WonderCon, held every year in LA at the Anaheim Convention Center, is a show we haven’t been able to get to for a few years, so it’s great that we’re now back and able to run a feature on some of the incredible cosplay present at the event for 2023.
I haven’t been able to find attendance figures for the 2023 show (which ran in late March), but the 2019 event—the last pre-Covid one—brought in over 66,000 people, so I’d imagine this year’s event was in that ballpark.
As usual all photos and video here are provided by Mineralblu, and you can check our way more of his stuff at his Facebook page. And as usual, every photo has a watermark on it detailing the cosplayer’s social media information and the character they’re cosplaying as.
THIS IS WONDERCON 2023 BEST COSPLAY MUSIC VIDEO ANIME EXPO 2023 LOS ANGELES COMIC CON BEST COSTUMES
For the second time in two years, things in the Battlefield community—or at least the worst elements of it—have gotten so toxic that it has led to some pretty stern requests for people to get a grip and cut it out.
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It’s an understatement when we say that this subreddit has grown incredibly toxic. It’s near impossible to have a simple discussion without insults being flung around at each other—and it’s really starting to harm the entire Battlefield community, and each of us that are part of it. […] The mods have an obligation to follow the rules set out by Reddit, and if we are found to be in breach of not enforcing them, or doing a poor job at enforcing them, we risk the community getting banned altogether.
Now, a year later, the developers of the games themselves have taken to social media with a statement—co-signed by all four Battlefield studios—saying “we have witnessed increased harassment towards members of our development team”, and that “we will take appropriate action” against players found to not be adhering to the series’ community guidelines:
Recently we have witnessed increased harassment towards members of our development team.
Across all of our Battlefield Studios we are open to constructive feedback and criticism about our games.
But to maintain a healthy and open dialogue with our community, we will protect our teams and people from toxicity and harassment. We believe this has no place inside our game or within the Battlefield community.
We want to remind our players that through our EA User Agreement and Battlefield Community Guidelines we will take appropriate action to uphold these values.
As a community, we play the objective, together.
I get it, Battlefield fans have been through the wringer in recent years! Every time the series changes direction parts of the fanbase get upset, and I don’t think anyone would say that Battlefield 2042 launched in a fit and proper state.
That should be a good thing! But no, this is the internet, and this is the video games corner of the internet, so of course there must be people who are angry, all the time, and like always they’re getting angry at the wrong people. Battlefield 2042 was rushed out the door to hit a fiscal objective in the middle of a pandemic by the people running EA, not the level designers and artists and community managers working at DICE.
I’m glad this statement uses such supportive (of their teams) and forceful language; if someone is dumb and hateful enough to be harassing the developers of a video game, for whatever reason, then that person isn’t going to be fun to play multiplayer video games with, or against.
It is May 12, 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom release day, and the temperature in New York City is creeping dangerously close to 90 degrees. In Midtown, bankers are sweating through their Brooks Brothers dress shirts and slacks, while tourists have busted out the cargo shorts. As I make my way out of the subway station near Rockefeller Center, I walk smack into a massive line of people. I sneer, assuming it’s the wildly long Nintendo Store line from more than a block away that our managing editor Carolyn Petit saw earlier this morning (I hate the idea of waiting in lines), but nope, the Jonas Brothers are at Rough Trade.
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The Week In Games: Return To Hyrule
Monday 3:53PM
Hours later, I head out to sit in the blazing sun for a bit to recharge my battery and notice the front of the Nintendo store looks conspicuously spacious. I hustle over, figuring I’ll snag a copy for someone else at Kotaku who wants to play (I do not). But as soon as I approach the front entrance to the building, which is on the corner of Rockefeller Plaza and 48th street, I realize the line is snaking down the adjacent street. It sits directly in the sun, many of the people waiting are visibly sweating.
At random intervals, a huge gap of bodies indicates the presence of a driveway, a few security guys making sure it remains open for cars passing through. Several future Tears of the Kingdom owners are hunched over playing Nintendo Switch. One woman is sitting on the sidewalk in shorts, a New York City no-no.
“Oh, fuck this,” I mumble before heading back to the dry, frigid air of the G/O Media offices. I may not be a big Zelda fan, but I don’t think there’s anything in the world that could make me wait hours on a line in Midtown Manhattan in the midst of a heatwave.
Zelda Tears of the Kingdom lines feel very nostalgic
Despite my beliefs, I’m fascinated to see people waiting in lines like this across the U.S. for the Breath of the Wild sequel. It feels sort of like a bygone era of gaming has returned—the last time I went to the midnight release of a game was November 2012 for Halo 4 at a Best Buy in Long Island, New York. I was 22 years old, and I was incredibly hyped.
The need to wait in long lines for midnight game releases has disappeared over the years, as more and more gamers turn to digital storefronts and downloads in order to get a new game the moment it releases, and the need for physical media wanes. (Though the side effects of a shift to entirely digital have been felt in the loss of access to so many movies—like sci-fi thriller Strange Days, which for some time was nearly impossible to watch without a physical DVD, only just becoming available to stream this year—and will undoubtedly soon affect games.) In 2012, you couldn’t play Halo 4 in any way other than on the two discs that came in the Master Chief-adorned case, but that’s simply not the case now.
What is it about Tears of the Kingdom that’s brought lines back in such a big way? After all, the Nintendo eShop is open 24/7, you can download the game right now without having to stand up for hours at a time, shuffling every 10 or so minutes a few inches closer to the shining glass Nintendo store doors. You can play Tears of the Kingdom right this second, no long-time exposure to stagnant, exhaust-filled NYC air required. Why, people in line, are you not doing this?
For many, the promise of special swag beckons. The Nintendo store has special-edition pins (and other “surprise giveaways”), many of which will undoubtedly end up on eBay for thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, Target has a fanny pack that people are freaking out over. The allure of impossible-to-get swag will always attract gamers, a group known to be completionists and collectors through and through.
But perhaps, despite my decidedly Grinch-y attitude about waiting in long lines for a video game, people are happily queuing for Tears of the Kingdom for the vibes, y’all. They’ve waited six years for a sequel to Breath of the Wild; what’s a few, sweaty hours more, especially in the company of your fellow die-hard fans?
With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom dropping on May 12, Nintendo is looking back and sharing more details about its predecessor, Breath of the Wild. Those details include confirmation that the Wii U console held back the production of and content included in BotW.
