Doom: The Dark Ages developer id Software has announced a new free update coming to the first-person shooter's Revelations DLC next month: an endless single-player "Slaughter Mode."

As announced on today's Slayers Club Live livestream with Doom: The Dark Ages game director Hugo Martin, Slaughter Mode will be "an endless single player mode where players fight through escalating demon waves across multiple arenas, earning cosmetics and their personal best in round/score."

Though id didn't give a specific launch date for the Slaughter Mode update, we can probably rule out November 19! And if you haven't played the stellar The Dark Ages yet, or its excellent expansion, Revelations, now's the time!

Fortunately, id Software carries on after layoffs hit the studio earlier this year, which prompted id co-founders John Romero and John Carmack to each separately comment on the staff reductions, which in turn prompted a response from both the studio and Martin himself.

The co-founder, co-chairman, and chief product officer of Riot Games, Marc Merrill, revealed the number of monthly active users 2XKO would have needed to justify its budget, and the eye-popping amount has sparked an animated debate within the fighting game community.

Speaking on The Lemonade Stand, Merrill went into detail about what happened behind the scenes at Riot to cause 2XKO’s catastrophic failure, and provided a ballpark figure of monthly active users the game would have needed in order to justify how much money and time was spent on its development.

It’s no surprise that this figure was, to put it lightly, pretty unrealistic for a fighting game; Merrill said that, considering its cost structure, 2XKO would have needed a player count “in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions” to rationalize its continued support.

Merrill also mentioned Street Fighter 6, saying the 2023 release of Capcom’s juggernaut title threw off their plans to take a big chunk of the fighting game community’s interest off the back of Street Fighter V.

“I think we had a window to do some great things to really help the fighting game community, and then Street Fighter 6 came out, which was something like eight years after we started working on 2XKO,” Merrill explained. “We had an awesome development team of really talented people that did great work, that made a beautiful game. We’d already communicated all this stuff to players, and so we were like, ‘You know what? Let’s just keep going. Let’s give it to the community. Let’s see what happens, right?’ …I think if we came out, ideally when we should’ve, years before Street Fighter, I think we would have made a really significant impact on the community.”

Merrill explained that Riot didn’t have internal “alignment” on the strategy for 2XKO, which caused “managerial fracturing” and confusion within the team. Ultimately, not enough players hopped on the game in order to justify the time and money spent on it, so Riot did what they thought was best — issued full refunds to players and canceled further content updates.

“We’ve got nobody to blame but ourselves,” he said. “[2XKO] resonated with some players, but not nearly enough players in order to justify the sort of live service, long-tail approach that the game was designed to do. And so we were like, let’s just pivot, let’s create this box, give everybody a refund, say, ‘Hey, sorry we weren't able to achieve this incredibly high aspiration that we were trying to do for the fighting game community, but we love you guys, appreciate [you], hope they’ll play this game, like many other box games, for years to come, and here you go. Sorry we let you down,’ is sort of the orientation of what happened there.”

For comparison, Street Fighter 6 — which is indisputably the biggest fighting game on the market right now — boasts an average of anywhere between 16,000 and 20,000 monthly active users on Steam (not including PlayStation, which doesn't share these statistics publicly). It’s understandable that Riot, the maker of massively popular MOBA League of Legends, might expect more than that — but even Riot themselves knew there was no way they could reach “millions” of monthly active users to justify keeping their tag fighter alive.

Unsurprisingly, Merrill’s comments have sparked a swath of heated reactions within the fighting game community. Most players were left stunned that Riot felt such a high player count was necessary to keep 2XKO afloat, given how relatively "niche" the genre is.

“It seems like they figured the game wasn't going to last long, but they spent so much money on it, so instead of immediately canning it, they released it to see if it would do anything,” one player mused. “Unfortunately, what it needed to do goes way beyond what any fighting game has ever done in existence lol.”

“The way [Merrill said], ‘Then Street Fighter 6 came out,’ like that wasn't going to happen. SFV had one of the best comeback stories in fighting games. Did he really not think 6 was going to happen?” another asked.

2XKO was first revealed to the public as ‘Project L’ in 2019, though rumors of a fighting game based on the League of Legends IP had been swirling around long beforehand. Its confusing release (from a closed beta to extended early access) on the back of a lengthy development period essentially killed most of the hype around the game, and Riot officially announced plans to end active development after December 2026, though online play will still be supported.

Metro 2039 is not terribly far away now, launching on February 4, 2027. While that game will truly bring the franchise to current generation consoles, developer 4A Games is launching next-gen updates for the first two games.

Both Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light were incredible tech showcases for their time, but they haven't exactly aged gracefully. Despite getting an intial remaster all the way back in 2014, Metro 2033 doesn't play super well with modern hardware, and I've needed to tweak it every time I've gone back to play it. Luckily, these next-gen updates should bring some long-needed bug fixes to the game.

The update will look different on console and on PC. For PS5 and Xbox Series X, the Metro games will run at either native 4K at 60 fps or an upscaled 4K at 120 fps, with PSSR on PS5 Pro and traditional temporal upscaling on the Xbox consoles. Over on PC, though, the game will finally have DLSS support, along with some unnamed quality-of-life improvements.

4A Games hasn't shared a lot of details on the updates coming to Metro 2033 and Metro Last Light, but it does promise to share full patch notes ahead of its October 22 release on PC and October 29 release on consoles. Either way, as long as the games are more stable, I'm all in.

As a lifelong PC gamer, all three of the Metro games hold a special place in my heart, for all the torture they've put my graphics cards through in the past. Luckily, if you don't like putting your hardware through the wringer, it doesn't sound like 4A is going to add ray tracing or anything crazy to 2033 or Last Light, so they should be significantly easier to run at high settings than they were when they launched in 2010 and 2013.

We've already gone hands-on with Metro 2039, and it seems like an incredible and brutal post-apocalyptic shooter — just like I'd want out of the franchise. The visuals we've seen so far look incredible too, so I can only imagine that it's going to stay true to its roots of pushing PC hardware to its limits. Although, it is launching in the middle of an ongoing RAM crisis, which is going to limit its already niche appeal a bit when the benchmarks start rolling out. Here's to hoping 4A Games finds a way to make a Metro game scalable at launch for once.

IGN's favorite game of 2024, Metaphor: ReFantazio, is getting a hardcover art book next year titled The Art of Metaphor: ReFantazio by Kelly Knox. If the game has a special place in your heart and you're eager to add this beautiful release to your bookshelf, preorders are now live for it at select retailers with a price tag of $50 (see it here at Amazon). You'll have to wait a little while to get your hands on it, though, as it's not set to be released until March 9.

Preorder The Art of Metaphor: ReFantazio

• See at Amazon - $50
• See at Walmart - $50 (OUT OF STOCK)

While that's still quite a ways away from now, don't let that stop you from putting an order in for it early. This new art book could very well sell out (it already has at Walmart), so it's better to secure a copy now than wait too long and miss out. If you're a big fan of the game, it certainly seems worth every penny, too.

For starters, the cover art for this book looks stunning, with a dark red background and gold designs. You can get a closer look at it in the image above. And as for what's inside, it's packed with information including behind-the-scenes details about the making of the game; concept art; character sketches; insights into its development, like breaking down its narrative and gameplay system; and much more.

That's an exciting amount of detail to dig into, plus a lovely hardcover casing surrounding it all. If you think it'd be the perfect pick-up for your shelf, or maybe know someone with a big love of Metaphor: ReFantazio who would adore it, don't miss out on this chance to get a preorder in. Again, it could sell out early, so make sure to secure your copy before that happens.

007 First Light launched earlier this year with the promise of future content being added to the TacSim mode, and IO Interactive has finally followed through.

The 007 First Light Extended Operations DLC launches for free today, and adds five different missions to the TacSim mode, along with New Game Plus, new outfits and a photo mode that was somehow missing from the game at launch.

Four of the new operations will revolve around the Valhalla, the supercar you get to play with in the campaign, like, once. According to the trailer, these Valhalla missions look like driving trials, where you'll use the car's weapons and gadgets to complete challenges on a timer. Unfortunately, you won't be able to just substitute it into other missions where you have to drive decidedly less exciting vehicles – at least not yet.

