Gaming News Roundup: GTA 6's PS5 Jailbreak Race, Xbox's Reported $150B Valuation, Dawn of War 4 Hands-On & More (Oct 21, 2026)
Grand Theft Auto VI (image via IGN / Rockstar Games)
GTA 6 is four weeks out, and the race between PS5 hackers and Sony is heating up as the launch gets closer. Today's lead: Sony has pushed a new PS5 firmware update while the homebrew scene shows off another jailbreak. Also on Wednesday: GTA 6's beer brands may be headed for real-world shelves, private equity firms reportedly valued Xbox at up to $150 billion, Modern Warfare 4's DMZ is live in early access, and the first Dawn of War 4 hands-on impressions are in. Plus: Resident Evil Requiem's surprising disc sales, Beyond Good and Evil 2's never-ending pre-production, Nvidia's stutter-cutting driver, Magic: The Gathering's record quarter, Valor Mortis turning a profit, Remedy's Alan Wake easter egg, Hellraiser: Revival's goal to get banned, Kojima on the "walking simulator" label, Deadlock's last voted hero, and hope for an Onimusha 3 remaster. Here's the Lanbrew gaming roundup for October 21, 2026.
Grand Theft Auto VI (image via GamesRadar+ / Rockstar Games)
Sony drops a new PS5 firmware update as the jailbreak race heats up ahead of GTA 6
Sony has released PS5 system software 26.07-14.20.00, a 1.2GB update whose only official patch note is improved "messages and usability on some screens." The timing has a lot of people reading between the lines. The PS5 homebrew scene has been on a tear lately: late last month, a jailbreak landed for every PS5 on firmware 7.00 through 13.60, including the PS5 Pro. Some games then started requiring firmware 14.00 to download updates, and the hunt for a newer exploit began.
Now longtime PS5 hacker Gezine has posted a clip showing debug menu access on firmware 14.10, though the method hasn't been released. That's why everyone's watching GTA 6. If a jailbreak works on whatever firmware Rockstar's game requires, fears of piracy follow. For now, there's an important catch: Gezine says the old way of dumping game executables "does not seem to work at 14.xx," so there's no evidence GTA 6 could be pirated on current exploits. IGN notes there's no proof 14.20 is a direct response to the 14.10 exploit, and Sony may push another update before November 19.
Source: IGN; GamesRadar+; Push Square
Grand Theft Auto VI (image via IGN / Rockstar Games)
GTA 6's beer brands may be about to become real, and fans think Rockstar is filming a live-action trailer in Miami
Rockstar's Miami takeover keeps getting stranger. As spotted by iGrandTheftAuto, the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has approved labels for three GTA beers made by Florida's Tripping Animals Brewing: series staples Patriot Beer and Pißwasser, plus a new one called No Mames Vice City, with a sunglasses-wearing dog on the can. No Mames is a 6% lager, and the other two come in at 4.2%. There's no word yet on when or where you'll be able to buy them.
Meanwhile, fans in Miami have been filming convoys of exotic cars dressed up as GTA vehicles, like Grotti and Emerus models, driving around town, sometimes followed by camera crews. That has fans speculating that Rockstar is shooting a live-action GTA 6 trailer around its real-world Vice City ads. It's all unconfirmed, but it fits a marketing push that already includes a Vice City blimp over Florida and a Vice City-themed Miami Heat game in November.
Xbox Game Studios (image via GameSpot / Microsoft)
Private equity firms reportedly valued Xbox at up to $150 billion
According to The Information, several private equity firms explored buying Xbox and were willing to go as high as $150 billion for Microsoft's gaming division, with a floor of around $100 billion. The firms were only exploring options, and no negotiations with Microsoft took place. The report follows Fortune's claim that some inside the company believe Xbox is being prepared for a possible sale, spin-off, outside investment or conversion into a subsidiary.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has previously shut down sale talk directly: "Xbox is not for sale." She added that Microsoft will look at "the right partnerships, the right operating model, and everything needed" to set Xbox up for success. Next-gen hardware costs are also in the news: Insider Gaming reports that leaker Kepler_L2 now says the PS6's bill of materials is only about $200 lower than Microsoft's next Xbox, as RAM and storage prices keep climbing.
Source: GameSpot; Insider Gaming
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 DMZ (image via Eurogamer / Activision)
Modern Warfare 4's DMZ is live in early access, and its first big bug was flattening players on spawn
Infinity Ward opened early access to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's DMZ extraction mode overnight, so anyone who preordered can now play it alongside the campaign. Early reactions are mostly positive, but players quickly found one brutal problem: one of the spawn points on the Hajin map sits in the middle of a road, so some players got run over by enemy patrols before they could even move. Since DMZ is persistent, dying means losing everything you brought in.