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As part of the eighth generation of consoles (alongside the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One), the Wii U was Nintendo’s first attempt at bridging the gap between on-the-go and at-home systems. It wasn’t a success. Yeah, it had some great games, including Bayonetta 2, Splatoon, and Xenoblade Chronicles X, among others. But the confusion around how to actually use the console, coupled with the proximity with which the GamePad had to be to the Wii U itself, made it cumbersome and frustrating. Hell, I remember when it was revealed during E3 2010 and folks (myself included) thought it was some sort of add-on for the Wii.
Despite some heavy-hitter titles like Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Maker, the Wii U was not the success Nintendo hoped it would be—or the success it’s used to. And although some of the better Wii U games are now on Nintendo Switch, the company’s home run handheld-console hybrid, Nintendo has admitted in a recent interview that BotW would have benefitted from being a Switch exclusive all along.
Some BotW features wouldn’t work on Wii U
Five Nintendo developers, including Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma, sat down to answer some questions about Tears of the Kingdom in a multi-part interview. In the latest segment, published on the official Nintendo website on May 10, the group was asked about how TotK has expanded in relation to its predecessor. Technical director Takuhiro Dohta explained that certain design elements couldn’t be implemented due to hardware limitations.
“Actually, the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was originally developed for Wii U, so there were restrictions in development,” Dohta said. “There were a lot of ideas we wanted to implement during its development, but we made clear decisions on what we wouldn’t do in that game. For example, we decided that it wouldn’t involve flying. Then Aonuma kept saying, ‘If flying is out of the question, I want to dig underground!’ And we’d respond, ‘Oh no! Please don’t make us develop that too!’”
Now that TotK is a Nintendo Switch exclusive, though, those concepts left on the cutting-room floor—like cliffside caves that should present new exploration opportunities—are making an appearance. This is largely because the team is reusing the BotW map to streamline development.
“For The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we began by compiling and implementing ideas we couldn’t include in the previous title,” Dohta said. “We wouldn’t have been able to do so had we made a completely new world, so developing in the same setting as the previous game was significant in this sense as well.”
Elsewhere in the interview, art director Satoru Takizawa confirmed that “traditional” Zelda dungeons are coming back as well. Although we learned this from the recent TotK leaks, it seems they will be more expansive than you saw in Link’s last outing.
“Making a ‘wide variety’ was pretty challenging,” Takizawa said. “The four Divine Beasts were the dungeons in [BotW], and they shared similar designs. This time, the dungeons are huge and each carry their own regional look and feel, just like traditional The Legend of Zelda games. We think they will provide a satisfying challenge for players. They were certainly a challenge to develop!”
Kotaku reached out to Nintendo for comment.
Tears of the Kingdom looks to be a huge expansion to Breath of the Wild, and not just because of the sky island you can explore above The Great Plateau. With Link’s plethora of new abilities, such as the Fuse skill that al mostly directly responds to weapon durability, it’ll be interesting to see what other ideas Nintendo has in store when Link’s latest adventure drops on May 12.
Sony has quietly closed down PixelOpus, one of its first-party PlayStation Studios. Based in San Mateo, California, the studio was responsible for 2014’s Entwined and 2019’s Concrete Genie.
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News of this first broke through a Twitter post from the studio, which expressed the team’s gratitude to the players who have enjoyed their games.
“Dear friends, our PixelOpus adventure has come to an end. As we look to new futures, we wanted to say a heartfelt thank you to the millions of passionate players who have supported us, and our mission to make beautiful, imaginative games with heart. We are so grateful!”
Sony didn’t immediately comment on the closure publicly but has since confirmed in a statement to IGN that PixelOpus is, in fact, shuttering on June 2.
“PlayStation Studios regularly evaluates its portfolio and the status of studio projects to ensure they meet the organization’s short and long-term strategic objectives,” the company told IGN. “As part of a recent review process, it has been decided that PixelOpus will close on June 2.”
PixelOpus was a small team within the hulking giant that is PlayStation Studios, having less than 20 employees as of 2019. The studio’s breakout game was 2019’s Concrete Genie on PS4, which was gorgeous to look at and had cool painting mechanics, but its pacing felt a bit plodding, even with a brisk run time of five or so hours. Before the closure, Pixelopus was working on a project with Sony Pictures Animation, but we don’t know yet if that game is still in the works with another team or has been canceled entirely.
It’s a sad end for a talented studio, but feels pretty in line with Sony’s hard pivot to prestige blockbusters at all costs. On top of closing PixelOpus, the company shuttered Japan Studio in 2021, which was putting out some of the more experimental work within the PlayStation first-party ecosystem. It’s a shame, and while there are still some studios doing cool things at places like Media Molecule, there’s certainly a gap within Sony’s catalog without it.
Redfall, a vampire shooter out this week on Xbox and PC, was developed by Arkane Studios, the same team behind classics like Dishonored and Prey. It’s one of Microsoft’s first-party exclusives for 2023, a big release for the company’s Game Pass subscription service. And by most accounts, it sucks.
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We’re currently playing the game together for our own impressions, which will be published soon, but in the meantime—because I find the reception so extraordinary given the scale (and price) of the release—I thought I’d roundup some of the impressions and review pieces out there from outlets who managed to receive code ahead of Redfall’s release (we, obviously, did not), or have been updating a review-in-progress piece as they go along.
Ultimately, Redfall is a game that should not have been released yet. Its litany of bugs hampers the gameplay loop of exploring its world with friends, and that loop itself feels compromised by elements that are poorly executed and ill-suited to the team implementing them. I can’t pretend to know whether Arkane chose to make a loot-shooter or was assigned to make a loot-shooter, but I can tell you what it feels like: one of the best game studios in the world suddenly made toothless.
Redfall is ultimately not up to Arkane’s usual standards. It feels rushed, unfinished, and unsatisfying to play. Single-player is hampered by a squad-based open-world shooter structure, multiplayer held back by odd decisions, and decent gunplay is marred by uninspiring mission structures. It’s a confusing game, full of contradictions, and the result is unfulfilling.
With Redfall arriving at IGN just a couple of days ahead of its official release date we haven’t had enough time to complete a final review yet – certainly not without becoming a nocturnal monster myself and staying awake all weekend. However, after several sessions – solo, co-op with a friend, and also in a group of three – I must admit I’m thoroughly underwhelmed by Redfall’s vanilla missions and lifeless world, and very disappointed at its lengthy list of display issues and bugs.
Redfall fails to compel on nearly every level, not just in its uninteresting story, but also its all-too-familiar gameplay. Not only does Redfall feel like a game stuck in yesteryear, even its performance finds a way to disappoint.
