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Update: The LazarBeam Fortnite skin reveal has debuted. You can see pics of the skin below or watch the reveal video for yourself. According to the reveal, the skin will be available on March 4th using the code Lazar.

Original story follows…

Epic Games will be revealing the next in its “Icon Series” of Fortnite skins, which honor popular content creators by modeling them in the cartoon Fortnite style. This time it’s LazarBeam’s turn, and the streamer is promoting a reveal to take place at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET today, March 1.

You can view the reveal below when it goes live. As usual we expect the cosmetics to include a skin, emote, and some gear like custom back bling and pickaxe.

The Icon Series began with the mega-popular streamer Ninja, who was modeled with a blend of elements from the real-life streamer Richard Blevins and an actual ninja. Other popular streamers inducted as icons include Loserfruit and Lachlan.

Meanwhile, Fortnite continues to incorporate brands from across the nerd spectrum, having recently added Ripley and a Xenomorph. The game is also getting a crossover with Batman comics, this time with Fortnite codes in the comics themselves that will unlock a special armored Batman skin.

A trademark that Bungie originally filed in 2020 is making the rounds again this week, prompting speculation that the Destiny studio may have plans for its own convention.

Bungie’s trademark for “BungieCon,” which was originally filed in summer 2020, covers all manner of products, including jewellery, trading cards, pants, and boots, along with something more befitting its name.

The Goods & Services description states that BungieCon could apply to the “organizing and conducting [of] fan conventions in the fields of video and computer games.”

The connection people are making here is that Bungie has plans to hold its own fan convention. This potential idea is further bolstered by the news back in 2017 that Bungie had trademarked “DestinyCon.”

If Bungie is indeed planning a fan convention, that might explain the other Goods & Services descriptions for things like jewellery, trading cards, and clothing. It’s not uncommon for those types of things to be sold at a convention.

Combined, it appears that Bungie is at least interested in the idea of a fan convention, or even less than that; that it wants to get the trademark to protect its future opportunity to use that name for a fan convention should the developer ever want to do this.

Trademark filings do not always result in future product announcements. For example, Activision trademarked all manner of Call of Duty games that never came to be, including Secret Warfare and Space Warfare. That being said, sometimes they do; like when Bethesda trademarked “Starfield” all the way back in 2013 before the company announced the game in 2018.

Going back to Bungie, the studio has legions of dedicated fans who love Destiny and may well want to attend some kind of fan convention if Bungie were to offer one. It wouldn’t be the first time a developer of a popular game held a fan convention dedicated to it. Before the pandemic, there were in-person fan gatherings like ExileCon (Path of Exile), BlizzCon (Blizzards games), TennoCon (Warframe), Final Fantasy Fan Festival (Final Fantasy), and more.

In other Bungie news, the developer recently announced an ambitious expansion plan for its studio in Washington which will support a hybrid model of in-office and remote working. Bungie also reiterated that it plans to release a new, non-Destiny IP by 2025 and bring Destiny to “additional media.”

Elden Ring fans have grown increasingly desperate for news of From Software’s highly anticipated game, and a leak of what appears to be grainy footage of the game in action has triggered a torrent of memes. On the Elden Ring subreddit, which has become ground zero for the game’s increasingly-desperate fans to express their displeasure at From Software’s radio silence, the reaction has been divided between unrelenting hype and humorous memes.

The Elden Ring subreddit has become increasingly meta in its sense of humor as the wait for the game has continued. For example, the above meme compares a low-definition screencap of a carriage from the newly revealed footage to the carriages from a photoshopped screenshot of Bloodborne Kart, a non-existent game that has become a meme unto itself in the community.

Other top posts in the subreddit poke fun at the footage’s highly questionable video quality. Another popular post compares a tree seen in the footage to an image from the manga Berserk, which Souls creator Hidetaka Miyazaki often references in his games.

While several leakers initially posted very short snippets of what appears to be a trailer for the game, one very recently uploaded a full 30-second clip of the game. While it’s impossible to fully verify its authenticity, it certainly looks like an open-world Souls game in action, complete with weighty combat and rideable horses. Reporter Jeff Grubb said that the trailer dates back from 2020. Microsoft also confirmed that Elden Ring will not be shown during an upcoming Xbox event.

The battle royale game Apex Legends released more than two years ago, but it’s still setting records. The free-to-play game from the developers of Titanfall surpassed 198,000 concurrent players on Steam recently, setting a new high watermark for the game.

SteamDB had Apex Legends at a peak concurrent player figure of 198,235 at the end of February. The game is showing strong growth, as Apex Legends’ peak concurrent player number rose by around 70,000 compared to January, according to SteamDB (via PC Gamer).

These are massive numbers, but they don’t even capture the full extent of Apex’s reach. The battle royale game is also available on Origin, where it presumably has a sizeable playerbase.