The good news is that Infinity Ward has already patched it: "Fixed some instances where enemy AI could run over players while infilling." Eurogamer also has a fun piece on MW4's new melee parry, which it calls "kind of brilliant." Traditional multiplayer unlocks at full launch this Friday, October 23, on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Switch 2.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 (image via Polygon / Deep Silver)
Dawn of War 4 previews are in, and critics are excited
The first hands-on impressions of Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 4 dropped this morning, and they're glowing. Developed by King Art and published by Deep Silver, it takes the series over from Relic. Previewers got the prologue plus two of the four campaigns, the Orks and the Adeptus Mechanicus, all set in a four-way war over the planet Kronus.
Polygon says it "has the potential to be the best Warhammer 40,000 game ever," singling out the Orks' Waaagh! stratagems, which unleash hordes of units once you fill the meter, as some of the most fun it's had this year. PC Gamer says the campaigns are "everything I hoped they'd be," and that its fear of a Dawn of War 3 repeat is gone. It praised the cheap, fast Ork armies and the tabletop-style freedom to swap weapons on individual units.
Resident Evil Requiem (image via Eurogamer / Capcom)
Resident Evil Requiem reportedly sold more on PlayStation discs than on Xbox in total
A new report from analytics firm Alinea, covered by Eurogamer, says physical PlayStation copies of Resident Evil Requiem may have outsold every version of the game on Xbox combined. It's part of a big batch of physical sales stats: discs make up under 30% of sales for 007 First Light, Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced and Crimson Desert, while about 800,000 of Marvel's Wolverine's 2.6 million sales were physical.
Japan leans even more physical. 44% of Pragmata's and Onimusha: Way of the Sword's copies there were sold on disc. Sports games are the opposite: EA Sports FC 27, PlayStation's current top seller, gets only 8.9% of its sales from physical copies. The numbers land as Sony keeps pushing toward digital, including a new digital-only PS5 Black in Japan with a separately sold disc drive.
Source: Eurogamer
Beyond Good and Evil 2 (image via Insider Gaming / Ubisoft)
Beyond Good and Evil 2 is still in pre-production after 18 years, report claims
Beyond Good and Evil 2, which has been in development since 2008, technically hasn't even entered production yet. That's according to a report from French outlet Origami, based on people close to the project, which Insider Gaming says it can verify. About 250 people are on the game at Ubisoft Montpellier alone, and the next milestone is reaching alpha and moving into full production.
The report describes a project that is "impossible to be cancelled" but keeps moving its goalposts, with leadership repeatedly asking whether it's cool or innovative enough and pushing deadlines back. At one point from 2019 to 2022, the plan was a heavily multiplayer game spanning many planets. The current goal is a "solo first" adventure with no mandatory login and optional co-op.
Source: Insider Gaming
Nvidia (image via The Verge)
Nvidia's new driver uses Microsoft's cloud tech to cut shader stutter
Nvidia's new 621.01 GPU driver adds support for Microsoft's Advanced Shader Delivery, which moves shader compilation to the cloud. Developers capture a game's shaders, and Microsoft precompiles them for hundreds of thousands of hardware and driver combinations. That means faster launches, no shader compilation screen, and none of the mid-game "just-in-time" compiling that causes stutter and CPU spikes.
Gears of War: E-Day and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 support it now when installed through the Xbox PC app. Nvidia says it's storefront-agnostic, so you benefit even with Steam copies as long as the Xbox PC app is installed. AMD GPUs (Adrenalin 26.6.1 or newer) and Snapdragon X2 chips support it too.
Source: The Verge
Magic: The Gathering (image via Polygon / Wizards of the Coast)
Magic: The Gathering tops $600 million in a quarter for the first time
Hasbro's third-quarter results are in, and Magic: The Gathering passed $600 million in quarterly revenue for the first time. Wizards of the Coast, which publishes Magic and Dungeons & Dragons, grew revenue 31% year over year and generated almost 90% of Hasbro's operating profit for the quarter. The Hobbit set is now the fourth best-selling Magic set ever, and Reality Fracture also helped.
Hasbro also says organized play participation in the first nine months of 2026 is up 40% compared with all of 2024. Polygon points out that this counts every event run through Magic's Companion app, including casual store Commander nights. So the casual scene is booming, but competitive players' complaints about prize support haven't gone away.