IO Interactive also added a New Game Plus mode, and that's probably what I'm going to be diving into first, especially with the path tracing update that came out a couple weeks ago. The mode also bring along a new 00 difficulty, which is supposedly significantly harder than the Purist difficulty in the original game. Enemies are going to react faster, some NPCs are swapped for more difficult variants, and combat is going to be way more unforgiving with two-hit kills and a tighter parry window.

Beyond the content additions, though, IO Interactive is also improving weapon animations and enemies will now be able to throw you off of a cliff, just like you were able to do to them in the base game. It's only fair, after all.

This is the first content-based DLC for 007 First Light and is a welcome return for one of the best games of the year so far. IGN's 007 First Light review returned a 9/10. We said: "Demonstrably obsessed with bringing the Bond fantasy to life in a way no one has ever managed before, 007 First Light is the best Bond game I’ve ever played."

While I'm sure some folks were hoping for a story expansion, the Extended Operations is free, and should tide people over before James Bond goes on any more official adventures. Hopefully the game will finally come out on Switch 2 next.

The 40th anniversary of Mega Man is just around the corner, celebrating four decades of one of gaming’s most enduring icons. After going hands-on with both Mega Man and Proto Man in the upcoming mainline game Mega Man: Dual Override, IGN had the chance to sit down and chat with the design team.

With the help of an interpreter, I was able to ask Director Shinya Ikuta, Producer Hiroyuki Minamitani, Art Director Yuji Ishihara, and Art Director Shinsuke Komaki, a wide range of questions, from design inspirations for Twinkle Girl, what makes Proto Man and Mega Man different, whether or not we will ever get a Mega Man dating sim, and more. Read on to find the answer to that and other burning questions.

Note that as this was a group interview through a single interpreter, with multiple people contributing, answers will be attributed to the full group, as Capcom.

IGN: This is a big anniversary for Mega Man, and you’ve said the design of this game is meant to celebrate this. Can you tell me a bit about how that anniversary impacts the development goals of this game?

Capcom: Yes, next year is the big 40th anniversary of the Mega Man series. We had decided early on we would be releasing a new game to celebrate this. It’s a celebration of the entire series. There was a lot of discussion across the team about what are elements and things that people would enjoy seeing in a new Mega Man game. It’s safe to say it influenced and inspired the development of Mega Man: Dual Override.

IGN: You said recently that even though this is a mainline game, the number was dropped from the title so as not to intimate newcomers. From a game development standpoint, how do you balance creating a game that is welcoming to newcomers, with creating a game that has the difficulty that experienced players are accustomed to and expect?

Capcom: It’s important for us to be welcoming to players who have never played a Mega Man game. That’s why we’ve incorporated new elements like the custom chip system, and the fact that each stage is broken into three areas. You may have noticed the areas get more difficult over time. That is very much intentional. We wanted to make the earlier areas a little more friendly so that it gradually gets more difficult, but also so that players can collect chips by completing the areas.

In the final version of the game, completing areas gets you chips, which you can use to customize your characters, and that will hopefully help elevate your gameplay, and enable you to overcome challenges that you might normally have a difficult time with. You can also go to a completely different robot masters stage, complete the first [easier] area, collect chips, then go back to an area that you are having trouble with.

At the same time, Twinkle Girl was made to be challenging, but rewarding. That is very much important for any Mega Man game, including Dual Override. Maintaining the expectations that veteran players and longtime fans have is very important.

IGN: In terms of the chips, you mentioned that you get those as you advance through various stages. Do we have a rough idea for how many chips or combinations are available?

Capcom: As you play through the different areas you collect the screws, and then with those screws you can trade in for different chips in the game. We have mentioned that there are going to be over 50 chips that the game will have to offer. These chips vary in different effects, whether it be active moves that you can perform, or them being passive effects. There’s going to be a good amount, and different combinations to use them in.

IGN: The override mechanic itself features a power boost followed by the period of weakness afterwards. What was the inspiration for that?

Capcom: The team wanted to experiment and try out something where Mega Man would transform for a brief period of time, look cool, and he becomes stronger, but also come with a risk, where he loses certain abilities for a brief time. This was an idea that we wanted to execute for quite a while and we were finally able to do it with this.

Although there is some risk involved with executing the override system, the period of time where you are weakened isn’t too strenuous. We hope that people will give it a try, and feel comfortable utilizing it. Even his look in override form looks cool and powerful, but there’s a danger element to it as well. Like maybe there is some sort of risk involved in it too. Hopefully that came through in the design.

IGN: Will you play through the entire game as one character, or can you switch between Mega Man and Proto Man?

Capcom: Within the same progression, once you start a character you will play with them until the completion of the game. Otherwise you can start a playthrough with the other character.

IGN: Does the story vary between the two playthroughs?

Capcom: The overarching story is the same, but as you progress, you’ll get to see their personalities in different ways, depending on which character you play with, and you’ll get to hear different speaking lines.

IGN: When it comes time to come up with the concept for new robot masters, by this point there have been over 100 of them, how does that work? Do people pitch in ideas? Are they informed by the levels? Is there a top secret book that no one knows about that has a list that has been gathered over the years?

Capcom: Actually a lot of people pitch in ideas, saying, “What about this robot, or this idea?” And then other staff will say they want to illustrate certain robots. They are all very enthusiastic about suggestions, and coming up with ideas. It’s also been a while since the last Mega Man game, and everyone has had a long time to brainstorm and come up with different ideas for Mega Man: Dual Override. We’ve had a lot of different Robot Masters, and it’s important to not overlap with the other ones, but more importantly, it’s important to come up with a concept that’s easy to understand, easy to grasp from a player perspective, and make something appealing. It’s challenging, but rewarding at the same time.

IGN: What was the origin of the design and concept for Twinkle Girl?

Capcom: We started out with the motif, or the theme of the boss. For Twinkle Girl it’s fireworks. Her stage is at the Robot Exhibit, she’s supposed to be an entertainer robot at the exhibit. And we wanted to make a female character. She’s also the first Robot Master we designed [for this game], and influenced a lot of the design of the other designs moving forward.

We tried different things, like what if she looked like a big firework, but that didn’t really pan out. Eventually we decided to make her more of a humanoid robot. We had a lot of fun making her.

IGN: This is a modern version of the classic Mega Man format, but over the years, we’ve seen various genre mash-ups, like kart racing, fighting games, RPGs. Are there genres in the future you are interested in exploring? Will we get a Mega Man survival horror game, or the Mega Man dating sim?

Capcom: (laughs) Obviously we can’t really comment on what’s going to happen in the future, but there are a lot of different ideas about how Mega Man can be incorporated into different genres.

IGN: With how cheery and bubbly Twinkle Girl is, do you have any fear that some people won’t want to fight her?

Capcom: Yes! We focused on making Twinkle Girl as appealing and attractive as possible. We would understand if people may have some hesitancy about defeating her. But this is Mega Man’s fate, it’s his heroic duty to defeat the Robot Masters, so that’s something that has to happen.

Obviously the Robot Masters are considered enemies in the world of Mega Man, but they are also the cast within the game. In terms of Twinkle Girl, she runs rampant and goes out of control, but doesn’t have any deadly intentions, which makes it a little more palatable.

IGN: So many video games take inspiration from the 40 years of Mega Man. Do you pay attention to those at all? Or do you focus solely on creating Mega Man in a unique, isolated space, for others to follow?

Capcom: We definitely can’t neglect the Mega Man-like aspects. There are things that make Mega Man, Mega Man, and those are things that we need to continue valuing and cherishing, and making an important aspect for future games and Dual Override. At the same time, it’s not like the team can just make whatever they think is right for a Mega Man game. The team does understand the market, trends, sees player behavior, and sees what is going on around them when making a game.

So the answer is both. It’s a healthy balance of maintaining those two things and doing what is right for our audience.

IGN: Thank you all so much for your time.

Capcom: Thank you.

Parts of this interview were edited for clarity.

Justin Koreis is a regular contributor to IGN. Check him out on BlueSky.

Key Preview Takeaways:

• March of Giants shakes up the somewhat-rigid MOBA genre in a compelling way.
• Matches aim to take 30 minutes or less.
• Strategies aplenty here; you’ve got plenty of options for how to achieve victory.

