The famous "oof" sound from Roblox, which was comically played whenever you met your maker, is no more.
The developer revealed its removal yesterday, stating that this is all is due to a "licensing issue".
Instead, the company has now added a "replacement default sound".
Stephane D'Astous, founder and former boss of Deus Ex developer Eidos Montreal, has described Square Enix's handling of its Western studios as a "train wreck in slow motion" in an explosive new interview.
Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, D'Astous criticised Square Enix's past management of its various Western studios and suggested the recent sale of Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics could have been motivated by a desire to court a buyout by PlayStation.
"It was a trajectory that could be predicted," D'Astous said, discussing the decline of Square Enix's Western studios, and Eidos Montreal in particular. "I left because things were missing at head office. [Pre-Square Enix] Eidos has a great tradition of development teams, but they don't have superior knowledge of how to sell their games. And that was quite clear."
The mystery of the church and secret door in Nier: Automata continues.
Yesterday we reported how reddit user sadfutago posted a video entering a previously unfound door that led to an unseen church area, leaving dataminers scratching their heads. Is this truly a new secret in the game, or an elaborate modded hoax?
Even the team behind the game has shared the videos on Twitter, including the game's creator Yoko Taro.
UPDATE 5pm UK: PlayStation has now officially confirmed today's Plus leak, and the strong line-up of Yakuza: Like A Dragon, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 and Little Nightmares, all of which will become available from 2nd August. More below...
ORIGINAL STORY 11.45am UK: As regular as clockwork, Dealabs has leaked the upcoming PS Plus lineup for August.
The three titles reportedly coming to the PlayStation's new look Essential tier are Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 (PS4/5), Yakuza: Like A Dragon (PS4/5) and Little Nightmares (PS4).
Meta, formerly Facebook, has announced a major set of pricing changes to its Meta Quest 2 VR headsets, starting in August.
Both the 128GB and 256GB versions of the headset will rise in price by $100, Meta said in a statement last night, from $300 to $400, and from $400 to $500, respectively.
These are serious price increases - for the 128GB model, it represents a rise of 33 percent! - for hardware generally considered a good entry-level VR device.
Elden Ring players are disappointed with the game's PvP multiplayer and its lack of balance.
One group of fans have even put together a website, eldenringpvp.net, to voice their opinions (as spotted by Kotaku).
"Thank you to FromSoftware for providing some of the most unique and unrivalled multiplayer experiences in gaming! These experiences have cultivated massive communities around a shared love of your games. However, with such an incomparable multiplayer come hurdles for both the players and developers alike. We aim to help both groups," reads a statement on the website.
Warner Bros brawler MultiVersus has seen a strong start on Steam, following the arrival of its open beta yesterday.
At the time of writing, its player count is sitting at a comfortable 49,486, with a peak of 144,456 today.
These numbers currently put it ahead of other popular (although admittedly older) games such as Monster Hunter Rise, Destiny 2 and Fifa 22.
Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic remake is "in serious trouble" and "delayed indefinitely", according to a new report.
Bloomberg said developer Aspyr fired the game's art director and design director this month, and told staff the hotly-anticipated remake is "on pause".
The dramatic decision comes after Aspyr, which has been working on the game for three years, demoed a vertical slice to Lucasfilm and publisher Sony at the end of June. Apparently Aspyr bosses told staff this demo "wasn't where they wanted it to be".
.jpg/BROK/resize/1920x1920%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/gta_1(2).jpg)
I still can't get over hearing that Grand Theft Auto was nearly canned - the Grand Theft Auto, the original, the game that started it all. What would have happened if it never came out? And it very nearly didn't, to hear Gary Penn talk about it, senior producer and then creative director on it. "That game was pretty much nearly canned every bloody week," he tells me in episode 20 of One-to-one, now available to all premium Eurogamer supporters.
Why was it nearly canned? Because "it was going nowhere and it was awful" - Penn isn't one for mincing his words. "I don't know why I used to defend it every week," he says. "I think I just believed that it could be something, as did Sam Houser who used to work there as well ... he was one of the other few people who believed in it." (Sam Houser went on to co-found Rockstar with his brother Dan and do very well out of GTA, of course.)
There's an audible sigh as I ask Gary Penn what was so awful about it, as if it's painful to remember. "For a start it rarely worked," he begins. "It would crash constantly - full-on, full-scale crashing, not sort of 'oh, slightly inconvenient'. You couldn't play it for more than a few minutes.
