February 2024

The Fantastic Four finally arrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe next year, and Marvel Studios has officially revealed who will don the team’s iconic blue suits.

The Fantastic Four was first announced in 2019 and is scheduled to premiere next year as the second film in Phase Six of the MCU. In a sweet Valentine's Day message, Marvel announced the following actors will portray Marvel’s First Family: 

Happy Valentine’s Day from Marvel’s First Family! Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn are The Fantastic Four.

Marvel Studios' #TheFantasticFour, in theaters July 25, 2025. pic.twitter.com/dOmLG0m7ie

— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) February 14, 2024

Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic - Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us, The Mandalorian)

Sue Storm/Invisible Woman - Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon, The Crown) 

Johnny Storm/Human Torch - Joseph Quinn (Stranger Things, Overlord)

Ben Grimm/The Thing - Ebon Moss-Bachrach (The Bear, The Punisher)

When MLB The Show 24 launches next month, it will include a female baseball player who made history in 1953. That inclusion will break new ground for the game series, too, as it’s never featured a playable woman character before.

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Co-operative PvE extraction shooter Helldivers 2 features a number of different enemy types, many of which you may have to take out to complete specific challenges. A recent challenge requiring players to take out 20 Scout Striders is one such, and it might be giving you a bit of a hard time if you’re not too…

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Destiny 2 ain’t no spring chicken. Bungie’s popular intergalactic looter shooter has been around since 2017, and in that time, the game has received numerous updates and expansions. Now, a new deal collects almost all of those expansions and updates into one $40 Steam bundle making it easy for anyone to jump in and…

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Overwatch 2’s ninth season has begun, and while most players are talking about the reworks and sweeping changes Blizzard has made, there’s a small subset of people whose most anticipated part of the seasonal drop is a heart. No, not the heart-shaped balloon Reaper pops in his Valentine’s Day emote; the heart-shaped…

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Overwatch 2’s ninth season is underway, and it’s bringing some sweeping changes to the hero shooter. On top of reworking Pharah and giving every hero both a health buff and a passive heal, Blizzard also increased the projectile size of most heroes’ weapons. In layperson’s terms, they made the bullets bigger. This…

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After months of speculation, the cast for the upcoming Marvel film The Fantastic Four has been announced by way of adorable Valentine’s Day-themed art. The art also revealed a release date: July 25, 2025.

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People playing Granblue Fantasy: Relink multiplayer on the PS4 or PS5 may notice improved matchmaking starting today or find they will see a higher drop rate when breaking foe parts thanks to a patch. The 1.0.4 update is now live and, while small, fixes two major issues people may have experienced when trying to play alone or with others.

After the game’s launch, there were reports of people on the PS4 or PS5 not getting foe parts after breaking certain areas on enemies. For example, a friend of mine noticed an issue trying to get Vitality Hoof from Furycane when fighting it. Downloading and applying the Granblue Fantasy: Relink patch should fix the drop rate going forward.

As for Granblue Fantasy: Relink matchmaking, it only applies to a specific multiplayer situation. If someone has Power Adjustment on, they should see a different in ensuing match ups and fights. This change doesn't have any kind of effect on general matchmaking outside of that particular situation.

The Pokemon Center has released a new line of goods called the Pikachu Everyday Fun Kitchen. The concept behind these products is that using them will make cooking more fun.

You can find all of the products via the Pokemon Center website. In total, you can purchase 17 different products for your kitchen, all of them starring Pikachu. Aside from direct references to Pikachu, all of them are red and yellow to match Pikachu’s color scheme.

Here is the list of Pikachu Everyday Fun Kitchen items that you can buy from the Pokemon Center:

• Apron: $29.99
• Bowls (4-pack): $39.99
• Ceramic Butter Dish: $29.99
• Ceramic Salt & Pepper Shaker Set: $19.99
• Cookie Cutters (8-pack): $14.99
• Cutting Mats: $12.99
• Dinner Plates (4-pack): $39.99

Sony has unveiled its PlayStation Plus Extra and Premium game catalogue additions for February, which this month include Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Need for Speed Unbound, The Outer Worlds, Tales of Arise, and more.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is arguably the biggest biggie in there, whisking players away for a Viking adventure set against an open-world backdrop of Anglo-Saxon England at the end of the ninth century. A lavishly designed "saga for the ages", is what Eurogamer called it back in 2020.

