Mass Effect Item Coming To Apex Legends

It seems that Respawn’s Apex Legends is set to have a crossover with BioWare’s Mass Effect. Although neither developer Respawn nor EA, which publishes both games, have officially announced the event, the Xbox Series X dashboard currently shows an image of an N7 item that Apex Legends players can acquire.

The item is listed as a Game Pass perk, but attempting to redeem the offer just takes users to the perks page, where there is no mention of the Mass Effect reward. The promotion likely went live ahead of time. The item itself looks to be a weapon charm.

An image of the item was sent into GameSpot by a reader (thanks, David), and then confirmed by a staff member. You can see both images below.

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Apex Legends gun charms based on several EA games including Mass Effect and Plants Vs. Zombies were reportedly discovered in November, 2020 through datamining. However, these were believed to be rewards for subscribing to EA Play. An N7 charm like the one appearing on the Xbox dashboard has not previously been seen. GameSpot has contacted EA for more information.

Apex Legends’ latest event, Chaos Theory, recently kicked off. The big change is Caustic’s town takeover, which is replacing Kings Canyon’s Water Treatment, Heat Shields are also being added as a way to allow players to temporarily survive outside the ring, Bangalore, meanwhile, is getting an heirloom, and a new Ring Fury limited-time mode has temporarily replaced standard Trios and Duos.

On the Mass Effect front, EA and BioWare are set to release an updated version of the trilogy called Mass Effect: Legendary Edition on May 14. All three games in the core series–Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3–will be available in the package, along with over 40 pieces of downloadable content, including special weapon and armor packs, campaign expansions, and more. All of this will be playable in 4K with HDR. Here’s everything we know so far about the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

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Resident Evil 2 Remake Actors Reprise Roles in Netflix Anime Series

Netflix has announced that Resident Evil 2 Remake actors Stephanie Panisello and Nick Apostolides will be returning to voice series stalwarts Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy in the upcoming CGI-animated series Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness.

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The news was confirmed alongside an initial synopsis of the series, which describes a reunion between the pair at The White House.

“In 2006, there were traces of improper access to secret Presidential files found in the White House’s network. American federal agent Leon S. Kennedy is among the group invited to the White House to investigate this incident, but when the lights suddenly go out, Leon and the SWAT team are forced to take down a horde of mysterious zombies.

Meanwhile, TerraSave staff member Claire Redfield encounters a mysterious image drawn by a youth in a country she visited, while providing support to refugees. Haunted by this drawing, which appears to be of a victim of viral infection, Claire starts her own investigation. The next morning, Claire visits the White House to request the construction of a welfare facility. There, she has a chance reunion with Leon and uses the opportunity to show him the boy’s drawing. Leon seems to realize some sort of connection between the zombie outbreak at the White House and the strange drawing, but he tells Claire that there is no relation and leaves.

In time, these two zombie outbreaks in distant countries lead to events that shake the nation to its very core.”

Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness was officially revealed back in September 2020, during Capcom’s TGS Live 2020 stream. It’s been confirmed Infinite Darkness is set in the canon of the game franchise.

The future is bright for Resident Evil fans, with Netflix also currently working on a live-action series adaptation of Resident Evil, and a separate, new origin movie project underway at Constantin Film featuring Kaya Scodelario as Claire Redfield, Hannah John-Kamen as Jill Valentine, Robbie Amell as Chris Redfield, and Avan Jogia as Leon S. Kennedy. Additionally, Resident Evil Village arrives on PC and consoles on May 7.

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Luke is Games Editor at IGN’s Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter sporadically @MrLukeReilly.

Netflix Is Getting Ready To Limit Password Sharing

Netflix password sharing is so common that there’s a good chance you’re not the one paying for the account you’re using right now. Netflix knows you’re doing it, though, and it wants you to stop, dangit. Netflix is now testing measures to limit password sharing, and some users are beginning to notice, according to a report from The Streamable.

The streaming giant is now prompting some people to sign up for a separate account if they’re watching on a connection different from that of the subscriber, the site reports. The message says, “If you don’t live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching.”

Netflix has typically been quiet about the practice of password sharing. The company has data on every account, every profile, and every IP address that accesses its service, so they know what we’re doing when we lend that password out. It’s unclear how Netflix decides a given stream is unauthorized. The terms of service only disallow password sharing “with individuals beyond your household.” Even a small family with two parents and a teenager can already include three mobile phones and a couple of laptops that might connect at home, work, and school. With viewers so mobile, it will be interesting to see whether Netflix can manage this without becoming overly draconian.

“This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so,” a Netflix spokesperson said in a statement to The Streamable. The test apparently only applies right now to televisions that run on Roku software, and CNBC notes that Netflix tests “hundreds” of feature per year that never roll out to the broader public.

