Daily Briefing: Friday 13th August

Grand Theft Auto remastered trilogy reportedly on the way this year

That's according to a new report from Kotaku who, building on a recent spate of rumours to the effect and relying on the input of various sources familiar with the matter, claim that a remastered trilogy of Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City, and San Andreas are set to launch sometime around October/November of this year. The remasters have allegedly been built using Unreal Engine and will feature "a mix of new and old graphics" alongside a new UI that, while updated, will retain the classic style of those PS2-era titles.

• These projects have been heavily rumoured for a few months now and only gained further steam following Take-Two Interactive's most recent investor call, where they confirmed that they had three unannounced "iterations of previously released titles" in the works. CEO Strauss Zelnick has also gone on record as saying the company aren't interested in doing "simple ports", which likely bodes well for the scope of the GTA remasters. They're supposedly set to release a single, digital-only bundle on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC, Google Stadia, and mobile devices. Console ports are the priority, however, and the PC and mobile releases could slip to next year.

Splitgate studio wants the game on more platforms

Sci-fi portal-oriented arena shooter Splitgate is, like, real hot right now and it looks like developers 1047 Games would like to capitalise on that popularity by bringing the game to more platforms. Speaking in a recent livestream, 1047 Games co-founder and CEO Ian Proulx outlined that bringing the game to Nintendo Switch and mobile devices is "absolutely" part of the development team's roadmap. Proulx said that "part of the vision is that we want to be available on everything."

• Setting expectations, however, Proulx went on to say that "it's not on the top of our priorities," and emphasised that the team aren't currently working on it. More platforms will come eventually though, alongside enhanced features for Xbox Series X|S PlayStation 5 consoles. It makes sense that 1047 Games will want to get their feet set before expanding onto other platforms. Splitgate had a phenomenally popular open beta launch to the point where overloaded servers were posting 90-minute wait times for matches. The game is in a much more solid state following a few cash injections and server overhauls, so the future looks very bright for Splitgate.

Amazon Games changes ownership rules for employees' personal projects

Amazon's gaming division has relaxed a series of guidelines that required its developers to only make and distribute games using Amazon's own internal development tools. This applied to both work and personal projects. Speaking to Bloomberg, Amazon Games VP Mike Frazzini outlined that "these policies were originally put in place over a decade ago when we had a lot less information and experience than we do today, and as a result, the policies were written quite broadly."

• These were a highly prohibitive set of guidelines, which also required employees to list their projects on the official Amazon games store and allowed Amazon to claim IP rights to personal projects made by employees outside of work hours. They also stipulated that staff could only work with other current Amazon staff when it came to gaming collaborations. It looks like things are a lot less cynical and, well, bleak since the guidelines have been overhauled, but it remains to be seen whether a relaxation in corporate greed will turn Amazon into a genuinely desirable destination for game developers.