Month: August 2020

Some eagle-eyed Xbox fans have noticed a strange quirk on the Xbox One store. Several Xbox 360 games that were previously delisted are now available for purchase on Xbox One, including Silent Hill: Downpour, Deadly Premonition, and Tom Clancy’s HAWX. Several racing games also make the list: Dirt 3, Fuel, Grid 2, and Midnight Club LA.

These Xbox 360 games are playable on the Xbox One thanks to that platform’s limited backward compatibility, which the Xbox Series X will share. It’s not clear why exactly these games are available now, but it could have something to do with Microsoft preparing the Xbox store for the upcoming Xbox Series X. According to Reddit users, purchasing these games only allows you to play them on Xbox One, not Xbox 360.

Delisted games are an unfortunately common phenomenon due to rights expiring and the like, particularly when it comes to licensed music. On social media, players have reported that some of these relisted games have become unavailable again, so if you want to pick up one of these games, time is of the essence.

The executive shake-up at Ubisoft is still ongoing. Co-vice president Tommy François has left the company. Ubisoft confirmed the departure in a statement to GameSpot, saying it is “effective immediately.”

The company didn’t share further details on François’ departure. He had previously been placed on disciplinary leave pending an investigation into the allegations of sexual assault and harassment at the company. Reports of his departure began circulating from Business Insider reporter Samuel Horti, who said the other investigations remain ongoing. François was part of the editorial team in charge of greenlighting projects, and also worked on writing or design for some games.

François is just the latest in a long line of Ubisoft executives who have left following a reckoning with the company’s toxic “frat-house” culture. Others include executives Serge Hascoet, Yannis Mallat, and Cecile Cornet, and global head of HR Cecile Cornet. Assassin’s Creed creative director Ashraf Ismail also left the company in the midst of these revelations, seemingly for personal reasons.

Ubisoft has promised large structural changes and various investigations in light of the accusations but has been mostly quiet with its public statements about the issue. It chose not to address the abuse allegations at its Ubisoft Forward event, and CEO Yves Guillemot was notably evasive in response to direct questions at a recent investor Q&A.

Riot Games has revealed that Act II of Valorant will begin on August 4, 2020, and will bring with it a new Battlepass, a new agent, a new Glitchpop Skinline, and a free-for-all Deathmatch mode.

Valorant’s Act II Battlepass will feature “unique unlockables, including gun skins, gun buddies, sprays, player cards, player titles, and Radianite Points,” and will cost 1000 VP.

The new agent arriving in Valorant, Killjoy, was revealed last week and will become playable on August 4 as well. She is a “wunderkind” that can use a variety of robots and gadgets to gain the upperhand against her enemies.

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The new Glitchpop Skinline “leans into a dystopian future where death has no consequence and comes to life through bright, colorful skins and a playful but deadly attitude.” These new skins will be available for Frenzy, Odin, Bulldog, and Judge. There will also be a melee weapon as well.

Free-for-all Deathmatch will launch in Beta form and will become available on August 5. It will see 10 players battling for dominance, with no abilities, infinite money, and no Spike.

A player will become victorious with 30 kills or if they have the most kills after 6 minutes. All weapons will be available and players will start with heavy armor. When a player dies, they will respawn within 3 seconds and will start with 8 seconds of invulnerability that will allows them to swap weapons if desired. Once they move or fire, the invulnerability goes away.

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Health packs will drop after an enemy is killed, an UAV will reveal the current location of enemies every 5 seconds, and Kill Banners will appear for those who can achieve a double kill, triple kill, etc.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN who is a Sova main. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Developer Riot Games has announced that Valorant‘s second act starts on Tuesday, August 4 for PC. The new season of content introduces a brand-new Agent, battle pass, and more.

Act 2’s headlining feature is Killjoy, the brand-new Agent coming to Valorant, who was recently leaked. A tech specialist, Killjoy has a variety of abilities centered around using drones and turrets to dish out damage. And her ultimate ability, Lockdown, does just as the name suggests: ensnares all enemies caught in the radius.

