Kojima's Cancellation Call, a Typhoon-Hit Tokyo Game Show, and Four Grand Finals
A fast scan of September 17–21: Kojima's account of the Physint split, Tokyo Game Show cut short by a typhoon, a 190GB GTA leak, and four championship finals.
This issue covers September 17–21, 2026.
Industry
- Kojima Productions disputes the reporting that Sony cancelled Physint over budget. Hideo Kojima's first interview since PlayStation pulled out of the game says Sony told the studio on a June Zoom call that it would stop funding development, and that he has heard nothing from the company since; Kojima Productions has followed up with a statement calling the budget and missed-milestone reporting unsourced speculation and confirming development continues with Xbox. Read more →
- Typhoon Dujuan forced Tokyo Game Show 2026 to close a day early. Organisers cancelled the expo's fifth day, added for its 30th anniversary, as the storm approached Tokyo, and PlayStation scrapped the Monday booth demos attached to it. Read more →
- Blizzard closed BlizzCon 2026 without saying when the next one will be. President Johanna Faries signed off with "until next BlizzCon" and no year, and the company has not answered questions about whether the show returns at all, after sitting out 2024 and 2025. Read more →
- A 190GB dump of the 2022 GTA 6 leak went public, exposing a cancelled Liberty City expansion for GTA 5. People picking through the files also found an early GTA 6 map built around 2015 whose locations still line up with this year's gameplay reveal, six weeks before the game launches on November 19. Read more →
- Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls has dropped below 1,000 concurrent players on Steam. An Alinea Analytics estimate puts six-week sales at 740,000 copies across all platforms while the Steam rating sits at 49% positive, leaving an online game with a DLC roadmap running into September 2027 without the PC audience it was built to reach. Read more →
Releases and updates
- Insomniac hotfixed Marvel's Wolverine's scent trails and is weighing a switch to remove them. The September 19 patch cut the opacity of the neon trails players had taken to calling "fart gas", and the studio says it is exploring an option to turn the sense indicators off entirely in a later update. Read more →
- Lufia I & II: The Sinistrals Saga will bring both Super Nintendo RPGs to Steam next year. Announced during Tokyo Game Show's PC Gaming Show, it is the first official re-release for two of the era's scarcest cartridges, and the sequel in particular has a long-standing reputation as one of the console's best. Read more →
- The World of Warcraft: Forever beta is drawing more attention for its lighting than for its new content. Blizzard's classic-era rebuild runs an updated lighting and water pass over the original art, and players holding $30 beta access are filling the subreddit with screenshots of sunrises and forests; the untouched look stays available as one of the game's two modes. Read more →
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 opened its final season, The Haunting, on September 17. Season 6 adds five multiplayer maps, four weapons and a new Zombies survival map, and runs Ranked Play as a three-week sprint that Treyarch describes as the last one before Modern Warfare 4. Read more →
Esports
- Vitality beat Aurora 3–1 to win StarLadder StarSeries Fall 2026 in Barcelona. Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut posted a 1.51 rating across the grand final, which Vitality reached by beating FURIA earlier the same afternoon, ending a title drought that stretched back to May 3. Read more →
- Team Falcons swept Spacestation Gaming 4–0 to win the RLCS 2026 World Championship in Fort Worth. Falcons came through the play-in and the lower bracket to give the Middle East and North Africa its first Rocket League world title, with Kiileerrz named tournament MVP and dralii collecting a second championship. Read more →
- G2 Esports swept Movistar KOI 3–0 for a record 20th LEC title. Support player Labrov took finals MVP in Nice, and Rasmus "Caps" Borregaard Winther extended his own record to 18 regional titles as G2 finished a year in which they won all three LEC splits. Read more →
- Shopify Rebellion Gold beat FlyQuest RED in the Game Changers North America Stage 2 grand final to take the region's direct ticket to the São Paulo championship. FlyQuest RED drop into the Americas last-chance qualifier against MIBR GC and Akave Esports GC for the one seat left. Read more →
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