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Google may have shuttered its internal development studios, but the technology giant’s Stadia streaming service is still getting lots and lots of games in the future. In a blog post, the company confirmed it has “more than 100 games” coming to the Stadia store in 2021.

There will be a wide range of titles from developers big and small, across numerous genres, coming to Stadia throughout the year. Some of the ones on the immediate horizon include Shantae: Half-Genie Hero Ultimate Edition (February 23), FIFA 21 (March 17), and Judgment (April 23). Killer Queen Black, Street Power Football, and Hellpoint are also on the way with unspecified dates, along with dozens an dozens more titles throughout 2021.

Earlier in February, Google made the surprise announcement that it was closing its two game development studios, with 150 jobs impacted.

In a blog post from industry veteran and head of Stadia, Phil Harrison, the executive said Google is focusing on fleshing out Stadia’s technology and will back away from actually developing games for it.

“Given our focus on building on the proven technology of Stadia as well as deepening our business partnerships, we’ve decided that we will not be investing further in bringing exclusive content from our internal development team SG&E, beyond any near-term planned games,” the statement said. “Over the coming months, most of the SG&E team will be moving on to new roles. We’re committed to working with this talented team to find new roles and support them.”

The Stadia and Stadia Pro platforms will remain operational in the wake of this news. “You can continue playing all your games on Stadia and Stadia Pro, and we’ll continue to bring new titles from third parties to the platform,” Google said. “We’re committed to the future of cloud gaming, and will continue to do our part to drive this industry forward. Our goal remains focused on creating the best possible platform for gamers and technology for our partners, bringing these experiences to life for people everywhere.”

For lots more on Stadia and its history, check out GameSpot’s feature video above, The Rise and Fall of Stadia Games and Entertainment.

[UPDATE] The issues affecting EA’s servers have now been resolved.

The original story is below.

Gaming giant Electronic Arts is experiencing some issues with a number of its services, with at least one giant game–the battle royale title Apex Legends–currently impacted by the outages.

The official EA Help Twitter account released a statement to concerned players. “We are aware that http://help.ea.com and a number of our services are experiencing issues at this time and are working on a fix. Stay tuned for updates,” it said.

The Apex Legends News Twitter account mentioned that the issues might be impacting the battle royale game. The full extent of the network outages, however, is not immediately clear.

Server outages and other related issues are common at EA and basically every company that operates online games. EA typically responds swiftly, so it’s expected that these latest issues will be addressed and sorted out in short order, but keep checking back with GameSpot for the latest.

EA continues to lean into live service games through its $2.1 billion acquisition of the Glu Mobile, the developer of Kim Kardashian’s very popular mobile title. EA wants to make more money from microtransactions, and buying Glu is a way to do that.

In an interview for PlayStation Official Magazine’s March 2021 issue, as quoted by Wccftech, producer Peter Fabiano has confirmed that Resident Evil: Village takes a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil 4, one of the most critically well-received games in the entire franchise. He’s also dropped a few more hints about Lady Dimitrescu and her daughters, as well as building up some high expectations for the next main-line Resident Evil game.

“You’ll notice we took a lot of inspiration from Resident Evil 4,” Fabiano explained. “The team has put a ton of effort into creating a truly authentic feel. There are plenty of surprises to keep you on your toes; players will find a balance of combat, exploration, and puzzle solving.”

At a superficial level, there are quite a few obvious parallels between Resident Evil 4 and Village, from the European rural village setting to the kidnapping of a character’s daughter as the central plot drive. It’ll be interesting to see how much further the Resident Evil 4 inspiration goes beyond those plot similarities, however.

As might be expected after Lady Dimitrescu became a fan-favorite character, the interview also discusses the vampire-like antagonist and her supernatural daughters. “Dimitrescu and her three daughters all harken back to what you might expect from vampire lore,” Fabiano explained. “We’re not saying that’s what they are, but there’s certainly something that feels supernatural about what’s going on.”

“We don’t want to spoil too much of the story,” he added. “But what I can say is that the creatures all fit within the context of Resident Evil’s world. We can assure you that Resident Evil Village takes into account the overall world and history of the series.”

The producer also said that the concept for Village sprung up around the end of development for Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. “The team grew quite attached to Ethan as a character so we knew we wanted to continue his story arc,” he explained. “We wanted to continue to have players experience the game through the eyes of protagonist Ethan Winters. This really helped to keep our vision on target. And since we are constantly sharing information across Resident Evil teams, that really helped inform us in making what we consider the best survival horror game to date.”

Resident Evil Village will release on May 7 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

History professor Tore Olsson is combining his love for history and his love for games in a new history class at the University of Tennessee titled “HIUS 383: Red Dead America.” The class will use both Red Dead Redemption and its sequel as jumping off points to explore the 1899-1911 period of American history.

In a Twitter thread explaining what the class’s syllabus will cover, Olsson admits that, taken alone, the games are “often historically inaccurate,” but still provide good jumping off points for the discussion of numerous historical issues including colonialism, racism, and the rise of monopoly capitalism.

Olsson has credited fellow historian Jonathan S. Jones for inspiring him to develop the class, after Jones wrote a feature for Slate examining how Red Dead Redemption 2 depicts and lets players interact with the U.S.’s racist past.

Olsson says that the course won’t require owning the game on PC or console, though it will assume that most of the students will have played the game before. In a subsequent tweet, he explains that he hopes the unorthodox handling of history will help attract students from non-history majors. Olsson also hopes that his class will inspire other professors to think about game-oriented classes that’ll appeal more to young students than a traditional syllabus might.

Gamers who are lucky enough to attend the University of Tennesee Knoxville will be able to take the class in August, while the rest of us will just have to hope Olsson releases the syllabus online for those of us wanting to follow along from home.

Destiny 2 is available on a huge number of platforms at this point, including Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Google Stadia. However, you’re currently limited to playing with those on the same platform as you. This used to be the standard for nearly every game, but many modern first-person shooters have started offering crossplay support, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. Luckily, crossplay is coming to Destiny 2 in the future. But just when is Destiny 2 getting crossplay?

When is Destiny 2 getting crossplay?

Though Bungie hasn’t given a firm date, it said in late January that crossplay would be coming to Destiny 2 later this year.

It has been making changes to the game’s current systems in order to facilitate this move, including changing recoil to accommodate for those using mouse-and-keyboard control versus a controller. There will almost certainly need to be more changes once the feature is implemented, not only to make things balanced for cooperative events, but also for ensuring the Crucible stays fair.

In current crossplay-enabled games like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, you can also choose to only play with those on your console, so it’s possible this option could be included in Destiny 2, as well.

Cross-save is live while you wait

It won’t let you play between two different platforms, but Destiny 2 does offer a cross-save feature right now. This lets you unify your platforms across one account, letting you play the game on whatever platform you use: PlayStation, Xbox, PC, or even Stadia.

This means that if you traditionally play on Xbox but your friends want to play on PS5, you should be able to do so without having to restart. However, once crossplay has been enabled, this will no longer be necessary.