Header image: AI-generated illustration by WordUp News.

The number of new itch.io game pages being created each day has doubled in roughly two months, and the platform says the audience has not grown to match. The figures point to a flood of generative AI projects, a problem many developers had already noticed on Steam.

Itch.io shared the data in a Bluesky post late on October 31. Its graph showed about 3,000 new pages created per day in August 2026. By October 30, the figure was above 6,000. In replies, the platform indicated that AI-made projects account for the majority of the new pages, according to Polygon’s reading of the thread. PC Gamer’s coverage similarly framed AI-generated “slop” as the likely cause, though itch.io’s public statements are brief, and the data shows volume rather than a detailed breakdown of who is uploading what.

More itch.io game pages, but not more players

The most telling detail may be what did not change. Itch.io confirmed in another reply that downloads and purchases have not doubled since August. No graph accompanied that statement, so the exact trend is unclear. But the implication is plain: the supply of games is growing much faster than the number of people playing or buying them.

That matters because itch.io works differently from a curated storefront. It is open to almost anyone, which has made it a home for student projects, game jam entries and experimental work. Many better-known indie developers also use it, and games there are often given away in charity bundles. The openness that makes it valuable also makes it easy to flood.

What it means for indie developers

For developers who hand-craft their games, a larger pile of new releases without a larger audience means a smaller share of attention for each one. Discovery is already a major challenge for small teams, and the new numbers suggest it is getting harder.

Itch.io does ask developers to disclose when they have used AI, but that is a labeling measure rather than a restriction. Whether disclosure is enough to keep AI-generated pages from crowding out other work is the open question the numbers raise.

A wider storefront problem

Itch.io is not alone. Polygon notes that Steam is similarly crowded, and that Steam Next Fest demos have been drowned out, or even copied, by AI-made competitors. One example it cites is the team behind Drunken Goddess Reflux, which canceled its Next Fest demo over concerns about AI clones.

Neither platform has announced new restrictions in response to the latest figures, at least in the material reviewed here. Unless that changes, the pattern in the data is likely to continue: itch.io game pages multiplying quickly, while the players who might discover them stay roughly where they were.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

The Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition has a release date: 12 November, with a demo arriving on the Nintendo eShop the day before. The date came during a surprise Pikmin Day Direct, according to Eurogamer’s report, and the package adds a timed new mode called Dandori Academy.

One caveat first. The source material available for this piece covers the Direct announcements, not a full Nintendo Treehouse play session. It does not describe what a Treehouse stream showed beyond the Dandori Academy exam featured in the Direct, so this article sticks to what has been confirmed.

What the Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition adds

The headline addition is Dandori Academy, a timed exam mode. The Direct showcased one exam, Gargantuan Garden, in which players have to gather gold nuggets before the clock runs out. That fits the series’ long-running emphasis on “dandori”, the Japanese term for planning and organising work efficiently, though the source does not spell out how the mode is structured beyond that single example.

The upgraded version also lets players give voice commands to Oatchi, the dog companion introduced in the original game. The source does not say how many commands are supported or what they do.

Demo and upgrade options

A demo is due on the eShop on 2 November. Progress made in it will carry over to the full game if you buy it, so time spent trying the game is not wasted.

Owners of the original Switch release, which launched in July 2023, are not being asked to rebuy the game. An upgrade pack will be available through the eShop, though the source does not give a price. The new edition is the route to Dandori Academy and the voice commands.

A Direct without new games

Nintendo had said beforehand that the broadcast would contain no new game announcements, and it kept to that. Instead, Shigeru Miyamoto introduced Japanese actor Fuka Koshiba as a new ambassador for the series. Nintendo also confirmed that 1 November is now officially Pikmin Day.

The release lands in a busy month for Nintendo. Eurogamer notes that the Pikmin 4 Switch 2 Edition is one of two big releases in November, alongside a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on 5 November.