Everything starts somewhere, and when the games industry began to form in the UK, back in the '80s, Gary Penn - my guest on the One-to-one podcast today - was there. A young adult passionate about games, he was propelled to micro-stardom, as he puts it, when he won a competition to find Britain's best gamer and ended up writing for Zzap!64 magazine. It was a magazine that changed the face of games journalism, injecting passion and charisma into it.
After Zzap!64, Penn would go on to win awards for The One magazine, before leaving editorial and side-stepping into consulting and ultimately, producing games. And it's then that he would cross paths with the most famous game series of all: Grand Theft Auto. Except, it wasn't called GTA at the time and it wasn't very good. In fact, Race n' Chase as it was known then, was "awful", according to Penn. But fate - and Penn - ensured the game wouldn't be cancelled and GTA would be released, paving the way for the series to become the cultural phenomenon it is today.
But by the time GTA3 was in development, Penn had had enough. He had severely burnt out and didn't want to work around the clock any more. So, along with some other DMA Design people, he would make a new studio called Denki to create very different kinds of games. Hundreds of these would be interactive TV games, but as time moved on, the studio ditched those in favour of games like Quarrel, which we loved on Eurogamer in 2011/2012 - a mash up of Risk and Scrabble.
Wrestling star John Cena is joining the Fortnite character roster, because of course he is.
The hugely-popular wrestler turned movie star will join Epic Games' battle royale as part of a WWE promotion that also emcompasses the publisher's Rocket League and Fall Guys.
Today's announcement comes just days after former WWE boss Vince McMahon announced his retirement from the company, amidst multiple claims of sexual misconduct.
IO Interactive has detailed all the improvements and new content that comes with Hitman 3's latest patch today.
First up, we have a better look at Ambrose Island, Hitman 3's new and free map. It's a tropical romp full of sandy shores, lush vegetation... and more than just a few places to hide a body. Sounds right up 47's street. The map will additionally bring new items for 47 to unlock, including a swashbuckling Kukri Machete, the Guerilla Wetsuit and a Molotov Cocktail to name a few.
IO has also revealed the opening cinematic for the Ambrose Island mission, which has some familiar faces as well as new targets within. You can see it for yourself below.
Four WWE 2K games have been quietly removed from sale on Steam, video game sports fans have noticed.
WWE 2K17, 2K18, 2K19 and 2K20 are all now missing from the Steam store on PC, and from both the PlayStation and Microsoft stores on consoles.
The move - which Steam-tracker suggests took place just over a week ago - leaves only the franchise's more recent WWE 2K Battlegrounds and WWE 2K22 on sale (thanks, PC Gamer).
Last week, Minecraft maker Mojang announced a firm ban on the use of NFTs within its hit sandbox game, to a warm response from many players.
The ban was seen by many fans as reactive - as some user-made projects have already used Minecraft to shift NFTs in the past.
Now, one of the largest of those - NFT Worlds - has issued a response via Twitter, and said it would create "a new game and platform" instead (thanks, PC Gamer).
Since its acquisition in 2007, Monolith Soft has become one of Nintendo's most prolific development partners thanks to both its assistance on first-party projects and, more importantly, its work on Xenoblade Chronicles. This large-scale RPG series has become one of Nintendo's key pillars in the RPG space and for good reason - its robust technical underpinnings, gorgeous vistas and strong storbytelling all work in tandem to create something unforgettable and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is no exception.
With its fresh cast of characters, enhanced technology and outstanding soundtrack, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 builds on the experience the team has acquired since its inception and comprehensively addresses a key weakness of the last series entry: image quality. In targeting higher end visuals, something that to give, with resolution taking a big hit. Dynamic pixel counts that could hit 540p docked and 360p in mobile mode were mitigated via a relatively simple spatial upscaler, paired with intrusive sharpening. Xenoblade 3, however, represents a colossal leap forward in that respect. Monolith has both improved the overall visual quality while greatly boosting image quality, achieving this via what looks like a temporal super-resolution solution, taking those lower pixel counts up to a passable rendition of 1080p when docked and 720p in portable play.
Today we got a little bit more information about PlayStation VR2, Sony's next foray into the world of virtual reality.
A new blog from PlayStation has detailed the user experience features available upon its release.
These include a very useful looking see-through view and a customisable play area set up, among others.
Thanks to the recent release of Stray, the internet is in no shortage of cat content. If this isn't enough for you though (and let's be frank, we could all do with more cats at all times), then you're in luck.
Modder KangieDanie has uploaded a splitscreen multipawer - sorry, multiplayer - mod for PC that lets you play through the campaign in local co-op.
