Steam's new API lets devs grant easier build access to players
Game Developer
NOVEMBER 12, 2024
Valve's newest update helps Steam devs give more clarity to players on game builds, and how it affects their saves.
How to build branching narrative without breaking the bank
Game Developer
APRIL 12, 2024
Freelance game writer and narrative designer Nessa Cannon wants devs to know they can craft meaningful narrative choices without overscoping.
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Trending Sources
Solo dev Esteban Hernandez spent 7 years on Creo God Simulator: “I’ve learned perseverance”
PreMortem.Games
FEBRUARY 5, 2025
What started as a passion project has grown into a full-fledged god game blending city-building, resource management and player-driven storytelling. It would be great to bounce ideas and concepts off of fellow colleagues when building my games. However, I will say that it is very nice to build and design things with full freedom!
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Steam devs will need SMS verification to release game builds
Game Developer
OCTOBER 11, 2023
Developers will have to register a phone number by October 24 if they ever want to update their game or add new users to their Steamworks account.
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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.4 beta 1
Mircosoft Game Dev
JANUARY 16, 2025
If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds. Normally our Beta 1 release notes summarize all the most exciting changes from the previous dev releases. Input Input saw a lot of incremental improvements and polish this dev cycle. down to 0.2 ( GH-97281 ).
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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.5 dev 3
Mircosoft Game Dev
APRIL 25, 2025
If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds. dev 1 and 4.5 dev 2 release notes for an overview of some key features which were already in that snapshot, and are therefore still available for testing in dev 3. dev 1 and 4.5
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Why You Can’t Objectively Build Great Games
Game Wisdom
NOVEMBER 8, 2024
Why You Can’t Objectively Build Great Games Josh Bycer josh@game-wisdom.com I was reading a piece over on Game Developer that gave me pause for a second about whether this is what game design at the AAA level is about now — focusing on analytics and trying to “math” the perfect … The post Why You Can’t Objectively (..)
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Solo dev Lente lives and works on a boat and that shows in her game Spilled!
PreMortem.Games
FEBRUARY 14, 2025
On Twitter , shes known to her 22K+ followers as dev on a boat. I went to school twice for game dev, both times did not work out. For me personally, its not only development Im interested in, but also the process of building a community and business. I make something new, and I use that for building community and marketing.
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Raid: Shadow Legends dev Plarium acquired by Modern Times Group
Game Developer
NOVEMBER 12, 2024
MTG spent $620 million to buy Plarium and 'significantly accelerate our ambition to build a strong ecosystem that can support gaming companies.'
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Owlchemy Labs CEO Andrew Eiche thinks devs should be bullish about AI
Game Developer
MARCH 8, 2024
The choice is to figure how to make them work for you, to figure out where the workloads actually fit best, and to build them in an ethical way." "These tools exist, and they aren't disappearing anytime soon.
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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.5 dev 2
Mircosoft Game Dev
APRIL 8, 2025
dev 1 snapshot, but surely they couldnt follow that up with another flood of anticipated changes, right? If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds. With the 4.4 development snapshots. Well, maybe not after seeing the 4.5 It is developed by Binogure Studio.
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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.5 dev 1
Mircosoft Game Dev
MARCH 20, 2025
As such, we encourage testing this build in order to ensure a smooth release for both versions. If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds. or newer is required for this build, changing the minimal supported version from.NET 6 to 8. stable release next week!
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Stellar Blade dev Shift Up eyes PC port and sequel in studio growth plans
Game Developer
MAY 20, 2024
Shift Up wants to build Stellar Blade into a franchise as it actively begins to start up a new project to become a hopeful cross-platform giant.
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Solo dev Vladyslav Pidiashenko “I hope IHAS will inspire players to better their lives”
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 30, 2024
In the past, I’ve tried creating a few YouTube channels (starting in 2017) and TikTok accounts, trying to build an audience and, eventually, turn it into a business. After finishing IHAS, I will start to build a strong team to work on games that are beyond my scope a solo dev.” .” Why did you become a solo developer?
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Roblox thinks subscriptions could help devs foster "recurring economic relationships"
Game Developer
JULY 20, 2023
The company is building new monetization tools that will let Roblox developers create subscriptions within their experiences.
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Solo dev Feryaz Beer’s debut Super Fantasy Kingdom “A weird mashup of genres”
PreMortem.Games
SEPTEMBER 8, 2023
The Hanover, Germany based solo dev describes his creative process as ‘a mix of perfectionism and empathy’. Or city-building games like The Settlers that I love so much, but tend to only play once – never really applying all that I’ve learned. Beer has been learning some valuable lessons along the way.