What we still don’t know

Several practical details are missing from the available reporting. These include the upgrade pack’s price, the full list of Dandori Academy exams, any graphical or performance changes on Switch 2, and how the demo is structured. Anyone wanting answers before 12 November has a free option: the demo arrives on 2 November, and its progress will carry over to the full game.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

File photo: Nintendo Switch 2-Konsole IL 20250606.png by PantheraLeo1359531, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Call of Duty’s long-awaited return to Nintendo hardware comes with a catch for competitive players: Switch 2 input lag in Modern Warfare 4 is substantially higher than on PlayStation 5. Digital Foundry’s technical analysis puts the gap in hard numbers, and the portable results are the most striking.

The numbers behind the Switch 2 input lag

In multiplayer, Digital Foundry measured 81ms of latency with the console docked and an average of 100ms in handheld mode. The PS5 managed around 49ms. Both consoles were tested with wireless controllers, a Switch 2 Pro Controller and a DualSense. Portable mode was also inconsistent, ranging from 83ms at best to 125ms at worst.

So handheld play has roughly double the delay of PS5, while docked play adds about two-thirds more. Digital Foundry said responsiveness “simply isn’t as good as on other consoles” and called the portable lag “actually deleterious to performance.” IGN’s coverage framed this as a “competitive disadvantage” for Nintendo players, noting that no amount of trigger-finger speed can make up for a console that takes longer to register the input.

Why it matters more in multiplayer

Call of Duty multiplayer has long built its reputation on a steady 60fps, and the series’ fans tend to be sensitive to anything that tilts the playing field. Debate over PC players’ advantages in crossplay has followed the franchise for years. On that front, Switch 2 mostly holds up: it hits 60fps most of the time, though Digital Foundry noted dips in certain situations, such as looking through a riot shield’s transparent visor. Variable refresh rate support on compatible displays helps hide those drops.

Frame rate, however, isn’t the same as responsiveness. A game can look smooth and still feel sluggish, which is why the latency figures are the headline finding here.

A mostly positive port, with visual trade-offs

Digital Foundry was otherwise fairly upbeat about the port, which was developed by Digital Legends with support from Infinity Ward. The campaign is capped at 30fps and uses dynamic resolution. Docked with DLSS enabled, it targets 900p but can fall to 450p in demanding moments such as the Paris vehicle chase. In portable mode the target is 720p, dropping as low as 360p.

The two sources differ on how the docked campaign looks. Digital Foundry’s resolution figures are well below 4K, while IGN’s Simon Cardy described the campaign as running at 30fps at 4K while docked. He also called textures far less detailed than on other platforms, though he said it still felt “snappy” and was a worthwhile experience for Nintendo-only players. Readers should treat the exact resolution as unsettled between the two accounts.

How Call of Duty got here

The release is the first Call of Duty on a Nintendo console since Ghosts in 2013, a gap the sources describe as 13 or 14 years depending on how it’s counted. It exists because of Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. While seeking regulatory approval, Microsoft offered a 10-year commitment to bring the series to Nintendo platforms, a pledge then Xbox boss Phil Spencer made in December 2022.

For campaign players and casual fans, the port appears to deliver what Nintendo owners have waited over a decade for. For anyone who cares about ranked-style multiplayer, the Switch 2 input lag is the number to weigh, especially in handheld mode, where it is at its worst.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

File photo: Nintendo Switch 2-Konsole IL 20250606.png by PantheraLeo1359531, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A Persona 1 remake leak has set the RPG community buzzing after almost two minutes of apparent gameplay footage appeared online on 31 October. Atlus and Sega have announced no such project, and none of the outlets covering the story could verify the clip. Even so, the details inside it have convinced plenty of fans that they are looking at something real.

What the footage appears to show

The clip, which seems to carry the subtitle Be Your True Mind, runs a little under two minutes. According to reports, it shows polished menus and a short stretch of combat that closely resembles the look and feel of Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload. It also includes a brief social link cutscene rendered in a noticeably different, almost graphic novel art style.

The file was reportedly uploaded to a file-sharing site under a Japanese filename that translates as “Megami Ibunroku Persona Remake”, a reference to the original game’s Japanese title. The accounts of how it spread differ. One report points to a post on the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit. Another says a YouTube channel named P1REMAKE shared it first, and that the channel’s account dates back to 2010 and has only a couple of other uploads, the last more than 14 years ago. The sources don’t settle which version is right, which is a good reason to be cautious about the clip’s origins.