Eurogamer’s early impressions are actually quite optimistic, writer Christian Donlan preferring to reserve final judgement until the game was done, but I thought his anecdote at the end here was a pretty good summary of the game’s visuals:
So how is it ugly? It’s technical stuff, I think, and while I’ll leave that to Digital Foundry I’ll say that the edges – technical term – are a little rough. Textures sometimes pop in late or not at all, so those beautiful trees are always bursting into fiery life a little too close by, and at one point the classic immersive sim storytelling graffiti on a wall was weirdly pixellated. Character models are still and oddly lit. I should add here, I’m trying to be objective, which is always a mistake. I think the patchy textures – yes, I’m really about to say this – gives the town a slightly impressionist feel. The waxy characters are wonderfully waxy, the kind of things you might meet on a trip through a haunted Hall of Presidents. Even so, there’s no ducking the fact that my wife came into the room when I was playing, looked at the screen in horror and said, “Jesus! What happened to Fortnite?”
I should note not all reviews and impressions pieces are so down! If you head over to Metacritic you’ll find some outlets—many of which I’ve literally never heard of, but still—have given the game positive scores, like We Got This Covered, who rated it 4.5 stars out of 5, saying:
With rich, beautiful open worlds, a multitude of weapons, and a wide variety of enemies to square off against, Redfall amazes. Players won’t regret staking their claim on Arkane’s latest masterpiece.
OK. Enough with the professional reviews. Let’s see what people who paid for the game—and if you bought this instead of playing on Game Pass it was a full-price $70 release, an important point to remember here—have to say. Here’s a selection of some of the top Steam reviews at time of posting:
Ignoring the performance issues, this game is bad. The AI is pathetic, even on the highest difficulty. The controls are clunky. The graphics are average. The world is empty. I don’t understand why these companies think they can start charging $70 for unfinished garbage. I couldn’t even stomach an hour of this game.
Extremely average and unfinished game. Poor performance on PC and riddled with bugs and glitches.
I’ve heard great things from Arkane, but this is not it. I played with two friends, who also refunded. Going to try and give it a go tonight on the $10 PC Game Pass instead. But that first hour was clear to me: this is not a $70 AAA release.
I’m going to wind up with that last one because, having played it for most of yesterday, it’s actually the closest to my own experiences with the game. This plays like a remaster of a PS3 shooter. It’s an unfinished concept piece, a pitch project that somehow made its way to retail.
It’s tough to explain how raw the whole thing feels without playing it yourself. Even the fonts look like placeholders. Arkane is a studio responsible for some of the most important first-person games of the last decade; to see their name attached to this just…really bums me out.
Anyway! Like I said, our own impressions will be coming soon, so check back to see if a few days of multiplayer madness will have our team (not me, I live on the far side of the moon) thinking any differently to these reviews.
Back in 2015, Grand Theft Auto Online players found a way to spawn a car that is usually only available in Grand Theft Auto V’s single-player campaign. While some developers might simply patch the exploit out of the game, Rockstar decided that wasn’t enough, and that these cheaters deserved a punishment fitting of a Grand Theft Auto game. So instead of removing the car, the studio made it so that whenever a player attempted to get inside it, the vehicle would spontaneously explode, leaving the cheaters with a sudden “Wasted” game over and a jump scare for good measure.
Why was this car so significant? It was the Duke O’ Death, given only to players who upgraded from the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Grand Theft Auto V to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One ports. Rockstar eventually made the car available to all players in 2021, even in Grand Theft Auto Online, but at one point it was a prized possession that Rockstar went the extra mile to keep out of multiplayer.
Back in the 1990s, Philips tried to break into the video game market with its doomed-to-fail, multimedia set-top box standard called CD-i. Many brands and models of CD-i players were released but all of them were flops and mostly forgotten in 2023. However, Philips did acquire the rights to develop three Zelda games for its unpopular machines. They were terrible. Now, a fan has taken what’s perhaps the worst of those games, a top-down RPG starring Zelda herself, and unofficially ported it to the Game Boy.
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You might be wondering how Philips was able to create Zelda games, and on a non-Nintendo platform. The answer to that involves Sony, weirdly enough. In 1989, Sony and Nintendo signed a deal to create a CD-based add-on for the SNES. However, Nintendo would later back out of the deal and instead work with Philips. Sony was bitter, and decided to develop its own game console, a little device you might have heard of called the PlayStation. Meanwhile, Nintendo saw the poor reaction to the Genesis’ Sega CD add-on and backed out of its planned SNES CD hardware entirely. It’s believed that, as some recompense for dissolving the deal, Nintendo ended up licensing some IP to Philips, allowing the company to make its own Zelda games. They weren’t great, and one of the three, Zelda’s Adventure, is seen by many fans as the worst of the bunch, and is often cited as the worst Zelda game ever released.
Still, even if it’s a bad game with terrible controls and awful live-action FMV cinematics, it’s still a Zelda game, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it has its fans. One of them has spent a few years developing a full port of the CD-i flop for Nintendo’s Game Boy. And now it’s out, and it’s really cool!
John Lay
The story behind the new Game Boy Zelda
Zelda’s Adventure for Game Boy was developed by John Lay, who describes himself as a programmer and graphic designer. According to Lay—a big fan of the 2D Zelda games—out of the three CD-i Zelda games games, Zelda’s Adventure “looked interesting.” And after stumbling across an early version of modern development tool GB Studio, Lay decided to start working on a demake during covid-19 lockdown as the idea of a portable version of the unbeloved game seemed like something he’d want to play. So he started work on a proof of concept that was just the first dungeon and the initial part of the overworld, which he estimates to comprise about 20 percent of the overall game.
“After I finished I took a short break and during that time GB Studio released an update I was eager to try,” Lay told Kotaku. “So I…continued the game where I left off and developed approximately another 40 percent of the overworld and dungeons.”
However, he ran into some GB Studio limitations, so he had to modify the engine with custom-created code to make the full demake feasible.
“I then used this modified engine to develop a third prototype with the remaining 40 percent of the overworld and the final dungeons,” he said. “During this time GB Studio released a third update with a bunch of improvements, so I sat down and planned out how to combine all three prototypes into a single game.”
Lay says from start to end this whole process took about 14 months, since starting work on the game in April 2020.
According to the Itch page for Zelda’s Adventure, it was developed to aesthetically resemble 1992’s Link’s Awakening, but also includes some features from the Game Boy Color duo Oracle of Ages and Seasons. Lay calls his creation a complete port of the full game, and the music was composed by Beatscribe.
