5 Video Game Things I Learned | 2026 September 19 - September 25
A wild week during which I learned more about Halo than in the rest of my life combined. I read about some history of the Halo franchise in addition to talking about the latest updates on the XBOX reset that include a big shakeup affecting the future of Halo. Bungie, the original developers of Halo, also made headlines this week with an update on the future of Destiny 2. I found out some new information about some books related to the upcoming game Exodus that I’m really excited about. Meanwhile, Activision and 2K each had separate, major updates regarding the war against cheating in online games.
Past Halo Takeover of Microsoft
In my seemingly never-ending effort to get caught up on Game Informer magazines that have been sitting on my desk throughout this year, I finally am at the tail end of the July 2026 issue featuring Halo: Campaign Evolved, the recently released remake of Halo: Combat Evolved. Combat Evolved was the phenomenon that put Xbox on the map from a game development perspective, serving as the flagship Xbox exclusive.
I never really got into Halo. I played some split-screen Halo: Reach multiplayer with some friends as a kid. Otherwise, I haven’t played Halo at all. I own a copy of Halo: Combat Evolved for the original Xbox… but I still don’t own an original Xbox. It’s on my list of retro consoles I would love to get at some point.
Because of my lack of Halo experience, there’s a lot I don’t know about the franchise: the unique mechanics, lore, narrative, development story, etc. As part of Game Informer’s dive into the remake, they also laid out the history of the franchise. There were so many interesting tidbits.
The one that stuck with me most is just how integral Halo was to the Xbox machine in the 2000s. As I mentioned, I definitely knew how valuable the Halo franchise was to Xbox. However, in the words of Sam Charchian, a former Technical Game Manager for Microsoft who was in charge of developer integration with the new Xbox Live service, “In a real sense, Bungie was Xbox.“ Due to the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, Bungie and Halo became the center point Xbox internally as well as in the eyes of players.
What was especially surprising to hear about at a place like Microsoft was how they treated Bungie like a first-class citizen. Charchian described how Bungie always got its way. “Whatever resource they wanted, they got. Whatever rule they wanted broken got broken.“ Xbox even went as far as refactoring Xbox Live after the service had already gone live with a 1.0 release on November 15, 2002.
This is where I also read about the strange dynamic between Microsoft and Bungie. There seemed to be a classic power dynamic in the opposite direction you would expect. My interpretation is that Bungie knew they held all of the cards. Being so important to the success of Xbox, Bungie took advantage by holding firm on all of their technical and design decisions and watching as Xbox scrambled to try to accommodate them. The refactor of Xbox Live to fit Bungie’s needs is the perfect example.
However, the bottom line is that it worked. Bungie got what they wanted; what they wanted was what players wanted; Xbox owned Bungie; therefore, players wanted Xbox. It was a big circular win-win that I imagine felt like anything but in the throws of it. In retrospect, though, this catering to Bungie’s every whim is likely what propelled Xbox 360 to sell 84 million copies over its lifetime.
Destiny Is Back!… Kinda
Speaking of Bungie, their recent decision to leave Destiny 2 behind by halting development on any future content has led to a lot of disappointment by fans. Despite Destiny 2 having been around for nine years now, it has managed to maintain a very devoted fanbase. Over the years, Bungie’s expansions for Destiny 2 have received varying amounts of praise. However, even when the praise is minimal, players continue to come back.
This past week, Bungie released a statement in the form of a YouTube video starring studio head Poria Torkan and head of product Josh Deane. The statement describes what’s on the horizon for Bungie, a big question mark for many people across the industry. Since Destiny 2’s development concluded, Bungie has laid off a huge number of its staff, announced that no new Destiny games are in the pipeline, and gone all-in on their latest game, Marathon, an extraction shooter that has received less-than-stellar reviews from many critics and players.
