Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Perhaps the best thing Overwatch has given to the world in years is an opportunity for everyone to edit and dress their cats up as a hero, and fans have gripped onto that opportunity like nothing else, flooding the internet with countless IRL Jetpack Cats. For those out of the loop, Blizzard Entertainment's long-running shooter Overwatch has been enjoying its biggest resurgence ever thanks to a meaty update featuring five new playable heroes, including Jetpack Cat, who is, quite simply, a standard, one brain cell ginger cat riding a weaponized jetpack. Fans didn't skip a beat and immediately began turning their own pets into the heroic Jetpack Cat with the power of amateur photoshop and cosplay. Take a look at some absolutely adorable cuties down below (though, I'm not sure I'd be quite so nice to these furballs if they tried to chuck me off a cliff in game). Jetpack Cat is now the most popular Overwatch hero as players call her the "most fun," but she's starting to get banned Blizzard's begging you to stop banning Overwatch's Jetpack Cat, and I promise shooting down the furball's not that hard Overwatch's evil faction suffers a huge blow in Helldivers 2-style event, and it's all thanks to Jetpack Cat cosmetics Wanted to join in on the Jetpack Cat cuteness! from r/Overwatch Turned my cat into jetpack cat from r/Overwatch i turned my cat into jetpack cat! from r/Overwatch Jetpack Cat Cosplay from r/Overwatch My cat is jetpack cat too! from r/Overwatch And as a bonus extra, I even waded into the wonky photoshop waters to imagine Paws, a very special cat who's no longer with us, as an Overwatch agent. He's the handsome gentleman in the pink ribbon pictured in our headline image. Needless to say, the Overwatch devs won't be running out of ideas for Jetpack Cat cosmetics anytime soon. Grey tabbies, British shorthairs, and the dozens of fan cats from around the world should give the folks at Blizzard enough fuel to make skins with for years. I'm also really excited to eventually see other people bring their cats along to nerd conventions in the future, dressed in pilot goggles and a leather jetpack buckle, hopefully. Hype around Jetpack Cat hasn't exactly subsided since her release, either. The tides totally turned in Overwatch's new faction wars event due to Blizzard dangling feline-themed cosmetics in front of players' noses, but the new support hero is also about to be nerfed as the devs fear she can be "very, very lethal." Overwatch fans think a RuPaul's Drag Race winner and Doctor Who star is teasing another new hero: "I'm immediately maining them"

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! The early findings of World of Warcraft's new Prey system – coming in the Midnight expansion due to launch next month – are in, and Blizzard is happy to report that a lot of you "really liked being ambushed." Hooray. If you've played Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, then the idea behind the Prey mechanic is pretty easy to understand. You opt in, and the race is on between you and a big bad to see who can knock the other over first. Eventually, the two of you will square off in a one-on-one bout, at which point you'll hopefully win. It'd be embarrassing if you didn't. Digging into why Blizzard wanted to bring such a thing to Azeroth, senior game designer Kim Flak shares that it's equal parts open-world difficulty and changing up the routine you've likely honed for years. Blizzard pleads with WoW fans not to judge removal of combat mods too early, as Midnight was designed with it in mind World of Warcraft lead teases "a lot of death" for "important characters" in the Worldsoul Saga, so pray for your faves World of Warcraft Midnight is the "the fastest expansion" Blizzard has ever made, with "no sacrifices to team health" "It's not like just clicking on a hard mode," Flak tells our pals at PC Gamer. "It's more increasing moment-to-moment gameplay challenges, and giving players opportunities for skill expression in the outdoor world. "It's easy to get into a flow state when you're just doing your routine, you know, you're doing your world quests, your rares, your treasures, you slouch down in your chair…" So what would happen if you had something to challenge your long-honed habits and routines? Flak shares that Blizzard's thinking is that the specter of a nemesis – if you will – will force you to sit upright in your chair by giving you more to think about – "'Do I have crowd control? Do I have the right talents? Do I have enough health before I go into this?" Of course, Blizzard wants to keep things fair. On lower difficulties, you'll only be jumped when you're actually in combat, so if you "AFK to go get your pizza," your rival won't see that as a prime opportunity to get the jump on you. On harder difficulties, though, they won't be so merciful. "Nightmare mode kind of is the 'don't AFK' mode," Flak says. "If you need to AFK, you're going to want to go to a rested area. You might even want to log out. You might want to hearthstone back home, because on Nightmare mode, going AFK might get you killed. But hey, it's in the name, you signed up for it." Plan your meals accordingly. Naturally, we'll have to wait and see how people feel about the Prey system when Midnight launches next month. As with plenty of other expansions, though, Blizzard has plenty of sources of feedback – pre-patch events, betas, and the like. So far, so good, it would appear. "One thing that I was surprised by was that players really liked being ambushed," Flak says. "I was a little afraid, like you mentioned a little bit earlier, that players might see these as moments of friction that felt a little unfair. Like 'I pulled that mob, and I would've lived if that guy hadn't ambushed me!' But players overall were like, 'I like being jumped. I like that experience. It's fun, it's surprising, and it's a moment for me to, all of a sudden, shift how I'm thinking about what I'm doing.' "It really delighted me, because I was hoping players were going to like the surprise of ambushes, and overall, a lot of them did." Blizzard pleads with World of Warcraft fans not to judge the removal of combat mods too early, because Midnight was designed with it in mind: "We changed some of how we build encounters."

