into effect, changing the digital betting and gaming scene in the fourth-largest gambling market in Europe.

Since some businesses run multiple brands, 46 of the 52 available licenses will be held by companies under the new regulations.

For instance, under its Italian domain, Flutter Entertainment oversees Betfair Exchange, Snaitech, and Sisal.

By limiting each license to a single website, the action essentially outlaws so-called ‘skin’ websites, which are third-party affiliate platforms that resell goods from authorised betting businesses.

Of the 407 active gambling sites in Italy, more than 350 are currently operated as skins, with 315 being run by domestic companies and 92 by foreign operators.

For new and smaller entrants, competitive marketing is difficult due to ongoing marketing restrictions, such as the prohibition on sports sponsorships.

The prohibition on skin betting, according to industry experts, might help level the playing field for newcomers and small-to-medium-sized bookmakers, that now only have to contend with 51 direct competitors rather than hundreds.

However, Italy continues to be a challenging market for operators without significant budgets or established brand recognition due to the licensing fees and continuous restrictions.

ADM mandates that bettors accept new terms and establish personal deposit and wager limits starting on November 13th in addition to the operator reduction.

Operators are required to post banners asking clients to enter these self-imposed limitations, which they have six months to do.

If players don’t do this, they won’t be able to wager with authorised bookmakers, but they can reapply to have their accounts activated within three years.

Similar to developments in other European countries, such as the UK and the Netherlands, where authorities are stepping up oversight to combat financial risk and responsible gambling, Italy has implemented new affordability measures.

The changes made by the government demonstrate a strategy focused on player and operator safety, enhancing oversight in an industry worth €21bn (£18bn) a year and generating roughly €8bn (£6bn) in tax income.

After an earlier attempt to raise gambling taxes failed last week, the Brazilian government is now taking new steps to increase the rate.

The leader of the Workers’ Party in the Chamber of Deputies, Lindbergh Farias, has introduced a new bill that would double the gross gaming revenue tax from 12% to 24%.

Immediately following the Chamber’s withdrawal of a provisional measure that had called for a smaller hike to 18%, the proposal—Bill PL 5,076/2025—was introduced on October 9th.

Brazil’s social security and public health programmes would receive half of the new tax revenue, if it were approved, with the remaining portion going to other areas like culture and sports.

Under the leadership of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Workers’ Party is making a fresh attempt to achieve its goals for economic policy.

According to a 2023 Comscore study, Brazil now has one of the biggest gambling markets in the world, with betting activity only surpassed by the US and the UK.

The bill acknowledges the sharp rise in betting volume and draws attention to related financial and social issues that affect families and mental health, including gambling addiction and debt.

Provisional Measure 1,303, the prior attempt to increase the gambling tax by 50%, was ultimately shelved before a vote could be taken.

Retroactive taxes for pre-regulation activity were also included in that plan, but it was vetoed. The goal of PL 5,076/2025 is to support the government’s larger economic agenda while reviving the tax hike.

According to the bill, the new rate would still be lower than those in nations like France and Germany, even though it would be higher than the average for the majority of activities in Brazil.

Its goal is to reduce addiction by decreasing the appeal of gambling while also boosting healthcare spending.

Team Falcons has been crowned the Stage 2 champion of Rainbow Six Siege X’s Europe Mena League 2025 after defeating Team Secret 2-1 in the Grand Finals.

Following its victory, the team has successfully qualified for the Munich Major in November, where it will compete for a guaranteed spot in the Six Invitational 2026 event.

Team Falcons began the series with a strong start, topping the Group Stage with an 8-1 win/loss ratio, outperforming teams such as Fnatic and Virtus.pro. As a result, it entered the Playoffs as one of the favourites to win and became the top team to beat.

It progressed through the Upper Bracket after defeating Team BDS 2-1, but in a shocking turn of events, lost to Team Secret 0-2. It clawed its way back to the Grand Finals by beating G2 Esports 2-0, before ultimately claiming a revenge victory against Team Secret.

Here is a full match breakdown of the Grand Finals between Team Falcons (FLCS) and Team Secret (TS):

Some of the other leagues of BLAST R6 Stage 2 have also named their champions; these include M80 for North America, and CAG Osaka for the Asia Pacific League Playoffs. As of writing, only South America remains undecided.