While the statement is titled “The Next Chapter for Bungie,“ it could just as easily have been titled “Destiny is back!” The duo starts by addressing how the players’ trust in Bungie has been broken, and how that’s largely due to Bungie spending too much time trying to achieve a vision at the cost of listening to its players. “It’s just a road filled with a lot of failed promises,“ Deane says, followed by Torkan explaining that they have to “earn“ players’ trust back, “and that starts with Destiny.“
Torkan gives an emphatic, “we are absolutely not done with Destiny.“ Now, while Bungie isn’t announcing a new Destiny game, the studio is restarting the Destiny heart by addressing a large pain point that the community has harped on for quite some time. Deane announces the next step excitedly while acknowledging that it will be a challenge that will take some time to accomplish. “[It] has to start with restoring what’s rightfully yours. It’s gonna take some time—I wish we could just flip a frickin’ switch—but we’re gonna commit to unvaulting the Destiny 2 campaigns, the destinations, the raids that never should’ve been ripped away to begin with.“
This topic of “vaulting” content became one of additional scrutiny when during a lawsuit between Bungie and author Matthew Kelsey Martineau in 2024 and 2025, Bungie couldn’t produce its own content to the court to prove its case. Instead, Bungie had to rely on YouTube videos and other third-party content. Bungie had managed to vault itself out of its own content, and that reignited frustration from fans.
Towards the end of the statement, Torkan says, “We’ve simplified our priorities, we’ve reduced competing initiatives, we’ve empowered teams to make decisions closer to development. Stability comes from focus.“ Deane goes on to say, “[To reestablish our relationship with you,] our mission is crystal clear: we need to restore Destiny to a place you can call home again, evolve Marathon for more of you to enjoy, and create a new inspiring future for Bungie no matter what.“
XBOX Reset (Cont’d)
Holy cow. Xbox keeps changing drastically. Matt Booty, Chief Content Officer at XBOX, sent out a letter to XBOX employees across the globe on September 22 called “Continuing Our Reset”. Earlier this summer, XBOX shook the video game industry by announcing a reset under Asha Sharma, the new head of XBOX following Phil Spencer’s departure from the role.
The letter starts by indicating that as of now, the reset has reached roughly 75% completion. The reset, estimated to extend well into 2027, supposedly comes with 3,200 layoffs across XBOX. If Booty’s math is correct, that means to date, the reset has removed about 2,400 employees from the XBOX payroll. This has come in the form of direct personal layoffs and subsidiary divestitures. Back when Sharma announced the XBOX reset, she planned to severely cut down on the layers of middle management across XBOX while divesting from five studios: Arkane Studios (Prey, Dishonored), Compulsion Games (We Happy Few, South of Midnight), Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Keeper, Kiln), Undead Labs (State of Decay), and Ninja Theory (Hellblade) through various methods.
Part of this latest message from Booty is an update on the divestitures, and it doesn’t paint the best picture. We already knew that Double Fine and Compulsion had bought their independence, reverting back to privately owned companies with their IP intact and some “runway funding.” There was no update regarding Arkane, other than that consultation with the company’s Works Council in France is still ongoing and “is expected to continue through the end of the year.”
However, Ninja Theory and Undead Labs are in very different positions than expected. As of July, when the XBOX reset hit, the methodology for divesting in the two companies was to sell them off to become subsidiaries of other companies. Instead, Undead labs has also purchased its independence with “similar terms” as Double Fine and Compulsion. In Undead Labs’s words, “Undead Labs… has completed its separation from XBOX and is now operating as an independent, employee-owned game development studio.“ Their development of State of Decay 3 will also continue under a new, currently unknown publisher. While that sounds nice, it’s not all sunshine and roses. Kotaku reported that a deal fell through which would’ve seen Splash Damage, a UK developer funded by Emona Capital, become Undead Labs’s new parent company. Splash Damage has a lot of ties to XBOX, having developed Gears Tactics and the multiplayer modes for several games in the Gears of War series. Undead Labs going independent also means that the studio had to announce layoffs of “a significant number of our colleagues.”
Things are even worse for Ninja Theory. Like Undead Labs with State of Decay 3, Ninja Theory showed off a teaser trailer at Summer Game Fest for its current project, Senua, the third game in the Hellblade franchise, in the hopes of attracting buyers for the studio. According to XBOX, two separate deals have fallen through for the purchase of Ninja Theory, and now, XBOX has “[begun] consultation with employees on a proposed closure while continuing to explore other paths forward.“ It would appear that the capital isn’t there amongst the current employees of Ninja Theory to become a privately owned company. Given that XBOX has to make the cuts one way or another, if the parties can’t find an interested buyer sometime soon, Ninja Theory’s employees and Senua are staring down the barrel of a loaded gun.
