Eurogamer

Discord is expanding its server subscription options with new ways to monetise.

Subscriptions have been available since December, allowing creators to monetise perks and benefits for their communities. More options are now on the way.

"Today, we're excited to share new tools that help you get started earning money faster," said product manager Derek Yang in a new blog post. "Over the next few months, you'll be able to create more value for your existing Server Subscriptions and utilise entirely new ways to earn money on Discord with one-time purchases."

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EA has released another patch for Star Wars Jedi: Survivor across PC and consoles.

This patch addresses a variety of issues, including fixes for crashes and such. Your standard update fare. Additionally, this patch includes a fix for bounty hunting progression and introduces improved blaster handling.

However, the patch note that really caught my attention - "The training dummy on Jedha was sneaking around. It has now been immobilised". Sorry buddy, today marks the end of your sneaking adventures. You shall now remain tethered in place for all our Jedi training needs.

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Twitch has introduced new labels to classify streams as mature content.

Tags are applied by streamers to label their own content, with these new labels replacing the existing Mature Content toggle to be more specific.

This change comes as part of Twitch's commitment to community safety.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series for supporters of Eurogamer. It's a series about highlighting some of the features in games that are often overlooked. It's also a series about you having your say, so don't be shy, use the comments below and join in!

Oh and you can find our entire Five of the Best archive elsewhere on the site.

Sorry that there was no Five of the Best last week. I'm sure you didn't notice - I will be impressed and somewhat flattered if you did. But I was away, gallivanting. I'm back now though, um, obviously.

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If you have no particularly strong feelings about horses in The Sims 4, join the club. However, plenty of fans have been positively clamouring for their heavily rumoured arrival - and it looks like EA has finally relented, teasing they'll be coming very soon.

The Sims 4 developer Maxis has been on something of a fan-pleasing crusade of late; last year marked the long-awaited return of werewolves, for instance, alongside more robust options for Sims teens, while 2023 has bought babies back in a big way.

Now, though, it looks like it's finally time for much-requested horses to shine; EA has announced its latest The Sims 4 development roadmap, promising two "bold kits" for release between June and September, as well as a "rootin' tootin' expansion".

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EA has announced a major internal shakeup that'll see it split into two separate organisations: EA Sports and EA Games, the latter now renamed EA Entertainment.

Writing on EA's website, CEO Andrew Wilson said the restructuring would "empower our studio leaders with more creative ownership and financial accountability to make faster and more insightful decisions around development and go to market strategies".

"These steps will accelerate our business, drive growth, and deliver long-term value for our people, our players and our communities," Wilson added.

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Microsoft has announced its indie-focused ID@Xbox Showcase will return this July, coinciding with the launch of its annual Summer Game Fest demo event.

This latest instalment of ID@Xbox takes place on 11th July and is set to feature a "first look at some new games including trailers, gameplay, reveals and more". It'll be hosted via IGN and, if past instalments are any indication, expect it to be a decidedly languid affair.

July's ID@Xbox showcase arrives alongside Microsoft's returning Summer Game Fest demo event. This runs from 11th-17th July and provides access to a selection demos for upcoming indie titles on Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One, available to download and play at home.

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Exactly one month ahead of its initially planned 20th July launch, Immortals of Aveum has been delayed into August as its developer takes additional time to "realise [its] full vision".

Immortals of Aveum, a first-person fantasy shooter that trades bullets for magic spells, follows the adventures of Jak as he joins an elite order of battlemages in a bid to save the world. It's the work of developer Ascendant Studios and is being published under the EA Originals label.

While Immortals of Aveum was initially expected to launch in July, Ascendant Studios has now announced a one-month delay in a statement shared on its website.

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Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has admitted the financial underperformance of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope was likely down to the publisher's decision to release a sequel on Switch, ignoring Nintendo's advice to "only do one iteration [of Mario] on each machine".

Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope received an extremely positive critical reception when it launched last October, with many praising the smart refinements it bought its predecessor's already wonderfully engaging strategic core.

Its commercial reception was far more muted, however; in an emergency investor call held at the start of the year to share news of its considerably lower-than- expected earnings, Ubisoft admitted it had been "surprised" by Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope's "underperformance in the final weeks of 2022 and early January".