Rainbow Six Siege X developer, Ubisoft, and tournament organiser BLAST have also revealed details for the Europe MENA League Regional Finals.

The event is scheduled to take place from November 29th to December 7th, 2025, in Malta, offering a €100,000 prize pool, and a spot at the Six Invitational 2026 in Paris.

The online quarterfinals will run from November 29th to 30th, featuring Bo3 matches and a double elimination format. Afterwards, from December 6th to 7th, teams will play LAN at the BLAST Studio Arena in Malta during the Semi-Finals and Grand Finals to determine the winner of the region’s 2025 season.

Six teams will be competing, divided into Upper and Lower Brackets similarly to the North America Regional Finals:

Tickets will be available for €20 via the dedicated web page on the event works site. However, matches will also be broadcast live on the official Rainbow Six Siege Twitch and YouTube channels.

Alongside the Regional Finals, the conclusion of the Europe tier 2 circuit will also take place in Malta, where the top two teams will fight for a share of a €15,000 prize pool and a spot in the Six Invitational 2026 Last Chance Qualifier.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game brings the worlds of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra into a straight-up 1v1 fighter. Announced during the franchise’s 20th-anniversary panel at New York Comic Con 2025, it landed like a love letter to longtime fans. 

The early footage leans on hand-drawn animation and recognisable bending styles; it’s rough in places, but the overall look tracks closely with the shows and has people hungry for deeper gameplay details. 

We’ll break down everything we know so far about Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game (working title) and what aspiring benders can expect from this upcoming FGC.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a head-to-head FGC set in Nickelodeon’s Avatar universe from creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. This isn’t an RPG or open world: think classic 1v1 fights built without combo strings that reach into three digits.

No, Avatar Legends isn’t a tag-fighter. Unlike most upcoming games in the genre, it “channels the energy of classic fighting games while breaking new ground in movement, style, and combat expression”.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game uses hand-drawn 2D art that faithfully resembles the show’s art design. The announcement footage sells it well, with faithful character designs and bending styles on full display. The trailer gave a glimpse of how supers would smoothly transition into an in-game cinematic before unleashing the attack.

From the description on the official Steam page and press releases, the game emphasises elemental mastery and is designed for both newcomers and veterans to the genre. The developers teased a unique “Flow System” with movement-centric gameplay. 

While it hasn’t been fully detailed yet, the pre-alpha footage suggests that chaining bending moves and combos are free-flowing and dynamic. Other features include a single-player campaign with an original narrative, combo trials, and gallery mode. 

Notably, the game will also include support characters to assist in battle. These secondary assist characters “influence your fighting style and grant special moves”, but whether it’s similar to Mortal Kombat’s Kameo system is still up in the air.

Assuming that the support characters are the companions seen in the background, the trailer confirms four of them. There’s the iconic Flying Bison Appa, Korra’s Polar Bear Dog Naga, bounty hunter June, and one of Azula’s allies, Mai.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game has a tentative date of Summer 2026 for release. Without further announcements, this information gives a time frame of June to August next year. It may be just sheer chance, but the summer solstice was also a significant day for Aang’s last battle. 

This title will also be available on the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PS4, and PC (Steam). On PC, you can already wishlist on Steam while waiting for further announcements. The announcement of a PS4 version is somewhat unexpected, considering the next-gen Switch target; nevertheless, it is made for more people to know about the game.

Avatar fans are eating well for the next two years with the upcoming The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender movie coming out next October, and the new series Avatar: Seven Heavens in 2027.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is now in development at Gameplay Group International (GGI), a new studio built to revive cancelled games. Led by industry veterans Victor Lugo and Philip Mayes, GGI acquires and reimagines commercially unrealised games by finishing titles that otherwise wouldn’t ship.

The Avatar fighting game had a bumpy path before it was finally revealed. An untitled Avatar fighter previously in development at Maximum Entertainment was cancelled in late 2024 before it was acquired by GGI. The team working on the game has veteran devs who have previously worked on other fighting games like Killer Instinct, Them’s Fighting Herds, and Skullgirls.

This matters because the Steam page of the game has one of the key features listed as “best in Class Net Code and Cross Play”. This is most likely referring to Maximum Entertainment’s in-house Abare Engine, which claims to be the world’s most advanced 2D engine and the world’s first game engine built from the ground up for rollback. 