How to play Zelda’s Adventure for Game Boy
If you want to play this neat port on a Game Boy emulator, you can download the ROM from Lay’s Itch page. However, you can also play it in your browser without having to download a thing, or just watch a full playthrough of the fan game on Lay’s YouTube channel.
John Lay
Honestly, Lay’s new fan game is probably the best way to experience Zelda’s Adventure, that odd and barely remembered piece of Nintendo ephemera. I mean, unless the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom decides to include some deep-cut references to it, in which case we all might have to go back and reassess the CD-i disaster. Though I very much doubt that’s going to happen.
As for Lay, he doesn’t have plans to demake the other two Zelda CD-i games, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, on Nintendo’s portable or any other console. But he did enjoy working on the project, and wanted to shout out to both his composer Beatscribe and the “incredible developers” behind GB Studio.
“Thanks to everyone who supported the project,” Lay said. “I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback so far, it really makes it worthwhile. I hope you enjoy the game!”
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This video by a user called Art from the Machine shows “a Skyrim mod which allows for conversations with NPCs via ChatGPT, xVASynth (text-to-speech), and Whisper (speech-to-text). This update introduces Skyrim scripting, which allows for lip syncing of voices and NPC awareness of in-game events.”
That’s the aim, anyway. Here’s what all that looks and sounds like in practice:
It’s a horror show, I know. Particular highlights are the way the video has to be sped up to mask the amount of time it takes the game to respond to questions, the terrible synthesised voice acting and the bland, generic standard of all the “writing”. Oh, and the fact the people running Skyrim’s stores—in a world without watches—will now tell you their opening hours like they were getting a phone call in a mall. Sorry, sir, we close at five pum.
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
I spent ages writing earlier drafts of this blog where I took this opportunity to launch into a tirade against the idea that machine learning can or should replace human artists, but you know what? This is a Skyrim mod. If this is what a lot of people still playing this game want—and clearly it is, even though what they actually want is to play a tabletop RPG with friends—then have at it. If you’re happy with word soup dialogue written by a machine that was trained on stuff that was already pretty generic in the first place, no amount of me saying “we need to value human art as the only true human experience” will convince you that if this is the future of video games that you want, you’re going to get everything you deserve.
As Bungie continues on its warpath against Destiny 2 cheaters, the studio has won $12 million in the lawsuit against Romanian cheat seller Mihai Claudiu-Florentin that began back in 2021.
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Claudiu-Florentin sold cheat software at VeteranCheats, which allowed users to get an edge over other players with software that could do things like tweak their aim and let them see through walls. Naturally, Bungie argued that the software was damaging to Destiny 2‘s competitive and cooperative modes, and has won the case against the seller. The lawsuit alleges “copyright infringement, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, and violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.” (Thanks, TheGamePost).
You can read a full PDF of the suit, courtesy of TheGamePost, here, but the gist of it is that Bungie is asking for $12,059,912.98 in total damages, with $11,696,000 going toward violations of the DMCA, $146,662.28 for violations of the Copyright Act, and $217,250.70 accounting for the studio’s attorney expense. After subpoenaing Stripe, a payment processing service, Bungie learned that at least 5848 separate transactions took place through the service that included Destiny 2 cheating software from November 2020 to July 2022.
While Bungie might have $12 million more dollars out of this, VeteranCheats’ website is still up and offering cheating software for games like Overwatch and Call of Duty. Though, Destiny no longer appears on the site’s home page or if you search within its community.
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
According to the lawsuit, Bungie has paid around $2 million in its anti-cheating efforts between staffing and software. This also extended to a blanket ban on cheating devices in both competitive and PvE modes earlier this month.
While Destiny 2 has been wrapped up in legal issues, the shooter has also been caught up in some other controversy recently thanks to a major leak that led to the ban of a major content creator in the game’s community.
Elden Ring legend Let Me Solo Her might want to watch his back, as another Tarnished is out here making a name for themselves by killing Malenia, Blade of Miquella in record time. Sure, Let Me Solo Her might have beaten her over 1,000 times, but this guy has killed Malenia in roughly 15 seconds. It’s one of the quickest times I’ve seen yet.
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Scarlet Rot Queen Malenia is an optional boss in FromSoftware’s most popular Souls game yet. Encountered in Elphael, Brace of the Haligtree, a legacy dungeon located in the northernmost part of The Lands Between, Malenia is notorious for her difficulty and one-hit kill potential. In stats FromSoft dropped earlier this month, it was revealed that Malenia was attempted some 329 million times. While that number doesn’t reflect player deaths, I’ve no doubt Malenia’s body count is in the millions at this point—though struggling Tarnished could always call up Let Me Solo Her via his summon sign to get a little help with the two-phased fight.
Or they could just watch redditor RS_Lionheart for useful tips, who absolutely murked the Goddess of Rot in 15 seconds on, get this, New Game+7, the highest difficulty Elden Ring has to offer after you’ve beaten it eight times over. That’s a lot of journeys through The Lands Between.
Beating Malenia the fast way
In an April 20 YouTube video, RS_Lionheart showed off exactly how he bodied Malenia. He starts the clip with a dizzying array of buffs and consumables ranging from the Golden Vow (an incantation that increases attack and defense) and the Frenzyflame Stone (a consumable that continuously restores your HP), among others. After almost 50 seconds of getting swole via performance-enhancing goodies and rotting steroids in front of Malenia’s fog gate, RS_Lionheart walks into the depths of the Haligtree to begin the fight. He skips the intro cutscene and finishes the first phase of the battle in seven seconds, using the cross jumping slash attack of two Bandit’s Curved Swords.
RS_Lionheart
Once her famed second phase begins, RS_Lionheart throws a Freezing Pot consumable to ground Malenia, then proceeds to jump-attack the winged queen to death. The total time it took? Just a little over 15 seconds.
A console staple Because the Xbox Series S is $30 off, you can put that $30 towards storage, an extra controller, or the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
The Elden Ring build for beating Malenia’s ass
In Reddit messages with Kotaku, RS_Lionheart, who has 15 different characters across two accounts and nearly 2,100 hours in Elden Ring, explained that he stacked a few different buffs onto the character he mained in order to beat the brakes off Malenia so quickly.
