A video game composer has harsh words for genAI. 2K Games is already delisting its surprisingly decent Lego racer from 2023. And Arc Raiders is moving to fewer, bigger updates each year. It’s the latest edition of Checkpoint for May 15, 2026, where I wish I was living my best life like Food4Dogs.
We are short-handed this week, which is why I missed multiple editions of our daily roundup over the last few days, as well as our weekly list of new games coming out. Expect things to be back on track next week when both Carolyn Petit and Rebekah Valentine return from vacation.
Horizon Forbidden West composer weighs in on generative AI
“The nerdy side of me goes: ‘Oh, wow, this is quite cool,” Joris De Man, who wrote the music for the first two games in Sony’s sci-fi open-world RPG series, recently told Edge magazine (via FRVR). “But the more creative and artistic side of me goes: ‘This is f*cking insane’.”
Sony recently embraced the potential of generative AI during an earnings presentation, citing its ongoing use by existing first-party studios and its ability to change everything from how people buy games to how they experience them. While the company made sure to clarify that it is putting human creativity in the driver’s seat of the new technology, gaming audiences in particular have revolted against genAI.
De Man pointed to the importance of human mistakes and unexpected accidents in the creation of art, versus the sense of perfection people might get from AI-generated work. He also criticized the way AI companies have gone around stealing from everyone without payment or attribution before rolling out their new tech.
“AI companies—all the major ones, like OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, etc—they could have gone two ways,” he said. “They could have said, ‘OK, we need to license the stuff that we’ve used’, but they’ve decided to go the other way. Which is, ‘We’ll train on everything we can find, and we’ll worry about the legal ramifications of this later.’”
Lego 2K Drive is disappearing just three years after release
It came out in May 2023 and is now getting delisted from storefronts on May 19, 2026. As spotted by MauroNL, the game’s online features will shut down a year from now, in May 2027. And some wonder why people are so worked up about the Stop Killing Games movement.
A pinball machine made out of Lego?
That’s one of the brick toy company’s latest sets, according to one new alleged leak. BrickTapNews claims it will release on July 1 for $200 and be space-themed.
Arc Raiders takes its foot off the gas to catch its breath
The extraction shooter will move to bigger, less frequent updates to fuel its ongoing growth. That means two major updates a year instead of monthly content drops. “The intention was to keep you all engaged, to ensure the game always felt fresh, and to give you reasons to keep braving topside,” Embark Studios wrote in a new blog post. “But once the game was in players’ hands, we saw that the kind of long-term experience we want to create for ARC Raiders requires more transformative updates.”
It continued, “Over time, we’ve found that the pressure of a monthly cycle limits how impactful these updates can be. You feel it, and we feel it too. Running at that pace isn’t sustainable, or compatible with the bigger ambitions we have for this game.”
Elden Ring and Duskbloods still on track for Switch 2 this year
But when? FromSoftware owner Kadokawa Group confirmed the timeline in its latest earnings report but we still don’t have any updates on whether they’ll be arriving in just a few months or late in the year.
Crimson Desert dropped another surprise patch overnight
Update 1.07 is mostly bug fixes, but it does increase the number of boss fights available for rematches and adds new unarmed combat skills for Damiane. Players are also excited about the fact that the “number of animals in the world that can be used as mounts” has increased.
The controversial Esports World Cup is moving cities
The Saudi Arabia-funded event is leaving Riyadh for Paris amid the U.S.’s war with Iran in the Middle East, Games Beat reports. An estimated 2,500 esports players attended last year’s event, and organizers are reportedly worried about potential interruptions to travel depending on how the conflict evolves over the next few months.