Valhalla is joined by the developer Criterion's equally recommended arcade racer Need for Speed Unbound - the "best Need for Speed in a generation" we said when it released in 2022 - as well as Obsidian Entertainment's slightly less gripping 2019 satirical adventure The Outer Worlds, a "conventional, easygoing scifi RPG...that fades very quickly from the mind." And here's the full list of February's PlayStation Plus Extra games.

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After days of basically edging the community with videos of new kiss animations, Larian Studios has finally released Baldur’s Gate 3’s patch six. The roughly 21GB update brings new kisses for your lovers, quality-of-life improvements, and a slew of bug fixes. Here are a few of the highlights:

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The start of February brought a short list of new games to PlayStation Plus, and while it did have some underrated gems, it was lacking big hitters. The subscription service is rectifying that in a big way as it approaches the end of February by adding a slew of new hugely popular titles for subscribers. It’s an…

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Sony announced its third-quarter earnings on February 14, and they weren’t exactly full of glad tidings for PlayStation fans. For starters, the company revealed it doesn’t plan to release any new titles in its major franchises for the remainder of 2024. Sony execs also said that its current-gen hardware, the PlayStatio…

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Last time, we conducted citizen science with a rare suggestion from a reader, and you decided that being able to reroll your build is better than instant-death bottomless pits. May you live a long and happy live refining by degrees, rather than slamming into hard lessons. This week, in celebration of Valentine's Day, we turn to matters of the heart, of loves and organs. What's better: health pick-ups looking like cartoon hearts or Doomguy's pet rabbit, Daisy?

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A new update for The Sims 4 has added options to give characters vitiligo, the autoimmune disorder which causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Rather than a handful of preset full-body patterns, The Sims 4's vitiligo impressively comes as loads of patterns for separate bodyparts, so you can create a wide range of effects. And no, you don't need to buy an expansion for it.

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We've eschewed any Valentine's theming this year, but Edwin put this in our news queue last night as a sort of dare for our evening shift, and let the record show I am less of a coward than Graham Smith. The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, a visual novel Tarot-themed card game from perennial (perhaps perineal, in this case) favourites Deconstructeam, was praised by Edwin in his review, and I was going to use the same strapline for this news post had he not got there first. Because now, in time for the season of romance, they've teamed up with sex toy purveyors Uberrime to create a frankly prohibitively massive dildo as an official tie-in for the game, which can be won in a free competition by three lucky people living in either the UK, EU, US or Canada (as in, they each win their own dildo; they don't have to time share).

I mean I say "prohibitively", but I don't know your life.

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A number of Ubisoft France employees are on strike today after the collapse of union negotiations with Ubisoft management, who have reportedly proposed a budget for wages "that would be lower than inflation for the second year in a row". The strikers are calling it a "badly balanced rewards system". Cheeky devils!

The news comes care of a post from Le Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo, who have evidently been doing their homework on videogame humour. That research has paid off, for here I am writing about the strikes, though I think I probably would have written about them anyway.

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In Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, characters mostly appear as names, voices, and sometimes an attached giant robot, but that hasn't stopped fans falling in love with them. So much so that one fan is developing an unofficial Armored Core dating sim featuring the game's various pilots with original designs and illustrations called Amour’d Core.

Developed by Austin-based artist Beth Short, Amour'd Core is a fan-made dating sim currently featuring nine Armored Core VI characters as romance options, with more planned. These include fan favorites like Handler Walter and Rusty, less prevalent characters like Pater and Maeterlinck, and even non-human characters like Ayre and ALLMIND.

Currently, there is no release date or list of expected platforms, and as an unaffiliated fan work the game's development is supported by Short's Patreon. There are several tiers of support available that include exclusive content and illustrations, and even the chance to appear in the game's credits.

You can find the creator's Valentine's Day tweet below:

There’s a lot going on with Anycolor, the company behind the Nijisanji Vtuber agency, with the English branch seeming to fall apart in December 2023 and January 2024 following situations surrounding Selen Tatsuki. However, this is more than just some recent issue, as the decline could even start to be traced as far back as 2022 when the Korean and Indonesian branches were first folded. It’s a lot! Especially if you’re new to Vtubers.

What’s going on with Anycolor, Nijisanji, Selen Tatsuki, and its other English and Indonesian Vtubers?

This timeline will only go over confirmed and known information and announcements as of February 14, 2024. As the Selen and Dokibird situation is a bit more specialized as a result of Doki specifically saying requesting people tell others "this is where I am now” on social media on February 5, 2024, that is the only performer identity that will be discussed out of respect to the people behind the Vtubers. In addition, not all Nijisanji graduations between 2022 and 2024 will be noted. 