“Before the start of the video, I used Seppuku twice to bring down my health and sorted my inventory by recent acquisition,” RS_Lionheart said. “Then, I used a Frenzyflame Stone to start the buildup of madness, followed by Golden Vow. After that, I drink a Cerulean Flask and used the Ash of War: Cragblade on my left-handed Bandit’s Curved Sword. I then switched my Dragon Communion Seal to an Antspur Rapier and used Bloodboil Aromatic. After this, madness should be inflicted, so I swapped the Black Dumpling Helm to the Mushroom Crown and drank another Cerulean Flask, followed by my Physick (Thorny Cracked Tear and Stonebarb Cracked Tear). Then, I inflicted poison on myself with two Roped Fetid Pots, swapped the Mushroom Crown to the White Mask, and inflicted blood loss using Seppuku again with the Antspur Rapier. Once blood loss was inflicted, I swapped the Kindred of Rot’s Exultation and the Lord of Blood’s Exultation to the Red-Feathered Branchsword and Claw Talisman. After that, I switched the Antspur Rapier to my other Bandit’s Curved Sword and applied Cragblade again before heading through the fog gate. Also, it’s important to note that the other talismans I used were Millicent’s Prosthesis and Rotten Winged Sword Insignia to boost successive attack damage. I also wore the Raptor’s Black Feathers to increase my jump attack damage.”
According to RS_Lionheart, he’s helped a good number of other players struggling against Malenia either by placing his summon sign near her gate or offering advice on his YouTube channel. She already has a massive health pool, but in New Game+7, her HP is increased by nearly 40 percent, making her all the more challenging. While he couldn’t recall exactly how many players he’s lent his dizzying buff-based strategy to, it’s not something RS_Lionheart is particularly fond of doing for one simple reason: Lag.
“I have a more simplified version I’ve used at a lower level (around 150) which has higher survivability (considering co-op can be unpredictable at times with lag and latency),” RS_Lionheart explained.
Lag aside, co-op is difficult for another reason: enemy scaling due to the number of additional players. Bosses take less damage, have more health, and hit way harder when playing Elden Ring with a friend or two. That’s part of why RS_Lionheart would prefer not to embark on such a challenge in multiplayer—and understands why many players may not want to attempt besting Malenia at all.
“The reason I enjoy a challenge like this so much is because it’s a thrill to try to do something that hasn’t been done before,” RS_Lionheart said. “That’s all the motivation I need when I’m doing research on a boss to figure out exactly how much damage I need to do before I do it. It’s very fun to me and in my opinion, takes a very full and complete knowledge of Elden Ring to attempt in full.”
That said, while the feat is very impressive, just one day later on April 21, a friend of RS_Lionheart smashed his 15-second record kill on Malenia, defeating the notorious Queen of Rot in a little over 10 seconds! Though his friend did not defeat the Queen of Rot on New Game+7, aside from a different weapon choice he went in with the exact same build as RS_Lionheart.
Sax Slave Gael
“He is a very skilled creator who runs the Sax Slave Gael YouTube channel,” RS_Lionheart said of the 10-second-killer. “I’ve learned a lot from him as I’m sure he’s learned from me through the past few months. I think competition like this is great because it pushes the boundaries of what is possible in Elden Ring.”
Elden Ring is already a punishing experience. Being one of the most difficult bosses in the game, Malenia strikes fear in the hearts of many players, myself included. But now that we’ve got a solid buffing strategy for breaking her down, maybe she isn’t so scary anymore?
Respawn went on to develop Apex Legends, a game set in the Titanfall universe only—crucially—without the Titans, and which has been printing money for years. They’ve also made the new Star Wars Jedi games, which have been a successful return to form for a franchise long stuck in licensed adaptation hell.
They’ve been very busy with those, and given their success likely will be for the foreseeable future. You also need to know that, as critically successful as Titanfall 2 was, the game—released alongside a bunch of other blockbuster shooters, including EA’s own Battlefield 1—was seen by publisher Electronic Arts as an enormous commercial failure.
So the likelihood that we ever get a Titanfall 3, especially a Titanfall 3 in the same vein as Titanfall 2, are slim! Actually that’s being generous. The likelihood that Respawn, as busy as they are, will make a Titanfall 3 with backing from EA, a publisher who will throw an under-performing franchise in the trash without a second’s hesitation, is pretty much zero.
This week, we’re back in said ringer. Speaking with Barron’s(thanks, PC Gamer), mostly about their new Star Wars game, Respawn boss Vince Zampella was asked about the possibility of there ever being a Titanfall 3, to which he replied
I hate to say yes, then people latch onto that, and then skewer you when it doesn’t come.
But I would love to see it happen is the real answer.
My man, you are one of the handful of people on the planet with the power to make this happen! You don’t need to pine about it in a interview, go call some meetings!
I kid, of course, there are a multitude of planning, resource-related and financial reasons we haven’t seen a Titanfall 3, but refreshingly—and in the only piece of good news to be had here today—that’s partly down to the fact that were such a thing to ever happen, Respawn want to do right by the game, rather than just drop Titanfall Tour on iOS or something.
“It has to be the right thing”, Zampella says. “It’s such a beloved franchise for the fans and also for us. If it is not the right moment in time, the right idea, then it just doesn’t make sense.”
Maybe that time will be soon. Maybe it’ll be never! All I know is that until we reach that right moment in time”, every time I have to type “Titanfall 3″ and not follow it up with “Announced” is going to kill me.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced its decision to block Micorosft’s $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard on Wednesday citing concerns it would hurt competition in the growing cloud gaming market where Microsoft dominates thanks to Game Pass. It’s a shocking turn of events for what seemed like a mega merger that was otherwise cruising toward regulatory approval.
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“We have concluded that the merger would result in the most powerful operator in the fast-developing market for cloud gaming, with a current market share of 60-70%, acquiring a portfolio of world-leading games with the incentive to withhold those games from competitors and substantially weaken competition in this important growing market,” the CMA wrote in its final report. Both Microsoft and Activision Blizzard said they will appeal the decision.
One seemingly likely result of Microsoft buying Activision Blizzard would be that the latter’s hit games likeOverwatch 2, Diablo IV, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II would all get added to Game Pass. The CMA argues this would give Microsoft, already the market leader in cloud gaming, even more anti-competitive control. It also suggests that the company would then have an incentive to raise prices on cloud gaming subscription services like Game Pass, while potentially withholding certain releases from some rival platforms like Sony’s PlayStation Plus.
