It's been nearly seven years since developer House House released its breakthrough title, Untitled Goose Game. The company's follow-up, a co-op puzzle-solving game called Big Walk, is out now, and it's already achieved an unexpected critical milestone on PlayStation Plus Essential. As reported by GameSpot's sister site Metacritic, Big Walk has landed with a 94 score among reviewers. That makes it the most critically acclaimed game to ever be released on PS Plus Essential on day one. Last year's indie adventure-puzzle hit Blue Prince achieved nearly the same score, with a 92 on Metacritc, but it was released on PS Extra, not Essential.. GameSpot's Big Walk review calls it a game of the year contender and hails it as one of the best co-op games ever created. "Big Walk takes fundamental and timeless video game concepts–obstacles and incentives for clearing them–and, through an intensely focused co-op experience, shapes them into something singularly rewarding, supremely mysterious, and totally unforgettable," notes the review. For anyone who is just getting started with the game, GameSpot has put together eight tips you need to know ahead of playing Big Walk. Players who have already dived into Big Walk should check out our guides on how to get shiny and how how to solve the 4166, 1899 puzzle. Big Walk is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2, and Mac.

The blockbuster buyout of Electronic Arts has been completed, with Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund taking ownership of the gaming giant in the biggest leveraged buyout (LBO) in the history of commerce. The $55 billion deal includes billions in debt for EA, which has prompted fears of massive cost-cutting with projected layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations. Nothing has been confirmed as of yet, however. "This moment recognizes the extraordinary people whose creativity, ambition, and passion have made EA one of the world's leading interactive entertainment companies," said EA CEO Andrew Wilson in the official announcement. "We're entering this next chapter from a position of strength with partners who share our vision and ambition. Together, we'll invest boldly, accelerate innovation, and build the next generation of games and experiences for the hundreds of millions of players and fans who inspire us every day." "Entertainment and sports are key areas of strategic focus for PIF, and are among the fastest growing and evolving sectors around the world," added PIF Deputy Governor and Head of International Investments Turqi Alnowaiser. "Together, the Consortium is uniquely positioned to be a long-term partner to EA's management team in driving sustained growth and innovation for EA and the industry." The PIF is buying EA alongside Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner's private equity firm Affinity Partners and investment company Silver Lake. The company's co-CEO, Egon Durban, was previously on the board of directors at the gaming company Unity. EA has gone private. EA announced the buyout back in September 2025, but it didn't close until today, August 4, due to the regulatory approval process. It was due to close earlier, but after Europe approved it in July, that set the stage for it to finally do so. PIF previously had a 9.9% stake in EA, and that's getting rolled into this deal. EA stockholders will get $210/share as part of the buyout, which represents a tidy 25% premium over the company's stock price on the last full day before the deal came to light and subsequently sent the price soaring. Now that the deal is done, EA is being removed from the public stock market. And with that, we'll have much less insight into how EA is operating from a financial perspective. EA CEO Andrew Wilson will remain CEO of the company, but it remains to be seen how long he may stick around. He became CEO in 2013 and has overseen a period of massive growth for EA, as the stock was trading around $27 when he became CEO. His remuneration has grown as well, with the latest company filings revealing Wilson was paid $38 million in total compensation in the previous fiscal year. In that same year, EA laid off many developers, including people who worked on the successful FPS Battlefield 6. Concerns Developers at BioWare said they feared that the RPG studio could be one of the first EA-owned companies to see cuts under the new ownership. BioWare is known, in part, for making pro-diversity games featuring inclusive storytelling and characters. Longtime BioWare writer Patrick Weekes, who was laid off in 2025, speculated that EA’s new owners, including the PIF, might want to avoid “gay stuff” and politics that the PIF’s leadership does not agree with. Developers working on The Sims have expressed ongoing concerns as well. Additionally, cosplayers raided EA’s California headquarters in protest of the deal. EA's $55 billion sale is not the biggest-ever gaming acquisition, as that record belongs to Microsoft, which paid $75.4 billion to acquire Activision Blizzard. The PIF already bought the mobile and social gaming giant Scopely (Monopoly Go) and Niantic's gaming division, including Pokemon Go, so this is just the latest massive move for the Kingdom. Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis said EA may look to “cut excess spending and rationalize the company’s workforce” to help bring in more money to address the debt. A report from Financial Times said EA might look to further bolster AI tools and technologies to help cut development costs and drive profitability. To be sure, EA had said it was already doing this, as are other companies who are embracing AI in an attempt to reduce costs. Mat Piscatella of Circana told GI.biz no one can say for sure what happens next for EA, but history may not be on EA’s side. “Leveraged buyouts have a certain history that generally hasn’t been great for the acquired companies,” he said. EA's final earnings report EA's latest earnings report, released on August 3, showed gains for revenue and profit in the April-June quarter. The company's net bookings of $1.35 billion increased $51 million year-over-year, but came in below analyst estimates. EA said increased sales of extra content for Apex Legends helped with the increase in bookings, as did full game and microtransaction sales for Battlefield 6. However, these gains were partially offset by lower sales of Split Fiction, which released during the same quarter the previous year. EA's earnings reports will no longer be made public now that the company has gone private. Some experts and industry veterans believe EA going private, and no longer needing to answer to public stakeholders, will lead to some benefits. Fiona Sperry was the top boss at EA’s Criterion Games and is now the CEO of Three Fields Entertainment. She said in an interview with GI.biz that, “I’d be really excited about the opportunity that going private would entail.” Publicly traded companies answer to their shareholders and are known to push games out the door to meet a quarterly earnings deadline. In a private setup, a company like EA could–in theory–change how it releases games. “However experienced you are, the reality of game development means that you’re often having to compromise your game to hit a date–a date you most often had to commit to long before you’ve finalized the design,” she said. “You have to design to the date rather than the other way round. And it’s really hard to do that when you’re trying to innovate.” “EA has amazing creative teams and hopefully this will give them the chance to really utilise that creativity and take some risks. Don’t get me wrong–dates are important for focusing everyone–but sometimes you just need more time,” she added. Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis said EA going private means the company is no longer beholden to the market at large and subject to everything that comes with being a publicly traded company. This, in turn, could allow EA to focus less on meeting quarterly financial targets and more on “long-term strategies and investments.” Of course, the investor consortium acquiring EA will surely have its own performance targets and demands that EA meets–not to mention the aforementioned debt to address–though the setup won’t be the same as when a company is available on the open market.

In recent years, the trading card game (TCG) environment has seen a boom of new games entering the market. There are still genre mainstays, like Magic: The Gathering, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which continue to receive support and feature a thriving secondhand market. However, new original IP TCGs like Flesh and Blood and Sorcery are making rounds at the local game store level and beyond. But licensed IP TCGs, like One Piece and the upcoming Cyberpunk TCG, have also taken the tabletop world by storm. Riftbound, the League of Legends trading card game, is no exception. After releasing late last year (at least in English), Riot Games' popular TCG has developed quite a large fanbase, leading to a massive presence at Gen Con in Indianapolis. GameSpot's Jessica Cogswell was present during the show, and got the chance to sit down with Riftbound game director Dave Guskin, who explained that the Riftbound team is much smaller than you'd think. With such a small team, you have to wonder what other games the team looked to for guidance. Resource systems, which are costs you'll typically pay to play or activate cards, are present in most TCGs. Guskin, who worked previously as a designer on Magic: The Gathering (and is also a big fan of the game), took inspiration from that game's mana system. "[I'm] a big fan of Magic's [mana system]," he explains. "I actually thought, 'Okay, we're going to start with the resources in the deck. That's the appropriate amount of variance for game variety.' We tried it with players and they completely rejected it. They were like, 'This is horrible. I don't want to not play this game.'" "So then I was like, 'Well, I'm not the right person to design this resource system,'" Guskin continued. "I recruited my two designers, Dave and Jon, who had joined shortly after the start, [and said], 'You've got to find a better resource system.' They tried like 10 or 12 different systems. Then they found one they liked, brought it to me, and were like, 'Okay, you're going to hate this,'" referring to Riftbound's Rune resource system. "[They told me,] 'So what you do is you get rid of your own resources,'" Guskin explained. "And I was like, 'I hate it'. They're like, 'No, no, you've got to play it.' And as you saw, when you actually play it, you're like, 'Wow, this is actually pretty cool.' So that was all them--they were amazing at making that system. And now it's one of the things that TCG players of other games say they like the most about Riftbound." In Riftbound, Runes operate similarly to Magic's lands in that you'll "tap" them (or exhaust, in this case) to pay a cards cost. But cards in Riftbound will often have two costs: Power and Energy. The Energy cost is represented by the top-most, colorless number in the upper left corner of a card, while the Power cost--which is also locationed in the upper left corner of the card but below Energy--is tied to one of Riftbound's six Domains (think Magic's colors). To pay a Power cost, you have to recycle a Rune of that Domain, which means placing it on the bottom of your 12-card Rune deck, referencing the two designers' "get rid of your own resources" pitch to Guskin. Riftbound is nearing its one year mark since its English release, with its fourth expansion Vendetta having recently hit store shelves. This week also marks the game's biannual State of the Game updates, which details changes coming to organized play, upcoming products, and next year's roadmap.