A 54-page document leaked by an insider to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation suggests that FIFA publisher Electronic Arts is actively pushing players to spend money on microtransactions. The document, which was provided by a leaker from EA Vancouver, appears to be a presentation that frankly discusses the importance of FIFA’s microtransaction-fuelled mode FIFA Ultimate Team (FUT).
“We are doing everything we can to drive players there,” a portion of the presentation reads. That same bullet-point refers to FIFA Ultimate Team as the “cornerstone” of the game. Another portion of the presentation details how the game’s developers use “content teasers” to attempt to incentivize players to spend money on Ultimate Team, summarizing that strategy as “all roads lead to FUT.”
According to the CBC, the insider felt obligated to leak the document because he and others dislike working on video games that include loot boxes and other gambling-type elements. An EA representative declined to comment, other than to say that the document was “viewed without context.”
“All EA games can be played without spending on in-game items, and the majority of players do not spend,” the representative stated.
In a sense, this news should not be surprising to anyone who has followed gaming news in recent years. It’s been clear for quite a while that microtransactions are immensely profitable as a business model, with EA’s rival Activision Blizzard making $1.2 billion in revenue from in-game microtransactions in just three months. A law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against EA back in 2020, claiming that FIFA Ultimate Team is a form of predatory gambling. For now, however, loot boxes are legal in most jurisdictions, though some countries like the UK have commissioned studies to determine how exactly they affect vulnerable players.
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Microsoft has unveiled May’s Xbox Games with Gold lineup, and it’s arguable that the backwards-compatible Xbox 360 games lead the way. Lego Batman and Tropico 4 will be free for Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers next month, while the Xbox One freebies include Dungeons 3 and Armello. Lego Batman and Armello will be free starting May 1, while Tropico 4 and Dungeons 3 will be available on May 16. All four of the freebies are playable on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One.
Armello is a digital tabletop game set in a dark fairy tale world ruled by animals. You play as a hero attempting to become the leader of Armello. To get to that point, you have to slowly work your way through strategic card-based battles, make friends, and complete a wide variety of quests. If you like card-based role-playing games and board games, Armello is worth checking out. It’ll be free all throughout May.
Dungeons 3 is a dungeon simulator where you play as Thalya, the leader tasked with commanding troops to create diabolical dungeons. Dungeons 3 has a single-player campaign with 20 mainline missions and a co-op mode where you and your partner can construct dastardly dungeons together. Dungeons 3 will be free from May 16 to June 15.
Lego Batman released way back in 2008, but if you’re looking for a game to play with the family, it’s still a good one to check out. In Lego Batman, the Caped Crusader and Robin must track down the most notorious villains of Gotham, including Riddler, Penguin, and Joker. Lego Batman, like all Traveller’s Tales Lego games, has breezy gameplay mechanics and a lighthearted tone. It will be free from May 1 to May 15.
Haemimont Games’ Tropico 4 is a strategy management sim that places you in the role of El Presidente. You work to create a prosperous nation, tending to your citizens’ needs and thwarting attacks from enemies of the government. The satirical storyline is compelling and bolsters the solid strategy and management sim mechanics. Tropico 4 will be free from May 16 to May 31.
A newly discovered glitch in Call of Duty: Warzone allows players to access an area under the map where they can take out players who can’t see them. People on Reddit have discovered that it’s not very difficult to get under the map at the airport, in particular.
The potential for negatively impacting the game with this glitch is immediately obvious, and players who have been killed by those who use the glitch are understandably voicing their frustrations. You can see an example of the glitch in the video below, as spotted by PC Gamer. It’s also been reported that it’s possible to get under the new map, Verdansk ’84, at locations like the train station, downtown, and TV station.
Here is an example of what it looks like to be on the receiving end of the glitch. As you can see in the video, the unsuspecting player is taken out at the Stadium by someone who has gotten under the map. The player who was killed never saw it coming. The person who uploaded the video titled it “What’s the point of even playing right now?”
Cheating continues to be an issue with Warzone, but this problem appears to be more of an issue related to the map itself and out-of-bounds areas that are accessible when they should not be. It’s not clear yet if any of the developers of Warzone have responded to this issue.