Microsoft tried to assuage these concerns in recent months by signing tons of deals with smaller cloud computing providers in the UK, promising to make Activision Blizzard’s games available through them alongside its own xCloud service. The CMA seemed unswayed by these overtures, however, calling Microsoft’s proposed remedies too limited in scope, implying they would leave out competing services like Sony’s and that enforcing the agreements would require too much ongoing regulatory oversight.
“We have already signed contracts to make Activision Blizzard’s popular games available on 150 million more devices, and we remain committed to reinforcing these agreements through regulatory remedies,” Brad Smith, Vice Chair and President at Microsoft, said in a statement. “We’re especially disappointed that after lengthy deliberations, this decision appears to reflect a flawed understanding of this market and the way the relevant cloud technology actually works.”
Activision’s response to the news was more harsh. “The CMA’s report contradicts the ambitions of the UK to become an attractive country to build technology businesses,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement. “We will work aggressively with Microsoft to reverse this on appeal. The report’s conclusions are a disservice to UK citizens, who face increasingly dire economic prospects. We will reassess our growth plans for the UK. Global innovators large and small will take note that— despite all its rhetoric—the UK is clearly closed for business.”
That language echoed Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s previous claims that the UK would become “death valley” if it torpedoed the deal, which promises huge financial windfalls for him and other executives at the company. The merger is still being investigated by authorities in the European Union, who are expected to announce a decision in May, and the Federal Trade Commission is currently threatening the acquisition with an antitrust lawsuit. It’s unclear how the CMA’s initial surprise ruling could affect approval in the U.S. and EU as a result, since failure in any one of the regions could likely doom it.
Wartales is currently in Early Access on Steam. It’s being developed by Shiro Games, the French studio behind the Viking RTS Northgard. And it has been taking up a lot of my time this month.
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There’s a lot going on in Wartales, a lot of influences getting thrown into a pot and swirling around each other, so the best (or at least most succinct) way I’ve seen it described is “Wartalesis a medieval open world role-playing game with turn-based combat in which the player leads a group of mercenaries.”
It’s mercenary management, basically. With some fighting. And a story. It’s like the management side of XCOM added the dietary and resting needs of a survival sim, then decided it wanted to go on a little RPG adventure. I have heard people say there’s some Mount and Blade here. Others say this is very close to Battle Brothers.
I could go on. But instead of continuing to confuse and bury you in references to existing video games, please just watch this release trailer instead:
Wartales – Official Release Trailer
I’ve been playing the game all week, and—this part is important—what I’ve played has been fantastic. The turn-based combat, while not exactly breaking new ground, works well enough. Your travels are full of story-driven quests full of morally ambiguous decisions, which as anyone who has played medieval-adjacent role-playing games will tell you, are the best types of decisions. The survival-style management of your party, which means everyone can die and you can hire replacements, has the same Fire Emblem, XCOM-y pull it always does when a game entrusts you with a (digital) person’s life.
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Fighting in Wartales is resolved through turn-based combat, in a way that will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever played a turn-based tactics gameScreenshot: Wartales
Know why I’m loving the game, though? It’s that viewpoint. While the camera zooms in for battles and conversations, most of your time in Wartales is spent wandering around an isometric overworld, your party meandering their way through forests and mountain passes and lovely little rural laneways.
It’s well-established here that I am an enjoyer of good isometric video games, and this is one of the nicest I’ve ever seen. It’s a whole game based around those scenes in Fellowship of the Ring where you see everybody striding across mountains and grassy plains. It’s combination of lush landscapes, slow pace and wide horizons makes this game seem vast, like it’s a world so big and full of possibilities that you’re about to get lost in it, but that’s also so quaint and immediate with its concerns that you don’t mind simply walking around for ages taking in the sights.
It doesn’t feel like a stage, or a level, or a map. It feels like a world.
I emphasised “what I’ve played” earlier because, by a lot of people’s accounts who are a lot further into Wartales than I am, everything that makes the opening hours such a blast—the feeling of wide open spaces, the constant resting and eating to keep your soldiers happy and breathing, the overworld battles—starts to become a bit of a grind later on.
Maybe it does, and when this game gets out of Early Access and I get that far, I’ll see if that’s actually the case. But for now, around 15 hours in, the open-ended mission structure that lets you take on contracts at your own leisure means that, for all its potential as a day-waster, its actually perfectly suited to what’s become a pretty busy part of my life, as I can jump in, finish a contract or two, set up camp, save the game then revisit it the next time I get a chance.
If you thought that gamers could be normal about two queers sharing a passionate kiss in 2023, then you would be very wrong. Horizon Forbidden West’s new story DLC, Burning Shores, contains a scene in which Aloy can choose to kiss a woman named Seyka, and it seems some PlayStation fans were not happy. Indeed, some players were so offended at being given this choice that they mass review-bombed the DLC on Metacritic. While the Metascore, which is based on critic’s reviews, currently sits at an 82, the user score is at just 3.2.
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Burning Shores is a DLC that, for technical reasons, is only available on PlayStation 5s. It brings significant quality of life improvements such as easier looting, though it’s apparently details like the better-looking clouds that rendered it a PS5 exclusive. The update also provides players with the opportunity to have Aloy pursue a romantic relationship with someone nice, which has been a fan request for years. And I’m happy for her. Seyka seems like a nice lady, and Aloy deserves to open up to someone after running around and saving the world for two consecutive games. The main people who are mad right now are the homophobes, who seemingly can’t stand the thought of any gay content in the Horizon series at all—even if whether or not Aloy acts on her feelings is fully optional.
The bar is on the floor, y’all. But it doesn’t stop bigots from running face-first into it. Recent players complained on Metacritic that “homosexuals” were putting forward a “dirty agenda” that “sabotaged” what could have been a beautiful story. Nearly all of the reviews with a “0” score complained that they shouldn’t be forced to see gay women exist in the world of Horizon. One player called the game “woke propaganda” for allowing Aloy to fall in love with someone she just met—as if that isn’t how human romantic attraction so often works. “[Guerilla Games] retconned the main character for LGBTQ nonsense,” bemoaned another so-called fan who seems to have completely missed that there were sparks between Aloy and Petra in Horizon Zero Dawn. “Aloy never showed signs of being a lesbian,” complained one player who seems to have played a completely different game.
This is not the first time that a PlayStation first-party franchise was attacked for featuring openly queer characters. This February, homophobes review bombed The Last of Us on HBO because they were forced to endure the unbearable sight of queer tenderness on television. Hopefully with enough repeated exposure, gamers will come to realize that queer video game characters are here to stay. Because culture is moving on, either with or without them.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has partnered up with a bunch of Twitch streamers to encourage gamers to not commit war crimes in popular shooters like Call of Duty. The ICRC hopes that its event, “Play by the Rules,” will educate players on the statutes of actual war. The organization has even created its own Fortnite mode to help communicate what those rules are.
