Greg Street, a former lead systems designer on Blizzard's World of Warcraft and executive producer on Riot Games' League of Legends MMO still in development, and NetEase Games have announced a new studio called Fantastic Pixel Castle. This studio is developing a new AAA MMO codenamed Ghost, set in a new fantasy universe. Street is joined by a founding team with decades of MMO and related genre experience ranging from World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Guild Wars 2, Fortnite, Overwatch, and Valorant, according to a press release. 

The studio is hiring and says it embraces a "remote-first structure." It is currently fully remote. Alongside today's news, Fantastic Pixel Castle has released three pieces of Ghost concept art and you can check each out by swiping through the gallery below: 

"With Fantastic Pixel Castle and Ghost, we want to demonstrate our commitment to open communication and development in front of players," Street, who is the studio's lead, writes in a press release. "MMOs are arguably one of the most challenging games to make, but we have some big advantages. We are a fully remote studio, allowing us to hire the best game developers, and we plan to stay small so that we can iterate on our design quickly. We also want to show the game early and often to the community and make sure we are on the right track to incorporate constant feedback. This is possible because NetEase Games is a strategic partner that understands our vision, and gives us the creative autonomy, resources, and support to be successful." 

NetEase Games president of global investments and partnerships says Fantastic Pixel Castle is bringing some of the best MMO talent available to NetEase to develop this original fantasy IP, noting that the studio has the company's full support "to make this vision a reality." 

Fantastic Pixel Castle's studio leaders will share more about the team and Ghost during a livestreamed AMA set for 2 p.m. ET on November 8, and the team encourages those interested in the idea of this game to check out the studio's website for more information. 

What do you hope to see from this MMO? Let us know in the comments below!

Remedy Entertainment released Alan Wake 2 last month, and it's resonated with both fans and critics alike as a longtime sequel and a new game from the creators of Control – you can read Game Informer's Alan Wake 2 review here. The studio has released two updates so far, but today's Alan Wake 2 update is easily the biggest yet and includes bug fixes, visual issue remedies, and more. 

Update 1.000.008 on PS5, 1.0.0.8 on Xbox Series X/S, and 1.0.8 on PC brings over 200 individual improvements and fixes to the game, including improved audio for live-action sequences, graphical issue fixes, Performance mode improvements, improved lighting, and various mission-specific fixes, like one that fixes a bug where Saga could get stuck in the environment in one of her first chapters. 

Here are the full Alan Wake 2 Update 1.0.8 release notes: 

Global

• Various localization fixes, such as improved subtitle timings for all languages
• Improved localized audio for live-action cinematics
• Various audio-related improvements and additional polish
• Improved lip sync in some instances
• Fixed various graphical issues in the environments
• Fixed various minor issues in cinematics
• Minor improvements to image aliasing in Performance mode and Xbox Series S
• Improved lighting
• Fixed lighting bugs in multiple locations
• Various UI-related fixes and additional polish
• Various gameplay fixes and improvements
• Minor gameplay finetuning
• Improved auto-aim for specific circumstances
• Fixed rare player character animation issues
• Fixed various issues in the Case Board
• Fixed various map issues
• Several conversations failing to trigger and thus blocking progress later have been fixed
• Fixed Rose’s dialogue choices, sometimes not being selectable, blocking progress
• Fixed a rare issue with Saga’s lines not playing when going to the Sheriff’s Station, blocking progress
• Resolved a potential problem in the player getting stuck in a Case Board Tutorial
• Fixed exploration rewards for Lighthouse 

Mission Specific

INVITATION:

• Fixed a bug where Saga could get stuck in the environment (“Crazy forest”)

CASEY:

• Fixed potential issue with players able to get stuck when falling from ladders
• Fixed potential issues with Dark Presence (it remains a threat)
• Fixed a rare crash

ZANE’S FILM:

• Fixed a bug where Alan could fall through the environment

SCRATCH:

• Fixed a bug where Saga could fall through the world
• Fixed a bug in where a gate could get locked after reloading a save game, causing the player to get blocked from progressing
• Fixed an issue where, in rare circumstances, the player could end up outside of the game world when opening the map
• Fixed an issue where, in rare cases, the Lighthouse key could not be picked up

WE SING:

• Fixed a bug where Alan could get stuck in the environment

ROOM 665:

• Fixed an issue that caused the Oceanview Hotel Lobby Echo not to align correctly (this one was really annoying; we apologize)

MASKS:

• Fixed an issue where if the player performed specific tasks in an unpredictable order, the mission progress could get blocked

DEERFEST:

• Fixed an issue (much to Rose’s chagrin) with physics-related props that could block the player in and halt progress

COME HOME:

• Fixed an issue where the player, in rare instances, could not exit the radio, TV, or manuscript interact modules. 

PC Specific

• Fixed a bug that could cause graphics settings to reset when launching the game
• Improvements to PC Window handling logic
• Fixed mouse cursor sometimes not appearing in menus

And that's everything in today's Alan Wake 2 update. 

For more, read Game Informer's Alan Wake 2 review and then check out this update where Remedy discusses its development progress on Control 2 and its Max Payne remakes. After that, read this feature about the characters to remember before starting Alan Wake 2, and then check out what the best graphics modes are in the game. 

Does this update fix any issues you have with Alan Wake 2? Let us know in the comments below!