Sony Stumbles and the Rain Falls

Daggerless Indie Dev Dispatch — Week of October 19, 2026

WARDOGS Season 02 launched October 15 and the concurrent chart moved with it. Enshrouded left Early Access the same day and set a new Steam peak. Steam Next Fest started today. Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse is out, and the ID@Xbox Showcase is tomorrow.

WARDOGS

Season 02 went live October 15 after a short maintenance window. Bulkhead added four weapons, four vehicles including a T-72 and a Gepard, three buildables, and rain. An experimental Wager Vendor that lets players stake cash on their own performance is planned for later in the season. The studio also awarded $100,000 to the winner of its community clip contest.

Joe Brammer said the studio got the Lonestar bonus wrong. They had added extra cash and XP for the blue team to lift its win rate. Skilled players piled onto it, blue started winning most matches, and Bulkhead pulled the bonus the same day. Season 02 brought the concurrent count back up to 309,000 on launch day. It has settled near 200,000 since, with a 24-hour peak around 295,000. That is still well below the 429,000 opening peak, but the game has not left Steam’s top five at $40.

The three-million-copy figure from September 26 is still the one Bulkhead is quoting. Console versions are not planned until 2028. Reviews remain Mostly Positive. Voting for Best Early Access Game at the Golden Joysticks closes October 23.

Enshrouded

Keen Games took Enshrouded out of Early Access on October 15, the same day on PS5. Xbox is spring 2027. The level cap went to 50 and skill trees reset. Keen added Sparkworks, a logic system for player-built traps and puzzles.

Steam peaked at 113,542 on October 18, well above the game’s pre-1.0 numbers. Reviews are Very Positive, around 86 percent. The price is $39.99. Cross-play between PC and PS5 is not available at launch.

The rest

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse launched October 15 on PC, PS5, Xbox, and Switch. Steam peaked around 21,700. Reviews landed at 86 on Metacritic for the PS5 version. Steam user reviews are Mostly Positive, about 73 percent. The price is $29.99.

Steam Next Fest runs through October 26. Demos and livestreams are live now.

The ID@Xbox Showcase is tomorrow at 1pm ET with 20 games, including The Wolf Among Us Remastered.

No Man’s Sky for iOS is still dated October 28. Pre-orders are open.

Out this week

• Valor Mortis launched October 13 and is day one on Game Pass.
• Planet Zoo 2 is out.
• Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 is out.
• Frostpunk Complete Edition is on Switch and Switch 2 today.
• BeamNG.drive entered Early Access on PS5 today.
• DuneCrawl is on PS5, Xbox, and Android.

Industry Notes

• Sony now requires firmware 14.10 to sign into PSN. Consoles on older builds, including those running the Relapse exploit, stay offline if they do not update. Firmware 14.00 and 14.10 closed the public exploit path. No complete jailbreak for 14.10 has been shown.
• Liquid Swords founder confirmed the Samson studio has closed.
• The Dune: Awakening studio is facing layoffs as it restructures after the console release.
• PlayStation founder Ken Kutaragi said discs became a metaphor for owning games, and that upset over their discontinuation is a “mentality issue.”
• Godot 4.8 entered beta on October 15. The project reports 1,523 fixes from 340 contributors since 4.7.
• raylib 6.2 shipped after a security audit, with redesigned image and file APIs.

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 five weeks in because Bulkhead shipped a real update and the servers stayed up. The Lonestar bonus lasted a day before the studio pulled it. Enshrouded left Early Access with a content drop and a console launch on the same day, and the Steam chart moved. Sony’s requirement that consoles run firmware 14.10 to reach PSN means older builds stay offline if they do not update. Both of the indie moves this week were small-studio decisions that did not need a mid-size deal.