Game Preservation Law 🎮, Immense Engine 🚀, GitHub CI/CD 🔁
🎮 Industry Shifts & Big Engines
California’s ‘Protect Our Games Act’ Puts Live-Service Shutdowns Under Fire
California’s proposed “Protect Our Games Act” (AB 1921) would require publishers to keep online-dependent games playable after server shutdowns—or offer refunds. The bill mandates 60 days’ notice before a shutdown and demands an offline patch, alternative version, or compensation once support ends. Backed by the Stop Killing Games movement, it targets cases where paid games vanish entirely. The ESA argues the law misunderstands live-service tech and would divert resources from developing new games and features.
Guerrilla Co-Founder Reveals Immense Engine, a European Answer to Unreal
Guerrilla Games co-founder Arjan Brussee is working on Immense Engine, a new game engine positioned as a fully European-hosted alternative to Unreal and Unity. Speaking on Dutch podcast De Technoloog, he emphasized EU rules compliance and deep, built-in AI integration. Brussee argues that smart frameworks of AI agents can replace the work of “ten or fifteen people,” and criticizes current engines as outdated, mouse-driven tools. With experience at Epic, EA, and Guerrilla, he’s targeting both games and wider 3D world applications.
🧠 AI & Technical Game Dev
Sony Details How AI Is Reshaping PlayStation Game Development
Sony has unveiled how deeply AI is being woven into PlayStation game development, from content creation to rendering. Tools like Mockingbird now turn performance capture into facial animation in seconds, while AI-generated hair models slash one of the most tedious art tasks. Gran Turismo’s Sophy hints at a future of personality-driven NPCs, and PS5 Pro’s PSSR uses machine learning to push 4K at high frame rates. Sony stresses AI will amplify, not replace, its developers and performers.
From Tag to itch.io: Automating Game Builds with GitHub Actions
Timmy Kokke shares a production-ready GitHub Actions workflow that turns tagging a release into a full automatic deploy to itch.io. Using npm version tags (v*.*.*) as the trigger, the pipeline builds your project, stores the output as an artifact, then uses Butler to upload that exact build. The guide covers setting up the itch.io API key as a GitHub secret and structuring your ./dist folder so HTML builds just work. It’s a clean way to remove manual zipping and uploading from your release process.
🛠 Tools & Workflows for Developers
Ship Menus in Hours, Not Days: New Unity UI Toolkit Design System
Solo developer Sinan Ata has open-sourced the Unity UI Toolkit Design System he built for his multiplayer platform fighter Leap of Legends. The MIT-licensed package drops straight into your Assets folder and instantly unifies menus, HUD, store, settings, and more under a consistent visual language. With token-based theming and simple .mobile variants, Sinan reports menus going from designed to shipped in hours instead of days. A live web demo lets you poke at components and inspect their selector chains before integrating.
Defold 1.12.4: Free Camera Unlocks Serious 3D Workflow
Defold, the free, source-available 2D/2.5D engine with console support, just took a big step toward full 3D. The 1.12.4 update adds a free camera mode in the scene view, finally giving creators proper 3D navigation and controls. The release also doubles available texture units per draw, adds shader precision options, and includes a glTF validator. If you’ve been eyeing Defold for lightweight 3D projects, this is a great moment to take another look.
📼 Retro Tech & Game History
How GTA III Fit an Entire City into 32MB of RAM
Grand Theft Auto III pulled off a magic trick: fitting a four-kilometre-wide city into just 32MB of PS2 RAM. Mark Brown breaks down how Rockstar used sector-based streaming, aggressive LODs, strict car pools, and custom memory management to constantly build Liberty City in front of you and delete it behind. The team even rearranged roads, capped speeds, and clipped plane wings to stop players outrunning the streamer. These techniques laid the groundwork for Vice City, San Andreas, and modern open worlds.