The Abare Engine’s RealMatch rollback was used in Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age. While the game itself only peaked at less than 100 players on Steam, at the very least, it was tangible proof of the impressive visuals and fast netcode.

The team has already confirmed 12 characters that can be played at the launch. The Steam page states that more characters will be released via a Seasonal model, commonly seen in most fighting games.

For now, seven fighters have been present in the trailers: Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Azula, Toph, and Korra. Fans are quickly searching for the wise Uncle Iroh, but there are too many good characters to draw from. From the first series, Suki, Firelord Ozai, Ty Lee, Jet, King Bumi, Hama, or even the Cabbage Merchant as a wildcard, have the potential to become fighters.

Of the 12 characters, six are from the first series; this means that Korra´s friends and enemies are absent from the party. For sure, someone from her own team should join the fight: Mako, Bolin, Asami, or Tenzin. The Beifong sisters, Lin and Suyin, could also add a metalbending specialist to the game.

Korra’s series is known for its amazing cast of villains. Red Lotus leader Zaheer is another fan-favourite that would fit right into the game; anti-bender Amon could serve as a counter-based character. Additionally, the eccentric Varrick and or the spiritual Jinora would fit as assist characters.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is shaping up to be an exciting crossover between the Avatar world and the fighting game genre. At its simplest form, it’s an officially licensed fighter that brings the cast of both series with faithful animations, and that’s already a good enough excuse for fans to check out the game.

GGI will have no problem catching public interest with a game featuring this level of cultural heft, and everything shown and revealed so far is looking good. If GGI can translate that promise into polished play, it can earn its place in the FGC, rather than just a good Avatar game.

Shenandoah Esports, the esports branch of Shenandoah University, has announced a partnership with multinational esports organisation Gen.G.

The deal will see the two parties collaborate on providing educational opportunities for students pursuing a career in the esports industry.

According to a release, the partnership is aiming to ‘enhance student experiences with additional professional development opportunities’ in addition to providing opportunities to travel through the University’s Global Experiential Learning trips.

As part of the partnership with Gen.G, students can take part in a trip to South Korea, where they will visit the organisation’s headquarters

In addition to travel and development initiatives, students seeking a career in esports can also benefit from work experience placements.

“This partnership will allow our students to gain access to real-world industry professionals to seek advice, experiential learning opportunities, and support as they transition from their educational journey to careers,” said Alyssa Duran, Esports Director at Shenandoah University.

Launched in 2018, Shenandoah University’s esports programme has become one of the top collegiate initiatives in the United States. In July 2025, it won four awards at the National Association of Collegiate Esports Convention.

In addition to fielding rosters in several esports titles, Gen.G has continued to bolster its focus on various educational initiatives through partnerships and Gen.G Foundation, the organisation’s dedicated education fund.

September saw the organisation join forces with McDonald’s to host a Campus Takeover at Marymount University, offering students a chance to network with industry professionals.

Alongside Shenandoah University, Gen.G recently partnered with Manchester University to offer a three-week course abroad for students to learn about the esports ecosystem in Seoul.

Education remains a key area in building a workforce equipped with the skills required to build and grow the esports industry further. With Gen.G’s continued investment, it will be interesting to see if its projects start yielding results.

FlyQuest has announced that it will be running a charity campaign during the League of Legends World Championships, featuring reigning champions T1.

The esports organisation will make donations to two chosen non-profit organisations based on its own performance and that of T1 during the tournament in China.

FlyQuest elaborated that $5 will be donated for every minute played by either team. For example, if T1 plays 595 minutes during Worlds, then FlyQuest will donate $2795 to their chosen charity. Furthermore, for every 10,000 followers FlyQuest gains, an extra $1 will be added to the rate.

FlyQuest has chosen to send funds to the Alveus Sanctuary, a wildlife sanctuary founded by streamer Maya Higa that also offers online conservation education. A donation will also be made to T1’s chosen charity, set to be ‘announced soon’ with the amount tied to the team’s performance, which is expected to be high given it is the reigning champion from Worlds 2024.

The League of Legends World Championships 2025 is the crowning event of the MOBA game’s esports scene, where the best teams around the world compete to be crowned number one.

Taking place from October 14th to November 9th, 17 teams, including T1 and FlyQuest, have qualified for the event.