According to video game reporter Jason Schreier, the floor falling out from the Undead Labs and Ninja Theory deals demonstrate just how rushed and unorganized this process has been. That’s not entirely surprising. XBOX is certainly desperate to fix its bottom line so that it can return to profitability under its new leadership that has only been instated for seven months.
Frankly, though, these are the least interesting updates from XBOX this week. A studio shuffle takes center stage as XBOX aims to consolidate its appendages.
As part of this reorganization, Activision’s reach stretches much further. World’s Edge (Age of Empires) and Rare (Sea of Thieves, Banjo Kazooie) are now subsidiaries of Activision. Activision is now also going to be taking over the Halo IP, including being tasked with development of the next Halo title via “a new, purpose-built team…” XBOX anticipated that, naturally, the gaming world would read this news and immediately assume Halo is going the way of Call of Duty. It’s a logical conclusion given that’s what Activision primarily develops these days and the two franchises share many mechanics being in the first-person shooter genre. To immediately try to eliminate this train of thought, Booty adds that this team “is separate from ongoing development and plans for Call of Duty.“
Obsidian Entertainment, meanwhile, will move under Bethesda Softworks. This move makes a lot of sense. Both studios specialize primarily in making large, open-world RPGs. Unfortunately, the two studios don’t share the same reputation. Bethesda is known for sprawling worlds that push the limits of what we thought possible for games but fail to impress on core functionalities, narrative, and polish. In contrast, Obsidian has become known for tighter, more polished experiences that push the limits of creativity. I fear that with Bethesda in the driver’s seat, Obsidian will be expected to fall into the Bethesda way of doing things. Earlier this year, we found out that Obsidian would start work on a new Fallout game, something fans have wanted for a long time after the company released the hit that was Fallout: New Vegas in 2010. I am curious to see what this means for Avowed 2. Avowed released in 2025 to many people, including myself, saying it was good but not great. The game failed to meet sales expectations, and the sequel was canned. However, reports suggested that the sequel would continue to be developed by a small team with the hopes that it would get completed enough to be re-ignited by management. Rumors suggest that the project is further along than people would suspect.
King, the developer known for Candy Crush, is taking over as the parent to Microsoft Casual Games, and Playground Games is merging with Turn 10 Studios to become a single studio. These are the biggest no-brainers on the docket. Microsoft Casual Games hardly does anything as far as the public games industry is concerned. However, they largely share genres and target platforms with King. Turn 10 Studios has been exclusively developing the Forza Motorsports franchise for over 20 years, largely playing second fiddle to Playground Games’s Forza Horizon series. Both series consist of racing games, and at this point, the Forza Horizon series is a powerhouse for Playground. I believe bringing Turn 10 into the fold officially can only help.
Finally, but certainly not of the least importance, 268 roles are being eliminated across XBOX. The biggest hit is to Halo Studios. With Activision taking over Halo, Halo Studios is essentially being closed. While a “small team at Halo Studios will continue supporting the Halo community and games in-market,” it’s expected that as we get further away from the releases of Halo Infinite and Halo: Campaign Evolved, the studio will dwindle to nothing and be quietly shuttered in the future.
Booty’s update was appropriately short and concise, much more so than this entry in my weekly post, but that speaks to just how impactful the things he said are. The impact didn’t need to be stated in Booty’s letter. The industry and the teams at XBOX understand the gravity of these moves.
Prequel Novels for Exodus
Mass Effect 2 is my favorite game I’ve ever played. My second favorite? Mass Effect 3. The original Mass Effect also sits in my top 15. It’s my favorite video game franchise out there. I was sorely disappointed by Mass Effect: Andromeda. I still haven’t finished it because it just bores me. The characters, worlds, and narrative feel so hollow. BioWare is currently working on what’s next for Mass Effect.