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“Every day, people play games set in conflict zones right from their couch. But right now, armed conflicts are more prevalent than ever,” the ICRC website said. “And to the people suffering from their effects, this conflict is not a game. It destroys lives and leaves communities devastated. Therefore, we’re challenging you to play FPS by the real Rules of War, to show everyone that even wars have rules—rules which protect humanity on battlefields IRL.”
As part of the event, on the ICRC’s official Twitch channel streamers have played a number of games while adhering (or attempting to adhere) to the Laws of Conflict, including PUBG Battlegrounds, Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone, Rainbow 6 Siege, and Escape From Tarkov. In addition to the Play by the Rules event, the ICRC created its own Fortnite mode that’s designed to convey the rules of war in the context of competitive play.
For those curious, the official rules of war for the ICRC’s Play by the Rules event (which have been streamlined to account for video game mechanics) are:
No thirsting (don’t shoot downed/unresponsive enemies)
No targeting non-violent NPCs
No targeting civilian buildings
Use med kits on everyone
ICRC
This isn’t the first time the ICRC has urged players to critically think about the rules of war. Back in 2017, the ICRC hosted a similar event in an Arma III DLC called Law of War. In Law of War, gamers put down their weapons and took on the role of humanitarian workers as they respond to people in crisis, deactivate mines, and speak with an investigative journalist. According to a blog post from Arma III developer Bohemia Interactive, the DLC raised a total of $176,667, which it donated to the ICRC.
Last week Capcom pushed an update out to the Steam versions of the remakes for Resident Evil 2 & 3. It was supposed to be a generic little update, but whatever Capcom did under the hood ended up breaking a couple of the game’s nicer features.
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Not long after the updates went live PC users began noticing that the option to enable ray-tracing within both game’s menu had disappeared. Also gone was the option to turn on 3D audio support. While some fans on Reddit initially believed this to have been intentional, Capcom later issued a statement confirming that the modes had been affected by the update, and that they “apologize for any inconvenience”.
To all Resident Evil 2 / Resident Evil 3 users on Steam
We’re aware of an ongoing issue with the raytracing option not appearing in the graphics menu and presets. We’ll have this addressed in a future update and apologize for any inconvenience!
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Sucks that it’ll take another update to fix stuff that had already been in the game, but that’s game development and support, baby.
Weirdly, this isn’t the first time those two specific options have been the focus of botched updates. Back in 2022 the Resident Evil 2 remake, Resident Evil 3 remake and Resident Evil 7 were all forcibly updated on PC to include ray-tracing and 3D audio, a move which massively upset users who were (rightly) concerned that this would blow the required specs for the games—which they had already bought and played—out of the window.
After the updates did exactly that, and fans protested, Capcom quickly reverted:
“Due to overwhelming community response, we’ve reactivated the previous version that does not include ray tracing and enhanced 3D audio,” Capcom’s Resident Evil team wrote on Steam. “Both enhanced and previous versions will be made available going forward.”
First too many people had ray-tracing, now nobody has ray-tracing.
Diablo IV is still a couple of months away, but Blizzard is already stomping down some of the game’s most popular classes ahead of its June 6 release date. The studio posted a new blog on its website reflecting on the game’s recent beta, and shared what’s basically a full set of patch notes it will implement ahead of Diablo IV’s launch. While there aren’t a lot of hard numbers to go off of, you can at least get a sense of where some of the game’s character classes will be by the time fans get to play them again.
8 Minutes Of Diablo IV’s Character Creator
What is Blizzard doing to my precious baby angel Necromancer?
At the end of March, Blizzard said Necromancers and Sorcerers were the most popular classes among beta players. This was especially significant for Necromancer, as the class was only available during one of the game’s two test periods, while the Sorcerer was available for both. Kotaku’s own Levi Winslow used Necromancer most, and said the class was “truly busted” thanks to its ability to revive dead skeletons to fight alongside them. While Blizzard’s new blog says these dead minions will die more often, there are no specific numbers or any mention of a smaller skeletal headcount being forced upon players. The developer notes the dead’s increased vulnerability will make raising them “a more active component” in playing the Necromancer, rather than something you can just set and forget.
The Sorcerer’s debuffs seem less all-encompassing, with Chain Lightning dealing less damage and specifically reduced effectiveness against boss characters. But beyond that, the class is getting some buffs with abilities like Charged Bolt and an increased Lucky Hit chance for Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
While players will be getting some changes in the final game, some enemies will, as well. The Butcher, an enemy who gave some players a tough time during the beta, may be getting some kind of rework before the game launches. The blog states that the team has “re-evaluated” the enemy for difficulty, and it will “present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.” So it sounds like it might become easier on lower difficulties, but even harder on higher ones.
What’s happening in the Diablo IV pre-release patch notes?
Beyond balance changes, Blizzard is also tweaking Diablo IV’s dungeon layouts to avoid backtracking, which it says was a common complaint during the betas. Here is the full list of patch notes for those curious:
Dungeon Layouts
One of the most common pieces of feedback Blizzard received is that players felt they were doing a lot of backtracking within certain dungeons. The team has optimized multiple dungeons across all zones to minimize the need for backtracking. Here is a list of dungeons specifically in the Fractured Peaks zone which received layout updates:
Caldera Gate
Defiled Catacombs
Derelict Lodge
Forbidden City
Hoarfrost Demise
Immortal Emanation
Kor Dragan Barracks
Maulwood
Rimescar Caverns
Developer’s Note: Our primary goal with the Layout changes was to reduce certain kinds of backtracking which detract from a player’s experience. An example of this change is that players previously needed to enter side rooms to interact with Structure Objectives, causing them to retread the same path. Now, many of our Structure Objectives have been repositioned along main dungeon pathways, making them easier for players to reach and allowing them to readily explore the dungeon after defeating the Structure.
Dungeon Events
The chance for an Event to spawn inside of a dungeon has increased from 10% to 60%.
Dungeon Gameplay
To reduce the need to backtrack, small numbers of straggling monsters will seek out the player to help complete the Kill All Monsters objective.
When Animus is gathered, the player and nearby allies will:
Gain 10 Resource.
Reduce all active Cooldowns by 1 second.
Depositing Animus channel time was reduced from 3 to 0 seconds.
