Author: Trafficblast

Epic has begun teasing an apparent Halloween event for Fortnite, titled Fortnitemares. The event will kick off this Wednesday, October 24 and last through Monday, November 26. It promises “spooky rewards” for completing special Fortnitemares challenges, and uses a variation on the Season 6 theme, “Darkness has risen.”

One such reward could be a skin that Epic appears to be teasing through Twitter. Three images have been revealed so far, and at least two of them look like they fit together like a puzzle. The Fortnitemares rewards will probably go through both the Battle Royale and Save the World modes, since Epic has announced that you can win a couple of skins by logging onto Save the World during the event.

That same announcement gave word that the Save the World mode, which had been planned for release as a free-to-play mode this year, won’t be switching to free after all. That means to earn any Fortnitemare rewards you’ll need to be a founder, but the studio is offering those packages at half-price.

The whole season is fairly creepy, and its biggest Battle Pass reward is the Dire Wolf skin that changes you into more and more of a werewolf as you level it up. We’ve also seen a slow drip of special Halloween skins. For more Halloween events, check out our Halloween roundup.

Wonder Woman was a breakout critical success for the often uneven DC cinematic universe, and its sequel set in the 1980s–Wonder Woman 1984–will take the character into the Cold War. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the return of Princess Diana, though, as the film has been pushed back to 2020.

Star Gal Gadot, who plays the title character, announced the delay via Twitter. Rather than its planned November 1, 2019 date, it will now release on June 5, 2020. Gadot calls this date its “rightful home,” presumably a reference to its placement among tent-pole summer movies rather than a fall release.

That was subsequently confirmed in a statement WB shared with GameSpot. “We had tremendous success releasing the first Wonder Woman film during the summer so when we saw an opportunity to take advantage of the changing competitive landscape, we did,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution. “This move lands the film exactly where it belongs.”

No other reason was given for the delay other than the “changing landscape” Gadot mentioned. That could mean that next fall is simply getting too crowded or that space has opened up in the following summer. DC has scheduled its Joker movie for October 2019, so keeping Wonder Woman 1984 in the November slot could have overlapped with it.

So far we haven’t seen a trailer for WW84, so details are still scarce. Patty Jenkins is returning to direct, and Chris Pine is coming back in some capacity as Steve Trevor. We also know that Kristen Wiig has been cast as one of Wonder Woman’s most iconic nemeses, Cheetah.

Fortnite has exploded into wild popularity thanks to its free-to-play Battle Royale mode, thanks in part to its availability as a free-to-play game. But Fortnite’s original Save the World mode will also eventually transition to a free-to-play model. However, those plans have been pushed out of 2018, as developer Epic Games says it needs to progress on some reworks and additional features before it makes the switch.

In an update about its Save the World mode, Epic suggests that the popularity of Fortnite as a whole means it needs to be prepared for a large influx of new users once STW goes free for all.

“We’re working on a broad set of features, reworks, and backend system scaling we believe are needed to go free-to-play,” it said. “Scaling up for the legions of player heroes who will be joining the fight is key to providing an excellent experience. This applies to all of our players, old and new, so we’re taking the time to get this right.”

If you just can’t wait for it to go free-to-play, Epic is hosting a 50% off sale for the Standard, Deluxe, Standard Deluxe, and Limited Founder’s Packs starting later this week. That means that your cheapest option will be $20 soon, until it goes free. Founders will also get a Brainiac Jonesy and Skull Ranger Ramirez for free if they log on during the Fortnitemares Halloween event.

The update also details a big change to the Hero System to give you more flexibility in the loadouts, along with several front-end UI improvements.

The cooperative PvE Save the World mode was the original pitch for Fortnite, and has remained in development as the free-to-play PvP Battle Royale has exploded in popularity. It’s fair to say the free version of the game has overshadowed its original vision, especially since the PvE isn’t available for some versions, including the Nintendo Switch or mobile games. But at least some of its large audience is likely to jump into Save the World once it’s free, so Epic is looking to be prepared.

If you need a hand on earning your rewards in Battle Royale, make sure to check out our challenge guide for this season.

Jade Raymond has departed EA Motive, the studio she helped found, making way for another executive to take on additional responsibilities. VentureBeat reports that Samantha Ryan is currently running EA’s mobile, Maxis, and BioWare studios, and will add Motive to her portfolio. That puts Ryan in charge of all North American studios except Respawn and EA Sports.