Why fans think it’s authentic

Viewers have gone through the footage frame by frame and picked out several details they say lend it credibility:

• What looks like Unreal Engine debug text in the corner of the screen during battle. Atlus moved to Unreal Engine for Persona 3 Reload.
• A new remix of the Pandora theme from the original PlayStation game.
• The protagonist being labelled “Boy With Earring”, the name used for him in Persona 2: Eternal Punishment.
• A character summoning animation for Eriko that seems to match the one used for Yukiko in the upcoming Persona 4 Revival, which is due on 18 February 2027.

The length and detail of the video have also counted in its favour. Fake leaks tend to be shorter and less elaborate, and some fans say they can’t imagine someone going to this much trouble to fake one.

The oddities that cut the other way

Not everything fits neatly. Persona 2 protagonist Tatsuya appears in the footage, apparently standing in for what may be an unfinished character model. That could be a placeholder, which would suggest a game still early in development. It could just as easily be a sign that something is off. Some commenters have floated the idea that this is an internal pitch for remakes of both Persona 1 and Persona 2 rather than a slice of a single game.

Nobody can say when the footage was captured either. It could be recent, or it could be years old, and it might be a proof of concept rather than anything close to a finished build. IGN also noted that, in an era of AI-generated fakes, skepticism is the sensible default, even though fan opinion is leaning towards the clip being genuine. IGN said it has asked Sega for comment.

The context behind the rumour

The timing makes the leak plausible, which is not the same as confirming it. Atlus has been steadily revisiting its back catalogue: Persona 3 Reload arrived in 2024, and Persona 4 Revival is on the way. In August, series producer Kazuhisa Wada stopped short of confirming Persona 1 and Persona 2 remakes. Coverage of his comments varies in tone, from saying it’s something Atlus will “probably eventually do” to saying it is something “we have to do”. Either way, he left the door wide open without saying work had begun.

That leaves the Persona 1 remake leak in familiar territory. The evidence is intriguing, the sourcing is murky, and the only people who can settle it are at Atlus and Sega. Until they do, it is best treated as an unconfirmed rumour with a few unusually specific details.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

File photo: 2022 Proton Persona 1.6L Executive CVT.jpg by Fyc09913, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Activision has agreed to remove real news footage of the Itaewon crowd crush from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, promising that the material “will be completely removed” in a game update due on Nov. 12. The decision follows days of backlash from bereaved families and criticism from a senior South Korean government official.

The footage appears in the game’s opening cinematic, which uses short news-style clips to depict civilian casualties in a fictional North Korean invasion of South Korea. Players and reporters later found that some of the clips were archive broadcast material from the 2022 Halloween disaster in Seoul’s Itaewon district, rather than staged scenes created for the game.

What the Itaewon crowd crush footage showed

The crowd crush happened on Oct. 29, 2022, when thousands of people packed into the neighbourhood’s narrow streets and alleys during Halloween celebrations. Polygon puts the death toll at 159, while Eurogamer says around 160 people died. Either way, it was one of South Korea’s deadliest peacetime disasters in recent memory.

According to Polygon, the material in the game reportedly included victims being carried away on stretchers, body bags lying in the street and people attempting CPR. Placing that kind of imagery inside a military shooter’s introduction, as scene-setting for a fictional war, is what drew the fiercest objections.

Activision’s apology, and who has heard it

Activision’s response has come in pieces. In a Korean-language statement reported by Inven Global, the publisher said it bowed its heads “in deep sympathy and apology to the bereaved families and victims.” Separately, a statement given to South Korean broadcaster MBC and reported by The Korea Herald offered “deepest condolences and sincere apologies” to families and anyone distressed by the incident.

The company has maintained that the game is “a work of fiction created to provide realistic immersion” and that it never meant to evoke or trivialise the tragedy. Its earlier statement to Eurogamer said the cinematic “utilises some real world news coverage to establish the game’s fictional narrative.” That is an acknowledgement that real broadcast material was used, paired with a denial of intent to reference Itaewon specifically.