With that said, a 2018 study showed that around 35% of millennial-aged users share their streaming passwords, while as many as 42% of younger users are doing so. Netflix Chief Product Officer Greg Peters said in 2019 that the company is investigating ways to address the issue without “alienating a certain portion of [its] user base,” and wants to find “consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that.”

Your free Netflix access is safe for now, but its days may be numbered.

Destiny 2’s Forsaken Content Will Be Vaulted “At Some Point”

More portions of Destiny 2 will be removed from the game and placed in the “Destiny Content Vault.” Bungie says the Forsaken expansion is next on the block to get pulled from the game in the developer’s ongoing attempt to balance Destiny 2’s install size with seasonal content drops and yearly expansion releases.

“Forsaken content will be vaulted at some point,” Bungie general manager Justin Truman said in an interview with Eurogamer. That means at least some portions of the game that were added with the 2018’s Forsaken expansion–including the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City locations, the Last Wish raid and Shattered Throne dungeon, and their related activities and story content–could be removed from the game. When the Beyond Light expansion was released in 2020, Bungie removed vanilla Destiny 2 content and content from its first two expansions, Curse of Osiris and Warmind, to make space. In all, four planetary locations and three raids went into the Vault, along with all their story and activities.

“I think in the same way we don’t want eight raids, it’s the same thing with storylines–we don’t want when a new player enters into Destiny, there’s five different competing storylines that they could start playing and in some of them, Uldren’s a good guy, and in some of them he’s a bad guy, and it’s not clear if you’re playing them out of order,” Truman explained, referring to the character Uldren Sov, who was an antagonist in Forsaken but has returned in a new role in the most recent Destiny 2 seasons.

“We want to curate that experience,” he continued. “We’re probably not going to go in strict chronological order–like, oh, the next Destiny 2 destination that came in the launch Destiny would be the next one to Vault. Instead, we’re thinking about it in terms of, which one of these destinations or experiences is doing the least to the overall healthy ecosystem? And that can range from, which ones have the most exciting experiences that we want to stick around, it could be to do with combatant usage, like, hey, if we get rid of this, there just aren’t that many places where Cabal are in Destiny 2 anymore….”

Bungie previously explained that the reason behind vaulting Destiny 2 content was to manage the game’s install size and breadth; removing older content that wasn’t being used as much made space for new content, like the Beyond Light expansion, and to help keep all the existing Destiny 2 content from getting unwieldy. The Vault also doesn’t mean content is gone forever. Bungie brought back a tuned-up version of Destiny 1’s Cosmodrome with Beyond Light, along with three retooled Destiny 1 Strike missions. It’s also bringing back the Vault of Glass, Destiny first-ever raid, with the next content season in May.

If we had to guess, though, we’d assume that Forsaken is headed to the content vault early next year. That’s when Bungie will release its next expansion, The Witch Queen, and presumably add more new destinations to visit. We’ll have to wait to see just what Bungie has in mind, but in the meantime, it’s probably a good idea to start getting in some runs of Last Wish.

Now Playing: The Devils’ Lair – Destiny VS Destiny 2 Comparison

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LG Is Pushing More And More Smart TV Ads–Even On Flagship TVs

Have you ever wondered why brand-new televisions with massive, bright, and vivid screens are so cheap these days? It’s all about the ads. Once relegated to the cheapest televisions, owners of LG’s flagship CX line are now discovering that they, too, are enjoying unprompted advertising on their television sets, according to a report from The Verge.

The Verge’s Chris Welch was updating streaming apps on his television when an ad popped up and played with sound in the corner of his screen without a way to skip it or stop it. It was a short one, but a pop-up, hover-over ad all the same. Other users on Twitter and Reddit have noticed the same behavior, so this doesn’t appear to be an isolated occurrence. What’s new about this is that the LG CX television Welch witnessed the ad on is one of the brand’s upper-middle range televisions, the ones that users buy for a premium experience. Every smart TV has ads to some degree, but this a step beyond ads showing up in the corner of the app browser or input menu.

A 2019 interview by The Verge with Vizio Chief Technology Officer Bill Baxter does a good job of explaining this. “This is a cutthroat industry. It’s a 6% margin industry. The greater strategy is I really don’t need to make money off of the TV. I need to cover my cost,” Baxter said. “It’s not just about data collection, it’s about post-purchase monetization of the TV.”

Companies like LG, Vizio, and others, can sell us televisions like these because they’re selling them at a razor-thin margin that, on its own, would make it difficult for a company to stay in business. Baxter says that without ads, Vizio would “collect a little bit more margin at retail to offset it.” In other words, you’d pay more at the register for the television.

