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  • The Finals gets surprise release during the 2023 Game Awards

    The Finals gets surprise release during the 2023 Game Awards

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    The Finals, one of the buzziest new shooters of 2023 despite only existing in beta, finally has a release date. It’s out… right now! Developer Embark Studios announced the news at the 2023 Game Awards.

    Created by ex-Battlefield devs, The Finals is a free-to-play first-person shooter in which various teams of three shoot each other a bunch to see which team is the best at shooting the other teams. Embark Studios ran a closed beta in the spring and an open beta spanning from late October through early November that racked up 7.5 million players.

    One of the huge draws of The Finals is that it’s not a battle royale. There’s no circle or storm or slowly encroaching safe zone. You also don’t really get punished when you get eliminated, save for a brief 20-second respawn timer. Matches last no longer than 15 minutes. It feels like a throwback to the deathmatch modes that dominated the mid-2000s, except it’s as gorgeous and technically impressive as any other modern shooter. Nostalgia for an earlier, arguably simpler era of gaming is no doubt a factor in The Finals’ popularity.

    The other huge draw is that every single building can explode.

    Last week, I got a chance to play The Finals during a closed media session meant to illustrate The Finals’ final state before its launch. I cannot express how frequently the thing I was standing on exploded.

    Image: Embark Studios

    For the most part, that tracks with Polygon’s more extensive preview of The Finals from earlier this year. The general concept is that you’re a contestant in some sort of shiny, violent, futuristic game show. Matches take place on maps like Monaco and Las Vegas. (Get it? Because gambling!) When you’re eliminated, you turn into a pile of coins. (Also because gambling.) Buildings, however, don’t suffer such a cartoonish fate. Shooting a wall or floor with an RPG causes it to collapse into a pile of rubble. When a building takes enough structural damage, the whole thing comes crashing down — even if you’re meticulously perched on the eaves, trying to get the drop on an opposing team.

    You can choose from three classes, simply named “light,” “medium,” and “heavy,” each replete with all the gear and movement speed (or lack thereof) you’d expect from those barebones classifications. For the session, Embark paired attendees off into squads of three. We played two different quick-play modes: Quick Cash and Bank It. Both modes tally your score not by how many eliminations you have but by how much cash you can steal from opponents and deliver to various drop points. But I’ll be honest: The shooting in The Finals is so distractingly solid — so emblematic of the golden age of Battlefield — I couldn’t help but spend my time prioritizing spraying and praying over learning “rules” and “objectives.” You’re welcome, teammates!

    A player of The Finals runs up stairs behind a teammate wearing bunny ears.

    Image: Embark Studios

    The Finals also features a tournament component with higher stakes than the quick-play modes. If your squad doesn’t finish in the top two for your existing round, you’re eliminated from the bracket. (I’m not sure what happens after the first round, because our squad finished last. Twice.)

    I’d be remiss not to mention our experience playing The Finals was marred by technical difficulties. Such things are generally excusable for a beta; that is, after all, the whole point of betas. Still, for roughly half the games we played, one or two players of our three-person squad would inexplicably fail to load in. When we’d successfully get into a match, for about half of those matches, one player would get dropped. Since The Finals does not have an option to rejoin an existing match, one party member getting kicked out meant we all had to quit. (Let the record reflect that we totally would’ve won all of those matches otherwise.)

    Aside from those hiccups, which may very well not be present at all in today’s full release, The Finals is an energetic and competent multiplayer shooter I could see myself dipping into for a few rounds when Halo Infinite gets too frustrating. Players have by and large moved on from the sort of arena-style gameplay on display here, so sure, like the contest that defines this game’s minimalist lore, The Finals is ultimately a gamble. But it’s one I hope pays off.

    The Finals is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.

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    Ari Notis

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  • Dragon’s Dogma 2 arrives March 2024, looks fantastic

    Dragon’s Dogma 2 arrives March 2024, looks fantastic

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    Dragon’s Dogma 2 will be released on March 22, 2024, reviving Capcom’s sword and sorcery action-RPG franchise after a decade-long break. Capcom revealed the release date and new gameplay details during a digital showcase on Tuesday.