KangieDanie notes that the mod is in very early development so if you decide to give it a try, you're inevitably going to run into some bugs.
There's an old Lohman and Barkley radio sketch about a guy at a McDonald's drive-thru whose brakes have failed. He's persistent, though. He circles the joint, racing along, getting his order out in bursts. One...Burger...
It's a lovely joke, and a joke with a certain kind of shape to it. Something of the Doppler effect. You listen and you hear the arc, the sound of something coming very close and then swinging away again. You get to hear the sensation of a curve, a loop. Maybe he was just hungry.
Anyway. This week I asked a couple of people who are making Rollerdrome at Roll7 what an ideal Rollerdrome map should look like. I thought they might talk about arcs or loops, and they did, in a way. But only because of what arcs and loops do to players. The ideal Rollerdrome map is a churn, I was told. No corners, as such. Everything brings you back to the centre and once you're at the centre, you never stop. Out again, but never too far. Always coming back. Always returning. One...Burger...
.jpg/BROK/resize/1920x1920%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/Xenoblade_Chronicles_3_review_Double_rainbow-(1).jpg)
When Final Fantasy veteran and survivor of the Xenosaga games Tetsuya Takahashi set out to make the original Xenoblade Chronicles, it was with the intention of creating nothing less than a JRPG masterpiece. His team at Monolith Soft were tasked with making a game that would restore the balance between systems and story that had been knocked out of whack by certain giants of the genre throughout the noughties, and one that would bring the JRPG back to its 90s pomp.
Upon its release in 2010 the first Xenoblade Chronicles met its brief and then some; coming six months after the high-budget hobble of Final Fantasy 13, Takahashi's game restated and refined the elements that helped make JRPGs so beloved in their heyday. Monolith Soft created a seemingly boundless fantasy world whose impossible horizons stretched on for miles (featuring landscapes as breathtaking as Breath of the Wild's, a game Monolith Soft helped create alongside Nintendo in its frequently employed role as a support developer) . Here was a JRPG infused with an infectious sense of adventure matched by some exquisite systems. At the time it was nothing short of a revelation.
Subsequent entries struggled to have the same impact. Xenoblade Chronicles X, a fantastic and fascinating spin-off, was held back by the Wii U's paltry user base as it shifted the balance towards its open world systems; Xenoblade Chronicles 2, meanwhile, had its appeal limited by some of its more questionable character designs and the excesses of its story as it was crowded out in the Switch's busy launch year. With Xenoblade Chronicles 3 coming during a relatively quiet summer for big new games, it feels like the timing might be right to restore the JRPG crown to a beloved series.
On 26th September, World of Warcraft Classic players will be able to get their hands on the Wrath of the Lich King expansion (something that we kind of suspected already, as it was leaked ahead of time).
To accompany this official announcement, however, we also have a new trailer from Blizzard. Here, the gates to the frozen plains of Northrend are opened once again as battle ensues all around.
You can check it out for yourself below.
Heads up there are vague spoilers for Better Call Saul season 6 episode 9 in here.
In a way, this episode could've been the last. I'm talking about 'Fun and Games', episode 9 of Better Call Saul's final season, which is technically not the latest by the time this piece is live. I think it could've been the last because of the sheer amount of things it ties up, but Better Call Saul, the sleepy, scummy, obsessively detailed prequel to Breaking Bad, is summed up best by the space it likes to give. To end it here, despite the at times interminable wait to see Saul as Saul, would've been too quick.
Over its seven years of runtime, the Breaking Bad prequel has sprawled. Showrunners Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould had apparently expected Jimmy McGill, a peevish, bitter, and just infuriatingly lovable young lawyer, to have fully evolved into Saul Goodman, a kind of late-Elvis final, tacky form, by the end of the first season - but they were also known to have not really had a plan for how that might happen, either.
Amazon is increasing the price of its Prime subscription from £79 to £95 per year in the UK.
For members who pay monthly, you'll pay a pound extra (£8.99 instead of £7.99, for a total of £107.88 a year).
The rise follows a similar price hike by streaming rival Netflix back in March - its second in just 18 months. Both companies offer games as part of their subscriptions.
Two Valorant players have been suspended from Riot-sanctioned esports competitions following an argument about in-game teabagging.
The news was shared on the Valorant site, stating that Dawn "Dawn" Park and Vivian "Risorah" Dela Cruz used vulgar language and harassed a member of the Galorants community.