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Back in the '90s and '00s, seeing a home console game ported to a handheld platform usually resulted in something absolutely dreadful, but somehow, the Game Boy Advance versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater turned out to be essential parts of that platform's library. These ports exist, in part, simply because developer Vicarious Visions was deep in debt and desperately needed something to keep the company afloat. Karthik Bala founded Vicarious Visions alongside his brother in 1991, and the pair spent years working on various passion projects before starting to take on various bits of contract work. Those projects included things like a Game Boy Color port of Activision's Spider-Man game. But by 2000, things at the 45-person studio had started to look dire – a major contract had fallen through, and the company suddenly couldn't make payroll. "We were literally hand-to-mouth, and what happened was we had to go get a loan from the bank," Bala told Time Extension. "My brother and I went bank to bank to bank, and nobody would give us a loan because at the time we were just a few years out of college, we had a big payroll, we didn't have any collateral, and we didn't have any assets; I was barely making my rent at the time." "The physical world gave us possibilities we didn't have before": How Grim Fandango's 3D world revolutionized PC gaming How Ape Escape's DualShock legacy lives on in today's PS5 games: "We'll never make it compatible with regular controls!" "Bully was chaotic from the day I started": Inside the making of Rockstar's 'GTA in boarding school' Eventually, Bala and his brother convinced a bank to give them a $1 million dollar loan, but "we knew that if we didn't pull this off, we would pretty much be in debt for the rest of our lives." They were able to pay their employees, but they needed more work to ensure the company's future. Luckily, Activision liked their work on Spider-Man and they'd managed to get ahold of early Game Boy Advance hardware, two factors that opened a big opportunity for the studio. "My brother and I went to E3 2000, and Tony Hawk had just been a big hit for Activision on PlayStation," Bala explained. "We wanted to bring Tony Hawk to handheld, and my brother saw Tony Hawk at the Activision booth. Because of that, we said, 'Hey, we should go pitch Tony Hawk on a game for the Game Boy Advance.'" Inspired by an isometric arcade skateboarding game from the '80s called 720, Bala called up the team back home and said, "'Why don't we put a pitch together and fake up some screenshots of what it could look like on the GBA?' The artists did that quickly, and FedEx'd me the colour printouts, and we went back to the Activision booth to go find Tony. It was all kind of ridiculous." Both Tony Hawk and Activision evidently liked what they saw, because Vicarious Visions got the green light to make their GBA port. There was just one problem: it was impossible. "Coming back from E3, we then told the team we were going to do this project," Bala said, "and they're like, 'Yeah, we've got some bad news for you. To render out all the sprites and all the animation that's needed for all the tricks and movement in 2D, it won't fit on the Game Boy Advance cartridge because there's only 8 megabytes of storage. Just the animations alone would be 80 megabytes.' But we had this handshake deal, so we had to figure it out." So a 2D, sprite-based take on Tony Hawk was out the window. The solution? Just make the GBA render 3D, polygonal skaters. That's a tall feat on a platform built for SNES-level graphics, but Bala credits developers Matt Conte and Alex Rybakov with making it work. "It was a super complicated and laborious process," Bala explained. "But it ran at 60 frames per second. When Nintendo saw it and when Activision saw it, nobody could believe it, because it was like this 3D game on a handheld, and it felt and played like Tony Hawk." Vicarious Visions' take on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater launched alongside the new handheld in 2001, and is still considered one of the best GBA games of all time. "That was our big breakout hit," Bala added. "It was year that we paid back all of our debt, and we became a premier developer on the Game Boy Advance. After that, we went on to do a lot of really fun licenses and IPs. At that point, it was like, 'You know what? This is what we should embrace. We should embrace doing console and handheld games with big IP.'" The partnership between Vicarious Visions and Activision was strong enough that the publisher eventually acquired the studio in 2005. The studio would continue to support various Activision titles over the years, including numerous handheld editions of games like Guitar Hero and Skylanders. But after delivering the fantastic Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 remakes in 2020, Vicarious Visions was shuffled over to become part of Blizzard and now largely offers support on the Diablo franchise. Tony Hawk also starred in some of the best PS1 games ever made.