The participating teams will play for the lion’s share of a $5m (~£3.7m) prize pool, with first place receiving $1m (~£748,000). The teams will compete across various stages across China, including Chengdu, Shanghai and Beijing.

As of writing, the tournament’s Swiss Stage is underway, where squads play five rounds to score as many wins as possible and qualify as one of eight teams for the Knockout Stage. The first round is nearing its conclusion, with FlyQuest losing to T1.

All matches can be watched live through the official League of Legends Esports Twitch and YouTube channels

Rainbow Six Siege X developer Ubisoft has shared an update on new anti-toxicity measures arriving in the first-person shooter.

As part of the title’s Y10S3.3 patch, the developer has added voice chat moderation in a bid to minimise toxic behaviour during matches.

Unveiled on October 14th, 2025, players loading into casual and competitive matches will see a new panel highlighting ‘detected disruptive voice or text chat’ in-game.

Players who have a reputation standing of Respectable and above will have the ability to provide feedback on incorrect detections, ensuring the system issues the appropriate punishments.

In addition to the panel, all voice chat detections for players have been reset. As a result, the community will have a clean slate for the latest chapter of Rainbow Six Siege’s tenth year.

The arrival of anti-toxicity measures is the latest change Ubisoft has made to Rainbow Six Siege X, as it continues to address community concerns. Earlier this month, the developer revealed that improvements to anti-cheat, balancing, and the title’s ranked mode would be made before the Munich Major.

Taking place from November 8th to 16th, the BLAST R6 Munich Major is the final Major of 2025 and will see 16 teams competing for a share of a $750,000 (~£561,986) prize pool. The winner of the tournament earns direct qualification to the Six Invitational 2026.

October is a month of change for Ubisoft and the Rainbow Six franchise. The developer officially launched Vantage Studios, a new subsidiary that will oversee the title’s development and expansion in addition to the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry franchises.

Rainbow Six Siege X is the latest title to implement new measures to combat toxicity across its casual and competitive playlists.

In May, Riot Games shared details on a new punishment system designed to punish bad behaviour and encourage players to be more respectful.

We’re looking forward to what’s coming with Battlefield 6. However, it would be remiss of us to look beyond what we have in front of us now. So why not consider the maps at launch, and rank them from least enjoyable to most? Agree or not with the lineup, these nine maps certainly deliver good variation and are the canvases of a new FPS contender.

Which of the Battlefield 6 maps has the edge? We’ve tried to be as balanced as possible, we’ve crammed in the play time on each map, and we’ve run, climbed, driven, flown, and parachuted all over the place. We’re not here to completely collapse all nine locations (only in-game), but we do have some views on where the best game flow can be found. 

To rank the best Battlefield 6 maps, we did three things. The first is to cram in as much game time as possible in as many modes. We tried each map in each available mode where matchmaking allowed. We then considered the flexibility of each map across its modes. Finally, we considered the flexibility of each map, as infantry-focused or with vehicles. 

An infantry-focused map set in the Old Town of Gibraltar, Saints Quarter is a shoe-in for Call of Duty fans looking for that frenetic fix. Infantry-only isn’t this writer’s preferred way to play Battlefield. However, Saints Quarter doesn’t do Domination, King of the Hill, and Squad and Team Deathmatch a disservice. 

This map’s detailed and destruction-ridden streets feature a pleasant fountain if you have time to look. Yet you’re best to be concerned about a high field-of-view setting and mouse sensitivity. This map does a good job of serving up unavoidable, relentless action. And if that’s what you want, then you’ll enjoy not catching your breath. 

Another infantry-only map, and a reminder that being eighth doesn’t make Empire State bad. This excellent infantry-only map gives you a taste of no-vehicle conquest, which is a refreshing break if you’re tired of getting dominated by attack helicopters. It’s also a map where squad and team pushes really feel satisfying. 

On Empire State, you feel a bit of the essence of the campaign mode’s non-stop action. Plus, if you’re wondering when’s best to be a medic or throw smoke grenades, then this is one of those maps. Assault ladders, multi-floor awareness, and routes around buildings are key. But if you want larger-scale warfare, then this won’t scratch that itch. 

A medium-sized map, Iberian Offensive offers an intriguing mix of wide-open side routes for vehicles and mounted jeeps. Yet it also contains the close-quarters combat and street-to-street fighting that so many faster FPS gamers should enjoy. It’s actually one of those maps that I thought I’d favour less, but the multi-level streets and houses are great.