Dawn has been suspended from competitions for three months; Risorah has been suspended for nine months.
There's a big new addition to Pokémon Go today, named Daily Adventure Incense.
This free item will refresh each day and offer you 15 minutes of Pokémon spawns - as long as you keep walking. Included in the list of possible creatures are a long list of uncommon critters, evolved species and... the surprise debut of Galar's Legendary bird trio from Pokémon Sword and Shield!
It's worth noting these three have only a chance to appear, and even then have a low catch and high flee rate. Still, there are already plenty of reports of players successfully acquiring at least one of them, just 12 hours in.
Creator Ron Gilbert has released a new snippet of gameplay from his upcoming release, Return to Monkey Island.
Here, we get our first look at the dialogue options mechanic in-game (you can also see it on the Return to Monkey Island website when you chat to Stan), and meet the formidable Judge Plank.
The clip starts by showing hero Guybrush Threepwood making his way along a snow-ridden and far from tropical street. Those icicles look like they could do some serious damage, and I am getting goose pimples just writing about them.
A Nexus Mods user is helping players add their purrfect protagonist to Stray on PC.
Modder NorskPL is taking commissions for Stray on a name-your-own-price basis, dependent on complexity.
Already, it seems people have been calling upon NorskPL's services, as their most recent uploads include many requested cat customeowsations.
It looks like Dark Souls 3 PC online servers may be coming back soon.
It's been over 183 days since the servers were shut down following the discovery of a security issue in the multiplayer functionality affecting all three Dark Souls games on PC.
However, an update to the game on the SteamDB page suggests a solution could be on the way soon.
A Nier: Automata player has stumbled upon a secret room in the game that's remained undiscovered since its launch in 2017.
The discovery was made by reddit user sadfutago and has dataminers scratching their heads at how it was achieved.
Some spoilers for Nier: Automata follow.
.jpg/BROK/resize/1920x1920%3E/format/jpg/quality/80/R-(22).jpg)
Earlier this month, Rockstar confirmed the end of any major support for Red Dead Online, with the developer shifting its focus to Grand Theft Auto 6. This left many cowboys disappointed (to put it mildly), to the extent an in-game funeral was held to mourn this loss.
While Rockstar may be jumping ship and swimming away from its Red Dead franchise, modders are not. In fact, a mod for Red Dead Redemption 2 will let you play as a totally new character of your own creation, give you a new skill tree to fill up and allow you to take on all-new heists.
I appreciate I said 'new' quite a lot there, but it fits the bill. This is no small undertaking by the modding community.
David Warner, who played Baldur's Gate 2 villain Jon Irenicus, has died at the age of 80.
Born in Manchester in 1941, Warner developed a prolific acting career that stretched across seven decades and spanned film, television, stage and video games.
On the big screen, Warner starred in movies such as Titanic, The Omen and Mary Poppins Returns. In 1981, he won an Emmy for his role in historical epic Masada.
The My Nintendo Store store went offline yesterday in the UK, and will remain unavailable due to maintenance until tomorrow, Wednesday 27th July.
It follows the disappearance of the store in several countries across mainland Europe, where a similar maintenance message popped up admitting downtime lasting "a few weeks" (thanks, Nintendo Life).
Nintendo has not given any further details of the maintenance it has planned, or why it is happening now.
When it emerged from open beta eight years ago, Hearthstone was a titan. Developed on a modest budget by a rotating team of less than 20 people, Hearthstone took the time-tested collectible card game blueprint from Magic the Gathering, distilled it to its essence, polished it to a shine, and conquered the world. It made millions of dollars. It paved the way for 101 other 'free-to-play' CCGs including Gwent, Legends of Runeterra, Shadowverse, and Valve's ill-fated Artifact. It was among the yearly top 10 most viewed games on Twitch for five years after launch. And it showed us that a successful esport needn't revolve around hair-trigger reflexes or high APMs.
Thirty-odd card sets and almost a decade later, the development team has ballooned to over 150. Hearthstone now has several new game modes, a revamped economy, an achievement system, a whole new playable class and new generation of streamers and esports casters and competitors. Twitch viewers and player counts have levelled off since the glory days. But, as Hearthstone remains a giant among live service games despite its vintage, how is it really holding up? And, critically, is it still worth playing?
If you found yourself suitably enthused for American Truck Simulator's Montana expansion following last week's 30 minutes of soothing cross-country trundling, there's some great news; it turns out developer SCS Software was somewhat underselling it when it said development was "slowly approaching the finish line" - the Montana expansion is out next week.