Two opposing armies seek to lay low their enemies' lines of fortifications, outlying outposts, and supply depots. They rely on coordinated pushes, often suicidal assaults for the many troops involved, to break their enemies' will. They seek to develop or acquire new strategies and technologies to break the stalemate of fighting over an ever-growing no man's land. I'm either describing Trench Warfare or the very popular MOBA genre, or, in the case of the upcoming March of Giants, both at the same time.

It's a MOBA that in the words of its lead designer wants to turn the arena into a battlefield. Players in the 4v4 matches are towering giants infused with mythical power who serve as champions and commanders for their side, shaping their three traditional lanes into a warfront with bastions of defense built up by the players—even pulling soldiers and supplies away to meet needs on another front.

I got to spend a day playing its current in-development build, and I think that it's looking surprisingly promising. I say surprising because the genre has historically been pretty set in stone. It's wild to challenge the titans of it like League of Legends and Dota 2. However, key developers on March of Giants also worked on another game you'd think was challenging immovable competition—Rainbow Six Siege, which in many ways went up against tactical shooter titan Counter-Strike and has survived and thrived to this day.

From what I saw, March of Giants is playing some of the same cards as Siege did, including one key decision: While it plans to incorporate the accessibility you expect from a game made in this decade, March of Giants doesn't dilute the genre. It has the hardcore things that have survived and thrived in the MOBA for years—from big stuff like separate skill leveling and complex itemization to the littler things like last hitting.

But it didn't feel tired. The big change is how the developers want the players to change and manipulate the battlefield. Commanding your retinue of soldiers is another ability in your arsenal as a player, as is placing battleworks that fortify positions and inevitably become ruins that shape the conflict's future.

In a typical match you can expect to contest a lane against one or more enemy heroes, all while trying to get experience points by taking out enemies and snatching up requisition points and supplies from the ruined city sections outside the attack lanes. The requisition is your money—used to upgrade your giant's own body. The supplies become battleworks, which can buy you an advantage in a pushed-forward lane or help your team hold on to a struggling one—a lot of which is down to what kind of hero you're playing and playing against. More on that later.

Battleworks aren't just defenses, either, but ironclad tanks, cavalry charges, and airship soldier drops. There's no RTS-style micro and basecraft going on here, but March of Giants is closer to the MOBA genre's RTS roots than I've felt a game has been in years. It reminds of the glory days of Warcraft 3 custom maps, where all kinds of wild ideas for what a MOBA could be were thought up and discarded.

As the match progresses you start to try and contest your enemy's supply depots and shop points, destroying them to empower your own team's abilities and deny enemies safe harbor. You also fight the opposing team over neutral objectives, like siege dozers that plow into enemy bunkers and towers like little else in the game. They're a perfect catalyst for a teamfight to kick off over, or for a lone sneaky hero to snap away from a distracted opposition. There's also bigger bosses to knock down—a vicious automated defense system and a rogue airship—that reward your team with big boosts to make strong pushes against the enemy, like a siege cannon that can reduce even end-game defenses to rubble.

To win, you just take out two of your enemy's three final citadels. It sounds easy, but the size of the March of Giants map is smaller than the map in other big-name MOBAs. You have breathing room, but once the match hits that 10- or 15-minute mark things start to get very claustrophobic—and any big game-winning push can have the entire enemy team there to defend it posthaste. And then it'll be over. March of Giants is designed to have its matches take roughly 20 to 30 minutes. I saw nothing longer than 25. I think you'll be able to get at least two, maybe three rounds played in an hour. It's a very appealing concept if you're fitting in gaming between other things. Of course, with the build freedom the developers are emphasizing, I could see a match that takes an extreme of 45 minutes or more.

The core of that flexibility is the characters. While many of them look like just another big dude, I'd encourage you to look deeper than the obvious ones on the art. There's also a skeleton. A werewolf. A tree. A cthulhu. A… whatever a Trench Maw is. Each character has a variety of builds: What order you get your skills while leveling, which items you buy, and eventually where you put the scarce augment points that boost your skills by making them longer ranged, able to shoot more projectiles, and a host of other stuff.

Iron Sister, for example, is a threatening mobile support character that can lay down some real damage, slow enemies, and anchor a defense. You could build that character into a strong support, laying out ability damage and team buffs and heals. You could also very easily build her skillset into an obnoxiously tanky menace that does her supporting from the middle of the enemy team. I didn't feel like the match or two I played as or against any given character even began to scratch the surface of what they could be built for.

I love this because it's playing into one of the best parts of a strong MOBA. Less is not more when it comes to character design, no: More is more. No single character is balanced against every other character: The ecosystem of characters as a whole is balanced. The game doesn't start when you spawn, it starts when you pick and counter-pick against the enemy team during the draft phase. That lets the developers embrace wackier out-there character designs like Trench Maw, who burrows around and spawns extra soldiers from the armored bunker on his back, or Dreadnought, whose entire toolkit revolves around locking down lanes with anti-titan bunkers that boost his skills.

While I must emphasize that March of Giants is definitely its own thing, it's a philosophy that reminds me more of Dota 2 than League of Legends, and that, I think, is a promising sign. From the way they spoke, the developers aren't going to put their foot on the scale and limit the freedom of what you can build a character into—but if you discover a wild new combo they're more likely to find out how to buff its counterplays than nerf it.

The new thing in March of Giants—and the thing I expect to see some insane community strategies come out of—are of course the systems for commanding soldiers and building battleworks. Your squad of soldiers is commanded with just two keys. One to send them out in a straight line or redirect their path mid-charge, another to recall them. With that simple system you can use your soldiers to do all manner of stuff. You can send them to gather supplies or money for you. You can break off small parties of them to serve as scouts, checking a spot of woods or ruined buildings for concealed enemies. You need soldiers to break open the defensive shields that allow enemy towers and bunkers to be damaged, and a charge of soldiers is also the most fearsome damage source against enemy giants! Indeed, swarming soldiers deal their own entire, unresistable damage type separate from attacks and ability damage.

Of course, Giants aren't defenseless. You can autoattack larger targets like guns and armored cars. But soldiers are too small to be targeted. Instead, you just left click to stomp. And watching the hundreds of soldiers dance around the screen didn't get old during the time I had to play. In fact, I felt like I was barely scratching the surface of an unexplored, complex new game system. Props to the March of Giants team for that.

That's not even to mention the Giants that change how their soldiers behave or give them buffs. Wolfgang's soldiers turn into a horde of ravenous werewolves, while Voidmaster turns them into tentacular cultists, and Ossuary turns his into a horde of ghosts who can pass through walls—hilarious for stealing supplies out from under the enemy's nose!

The real counter to soldiers is… your own side's soldiers and your battlework defenses. Laying out trenches stops charges cold, or at least slows them down. Anti-giant bunkers mean your enemy can't get close to follow up on a charge they sent in. And both of those are countered by hard pushes with ironclad tanks or cavalry charges. Like real trench warfare, however, you can't fight over the same ground forever. The ruins of buildings prevent things from being built in the same spot later on—a devastated no man's land that emerges naturally as the teams push back and forth through each others' lines of defense.

It keeps the matches snappy and prevents them from becoming stalemates.It's a nice parallel to March of Giants themes as a whole. You're at the peak of this industrial fantasy world's trench warfare—and the Giants are here to break it all down. More is more, baby.

While you're here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we've checked out recently!

• Grand Theft Auto 6
• Fable
• Exodus
• Final Fantasy 7: Revelation

Jon Bolding is a regular contributor to IGN who does most of his gaming on PC. Talk PC gaming with him on X/Twitter at @JonBolds.

UPDATE: Blizzard Community Manager Kaivax has posted on the WoW forums reiterating the policy against real money trading. Blizzard will also be implementing a warning that'll pop up in your trade window that'll warn you about accepting large amounts of gold from people you don't know. The post makes it clear that "our stance on RMT in World of Warcraft is crystal clear: any account belonging to any player that is found to have participated in generating, selling, buying, or receiving illicit gold is subject to the gold being removed, account suspensions, or permanent account closures." Original story continues below.

