Eurogamer

Activision Blizzard's attempt to pause California's ongoing lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and a "frat boy" culture at the company has been rejected by an LA County Court judge.

Activision Blizzard moved to pause legal proceedings following a messy tussle between California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), which had launched the original lawsuit against the publisher, and the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) - which had previously announced an $18m settlement deal with Activision as part of its own investigation into the company.

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Apex Legends' 11th season gets underway next Tuesday, 2nd November, and ahead of its launch, developer Respawn has released a fresh gameplay trailer revealing, among other things, the free-to-play battle royale shooter's brand-new tropical island map, Storm Point.

Storm Point, a beautiful island paradise located on the planet Gaea, stretches from its tropical shoreline up to the peaks of its towering mountains, making for Apex Legends' biggest map yet - said to be around 15% larger than previous record holder World's Edge.

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Tomb Raider is 25 today.

The first game in the series released today in 1996 on Sega Saturn, launching the iconic series and the long-running career of Ms Lara Croft.

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PlayStation has released an amusingly-timed deep dive into Horizon Forbidden West's new tools and traversal abilities, such as Aloy's wristmounted Pullcaster (a grapple). Hey, I know another game with one of those!

As seen previously in June's gameplay trailer, Aloy's ability set has also been broadened by the addition of free-climbing - Assassin's Creed eat your heart out.

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Microsoft's reveal of Halo Infinite's campaign last year went so badly, it delayed the game to this Christmas.

Part of the negative reception had to do with the flat visuals - and Craig became the posterboy for Halo's problems.

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Microsoft has unveiled a fresh look at the Halo Infinite campaign over a year since its last infamous reveal.

The video below sets the scene for the campaign, which sees Master Chief fight back against the Banished forces on Zeta Halo.

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I'm not sure what Guardians of the Galaxy wants to be.

On one hand, it's a wonderfully accessible adventure wrapped up in family-friendly packaging, with an action-packed storyline that takes you on a delightful voyage through some of the galaxy's most colourful climes. On the other, it boasts an aggressively complex combat system that requires a high degree of digit-dexterity and rarely forgives your mistakes.

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FIFA players have all been there - your opponent rage quits before half-time, or pauses the match all the time, or time-wastes after scoring a goal, or celebrates every goal. Playing FIFA online can be a proper annoying experience.

Now, EA has outlined the unwritten rules of FIFA online play - using the world's oldest club to get the message across.

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Intel has warned the ongoing global semiconductor shortage could continue into 2023.

The shortage has affected PC graphics cards, as well as supplies for Xbox, PlayStation and Switch consoles.

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Charles Martinet, the one true voice of Mario, has said he wants to continue in the role until he drops dead.

Martinet, who is 66, has been the voice of Nintendo's legendary mascot since 1992. After almost 30 years, Martinet has portrayed the plumber in around 100 games.

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A Smash Bros.-style Warner Bros. crossover platform fighter is reportedly in the works.

Mention of the game emerged first from a post from a burner account in the GamingLeaksAndRumours subreddit, which was subsequently verified by GamesBeat's Jeff Grubb on Twitter.

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A mini-game featured in Mario Party Superstars, which launches for Nintendo Switch this week, comes with a health warning.

Tug o' War, which was originally found in Mario Party N64, has a special notice with advice on how "to avoid irritation to your skin and/or damage to the control stick".

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A Wu-Tang Clan game is reportedly in the works for Xbox.

Details come from VentureBeat's Jeff Grubb on the latest episode of his video series, Game Mess, and Windows Central's Jez Corden.

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Sir Trevor McDonald has been confirmed as the new GamesMaster.

The classic gaming show will be returning later this year on E4 and there's already been months of speculation as to who would take on the persona once played by Sir Patrick Moore.

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Microsoft will show off the Halo Infinite campaign for the first time in over a year this afternoon.

A campaign overview video goes live at 2pm UK time. You can watch it in the video below.

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This is how I knew I had fallen in love with Beast Breaker: I was fighting a beast called Thorncreeper when the woman sitting next to me on the train, politely tapped me on the shoulder, informing me that this is her stop and, as it turns out, mine. I had been enraptured enough to completely forget about my surroundings, caught up in the flow.

