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Daggerless Indie Dev Dispatch — Week of October 12, 2026
Hello Games is putting the full No Man’s Sky on a phone at the end of the month. WARDOGS gets its first real content drop three days before that. Steam had more people online at once on Sunday than it ever has. Enshrouded leaves Early Access the same day as Season 02, and Castlevania is Thursday.
WARDOGS
Season 02 hits October 15. Bulkhead is adding four weapons and four vehicles, including a T-72 and a Gepard, plus three buildables, rain, and an experimental system that lets players wager in-game cash on objectives. Joe Brammer said they have been watching matches and changing the systems that show up every game.
The three-million-copy number from September 26 is still the official one. Right now the game is running around 157,000 concurrent, with a 24-hour peak near 199,000. That is down from the 429,000 launch peak, but it is still sitting in Steam’s top six sellers at $40. Consoles are not planned until 2028. Reviews are Mostly Positive. It is also up for Best Early Access Game at the Golden Joysticks, with voting open through October 23.
No Man’s Sky
Apple’s Indie Games Week started today, and No Man’s Sky is the title they are leading with. The iOS version lands October 28 with every major update through Cosmos. Hello Games says the download is under 4GB and runs back to the iPhone 11. Touch, controller, and mouse and keyboard all work. Multiplayer is not included, and settlements need an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. Pre-orders are open. Sean Murray said the port started as a side project and got help from the work they were already doing on Light No Fire.
Sifu, Vampire Crawlers, Dome Keeper, Little Kitty Big City, Yes Your Grace 2, and 9 Kings also arrived on the App Store this week.
Follow-through
Alinea estimates about 1.7 million people played Gears of War: E-Day through Game Pass after the October 6 launch. Roughly 722,000 of them bought the $30 Premium upgrade. Direct sales were lower, around 230,000 copies, which puts the total revenue estimate near $37 million. Steam peaked around 31,500, higher than any earlier Gears game on the platform. The Coalition said the login problems were DDoS. Reviews landed at 87 on Metacritic.
Steam hit 43,505,724 users online on Sunday. About 14.5 million of them were actually in a game. AION 2’s launch peak of 397,905 and a Deadlock update were part of the reason. The Autumn Sale was already over.
Valheim, Blood of Dawnwalker, Mewgenics, and Crimson Desert are among the Golden Joystick PC Game of the Year nominees. The Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist comes out October 26, and the ceremony is November 11.
Out this week
Enshrouded leaves Early Access on October 15, the same day on PS5. Xbox is spring 2027. The level cap goes to 50 and skill trees reset. Keen is adding Sparkworks, a logic system so players can build traps and puzzles in their own bases.
- Valor Mortis is October 13 and is day one on Game Pass.
- Planet Zoo 2 is October 13.
- Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 is October 14.
- Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is October 15 on PC, PS5, Xbox, and Switch.
- Dressmaker is still in the US weekly top ten.
Industry Notes
- Nintendo’s Latin America VP said the company has no plans to drop physical games. They will follow what people actually buy.
- Nvidia is reportedly ending production of the RTX 5090. The 5080 24GB is expected to become the top GeForce card.
- Games M&A in Q3 totaled $57.8 billion. Most of that is EA’s $55 billion deal.
- Sega said it will not hand creative work to AI. Using tools for efficiency is fine.
- BAFTA handed out more than £270,000 across 112 career grants.
Free Tools & Assets
- Kenney.nl — Tiny Factory is still the current pack. All-in-1 is coming to Steam.
- itch.io free assets and OpenGameArt.
- Epic Fab limited-time free through October 20: Ready Map Vol 2 – Bridge Environment / Nature by Six Sides Studios, AdaptivePathfindingSystem AI Navigation Plugin by NordVader, Stylized Harvest Farm Environment by Emberlight Creations. Claim at fab.com/limited-time-free.
Daggerless Verdict
WARDOGS is still busy a month later because Bulkhead kept putting things in the game. Season 02 is the first real test of whether people stay. Hello Games is taking a decade of free updates and putting them on a phone that costs less than 4GB. Both of those are small-studio moves that do not need a mid-size deal or a Game Pass slot to work. If you are shipping this fall, that is the comparison worth making.
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