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins admits that some of the in-game events are a bit too beneficial to campers, and probably need a bit of balancing. With any online game, no matter how much developers test anything, players will find the most effective way of working around it. Masahiro Sakurai never directed Super Smash Bros Melee with the intention of it being a competitive fighting game, but it spawned the possibly biggest fighting game sub-community of all time. So it's likely impossible to truly tell until it's in people's hands. Speaking to PC Gamer, Watkins was asked about events like Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker which allow players to camp at entrances to reap the rewards instead of completing the tasks. He responded "So that one's a good use case for where revisions are probably required, right?" Watkins explains, "when we built that, we had an idealised way of how we hoped people would engage with it. And then, you know, as players always do, they find this sort of meta throughline." Arc Raiders dev says "we do analyze behavior and match accordingly," so maybe start playing nice Arc Raiders lead responds to complaints about late spawns, says late joiners are important and "profit way more" While playing Arc Raiders, Embark leads clarify they only added true "aggression-based" matchmaking fairly recently And while "we thought at the time would be an ok mitigation factor for Hidden Bunker is that we tried to stack pretty deadly enemies near the entrance," players are already good enough at the game that it isn't really a problem for them. Watkins explains, "Now that we have tons of live data, we can go look at those existing map conditions, because there's a few others that have similar issues." However, it's not as simple as changing it drastically, as he adds "it's about us trying to keep the spirit of those, but adjust the mechanics so you're not getting quite those moments." Arc Raiders players tried to rig matchmaking by lying in post-match surveys, but Embark says those don't do a darn thing

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Solid Snake is finally back on the right path once again as Rainbow Six Siege gives him bigger cheeks than his most recent appearances. Snake had a hard life. Not only has Metal Gear Solid's star player not had an appearance in the games since 2008, but since then his crossover appearances have committed crimes against him. In Metal Gear Solid 2, 4, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Solid Snake is caked up, Kojima insisted that he has a better ass than Raiden, and boy did the team deliver which led to the iconic "the clap of my ass cheeks keeps alerting the guards" meme that even David Hayter himself got in on. But Snake's first appearance in 10 years for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was the start of a worrying trend, yes it was nice to see Snake again, and some signs of life for the then-dormant Metal Gear series, but his cake was heavily nerfed, he had a flat ass. Then years later when he appeared in Fortnite, it got even worse, it was gone, he was so flat he made Hank Hill look like Aunt Fanny from the 2005 film Robots. Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker co-op, inspired by the Monster Hunter craze, lives on in Master Collection Volume 2 After 18 years, Metal Gear Solid 4 finally escapes PS3 jail as Konami announces Master Collection Volume 2 Hideo Kojima says "things that are too comfortable" won't stick with players, so he likes to "leave a bit of discomfort" However, there is a spark of hope. As Twitter user HEITAIs points out (via machine translation) that with his upcoming appearance in Rainbow Six Siege, Ubisoft is trying to right one of the most horrific wrongs bestowed upon Snake, as he appears to be a bit more thick than his Fortnite and Smash days. Granted, he's still not the whole bakery as he was in his heyday, but it's a good first step in the return of Metal Gear. Concerning if true.February 19, 2026 Concerning if true.February 19, 2026 Concerning if true.February 19, 2026 Hayter even commented on the shrinkage, calling it "concerning if true", so with Snake himself alerted of some of the wrongdoings bestowed upon him, hopefully Metal Gear Solid 6 will have him as caked up as Kojima intended. Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol. 2's included games disappear from storefronts without warning