    Hideaki Itsuno, director of Dragon’s Dogma 2, and Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, the game’s producer, showed off new features coming in the sequel. That includes a huge new addition to the bestiary, the Talos, a massive brass warrior who emerges from the sea. Developers showed varying approaches to taking the Talos down: by leaping onto it from a cliff’s edge, and fighting it while holding on for dear life, à la Shadow of the Colossus; riding birds toward the Talos to close the distance to it; and attacking it from afar using ranged weapons and spells.

    Capcom also showed off a new vocation, the Trickster. That Arisen-only character class can use a censer in battle to conjure illusions, causing enemies to fight each other, and to support a player’s pawns to make them more effective in battle. The Trickster, a “devious vocation,” can manipulate the battle from the sidelines rather than fight directly.

    The Trickster joins Dragon’s Dogma 2’s previously confirmed vocations: Fighter, Archer, Thief, Mage, Magick Archer, and Mystic Spearhand.





    • Image: Capcom






    • Image: Capcom






    • Image: Capcom


    Capcom also showed off its update character creator, which players can use to customize their Arisen and main Pawn. The developer is using new photogrammetry technology to increase the photorealism of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s player-created avatars, developers said.

    Finally, developers also teased a bit of the game’s story, which they said was set in a world parallel to that of the original Dragon’s Dogma. As an Arisen, players will find themselves caught between the beliefs and plots of two rival nations. Vermund, the human kingdom, is at the center of a power struggle for the throne, with a false Arisen installed by the queen regent Disa. In Battahl, the humanoid beasts there treat Pawns as a source of misfortune. But both nations view dragons as a threat to their survival.

    Dragon’s Dogma 2 is coming to PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The original Dragon’s Dogma was released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2012, followed by the expansion Dark Arisen the next year.

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    Michael McWhertor

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  • Marvel Snap will still ‘flourish in the future,’ despite ByteDance’s exit from gaming

    Marvel Snap will still ‘flourish in the future,’ despite ByteDance’s exit from gaming

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    TikTok owner ByteDance is looking to get out of mainstream gaming, including at its subsidiary Nuverse, the publisher of Marvel Snap. ByteDance confirmed Monday in a statement to Polygon that it will “restructure” its gaming business. The decision is expected to lead to hundreds of layoffs, according to Reuters, which first reported the news. ByteDance has not confirmed the scope of its layoffs.

    “We regularly review our businesses and make adjustments to center on long-term strategic growth areas,” a ByteDance representative said in a statement. “Following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to restructure our gaming business.”

    Though ByteDance is divesting from Nuverse, Marvel Snap “will continue to operate and flourish in the future,” according to a tweet posted early Monday on X (formerly Twitter) by the official Marvel Snap X account. The game is developed by Irvine, California-based indie studio Second Dinner.

    Reuters, citing four unnamed sources, reports that ByteDance has no plans to enter the mainstream gaming market again. The company’s casual games publisher Ohayoo — which work with Chinese social media platform Douyin — will not be impacted, nor will the casual games that run on TikTok. Beyond Nuverse, ByteDance is reportedly looking to sell off mobile gaming subsidiary Moonton Technology, Reuters reported. Earlier this month, ByteDance restructured its virtual reality company Pico, resulting in hundreds of employees being laid off, TechCrunch reported.

    Nuverse had 3,000 employees in 2021, according to TechCrunch — a number that has remained relatively consistent over the years, the outlet said, citing Chinese tech news outlet LatePost.

    ByteDance has invested heavily in the video game industry over the past few years as it looked to compete with Chinese gaming giants Tencent and NetEase. Marvel Snap was a success in the U.S., reaching a reported $116 million in revenue. Other Nuverse games include One Piece: The Voyage and Warhammer 40,000: Lost Crusade. Moonton Games is responsible for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang and Watcher of Realms.

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    Nicole Carpenter

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  • The Last of Us Part 2 PS5 remaster leaks on PSN with trailer, release date

    The Last of Us Part 2 PS5 remaster leaks on PSN with trailer, release date

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    It should come as no surprise to fans that The Last of Us Part 2 might have a remastered version in development for PlayStation 5, ever since The Last of Us Part 1 — the PS5 port of the original game — came out in September 2022. The remastered version of the sequel just got a lot more solid, thanks to a leak courtesy of the PlayStation Store.