ORIGINAL STORY: World of Warcraft: Classic has had a gold selling problem for its entire existence, but with Forever, Blizzard seems hard-set on reversing that trend, and some streamers are getting caught in the act.

Before Forever's beta came out, Classic had big problems with its economy due to the popularity of GDKP. For the uninitiated, that was a system where in raids, players would bid gold in order to get items that drop from bosses. That, combined with Blizzard's seemingly lax enforcement of real-money trading, or RMT, ended up with millions of gold being dumped into the Classic economies.

But, when Forever came out, Blizzard said it would be banning GDKP, which was a huge first step in making the Classic+ mode a lot more fair for everyone. The other side of that coin, though, is the RMT. If Blizzard remained lax in enforcing its rules, then people with disposable incomes could find new ways to distort the economy in their favor.

Luckily, it does seem like Blizzard is actually cracking down in the Forever beta. Just in the last couple of days, a couple of Classic streamers have been hit by Blizzard to varying degrees after RMT was suspected.

On Tuesday, WoW commentator N_Tys26 tweeted a clip of WoW streamer Ziqo after Blizzard reportedly reclaimed a load of gold, leaving him with just 9 silver. That meant that he was abandoned in Stonetalon Mountains – a Horde zone – without enough gold to get a flight back to Stormwind.

𝐁𝐋𝐈𝐙𝐙𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐒 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐆𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐎 𝐙𝐈𝐐𝐎

There has been quite the conversation recently about WoW streamer @Ziqoftw receiving large sums of gold on the Forever beta.

As previously covered, Ziqo has maintained his innocence and even come up with some… pic.twitter.com/Vzi5mDQjJO

— N_Tys (@N_Tys26) September 29, 2026

But it seems like Ziqo was let off easy, with his gold just getting wiped, rather than having his account banned. Not every streamer caught has been so lucky, though. N_Tys26 posted another clip of streamer Payo getting "one of his accounts banned" after promoting gold selling on his stream, even though he claims he has "never bought gold" in his life.

Just the day before that clip was posted, though, N_Tys26 shared another clip of Payo begging his audience to buy gold for him. I'm pretty sure that counts. But, while that account got banned, Payo already has another account up and running and will be participating in a $100,000 duelling tournament.

𝐏𝐀𝐘𝐎 𝐁𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐎𝐍 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐀 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐎𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐆𝐎𝐋𝐃 𝐁𝐔𝐘𝐈𝐍𝐆

One of Payo’s beta accounts has been banned for promoting gold buying.@payowow has apologised for promoting gold buying and believes he deserves the ban, as it shows Blizzard is taking RMT… pic.twitter.com/kDDUXXDAVh

— N_Tys (@N_Tys26) October 1, 2026

It is possible that since these WoW streamers' actions are more visible due to, well, streaming, that they're getting more severe action taken than the average player. I've reached out to Blizzard for comment on that situation, and I'll update this story if and when I hear back. But regardless, taking action on streamers engaging with or promoting RMT should at least discourage players from buying gold.

Either way, it's a good sign that Blizzard is cracking down on this behavior now, while World of Warcraft Forever is still in beta. Hopefully, when the game hits its final release on November 4, the economy won't get distorted the same way that Classic did, or at least it'll take longer. Blizzard has also spent a lot of time making sure the game appeals to Classic players, and has cracked down on inappropriate names too, though with mixed results.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 players are up in arms over a coveted shield that is locked behind a Twitch paywall.

Space Marine 2’s 15.0 update launched today and with it came a new set of Twitch drops. Nothing particularly special there, except the fact you need to buy one new recurring or gift subscription ($6) to claim the Victrix Guard Shield.

Fans have called on developer Saber to add this shield to Space Marine 2 ever since the game launched two years ago. It appears briefly in the campaign, with an Ultramarine holding it more in the background of the Battle Barge than anything else. It’s not been available for players to wield before.

As you’d expect, the prospect of handing $6 to Twitch just for one shield has caused quite the stink within the Space Marine 2 community. “I'm not gonna pay for a sub I'm not gonna use,” one person complained. “I just paid 39€ for the year 3 pass, which should be more than enough.” Added another: "I don't know about you all but my ass isn't paying 6 bucks for a shield."

“Incredible levels of greed,” another person said. “I don’t even use Twitch except to get these rewards and you’re telling me that after throwing 40 dollars on a season pass I need to give even more money to some random goober on Twitch to get the shield????” another complained. “lmao this shield has been on the campaign since day 1 and the only way you can get it 2 years later is via twitch stream,” another added. “Hilarious honestly.”

Reps for the game have confirmed that the shield will be made available via the Accolades shop in a future update, but there’s no word when that will be. So, for now, we really do have a Space Marine 2 shield locked behind a $6 Twitch paywall.

The Space Marine 2 Discord and subreddit are packed with similar complaints over this. Space Marine 2 generally speaking has a good reputation for its live service monetization, with only the occasional misstep (voice packs!) from publisher Focus and developer Saber. So this situation with the shield is something of an outlier.

"Sometimes they astonish me with the decision they take," one fan commented. "They'll be cooking and then do absolute doodoo feces like this. What the f**k?"

Jason Jones, one of the co-founders of Bungie and a co-creator of Halo and Destiny, has announced his new studio, Stone Kite, which will work on projects across various entertainment mediums. The studio's first release is One Zero One, a limited-series comic book based on a manuscript written by Jones. Check out some page selects in the gallery below.

The Los Angeles-based studio is a partnership with Margaret Stohl, a Bungie veteran who has written 14 books as well as numerous games and Marvel Comics in her career. She serves as Stone Kite's CEO. “I've spent my career creating books, games, comics, film and television, and I've seen how often the medium that tells the first story ends up defining everything that comes after it,” she said. “Stone Kite is about breaking down those old media silos. Instead of starting in one medium and adapting outward, we bring the best global creators from different disciplines into the room from day one to shape the world together. We change the conversation. We never say that’s how it’s traditionally done. We build communities, and we listen to them. That’s how we’re creating worlds that people can explore for decades, in whatever ways they want.”

“I’ve spent my whole life making games, but I’ve always wanted to write,” Jones said. “I used to bike fifteen miles along Lake Michigan to the used bookstores in North Chicago, and bike home again with a backpack full of sci-fi paperbacks. Margie was the first person to believe I could write a book of my own, the first person to read it, and the one person I trusted to help me develop it into epic entertainment that leaves the world a better place.”

One Zero One is a four-part limited comic series about an impending face-off between humans and a rogue army of AI-driven robots. Part 1 is available now in digital form on the Stone Kite website, which is also where you can preorder a physical copy.

Jones co-founded Bungie in 1991 and stayed with it until his position as Chief Vision Officer was reportedly part of the widespread studio layoffs enacted by Sony earlier this year, which today's Stone Kite announcement would certainly seem to confirm. Jones is regarded as a visionary game designer and rarely gives interviews. In fact, his career-spanning interview with IGN in 2013 was his first interview in over a decade at the time, and he's rarely spoken publicly since.

Bungie, meanwhile, which had officially ended support for Destiny 2 earlier this year, announced last week that it is in fact not finished yet.

Key Preview Takeaways:

• Each additional shift you take makes things tougher.
• You can’t directly attack; you can only use items to fight back.
• You can play solo, but co-op will be the way to go if you can.

Toy Story might be pop culture’sthe most recognizable take on the idea that our toys have a life of their own when we're not around, but Mob Entertainment’s Poppy Playtime might be among the more unique approaches to take on the concept. Its story, about shoving sentience into the products in a toy factory and those very abominations rebelling against their creators, is a sort of dark horror that has really spoken to a dedicated and growing audience of fans across games, film, and more. And though Escape From Playtime isn’t the studio’s first attempt at a multiplayer game, building one inside the Poppy Playtime universe and putting players inside the furry bodies and twisted minds of the monsters of the factory hopes to be their most robust attempt.

We got to play a few rounds of the co-op extraction looter ahead of its open playtest starting October 1, and I found it surprisingly challenging in mostly fun ways despite the finicky controls and abundance of small bugs.

