Plus the prototype for the upcoming Pokemon game is leaked and almost every user in the Discord leak is Australian
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SIFTER is produced by Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Courtney Smith, Adam Christou, Chris Button, Naomi Jackson. Hope Corrigan is Hardware Editor. Cat Jahne is Social Producer, Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER.
GIANNI: Hi I’m Gianni Di Giovanni
FIONA: and I’m Fiona Bartholomaeus
GIANNI: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
FIONA: This week GTA 6 is delayed as Rockstar is also accused of union busting tactics, turns out most of the people caught up in the recent Discord hack were Australian, and a playable version of Pokemon Pokopia has been leaked online.
Here is the news for Sunday 9 of November. Let’s go!
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PROMO: Join the SIFTER community on Discord at sifter.com.au/discord
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FIONA: GTA 6 has been delayed again with a new release date of November 2026. This news comes around the same time that a bunch of employees at Rockstar Games, the team behind Grand Theft Auto, were fired.
Reported by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, the company let go 30-40 employees across offices in the UK and Canada.
The Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain, the first to organize video-game workers in the UK, alleges it is “one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry.”
It told Bloomberg that all the employees let go had been involved with union efforts at Rockstar.
GIANNI: But Rockstar have denied those claims stating that the firing was in ‘no way related to people’s right to join a union or engage in union activities.’ And said that it was actually due to the employees allegedly ‘sharing company information in a forum that included non-employees.’
According to the union, all of the affected employees were part of a private union chat group on Discord and the only outsiders in the chat were labor organizers.
Since Rockstar were targeted with a massive leak in 2022 which released dozens of videos of unfinished footage of Grand Theft Auto VI, the company has been pretty strict with security, even going as far as asking workers to return to the office 5 days a week partly for security reasons.
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GIANNI: The Guardian has confirmed that of the nearly 70,000 users caught up in the massive identity hack 68,122 were Australian, to which I say struth mate bloody hell.
Australia is currently embarking on a massive social media ban for children under the age of 16 and are leaving it up to each platform to determine how they do that, but this doesn’t fill you with a lot of confidence.
The legislation for age verification comes into effect about one month from today on December 10 in Australia.
FIONA: Discord said that the third party service they used for age verification was hacked, saying that usernames, email, billing information, IP addresses, and a small number of government ID images were stolen.
Expect this to keep happening more and more as other sites get added to the list and each company is left to their own devices to work out how to check how old someone is.
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FIONA: Whoops, Pokemon’s next game just got leaked online and guess what, it’s a full playable prototype.
The 2019 beta version of Pokemon Pokopia, the upcoming farming and village building sim, appeared online when an account called RyDawgE_ discovered it in the files of the major 2024 leak.
The user shared the finding on social media saying it’s a fully playable Unity project.
It looks completely different to what we saw a couple of months ago, with this 2019 prototype using a different graphics engine and using more 2D pixel art that looks like Stardew Valley.
GIANNI: This prototype also shows that it was a bit more of a resource management sim, like Stardew, rather than what it is now.
The 2019 version also centered around players assigning Pokémon tasks, for example getting Charizard to roam around the map to pick up resources or getting Eevee to automatically craft houses based on the resource items you have.
Whereas the current version focuses on Ditto using its powers to learn abilities from other Pokemon that have been unlocked on their map.
FIONA: Nintendo has been hit with a bunch of different hacks recently including the names of the Gen 10 games Pokémon Wind & Wave, and the entire Pokémon Legends Z-A Pokédex leaking months before launch.
The leak also revealed that the game originally started at Game Freak before the company handed it off to Koei Tecmo. It’s interesting to see how different it is and makes you wonder why they changed it up.
There isn’t a release date yet but we know it’ll be out sometime next year.
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FIONA: Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have all the nail-biting, teeth-grinding stress of cooking with your friend in Overcooked, in real life? Well some lucky? Unlucky? reality show contestants are about to find out as Overcooked is getting a reality tv show!
In an exclusive report by Deadline, they say that A24 has acquired the rights to the high intensity cooking video game and are partnering with Netflix to create an ‘unscripted series adaptation’
But isn’t this basically the format of most reality cooking shows?
GIANNI: The show will apparently be similar to other Netflix reality shows such as ‘Nailed It’ and ‘Floor is Lava’ and will involve a bunch of chaos and high stakes challenges.
We aren’t sure when this will come out as the show is believed to be in the early stages of development so you know I’ll be keeping an eye out for that news.
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GIANNI: That’s it for the headlines…Here are the games coming out this week.
FIONA: Become a master hacker in the roguelike deckbuilder ‘Into the Grid’. This cyberpunk dystopian has epic card-battles, map exploration and resource management, which you use to explore the dangers of cyberspace and fight evil corporations. That is out in Early Access on PC on 10 November.
GIANNI: In Goodnight Universe you play as a 6-month old baby called Isaac who’s developing mysterious psychic powers. All you want is to be loved by your family but you have to face off against a secretive tech corporation that wants you for their own. That’s coming to PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Nintendo Switch 2 on the 12th.
FIONA: Live your dreams as a tiny mouse in the cozy woodland survival game Winter Burrow. You play as a mouse who has returned from the big city to find their childhood home in ruins. Fix your childhood home, explore, gather resources, knit warm sweaters and bake pies in this adorable game. You can grab it on PC, Switch and Xbox Series X and S on the 13th.
GIANNI: Also out on the 13th is Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami II. Dive back into the original story that launched the epic series, with enhanced graphics and improved frame rates. Both of these games have been fully remade from the original PS2 classics and is perfect for both newcomers and longtime fans of the Yakuza series. They both release separately on the Nintendo Switch 2 on Thursday.
FIONA: For you city-builder fans out there, get ready to explore Ancient Rome in Anno 117: Pax Romana. Build cities, expand your influence through Roman provinces and govern using economic prowess, diplomatic skills, or military might in this real-time strategy game. That’s out on the 13th for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and the 14th for PC and keep an eye on sifter.com.au for a review
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PROMO: Articles to read, videos to watch and podcasts to listen to on sifter.com.au
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GIANNI: This has been Walkthrough by SIFTER, my name is Gianni Di Giovanni
FIONA: And my name is Fiona Bartholomaeus, thank you so much for listening.
GIANNI: We’re digging into hardware reviews on sifter.com.au, we’ve got a cool look at the Genki Pocket Pro by Mitch, we’re testing out microphones like the Hyper X Quadcast 2 by Nom and much much more to come. Head to sifter.com.au/ and click on the hardware button at the top for the collection as we dig into the best gaming accessories. That’s sifter.com.au
FIONA: SIFTER is produced by Naomi Jackson, myself, Cat Jahne, Kyle Pauletto, Adam Christou, Chris Button and Hope Corrigan. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is SIFTER’s Executive Producer and script editor.
GIANNI: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune, and Audio Technica Australia and Apple for their support of SIFTER’s podcasts.
FIONA: We’ll be back with more news next Sunday, see you then.