You can be sniping through trees in the more open south-west part of the map, only to have a tank spotted, sending players flying for cover. Landmines and anti-tank play are a must here on BF6 modes like Conquest, as locking down key choke-points is as key to victory as it is fun to try and organise. Just avoid the crater of death below the bus. You’ll know. 

A genuinely joyful but fairly open map, and one of the larger options to have fun with helicopters and jets. In Escalation and Conquest modes, there’s enough space for the classic Battlefield plays, too: C4 jeep vs tank? Check. Park a helicopter on an apartment block? That too. However, there could be a bit more cover for avoiding guided missiles.

Nonetheless, New Sobek City’s sandy Egyptian construction yard aesthetic looks great. It also combines tricky hiding spots with open lanes for armoured reinforcement to pour in. If you’re in an attack helicopter, you’ll favour the ducking in and out of buildings on the western side of the map. The battle for elevated infantry positioning is fun, but not so consequential.

Until you’ve played the BF6 maps extensively, Siege of Cairo may feel a bit like Iberian Offensive. It’s not, though. It feels larger and more densely populated, with destruction-ready buildings, snaking corridors, and solid outside lanes. Siege of Cairo is a very satisfying Conquest map, as teams flow around flags and attempt to outmanoeuvre enemies. 

It feels even better in Breakthrough: the repeated attempts to find a sneaky route to M-COMs keep your opponents checking their six. If it pays off, the feeling is immense. Equally, if you manage to prevent your opponents’ progress, you know your team has been pretty darn solid that match. 

Peak by name but not quite by nature. We may have previously named it ‘Liberation Mid’. That feels harsh now, because as one of Battlefield 6’s new maps, it serves to force the action. It’s fairly linear as larger maps go, but if you want team-facing-team combat, then you won’t miss that here. On larger modes, it’s a sniper’s delight, although that can be a lot. 

Still, with tanks, jets, and other vehicles allowing transport on larger maps, there’s enough space to play. Smaller modes like Team and Squad Deathmatch work well here, as do non-stop Domination firefights. We love the views, with Liberation Peak being one of the better-looking maps. A bit too exposed for sneaky spawn beacons, but a good new arrival. 

As a classic map, the desire to just whack this one in at number 1 was there, but that wouldn’t be fair. For all its nostalgia-ridden excellence, it’s a bonus more than the best. Still, if you’re thinking about Battlefield 6 conquest maps, then Operation Firestorm is a nice treat to have back in the latest title. 

There’s plenty of space for aircraft, tanks, and anti-aircraft when playing Conquest, but it’s solid all over. Available for all game modes, this is self-congratulatory, but this writer loved Breakthrough: sliding between industrial architecture, pipes, and silos, arming and destroying M-COMs is a blast! As is just sitting back and painting targets with the AA. 

The best map in Battlefield 6? Not quite. Mirak Valley is the largest map at launch. If we’re honest, that’s probably why we like it so much. Battlefield feels made for space and large-scale warfare, as that’s where it has its modern military roots. Mirak Valley isn’t perfect, though, and its layout is largely to blame.

This is a war-ravaged map with open areas and centralised buildings, but the map is actually quite linear. A bit more width, more variety in Conquest flag points, and then more utility can be found for the vehicles. Still, there’s plenty of space for changes to be made if the devs are willing. Map with the most potential? We’d say so.

Without doubt, one of the better Battlefield 6 maps; it almost perfectly captures this writer’s feelings about BF6, too. It’s not a map that we would think we’d enjoy as much as we do. But, because BF6 is now more than a vehicle-focused title, it feels like Manhattan Bridge works in whatever mode you play it in. That is, it feels flexible and fun beyond others. 

When the BF6 devs talk about ‘adaptive combat zones’, Manhattan Bridge is a fine example. It feels large enough for a competitive Conquest or Escalation, but is clearly urban and can support infantry-only modes if you prefer. We’d love it if helicopters were more of a thing, but the spawns do feel a little buggy across maps as we write, so maybe that will be ‘fixed’. 

There’s a strong line-up of maps at launch, with close-quarters combat and more expansive warfare dished out in equal measure.

While Manhattan Bridge takes the top spot as of now, with more maps on the way, check back here as we work through the Season 1 roadmap for updates.