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! The Witcher 1 had a pretty peculiar take on RPG romances back in 2007, rewarding players with collectible, salacious cards for having sex with various women. But if you've ever taken a moment to really analyze the cards (for what I assume are research purposes), then you might just notice the romance cards rarely ever match up with the characters' portraits or in-game models, and there's a very good reason why. Ganszyniec admits that some of Geralt's courting tactics, like asking a woman he's only just met to follow him into a "nook" somewhere, are a bit off. "That doesn't sound creepy at all, Geralt." Ahead of The Witcher 1 remake, OG story lead reveals that ending cutscene was created without "involving the story team" The Witcher 1 lead story designer's first playthrough in "almost 20 years" has must-watch commentary ahead of the remake The Witcher 1 story lead gets frustrated playing the epilogue he largely designed: "I got only myself to blame" "I wasn't responsible for the sex cards," he quickly adds, "but I overheard the designing of this particular one and that's when I learned the term, uh, MILF. And I'm sorry you had to hear that, but there's another funny story with it." The former CDPR developer then scrolls through the game's menus to find the 'Characters' tab, which lists all the people Geralt's encountered on his adventure alongside a portrait of them. Romance cards can also be viewed here. Ganszyniec spends some time showing how some characters' cards are out of whack with their menu portraits, which are also sometimes out of sync with their in-game models. Oddly enough, hair colors, skin tones and more can all differ quite drastically. "What we later learned was that the person who was responsible for making sure the colors matched [were] colorblind, like, totally," Ganszyniec explains. "But they were too shy to talk about it. So how do you approach the task? Well, you can copy the RGB numbers or casually ask fellow designers [...] 'Do you think this hair is more auburn or?'" The Witcher 1 is now being remade in a joint effort from CD Projekt Red and Fool's Theory as the former also hammers away at the much-hyped The Witcher 4. OG The Witcher lead thinks the Wild Hunt "will probably need to be changed" for the RPG's new remake because they were originally seen as wraiths – not "elves in armor"

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Embark Studios design director Virgil Watkins says the end of match survey in Arc Raiders won't affect future matchmaking like some players think. Matchmaking is always a contentious thing in any online game, especially within the shooter community. And as such, there's always a section of players who want to figure out the fine details and optimize who they get paired with in their favor. This led to a rumor emerging that how you react in the post-game survey could effect the type of players you get paired up with in the future, but from the sounds of things it seems to be more a case of confirmation bias for anyone who did see a difference. Speaking to PC Gamer, Watkins was asked about the end-of-game surveys and how much weight they have in the game's matchmaking, responding, "Zero factor." He explains, "Those are just to help us gauge how players felt about the round. They have no mechanical change on what happens to you. It is solely based on your actions in the round. Those just go to our data team and help us pair up like things that occurred in the server." Arc Raiders dev says "we do analyze behavior and match accordingly," so maybe start playing nice Arc Raiders players make a plea to Embark: don't let PvP in trios poison your solo "aggression-based" matchmaking While playing Arc Raiders, Embark leads clarify they only added true "aggression-based" matchmaking fairly recently In fact, it sounds like the surveys overall haven't exactly been helpful to Embark, as Watkins adds, "that—and I understand why this sort of myth emerged—really messed with a lot of our PvP sentiment metrics." He explains the survey "was meant to gauge 'of the PvP that occurred to you. Was it good?' Not, 'do you even like PvP or not?' So then we get really weird graphs that don't match up with what we're seeing." So from the sounds of things, the only thing that actually effects your matchmaking in Arc Raiders is how you play, which is pretty standard. Arc Raiders devs love the self-described sheriffs of PvP, even if they do kill the wrong people sometimes: "Those are some of the better moments"