The new Verdansk ’84 map is just a few days old at this point, so it was likely inevitable that there would be some teething issues like this. Here’s to hoping the developers close out these glitches before they become too commonplace.
The latest addition to Apex Legends’ character roster is Valkyrie, the daughter of Titanfall 2 villain Viper. And while she may not have a Titan herself, her kit is a direct tribute to her dad’s Northstar mech.
Valkyrie’s key equipment is her jetpack, and her kit is built around that feature. The ‘VTOL Jets’ make her incredibly mobile, replicating the flying nature of the Northstar Titan. That’s just the start of the mech similarities, though; like a Northstar, Valkyrie has a Missile Swarm that deploys from shoulder-mounted launchers. Respawn compares this ability to a “mini Bangalore ultimate”, although expect much lower damage. The explosions do stun, though, so affected enemies will experience a short debuff to movement and aim speed.
Her ultimate ability is Skyward Dive, which is effectively a team evacuation manoeuvre in which Valkyrie picks both her teammates up and soars into the sky as a trio. This can help an entire team escape danger and redeploy in a more advantageous position.
Skyward Dive will also activate Valkyrie’s Titanfall-style HUD (in fact any high-altitude move will activate this, be that using launch pads or the initial jump at the start of a match.) This HUD will highlight any enemy player that Valkyrie has line of sight on, within a certain range. This helps provide valuable intel before hitting the ground.
As a recon class, Valkyrie can use the beacon terminals around the map to learn where the next ring will be located. She can obviously reach these thanks to her VTOL Jets, but it should be noted that the jetpack has limited fuel on a slow cooldown, so fuel consumption should be on the mind of every player. The VTOL jets are also loud, so draw attention. And while in the air, you’ll have to turn the jets off to be able to use your weapons again (although thankfully you can use the Missile Swarm mid-flight if you have it ready).
In addition to Valkyrie, this season of Apex Legends introduces a new weapon: the Bocek compound bow. This medium range precision bow and arrow has all the hallmarks of a classic video game bow; slow but quiet, huge damage, and difficult to master. It uses a new bespoke arrow ammunition type, which will be difficult to find, but they can be retrieved from the environment if you miss, or the deathbox of a player you kill.
To help make the Bocek versatile, a Shatter Cap hop-up can be fitted to it, which turns the bow into a close-range shotgun-style weapon, shooting multiple scatter arrows at a time. For more confident users, the Deadeye’s Tempo hop-up provides a buff to drawback speed if you can repeatedly fire on the ‘beat’ of your bow pull.
The upcoming season of Apex Legends, Legacy, is set to add a new, permanent 3v3 game mode called Arenas.
Arenas is not a battle royale, but is instead a multi-round 3v3 mode with similarities to games like Valorant and Counter-Strike. Players fight on maps much smaller than those used for the battle royale, and have just one life per round to out-play the other team. Conclusive games can be over in three rounds, but a match can go as far as nine rounds and into sudden death if teams are unable to out-smart their opponents.
While you will use the same weapons and characters as you do in the main Apex Legends battle royale mode, Arenas is a very different looking game type. For starters, there is no looting at all. Instead, a shopping phase before each round will allow players to purchase weapons, consumables, and upgrades. You can also purchase character abilities; to keep the characters balanced for this mode, you’ll have to buy charges of their tactical and ultimate abilities in this phase, rather than the battle royale’s cooldown system. Currency for the store is provided at the start of every round, with bonuses awarded for kills and wins, much like in other tactical PvP shooters. Player equipment is reset at the start of each round to prevent power snowballing and keep matches to a swift average of 15 minutes.
While there’s no classic-style looting, there are still equipment bins around the map that contain consumables, as well as currency pickups that will allow you to buy better gear in the next round. Additionally, a supply drop will land halfway through a round containing three weapons, the rarity of which will increase round by round.
Map design is much closer to traditional Apex Legends than the lanes of Counter-Strike; while much smaller than battle royale maps, they have stretches of open ground and named locations to fight over. The classic battle royale circle is also part of the mode, and staying inside it is a major part of a round’s momentum.