    Although The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered isn’t on the PlayStation storefront at this time, it appears to have been in the database at some point recently, because websites that track updates to the PlayStation Store have scraped the relevant data about the game. PSdeals.net has a listing for the game that links to a now-broken PlayStation Store page. The PSdeals listing includes screenshots that appear to be from the remaster, with the phrase “captured on PS5” (as is standard practice for Sony) visible in the corner.

    Insider Gaming has a report that goes even further, including the game’s release date — Jan. 19, 2024, which would be quite soon — and even a short teaser trailer that starts off with footage of the Part 1 remaster and then progresses to Part 2 footage. Wario64, the deals aficionado made famous on X (formerly Twitter), corroborated that reporting with a link to the same trailer that appears to be hosted on Sony’s own servers.

    It’s worth noting that the trailer makes no mention of a Windows PC version of The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered. While Sony has been bringing many of its first-party games to PC in recent years, there’s typically been a lag time of more than a year before those PC ports arrive.

    Polygon has reached out to Sony for confirmation and will update this story when we hear back.

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    Maddy Myers

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  • Kongregate, Digital Bros. cut jobs in a growing wave of video game industry layoffs

    Kongregate, Digital Bros. cut jobs in a growing wave of video game industry layoffs

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    The video game industry’s string of layoffs continues: Digital Bros. Entertainment and Kongregate have both announced job cuts.

    Digital Bros., which owns Control publisher 505 Games and other studios, is laying off 30% of its workforce — roughly 130 people — as part of an “organization review,” it announced Tuesday. The job losses will largely impact Digital Bros.’ studios, according to a news release. Beyond 505 Games, Digital Bros. Entertainment owns DR Studios (Terraria for mobile and console), Kunos Simulazioni (Assetto Corsa), Infinity Plus Two (Puzzle Quest 3), Supernova Games, Nesting Games, Avantgarden (Last Day of June) and Ingame Studios (Crime Boss: Rockay City).

    Kongregate, the online gaming portal and publisher, has cut more than a dozen jobs across several departments. Kongregate has not responded to Polygon’s request for comment. The layoffs span multiple departments, including art, VFX, marketing, community management, and production. It’s been a challenging few years for Kongregate, which made a name for itself in the early 2000s as the online portal for Flash games. When Adobe dropped Flash support for good in 2020, Kongregate had to shift toward preserving its Flash games.

    In July 2020, Kongregate announced it was no longer accepting user-created games, as it moved toward its own internal development. At that time, it laid off several people to “reshape” the company. One person laid off by Kongregate told Polygon it came as a total surprise.

    Three video game studios have laid off workers in as many days: Amazon’s gaming division announced layoffs on Monday. More than 180 people have been cut from Amazon’s Crown Channel and Game Growth programs as the company “refocuses” on Prime Gaming, according to a staff memo sent by Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann. Humble Games, which publishes video games like Coral Island and Mineko’s Night Market, also laid off an unknown number of staffers this week, it confirmed to GLHF. Over the past year, more than 6,000 people have been laid off in the video game industry, according to a layoff tracking website.

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    Nicole Carpenter

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  • Hades leads a major wave of game announcements from Netflix

    Hades leads a major wave of game announcements from Netflix

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    Netflix has been investing heavily into gaming over the past few years in its continued effort to become the Netflix of… well, everything. In addition to acquiring and building new game studios, nabbing big name talent, and moving into cloud gaming, the streamer is making a concerted effort to make the Netflix app a competitive destination for subscription-based mobile gaming. Though as of now, less than 1% of all Netflix users take advantage of the service.

    That hasn’t slowed down Netflix’s determination in the space. During this year’s Geeked Week virtual event, the company announced a slew of new titles coming to the Netflix mobile app in 2024.

