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Good morning and welcome to your regularly scheduled Friday. You may cheer, party, and otherwise shake it in excitement for the weekend. You deserve it. But before you go, here’s today’s Morning Checkpoint, Kotaku’s daily round-up of news and other stuff you might care about. This time around, we have a story from Bobby Kotick about almost buying Minecraft, a leaker claiming RDR2 will get a PS5 upgrade, devs pushing back on live-service games, and EA once again telling people Battlefield 6 will get bigger maps one day.
Battlefield 6 devs address lack of big maps and offer some hope
Since it launched last month, people have been complaining about the lack of big maps in Battlefield 6. And once again, EA has addressed these complaints. In a new blog post, the devs behind the online FPS claim that more maps of all sizes are coming to the game in future updates. The blog also claims that Battlefield Studios is “learning from community creations in Portal.”
— Battlefield Comms (@BattlefieldComm) November 12, 2025
That seems to be an acknowledgement of some of the user-made maps popping up that repurpose the massive battle royale map into the kind of huge Conquest levels players crave. I got to play the game’s next map, Eastwood, and I do think people are going to like it and be pleased with its size. Hopefully, we get an even bigger map in the future that gives BF6 the giant battlefield fans have been begging for, and which the FPS deserves.
Bobby Kotick offered Notch $1.5 billion for Minecraft
On a new podcast, former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick said he “almost bought” Minecraft before Xbox made the deal in 2014. As spotted by GameSpot, Kotick explained why, ultimately, the deal didn’t happen, saying: “I had to spend five days in Stockholm with [Minecraft creator Notch], who founded the company. We offered him $1.5 billion. And he said, ‘By the way, I’m quitting, and my top leadership guys are all quitting.’ And they only had 30 employees at the company. Like, we can’t run your company.” Activision eventually did end up owning Minecraft, in a way, but only after Microsoft spent $75 billion buying the Call of Duty publisher in 2023.
Insider claims RDR2 is going to get a PS5 upgrade
Yesterday, Rockstar announced Red Dead Redemption would receive PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch 2 upgrade for free, allowing the game to look and play better on the newer hardware. And according to one somewhat reliable leaker, NateTheHate, Rockstar is still planning to update Red Dead Redemption 2 as well. But the timing was affected by GTA 6‘s delays. We’ll see…
Phasmophobia devs don’t want to game to be a live-service ‘treadmill’
Co-op ghost-hunting spook ’em up Phasmophobia is a very popular game. But despite a series of free updates and new content being added fairly regularly, the devs behind it don’t consider the game a live-service title, like Fortnite or Call of Duty. In an interview with PCGamesN, Phasmophobia art director Corey Dixon seemed strongly opposed to live-service development and putting a time crunch on devs and players. As for why players keep coming back, Dixon said: “We’re not trying to just suck you in and keep the player’s attention, you know. You want to just make it a fun game that people want to play because it’s fun.” Imagine that.
Rockstar’s firing of 31 employees is now officially being discussed in the UK Parliament
Earlier this month, Rockstar Games fired over two dozen employees in the United Kingdom. The employees and the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain claim Rockstar is union-busting and demand they be reinstated. The publisher behind GTA claims the workers were sharing confidential information. Now, this whole situation could put Rockstar Games in hot water as firings were brought up in the UK Parliament on Thursday.
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