The time to Rescue was reduced from 3 to 1.5 seconds.
All Rescue objectives now drop a Health Potion upon completion.
While carrying the Ancient’s Statue, Bloodstone, Mechanical Box, or Stone Carving, you will receive a Momentum bonus granting a 25% move speed increase to you and nearby allies.
Pedestals have had their channel time reduced from 2 to 0 seconds.
Returning a Portable Object to its Pedestal now fully restores Health, Resource, Potions, and resets cooldowns for all nearby players.
All doors will now generate a minimap ping when they are opened.
All Structure Objectives in dungeons now have additional combat mechanics players must overcome.
Developer’s Note: While our dungeons offer a variety of Objectives to complete, player feedback stated that the action of completing each Objective felt tedious. We hope that providing bonuses, such as the increase to mobility while carrying certain Objective items, will streamline and vary the experience of completing Objectives. This adjustment is merely a starting point, and we intend to extend this philosophy to keys in a future update.
General
Effects like Stun and Freeze can be applied to Elite Monsters twice as long before they become Unstoppable.
Reviewed class skills to confirm that all classes have access to sufficient skills that remove control impairing effects.
Many Legendary Powers have had updates to their effectiveness.
Barbarian
A flat 10% passive damage reduction has been added for the Barbarian Class. Some Skill Tree passives had their damage reduction effects reduced to compensate.
The Whirlwind Skill now deals more damage and consumes more Fury.
The Double Swing Skill Enhancement refunds its full Fury cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies.
Druid
Companion Skills will now deal heavily increased damage.
All Ultimate Skills have had their cooldowns reduced.
Usability improvements have been made to Maul and Pulverize.
Using a non-Shapeshifting Skill will transform a Druid back into their human form.
Necromancer
Summoned Minions will die more often, requiring players to utilize Corpses more often.
Many bonuses in the Book of the Dead have had their stats increased.
The damage dealt by the Corpse Explosion skill has been reduced.
The brightness of the Skeletal Warriors and Mages has been reduced.
Rogue
Upgrades for Subterfuge Skills have had their bonuses increased.
Multiple passive Skills have had their bonuses increased.
All Imbuement Skills have had their cooldowns increased.
Sorcerer
Charged Bolt’s damage was increased and the Mana cost to cast has decreased.
Decreased the damage of Chain Lightning and reduced its effectiveness against Bosses.
Decreased the cooldown for the Incinerate Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Firewalls will now spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using its Enchantment bonus.
Increased the Lucky Hit chance for the Meteor Skill’s Enchantment bonus.
Developer’s Note: Whenever we introduce changes to our Classes, it is with the goal of making both them and their Skills feel impactful and powerful—your feedback has helped us uphold this ideal. Some players have adeptly noticed that certain Skills were too powerful. One of our goals for Skills is to have them be interesting to wield and interactive in terms of itemization and combat feel. We’ve made some changes to help in this regard, with one example being the Necromancer’s Minions. We’ve made a change that makes them more vulnerable in combat, which will make raising the dead a more active component of the Necromancer’s gameplay. Launch is just the first step of our Class balance journey, and you can expect further updates that iterate on this pillar of Diablo IV.
UI
Fixed an issue where the built-in Screen Reader was not reading key prompts, game options details, and other UI text.
Fixed an issue where actions could not be bound to the mouse wheel.
Fixed an issue where Evade couldn’t be bound to the right Analog Stick on controller.
Chat will now display on the left side of the screen when using the centered action bar configuration.
A character’s stats will be displayed by default when players click the Materials & Stats button within their Inventory.
The Move and Interact inputs can now be mapped to one button while the Primary Attack input is mapped to a secondary button.
The sans serif font used in-game has been replaced with a new serif font.
Encounters
Fixed multiple issues that allowed bosses, like the Butcher, to become unresponsive.
The Butcher has been re-evaluated for difficulty and will present a greater challenge in World Tiers III and IV.
Bosses such as T’chort, Malnok, Vhenard, and others were reevaluated for melee character difficulty, resulting in changes to attacks and fight mechanics.
Fixed an issue where Vampire Brutes using the Shadow Enchant affix would chain-cast Impale.
Cellars
Increased the chance for a dungeon Event to occur in Cellars.
Cellars will now consistently reward a chest upon completion.
Fixed an issue where Cellars would prematurely be marked as complete.
Fixed an issue where the guaranteed elite monster would be absent from a Cellar.
General quality of life
Fixed an issue where players could increase attack speed by move-cancelling attacks early.
Fixed an issue where characters weren’t immune and untargetable after loading into an area.
The Reset Dungeon button has been disabled.
Fixed an issue that caused Gale Valley and Serac Rapture to have less monsters than intended until the campaign quests in those territories were completed.
Bungie is cracking down on Destiny 2 players using third-party peripherals to cheat in the game’s competitive and cooperative modes.
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The studio is following Call of Duty: Warzone’s example, which implemented a similar ban at the beginning of April, and is now monitoring when players use devices to get the leg up against others. Bungie outlines its policy in a blog post on its website, but stops short of naming any specific software or hardware because it “simply [doesn’t] want to offer a bigger spotlight than necessary.” But broadly, the post lists things like “programmable controllers, keyboard and mouse adapters, advanced macros, or automation via artificial intelligence” meant to let the user use inputs in a way that goes beyond what the game or player is typically capable of.
Bungie makes a distinction between things like external accessibility aids that make the game playable as intended for people with disabilities and third-party peripherals maliciously designed to give the user an advantage over others. Because Destiny 2’s PvE content also affects things like races to finish the game’s raids at launch, Bungie is extending these rules to cooperative modes, as well.
“Simply using an accessibility aide to play Destiny 2, where a player could not play otherwise, would not be a violation of this policy,” the post reads. “Using these tools to mitigate challenges all players face, such as reducing recoil or increasing aim assist, would be a violation.”
Moving forward, Bungie says it will be monitoring for violations, with plans to issue warnings, restrictions, or outright bans depending on the situation. Cheating in online games is as old as the medium, but what that means and how it’s detectable varies from game to game. Valve recently caught and banned over 40,000 cheaters from Dota 2and then publicized the move as a threat to would-be cheaters.
While third-party software and peripherals are one part of the conversation, some competitive communities are deciding for themselves what cheating looks like. The Super Smash Bros. Ultimate competitive scene has been dealing with an in-game strategy that was deemed unfair involving the character Steve. Since then, some tournament organizers have made the decision to ban the character outright, rather than having to vet suspect players at events.
