Battlefield 6 gets a seasonal delay just when fans have started souring on the game. The makers of Warhammer have tried gen AI and they’re “just not excited about it.” Eidos Montreal is making an AAAA blockbuster. Hopefully, it’s better than Skull and Bones.
Welcome to the latest edition of Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku‘s daily roundup of gaming news, rumors, and culture. It’s 2026 and all my kids want to do is play Plants vs. Zombies. And not even the 2025 remaster but the original 2009 game on Xbox (thank you backwards compatibility). They have not touched any of the games I bought them for Christmas. This is why the console gaming industry is struggling.
Battlefield 6‘s next update gets a one month delay
The best-selling new shooter has been slipping. Community sentiment has been less than great. REDSEC in particular has Some Problems. It sounds like EA wants to take some extra time to recalibrate things before launching season 2. “During our ongoing development, we’ve continued to review community feedback and, in order to keep our promise, determined that our best path forward is to extend Season 1 and give ourselves extra time to further polish and refine Season 2,” it wrote in a new blog post this week.
Season 2 will launch on February 17 instead of January 20. That will be four months with only two new maps. And if the new maps aren’t Big Maps, then none of it will probably matter anyway. Call of Duty is no longer an annual release, it’s an ongoing platform. Battlefield 6 is trying to do that on the fly at launch and it’s clearly being stretched thin. Instead of a one-month delay to make good on its current content promises, it probably needs to dig in and focus on servicing the one part of Battlefield 6 that matters most. At least for now. And that’s probably Big Maps.
Eidos Montreal’s next game will be “AAAA” and made in Unreal Engine 5
That’s according to a recent developer resume discovered by Timur222. Insider Gaming reports that this project has been in development as far back as 2019 and has cost the studio a lot of money. It’s definitely not a new Deus Ex game either, sadly. The Embracer-owned Canadian studio shipped Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy in 2021 and hasn’t launched a solo project since. It has done co-development on several Microsoft projects in the years since, including Grounded 2 and Fable, while also facing multiple rounds of layoffs.
The makers of Warhammer promise absolutely no GenAI
Games Workshop CEO Kevin Rountree addressed the controversial tech in a recent earnings meeting following a very lucrative quarter. “We do have a few senior managers that are [experts on AI]: none are that excited about it yet,” he said, as reported by IGN. “We have agreed an internal policy to guide us all, which is currently very cautious e.g. we do not allow AI-generated content or AI to be used in our design processes or its unauthorized use outside of GW including in any of our competitions. We also have to monitor and protect ourselves from a data compliance, security and governance perspective, the AI or machine learning engines seem to be automatically included on our phones or laptops whether we like it or not.”
Steam Machine verification will be easier than for Steam Decks
“One easy rule of thumb is that if your title is Verified on Steam Deck, it will be Verified on Steam Machine,” Valve designer Lawrence Yang told Game Developer. He says creators hoping for a “Steam Machine Verified” badge can expect “fewer constraints” than on the current handhelds. Hopefully that means a smoother process but also badges that are actually more useful than some of the current Steam Deck ones.
The Blood of Dawnwalker will let you sex vampires, probably
I missed this detail from the dark fantasy RPG’s New Game+ showcase interview (thanks PC Gamer), but romance will be a part of the upcoming game from Witcher 3 devs.
. “There are romance options, yes,” director Mateusz Tomaskiewicz said. “We didn’t delve deep into with whom yet, and I’ll leave that for the future to talk about. However, yes, you can expect to build relationships with characters.” I think folks are sleeping on this one a bit. It’s one of my most anticipated releases of 2026.