In the meantime, I’ve let myself get excited for Exodus, a game releasing April 7, 2027, that shares a lot of DNA with Mass Effect, and I mean that more literally than you think. Yes, it’s a far-future, sci-fi adventure with a focus on characters and story just like Mass Effect. However, it goes deeper. Developer Archetype Entertainment was created by Wizards of the Coast (known for Dungeons & Dragons), and some of its first hires were James Ohlen, Chad Robertson, and Drew Karpyshyn.
Ohlen is a BioWare veteran, having worked on titles like Mass Effect, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur’s Gate, and Dragon Age: Origins. After some time away from video games, he’s now the studio head of Archetype.
Robertson also came from BioWare, previously serving as head of technology and studio director at BioWare Austin. His notable credits include Star Wars: The Old Republic, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Jaws of Hakkon, and Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Karpyshyn is the addition I’m most excited about. Karpyshyn is an author who set the foundation of the Mass Effect universe. He’s credited as a lead writer on Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, after which he missed out on the development of the third game to work on Star Wars: The Old Republic. Karpyshyn also wrote a trilogy of Mass Effect novels, two of which I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed.
With all of these people heading up the development of Exodus, I have high expectations.
The truly new bit of information I learned this week, though, has to do with the lengths Wizards of the Coast is going to to establish Exodus as an IP, not just a game. Apparently, over the past couple of years, Wizards of the Coast has worked to help produce an Exodus tabletop RPG that releases in January, 2027, as well as two prequel novels titled Exodus: The Archimedes Engine and Exodus: The Helium Sea. The former released in September of 2024, and the latter just released this past June. They’re both written by Peter F. Hamilton, a sci-fi author who is listed as a writer alongside Karpyshyn for Exodus.
My book backlog has grown nearly to the depths of my video game backlog. I’ve picked up reading as a hobby in a big way the past few years, and it’s just infinitely harder to read through a backlog than play through a video game backlog. I’m a somewhat slow reader, and it can be hard to find the time.
You better believe the Exodus prequel novels have shot to the top of my list, though. I would love to be able to read both books before the game releases in April. The page counts are 928 and 752, respectively. We’ll see if I’m capable of reading over 1,600 pages of space opera in just six months… I kinda doubt it.
Cheaters Never Prosper
As a one-two combo of news this week, Activision and 2K announced some striking and opposingly toned information regarding cheating in online gaming.
Activision has an internal team called Team Ricochet with a targeted purpose of minimizing cheating in the publisher’s online games. Ricochet this week labeled video game cheating as a business worth about $8.5 billion. This coincides with research indicating that more than two-thirds (69%) of game developers believe that cheating in video games is either a “significant or very significant problem.”
2K is doing their part to counter these bad actors. In August, 2K declared that they would take action against cheaters in their NBA 2K series. NBA 2K27 released shortly after on September 4, 2026. This week, on September 24, 2026, 2K announced “the first wave of permanent bans against accounts using cheats and scripts to gain an unfair advantage through shooting aids and other input manipulation” in NBA 2K. These bans are retroactive to the first day of NBA 2K27 early access (August 26, 2026). Anyone found to have cheated at any point in that timeline is subject to a permanent account ban. Repeat offenders are subject to bans of their devices.
There’s little debate amongst most gamers that cheaters just make the gaming ecosystem worse. They undermine skill and ruin everyone else’s fun for their own satisfaction. If it’s rampant enough, they can also ruin entire games for fans. Further downstream of these consequences are the developers/publishers who can see significant reductions in player retention and, therefore, revenue thanks to cheaters who make a game that was worked really hard on unplayable.
Because of this, you see these sorts of initiatives by 2K, Activision, and most other large publishers who deal in competitive online games. While 2K didn’t state any numbers to show the extent of the bans, the internet has plenty of videos, images, and other posts from people waking up to account bans in the past several days due to cheating. Team Ricochet reports that they’ve “disrupted more than 375 reseller operations, issued more than 80 cease-and-desist demands, and helped shut down 31 primary cheat vendors,” in addition to 70,000 hardware bans to combat cheating.