I don\u2019t envy those with the impossible task of migrating Call of Duty\u2018s featureless operator bravado to the big screen. Arc Raiders is falling off but still dominating. And the video game shovelware spam problem is getting out of control. It\u2019s the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint for April 16, 2026.<\/p>\n
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is out today and the clips have begun<\/a>. JRPG super fans will even be able to use the Switch social sim to recreate their own dinner party of Final Fantasy developer legends<\/a>.<\/p>\n Arc Raiders drops 80 percent of its concurrent player peak on Steam <\/p>\n ARC Raiders has collapsed. Game is dead now. The developers ruined the game. They don\u2019t know wtf they\u2019re doing. pic.twitter.com\/3TqllEVPdG<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 ExoGhost (@ExoGhost) April 12, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n Is it joever for the surprise extraction shooter hit of 2025? Not by a long shot. But after weeks of Marathon Steam Chart pocket watching, it was only a matter of time before the pundits turned their gaze upon the market leader\u2019s recent decline from 466,000 in January to 90,000 today.<\/p>\n Forbes\u2018 Paul Tassi has listed<\/a> a handful of possible reasons for the softening spirit among Arc Raiders\u2018 scavengers. They include a lackluster season, ongoing cheating issues, negative vibes among streamers, and a more fickle audience around the game\u2019s PVE-centric multiplayer focus.\u00a0So far at least, the game seems to be following a similar trend to Helldivers 2, which sports an ongoing live-service success arc that anyone would be happy to mimic.<\/p>\n We know basically nothing about the Call of Duty movie other than when it\u2019s coming out <\/p>\n That date is June 30, 2028, Paramount announced on Thursday at CinemaCon. \u201cWe want to make sure that the authenticity of it is captured on a human level so that it feels really real and infuse that with epic scope,\u201d Activision president Rob Kostich said, according to The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan will write the script with Peter Berg of Battleship and Deepwater Horizon fame directing. The movie was reportedly eyeing Steven Spielberg to lead production at one point but he wanted too much creative control. What it means for a movie to be \u201cauthentic\u201d to Call of Duty\u2018s annual cyclone of remixed military set pieces remains anybody\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n A Congressman calls on the FTC to halt Saudi Arabia\u2019s buyout of EA <\/p>\n Florida Democrat Maxwell Frost shared his concerns on a recent livestream<\/a> with Zefrine and lilsimsie (via TheGamer<\/a>). \u201cI\u2019m very concerned about what\u2019s going on in the gaming industry,\u201d he said. \u201cEspecially \u2019cause Saudi Arabia is essentially trying to acquire every part of gaming you can think of.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cIt\u2019s gonna put us in a really tough position in terms of national security, in terms of censorship in what that government believes, and in terms of the workers who create the games as well. So, I really think the FTC needs to step in here. They can sue to stop the merger; the Department of Justice can sue to stop the merger as well. There are so many reasons why they need to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n Minecraft lookalike Hytale takes aim at Switch shovelware rip-off Hytale: Sandbox RPG <\/p>\n Yeah, it’s being handled by the legal team.<\/p>\n \u2014 Simon (@Simon_Hypixel) April 13, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n The voxel crafting game\u00a0Hytale is currently only available in Early Access on Steam, but spam copycats are already popping up elsewhere (via Automaton<\/a>). Fans noticed one particularly gratuitous rip-off on the Switch eShop. \u201cIt\u2019s being handled by our legal team,\u201d co-director Simon Collins-Laflamme wrote on X<\/a>. Sony has started cracking down<\/a> on viral slop grabs on PSN by purging hundreds of junk listings.<\/p>\n A Pok\u00e9mon clone of a Pok\u00e9mon clone leaves Steam <\/p>\n Pickmos is a creature collector survival game that apes Palworld and Pok\u00e9mon. It\u2019s such a brazen knockoff that it\u2019s hard to tell if the game\u2019s existence is actually just a big piece of IP theft performance art. It was announced last month as Pickmon before changing its name to Pickmos. Now it\u2019s yeeting itself off Valve\u2019s storefront.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve heard your feedback regarding the removal of our Steam store page and want to clear things up,\u201d publisher Networkgo told players<\/a>. \u201cNetworkgo has officially intervened in the development of Pickmos. We will be supervising the PocketGame team from a player\u2019s perspective to ensure the game keeps getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n The famous game jam series that spawned Celeste will wind down <\/p>\n Ludum Dare has scheduled its final game jam for October 2028, cofounder Mike Kasprzak announced today<\/a> (via Game Developer<\/a>). \u201cThose of us that have been around since the beginning know that April is Ludum Dare month,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s the one thing I will take full responsibility for: convincing everyone involved that if it\u2019s April, we need to run a Ludum Dare.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued, \u201cSo with that, I do intend to run an encore event in April of 2029. That will be the end-end though. Do note this isn\u2019t a \u2018scheduled\u2019 Ludum Dare event, even though I am telling you it\u2019s going to happen. October 2028 will be Ludum Dare\u2019s goodbye celebration event. After that, Ludum Dare will return \u2018as needed.’\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n ICYMI: Watch this:
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