In what seems to be the only good news related to publisher Krafton right now, the Last Epoch developer it bought in July hasn't been warped by its aggressive pivot to becoming an "AI-first company" above all else. At least not yet.

Eleventh Hour Games broke its silence on whether you'll have to pay for Last Epoch's upcoming Orobyss expansion after spending years—as an indie developer—promising players everything would be free. The answer is no: Last Epoch's expansion will be free to anyone who already owns the base game, and it will be packed in for anyone who buys the game after it's out.

Last month, EHG founder Judd Cobler said the studio would "maybe" have to charge something for the expansion, as the game's first three seasons haven't been profitable. But now it looks like EHG will hold to the promise it made when it ran a Kickstarter for the game in 2018.

There's a small catch here though: Alongside the expansion a new "Paradox class" will be released and it will have a price that won't be revealed until later. In the announcement post on Reddit, Cobler describes it as a "fully alternate playable class built on systems that work differently from anything else in the game." The one coming with Orobyss won't be the last, either, as EHG plans to "experiment in new and innovative ways" with more classes in the future.

That last bit is too vague for me to have a strong feeling about it, but that hasn't stopped fans from speculating that it's just a sneaky way for EHG to charge players for something other than expansions and cosmetics. There's zero evidence for that, but there are fans with more reasonable concerns that paid classes could outshine the existing ones in a potential pay-to-win scenario.

Last Epoch is an action RPG where you click monsters until loot pops out of them. It's not a competitive PvP game and there's no reward for ranking high on its leaderboards other than prestige. Just like when Blizzard released a ridiculously overpowered new class for Diablo 4's paid expansion, it won't do anything to people not playing it other than make them feel jealous that they didn't swipe their card. For some people, however, it's about the principle of only letting you play with the fancy new stuff if you pay, and I can at least sympathize with that.

Orobyss will be released next year, but it will be preceded by two seasons with plenty of updates to the base game. Cobler says the gap between seasons will remain longer than the studio wants at the moment because it's busy hiring new people and preparing for the game's launch on PlayStation 5.

At the end of the post, Cobler addresses the skepticism that Krafton's AI obsession will trickle down to EHG. "To be clear, our development approach is not changing," he says. "We remain focused on building Last Epoch the same way we always have, with the same hands-on design philosophy."

That's a promising thing to hear after just about every headline about Krafton lately has been absolutely harrowing, especially if you would like to see games like Last Epoch, PUBG, and Subnautica 2 not get pulled into the "AI-first" black hole.

Sandbox game Hytale was only surviving until now, bruised badly by cancellation and studio closure before it recently got back in the warm hands of its creators at Hypixel. According to CEO Simon Collins-Laflamme, even this new chapter of existence has sometimes been difficult for Hytale – but things seem to finally be happier after a successful round of playtests this week.

While, not long ago, Collins-Laflamme said "the game is not good enough" to release in Early Access yet, he seems to be in better spirits about the Minecraft-like now. He says in a November 25 post on Twitter, "Over 60 people play-tested Hytale yesterday and gave us great feedback and bug reports! Things are doing well!"

"There are ongoing tests the whole week and we should have some hardware min spec estimate later this week," Collins-Laflamme continues. "We also did a 15-player SMP with the dev team in the morning, it was nice to see things coming together at last!"

While Hytale hasn't been wholly reborn, this is still a promising change for a game whose 10 years in development have often been muddied by setbacks. Acknowledging this, creator Collins-Laflamme continues to say there's still a "long way to go, but momentum is key."

"We are doing large-scale server tests later this week, and some PvP!" the dev continues to say. Hypixel will also soon release a new blog post regarding Hytale's Creative Mode, along with raw gameplay footage, and "a bunch of screenshots" from playtesters.

"Hytale is saved": Riot sells Hytale back to Hypixel founders, who promise 10 years of support, an early access date soon, and a return to the "original vision."

//Body

Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 is well into its second year of updates at this point, with Saber Interactive having unveiled the roadmap for year two back in August. Patch 11 represents something of a palette cleanser between September's birthday feast and next year's Techmarine treat. But there's still plenty here for veteran Ultramarines to get their massive, armoured mitts on.

Patch 11's main event is a new PvE Operation. Titled Reclamation, it takes place in orbit above the planet Avarax and sees your squad assaulting a "critically damaged Imperial cruiser to purge it of Tyranid infestation". It seems there will be slightly more to the operation than this, however, as the post says objectives will "begin to shift" as events proceed. Intriguing!

Alongside this, the update introduces a new PvE item called Sanctified Wrath, which makes players immune to knockbacks and provides a slight boost to melee damage. It also knocks back enemies in a small radius when deployed, which should make it useful if the Tyranid hordes threaten to overwhelm your position.

There are also 40 new battlefield conditions, six extra heroic weapons and eight additional armour pieces. That's it for completely new stuff. But the update makes some mechanical changes too.

Chiefly, it expands the moveset of the Assault Marine, adding several new Jump Pack Dash attacks, which Saber says are "much quicker and [more] responsive than normal sprint attacks." This isn't an isolated change, either, with Saber planning to continue "expanding and improving sandbox gameplay for all classes."

In other words, expect similar additions to the Tactical and Vanguard Marine classes in due course, though likely not until after Patch 12. Elsewhere, the update improves combos and attack damage for the Power Axe, increases the power of the Heavy Bolt Rifle, and adjusts the Vanguard class to make it less of a healer and "reinforce [the] range/melee hybrid playstyle for him."

One of the most notable changes is hidden away near the bottom of the patchnotes, which is that it increases the netcode damage cap across the game. Saber says this is "going to open a huge can of worms for gameplay balancing, but that it "it has to be done", as the studio believes that game damage numbers should not be restricted by net code:

"It's pretty clear that some damage buff combinations from multiple sources are already insane," Saber adds. "For now, have fun."

Patch 11 will be the last major update for 2025. Patch 12, which will arrive early next year, will introduce the aforementioned Techmarine class, hence why Saber is saving any further tweaks to existing classes until after the Omnissiah axe-wielding engineer arrives. There are plenty more updates planned after that, which should help put paid to the weirdly persistent belief that Saber's development of Space Marine 3 is siphoning resources from Space Marine 2's post-launch support.