We lasso this week’s stories into one place for you.

Ah, it’s the weekend. Time to relax, to unwind, and to catch up with the news of the past five days, and lucky for you we have just the thing to help you with that last one. So, get yourself a cup of something, a bite of something, and settle in for another of our weekly news roundups.

The Telltale saga continues

Since the news of Telltale Games’ closure last week, the threads of that story have spun off in a hundred different directions, so here’s what been unfolding this week.

Sadly, some responses to the closure of Telltale weren’t too focused on the people affected by the cuts but rather with the future of The Walking Dead’s final season. With confirmations from the company about The Wolf Among Us 2 and Stranger Things being cancelled, players who had already shelled out for The Walking Dead Season Pass were left disappointed after it seemed likely that the remainder of the game had also been canned with the game also being pulled from digital stores this week.

But that all changed, sparking both angry and hopeful reactions after Telltale released a statement suggesting that there were talks with prospective partners about finishing the final season of the popular zombie game. Among those questioning the actions of the company was God of War’s direct, Cory Barlog who questioned whether Telltale would be paying their recently departed staff a severance before continuing with a potential game, saying: “I would be fine waiting however long it took to ensure we first treated those who worked so hard with the humanity and respect they deserve.” Whether or not Telltale will conclude the final Season of The Walking Dead remains to be see, as does whether they compensate those affected by the redundancies.

Though it might not be the only way the former employees get what they’re owed from Telltale, as it emerged this week that a class action suit was being bought against the company. At the heart of the lawsuit is the claim that Telltale dismissed around 250 employees without notice or severance, an action which goes against the 1988 Workers’ Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act. This Act requires a company with more than 100 employees to give at least 60-days’ notice before dismissing employees, which Telltale obviously didn’t do. There’s been no further news on this at this time but we’ll be keeping an eye on events.

And the last thread of this story is that while reports suggested that the Stranger Things project had been cancelled, Netflix has said to Polygon that the game will still be produced, with the remaining staff at Telltale apparently being left to work on the title.

Sony succumbs to Cross-Play

Sony finally caved this week and confirmed that cross-play would be introduced for PlayStation players, but only with Fortnite as the company toys with the idea in a beta phase. The news coincides with season six of Epic Games’ battle royale kicks off, meaning for the first time PlayStation players will get a chance to go up against players on Xbox, PC, Switch, Android, iPhone, and iPad.

Sony’s big boss, John Kodera, released a blog post this week, saying the introduction of cross-play reflected how “the communities around some games have evolved to the point where cross-platform experiences add significant value to players.” While the cross-play feature is limited solely to Fortnite at the moment, Kodera has suggested that it could open up to other third-party games, though no specifics or time frame was given.

let's play Fortnite | GGS Gamer

Microsoft was among those who seemed pretty happy with the news, apparently now the poster-child for video game harmonisation, the company kept their reaction short and sweet.

We wrote a short feature about whether or not we were entering a new kind of console war a while back, with cross-play between Xbox and Nintendo coming up, so it’ll be interesting to see whether Sony does relent any further and introduce the likes of Minecraft into their new cross-play list in the future.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is going to need a fair bit of space

Sticking with Sony, it looks like PS4 players who are looking to pick up Red Dead Redemption 2 will have to have a fair bit of space for the game, with reports suggesting that Rockstar’s cowboy game will need 105 GB of space.

The Frontier Mountain Ranges show just how much detail is in the game

Now, the story gets a little blurred here. Some have suggested that the astonishing file size is only for PS4, while others suggest that it’s for both Xbox and PlayStation. There’s no word as to whether there is any difference of the game’s file size on either console, though, given the detail of the game from what we’ve seen so far, the eye-watering space you’ll need to carve out isn’t that surprising.

Red Dead Redemption 2 will land on PS4 and Xbox One on October 26.

And finally… Did you know Google has a secret game?

It seems there’s always something going on with Google. Usually, it seems like it’s something that could be kind of shady or something that has a gleam of villainy to it, and sometimes it’s something pretty cool. This time it’s something cool.

Because one savvy Reddit user uncovered a full-blown text adventure hidden away in the search engine’s java console. Simply googling “text adventure£, pressing search and then opening up the console using CTRL+shift+J will show a simple question; “Do you want to play a game?” Answer yes and you’ll get to play as a big, blue “G” who is looking for its friends, a red “O”, a yello “O”, a blue “G”, a green “L”, and a red “E”.

The game adopts all the old mechanics of the now ancient text adventures, with movements refined down to directions and actions limited to “grab”. Go and give it a try yourself and let us know how far you get!

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