Gaming News Roundup: Save Mass Effect Graffiti Hits EA, Modern Warfare 4's Switch 2 Input Lag, Bend Studio's Next Game Eyes 2027 & More (Nov 1, 2026)
Mass Effect (image via IGN / BioWare)
The Save Mass Effect campaign has made it to an EA office wall, and Digital Foundry found Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2 has a real input lag problem. Bend Studio's next game might be closer than you think, and a viral video does the math on how GTA 6 could save you $5,000. Plus Dune: Awakening heads somewhere frozen, HoYoverse dates Petit Planet, Anthropic confirms its Claude change on game clones, Warzone's last-gen shutdown, a see-through handheld and more. Here's the Lanbrew gaming roundup for November 1, 2026.
Mass Effect (image via Kotaku / BioWare)
"Save Mass Effect" graffiti shows up outside an EA office as the fan campaign keeps growing
The Save Mass Effect movement has gone from petitions to spray paint. A Reddit user shared photos of "Save Mass Effect" graffiti tagged outside an EA building in Madrid, IGN and Kotaku report. It's the latest twist in a fan campaign that took off after EA shut down BioWare and canceled the next Mass Effect earlier this month.
The campaign is getting big. The Save Mass Effect petition now has about 290,000 signatures, and the fan group We Are Mass Effect ran a billboard in Times Square on October 26, with another planned outside this year's The Game Awards. The group says it didn't ask anyone to tag EA's offices, and it's unclear who did.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 (image via IGN / Activision)
Digital Foundry: Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2 has twice the input lag of PS5 in portable mode
Modern Warfare 4 on Switch 2 holds up better than you'd think, but there's a catch. Digital Foundry measured input lag at 81ms docked and 100ms in portable mode, about double the PS5's 49.1ms, IGN reports. In portable multiplayer, DF saw latency swing from 83ms to 125ms, which can put Switch 2 players at a real disadvantage in competitive matches.
The rest of the port is solid. Multiplayer targets 60fps and mostly hits it, though some things, like looking through a riot shield's visor, make it drop. VRR helps smooth that out, and the campaign runs at 30fps. Port specialist Digital Legends handled the Switch 2 version with help from Infinity Ward.
Source: IGN
Days Gone (image via Push Square / Bend Studio)
Report: Days Gone studio Bend's next game is a third-person co-op title that could launch in 2027
Bend Studio's next game may not be far off. According to MP1st, via Push Square, the Days Gone studio plans to reveal its next game in 2027 and could release it that same year, since it's said to be much further along in development than people think.
MP1st describes it as a third-person game with co-op features. It's not a live-service game, and it's not Days Gone 2. One more note: a Days Gone 2 pitch reportedly never got past studio management and never reached Sony. Sony hasn't announced anything, so treat this as a rumor for now.
Source: Push Square
Grand Theft Auto 6 (image via Insider Gaming / Rockstar Games)
A millionaire's viral video says GTA 6 could save you $5,000, and the math kind of works
Here's a new way to justify that GTA 6 purchase. In a viral clip, British businessman and creator Mark Tilbury, who has almost 20 million subscribers across his channels, grabs a GTA 6 display copy in a UK store and pulls out a calculator, Insider Gaming reports. At $99.99 for an 80-hour game, he says that's about $1.24 an hour, or as little as 50 cents once you add side content.
Then comes the punchline. Play four hours a night and that's 50 nights in Leonida. Spend those same 50 nights out at around $100 each and you're down $5,000. It's tongue-in-cheek, but it's another sign of how big GTA 6 is outside gaming. Grand Theft Auto 6 launches November 19 on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Source: Insider Gaming
Dune: Awakening (image via Eurogamer / Funcom)
Dune: Awakening's free Blood and Ice expansion trades sand for snow on December 1
Funcom is taking Dune: Awakening somewhere cold. The free Blood and Ice expansion launches December 1 on PC, PS5 and Xbox, Eurogamer reports. It adds a new map called the Polar Sink, split into tundra and ice cap biomes, plus about 35 hours of new progression, new vehicle modules, augments and specialization traits. This time you're hunting for heat to survive instead of hiding from it, and ice you harvest can cool your base equipment and speed up production.
There's more on the way. Offline single-player is due this month, and full cross-play arrives in January 2027, along with character transfers between multiplayer and single-player. Funcom also opened a cosmetics store, which it says will help pay for free updates. PC Gamer notes this follows Funcom's big rework that made the game playable as a solo and PvE experience.
Petit Planet (image via Gematsu / HoYoverse)
HoYoverse's cozy Petit Planet launches December 4, with Switch 2 coming in 2027 but no word on PS5
HoYoverse's life sim Petit Planet finally has a date. It launches December 4 on PC (Epic Games Store and HoYoverse's own client), iOS and Android, Gematsu reports. A Switch 2 version follows in 2027. Insider Gaming says a Launch a Planet pre-launch event starts November 1, and the game is built around decorating your own little planet, with more than 1,000 free items.
One notable gap: PS5. Push Square points out HoYoverse has brought nearly every game since Genshin Impact to PlayStation, but this time it only committed to Switch 2. With an obvious Animal Crossing vibe, Nintendo's console makes sense, but PlayStation fans are already asking.