Valor Mortis (image via Push Square / One More Level)
Valor Mortis broke even in a week and is now turning a profit
Good news for One More Level: publisher Lyrical Games says first-person soulslike Valor Mortis reached its break-even point in just seven days, so the game's development costs are already paid off and it's now making money. Official sales figures haven't been shared yet.
The Ghostrunner studio deliberately skipped preorders and let the finished game speak for itself at its $40 price. An expansion is confirmed for 2027. If you missed it, see our Valor Mortis review roundup for what critics thought.
Source: Push Square
Control Resonant (image via VGC / Remedy Entertainment)
Control Resonant's director says its Alan Wake easter egg isn't a tease for Remedy's next game
Control Resonant hides a live-action Alan Wake clip in a secret room, starring Sam Lake, Ilkka Villi and Matthew Porretta, and fans have been treating it as a hint at Alan Wake 3. In an interview with VGC, creative director Mikael Kasurinen says not to read too much into it. Asked whether players have already seen what's next from Remedy, he said: "No… I'll be honest, no."
Kasurinen says he wanted Resonant to "stand on its own two feet" with a clear beginning, middle and end, rather than leaving dangling mysteries. He did acknowledge that planting seeds is a Remedy tradition, and that "certain things will spread into future things." He also explained why fan-favorite band the Old Gods of Asgard don't appear this time.
Source: VGC
Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival (image via VGC / Saber Interactive)
Hellraiser: Revival's team had an "unofficial goal" of getting the game banned somewhere
Saber Interactive wanted Hellraiser: Revival to be extreme enough that somebody, somewhere, would refuse to rate it. Narrative director Antony De Fault told IGN, "It was an unofficial goal of the team to be banned, unrated, or restricted at least somewhere in the world as one barometer of whether we'd done our jobs right." The idea was to make players actually take part in taboo acts, not just watch them, in keeping with Clive Barker's original novella.
There was a limit, though. De Fault says the team rearranged one scene so the camera couldn't show more, because it would have pushed the game past ratings thresholds and off store shelves in most places. VGC notes the team got its wish anyway: Indonesia's rating board refused to classify the game.
Source: VGC
Death Stranding (image via VGC / Kojima Productions)
Kojima says Death Stranding's "walking simulator" label shows how social media forms hivemind opinions
In a conversation with director Alejandro González Iñárritu for Gizmodo Japan, marking the Japanese release of Iñárritu's film Digger, Hideo Kojima talked about how people form opinions about things they've never tried. His example: Death Stranding. "People who haven't played it have said things like, 'this is just a walking simulator', as if they'd actually played it," he said. "That perception still persists, and that's actually what scares me the most."
Kojima added that algorithm-driven feeds make it worse, because "you only come across opinions and content you already agree with," and you never stumble onto a different perspective by chance. Iñárritu described the same thing around his film, saying people now hold strong opinions on what they haven't seen.
Source: VGC
Deadlock (image via PC Gamer / Valve)
Deadlock's final voted hero, Nurse Harrow, is in after 110 million votes
Valve's Deadlock hero vote is over. Nurse Harrow, a support with "unorthodox methods," joins the game as the last of the six heroes from the City Never Sleeps voting rounds, after Rat King, Baba, Solomon, Deadman Danny and Violet. Players cast 110 million votes over the whole event.
Valve shared some fun stats too. Only 22,194 players voted exclusively for Nurse Harrow, but one cast exactly 1,000 votes for her, and Harrow voters had a higher win rate than every other group. The closest race was Baba vs. Solomon for second place, and only 847 players voted in every round and picked every winner.
Source: PC Gamer
Onimusha (image via PC Gamer / Capcom)
Capcom's Onimusha producer says he'd love to remaster Onimusha 3 and Dawn of Dreams
Onimusha 3, the PS2 game co-starring Jean Reno, has always looked like a long shot for a remaster because of the licensing around his likeness. But when PC Gamer asked Capcom about it at the end of an Onimusha: Way of the Sword interview, series producer Akihito Kadowaki gave a surprisingly direct answer: "Seeing the reaction to the game and the excitement around it, definitely makes me feel that it would be great to release remasters of Onimusha 3 and Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams."
It's not an announcement, but PC Gamer notes that Japanese developers usually hedge these answers much more carefully. Capcom has already brought Onimusha and Onimusha 2 back, and it now makes most of its money on PC.
Source: PC Gamer
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