Montana - which will be American Truck Simulator's tenth explorable state, joining California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming - launches next Thursday, 4th August, giving players the chance to admire its "glistening glacial lakes, snow-capped mountain peaks, blue-ribbon trout streams, and mighty Missouri, Yellowstone, and Flathead Rivers", all from behind the wheel.
Those curious for a glimpse at the routes American Truck Simulator's Montana expansion will unlock can get a taste of the journeys ahead in SCS' newly updated map. Montana's beautifully recreated landmarks also get an airing in the launch trailer below, but for a more genteel preview, SCS' wonderfully relaxing 30-minute sight-seeing tour is well worth your time.
Ubisoft has responded to a recent report claiming Roller Champions will be winding down after its third season, insisting it "isn't getting cancelled" and that it "fully supports" the project.
Word that Ubisoft's free-to-play sports game was nearing the end of its life, despite only launching back in May, came via the ever-leaky Jeff Grubb during a segment on the Xbox Era podcast over the weekend.
In reponse, Ubisoft has now shared a statement on Twitter denying those claims and insisting "Roller Champions isn't getting cancelled". But while an imminent demise doesn't currently appear to be on the cards, Ubisoft does say it will be extending Roller Champions' current season, Disco Fever, in order to "focus on what our players have told us needs improvement".
Daedalic Entertainment has delayed the launch of Lord of the Rings: Gollum once more, this time pushing its previously announced 1st September release back "by a few months".
Lords of the Rings: Gollum was announced in March 2019, promising a Middle-Earth-inspired blend of "subtle tactical stealth", environmental puzzling, climbing challenges, and "fast-paced parkour action", all playing out across a mixture of open levels and more linear missions.
Daedelic was originally aiming to launch Gollum last year, but ultimately made the decision to delay its release into 2022, although no reason was given at the time. This latest delay, though, has been made in order to "deliver the best possible experience", according to the developer.
EA is reportedly the latest studio to get a slice of the Marvel action, with new claims suggesting it's currently working on a new single-player, open-world game based on the Black Panther series.
That's according to loose-lipped journalist Jeff Grubb who, speaking as part of Giant Bomb's Game Mess Mornings stream, claimed the project will be single-player-only title, with EA's aim being to build on the success of developer Respawn's well-received solo adventure Jedi: Fallen Order.
While details are inevitably limited at this juncture - the title is said to be in "very early development" - Grubb claimed the basic premise is that players will need to complete various challenges in a bid to become the new Black Panther, following the death of an earlier incarnation at the start of the game.
Roblox planned numerous concessions to Chinese state censorship and expected its game be hacked and cloned by Chinese companies as part of its launch in the country, an astonishing cache of leaked internal documents has revealed.
The details, published by Vice, come from documents recently obtained by a hacker and held to ransom, before being posted online. Vice has said it has published these details to shine a light on the lengths that Western companies can be forced to go to if they decide to enter the Chinese market.
Revelations revealed in the report include instructions to Roblox employees in one internal presentation to "expect that hacking has already started" and that it would "ramp up after a deal is signed, possibly even by [Roblox's] partner".
Stray may have only recently been released, but someone has already deciphered the game's mysterious language.
This language uses a substitution cipher to make the world in Stray more cryptic and mysterious. (A substitution cipher is a used to encrypt text by swapping each letter or symbol within said text with a different symbol, that can then be unscrambled with a key.)
And now, HalfGlassGaming's Josh Wirtanen has cracked Stray's cipher, and shared how we too can do the same (thanks, RockPaperShotgun). I have embedded some photos from the game within this article, so if you are yet to play or are keen to avoid spoilers, please take this as your cue to read something else on Eurogamer.
Next year's European TwitchCon event will be held in Paris.
It follows the recent TwitchCon Amsterdam event that saw nearly 14,500 people attend, an increase of 65 percent compared to the previous Berlin-held event in 2019.
That popularity is in part testament to the rise of the streaming platform during the pandemic, which now encompasses audiences far outside gaming.
FIFA 23 has the exclusive on Italian super club Juventus after a three-year stint at football rival PES / eFootball.
EA Sports announced it's signed an exclusive, multi-year partnership with the Old Lady, which sees Juventus return to the FIFA fold with full in-game integration that includes Juventus' official club logo and kits and the rights to the Juventus Stadium, Allianz Arena.
There's more: former footballer and Juventus legend Claudio Marchisio is in FIFA 23 as a FUT Hero card for use in Ultimate Team.