You take control of Skipper, a small mouse with a big heart. As beasts start to descend on various critter settlements, Skip bravely grabs their grandmother's sword and decides to face the threat head-on. Because the beasts are quite large and Skip is anything but, you actually guide them like a pinball.

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Activision Blizzard is letting every Battle.net user change their name for free.

The change comes in the wake of Activision Blizzard's committment to changing its "frat boy" culture following California's ongoing lawsuit. Following accusations of sexual harassment against the developer the character is named after, Overwatch's fan-favourite cowboy character Jesse McCree has been given a new name and will be known as Cole Cassidy when an update rolls out on Tuesday, 26th October. Consequently, Activision Blizzard is extending the opportunity of a name-change to its players, too.

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Resident Evil's Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield are now available in the Fortnite Item Shop.

"After surviving countless horrors in the Spencer Mansion and beyond, S.T.A.R.S. veterans Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine find themselves on the Island to face The Sideways' Cube Monsters. Fend off Cube Monsters (and your opponents) like your life depends on it with the S.T.A.R.S. Team Set, available now in the Fortnite Item Shop!" Epic teases in a new blog posted earlier today.

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Players who've completed Supermassive's latest instalment of The Dark Pictures anthology, House of Ashes, are sharing their first peek at the next chapter of the horror game: The Devil In Me.

Though barely a minute long, the new teaser shows off a decidedly less supernatural premise. "You wanna know what it means to be a killer?" an off-camera narrator muses, before we're subjected to a raft of bloody images - a syringe, a beating heart, a bloody smear on a tiled wall - and what looks to be an assortment of DIY surgical experiments. Ew.

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Rockstar has revealed the requirements for players hoping to jump into Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition on PC.

As detailed on the Rockstar store page (thanks, PC Gamer), players will need 45GB of space and a recommended 16GB of memory, plus a GeForce GTX 760 or a Radeon R9 280, with a recommended GTX 970 or RX 570.

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The Persona series has reportedly sold over 15 million copies.

In an investor's report, Sega Sammy says that between March 2020 and the end of the fiscal year in March 2021, the fan-favourite franchise has sold almost two million copies.

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Phasmophobia has revealed its Halloween update, Nightmare, will roll out on 25th October at 4pm UK time.

"Been quiet on here lately, but here's some exciting news," developer Kinetic Games teased on its social media channels, accompanying the statement with a single image that shows the name, date, and time the update is expected to go live over a screenshot of a single camping tent.

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A new video has shed light on what it was like inside BioWare during the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy.

The video below, from People Make Games, includes a raft of interviews with former BioWare developers who discuss the events leading up to the release of Mass Effect 3 in March 2012, the backlash to its ending, and the decision to update the game to address the complaints.

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Konami has delayed eFootball 2022's first update.

The 0.9.1 update was due out 28th October. It's now due out "early November". That could be a week or perhaps two weeks?

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Valheim developer Iron Gate Studios has teased the upcoming Mistlands biome update with a work-in-progress screenshot.

Following last month's launch of the Hearth & Home update, the majority of the development team behind the hit indie Viking game started working on the Mistlands, Iron Gate Studios said in a blog post on Steam.

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The Duke of Edinburgh's Award now lets you do esports.

The long-running royal family-fuelled awards scheme, which is best-known for its physical and expedition activities, has officially added esports to the DofE skills list.

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No More Heroes developer Grasshopper Manufacture has been bought by NetEase Games for an undisclosed fee.

Goichi "SUDA51" Suda's Tokyo-based studio signed a deal with the Chinese giant at the end of May, having previously been owned by GungHo Online Entertainment.

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Forza Horizon 5 has gone gold, the game arrives less than two weeks from now and recently, press had the chance to go hands-on with what is effectively the first hour of the game, featuring the introductory drive, a showcase event, a number of races and open world challenges and the player's arrival at their very first home. Oli Welsh has already shared his first impressions but for Digital Foundry, the preview was a chance to get up close and personal with the technology, to get some idea of how the new Xbox consoles are put through their paces and crucially, to see how the game may scale across systems.