Satirical sci-fi shooter sequel Helldivers 2 is off to a flying start, and now its creator Arrowhead Game Studios has put out a call for fresh development talent so it can "accelerate and beef up" its post-launch content plans.

Despite some early technical woes, which Arrowhead has been hard at work trying resolve since Friday's release on PlayStation 5 and PC, Helldivers 2 has enjoyed a positive critical reception and strong player numbers, even becoming PlayStation Studios' biggest Steam launch to date as it amassed over 150,000 concurrents this weekend.

Amid that early success, Arrowhead CEO and Helldivers 2 creative director Johan Pilestedt has taken to social media on a recruitment drive, seeking out "more amazing developers" who can "help [the studio] accelerate and beef up our content plans".

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The Pokémon Company is bringing its hugely popular Pokémon Center pop-up store back to London for four days this April, with promise of more exclusive Pokémon merchandise.

The Pokémon Center's return to the UK coincides with this year's Pokémon Europe International Championships, which take place at ExCeL London from 4th to 7th April. The store will be open at the venue from 10am to 8pm every day except Sunday, when it's set to close at 4pm.

Previous Pokémon Center pop-ups in the UK have attracted huge crowds, and The Pokémon Company is clearly expecting similar attention this time around. It notes that while entry to the store is open to the general public and won't require a competitor or spectator badge, reservations are mandatory - even for badged attendees. More information on the reservation process is set to be shared "closer to the event".

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Free-to-play shooter Halo Infinite just got a long, long overdue update to one of its more troubled modes: Big Team Battle. Featuring 24 players at once, Infinite’s large-scale playlist was always beleaguered by the fact that it had too few maps. Any session spent in large brawls would inevitably orbit the same…

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It’s Valentine’s Day, which means love is in the air. Maybe you have someone to squeeze, or maybe you’re holding on to an unrequested crush. And to be clear, we’re talking about video game characters. Because let’s be honest, for some of us who have been playing video games since we were kids, game characters helped…

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The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is my current go-to high-end gaming CPU recommendation, on account of its brilliant top-tier performance at a mid-tier price. The CPU normally costs around £375, but today it's down to £350 at Amazon UK. This isn't the cheapest we've ever seen this model, but it's the best price recorded in 2024 so far and a solid £25 below the going rate.

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The RTX 4070 Super is a rather good deal, offering a significant boost in gaming performance over the earlier RTX 4070 - in fact, it's closer to the 4070 Ti than the vanilla 4070. That makes it a great choice for gaming up to 4K, while costing just a bit over the £500 mark - £539 to be accurate after a £50 discount that puts it below the UK RRP of £579.

That price is for a relatively modest Zotac Twin Edge model which fits easily even into small form factor PC, but thanks to the efficiency of the Ada Lovelace architecture the card should still run quite cool and quiet.

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Sony president and PlayStation chairman Hiroki Totoki has spoken of the opportunities available in its approach to releasing first-party games on PC, saying it's "proactively [working] on" bringing more titles to other platforms as part of an "aggressive" profit margin growth plan.

Totoki made the comments during an investor Q&A coinciding with Sony's latest financial earnings report. When asked how its gaming division might be looking to increase profits, he first discussed the difficulty of cost reduction in PlayStation hardware, given component pricing, before highlighting a "multiplatform" approach to its first-party game releases as a potentially more fruitful area of expansion.

"In the past, as you all know," Totoki explained, "we wanted to popularise [our] console, and the first-party title's main purpose was to make the console popular."

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In this week's episode of The Game Informer Show, Kyle Hilliard takes over hosting duty with Alex Van Aken just being present to be part of the ride. Charles Harte is also in attendance, as is special guest Sarah Thwaites. We kick off the show discussing Helldivers 2 and Mario vs. Donkey Kong before jumping into a big discussion about a number of compelling indie games like Lysfanga: The Time Shift Warrior, Crow Country, Pepper Grinder, Helskate, Project O.R.C.S., and Nightingale. We also chat about the recent Tomb Raider Remaster collection before diving into the initial broadcast of our new recurring segment, The Lunch Break: Like A Dance Break but with Lunch (Working Title).

Watch Our Weekly Gaming Podcast:

Follow us on social media: Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard), Alex Van Aken (@itsVanAken), Charles Harte (@chuckduck365), Sarah Thwaites (@sarahathwaites).