As a person unfamiliar with Poppy Playtime, I found Sr. Comms Manager Tyler Sanchez’s rundown of the lore to be helpful. Lots of attention has been paid to making the environments, enemies, and all the little details in between as accurate and respectful of the world they’ve made and that people have immersed themselves into as possible, as well as leaving breadcrumbs for real lore heads to devour. “The community is VERY passionate about the lore,” he punctuated his summary with. A quick perusal of the subreddit shows this to be true pretty immediately — quite a few of the top threads are people sharing early art or debating the merits of certain interpretations of story morsels.

Once we got split into groups and dropped into the factory, I really appreciated how creepy and also silly all of these things were in motion. Walls and furniture askew and messy and towering over our miniscule bodies. Colorful bits and bobs all covered by jagged shadows or washed with eerie, sickly reds or greens. Our teddy characters, the Smiling Critters, whose namesake mugs curl uncomfortably from ear to ear. Mob’s animation origins really make the macabre merriness stick to you as you watch monsters slink through the darkness in pursuit of you.

Night Shift

QA Manager Jostin Bilyeu’s rundown of the gameflow was pleasantly chaotic and elaborate, but boiled down to a simple goal: Our team must scavenge loot from around the factory and return it to Barry, a googly-eyed cart, without being caught and killed by the twisted experiments that roam the building’s corridors. Different bits of loot have different point values and rounds, called shifts here, have minimum point quotas that must be reached before you can leave the factory with the victory and move on to the next shift. Easier said than done, of course.

Grabbing loot is pretty straightforward, but you have a very limited amount of inventory space to keep them in. You really have to be discerning when managing the four slots if you're trying to be efficient. The added wrinkle is that most of the items you’ll find have some sort of utility that can be helpful in navigating the labyrinthian factory, like glow sticks you can mark important features or leave trails with. I got a kick out of the airhorn, which can be useful in helping your teammates find you with the unfortunate downside of also letting the enemy know your approximate location.

Even when our squad of four had our pockets filled to the brim, we never had enough to hit the threshold in one wave, so we’d have to double back deeper into the factory on the hunt for more valuables. The deeper we ventured, the more the factory itself became its own oppressive enemy. With so many halls and doors that seem to sprawl out endlessly, not to mention the verticality of it all with rooms that potentially go as high as they do wide inviting us to use our ability to climb on practically anything to scour from floor to ceiling. Most of the climbing I did was pretty sketchy, thanks to both my unfamiliarity to the controls and the bugginess that comes with every surface in the game being potentially sticky at the press of a button.

Hazards revealed themselves the deeper we went, like a series of rooms consumed by noxious red CatNap gas, toxic to us if we stayed in it for too long. To clear the gas we had to navigate a path of school room desks whose tops peeked out over the noxious cloud, hopping from desk to desk through a series of rooms in order to pull a series of switches scattered among them. Again, easier said than done, as the floaty jumping could make for some dicey near misses, but I appreciated the way events like this modified the overall task.

You’re Not Alone

And then there’s the other denizens of the dilapidated workhouse that really don’t want you to leave. Of the four enemy types that possibly roam those corridors, I encountered three. Little green Boogie Bots were the bulk of the opponents, rolling around in patrol loops, sounding an alarm when they spotted one of us, and speeding towards us in an attempt to blow us all to bits. The Cat Bees float around like ghosts and latch onto players, and the only way to get them off as they slowly tick your life away is if an ally throws something at them. And then there was Miss Delight, an apparent fan favorite character who wanders the halls almost like a Big Daddy from Bioshock. She is a terrifying threat, and even though my encounter with her was brief — I ran and hid under a box as soon as I got the slightest hint that she was around — the menacing aura was real and palpable.

Monster types are limited, but I didn’t feel like I needed more variety to stay on my toes because each of them are so different and require different strategies to counterplay. I always had to keep a quick exit route in mind for the bots, and was incentivized not to stray too far from the group because of the bees. I also found that, for a game without direct combat (you can only throw your items at enemies and hope for the best), out-maneuvering these foes felt engaging enough that I didn't miss having the option to just simply bash something to death.

When we hit our quota and escaped, we moved on to the next shift, where the necessary number of points to extract raises. And so does the difficulty, as the procedurally generated factory map gets larger, and is filled with a greater variety of environmental hazards and more enemies. The longer you stay in the map looking for loot, the more deadly it gets, as monsters get better at finding you and the poisonous CatNap gas starts to fill the halls of the place. We struggled to stay alive in shift 2 long enough to see how grim it could get, though.

Survive Together or Die Alone

Escape from Playtime has a heavy emphasis on co-op and teamwork, evident in a special room we found that had giant piano keys scattered across it and a song we had to play by pressing the keys in a specific order. Was this puzzle solvable solo? Hell, the whole game can be played in single player, but the pain in the ass it would have been for a little bit of loot and opening a short cut would have made it untenable. That said, the only ways to communicate with other players areis through a single, contextless ping or the proximity voice chat. And without matchmaking, you’ll have to bring your own friends to the party (or I guess join a stranger’s hosted game?), which in its own right could be a challenge as tall as Huggy Wuggy.

Though more challenging than may meet the eye at first, Escape From Playtime’s kleptomaniacal co-op is fun and has a lot of potential. It has steep competition from all sides, as the number of multiplayer games in all genres has explodeds exponentially, but if overnight successes of games like Mecca Chameleon is any indication, small- scope romps with friends can always find a foothold with the right community, and Mob has that in spades.

Enter the factory at your owl peril when Escape From Playtime hits Early Access on October 21.

While you're here, check out these recent previews of other big upcoming games we've checked out recently!

• Grand Theft Auto 6
• Fable
• Exodus
• Final Fantasy 7: Revelation

Jarrett Green is a frequent contributor to IGN. Talk video games with him on X/Twitter at @Jarrettjawn.

Editor's Note: This review currently only covers Gears of War: E-Day's story campaign, as that’s all reviewers were given access to ahead of release. It will be updated with a finalized score and multiplayer impressions once we spend some time with the Versus and Horde Siege modes.

To the casual observer, Gears of War has always been a heavy-metal third-person cover shooter about a bunch of meatheads with chainsaws attached to their guns fighting aliens. But what Gears fans know all too well is that the real secret to the series’s two decades of success isn’t the killer graphics, the smart cover mechanics, or the gloriously gratuitous gore – although those things are all certainly significant parts of the recipe. It’s the heart. Marcus and Dom’s brotherhood. JD or Del’s sacrifice (depending on what you chose to do in Gears 5). Dom’s relentless love for Maria. And so my biggest question heading into Gears of War: E-Day, a prequel to the first game set 14 years prior on the day the Locust emerged from underneath the planet Sera, was how it would hang onto that heart when we already knew our armor-clad bros would definitely be alive by the end. I’m thrilled to say that E-Day carries its own satisfying emotional weight, with additional welcomed backstory for Marcus and Dom leading the way – oh, and the action is pretty top-notch, too.

E-Day begins with our Coalition of Ordered Government (COG) heroes, Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago, completing a ceremonial tour to honor their service in the finally-ended 79-year Pendulum Wars. We get glimpses of how each of them is reckoning with the end of the only thing they’ve ever known: Marcus is ready to re-enlist and hoping Dom will join him, while Dom is ready to go home to his wife Maria and their two young children, who are growing up without him. Of course, things quickly go to Hell – or rather, Hell comes up to them. Gears of War: E-Day does an excellent job of conveying both the uncertainty and the horror of what’s happening to these characters, even when we as players know exactly what’s going on.

By happenstance, Marcus and Dom get unofficially paired up with ex-Gear Mags Carter and rookie Gear Lucas Reyes, who happen to be at the same bar when the Locust tremors begin, before the quartet officially becomes Bravo Squad once the COG starts organizing its defenses. E-Day deserves a lot of credit here: In a prequel like this where you’re already attached to the leads, it would be easy for Carter and Reyes to be throwaway side characters who exist only to further the stories of our two well-known heroes. But E-Day makes time for your lesser-known Bravo squadmates, dedicating entire meaningful and enjoyable sections to establishing them in this world and getting you to care about them.

