One of the game industry's better-known figures is moving on from the studio he created. Bethesda has confirmed that Tango Gameworks founder and CEO Shinji Mikami is leaving his company in the "coming months." The designer hasn't provided reasons for his departure, or said where he's going next. We've asked Bethesda and Tango for comment. Mikami has been one of the most influential game developers in his 33-year career.

In 2014, Microsoft bought Minecraft's developer Mojang for what seemed, at the time, an eye-popping figure: $2.5bn (£1.8bn). It was the first in a series of bullish video-game studio acquisitions by the tech giant, whose games division has been led by executive Phil Spencer, a long-time advocate for video games within Microsoft and the wider business world, for the past eight years. More studios followed, for undisclosed amounts: beloved Californian comedy-game artists Double Fine, UK studio Ninja Theory, RPG specialists Obsidian Entertainment. It seemed that under Spencer's leadership, Microsoft was cementing its commitment to the Xbox console and the video-games business by investing in what makes games great: the people who make them. Then came 2020's deal to acquire Zenimax (and with it Bethesda), for a properly astonishing $7.5bn.

Robert A. Altman, the co-founder of video game company ZeniMax Media, which published top franchises including The Elder Scrolls and Fallout, has died. His cause of death was not immediately clear. Publisher Bethesda Softworks confirmed Altman's passing through a statement on Twitter. "He was a true visionary, friend, and believer in the spirit of people and the power of what they could accomplish together," reads a portion of Bethesda's statement. "He was an extraordinary leaders, and an even better human being."

Carmack, son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack, grew up in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area where he became interested in computers at an early age. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas and Raytown South High School in nearby Raytown, Missouri. Carmack was introduced to video games with the 1978 shoot'em up title Space Invaders in the arcades during a summer vacation as a child. The 1980 maze chase arcade game Pac-Man also left a strong impression on him. He cited Shigeru Miyamoto as the game developer he most admired.[4]

Carmack, son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack, grew up in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area where he became interested in computers at an early age. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas and Raytown South High School in nearby Raytown, Missouri. Carmack was introduced to video games with the 1978 shoot'em up title Space Invaders in the arcades during a summer vacation as a child. The 1980 maze chase arcade game Pac-Man also left a strong impression on him. He cited Shigeru Miyamoto as the game developer he most admired.[4]

I had worried that The Elder Scrolls Online had played its best hand too soon when it released Morrowind as its first "chapter" (or expansion) in 2017, but I'd forgotten about the dragons. The beasts, so loved from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, take flight in ESO's upcoming Elsweyr expansion, and earlier today ESO's creative director Rich Lambert showed audiences on Twitch how dragons would spend the game's next chapter burninating the homeland of the cat-like Khajiit. The new chapter launches for pre-orders buyers on May 20, and here are five good reasons why you'll want to be around in May when the fur and fire starts to fly. Here there be dragons, and frankly it's about time. I'm a little surprised to see them.

The first chap I meet in the Summerset Isles is an elf with a Sean Penn face who gripes about how he's missing out on a wine tasting because some local Wood Elves "offed" the vintner, because of course. This, after all, is the closed beta for The Elder Scrolls Online's Summerset expansion ($40 on Amazon), which whisks us off to the ancestral homes of the High Elves, a magical land crammed with haughty wizards, Neuschwanstein-like villas, and flora that likely would have been at home in Eden. This dude just wants his wine, and I can appreciate that. ZeniMax Online's game may be crawling with elves and the occasional grumpy orc, but no other MMORPG feels quite so human. That's not to say that other MMOs like Final Fantasy XIV and Star Wars: The Old Republic don't spin a good yarn, but they're more concerned with high drama and the oh-so-important Fate of the World.

Last time around, in ZeniMax's suit against Facebook-owned Oculus, the virtual realty giant was found to owe the plaintiff $500 million because founder Palmer Luckey was judged to have violated a non-disclosure agreement. That was the bad news, but ZeniMax's other allegations were dismissed. Still, a half-billion bucks is a lot. Today, according to TechCrunch, Oculus dodged a bullet when a second breach-of-contract suit, this time filed by Total Recall Technologies, was dismissed by the court. TRT had filed suit in 2015, alleging that Luckey had violated an NDA he'd signed when he visited the company during development of the Oculus Rift.

Nothing you could possibly be paying attention to except for our weekly round-up of video game news, right? This week we've got Portal recreated for the Apple IIe, the possibility of a new Pillars of Eternity sequel, the Super Mario Odyssey trailer ported into the world of Grand Theft Auto IV, another Overwatch holiday event, and more! This one lacks Colin McComb unfortunately, but does provide a look at Torment's combat. It's turn-based, unlike the real-time-with-pause system used by Infinity Engine games. While we're on the subject of isometric CRPGs and Infinity Engine games: Obsidian's been teasing a new project all week, and it's starting to look like a sequel to Pillars of Eternity.

Why are there so many sketchy ads for fake goods on Instagram? Why have e-waste levels jumped? And why is LG boasting that its next phone won't burst into flames? Why do Instagram and Twitter want me to buy fake Yeezys? Both Facebook and Twitter are part of the Ads Integrity Alliance and have policies in place to keep out sketchy advertisers, but that's clearly not keeping some from slipping through the cracks.