    Along with major announcements and trailer premieres for several of its biggest upcoming series and movies like Avatar: The Last Airbender, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Stranger Things, and The Umbrella Academy, Netflix has also shined a spotlight on several of its biggest games coming to the Netflix mobile app, as well as recent releases like Oxenfree II: Lost Signals and Slayaway Camp 2: Netflix and Kill.

    Here are the biggest game announcements and trailers from Netflix Geeked Week 2023.

    Hades

    If you’ve never played Supergiant’s peerless action roguelite before — or always wanted to play it on mobile — Netflix has you covered. An iOS version of Polygon’s 2020 game of the year is coming soon, exclusively to Netflix subscribers. Set in a gaudy, funny, sexy, and mysterious version of the Underworld of Greek myth, Hades follows Zagreus, prince of the Underworld, as he tries and tries and tries again (and again, and again) to escape his father’s domain. With near-infinite permutations of weapons, skills, and boons granted by your fellow gods, Hades never plays the same twice, and it will automatically be the best game in Netflix’s catalog when it arrives there.

    Braid: Anniversary Edition

    The long-awaited anniversary edition of Jonathan Blow’s time-bending puzzle platformer, which was first announced way back in 2020, is finally being released in April of next year. If that weren’t enough, it’s also coming to the Netflix mobile app!

    The Anniversary Edition of the game comes with a suite of new features, including the ability to switch between the old and new graphics at will and 15 hours of developer commentary from Blow himself and Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation.

    Chicken Run: Eggstraction

    Coming hot on the tail (feather) of the long-awaited sequel Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, Aardman Animations has announced Chicken Run: Eggstraction — a top-down, real time stealth action game set shortly after the events of the film. You’ll hatch plans, assemble a crack team of chicken commandos, improvise gadgets, and sneak into farms as you liberate whole flocks of new recruits when the game is released in 2024.

    Death’s Door

    Death’s Door, the isometric action-adventure game from Acid Nerve and number seven on our list of the best games of 2021, is coming to the Netflix mobile app. As a sword-wielding crow, you traverse the afterlife collecting souls for the Reaping Commission Headquarters. Think a slightly easier take on Dark Souls — though not that much easier.

    Katana Zero

    The stylish, neo-noir action platformer Katana Zero is also headed to Netflix mobile. You play as a katana-wielding amnesiac assassin as you hack and slash your way through swaths of enemies, slow down time, and dodge deadly attack as you bob and weave your way through a dystopian neon-lit metropolis.

    Money Heist

    One of Netflix’s biggest international hits is its Spanish heist thriller, which now gets this interactive spinoff from the in-house studio Netflix Stories. Dialogue choices and hacking minigames abound when you join the original Money Heist crew in the theft that started it all — La Perla de Barcelona. Like all the games based on Netflix’s original shows and movies, the Money Heist game will remain exclusive to Netflix subscribers when it releases soon, alongside spinoff series Berlin.

    Shadow and Bone: Enter the Fold

    Fans of Shadow and Bone are still waiting on word of a possible third season of the fantasy mystery drama. But in the meantime, Netflix announced a new narrative roleplaying game set between the events of season 1 and 2, which is available to play now on the Netflix mobile app. Explore the world of Grishaverse as Alina, Jesper, Sturmhond, and General Kirigan as you traverse the war-torn land of Ravka, meet familiar faces, and make hard decisions in Shadow and Bone: Enter the Fold.

    The Dragon Prince: Xadia

    Due next year, The Dragon Prince: Xadia is a Diablo-style co-op action role-playing game with hack-and-slash combat and loot galore. It’s being made at Wonderstorm, the studio responsible for the animated fantasy series that’s one of the longest-running shows on Netflix (its sixth season debuts next year), so it should capture the show’s vibe perfectly. This one will be exclusive to Netflix on mobile at launch, but it’s getting a PC version too.

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    Toussaint Egan

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  • Kachow! Lightning McQueen is racing into Rocket League

    Kachow! Lightning McQueen is racing into Rocket League

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    A collaboration between Rocket League, the video game where you play soccer but as a car, and Disney and Pixar’s Cars franchise is such an obvious match that it’s strange it took till now to happen. But better late than never, and now Lightning McQueen himself is racing into Rocket League. Kachow!