Act 2 will also bring about a new set of skins called Glitchpop Skyline. The skin set features multiple variants for the Bulldog, Frenzy, Judge, Odin, and dagger, and costs between 2,175 and 4,350 Valorant Points for each individual skin. The entire bundle will set you back 8,700 Valorant Points. You can check out the Glitchpop Skyline set, and the trailer showcase, below.

With the introduction of Act 2 comes a new game mode: Free-For-All Deathmatch. The game mode strips everything back from Valorant and makes it a more classic shooter akin to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. There are no abilities, no teams, and infinite money. This means there are respawns, as well as drop-in/drop-out multiplayer with teams competing to score 30 kills first. FFA Deathmatch will launch in beta on August 5, but if Riot finds the mode stable and the servers functioning properly, it will be left as a permanent addition.

Finally, Valorant’s second act houses a new Battle Pass that features “a series of unique unlockables” including weapon skins, gun buddies, sprays, player cards and titles, and Radianite Points. You can check out some of the unlockable items below.

In other, sillier Valorant news, an Australian streamer recently had his Valorant session interrupted when a magpie–yes, the Australian bird considered one of the most intelligent animals in the world–one-clicked his head in real life.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s latest patch, containing the update for Season 5, has been deployed. It is, as they always are, massive, but Infinity Ward says that the update will actually shrink the overall install size of the game.

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The Season 5 update, available to download now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One ahead of the season launch itself, weighs in at a chunky 36GB on PS4, although requires 90GB of free space on the hard drive to initiate the download. But Modern Warfare’s Production Director, Paul Haile, has said that this won’t just add more space demands on top of what the game currently takes up.

this means the download will be big, but the overall size of the game will actually shrink on your consoles after you download the patch, even though we’re adding a bunch of new content for the season.

— Paul Haile (@Tyrael) August 2, 2020

“The overall size of the game will actually shrink on your consoles after you download the patch, even though we’re adding a bunch of new content for the season,” he says. He also explains that the patch contains not just new content, but optimisation for the existing asset packs.

With Modern Warfare taking up pretty much 200GB at the moment across all platforms, this shrinkage of the install size will come as good news to many players who’d like to have other large games installed on the same drive.

For more on Call of Duty, check out Infinity Ward’s current stance on cheat bans, a listing that appears to be for this year’s unannounced Call of Duty game, and how our obsession with Yegor’s pink tracksuit jacket revealed some fascinating things about game design.

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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer. 

During the Japan Fighting Game Publishers Roundtable that took place recently, Tekken director and producer Katsuhiro Harada revealed that he began wearing his trademark sunglasses after Capcom asked him to become a villain.

“I was actually forced by Capcom to wear these sunglasses, originally,” Harada said during the live stream as reported by Event Hubs.

“They told me, ‘Please wear these sunglasses for four years since you’re the bad guy.’ And now I’m still wearing them 10 years later.”

Harada would don his signature sunglasses during the cross-promotion for Street Fighter X Tekken, with Capcom’s Yoshinori Ono positioned as the good guy foil, according to English translator Michael Murray. “He said that his sunglasses are something that Capcom asked us for,” said Murray.

“True story though. Capcom U.S.A. told him to do it because he’s ‘the bad guy.’ That was back during the Street Fighter X Tekken stuff. Yoshinori Ono was supposed to be the good guy and Harada was the bad guy. But then everyone came to expect it. He has to play along, right?”

Harada’s sunglasses have become part of his personal image in the years since Capcom released Street Fighter X Tekken, with the video game producer always seen wearing a pair during public appearances.

Even when he made a cameo in the Tekken 7 gameplay reveal trailer for The Walking Dead’s Negan, Harada’s digital likeness was sporting a pair of shades.

Beyond the origin story of Harada’s fashion style, more information on Tekken 7 was revealed. Season Pass 4 was announced, although who the first new brawler will be in the Bandai Namco game is currently unknown.

The update will also see the roster refreshed with new moves, enhanced online play, and a Tekken Prowess metric to give players more details on their overall performance.