The apology has not fully landed with everyone. The 10.29 Itaewon Disaster Bereaved Families Association welcomed the removal but told the BBC it had not received a direct apology from Activision, according to Polygon. Eurogamer notes that the families’ association and the Citizens Countermeasure Meeting had both called for the footage to be taken out.

Government pressure adds weight

The dispute also moved into politics. Interior and Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung described the footage’s inclusion as “secondary harm” and said, “I believe appropriate sanctions should be imposed.” He argued that using such a tragedy as material for entertainment or business “is something that should be refrained from as a matter of human ethics.”

Yun did not announce a specific penalty. He said it was up to the relevant agencies to decide “whether to impose punishment or block it to make general access difficult.” It is unclear from the reporting whether any formal action will follow now that Activision has committed to a fix.

A game already sitting on a sensitive subject

The timing compounds an awkward launch. Modern Warfare 4 arrived last week with a premise that is itself politically charged: a war between North and South Korea, two countries that remain technically at war because the 1953 armistice was never followed by a peace treaty. Polygon notes the game has drawn criticism for that depiction alone.

For now, the practical outcome is clear. The Itaewon crowd crush footage stays in the game until the Nov. 12 patch, and the remaining question is whether Activision’s statements to the press will be followed by direct contact with the families who asked for it to be removed.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

File photo: Itaewon, Seoul Halloween Crowd Crush on October 29th, 2022.jpg by 열린공감 TV, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Header image: AI-generated illustration by WordUp News.

The id Software layoffs were among the harshest cuts in Xbox’s sweeping summer restructuring, and the Doom studio’s leadership is now insisting it came out the other side in good shape. Co-director Marty Stratton says the team is “doing great” and collaborating more tightly than before with sister studio MachineGames, even as questions linger about how a studio roughly half its former size can sustain big-budget shooters.

What Stratton said about the cuts

Stratton made the remarks at a press event earlier this week, according to reporting from IGN that was picked up by Kotaku. Asked about the fallout, he did not dispute the scale of the reductions. “Everybody knows we had about half of our studio exit as part of that,” he reportedly said, while arguing there was “a very deliberate effort” to keep id “incredibly viable” across game development and its technology department.

The timing made the cuts especially stark. Kotaku reports that roughly half the studio was let go just 24 hours before the big expansion for Doom: The Dark Ages launched. The studio’s future has been a point of speculation ever since, particularly because the cuts reportedly hit departments holding decades of combined institutional knowledge.

The engine question hanging over id

The biggest concern has been id Tech, the in-house engine behind the studio’s shooters. In August, veteran programmer Chris Hays said making a AAA game “like we’ve done before with half the people” was “impossible.” Id has pushed back on that view, arguing that the studio is roughly where it was when it shipped Doom (2016) nearly a decade ago.

Stratton’s latest comments lean on a different argument: that id is not facing the challenge alone. MachineGames, which is working on the unannounced Wolfenstein 3, runs its projects on a separate fork of id Tech. Observers have floated the idea that the two studios could pool their remaining engineering resources to cover gaps on future releases.

A closer partnership with MachineGames

Stratton appeared to embrace that idea. “We’re working more closely with MachineGames than ever,” he reportedly said. He described the relationship as long-standing but said both teams now have “incredibly talented engineers” and are on “an amazing path” for technology development. He also said the effort started earlier this year, before the layoffs, rather than being a reaction to them. Both studios, he said, are “really bullish” about what lies ahead.

That framing is notable. If the shared engine work predates the cuts, it suggests the studios were already heading toward tighter integration, though the sources do not say how much of that work survived the reduction in headcount.

What the id Software layoffs leave unresolved

Stratton’s confidence is one side of a debate that has played out publicly for months. Around the time of the cuts, he had said that “what matters the most is that the games are good.” Meanwhile, at least one current developer has been openly skeptical about what a halved team can deliver. These accounts sit uneasily together, and only future releases will settle the argument.

