Video game news digest: Saturday, October 31, 2026

Final Fantasy XIV pushes Evercold back a month, Activision will cut real disaster footage from Modern Warfare 4, and Bungie lays out a timeline for bringing Destiny 2's vaulted campaigns back. Celeste and TowerFall are also gone from the Xbox store.

Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold launches February 23, 2027

Previously slated for January 2027, Final Fantasy XIV's sixth expansion now launches on Tuesday, February 23, 2027, with early access from Friday, February 19 for those who pre-order. Square Enix revealed the new date at Fan Festival in Tokyo, which opened on Saturday, alongside the opening cinematic. Pre-orders open on Wednesday, November 4. Evercold brings two new jobs: Bastion, a tank, and Zephyr, a physical ranged DPS.

Modern Warfare 4 will drop its Itaewon crowd crush footage

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4's opening cinematic uses real footage of the deadly October 2022 crowd crush in Seoul's Itaewon district to depict a fictional invasion of South Korea. After victims' families protested, Activision apologized and told Korean media the footage will be removed in the Thursday, November 12 update, Kotaku reports, as does PC Gamer. No English statement from the publisher had appeared at the time of those reports.

Destiny 2's vaulted campaigns are coming back after a year of production

Bungie laid out on Thursday its plan to restore Destiny 2's vaulted content: the Red War, Curse of Osiris, Warmind and Forsaken campaigns, along with their strikes, raids and the Menagerie. The port, handled by a partner studio, stays in pre-production until January or February, followed by roughly twelve months of full production. A "Destiny Legacy" project also aims to bring the whole journey that began over a decade ago to today's platforms, with news expected early in 2027. Bungie warns there will be no new Destiny announcement at The Game Awards.

Celeste and TowerFall pulled from the Xbox store

Maddy Makes Games has delisted both games from Xbox this week. Maddy Thorson confirmed on Bluesky that the move supports the BDS boycott targeting Microsoft, according to Eurogamer and GamesIndustry.biz.