    The Lightning McQueen cosmetic bundle hits the game on Nov. 7. The McQueen car body will be the very first in the game to come with dynamic expression. This means that the Lightning McQueen car’s eyes will move and blink and change depending on what’s going on in the game. He wouldn’t be lightning without that cocky smile, after all!

    There are also three new decals to mix up Lightning’s look: the classic racetrack red, the spruced up shiny deep crimson, and a Dinoco Blue fit. There are also new wheels to choose from, including the iconic whitewall wheels promoted by Radiator Springs residents Luigi and Guido.

    The bundle also includes a Ka-chow Goal Explosion, a Lightning McQueen Player Banner. and a “Life Is A Highway” Player Anthem by Rascal Flatts. It’ll be available for 2500 credits.

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    Petrana Radulovic

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  • Overwatch 2’s new tank hero leaks ahead of BlizzCon 2023 reveal

    Overwatch 2’s new tank hero leaks ahead of BlizzCon 2023 reveal

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    A new hero is coming to Overwatch 2 next month. Mauga, the game’s next tank-class hero, will join the Overwatch roster with season 8 and will be the game’s 39th playable character, according to a post on the Nintendo Switch eShop news channel.

    Blizzard plans to officially reveal the next Overwatch 2 hero at BlizzCon 2023, which starts Friday, but a first look at Mauga and his abilities have leaked ahead of that.

    Overwatch 2 players can get their hands on Mauga earlier than December, however — this weekend, in fact, thanks to a free trial weekend for Blizzard’s game. Mauga will be playable from Friday, Nov. 3 through Sunday, Nov. 5 as part of a sneak peek at season 8 of Overwatch 2.

    Image: Blizzard Entertainment

    Blizzard describes Mauga as a “powerful brawling Tank Hero who will tear through the competition with his incendiary and volatile chainguns.” Maugau’s kit is designed “to bash through the front lines and brawl his opponents in close-quarter combat, by wielding two powerful chainguns that can either be fire individually or in unison,” Blizzard says.

    One of Mauga’s chainguns is nicknamed “Gunny” and can burn his opponents with incendiary charges when they take enough damage. The other gun is known as “Cha-Cha,” which can deal critical hits. Mauga’s Berserker passive ability, Blizzard says, will grant him temporary health whenever he deals critical damage.

    Mauga’s front line-breaking power is called Overrun, “a charging ability that cannot be stopped by any crowd control abilities,” Blizzard says, meaning counters like Ana’s Sleep Dart or Sigma’s Accretion. Overrun “stomps into opponents, dealing a powerful knockback.” Another ability, Cardiac Overdrive, creates an aura that reduces incoming damage, “allowing allies to heal themselves while dealing damage.”

    Mauga’s ultimate ability, Cage Fight, “traps nearby opponents in a cylindrical fighting ring” with a barrier that “blocks enemy incoming damage or healing from the outside.”

    Blizzard says Mauga will be officially released on Dec. 5, when season 8 of Overwatch 2 goes live.

    Overwatch 2’s 39th playable hero shouldn’t be a surprise to players who have been paying close attention to the game for the past few years. Mauga made a guest appearance in the 2019 Overwatch comic What You Left Behind, which revealed the tank-class character as a former Talon ally of Baptiste. Mauga hails from Samoa, a location that Blizzard recently mined for a new Control map for Overwatch 2. That map offered hints that Mauga would soon appear in the game, in the form of one of his colorful shirts hanging in a room.

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    Michael McWhertor

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  • Spooky new Battlefield mode lets you 3D print a bunch of terrifying naked dudes

    Spooky new Battlefield mode lets you 3D print a bunch of terrifying naked dudes

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    Battlefield 2042 is enjoying a small resurgence as it nears its two-year anniversary, thanks to a recent free weekend, a sale, and multiple updates from the developer. The game’s new season will hopefully maintain players’ renewed interest in DICE’s futuristic military shooter — particularly the new mode that lets you deploy and fight against hordes of 3D-printed synthetic soldiers who run around naked and smash enemies’ heads in with hammers.