The unfolding nightmare of E-Day is reflected in both the types of Locust monsters you face as the campaign progresses as well as the sorts of weapons you’ll need to put them back in the ground. Easily-dispatched Wretches and run-of-the-mill, Hammerburst-wielding Drones are on the front lines as Bravo Squad wonders what the hell it’s up against in the invasion’s opening hours. You’ll take them down with Gears of War staples like the Gnasher shotgun and Lancer, both the bayonet-clad original version and the prototype of the chainsaw-equipped revision. Yes, you’ll get your hands on Gears’s most famous firearm pretty early, and you even get to witness its fun little origin story.

But as you move through the first hours of the Locust invasion, Bravo Squad is continually confused and terrified at the increasingly deadly horrors trying to kill them. The monster menagerie is, naturally, a mix of foes you have and haven’t seen before in other Gears of War games, and the battles get steadily more white-knuckle as you make your way through the five-act story. Giant, frog-like hopping freaks that arc multi-gallon acidic loogies at you. Heavies that come in multiple varieties, most menacingly the one that fires a medium-range Gorehook – a hook on a chain that will typically down you in one hit.

On that note, one of my few complaints about Gears of War: E-Day is related to the down-but-not-out situations you’ll find yourself in throughout the campaign. When, not if, you get downed, your allies will occasionally be standing right next to you and not revive you. In fairness, it wasn’t a constant occurrence, but there were numerous times throughout my 15-18 hour first playthrough when I got stomped to death by a Locust heavy because one of my buddies either stood next to me and didn’t get me up, ran off and left me for dead, or never even got over to me as I mashed the X button to cling to life for a while. The immediate solution for this is to play through E-Day in four-player online co-op (two-player split-screen is the limit on a single Xbox), but I sure hope a patch resolves this inconsistent AI behavior sooner rather than later as well.

Guns Aplenty

As with the Locust enemies, E-Day’s weapons are a mix of old and new, and my goodness do I love them. Every weapon has a unique purpose to suit a particular combat strategy. And man, it still feels awesome to blast a Locust Heavy to bits with the Gnasher shotgun, cut a Drone into pieces with the Lancer Prototype’s chainsaw attachment, or explode a Locust sniper’s head with a scoped-Longshot kill. But there’s so much more in there beyond those Gears classics. The Breechshot, first introduced in the often-forgotten Gears of War: Judgment, ended up being one of my go-tos the longer the campaign went on, as it offered solid range and stopping power without being as cumbersome as something like the Longshot sniper rifle.

But there are a lot of weapons I’d give shoutouts to as well, like the Incinerator, which shotgun-blasts a burst of flesh-melting Imulsion; the Ripper, which is basically the Gears-universe equivalent of a SAW; and the ol’ favorite Torque Bow, which has a hell of a windup but then unleashes an explosive arrow at your target. I loved the weapon complement here, as well as the options that deep roster of firearms afforded me in some of the campaign’s later battles.

And it’s not just that all of these weapons are fun to use in the right situation. They can also all be modified and upgraded through E-Day’s new Weapon Mod and Tactical Gear system. You’ll encounter dozens of yellow Hard Cases lightly hidden throughout the world for you to find. Each contains a mod for one weapon or another, such as accuracy enhancers, scopes, or clip extenders. Completing optional secondary objectives around the major industrial city of Kalona where E-Day takes place also grants these same rewards. Each weapon has four mod slots, which you’ll unlock as you go, and I found myself constantly tweaking each weapon to find the right mix of add-ons that suited my playstyle. As such, I was plenty motivated to find every Hard Case I could and complete every secondary objective possible.

In addition to this is the Tactical Gear that modifies your armor, giving you your choice of a few squad-affecting special abilities that recharge on a cooldown timer after you use them. Again, you’ll unlock more as you progress, but once I got my hands on the Stim that allowed me to heal myself and any teammates within its radius for a short time, I was never tempted by any of the other choices. All of these customization options evolve the classic Gears of War combat in a welcome but not radical way that I appreciate, while liberally placed Supply Caches let you cycle weapons and mods rather frequently if you so choose.

And you’ll be glad for the ability to rearrange your weapon loadout often in E-Day’s mini-boss fights and full-blown boss battles. Almost all of them are memorable in a good way. With, again, a mix of old and new “faces,” these were often barely-scrape-by bouts during my playthrough and ones I welcomed both when they arrived and when I emerged victorious.

E-Day is packed with beautiful locations. The destroyed downtown of Kalona; the pitch-black, Locust-dug caves underneath it; the almost sinister-looking Imulsion refinery; the peaceful mountaintops outside the city. Although the entire campaign doesn’t take place there, you’ll spend a healthy amount of time in Kalona, and the massive but dense battle spaces there are an excellent evolution of the mostly empty open-world areas from Gears 5. The freedom feels far more organic and meaningful here, as there are so many interesting things around almost every corner.

In addition to the aforementioned secondary objectives that grant meaningful Weapon Mod upgrades, there are hidden objects with optionally-viewed details that add a bit of color to a world in the process of recovering from a 79-year civil war, only to be invaded and destroyed by the Locust in a few days. The gorgeous visuals are brought down only by infrequent but noticeable framerate hitches, even while playing in Performance Mode on the Xbox Series X. As such, I can’t recommend playing on the 30fps Quality Mode – at least not before a patch or two.

On a side note, I appreciate that E-Day doesn’t do the all-too-common “make the player run the gauntlet of everything they’ve already fought, but multiply it” endgame sequence. Instead, your mettle is tested plenty of times along the way, with ample quiet moments to punctuate the loud action. And the ending is, I’ll say without spoiling anything, satisfying, which isn’t an easy thing to pull off when, as I mentioned, we already know that Marcus and Dom make it out of E-Day alive. And thank goodness, because I need more quippy Marcus Fenix one-liners in my life; I can’t get enough of them.

Campaign Verdict:

By going back to the beginning, Gears of War: E-Day returns to the heart of this series: Marcus Fenix, Dom Santiago, and a Locust horde that’s as terrifying as it is dangerous. E-Day pulls off the tightrope act of giving us a heartfelt prequel with strong characters even when we know how it ends. On a more mechanical level, it also evolves the enemies, weapons, and combat you’d expect to deliver a Gears of War campaign that stands toe-to-toe with any of the others. It wraps up with 10 years still left to go before Marcus gets tossed in prison ahead of the events of the first Gears of War, so here’s hoping the next one stays in the past for a while longer – and that we don’t have to wait another seven years for it to arrive.

Gear of War: E-Day developers are reportedly in no mood to celebrate the game's imminent release, following months of overtime and fresh fears of further layoffs.

That's according to a Eurogamer report that includes comments from various sources at The Coalition, Microsoft's dedicated Gears of War team that has been working on E-Day for the past five years.

Microsoft has made numerous rounds of redundancies over that time, though staff at The Coalition say they previously felt somewhat insulated from the job losses due to their work on such a high-profile project. But as their time building Gears of War: E-Day has wound down — a period that has also reportedly seen them "crunching hard" — there are now serious concerns that layoffs may soon be on the horizon for them, too.

"The mood is certainly 'let's not celebrate the game until we're three months post launch, just in case', which is very unusual," one source said.

"We're just expecting the next wave [of layoffs], or being reorganized under Activision or something later this year," claimed another.

Xbox boss Asha Sharma unveiled a plan to cut 3,200 jobs across the company this year back in July, when the first 1,600 redundancies were announced. Then, last month, a second batch of layoffs were confirmed alongside major structural changes that saw Halo Studios downsized and the franchise handed to Activision, which will also manage veteran British studio Rare. With such seismic changes for Xbox's flagship shooter franchise, suddenly nothing seemed as certain for its Gears of War team.

Staff say they are now "on edge" for the hammer to drop, especially following the "very demoralizing" layoff of Gears of War: E-Day story director Juan Vaca, who was recently culled just two weeks before the game's release.

"I can only imagine the heartbreak of spending all those years on a game to have the final stretch ripped away, completely out of your control," another source said, commented on Vaca's departure. "It's like you planned for a year on a meal for your family where everyone will be there and the day of, you get locked out of the building or something and can't join in."

Microsoft declined to provide an official response to Eurogamer for its report, though it is understood that Microsoft has acknowledged staff have worked hard on getting E-Day out the door, and that this extra effort includes out-of-hours toil that will be repaid in additional holiday.