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Doing this on anon for obvious reasons but is there any chance of getting hired as an entry level game dev in 2025? I’ve been unemployed for nearly two years since graduating from uni and I’m just getting rejection after rejection from game companies. All the posts are looking for senior devs, team leads, or managers. I have friends who’ve given up on the industry entirely. Is there any hope? Or am I fighting a losing battle here…
Ask a Game Dev
APRIL 16, 2025
New studios do start up, but entry level positions are rare since most of the new studios are looking for funding and they need the core senior dev team to build enough of a prototype to sell the idea to the money people. The first approach is to get a game dev adjacent job.
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Arrowhead wants players to 'build their own sandcastles' in Helldivers 2's galactic campaign
Game Developer
FEBRUARY 25, 2025
Helldivers 2 devs admit to being bullies who want to kick over player sandcastles.
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Solo dev Lincoln McCulloch’s all-consuming journey to develop Dungeons & Kingdoms
PreMortem.Games
JULY 26, 2024
An ambitious game that combines medieval city building and kingdom defense with ARPG combat and monster hunting. “So, I then had enough time to focus on game dev, so I made the decision to start changing careers. I knew plenty of software devs, even some that were making games, but they worked for game companies. Definitely.
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Under a Rock - Dev Blog #1
Indie DB
OCTOBER 25, 2023
Our very first dev blog with more to follow. Hope you like it :) The first dev blog focus on creatures and building.
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Dev snapshot: Godot 4.4 beta 3
Mircosoft Game Dev
FEBRUARY 7, 2025
Woah, another beta build already? If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds. Export: Disable Metal and Vulkan renderers in simulator builds. or newer is required for this build, changing the minimal supported version from.NET 6 to 8.
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Wrapping up 2023 • Celebrating the life and works of solo developers
PreMortem.Games
DECEMBER 22, 2023
Solo dev Graham Reid: “Being part of a like-minded community is really important” Young Dutch indie developer Lente is something of a free spirit. Solo dev Lente lives and works on a boat and that shows in her game Spilled! Despite being a solo dev all that time, he never really struggled with his motivation. “I
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Solo dev Rohan Nowell of Doggy Don’t Care “Just start building and ideas will come”
PreMortem.Games
FEBRUARY 15, 2024
Just start building and the ideas will come.” The post Solo dev Rohan Nowell of Doggy Don’t Care “Just start building and ideas will come” appeared first on PreMortem Games. What’s the biggest lesson learned from this project? “An An idea doesn’t need to be perfect or even completely known before you start.
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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora devs on crafting their own corner of James Cameron's sci-fi universe
Game Developer
OCTOBER 30, 2023
Game director Ditte Deenfeldt and senior narrative designer Chella Ramanan discuss expanding Pandora, and why building up Na'vi culture was important.
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A follow up to your answer about veilguard (was really hoping you would touch on that one). Why do game companies that have a “bad” release always seem to start from the bottom of the pyramid when it comes to restructuring and recouping losses? Why fire low level devs who did their best with what they had, when the companies have people in senior positions making hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not more) that they could just cut from? Why do the trenches always get the punishment first?
Ask a Game Dev
FEBRUARY 3, 2025
The next factor is that each major experience level up a dev attains tends to be a geometric difference in productivity. [ A large task that would take a junior dev two months to complete might take a mid-level dev one month and a senior dev only a week or two ].
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Mircosoft Game Dev
FEBRUARY 17, 2025
If you are interested in the latter, please request to join our testing group to get access to pre-release builds. Help us continue our work: Make a Donation Standard build includes support for GDScript and GDExtension.NET build (marked as mono ) includes support for C#, as well as GDScript and GDExtension.NET 8.0
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Ascent of Ashes dev switches to Godot halfway development “Not as chaotic as Unity”
PreMortem.Games
DECEMBER 16, 2024
That’s when I formed the idea of building a new colony sim from the ground up, centered around the idea of exploration and travel. This also meant we had less dev time to fix bugs or optimize performance. I remember when an Early Access update added the overworld feature. It looked really exciting to me, he says.
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How to Build a Mailing List and Send Newsletters as a Board Game Dev
Brand Game Development
AUGUST 24, 2020
As such, this guide will be split into five parts: Mailing List Basics Setting up a Mailing List on MailChimp Creating a Landing Page that Works Creating a Template that Works Building Your Mailing List. You’ll be asked to enter the following: List Name – I use Brandon the Game Dev Newsletter. Building Your Mailing List.
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With the announcement of the Switch 2 I was wondering how do games for an older version of a console work on a newer version of the same console? Will they run better from the start or do the devs have to go back and update or unlock something for it to work better?
Ask a Game Dev
APRIL 14, 2025
Emulating the game means building a virtual machine around the original game that pretends to be the original hardware and modifies the inputs and outputs to and from the game. Because we can't modify the original game, we need to build a box around it that we can modify and run the original game within that box.
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Solo dev Lente lives and works on a boat and that shows in her game Spilled!