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! As Slay the Spire 2's impending Steam Early Access release threatens to suck up everyone's time and attention for the foreseeable future, another roguelike deckbuilder is moving well out of the way to avoid being "instantly buried under a legendary sequel" First-person "Rock, Paper, Scissors" roguelike Handmancers was previously set to kick off its Early Access tenure on March 9 - just four days after Slay the Spire 2's release date - but it's since been delayed further into the future to avoid developer Mega Crit's inevitably huge launch. And it wouldn't be the first time this has happened to a roguelike indie dev, either. "Our original plan was simple," the Handmancer studios writes on social media, explaining that it wanted the game to come out immediately after its spotlight at the Turn-Based Fest showcase. "Then literally the next day we saw the news - Slay the Spire 2 is launching on March 5." Slay the Spire 2 scares devs into early release after fearing losing fans to "an absolute juggernaut in our own genre" Slay the Spire 2 Steam early access release date set for March 5 as the king of roguelike deckbuilders returns Slay the Spire 2 devs literally flipped a coin to decide between a new game or a sequel to their genre-defining roguelike deckbuilder: "The rest is history" pic.twitter.com/O7Hy7NGdAEFebruary 21, 2026 pic.twitter.com/O7Hy7NGdAEFebruary 21, 2026 pic.twitter.com/O7Hy7NGdAEFebruary 21, 2026 "And let's be honest - you'll be playing it, we'll be playing it, everyone will be playing it," the developer says. "We're huge fans and insanely excited. But launching a deckbuilder the same week as Slay the Spire 2? Yeah... we'd get absolutely crushed. Buying two deckbuilders in the same week? In this economy? Not happening." The Handmancer studio hasn't fully locked down a new date yet, but it'll announce one sometime during Turn-Based Fest next month. And the team are looking at the situation in a 'glass half full' way. "More time means more polish, more balance work, and more content," it says. "Including a brand new boss that we originally planned for the first post-launch update." Should you be interested, you can keep up with Handmancers on Steam. In the meantime, check out our picks of the best roguelikes you can play right now.

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Overwatch's Jetpack Cat - the new hero that, as you might have guessed, is a cat in a jetpack - is already being subjected to nerfs next week and in a mid-season update because Blizzard Entertainment's slightly worried about the flying feline's flanking capabilities. Overwatch associate game director Alec Dawson spilled the beans in a lengthy interview with streamer Deemzies. "So perks come more at the end of a hero's lifespan in terms of when we're developing them," Dawson says. "I think the thing we want to do with Jetpack Cat in particular is actually take a look at her perks because the perks that people are picking the most and are actually the most proficient are going to be the two aggressive ones." Jetpack Cat players have likely already figured out her ideal build, but for those outside her grip, the hero's essential perks are Claws Out and Territorial. The first makes Jetpack Cat's melee deal damage over time, and the latter makes her area-of-effect healing ability Purr also attack nearby enemies. Together, they turn Jetpack Cat into an absolute self-sustaining menace during 1v1 fights, capable of escaping encounters just as quickly as she enters them. Blizzard's begging you to stop banning Overwatch's Jetpack Cat, and I promise shooting down the furball's not that hard Jetpack Cat is now the most popular Overwatch hero as players call her the "most fun," but she's starting to get banned Blizzard drops Overwatch Jetpack Cat lore and everyone agrees there's something fishy with that feline: "No good" "So we're going to be nerfing both of those [Claws Out and Territorial] sometime early next week and then in the mid-season we're looking at actually adding a new perk and getting rid of the Territorial perk as well," Dawson continues. "The amount of aggression she has right now, you know, she can kind of fight someone, use the claws, press the E, and she can be very, very lethal in a pretty short window there. We want to pull that out just a tad from her." As much as I personally love running an Assassin Cat build, the aggressive perks were never going to be sustainable for a support hero who has more flanking capability than most of the DPS roster. Even Blizzard was begging folks to stop banning the damn cat, and those bans have only become more common in the days since her launch, at least in the low Diamond ranks I'm permanently stuck in. Overwatch fans think a RuPaul's Drag Race winner and Doctor Who star is teasing another new hero: "I'm immediately maining them"

The Stop Killing Games campaign is evolving into more than just a movement. In a YouTube video, the campaign's creator, Ross Scott, explained that organizers are planning to establish two non-governmental organizations, one for the European Union and another for the US. According to Scott, these NGOs would allow for "long-term counter lobbying" when publishers end support for certain video games. "Let me start off by saying I think we're going to win this, namely the problem of publishers destroying video games that you've already paid for," Scott said in the video. According to Scott, the NGOs will work on getting the original Stop Killing Games petition codified into EU law, while also pursuing more watchdog actions, like setting up a system to report publishers for revoking access to purchased video games. The Stop Killing Games campaign started as a reaction to Ubisoft's delisting of The Crew from players' libraries. The controversial decision stirred up concerns about how publishers have the ultimate say on delisting video games. After crossing a million signatures last year, the movement's leadership has been busy exploring the next steps. According to Scott, the campaign leadership will meet with the European Commission soon, but is also working on a 500-page legal paper that reveals some of the industry's current controversial practices. In the meantime, the ongoing efforts have led to a change of heart from Ubisoft since the publisher updated The Crew 2 with an offline mode.