Broader uncertainty also remains. Kotaku notes that Xbox has about a quarter of its “reset” left, with further rounds of layoffs reportedly scheduled for November and January. What Microsoft ultimately plans for franchises like Doom is still unclear, and no amount of upbeat messaging from the studio can answer that. For now, id’s message is that it is stable, focused and leaning harder on its Wolfenstein-making colleagues, while fans and industry watchers wait to see what that adds up to.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

Header image: AI-generated illustration by WordUp News.

Nintendo has declared November 1 to be Pikmin Day, an annual celebration of its tiny plant-creature franchise, and marked the occasion with a surprise video presentation on Halloween. Hosted by Shigeru Miyamoto, the broadcast offered no Pikmin 5 and no blockbuster reveal. It did lay out a fairly clear plan for how Nintendo wants to keep the series in the spotlight.

Why November 1?

The date does not match any release anniversary. The first game reached Japan in October 2001 and North America that December. According to Miyamoto, the choice comes down to the look of the numbers. Early Pikmin came in only three colors, red, yellow and blue, and when the three stand side by side they resemble “11.1.” The franchise is now 25 years old, so the timing also works as a quiet birthday nod.

IGN described the length as a little more than nine minutes, while Polygon called it a brief video. Either way, it was a small showcase. Miyamoto said that “going forward, I want people to know more about Pikmin,” which suggests Pikmin Day is meant as the start of a longer push rather than a one-off.

Hello! Pikmin brings monthly animated shorts

The biggest new item was a project called Hello! Pikmin, which Miyamoto is making with Nintendo Pictures. The sample short shows a red Pikmin sneaking up on what looks like a sleeping toad to steal a worn baseball. The toad is awake, and hungry, which does not bode well for the Pikmin.

Nintendo plans to release new shorts through the Nintendo Today app and other channels, aiming for roughly one per month in the near future. Animation is familiar territory for the franchise. Nintendo Pictures released a Pikmin short called “Close to You” a year ago, and Miyamoto’s team made a trio of Pikmin animations back in 2014.

Pikmin 4 on Switch 2 gets a demo

The most concrete news for players concerns Pikmin 4 – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Dandori Academy, due November 12, 2026. A free demo arrives November 2, and save data will carry over to the full game. The demo covers the Sun-Speckled Terrace opening area and two Dandori Academy stages.

The Switch 2 version adds voice control. Using the console’s built-in microphone, players can give Oatchi commands such as “rush” and “go to work.” Dandori Academy, the new challenge mode, centers on timed tasks where players try to earn medals by optimizing their strategies. Limited-time exams will arrive every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with leaderboards for competition. Polygon reports that 72 Dandori Academy stages will be released over time.

Secret Caves head to Pikmin Bloom

The mobile game Pikmin Bloom, which launched in 2021, gets a new feature this winter. Secret Caves are battle-focused exploration events in which players send their Pikmin into caves to fight creatures and find treasure. A teaser showed a squad taking on a Bulborb. Treasures shown included a rubber duck, a sword, a cookie and a chef hat, and they will form a new in-game collection.

Entering a cave requires a map. Maps can be found through things like in-game postcards, and Polygon adds that they can also be earned by playing the Dandori Academy challenges in the Switch 2 edition. That link between console and phone is one of the few moments in the showcase where Nintendo ties its Pikmin products together.

A famous fan joins as spokesperson

Nintendo also named Japanese actor Fuka Koshiba as a spokesperson for the franchise, in order to “build more excitement about Pikmin going forward,” per Miyamoto. Koshiba is known for knitting Pikmin-themed headwear in her spare time.

Taken together, the announcements point to a strategy of steady, low-key exposure: a yearly holiday, a monthly video, weekly in-game exams and a seasonal mobile update. Whether that builds toward a new mainline game is something Nintendo has not said. For now, the first Pikmin Day is a reminder that the franchise has more going on than its occasional new releases suggest.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

Xbox console supply is now the official explanation for a weak hardware quarter, with Xbox chief Asha Sharma insisting that demand outstrips what Microsoft can put on shelves. The claim came alongside Microsoft’s latest earnings, which showed Xbox hardware sales down 14 percent year on year.

