Valve's cancelled Portal prequel F-Stop has leaked, Kotaku reports
Plus Halloween On Goober Street's breakout, ASCII-Farfields, 9,798 Steam games on sale and this week's filings.
The Denoiser
From The Raytrace · No. 2 · Friday, November 6, 2026 · The week in video games, minus the noise
Number of the week
9,798
Steam games on sale in the US on November 5, out of 116,672 with a price: 8.4%. 845 of those discounts were new that day.
Deepest cuts among the top sellers
| CRYSTAR | −94% | |
| Borderlands 3 | −90% | |
| Scorn | −90% | |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition | −90% | |
| A Plague Tale: Innocence | −90% |
The week's lead · Industry
Kotaku says three separate Valve leaks have been combined into a fully playable version of F-Stop, a cancelled game from 2007.
Origin Kotaku: Valve’s Cancelled Portal Prequel F-Stop Has Leaked · Nov 1, 15:00 UTC · 4 outlets followed
Long Exposure
This week, The Raytrace interviewed SirDiabo.
In an email interview, the developer behind GithubLauncher talks about how it began in the N64Recomp Discord, why it was renamed, keeping AI-made ports apart, an unreleased Smash 64 recomp, and the game engine that comes next.
By Nicholas De Leon · 9 min read
Also this week
| • | God of War Laufey delayed to May 20th, 2027, Santa Monica Studio saysConfirmed by Santa Monica Studio |
| • | Ubisoft among bidders for Dishonored studio Arkane, Bloomberg reportsReported by Bloomberg |
| • | Nintendo names Aonuma and Fujibayashi as producers of Ocarina of Time on Switch 2Confirmed by Nintendo |
| • | PS Plus November games: Dead Island 2, Tomb Raider IV – VI Remastered, Monster Train 2Confirmed by Sony Interactive Entertainment |
| • | Arkane union accuses Xbox of 'sabotaging' Blade development, VGC reportsReported by VGC |
| • | Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee Remastered launches on PS5 Tuesday, Sony saysConfirmed by Sony Interactive Entertainment |
Breakout
+68%
Steam reviews: 47 a week before, then 32 new from Oct 29 to Nov 4, 97% of them positive. The fastest riser on our watch list.
Reviews per day, last 15 days · the week counted is in color
Also rising
| • | We Were Here Tomorrow: +614 reviews (+55%), 29% positive |
| • | Cucina Stellata: +389 reviews (+53%), 97% positive |
First Light · picks nobody can pay for
A free, browser-playable first-person exploration game rendered as a 3D ASCII world in a single HTML file. The description lists cities, procedural wilderness, storms, wildlife and hidden mysteries.
playable in the browser (free)
FERRUM is a free, browser-playable survival and factory-automation game. The player crash-lands, survives, builds a factory, programs drones in JavaScript, and works toward buying the planet.
playable in the browser (free)
A free browser demo of Mara's Abyss, a turn-based roguelike dungeon crawler with permadeath, billed as open-world and randomly generated, and made for the Game Boy Color.
playable in the browser (free)
Emulation & homebrew
New releases
| • | OpenRCT2 v0.5.7 - “Get on with it!”RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 · Nov 1 |
| • | shadPS4 shadps4 v0.21.0 - codename Until Mavethee DawnPlayStation 4 · Oct 30 |
New homebrew
| • | The Wobbloos: At The SeasideCommodore 64 · new on PDRoms |
| • | The Wobbloos: In The ForestCommodore 64 · new on PDRoms |
| • | Deadline DundeeCommodore 64 · new on PDRoms |
| • | Pole PositionAtari ST · new on PDRoms |
| • | Paddy’s Pub InvitationalSega Genesis · new on PDRoms |
Newly Verified on Steam Deck
| • | Remothered: Red Nun's Legacywas Unknown |
| • | Warrior Cats: Clans of the Forestwas Playable |
| • | Escape the Backroomswas Playable |
| • | Tom the Postgirlwas Unknown |
Paper trail
| • | 11-05 Sony Group filed a 6-K (foreign issuer's report) |
| • | 11-05 Sony Group filed a 6-K (foreign issuer's report) |
| • | 11-05 NetEase filed a 6-K (foreign issuer's report) |
| • | 11-05 Unity Software filed a 10-Q (see filing) |
| • | 11-05 Unity Software filed an 8-K (item 2.02: results) |
| • | 11-05 Playtika filed an 8-K (item 2.02: results) |
| • | 11-05 NetEase filed a 6-K (foreign issuer's report) |
| • | 11-05 Playtika filed a 10-Q (see filing) |
No union petitions or labor charges at game companies this week.
Elsewhere
Your turn
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How the machine did
This week the models made 14,144 calls and cost $61.21. 38 stories ran across 7 daily editions.
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Stories in this email are written by AI from primary sources, then checked by code against those sources; see How we use AI at theraytrace.com/about.
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