PreMortem.Games
NOVEMBER 27, 2023
On Twitter , she’s known to her 13K+ followers as ‘dev on a boat’. I went to school twice for game dev, both times did not work out. For me personally, it’s not only development I’m interested in, but also the process of building a community and business. I make something new, and I use that for building community and marketing.
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Mirthwood by Bad Ridge Games is mixing genres with something darker and more adventurous
PreMortem.Games
DECEMBER 4, 2024
Laser focus The homestead-building mechanic stands out as one of the highlights for the two-man dev team. Learning to draw specifically for the game, he refined the style over time. The style came together slowly in early development and was refined as time went on.”
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Two part question. 1) Where does a decision like taking DA4 from single player to live service back to single player most likely come from? Do studio leads make that kind of call, or project leads? Or is it a publisher-side “mandate” based on market trends? 2) Rebooting like that must come with significant costs given all the “wasted” dev work, so what needs to happen to make them that confident that staying on course will result in smaller returns than starting over?
Ask a Game Dev
FEBRUARY 13, 2025
Those content updates and patches are the "service" part - we have to build them, they go live and get pushed out to the public. The "live service" part means that the game is "live" (it is out in public) and that we "service it" by building additional stuff for it over time. Now let's get to your questions.
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sorry this is 2 questions in 1 on very different topics haha. but im not a game dev nor am i likely to get the skills in game dev- i am very in marketing & analytics though as well as a mix of other stuff. would you know if, size of studio asides, do aa/aaa studios or publishers have good sized non game dev teams? i really want to get involved in the creatives industry (wether it be games or something like shows) outside of direct creation but i dont know what the market for that is like, especially as someone in the global south. the 2nd unrelated thing is DATV has a weird (?) save limit on console. pc has 100 saves unli characters, but console is currently hard capped at 3 characters. would you have any ideas or insights as to why that might be the limit they chose?
Ask a Game Dev
NOVEMBER 13, 2024
For your first question about what kind of non-creation teams there are: Game dev studios typically have internal support teams - back end, build, IT, user research, etc. Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr Frequent Questions: The FAQ
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Solo dev Josh Salley (HALbot Studios) “I believe in keeping a good work life balance”
PreMortem.Games
AUGUST 3, 2023
How do you know that the game you are building is genuinely scary? “It’s The post Solo dev Josh Salley (HALbot Studios) “I believe in keeping a good work life balance” appeared first on PreMortem Games. “I would love to work with a team at some point. The Nightmare Escape is a horror game.
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Solo dev Evan Polekoff of Critter Crossfire “Motivation is a limited resource”
PreMortem.Games
JANUARY 8, 2024
With the game now announced for a 2024-release, the part time solo dev is motivated to finish the game. After that, if you want to ship something, you need to build discipline.” After reaching larger milestones, I send playtest builds to friends to get feedback and polish things up. Why are you working as a solo developer? “In
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AWS to showcase tools for breakthrough gaming experiences at GDC 2025
AWS Games
MARCH 13, 2025
Experience first-hand how Amazon Web Services (AWS) for Games helps build breakthrough gaming experiences at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), March 17-21, 2025 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Join the team behind Netflixs Squid Game Unleashed as they lead you through building the backend for a fast-based action mobile game.
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Two engineers build the physics-driven engineering parody The Enjenir
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 9, 2023
With the game’s 100% physics-based building system, players can solve each mission in infinite ways. What originally started out as a treehouse building simulator prototype, slowly evolved as the duo gradually added different mechanics. “It From the building mechanics, all the way to the third person character movements.
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Is Gameplay Programmer some form of specialization? I always see people who work as gameplay programmer have some secondary skill, like tools, graphics, etc. In order to create a game you need these guys, but when it comes to layoffs, are they considered high-priority?
Ask a Game Dev
APRIL 2, 2025
Gameplay programmer goals tend to be building systems that allow designers to create new content. This often involves building and supporting tools to allow the designers to create, edit, and tune many different individual instances of a specific kind of content - abilities, spells, items, enemies, quests, etc.
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Solo dev Almar works on debut game Repunk “I’ve had some darker moments”
PreMortem.Games
NOVEMBER 17, 2023
Yet, for indie dev Almar, it offered an escape from the corporate rat race he felt trapped in. External validation rarely comes your way, especially while seeking attention on social media – which is absolutely required to build a community and get to be known by players. For some, the idea of developing a game alone is daunting.
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Skyrim-dev Nate Purkeypile goes solo and makes heavy metal horror game The Axis Unseen
PreMortem.Games
OCTOBER 21, 2024
He had been building giant open-world games like Fallout and Skyrim in large teams for years. But now with stuff like Unreal Engine 5, it’s far more possible as a solo dev. But as a solo indie dev, I can take more risks. The Axis Unseen is a heavy-metal open-world horror game that is launching tomorrow. “If Or so I hope!
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