“Console sales remain constrained by supply, with more demand than consoles available,” Sharma wrote on X. She said Microsoft is working to get more consoles to players, including through an expanded refurbishment program, and added: “We’re making progress, with a lot more work ahead.”

What the quarter’s numbers show

For the three months ending September 30, Xbox revenue slipped 2 percent to roughly $5.38 billion, from about $5.51 billion a year earlier. That is a smaller decline than the 10 percent drop reported the previous quarter. Content and services revenue also dipped slightly. Microsoft’s finance chief attributed that to lower third-party content and Game Pass revenue, partly offset by growth in first-party content.

Sharma’s own summary leaned on the positives: record performances for Minecraft and the World of Warcraft: Forever beta, double-digit growth in PC revenue, and what she called Call of Duty’s most acclaimed release in over a decade. Microsoft has not offered sales figures for the new Call of Duty, and it hasn’t published Series X/S unit numbers in years, so the scale of the hardware decline is hard to gauge.

Context matters here too. Microsoft’s Azure cloud business brought in $33.1 billion in the same quarter, about six times Xbox’s total. Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 launched after the quarter closed, so they will show up in the next report, alongside World of Warcraft: Forever and Grand Theft Auto 6.

Is it really a supply problem?

Not everyone accepts the framing. In the U.S., consoles are often available through Xbox’s own store and online retailers, so a determined buyer can usually find one. Some European fans have also pushed back publicly, saying the claim doesn’t match their experience of shopping for a console in regions where Xbox stock has been patchy or where Microsoft has scaled back service.

The likely culprit behind any real shortage is the memory-chip crunch driven by AI demand, which has pushed up console prices over the past year and is forecast to worsen into 2027. Xbox has already raised prices repeatedly, and a pricier anniversary Series X is due in November. Tight Xbox console supply and rising prices can plausibly look the same on a sales chart, which makes “constrained by supply” difficult to separate from “demand fell as prices rose.”

The refurbishment push

Microsoft’s remedy is to recycle hardware that already exists. Some U.S. owners who hadn’t switched on their consoles in a while received emails encouraging them to trade them in at retailers such as Best Buy. Microsoft doesn’t profit from a used-console sale, but a refurbished machine in an active player’s hands can generate revenue later through game and subscription purchases. With GTA 6 arriving this holiday season, that logic is clear.

The bigger test ahead

The stakes extend beyond this holiday. Next-generation Project Helix hardware is reportedly targeting holiday 2028, and one recent report estimated a price of $1,200 to $1,800 if Microsoft chose not to subsidize it as it has with past launches. The same memory shortage that is squeezing today’s Xbox console supply could shape what that machine costs and whether it ships in volume.

All of this unfolds amid wider upheaval. Sharma’s restructuring has led to more than 1,800 job losses at Xbox so far, with more layoffs expected, and Microsoft has offered voluntary exits to many thousands of employees company-wide. Microsoft overall is thriving on cloud revenue, but Xbox hardware remains the weak spot. Whether supply is truly the limit, or a convenient explanation, may become clearer when holiday results arrive.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

File photo: Asha Sharma CEO of XBOX at 2026 XBOX Showcase.jpg by Jasonglewis, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nintendo has pulled the Kirby Air Riders Halloween event from its Switch 2 racer just two days after it launched, citing a bug that made the game freeze mid-race. The seasonal celebration was meant to run until November 4, but it will now end well before Halloween itself.

What Nintendo said about the cancellation

The announcement came from Nintendo’s Japanese support account on X on October 30. According to a machine translation of the post, the company had “identified an issue” in the ongoing “Trick or Treat!” event in which “the screen may temporarily freeze during gameplay.” Its conclusion was blunt: “we have decided to cancel this event.” The news was first spotted by Nintendo Life.

The event started on October 28 and was the first Halloween outing for the roughly 10-month-old game. It brought spooky and fall-themed decorations, plus ghost-hat cosmetics that players could earn through play. Players reported the problems almost immediately, with clips circulating online of the game stalling for several seconds at a time. For a racing game, that kind of hitch can ruin a run.