    Season 6’s of Battlefield 2042 will introduce a new limited time mode called Killswitch, a 12v12 game type that lets players print out waves of Geists — the aforementioned buck-naked ’bots — that can be deployed in combat. They’re effectively (fast) zombies who sprint at the opposing team and try to bludgeon them to death, as seen in the trailer above.

    Geists are printed at Forges in Killswitch’s maps (Redacted, Manifest, Hourglass and Spearhead), and teams will battle for control of those Forges while they simultaneously attempt to capture locations called AOS nodes.

    How did these synthetic soldiers, who are not canonically zombies, find their way into Battlefield fiction? According to DICE and publisher Electronic Arts, a secret R&D lab off the coast of Scotland is the victim of an AI run amok. That artificial intelligence has taken over and created the Geist, glowing-eyed bad guys who are programmed to kill. Sure, I buy that.

    While zombies may be something of a tired trope (and prominently associated with more popular modern military first-person shooters), it’s fun to see DICE and developer Ripple Effect experiment with Battlefield while new leadership rethinks EA’s approach to the franchise.

    Killswitch is playable as part of Battlefield 2042’s Dark Protocol event, which runs Oct. 31 to Nov. 14. Players who take part in Killswitch matches can earn Ribbons that can be cashed in for free cosmetic rewards, like weapon and vehicle skins.

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    Michael McWhertor

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  • India’s gaming market is worth $2.6 billion, expected to reach $8.6 billion by 2027: Report

    India’s gaming market is worth $2.6 billion, expected to reach $8.6 billion by 2027: Report

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    India’s gaming market, which has crossed the half-a-billion mark with 507 million gamers, has reached $2.6 billion, revealed Interactive Media Venture Capital Fund Lumikai in its latest report. According to the report titled ‘State of India Gaming report FY22,’ the domestic gaming industry is expected to almost quadruple to $8.6 billion by 2027.

    Justin Shriram Keeling, founding general partner of Lumikai, while sharing his thoughts on the report, said, “India’s gaming industry this year hit major inflection points, registering strong growth across the board. India crossed half a billion gamers in FY22, up from 450 million the year prior.”

    “Industry growth is expected to be fueled by a rapidly increasing gamer base, higher conversion to paid users, and increasing sophistication of Indian gamers,” Keeling added.

    The report, which the VC fund claims is undertaken across India’s gaming industry, had gathered inputs from a demographic sample of 2,240 respondents, third-party data providers, interviews with industry leaders, and the company’s proprietary insights.

    Salone Sehgal, Founding General Partner at Lumikai, said, “The last 28 months have been watershed years in terms of attracting VC investment of over $2.6 billion in the Indian gaming landscape. Sustained capital investment and liquidity outcomes in the form of strategic exits valuing $750M+, multiple unicorns, and a publicly traded company have heightened the interests of entrepreneurs and investors alike. This sustained momentum should further drive entrepreneurial ambition and innovation in the Indian gaming industry.”

    As per the report, the Indian gaming industry is estimated to have crossed half a billion gamers in FY22, up from 450 million in the previous year. Out of which 120 million, almost one-fourth, are paying users and approximately $20 revenue per paying user.

    In addition to this, India was also the world’s largest consumer of mobile games in FY22 with 15 billion downloads in the year.

    In FY22, mid-core games, like BGMI, and Free Fire, were the fastest-growing gaming category and recorded a growth of 32 per cent, grossing combined revenues of around $550 million.

    It further revealed that Web3 emerged as an increasingly popular technology in games. Web3 games in India have raised around $400 million in funding between 2019 and 2022.

    Among Indians who pay for games, nearly 48 per cent of gamers spend money on mid-core games. In addition to this, 65 per cent of paying gamers claim they have engaged in in-app purchases at least once.

    Indian gaming companies are on track to raise $513 million for the calendar year FY22. Gaming sector funding is up 380 per cent from 2019 and up by 23 per cent from 2020.

    India-based content is growing in popularity with 80 per cent of gamers showing a proclivity to play games based on Indian intellectual property. The number of female gamers in India was found to be on the rise with a 60:40 Male: female ratio.

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