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An anonymous leaker has dropped a huge amount of data on Genshin Impact's upcoming region, Fontaine, called out developer HoYoverse's "ridiculously pointless" security measures, going so far as to suggest solutions which could make it harder for leakers in future.

A message from this person simulataneously calls out other Genshin leakers for taking part in "clout hierarchy" and general drama.

Files made available in this leak mostly contain concept artwork on new characters, weapons, and environments for Fontaine, the upcoming new underwater region expected to debut in Genshin Impact's big 4.0 patch.

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Street Fighter 6 on PC is OK. It's good in some areas, mediocre in others and downright poor in some respects, but it is at least competent - which is far from a sure thing with the current state of PC ports. With a modicum of effort, it's easy to get a flowing, stutter-free, performant experience. However, it's also remarkably unambitious, with very little attempt made to scale the experience beyond the confines established by the console versions.

The game doesn't start off in a particularly promising manner, however, owing to how long it takes to get access to the options screen to change settings. There are the EULAs to navigate and the requirement to sign up for a Capcom account, while everything initially runs in windowed mode for some reason.

It took me around 15 minutes from first boot to actually get control of the game which is an astonishingly high level of friction, leaving a bad first impression. And it may actually take longer than that actually because less powerful CPUs require a shader pre-compilation step, which you don't need to do on more powerful processors.

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Nintendo has announced its next Direct showcase, which will be livestreamed tomorrow (21st June) at 3pm UK time.

The Direct promises 40 minutes "focused mainly on Nintendo Switch titles launching this year, including new details on Pikmin 4".

Watch on the Nintendo Direct website or YouTube channel.

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The next wave of games is about to hit Xbox Game Pass, led by EA's Need for Speed Unbound.

Released at the end of last year, Unbound is the latest in the racing series that was somewhat ill-fated. It will join Game Pass (cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S) on 22nd June.

On the same day, The Bookwalker will be available day one (console, PC) - an indie narrative adventure about a writer-turned-thief who can dive directly into books.

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The first game whose release I ever truly counted down the days to was Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. Sure I had patiently waited for Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire to arrive, but I didn't tick off every day on a chart before going to bed. Nor did I get in trouble for blue tacking said chart to my bedroom wall and, upon removing it, accidentally pulling off some of the paint. I had just started reading gaming magazines at the time as well, and every article I read about the game only made my excitement blossom further. Sadly, in my enthusiasm, I got the North American and European release dates confused, so, when I arrived at my local Game, I discovered I still had another week to live through.

After a week which felt like a year, I found myself swept into A Wonderful Life's world; spending hours caring for my animals, foraging and befriending the locals. To this day, Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for the GameCube remains one of my favourite farming simulators.

Before we count our chickens with Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life though, there are a few important details to go over. First, you probably noticed that the game series' name changed during those previous paragraphs. This is because in 2014, Marvelous, the original developer, started using its own publishing brand, XSeed Games, having discontinued its licensing agreement with original publisher Natsume two years earlier. Natsume, however, maintained the rights to the Harvest Moon title and continues to publish games under it - hence the split.

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A 3D artist has recreated Chrono Trigger's Leene Square in HD-2D, which has fans desperate for a remake.

Dott's YouTube channel has plenty of videos in the style, including a re-imagining of Pokémon Red.

But SNES RPG Chrono Trigger - one of Square Enix's greatest achievements - is perhaps the most obvious candidate for an actual remake in this style.

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When we announced recently that tickets were on sale for this year's EGX show in London in October, some of you had issues applying your Eurogamer Supporters discount when trying to buy them.

I said I'd investigate and I'm here to tell you now that the problem has now been solved. Better yet, a whole new discount has been created and applied - and it's much bigger than before.

Eurogamer Supporters can now get early entry EGX tickets half price, which, if you combine it with the currently running early bird discount (which expires Thursday 22nd June), adds up to a significant saving. But even if you miss the early bird combo, it makes a big difference.

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A sequel to Switch launch title 1-2-Switch was announced earlier this month and you may have noticed its host: a man with a cartoon horse head.

We now know that's MC Horace.

Box art for Everybody 1-2-Switch has leaked online, revealing the bizarre character's name.

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Square Enix has quietly updated its Final Fantasy racer Chocobo GP on Switch as a complete package.

Back in December, the company announced an end to "large scale updates" for the game nine months after its release. This included the removal of its in-game mythril shop (in January) used for microtransactions.