The success seems to suggest that Apex’s Season 8 helped bring more players into the fold to check out the new hero, Fuse, and duke it out on the new version of the King’s Canyon map.

Apex Legends originally launched in February 2019 but it didn’t come to Steam until November 2020. The game is a chart-topper on Steam, consistently ranking in the top 10 most-played games on the platform.

The ongoing success of Apex Legends is helping publisher Electronic Arts in a big way. The company said in its latest earnings briefing that Apex Legends experienced a 30% growth in new players year-over-year, while its various microtransactions helped EA make billions from in-game purchases.

Apex Legends will expand further when it releases on Nintendo Switch on March 9 with a port studio Panic Button.

Many are wondering if developer Respawn will ever return to Titanfall in the wake of Apex’s success. According to EA Studios boss Laura Miele, the fate of the Titanfall series is in Respawn’s hands, and the studio will decide how to move forward.

Snoop Dogg’s love for Madden is well-documented, but the rapper didn’t exactly have a good time streaming the game recently. Fourteen minutes into his most recent Madden stream, after the opposing team scored three unanswered touchdowns in the first half, Snoop decided that he’d had enough.

However, it appears that the mind behind such infectious hits as “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “Gin & Juice” forgot to end the steam, as the broadcast continued for the next seven hours and change with no footage whatsoever. Viewers were regaled with a mixture of soul and funk classics for hours and hours. Snoop’s fans continued to bombard the stream chat with memes and emojis for the entirety of that time, with several suggesting that he should “get some mods” to help with the technical mix-up.

Snoop’s stream description of “sit back, relax, and chill, it’s a vibe in here” seems particularly ironic now, given how the stream ended. That said, the fact that Snoop’s fans were willing to sit there for hours amusing themselves to the tunes of James Brown demonstrates the rapper’s endless appeal. Let’s hope he can at least make it through an entire game next time.

Recently, Madden 21 wrongly predicted that the Kansas City Chiefs would beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in this year’s Super Bowl. That said, not everyone has been happy with last year’s entry in the series. In GameSpot’s Madden 21 review, our critic Steven Petite opined that Madden 21 feels more like an update than a full new game.

On this final episode of Dirty Arty, Jake and Rob set out to find Arty’s final resting place.

A new way to customize your Spartan in Halo 3 is coming to the game more than 13 years after it was originally released. 343 Industries has announced that it’s taking a page out of Fortnite’s book with its own version of back bling for another way to customize your solider.

“Back attachment” gear is coming to Halo 3 in The Master Chief Collection with the Season 6 update. The attachments are purely cosmetic, and they’re meant to give you yet another way to customize your character to stand out on the battlefield.

The new back attachments, which can be unlocked by simply playing the game, include the Tactical pack, the Demolitions pack, the Communications pack, and the Ammo pack, among others. The Ammo pack looks the best to me thanks to its huge knife at the bottom.

Another one, which wasn’t announced in 343’s blog post but is available in the Season 6 beta test, is the Sword and Board (see below), along with one called Pulaski. This one is a big firefighter’s axe–you can see it in the game in UberNick’s YouTube video.

Halo Insiders who were selected for the latest “flight,” or beta test, can check out the MCC Season 6 content right now on console and PC. This also includes animated visors and two new multiplayer maps that came from the canceled free-to-play Halo Online game for Russia.

There has been a lot of Halo news lately; check out the stories linked below to catch up with the latest developments across the franchise.

Horizon Forbidden West is still on track for release on PS5 and PS4 later this year, according to the most recent games trailer from Sony. The trailer suggests the sequel will launch in the second half of 2021, while also featuring the most up-to-date release information for Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Gran Turismo 7.

The trailer in question (captured by IGN) features the recently revealed June release date for Insomniac’s latest Ratchet and Clank adventure and the omission of a 2021 release window for Gran Turismo 7, suggesting that the “anticipated second half 2021” caption for Horizon Forbidden West is equally accurate. You can see the trailer below, which shows off some clips from the anticipated sequel that Sony debuted with the game’s announcement.

A second ad on Instagram (via VGC) corroborates this, stating that Forbidden West might come in the latter months of 2021. This echoes statements made by PlayStation’s Jim Ryan, who said he felt confident about the releases of Returnal, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, and Horizon Forbidden West in an interview with GQ last week.

Ryan also mentioned that if the need arises, Sony is giving developers the space to delay their games. This was the case with Gran Turismo 7, which is no longer being advertised with a 2021 release window after it was delayed until 2022.

“But I think in this world, where creative people are working remotely, you’ve just got to respect the fact that that development needs to take what it needs to take and to get the games right,” said Ryan.

Horizon Forbidden West takes protagonist Aloy to the western coast of post-apocalyptic America, where she will face new threats and make new allies. The Guerrilla-developed sequel is one of the last Sony exclusives announced that will be on both PS5 and PS4.