Home Safety Hotline is out now on Steam.

There aren't enough games with queer characters and themes -- and GLAAD, the world's largest LGBTQ media advocacy group, has the statistics to prove it. GLAAD's first annual report on the video game industry found that nearly 20 percent of all players in the United States identify as LGBTQ, yet just 2 percent of games contain characters and storylines relevant to this community. The report highlights three critical truths: Representation matters a lot to LGBTQ players, the remaining gaming audience largely welcomes these themes, and new generations of gamers are only becoming more open to queer content. GLAAD has the numbers, so let's take a deeper look alongside a few bits of gaming news from the past week: Xbox is preparing to address a bunch of rumors on Thursday about the company's plans to bring its exclusive games to PlayStation, Switch and other platforms. The rumors have centered on major releases like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and Starfield, but according to The Verge's Tom Warren, the first titles scheduled to make the leap are Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment.

The production pipeline for mainstream video games has always been hectic. The AAA factory is powered by rigid marketing plans and periods of soul-sucking crunch, and while this process has resulted in incredible games over the years, it's also been detrimental to developers' mental health and long-term job stability. Layoffs have long been baked into the video game industry, but in recent months, this trend has been running in overdrive, and it's happening at studios of all sizes. Hideo Kojima is partnering with Sony to build a new game that's actually more like a movie. Of course, you could say this about any of Kojima's games since Snatcher, but this time around, he's doing the Hollywood thing on purpose.

Welcome back to our weekly gaming news roundup. As the year comes to a close, we're looking back on 12 months of massive change for the video game industry, driven by acquisitions, layoffs and unionization. You can read my story on consolidation for more on gaming's tough year. Baldur's Gate 3 is officially the Game of the Year and after months as a PlayStation console exclusive, it's finally available on Xbox. However, if you're waiting for it to become available on Game Pass, stop.

The Game Awards are done and the video game marketing machine is winding down for the year, but this industry never fully stops. This week, we're taking a look at what The Game Awards could have done better (a few things, it turns out) and breaking down some of the biggest announcements from last week's show. We're gonna talk about The Game Awards a lot this week, but one of the biggest announcements from last Thursday's show was the existence of Light No Fire, a new title from No Man's Sky studio Hello Games. It's a planet-sized, multiplayer game about exploration and community-building, and it uses procedural generation to fill every valley and mountaintop with life. There's no release date for Light No Fire just yet, but Hello Games has been working on it for five years. Also at The Game Awards, we saw the reveal of a Blade game from Arkane Lyon, OD from Kojima Productions, Windblown from Dead Cells studio Motion Twin, and Exodus from Archetype Entertainment, a studio composed of BioWare, 343 and Naughty Dog veterans.

After a slow month in the world of video game marketing, things are starting to pick up. The past week has given us a first look at the new Fallout TV show, a few release dates and a trailer for a little game called Grand Theft Auto VI -- and the Game Awards are still to come. What good timing for us to launch a weekly video game show to dig into the news. The Game Awards will go live on Thursday, December 7, at 7:30PM ET. Expect a few hours of game announcements, new trailers, awkward interviews and musical performances, including one by the fictional band from Alan Wake 2. Amazon dropped the first trailer for its live-action Fallout series -- and, man, it sure does look like Fallout.

This week, Overwatch has a new hero, the Video Game Awards are here to give us something to argue about, and Telltale's ending becomes permanent. Games like Overwatch grow via the introduction of new characters, playable heroes that expand the roster and change up the climate of play in casual and competitive modes. This week, Overwatch introduces its newest character, Ashe, the leader of the villainous Deadlock gang, a cowboy-themed heroine with a semi automatic rifle and a robot companion. This means that, alongside launch hero McCree, Ashe is now the second cowboy-themed character in Overwatch. That futuristic cops and robbers have whole gangs of cowboy warriors?

I'm writing this on a bus on the way to the airport, so you'll have to forgive my brief intro here. It's our gaming news round-up though, and you know what they say: The gaming news round-up must go on. Keep reading for news about Destiny 2's new expansion (with the most generic name I can imagine), a look at the follow-up from the director of World War I tearjerker Valiant Hearts, details on Dark Souls: Remastered's PC discount, and Valve's video game acquisitions. This is gaming news for April 23 to 27. Starting off this week like every week, with a list of what you could be playing this weekend--for free.