The game has an updated release date in the eShop (31st May 2023 in the UK store), seemingly related to the Chocobo GP Lite version of the game that no longer exists.

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Developer Larian Studios has launched an ARG website called Blood in Baldur's Gate, set 15 years before the events of Baldur's Gate 3.

Blood in Baldur's Gate is a murder mystery which sets players the task of finding out who has killed an elf. The game takes place on a map of the lower part of Baldur's Gate, where players can select locations to visit and investigate.

Each day, players can vote on where to head next and whichever location gets the most votes will be made available. The game updates every weekday, and Larian has stated the game will run for the next three weeks.

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Halo Infinite will no longer include seasonal narrative cutscenes from Season 4 onwards.

Brian Jarrard, community director at 343 Industries made the statement on Twitter yesterday, describing the cuts as a trade-off.

"As we've redefined our top priorities and shifted resources internally this year," Jarrard wrote, "we had to make the decision to forego seasonal narrative cutscenes to make room for the team to continue focusing on highly requested features, content, and improvements for Halo Infinite."

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Official artwork for Pikmin 4 has detailed several unannounced features for Nintendo's long-awaited upcoming garden strategy sequel.

This includes the game's split-screen multiplayer mode - a long-standing feature of the series since Pikmin 2 - and what looks like the ability for a second player to aid you in the game's main campaign via some kind of targeting reticule.

Environments shown off here appear to include the interior of a house - a dramatic departure for the series which has so far stayed outside (or underground). And yes, spoilers for Pikmin 1, the series is indeed set on Earth.

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Summer Game Fest host Geoff Keighley has commented on the lack of women on stage during this year's show - and said one woman had been due to appear.

Discussing the show with CBC, Keighley acknowledged the all-male line-up on stage had been "a fair flag" for criticism, even if this had not originally been the intent.

This is Us actress Melanie Liburd, who stars in Alan Wake 2 as its new co-protagonist, had been due to appear at one point, Keighley said.

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Baten Kaitos 1 and 2 HD Remaster now has a release date and will arrive with a number of quality of life improvements, like a no encounters option.

The two game collection was first announced at the February Nintendo Direct this year as a summer release; now we know it'll launch on 15th September.

To modernise the games and make them more approachable, new options will include: no encounters, auto-battle, skip cutscenes, and auto-save options.

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Park Beyond's opening is gloriously silly, as you start off with an introduction to the coaster system by building a ride to take you out of a fire escape, through courtyards, over buildings, and to a park entrance - via cannon. And accompanied by NPCs who are so obnoxiously cheerful they cycle all the way back round to being likeable again. It reminded me of being at a pantomime - I just had to buy in, even for the terrible villain who wants to build (gasp) car parks, instead of theme parks.

Park Beyond sets itself apart from other theme park games with the mechanic of "impossification", making rides (and to a lesser extent, shops and staff) go "beyond" the usual, becoming bigger and dafter than real life. So your ride modules, in addition to loops and inversions, include cannons, jump ramps, bumper-boat transformations and punchy springs. You'll get construction goals to include modules like these - or attain certain heights, or speeds - and when you're building for a park, instead of through your own neighbourhood, these goals make up "hooks" that set the target audience and stats for your rides. There are puzzles in here, and even more when you decide to impossify a ride, which unlocks an optional third, even more outrageous hook - to go at a top speed of 140kmph, for example, or include three cannon launches.

Steam Next Fest, Valve's semi-regular celebration of gaming things to come, is back for another week of developer chats, livestreams, and an intimidating stack of "hundreds" of demos likely to thwart even the most committed completionist.

Proceedings are now firmly underway, continuing until next Monday 26th June, and Valve has provided a full list of available demos and livestreams for those eager to dive right in. But should decision paralysis strike, you'll find a few potentially promising places to start - based on some of the games Eurogamer has been harbouring mounting excitement for in recent times - below.

The list is far from exhaustive, of course, and all the games I've included are largely known quantities - it'll take a lot more poking around Valve's subterranean depths before Steam Next Fest's latest batch of hidden gems reveals itself. But in the meantime, while the poking continues, perhaps the following will provide some initial inspiration - and if anything catches your eye as you do your own deeper delving, feel free to share in the comments.

