Some game delays can go on for years, seeing games announced at big events that somehow through issues behind-the-scenes get stuck in development hell. Some make it out eventually, in one form or another (be it the game itself, an altered version of the same title or something completely different); while others perish entirely. Unfortunately for those hoping to see The Last Guardian ever release, it seems to have just become the latter of the two.

Sony Computer Entertainment America have decided that they are not going to extend their hold on the trademark for the title, which seems to suggest that the project itself could have finally just been shelved indefinitely. The team working on the game was Team Ico, creators of Shadow of the Colossus and ICO and was announced after both those titles were such successes.

Having been announced during the days of the PS2, it’s been in development since 2007 and was supposed to release for the PS3. However as time went on without updates, Sony began to avoid answering too many questions regarding its status and speculation grew about what was going on, as it tends to when official information is lacking. However as recently as August last year Sony was reassuring gamers that The Last Guardian was still an active project.

Now it seems that the game will never be. Unless of course a decision has been taken to rename the game and hasn’t been announced yet. After all, no official cancellation announcement has been formerly made by Sony or Team Ico, so The Last Guardian might yet become one of those development hell games that surfaces at last in a guise different from the one we were expecting.

YoYo Games, developer and owner of the GameMaker: Studio engine that was used to make popular small games such as Gunpoint, Hotline Miami and Risk of Rain has been reported as having been bought out by the gambling game developer PlayTech. At first this seems a bit of an odd acquisition for them, but PlayTech also run a sideline to the business that sells development tools such as GameMaker: Studio.

GameMaker currently has over 750,000 registered developers using it for making games within and as well as having been downloaded more than four million times it’s also one of the few game engines available for purchase through the Steam Store, which makes it very accessible and appealing for small indie developers.

A clause in the sale contract makes it clear that PlayTech plan to continue to support GameMaker for quite a time yet, and if the team working on it can hit certain targets set they can earn a further $5.25 million. Not bad at all.

A recent update to Ubisoft’s The Crew game has patched a number of bugs, the most amusing being one that enabled some cars to accelerate so fast while going in reverse they were actually going faster facing backwards than when they were facing forward. Whoops.

As well as this, a number of other tweaks have been made the the handling and performance of several makes of cars as well as fixes to bugs that occurred when a friend who left the game would still display as being Online, when tracking progress of unlocks through awards and many other issues and bugs. This is along with general improvements to such things as the framerate when in Cockpit Mode and the AI. Also halted in their tracks are the bug that caused players to sometimes lose all their save data (unfortunately the data can’t be restored) and one that allowed for a wall-riding exploit, thanks to a change in the friction applied to side barriers along roads.

The patch isn’t just for fixes though, it’s added new content to the game. A PvP mode now exists for ten different circuits that calls for you to eliminate other players and four new faction missions have been added to the game. Great if you’ve already completed what was already available.

While bug fixes are always a good thing (when they work and don’t break other things), it’s a little sad to see The Crew’s unintentional tribute to Big Rigs infamous reverse bug bite the dust.

In modding news, an interesting new mod has popped up for Doom, a game twenty years old already and still with an active modding community. The dedication to it is amazing, and somehow the modders don’t seem to be running out of ideas.Well, maybe a little bit but they’re obviously still having a lot of fun with their mods if this one’s anything to go by.

The mod in question is created by someone called Linguica and is called the InstaDoom mod. What does it do? Enables you to take selfies. Really.

It’s based off Instragram and therefore contains 37 filters to tint your photos and the photos will show Doomguy’s head on the body of a space marine sprite as you journey through the levels and fight the beasts and enemies. Not exactly the first choice of game I’d think of for taking selfies in, but as I said above they must have had fun making this mod. If you’re interested you can download InstaDoom here.

On the Blizzard front, it seems PAX East might be shaping up for some nice things for gamer. The studio’s got a panel scheduled that includes the game directors for Heroes of the Storm (Dustin Browder), Hearthstone (Eric Dodds) and new game Overwatch (Jeff Kaplan), which seems incredibly promising for players of those three games.

The schedule blurb itself for the panel, which kicks off this year’s PAX East on Friday, March 3rd, says “Bold new heroes, exciting new cards, and epic new battlegrounds. . . . Join a trio of Blizzard Entertainment developers for a look at just some of what’s in store for 2015, including upcoming content for Heroes of the Storm, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and Overwatch” so we can expect some wonderful new content to look forward to (although having just introduced 160+ cards to Hearthstone recently, I have to wonder what they could possibly be adding now).

Last year’s PAX East was used so Blizzard could announce the first Hearthstone expansion, Curse of Naxxramas, so if something larger than what the blurb promises is revealed it wouldn’t be the first time. It could even see the announcement of beta for Overwatch which many have been looking forward to since Blizzcon.

Looking forward to it? I know I am (mainly for Hearthstone :P).