A new and free update for The Sims 4, EA’s uber-popular life sim, has added cosmetic options to the game that let you give your Sims vitiligo skin patches and patterns. To help celebrate this awesome addition, EA has brought in the world-famous model Winnie Harlow.

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The latest Bandai Namco financial statement suggests that Blue Protocol is underperforming for the company. The statement for Q3 of the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, shows losses due to “new online game titles introduced this fiscal year.” [Thanks, Ryokutya2089!]

The company noted that performance for mainline titles belonging to the Dragon Ball and One Piece series remained stable in Japan and overseas, but new online game titles fell far short of plans. The latest statement appeared on the Japanese gaming website Gamebiz. While Bandai Namco doesn’t directly state that Blue Protocol is underperforming or name it as responsible for the losses, the title is the only online game the company has released for the current fiscal year.

Bandai Namco reported ¥772 billion yen in sales for Q3, an increase of 3.9% compared to the previous fiscal year during the same period of time. However, operating income for the company resulted in ¥78 billion yen, a decrease of 26.3% year-over-year. Going forward, Bandai Namco stated plans to build an optimal and well-balanced title portfolio and strengthen development with an emphasis on quality.

Digital Foundry's tools of the trade is a new series looking at the tools - physical and virtual - that DF members use to carry out their work analysing video games and hardware. In this first episode, Will Judd shares his thoughts on digital callipers, specifically the Hozo NeoCaliper.

There are a handful of tools that should be in any PC gamer's toolkit, from the Phillips-head screwdrivers you'll need to build or modify pretty much every PC out there to the Allen keys that can help you adjust sim racing rigs, monitor arms and other more substantial furniture. However, one useful tool I've not seen mentioned much is a set of callipers - whether that's a traditional analogue set or more newfangled digital alternatives. I've used a set of the latter for several years now, and I'm always amazed at how useful these can be for PC building in general - and PC journalism more specifically.

First, the general stuff: callipers are extremely useful for small form factor Mini ITX builds, where you could start by just cramming every component into your case, but it's often better to measure your components before you begin to make sure you'll have enough clearance. Callipers won't replace a tape measure for extremely long objects - I'm thinking of graphics card length, for example - but smaller objects like CPU tower coolers or radiators can be measured quickly and accurately with digital callipers, allowing you to ensure that your intended setup is actually workable in the often limited space available. It's worth pointing out that as well as measuring the size of objects (outer diameter), you can also measure gaps (inner diameter) - the arms on the top of a set of callipers grip in the opposite direction, allowing you to see exactly how much space you have available.

Xbox president Sarah Bond reportedly told staff that "every screen is an Xbox". These words come ahead of Microsoft's business update later today, in which the company is expected to lay out its plans to publish some Xbox games on PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.

Bond was speaking at an internal town hall meeting, with several sources telling Inverse the exec went on to discuss Xbox's strategy of existing on multiple devices. She also spoke more on the company's ambitions to become the number one cross-platform gaming company, the sources said.

To illustrate this point, staff were shown images of this year's breakout hit Palworld across multiple screens. This included "tablets, TV screens, monitors, and handheld devices", the publication said.

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Embracer has laid off 8 percent of its workforce as its restructuring programme reaches "mature stages".

The company released its latest financial report today, stating its net sales increased by 4 percent, though this is largely thanks to its Tabletop Games and Entertainment divisions. PC and console games net sales decreased by five percent.

In its third quarter, the company laid off 483 people, meaning 1387 employees have now lost their jobs in the last two quarters, representing 8 percent of the total workforce.

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A report by the French video game workers union has raised concerns from staff at Life is Strange and Vampyr developer Don't Nod.

Headquarted in Paris, the company released action role-player Banishers: Ghosts of Eden this week, following last year's well-received Jusant and Harmony: The Fall of Reverie.

Now, a report by French union Le Syndicat des Travailleurs et Travailleuses du Jeu Vidéo (STJV) has alleged that staff at Don't Nod are subject to mismanagement by the company due to the need to balance multiple projects with "frequently" changing deadlines, "contradictory" directions and "no long-term vision" for staff welfare.

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Commitment can be scarier than any ghost story. When I got married, I spent a lot of time leading up to the wedding borrowing grief from my future self. The prospect of 'til death do we part' brought forward the stark idea that one day one of us would have to say goodbye to the other. I was suddenly and unexpectedly wracked with anxiety about the mortality of my loved ones, and playing Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden reminded me of this uncomfortable feeling. Antea and Red have each other, to hold and confide in and joke with – but Antea is a ghost, and they have to get ready to say goodbye. That's the commitment they make to each other.

Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden sees Red and Antea, ghost hunters and life partners, called to settle a curse that's fallen on the early Massachusetts settler colony of New Eden. The tight-knit, suspicious puritan community aren't all convinced that the pair can help, seeing their arrival as too little too late – or insufficiently godly – after the loss of their community pillar to the ghost at the centre of the curse.

New Eden Town introduces you to life as a banisher: fighting violent spectres that have forgotten who they were, convincing benevolent ghosts to leave people to grieve in peace, and snooping in people's belongings to get better answers to your questions. When the pair inadvertently walk into a trap, the townspeople's suspicions are proved correct – Antea is killed, and the survivors scatter. To help her peacefully pass on, it will be a long journey to loosen the curse's hold on the area to retrieve her body – and there's the unthinkable option of taking that same journey to instead resurrect her, going against everything they believe as banishers. Death to the dead, and life to the living.

The studio behind Homeworld 3, Homeworld: Deserts Of Kharak, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker have cut a number of jobs, explaining this is "part of a realignment plan that's necessary because of new projects that were shelved by some of our partners". Blackbird Interactive haven't confirmed the number of people who lost their jobs, nor have they said what the mystery projects were. It's been a grim year for people working in the video games industry, with thousands losing their jobs, and we're only halfway through February.

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Readers, consider this is a public service announcement for (deep breath) Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Trilogy Starring Lara Croft. Do not, for the love of all that's ancient and holy, play this game with its newly-added modern control scheme. The original tank controls are by far and away the best (and only real) option for going back and experiencing Lara's OG adventures from the late 90s, and I'm not just saying that out of nostalgia. The modern controls are bad, plain and simple, and are as much an enemy to Tomb Raider's incredibly precise mode of 3D platforming as the tigers and wolves that stalk its trap-filled catacombs. They are utterly maddening, and the antithesis of everything Tomb Raider stands for. I implore you, do not go anywhere near them, for your own sake as well as Lara's.

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If you've been yearning to take up arms against Super Earth as either an arachnid, a robot or a filthy (managed) democracy-hating human traitor, then I have bad news, roughneck. Helldivers 2 will "never" get a PvP mode, according to Arrowhead's CEO Johan Pilestedt. The reason? They want to avoid encouraging any toxic behaviour in the new shooter's multiplayer community.

Given that Helldivers 2 is a game with mandatory friendly fire in which you can kill team-mates by respawning right on top of them, I fear the Good Ship Camaraderie may already have sailed, but I'm very early on in my Helldiver career, and I'm... intrigued by how Arrowhead's efforts at community curation sit alongside/within the game's premise of playing a dirty space fascist locked in an endless xenophobic crusade.

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Making good on their word, People Can Fly and Incuvo have released a rather chunky patch for Bulletstorm VR on PlayStation VR2 and Steam VR. This follows an earlier update on Meta Quest sets, which took aim at crashes and more.

Bulletstorm VR had a broken release earlier this year, with players complaining about the port's botched physics and censorship, among other issues. Back in January, the team subsequently said it was "committed to improving the quality" of its release, and would be prioritising fixes based on their severity.

This new patch will provide fixes for multiple crashes and bugs, as well as improving the AI on select enemies. Other quality of life improvements, such as holding down the trigger to automatically skip a cinematic, have also been added.

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Following a rocky launch, Payday 3 developer Starbreeze said its sales and player activity are "currently at significantly lower levels than [it] would like". However, the studio hopes to turn this around in the future, stating it will focus efforts "to ensure that the game lives up to expectations" for players.

The developer noted there have been other examples of games that have successfully turned a "problematic initial time on the market" into a "long-term success" story. While Starbreeze did not mention any names, Cyberpunk 2077 came to my mind.

"There is no simple recipe available, but a common thread from the positive examples is to take players' criticism to heart, dare to support your game and keeping an open and honest dialogue with your stakeholders," Starbreeze said in its year-end report. "That is exactly what we are now doing with Payday 3."

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Helldivers 2 will "never" include a PvP mode in order to reduce toxic play.

The game's creative director and Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt responded to a fan requesting the addition of a PvP mode to keep "hardcore gamers engaged".

"We'll 'never' add a PvP-mode. This is to reduce toxic elements from the community," said Pilestedt. "We want an environment that's supportive, fun and where we all are fighting on the same side!"

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