EA Motive has been at work on an unnamed Star Wars title, and it most recently helped DICE on development of Star Wars Battlefront 2. That Star Wars game is the same one Amy Hennig had been at work on before leaving the company upon the closure of Visceral. Raymond had said in an interview with Game Informer that her studio was planning to use a lot of the material produced by Visceral, but to pivot more towards “player agency.”

“EA Studios is focused on bringing more creative new games and content to players,” an EA spokesperson told GameSpot in a statement. “Laura Miele and her team have taken several steps internally to better support our game makers in this pursuit, such as expanding Samantha Ryan’s portfolio to lead additional studios, including Motive. Samantha is known for driving creative design and supporting game teams so they can bring their visions to life. She is a deeply experienced game-maker with a gameography that spans from The Sims to Batman: Arkham City to No One Lives Forever to the highly-anticipated Anthem.

“With this change, Jade Raymond has decided to leave Electronic Arts. In her time with us, Jade helped to build great teams, and our projects underway at Motive and other studios continue unchanged. We’re appreciative of all of her efforts, and we wish Jade all the best as she moves on to her next adventure. We are driving greater creativity into everything we do across EA Studios, and we’ll look forward to sharing more in the months to come.”

Respawn is working on its own Star Wars game, Jedi Fallen Order. It’s expected in holiday 2019.

Xbox One Game Pass has updated with a few extra tricks and treats this month, adding some extra horror games to the library in honor of Halloween. These are all part of the “2Spooky for Halloween” promotion, which includes more than 20 spooky and scary games as part of Game Pass. The new additions are Dead Island: Riptide DE, Outlast, Hello Neighbor, and Observer.

Dead Island: Riptide takes you to the Banoi Archipelago to fight to survive a zombie apocalypse. The Definitive Edition features remastered access and grants access to all of the bonus content produced. Outlast is a first-person survival horror game that takes you into the heart of a creepy asylum reopened by a corporation with some questionable initiatives. Hello Neighbor is a sandbox stealth horror game that has you investigate your neighbor’s dark secrets. Finally, Observer is a cyberpunk game that has you investigate crimes by delving into your suspects’ fears.

The full Halloween Collection on Game Pass also includes Graveyard Keeper, State of Decay 2, Dead Rising 4, Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0, and more. In case those are all too scary for you, a kinder, cuter Halloween game is also available in Costume Quest 2.

Xbox Game Pass is a subscription-based service that gives you access to download more than 100 full Xbox One and Xbox 360 games. Microsoft adds new games each month, and it offers new first-party releases like Forza Horizon 4 to subscribers on the day of release. Other new additions for October include Wolfenstein: The New Order, Metro 2033 Redux, Westerado: Double Barreled, Lego Indiana Jones, Shantae: Half-Genie Hero, and Split/Second.

The competition between subscription services appears to be heating up as well, because Sony recently expanded its own PlayStation Now program to allow game downloads.

The long-awaited Red Dead Redemption 2 is due this week, but Rockstar is working to counteract an unexpected controversy. Following comments about 100-hour work weeks, the studio has repeatedly made attempts to tell fans that it doesn’t expect such long hours from everyone. Now it has reportedly sent that message to its own employees too.

Variety reports that Rockstar held a meeting on Friday to tell its employees that overtime is not mandatory, though it is occasionally requested and scheduled. Rockstar’s Jennifer Kolbe said the meeting was held to clear up any misconceptions about what was expected of employees.

“Some people have said that they felt it was effectively mandatory because it was expected of them. In light of the discussion around this issue, we got the team together today to make sure it is clear to them that OT work is not mandatory,” she said. “We are also pushing to make any OT worked more flexible in terms of schedule (i.e. ‘work when makes sense for you’).”

Rockstar Lincoln is said to have worked the longest hours approaching the launch of Red Dead Redemption 2, with some weeks topping 60-70 hours. The meeting came to light after Flik Green, an animation assistant at Rockstar North, spoke about it on social media. She went on to say that when she worked at Lincoln as a QA tester she and her coworkers never assumed the overtime to be optional–but that the environment at North has been very different with more standard hours and only slight overtime.

The controversy kicked off when co-founder Dan Houser casually mentioned working 100-hour weeks several times in 2018. He later clarified that he was referring only to the senior writing team, including himself, but it had sparked a larger discussion about development crunch and the expectations put on developers.

Rockstar encouraged its employees to speak out about their own experiences, and several gave anecdotes about their time at the company. Many anecdotes noted that the studio does go through crunch, but that the environment had improved over the years and isn’t as extreme as 100-hour weeks.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming on October 26. For more details check out our pre-order guide.