Will the event come back?

Nintendo has not written the event off entirely. The same post says the company plans to hold it again so that players can still obtain the associated rewards, and that more details will follow once they are finalized. There is no date, and no indication of whether “again” means before the end of the year or some time later. Calling an event both “cancelled” and “planned to return” leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Kotaku says it has asked Nintendo for clarification.

The sources also don’t say what is actually causing the freezes. Nintendo’s statement describes the symptom but not the technical cause, and it has not said how long a fix might take. The fact that it pulled the content outright rather than patching it over the weekend suggests the problem is not a quick one, though that is an inference rather than anything the company has confirmed.

A small stumble for a game still getting updates

Kirby Air Riders, directed by Masahiro Sakurai of Super Smash Bros. fame, was released in 2025 as a follow-up to the 2003 GameCube title. It is a light, colorful racer, and ongoing themed events are a sign Nintendo is still investing in it months after launch. Seasonal updates like this one are a way to keep players returning, which makes a botched rollout on the first spooky season an awkward moment.

For players, the practical upshot is simple. The Halloween content is gone for now, the ghost hats are out of reach until the event returns, and Nintendo has promised a second chance without saying when. Anyone hoping to wear them on actual Halloween will likely be disappointed, but the company’s pledge to let players earn the rewards later at least means nothing is being lost permanently. Further details on the Kirby Air Riders event are expected once Nintendo finalizes its plans.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.

File photo: Nintendo Switch 2-Konsole IL 20250606.png by PantheraLeo1359531, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Header image: AI-generated illustration by WordUp News.

Players searching for help with the Festering Secret quest in Phantom Blade Zero will have to wait for a reliable answer. The source material gathered for this article does not contain a usable walkthrough, so guessing at objectives, locations or bosses would only send people in the wrong direction.

What the sources say about the Festering Secret quest

The GamesRadar page that carries the Festering Secret headline came through only as site navigation, newsletter prompts and sign-up text. None of the quest’s steps, rewards or requirements appear in it. The second source, from Polygon, is a walkthrough for a different side quest called “Whence the Weeping.” It never mentions the Festering Secret quest, so nothing in it can be applied to that mission.

A related guide: the Whence the Weeping quest

Because the Polygon guide is the only substantive material available, here is what it reports. “Whence the Weeping” begins very early, after the protagonist, Soul, wakes up following the carriage sequence in Weeping Creek Valley. The objective is simply to find the source of a woman’s weeping. The guide says the quest takes far longer to finish than its early start suggests, and that it can only be completed later in the campaign. Following the sound itself does not advance it. Players are told to follow the map icons and pick the dialogue options about the weeping.

Polygon breaks the quest into five steps:

• Talk to Yu’er in Weeping Creek Valley and ask about the woman’s weeping.
• Defeat the final boss of Crimson Forest.
• Ask Jewel in the Village of Lu region about the faint weeping.
• Travel to Meigu Lake.
• Reach the Mountain of Imprisonment and beat its final boss.

The guide adds some detail on the later steps. Reaching Meigu Lake requires beating a boss in Pangzhen, which yields a story item that can be repaired into the Flaming Mane phantom edge. That weapon burns away the roots blocking the path east of the Pavilion of Knowledge Crossroads bell. Before heading to the Mountain of Imprisonment, players should finish the “Illusory Pipa” side quest. The item it provides is needed to disperse the mist at the Weeping Mistgate.

What to do while waiting for a Festering Secret quest guide

Anyone stuck on the Festering Secret quest should check the in-game quest log and map markers first. Players can also look for an updated guide from a publisher that has actually covered it. The Polygon walkthrough does show how this game tends to structure side quests: vague early objectives, steps unlocked by story progress, and dialogue choices that matter. That is a general pattern from one guide, though, and not evidence of how this particular quest works.

Until a source with real details appears, no one can say with confidence where the Festering Secret quest starts, what it asks of players or how it ends.

Explore more on this topic with Vexel Search.