When Arenas launches it will have two bespoke maps: Party Crasher, set on a ship that’s crashed into a downtown plaza, and Phaserunner, a more rural, open map with long sightlines. More maps are in development, but since they will take a while three more maps have been made using segments of the battle royale maps. These will be Artillery from Kings Canyon, Thermal Station from Worlds End, and Golden Garden from Olympus. The mode will launch with its two bespoke maps and Artillery, and add the other two maps in the following weeks.
Arenas could be the start of Apex Legends being a platform for other game modes beyond battle royal, too. “We’re pretty good shooter makers, so how can we offer that in other ways?” said Game Director Chad Grenier in an Q&A session with press. “So our first step has been in Arenas. We’ve got these other things we’re doing in playtests, where we’re trying to expand even further than that, so I think you’ll continue to see some innovations and some limited time modes, and us try a few things here and there. We do hope that Apex can be more than just a battle royale game.”
Apex Legends Legacy launches May 4, and adds a new character, Valkyrie, and a new weapon, the Bochek bow and arrow, too. Both this new character and weapon will be available in Arenas as well as the main battle royale mode.
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Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
Arenas is a brand-new, permanent team deathmatch mode launching in Apex Legends Season 9: Legacy (which is strangely just called Legacy, no number like past seasons). Much like Titanfall 2‘s Live Fire mode, Arenas is heavily focused on gunplay, with only two teams facing off in matches that play out over several fast-paced rounds. After getting hands-on with it, I really enjoyed Arenas. There’s no wall-running in Arenas, but it reminded me of my favorite aspects of Titanfall 2’s Pilot-focused multiplayer modes.
Following my hands-on, I got to sit down with several members of Respawn’s team to talk about Arenas. During our conversation, I was surprised to hear that the team deathmatch mode initially took inspiration from a completely different genre of game: auto chess.
“The funny story is that the inspiration for Arenas actually comes from auto chess,” Respawn lead game designer Carlos Pineda told me in an interview following my hands-on. “Auto chess has different people fighting on a grid–and that was our original idea. We thought, ‘We should do that–we should do a bunch of teams fighting each other on different parts of the map.’ But eventually we talked about it and it became different teams fighting each other on the same map but different instances. It was like a little tournament–3v3 over here, 3v3 over there, and as you win you move up until there’s only one left.”
According to Arenas designer Robert West, the first prototype for Arenas was playtested in September 2019–for those keeping track at home, yes, that’s back during Season 2: Battle Charge. Respawn has been working on Arenas for a long time. “It took place on Artillery in Kings Canyon; it was 24 players in eight squads in four 3v3 matches all at once,” West said. “The matches were at the same time and on the same map but separate instances so you were only ever fighting only one other squad at a time each round.”
This early version of Arenas played similarly to Apex Legends: Battle Royale. After both teams spawned on opposite sides of Artillery, it was a mad dash to find the best loot you could and then fight it out. It was like dropping hot with one other squad.
“The prototype was far from perfect but it gave us one point of clarity: Intense 3v3 match-ups with no third-partying felt amazing,” West said.
“And we just kept chasing it until suddenly we’re like, ‘Actually, this is really good. Maybe it should live forever,'” Respawn design director Jason McCord told me. “So then we started putting new game polish on it–like LTMs get enough to go out ’cause they only have to be out for a little while and then they’re done. But when you start saying, ‘This thing needs to live forever,’ you put a lot more work into it: All the special UI, everyone on the team is looking at it, the writing team is getting super involved and suddenly its existence lives in the lore. Arenas now has that level of polish on it and we hope it lives forever. We plan for it to live forever. We’ll be watching the queues, using every trick that we have to ensure it stays healthy.”
Arenas plays like Respawn’s take on the formula used for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive or Valorant. Unlike those games, however, there’s no objective to pursue like defusing a bomb. But much like those games, Arenas is heavily focused on two teams engaging in high-intensity gunfights on small maps that are divided into a few points of interest and clear-cut lanes.
“It’s super different from [Battle Royale],” Pineda said. “There’s always a desire for us to make games that are deep and have lots of mastery so we said, ‘We’ve got this new mode, it’s super fun to play–how do we make something that’s deep and masterful out of this?’ Strip away the multiple teams and now just focus on the head-to-head fights. Strip away the RNG and put loot into a store.”