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Arc Raiders developers love all the roleplaying communities in the game, including the self-described sheriffs who dole out what they call justice in online lobbies. Whether their verdicts are actually just is another question, but developer Embark Studios is simply glad that its game leaves room for that kind of emergent storytelling. Speaking to PC Gamer, design director Virgil Watkins was asked about the wandering group of Stella Montis sheriffs that pounce on any suspected PvP aggressors who, allegedly, betray or backstab other raiders. The sheriffs on Stella Montis don't always get things totally right, but hey, they're the law. Who's gonna stop them? "Well, I mean, for me, that's actually kind of the hope with all of it: letting players lead with their own motivations and create all those stories for each other," Watkins tells the site. "And that's not something we can ever author or force to happen, and I'm glad that we don't try. I far prefer that we give players the means and the context and the opportunity to do these things, and then they do what they want to do." Arc Raiders "needs that element of tension and risk" from PvP, but Embark knows people are loving its "safer lobbies" Arc Raiders players down each other a "surprisingly low" amount, and the devs are "way worse people than the community" PvP is the reason Arc Raiders works – love it or hate it, even Embark's design lead says it "adds the spice" "I've even seen videos where people cause that kind of chaos on purpose, like they'll have a silenced weapon and watch two people being friendly, and they'll shoot at just the right moment. The guy turns like, 'Why'd you do that?' And they get in a fight, and then a third guy shows up, and punishes the first guy, and then no one knows what's going on anymore. And yeah, I think those are some of the better moments you can hope to see," he adds. Arc Raiders is gearing up for the big Shrouded Sky update coming in just a few days time, bringing with it a new map condition, beard customization, gameplay adjustments, and a brand new Arc. Fans think they've already spotted a glimpse of the mysterious threat, too. Arc Raiders lead dispels conspiracy theory that the robots are somehow learning how to kill us better: "That's just us in the way we author them"

Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Want to add more newsletters? Every Friday Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them. Every Thursday GTA 6 O'clock Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts. Every Friday Knowledge From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon. Every Thursday The Setup Every Wednesday Switch 2 Spotlight Every Saturday The Watchlist Once a month SFX Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month! Balatro's mostly solo developer LocalThunk is still working on the roguelike behemoth's big 1.1 release, a long-awaited major gameplay update to the game. LocalThunk confirms as much in a new blog post mainly dedicated to his game dev origins, which he closes out with this: "Happy 2nd birthday, Balatro. P.S. Yes I'm still working on 1.1." The free update that somehow promises even more new strategies and ideas (in a game already spilling over with strategies and ideas) was announced in 2024 shortly after Balatro took the gaming world by storm. LocalThunk then delayed the 1.1 update out of 2025 and into 2026 to avoid going back to the brutal crunch mode that defined most of the base game's development. "It's done when it's done," the dev said at the time. "I am not going to abandon Haunted Chocolatier," says Stardew Valley's Eric Barone Palworld lead gently reminds players the next update is not "massive," since "mammoth sized 1.0" is still a long way off: "I think you've misunderstood" Blue Prince creator couldn't "physically" make another game as "ambitious" as his 2025 puzzle hit Balatro 1.1 seems to be making steady progress now, though. LocalThunk's blog recalls his time as a new computer science student who didn't have the best grades but became "so obsessed" with making small programs that he pulled multiple all nighters on school days, and eventually did the same on an unnamed game project. "I worked on that game for over two years," LocalThunk says. "It never had a name, it was never completed, and apart from showing it to a few friends and family nobody knew it even existed. But it was exactly what I wanted to make and the feeling of absolute freedom I had while working on it is the reason why I kept game development as a hobby years later. That project was the template. I found the files for that project and played it for a couple days recently; it was pretty fun." "I think about that version of myself a lot now. I didn't know what was coming and even if I could warn myself I'm not sure what I could have said to prepare for the insanity. I'm not even sure if there's a lesson to learn." "With all the success, baggage, attention, heartache, fear, stress, and joy that I've had since Balatro was created, at least that old version of myself is still there," the dev adds. "Last night I stayed up until the early hours of the morning drawing pixel art, writing code, and listening to music in my quiet house. Notebook of ideas open next to me, cup of decaf in hand. Thank you to everyone for allowing this terrible student to keep staying up too late." With a game as replayable and moreish as Balatro, there's really no rush to add much of anything until LocalThunk feels it's ready and polished. Plus, any excuse to avoid crunch culture is a good one in my books. Localthunk says Balatro doesn't have microtransactions "because when I play other games that have those things it makes me want to put my computer in the dishwasher"