Source: Gematsu; Insider Gaming; Push Square
Claude (image via PC Gamer / Anthropic)
Update: Anthropic confirms it changed Claude to stop it recreating existing games
What's new: Last time, players only suspected Anthropic had quietly limited Claude after a flood of AI-made game clones and decompilations. Now Anthropic has confirmed it. A new rule in Claude Code tells Opus 5.5 to "build original games, games in a genre, and games from the user's own designs and assets," but not "a recreation of a specific existing game, even if it is renamed or called original," IGN and PC Gamer report, via Game Developer.
Anthropic's Addy Osmani said the company added "two sentences" to the prompt because using Claude to infringe IP breaks its usage policy, and that original projects should keep working. The change follows weeks of complaints about cloned games and demos on Steam, which led some studios to cancel public demos.
Overwatch (image via TheGamer / Blizzard)
Overwatch director Aaron Keller won't rule out smaller PvE story missions
Overwatch's canceled PvE campaign isn't coming back, but story missions aren't totally dead. At a press roundtable, game director Aaron Keller told TheGamer, "I would never discount it," when asked about more playable story content. He said smaller PvE experiences could work as long as they don't pull focus from the main game.
Past story missions drew a lot of excitement, but players dropped off fast, and they cost far more to make than other events, Keller said. That's why Blizzard moved its storytelling to cinematics, comics and webtoons. Anything as big as the canceled campaign would need to be "a whole new game" made by a new team.
Source: TheGamer
Call of Duty: Warzone (image via Pure Xbox / Activision)
Warzone on Xbox One and PS4 goes offline November 6, leading this season's server shutdowns
If you still play Call of Duty: Warzone on last-gen consoles, you've got less than a week left. Pure Xbox's November and December shutdown roundup says Warzone on Xbox One and PS4 goes offline when Modern Warfare 4 Season 1 starts on November 6.
NBA 2K25 loses its servers at the end of the year, and Synduality: Echo of Ada shuts off in-game purchases in December ahead of a full server shutdown in May 2027. Amazon's New World: Aeternum goes offline at the end of January 2027, and Street Outlaws and Street Outlaws 2 leave the Xbox Store at the end of December.
Source: Pure Xbox
Silver Palace (image via Gematsu / Elementa)
Free-to-play detective RPG Silver Palace launches December 14
Silver Palace is coming sooner than expected. The free-to-play open-world action RPG launches December 14 on PS5, PC, iOS and Android, Gematsu reports. You play a detective in Silvernia, a Victorian-inspired city, solving strange cases, making friends and fighting with Silverium-powered combat.
Push Square's editor played it at Gamescom and said the reveal "really shocked" him, since he figured it was still a long way out. Pre-registration is open, and milestone rewards include a free 4-star character and 20 Simulation Shots.
Source: Gematsu; Push Square
Mega Man: Dual Override (image via Nintendo Life / Capcom)
Mega Man: Dual Override reveals Cook Man, its kung fu chef Robot Master
Capcom has revealed another Robot Master for Mega Man: Dual Override, and this one cooks. Cook Man is a wandering chef who wants recognition for his cooking, and he'll "slice and dice" Mega Man and Proto Man with his Kung Fu Cooking style, Nintendo Life reports.
He joins Tank Man, Twinkle Girl and Jet Man, with more Robot Masters still to be revealed. Mega Man: Dual Override launches on Switch and Switch 2 in 2027.
Source: Nintendo Life
Playable Archive (image via Eurogamer / Brian Clarke)
The Mortuary Assistant dev turned his canceled Paranormal Activity game into a free Halloween scare
Brian Clarke, the developer of The Mortuary Assistant, has released Playable Archive for free this Halloween. It's about 30 minutes of found-footage horror taken from Paranormal Activity: Threshold, his much bigger Paranormal Activity game that was announced last November and then canceled, Eurogamer reports. The name riffs on Kojima's famous P.T.
Clarke told Eurogamer that publisher DreadXP pitched him the license after The Mortuary Assistant came out, and he built a whole demonology for the series. He also talked about how some of those ideas might live on, maybe even in a new Mortuary Assistant game.
Source: Eurogamer
GOG (image via GamesRadar+ / GOG)
GOG wants to sell physical copies of its PC games someday
Physical PC games have been mostly gone for years, but GOG would like to change that. "Ideally, my dream would be to be able to buy physical versions of those games on GOG," Marcin Paczynski, GOG's senior business development and partnerships manager, told GamesRadar+. The idea is that you'd pick a game from your GOG shelf and have a physical copy shipped to you.
It's not happening yet. Paczynski called it "a very, very complicated thing" that would need storage, shipping and "additional approvals" from publishers. For now, GOG's preservation work includes printable 3D big-box art you can build yourself. "We are making small steps in that direction," he said.
Source: GamesRadar+
Arduview (image via VGC)
The Arduview is a credit-card-sized handheld you can see straight through, screen and all
Here's a handheld that hides nothing. The Arduview is a credit-card-sized device where everything is see-through, even the screen. You can watch the game from behind, VGC reports. VGC has been using one for about a month and confirms the screen works like the Kickstarter shows. Creator Louis Huang, a Babson College student, says "the inside of a device is the most interesting part of it, so you should be able to see it."
It's built on the open-source Arduboy platform, so you can open it, flash it and tinker with it. It ships with 400 built-in games, and you can add community-made Arduboy games too. The Kickstarter has already passed its goal, with early-bird pledges from about $75 versus about $147 at launch.
Source: VGC
Lanbrew rounds up the day's biggest gaming stories. Every story above links to the original reporting, so click through to support the outlets doing the work.
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