Each Arenas match is divided into rounds. At the start of a round, you have a brief amount of time to spend a select amount of Materials to craft an assortment of weapons, healing, or ability uses. You can spend more Materials upfront if you want to be somewhat well outfitted from the start or choose to save your cash in the early rounds in order to make a big purchase in the latter half of the match–like buying a legend’s ultimate ability or fully-upgrading a gun. You’ll also earn more Materials by being a team player and getting assists or kills, or taking the time during a round to track down Material caches for your squad. Everything you buy will be lost at the end of the round.
You’ll have to be strategic with how you spend your Materials prior to the start of a round–do you go all in every round or save up to make a few big purchases later on?
Unlike Battle Royale, there are no respawns in Arenas, so when you’re dead, you’re dead. And save for a care package that lands midway through each round, there are no weapons to loot. Arenas is designed for speed–you pick your gear, your team comes up with a strategy, you fight the other team, and then you regroup for the next round and try to figure out what went wrong and what went right. Each round typically only lasts a few minutes.
The first team to win at least three rounds and be ahead by at least two rounds wins the match. So, as an example, if the opposing team wins the first round but then your team wins the next three, you’ll win the match. But if the opposing team wins the first two rounds and then you win the next three, you have to win one more match in order to have that two-round lead. The one exception to this rule is if both teams manage to win four rounds; then the ninth round will be a tiebreaker to decide the victor.
I found my three hours hands-on with Apex Legends: Arenas to be incredibly satisfying–I came away thinking that it could easily exist as its own game. It’s built on the core of what makes Apex Legends: Battle Royale so good: an informative ping system, smooth movement controls, solid first-person shooter mechanics, well-structured map design, compelling lore, and likeable characters. In Arenas, all of that is just now funnelled through the gameplay loop of a team deathmatch instead of a battle royale. It feels a lot like what Epic Games managed to achieve with Fortnite, where the core mechanics of Save The World were used to create the very different Battle Royale.
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Apex Legends & Titanfall Timeline Explained
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“And so what does Apex Legends turn into? It’s really open to how people perceive it,” McCord said. “Right now, Battle Royale is still going to be where you go to get the full experience. You get pacing in Battle Royale, you get 20 minutes of adventure when you play a good battle royale match. Arenas is like going into a sparring ring and smacking some fools and figuring out who’s better. We want both of those experiences to live but if, say, we release Arenas and 100% of players go play Arenas, we will change our strategy.”
He added: “And you better believe that we’re doing similar things right now that we’re not talking about. We’re playtesting some stuff that’s different and it’s cool, and we’re asking, ‘Should it be limited-time or should it be permanent?'”
When Apex Legends: Legacy starts, you’ll be able to hop into Battle Royale or Arenas. Battle Royale will obviously be the more substantial of the two, with Trios, Duos, and Ranked playlists. Arenas will only have its one playlist, but it will launch with five maps. Three of those maps are repurposed points of interest from Battle Royale–Kings Canyon’s Artillery, World’s Edge’s Thermal Station, and Olympus’ Gardens–while the other two are brand new. For now, Respawn’s plan for the future of Arenas is to add a ranked playlist and more maps, but that could change depending on how the community takes to the new mode.
One of Arenas’ new maps has a prototype phase runner, providing a means of flanking the other team or setting up a well-placed trap.
“It’s a lot of intense planning and producing but we are going to keep doing map updates for [Battle Royale] maps like we always have, and also try to get Arenas to feel just as important,” Respawn lead level designer Dave Osei told me. “So new maps will be something to look forward to. The team is definitely very busy but we’re aware of what we can and can’t do with the time we have.”
Additionally, Apex Legends’ story will occasionally be told through Arenas–so, from now on, we’ll have to scour Arenas’ maps for new content teasers in the same way we look through the Battle Royale’s maps and Apex Legends’ firing range. The introduction of Arenas actually marks one of Apex Legends’ strongest ties to Titanfall, as the person who runs it is Ash, an Apex Predator you face in Titanfall 2.