Xbox is yet to detail when its final round of layoffs this year will take place, though even if The Coalition is told it's safe for now, some staff have suggested they still won't breathe a sight of relief. "It's hard to believe anything [Microsoft leadership] say anymore after discarding staff in this manner," one employee stated.

Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described the Xbox layoffs as "streamlining" at the company that was "great to see."

Classic features such as taking enemies hostage as "meat shields" and dueling with the chainsaw attachments on Lancer assault rifles won't be in Gears of War: E-Day at launch. According to a developer blog from The Coalition, it wasn't possible to build these features out for launch because this prequel was built from scratch, rather than on the bones of previous Gears of War titles.

"We started E-Day with an empty hard drive building our entire gameplay sandbox from scratch to ensure a more unified gameplay experience across Campaign, PVE and PVP," The Coalition said. "This new sandbox also allowed for innovation in cover, combat and enemies. The trade-off being that including every legacy feature from Gears of War was not possible for launch."

The developer said it is working hard to deliver these features, along with Private Lobbies and leaderboards, post-launch or in its next title. If The Coalition makes another one, I hope they call it Gears of War: Bidet.

E-Day's first Season kicks off with the Early Access release (today at 8am PT / 11am ET) and runs for eight weeks until December 1. The Season includes all launch maps, modes, and cosmetics, as well as three seasonal events: Halloween, 20 Years of Gears, and Thanksgibbing. Ranked modes arrives later, on October 13.

Elsewhere, the blog talks about big changes to the Gnasher, Gears of War's iconic shotgun that turns other players into giblets.

In previous games, hip firing the Gnasher resulted in a blast in whatever direction your character was facing. In E-Day, this system blends camera aiming and muzzle position to give players more control over those last-minute boomstick blasts.

Last month, Xbox laid off a further 268 members of staff, with the story director of E-Day among those cut. In June 2024, Microsoft pledged to continue the story of Gears of War and wrap up the cliffhanger posed by Gears 5's ending, despite creating a prequel first with E-Day.

Whether that still comes to fruition or not likely depends on the success of E-Day, with developers at The Coalition reportedly already concerned they'll face cuts as soon as the upcoming game launches. "It's hard to believe anything they say anymore," a The Coalition developer told Eurogamer.

Just last week, Marathon's developers laid out a new roadmap for the game that'd bring PvE and deathmatch modes to the game, but now Game Director Del Chafe has reassured fans that the extraction mode will not be sunsetted.

When Bungie revealed the roadmap last week, some people were worried that the more hardcore extraction mode would be neglected in favor of the new modes, especially after the developer admitted that Marathon flopped because it was too hard. But, using the Marathon Development Team Twitter account, Chafe reassured folks, saying, "We want to be clear, Extraction is still a major part of Marathon, and we're also going to continue updating it as we look to the future of the game."

Hey everyone, Del here.

Last week we had a great time talking about the upcoming PvE and experimental PvP modes for Symbiosis in December. We want to be clear, Extraction is still a major part of Marathon, and we're also going to continue updating it as we look to the future…

— Marathon Development Team (@MarathonDevTeam) September 30, 2026

Chafe also asked fans for feedback: "We'd love to hear from you on what you're enjoying about Extraction today, what you think needs work, and what you wish was there." Of course, Marathon fans obliged.

Marathon streamer Drewsky replied, saying that the among the main problems facing the extraction mode are spawn rushes and harsh death spirals that price players out. User nsorrey36 echoed Drewsky, saying, "Echoing a lot of sentiment where it feels like lobby wiping is the go-to strategy of the run."

It seems like the perfect solution to Marathon's problems would be to introduce the new game modes coming in the Symbiosis update, while also finding a way to incentivize extraction players to not immediately start running for spawn points in the hopes of catching someone off guard. Luckily, it sounds like Bungie is taking any and all community feedback to heart, so there's actually a chance that extraction will look a lot different in a year.

All of these changes for Marathon are happening at the same time that Bungie is working on bringing Destiny back. The developer reassured gamers earlier this month that it wasn't done with Destiny, and is working on bringing back vaulted Destiny 2 content.

As the fantasy RPG GOAT, it really doesn’t take a whole lot for me to replay The Witcher 3. I’ve happily done so the numerous other times developer CD Projekt Red has revamped this masterpiece, but The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered seems to be the biggest overhaul to the beloved tale yet. A free update for anyone who owns the original, so many different parts of this already excellent game have been improved – from combat to movement to skill progression (not to mention the modernized graphics). After about 10 hours working my way through White Orchard and beyond, it’s already extremely clear that this is the best The Witcher 3 has ever been.

Combat is less floaty and enemies are (slightly) less stupid

It’s probably not controversial to say that one of the worst parts of this otherwise amazing adventure was the combat. Even after at least a few updates to it over the years, it still mostly felt floaty, a bit on the sloppy side, and enemies were a huge fan of just standing there and waiting for their turn to get decapitated. The modernizations made to combat in this remaster are its biggest step forward, as a whole bevy of tweaks have been made to address various sticking points. Geralt attacks faster and enemies are quicker to match your pace, which makes the process of chopping through your ninth pack of wolves much less irritating.

The camera and lock-on functionality have been the highlight so far, as you can now toggle between large groups of enemies with ease, and without the camera losing its mind. I didn’t even use the lock-on system in the original specifically because it was so unreliable, so being able to do so now has taken some serious getting used to. In general, the camera feels much better – less tightly locked to your back so you can handle groups of enemies more reliably (though those darn Neckers still like to sneak up on ya), and so far I’ve encountered far fewer situations where I felt like I was fighting my view as much as I was the monsters.

I’ve also noticed some new enemy behaviors that make swordplay more interesting, specifically how they’ll now retreat instead of letting you trounce them with steel, launch less telegraphed counterattacks, and disappear and reappear behind you (in the case of ghost monsters). All that did a much better job of making me feel like I was fighting intelligent creatures. Of course, compared to some of the stuff we see in action games today, I still do feel like the enemy behavior shows its age, and it was never all that great to begin with. Still, this is enough of an improvement to make combat feel much more engaging than it once did, significantly upgrading one of this adventure’s weakest points.

Geralt moves so much faster and Roach is less of a cretin

Movement is one of those small details that can grate the heck out of you in a massive RPG like The Witcher 3, slowly filling you with rage over the course of hundreds of hours. In the original, Geralt was often slow and had a lot of trouble getting over things. His rigid animations sometimes made me avoid ladders altogether because I just didn’t have the patience for it. In the remaster, Geralt absolutely flies over fences and navigates vertical obstacles with relative ease, to the point where it actually felt weird to see him be so nimble. I recall losing over an hour of progress in the 1.0 version when Geralt fell off a ledge no taller than a barstool and managed to break every bone in his body. This was reduced already in the next-gen update from 2022, but combined with the other speed and mobility improvements here, it almost feels like a completely different game – to the point where I’ve begun to wonder if it’ll make the map feel smaller than before as I get deeper in.

Similarly, Roach is no longer the annoying idiot she once was, now sporting much more intuitive controls that make her less likely to get caught on trees (which she now passes through if she’s just brushing against them while galloping), or end up on top of a barn. Most importantly, you can now loot herbs and whatnot without getting off your horse, which is maybe the single best improvement this remaster offers (dismounting every 10 seconds to pick a flower drove me to the brink of madness in 2015).

Skill trees are less restrictive

A pet peeve of mine in RPGs is when skill trees prevent you from playing around with different builds until you get deep into the progression. This is something The Witcher 3 suffered from quite a bit in the early hours, as so many of the impactful abilities were locked behind walls you couldn’t remove until late in the journey. The revised trees in the remaster take a page out of Cyberpunk 2077’s book by making perks more readily available earlier on, so you can customize how you’d like Geralt to get his Witchering done. I’m still early in my journey on this run, but I’m already happy to see that I won’t have to wait until I’ve invested a whole 12 points in a branch before I can unlock any good skills – so long as I’ve purchased a skill along the route I’m focusing on, I can now progress down a certain skill path with fewer obstructions.