Scalability is key to Forza Horizon 5 for several reasons. First of all, it's a Horizon game supports more platforms than it ever has before. In addition to PC (with scalability challenges of its own) and two quite different Xbox Series consoles, there's Xbox One as well, not to mention Xbox One X. The preview code we had only worked on the new machines, so quite how Playground intends to run the game on Xbox One remains to be seen, but perhaps there are some clues when looking at Series code, principally because both quality and performance modes are included. Intriguingly, whether you're running on Series X or its junior counterpart, both of them run at the same resolution: 3840x2160 or 1920x1080 respectively, albeit with potential hints of dynamic resolution scaling in play on the performance mode (truth is, it's quite hard to tell).

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Starbreeze has revealed new details on upcoming co-op shooter Payday 3.

During a livestream to celebrate Payday's 10-year anniversary, Payday 3 game director Erik Wonnevi confirmed new details on the game (skip to the 3:03 mark in the video below).

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CD Projekt has bought The Flame in the Flood developer The Molasses Flood for an undisclosed fee.

In a note to press, CD Projekt said The Molasses Flood will keep its current identity and will not be merged with existing teams.

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Overwatch's fan-favourite cowboy character Jesse McCree finally has a new name after Activision Blizzard committed to changing it in the wake of California's ongoing lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and a "frat boy" culture at the company. Henceforth, Jesse McCree will be known as Cole Cassidy.

McCree is just one of many characters across Blizzard's portfolio to have taken his name from a developer at the company. However, back in August, Blizzard announced it would be renaming the cowboy after the real-life Jesse McCree, who had been named in several accounts of the studio's toxic work culture, was confirmed to have departed the company amid the fallout from the lawsuit - although no reason for his exit was given.

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King's browser games portal, home to some of the company's biggest hits such as Candy Crush, Bubble Witch and Farm King, will shut down in December after 18 years of operation.

RoyalGames.com (formerly King.com) was the birthplace of the company's biggest franchises, before they were transferred onto Facebook and mobile apps.

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In the wake of this summer's big fan protest, Pokémon Go developer Niantic promised better communication with its player base.

One element of that is a new developer diary series, shedding light on various aspects of the game and the thinking behind them. First up is Community Day, the popular monthly in-game event which spotlights a singular 'mon.

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A genuinely competitive 4K 144Hz monitor with unique features at a fair price. That was the promise of the Eve Spectrum, a unique 'crowd-designed' project that is also the company's first ever monitor. Against steep odds, Eve has delivered the goods. While a few rough edges remain, the Spectrum is a surprisingly competent package, capable of standing against rivals from long-established competitors.

As we mentioned in our first impressions piece nine months ago, the design of this monitor is superb. Rather than imitating the RGB-soaked, metal-and-plastic amalgamations of standard 'gaming' monitors, Eve has opted for a simpler look. With a skinny stand and little ornamentation, the Spectrum could come off as cheap, but the robust materials, monochrome colour scheme and industrial design elevate the monitor to the level of a pre-Cook Apple product.

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Sony has announced another State of Play for Wednesday 27th October.

Tune in on YouTube and Twitch at 10PM UK time.

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UPDATE 22/10/21: Valkyrae has now responded on her Twitter with a voice note after a "very very long two days".

"I've been waiting to speak and to stream until after I see how the RFLCT website has been updated," she said. "I also wanted to say that all of the hate and the doubt and concerns and the criticism are all warranted and valid. I understand completely where you're all coming from.

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Advance Wars 1+2 Re-Boot Camp on Switch has been delayed until spring 2022.

The game was originally intended to release on 3rd December, but Nintendo announced the news saying "the game just needs a little more time for fine tuning".

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Rockstar has released the first official trailer for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition.

The remastered trilogy will be released digitally on 11th November across PC, PlayStation and Xbox consoles, plus Nintendo Switch. The game will cost £54.99, with physical copies to follow on 7th December.

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What I love about Inscryption is that not only does it manage to stand out in the card game space, which is not an easy thing to do, but that it almost relies upon the saturation of the space to really come alive. It's as though it needs your familiarity with the other games in order to play around with what you expect. And, it has to be said, to play around with you.

You are the toy - that is clearly the theme. But you are trying to break out, and escape. But from what? What is that being sat across the table from you, shrouded in the darkness, with only eyes visible, watching, boring into you. They seem to have complete control over you and the surroundings, this wood cabin in the middle of... you have no idea. It feels like it should be an American Wild West frontier, but it could be anywhere, if it's really real at all. And yet, you're free to walk around, to puzzle over the ornaments you find there. The only problem comes when you try to leave.

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