“We’re definitely going to utilize Arenas the same way we utilize Battle Royale,” Respawn senior writer Ashley Reed told me. “Ash is back in the picture–she showed up in Season 5, made a brief appearance in Season 6, and then disappeared. And now that she’s back, what does that mean for all the people that were involved with her in some way, especially sweet, sweet Pathfinder? That’s something we’re definitely interested in: Utilizing every aspect of Apex to push forward our story.”
Apex Legends: Legacy begins on May 4. Alongside Arenas, the season adds new playable character Valkyrie, a new point of interest to Olympus (a crashed ship full of infected crewmembers and a monstrous plant), and the Bocek Compound Bow. Additionally, Legacy will see several character and weapon balancing changes (such as the Peacekeeper returning to ground loot while the Triple Take goes into care packages) and the return of World’s Edge to the Battle Royale playlists.
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After going hands-on with Apex Legends Legacy, Persia, Jordan, and Max sat down to talk about Season 9’s Arenas mode, new playable legend Valkyrie, Bocek Bow weapon, Olympus map changes, and more.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 is officially headed to Xbox for the first time and will be available on console, PC, and Xbox Cloud Gaming on May 4. The Dragon Quest spin-off sequel from publisher Square Enix originally launched in December 2019 for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, arriving on PC a few months later.
Microsoft confirmed the news after store pages for the game began appearing online and leaking the existence of the game. If you’re not currently a member of Xbox Game Pass or Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, you’ll be able to purchase Dragon Quest Builders 2 for $50.
In our Dragon Quest Builders 2 review, critic Heidi Kemps praised the game for building on the strong foundation that its predecessor had established.
“Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a great game, combining exploration, sandbox-building, questing, and town-management into a delightful package that will gladly suck up your time and put a big smile on your face,” Kemps said. “It’s the sort of game that you’ll intend to play for a little while, only to find that hours have flown by once you manage to actually put it down.”
Roku users may soon have issues finding YouTube TV on their devices. In an email sent to its YouTube TV users, Roku is now warning that the app may go dark. This is due to recent negotiations in which Google allegedly wants conspicuous placement for YouTube in all search results and to block results from other providers. News of the brewing standoff was first reported by Axios, which has also published the email alerting customers.
“Recent negotiations with Google to carry YouTube TV have broken down because Roku cannot accept Google’s unfair terms as we believe they could harm our users,” reads the email. “While we are deeply disappointed in Google’s decision to use their monopoly power to try and force terms… we remain committed to reaching an agreement with Google that preserves your access.”
Roku is also indicating that in these negotiations, according to Yahoo News, Google has allegedly “threatened to set chipset and memory requirements for devices that would raise hardware prices.” Such a move would therefore, potentially, give Google’s Chromecast device an unfair competitive advantage, which a Roku spokesperson argued would be “predatory.”
Earlier this year, Roku released estimated data from 2020 indicating that it closed out the year with a total of 51.2 million active accounts. During the pandemic, the company says it created approximately 14 million accounts, and that in the fourth quarter of 2020 alone, its viewers watched a total of 58.7 billion hours.
HBO’s The Last of Us TV show has added two new directors, both of whom have released highly regarded films. The new directors are Jasmila Žbanić and Ali Abbasi, according to a report from Variety.
Žbanić recently released Quo Vadis, Aida, which was nominated for Best International Film at the Oscars. It didn’t win, but getting a nomination is a big deal. It did win the Film Independent Spirit Award for best international film this year.
Abbasi, meanwhile, won the Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival for his 2018 movie Border, which is also known as Gräns.
Johan Renck, who directed HBO’s Chernobyl, was originally attached to direct the pilot for The Last of Us, but he would later drop out. Kantemir Balagov (Beanpole) came in to replace him.
It is not immediately clear how many episodes are in Season 1 for The Last of Us, and the Variety report didn’t have any word on the breakdown between Žbanić and Abbasi as it related to which episodes they will direct.
Craig Mazin, who wrote Chernobyl, is attached as a writer for The Last of Us TV show alongside the writer-director of the game, Neil Druckmann.
Recently, Druckmann spoke about how the Last of Us TV show will deviate significantly from the games. “Some of my favorite episodes so far have deviated greatly from the story, and I can’t wait for people to see them,” he said.