Oh, yeah, this remaster looks pretty great too

Maybe this goes without saying for a remaster, but this is a pretty massive graphical upgrade, even over the one The Witcher 3 got for the current generation of consoles just four years ago. The lighting is much more dramatic, environmental textures are way more detailed, shadows and reflections are much more consistent across the board (especially on PC), and Geralt’s hair looks way less like a blurry mess than it once did. Again, this is all stuff that you’d hope would be the bare minimum when remastering a 12-year-old game, but it still warrants a shoutout. There’s even a new photo mode for those of you who want to take glamor shots of Geralt in all his new, high definition glory.

The one thing caveat here is that performance is still not perfect, and I still ran into a dropped frame or two on both console and PC. It’s a small price to pay for how much better things look, though, especially with the incredibly short load times I saw. And considering that the original had some framerate issues of its own, it’s not like anything has gotten worse here.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered’s greatest asset isn’t that it adds anything the original sorely lacked, but rather that it removes some of the biggest roadblocks to fun the 1.0 version was saddled with. Combat is more challenging but also easier to enjoy, movement is quicker and less irritating, and revised skill trees allow for more freedom. Even if it doesn’t manage to fix some of the technical issues (plus I’m sure there are some bugs waiting for me to encounter them that haven’t reared their ugly heads yet), it manages to make this classic RPG more enjoyable in 2026, and that’s worth yet another ride down its well-trodded roads.

Crimson Desert's first expansion was only just announced at the State of Play in September with a very ambitious October 15 release date. Unfortunately, it seems that target was a little too ambitious.

Pearl Abyss announced that the Charting the Unknown expansion would be delayed by two weeks, in order to "deliver a more polished and stable gameplay experience." But even with this delay, the new expansion is coming remarkably close to the game's initial release, and hopefully the developer will have even more content planned for the future.

The expansion comes just seven months after Crimson Desert intially released back on March 19. And while the reception to the game was mixed, a lot of its initial issues have since been ironed out, turning the game into one of the breakout hits of the year.

Hello, Greymanes. We would like to share an update regarding Crimson Desert’s upcoming DLC. pic.twitter.com/mKNmYn10jX

— Crimson Desert (@CrimsonDesert_) September 30, 2026

This first expansion will expand the game to a new zone, and will bring sea exploration to the already expansive world. Charting the unknown will also bring more robust base building, with the trailer suggesting you'll be able to actually build new buildings, which will only add another hundred hours to my play time.

Crimson Desert's Charting the Unknown expansion will now launch on October 29, and will set you back $24.99. And just like the base game, it'll be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC.

A modder who was porting GTA 5 to Nintendo Switch taunted Rockstar Games and was immediately hit with a cease and desist.

The modder, known as Mojso, was planning to bring GTA 5 and GTA Online to Nintendo Switch for modded versions of the console and got a bit cocky. After Rockstar Games recently posted its guidelines for modding (which forbids unofficial ports), the modder posted: "Try me Rockstar, [I don't give a f**k.]"

Three days later, the modder's Discord server was taken down for copyright infringement, but it didn't seem to deter them. After many warned them about how litigous Rockstar Games and parent company Take-Two are, the modder suggested they aren't worried about it: "Copyright infringement is anything but enforced in Serbia."

Less than a week later, the modder confirmed they had received a cease and desist from Take-Two Interactive and thanked the company for its "mercy." As a result, the port will never see the light of day, as Mojso has stated that they don't want to risk any legal issues.

"Paralympics Productions is shutting down on October 3rd. Thank you everyone who supported us through tough times and lenghty development. I am sorry for not fulfilling your expectations and leaving you high and dry. I am thankful for Take-Two's mercy so this is the definitive end," they wrote.

When people pointed back to the modder's post about taunting Rockstar, Mojso noted that they didn't actually expect Rockstar to do anything.

"They tried me," Mojso said. "[What the] f**k [do] you want me to do? Fight with them in court? I wasn't expecting them to hit back hard."

The modder had been working on this port using leaked GTA 5 source code, which has resulted in a bevy of other leaks and issues. Ultimately, it's probably in your best interest to not taunt massive corporations that are known for hunting down people that mess with their IP.

Ordering food through DoorDash is probably one of the biggest examples of how modern life has grown incredibly convenient, but apparently, there are still some people who think scrolling through an app is too much work. Now, you'll be able to just text DoorDash and have it order food for you without needing to figure out what, exactly, you feel like eating.

DoorDash announced the feature earlier this week, and the idea is that you'll text an AI agent through iMessages – apparently Android support will come sometime in the future – an idea of what you want for dinner. Then, DoorDash's AI agent will browse through all the restaurants in your area and give you suggestions based on your past orders and what you included in your text.

One of the examples DoorDash includes is asking its bot for your usual Friday night order, and it'll remember what you usually get, along with any modifications you usually make. This is already pretty easy to do within the app, which usually has your last few orders at the top of the screen anyways. Ironically, texting a robot for your usual order might end up having more button presses than just opening the app and ordering normally.

In some ways, this actually feels like a blast from the past. SMS ordering used to be a thing, before the rise of smartphones. Dominoes introduced a way to order pizza by sending them an emoji all the way back in 2015, according to TechTimes. Though, to be fair, that was just one restaurant.

If you want to cut scrolling through an app out of your DoorDash routine, you can sign up to test this feature on DoorDash's website, but only if you're on iOS. Android users will just have to order food the new-old-fashioned way for a while longer. It's not clear when this feature will leave beta, but either way, it seems like ordering food will get even easier, regardless of whether or not it actually needed to.

Wizards of the Coast trots out a new MTG Secret Lair on a monthly basis at this point, and while crossovers aren't anything new for the franchise, this new 'superdrop' brings Jim Henson's Labyrinth and KPop Demon Hunters to the card game for the first time.

Wizards of the Coast has just announced the Corn Maze Superdrop, clearly in time for Halloween, but instead of going with a darker horror twist like it did with the Junji Ito drop, all of these collections are relatively lighthearted. Of course, for most people, the biggest draws will be the KPop Demon Hunters and Labyrinth drops – the latter of which has three collections – along with a Marvel Zombies collection.

The three Labyrinth drops are the highlight of the Corn Maze Superdrop, though. The Secret Lair x Jim Henson's Labyrinth Fear Me, Love Me drop is entirely focused on Goblin kindred cards, and is headlined by Muxus, Goblin Grandee, a Goblin Staple, posing as Jareth, Goblin King with a beautiful illustration of David Bowie. Of course, there's also a copy of Claim the Firstborn as The Kidnapping of Toby. For some reason, though, this drop also has a copy of Trinisphere, which doesn't really fit into any conceivable goblin deck, but at least it has some cool art of Bowie holding a bunch of orbs.

It wouldn't be a Secret Lair Superdrop without some nigh-unreadable cards, and that's where the Secret Lair x Jim Henson's Labyrinth: Through the Labyrinth comes in. The art on these cards are all gorgeous, though I could totally see some of them being hard to parse from across the table. Still, Wizards decided to print Leveler in this drop, which you can combine with The Beamtown Bullies or Thassa's Oracle to make your pod wish they were dropped in the Labyrinth.

There's also a KPop Demon Hunters drop, which has some incredible cards with combo potential. This one comes with a copy of Freed From The Real and Underworld Breach, both of which will be notorious in decks that are built around them. There's a reason Breach has been banned in multiple formats, after all.

And Wizards is still trying to work more Marvel content into Magic, this time with a Marvel Zombies drop that's focused on Zombie kindred cards. But, as cool as it would be to have a commander deck helmed by Zombie Thor or Zombie Scarlet witch, none of the cards in this drop are really worth the high price you'd be paying for them, unless you really love Marvel Zombies.

Some of the other drops are seriously cool, too. The Manufactured Grounds by See Machine drop brings some incredible art to the original artifact land cycle from Mirrodin. That drop probably doesn't make a lot of sense from a purely financial perspective, but damn, does it look cool. Then there's the Peace, Love and Treefolk drop, which gives Timber Protector its first meaningful reprint besides the Lord of the Rings commander decks.

I'm probably going to pick up all of the Labyrinth drops, and if you want to grab one (or all) of them too, the Corn Maze Superdrop will be available starting at 9am PT / 12pm ET on October 12. Wizards of the Coast will even toss in a Labyrinth-flavored copy of Maze of Ith on any order over $199.