There are a few things that we, as consumers, can do to offset these, though doing so can become especially difficult with the growing prevalence of TVs powered by Roku’s operating system. You could look for a non-smart television–one with a stock on-screen display that serves up only information like you input and configuration information. These are getting increasingly more difficult to find, and are often not on the bleeding edge of technology. If you’re looking for a 65-inch UltraHD television with DolbyVision HDR, and HDMI 2.1 compatibility to pair with your new gaming console, you might be out of luck if ads are a dealbreaker. It’s much easier to find smaller, lower-resolution televisions.

If you want the latest tech in your TV, you’re stuck buying a smart TV. The most effective defense against ads is to simply never connect the television to the internet. Most smart TVs have USB ports and allow for offline software updates over USB, and an unconnected television can’t serve up ads. Instead of using the built-in apps to access Netflix and Disney+, you can connect something like an AppleTV box, or an Nvidia Shield and enjoy your apps through that, rather than the television menu.

If you absolutely have to connect that big, bright rectangle to the internet, the next easiest step is to look at your TV settings and check any boxes to disable (or reduce) tracking and the microphone so that, at the very least, the ads you see don’t feel quite so creepy.

If you’re a bit more technically-inclined, you can also put something between the television and the internet to mitigate ad serving. A Reddit thread from 2019 still has great information about blocking common ad sources. You can also buy a Raspberry Pi computer and configure it with network-wide ad-blocking software called Pi-Hole. While that will help, it seems some smart TVs are finding ways around this.

Of course, this is all out the window once these manufacturers decide to cram a cellular radio into their TVs right next to the wireless and Bluetooth radios so that they can pull ads without even touching our routers and internet connections, though no manufacturer has yet announced such plans.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart – Here’s What Comes in Each Edition

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is set to release exclusively for PlayStation 5 on June 11. It’s a third-person shooter developed by Insomniac Games, and it’s meant to showcase many of the PS5’s flagship features. It’s available now for preorder (see it at Amazon, or Amazon UK).

You can pick up the standard edition, of course, or go for the digital deluxe edition if you want some downloadable extras thrown in. Below, we have full details on what comes in each edition, as well as what preorder bonuses you can expect. Let’s get to it.

Preorder Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart

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The standard edition of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart comes with the game and the preorder bonus described below.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Digital Deluxe Edition

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Those who choose to forego a disc can pick up the digital deluxe edition. It comes with the game itself, along with the following digital extras:

  • 5 armor sets
  • Photo mode sticker pack
  • 20 Raritanium (in-game upgrade materials)
  • Digital soundtrack
  • Digital art book

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart Preorder Bonus

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Preorder the digital standard edition or the physical launch edition, and you’ll receive early unlocks for the Carbonox Armor from 2003’s Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando and the Pixelizer weapon, which appeared in the 2016 Ratchet & Clank. US and Canadian customers who preorder will also get a $5 discount off official merchandise on the PlayStation Gear store.

What is Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart?

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Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is the latest in a long line of PlayStation-exclusive third-person shooters that goes back to PS2. This time around, Dr. Nefarious whips up a device that lets him access other dimensions. He uses it to separate the lovable Lombax Ratchet from his robotic friend Clank. Your job is to reunite the friends, while hopping between alternate realities and using a wide array of powerful (and often comedic) weapons. There’s also a new female Lombax in the equation, but we haven’t gotten many details about her yet.

The game also makes use of PS5-specific features, including super-fast loading times, 4K HDR graphics, ray tracing, haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, and 3D sound.

Other Preorder Guides

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Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert at IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @_chrislreed.

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Borderlands 3 Director’s Cut Delayed To April 8 Due To Texas Storm

Borderlands 3‘s Director’s Cut DLC has been delayed to April due to complications from the recent severe weather and power outages in Texas. Gearbox issued a statement saying that the conditions “unavoidably disrupted” its work, forcing it to push back the add-on by a few weeks. The new release date is April 8.

The Director’s Cut had been set for March 18, a date that was set in early February. But a severe winter storm hit Texas and surrounding regions on February 13, causing widespread blackouts and other infrastructure problems. Many Texans had no heat and frozen pipes for several days, and the death toll reached 70 in the United States.

Thankfully, Gearbox says, its employees are all safe. But the studio, based near Dallas, TX, was impacted by the storm regardless. It says it has now shifted the Director’s Cut date to “deliver the best possible experience.”

The Director’s Cut update will include a series of new story missions, behind-the-scenes content like bloopers and bonus footage, and a full-fledged Raid boss called Hemovorous the Invincible. It will cost 500 Eridium to unlock the door and take on the raid.

Borderlands 3 will also get Vault Cards, which offer exclusive cosmetic rewards for completing daily and weekly challenges. Finally, a new set of Multi-Verse cosmetics is coming with the second season pass. These special cosmetic packs do more than simply change the color tone of your characters, instead changing their whole geometry based on how they might look in an alternate universe. The Final Form pack shows the Vault Hunters if they’d never become Vault Hunters, while the Disciples of the Vault pack shows how they’d look if they’d become followers of the Calypso cult.

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