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The absolute worst thing in Aliens: Dark Descent isn't an alien, but the timeline in the top-right of the screen - or as I like to call it, Satan's Fast Forward Button. In this scrappy but compelling top-down tactics adaptation from Battlefleet Gothic: Armada developer Tindalos Interactive, you lead up to four Colonial Marines around labyrinths of corridors, flaming wreckage and sealed rooms, completing missions of the "activate the generator" variety while fending off - or preferably, avoiding - xenomorphs of all sizes and degrees of canonicity.

Armed with battle rifles, Smart Guns, flame-throwers, grenade launchers and, of course, shotguns for close encounters, your squad can shut down a single vanilla Alien without too much trouble, providing you master certain basic gambits like back-pedalling while shooting xenos to avoid their acid blood. But alerting one Alien alerts the entire hive, triggering a Hunt phase during which other Aliens home in on your position, while also kicking the aforesaid timeline into motion.

As the timeline advances, it increases the number and aggressiveness of the Aliens roaming each environment. The dots on your motion tracker move faster, switch direction more frequently, and make more spiteful use of the terrain, diving into tunnels to respawn behind you or lurking in vents next to rooms that harbour objectives. The timeline also gradually introduces beefier grades of extra-terrestrial, like the ground-pounding Crusher and the oddly team-spirited Praetorian, which hurries around rallying the other monsters like a D&D hero trying to Gather Their Party.

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Has Microsoft ruled out an upgraded version of the Xbox Series X console as a mid-generation upgrade for the existing line-up of consoles? According to an interview with Bloomberg, Xbox chief Phil Spencer doesn't 'feel an imperative' to deliver a more powerful machine, saying 'right now, we're set on the hardware we have'.

This is the primary discussion point for this week's DF Direct Weekly - and based on how the console generation has developed in its first 2.5 years, it's difficult to argue against the Xbox team's thinking. Microsoft itself has only just finished developing for the last generation Xbox One console and across the industry, developers and publishers are finally letting go of the older hardware. Meanwhile, technologies designed specifically for the current consoles are at last arriving: across the summer, we should start to see the first game to utilise Epic's Unreal Engine 5 technology. If we've yet to see what the current wave of consoles can actually do, is there actually an imperative to deliver a more powerful machine?

In the Bloomberg interview, Spencer also talks about 'feedback' suggesting that such a machine probably isn't a good idea - but what can that feedback actually be? Creating a console takes several years, so either a new machine was developed and canned in the meantime based on this feedback or else Spencer's taking a look at the last-gen base vs enhanced console split, which was around 80/20 in favour of the cheaper, less capable machine. Was that 20 percent of users just too low to be worth the effort of going through the console development cycle again? Is it even possible to deliver a meaningful upgrade within the next couple of years?

The $1099 Innocn 48Q1V ticks a lot of boxes for me. It's a 4K OLED PC monitor with DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 inputs, a matte finish and a refresh rate that tops out at 138Hz - oh, and it's gigantic at 48 inches. As a fan of OLED technology in the living room, I was eager to adopt one as a PC monitor - and find out if I could use it like a regular LCD without worrying about burn-in. One month in, I've got some preliminary results to share.

To test out the 48Q1V, I pulled no punches and used it as I would any other high-end PC gaming monitor - that means high brightness settings, no auto-hiding the taskbar, no dark themes and no blank wallpapers. The 48Q1V saw a lot of Adobe Premiere usage during these tests, with hours of static imagery, and I also tested a wide range of games in both HDR and SDR to assess its performance on that front. The results are overwhelmingly positive - but there are some definite caveats as well.

The 48Q1V is based around one of LG's TV-sized OLED panels and comes in a TV-sized box, but the rest of the design is completely different with a speaker bar covered in soft gray fabric. Below that, there are five adjustment buttons and a power switch; a remote is also provided for changing settings. There's a height-adjustable stand too, with tilt but no swivel, plus a 200x200 VESA mount via an adapter plate for wall-mounting. I did try attaching it to my Ergotron monitor arm, but of course it was too heavy to be supported.

The New York Times has responded to the comparisons between its new game Connections and BBC quiz show Only Connect.

Last week, Connections began beta testing and gained attention from viewers and host of Only Connect for its similarities to the show.

In a statement sent to Eurogamer on the close similarity between the two, The New York Times said "the content of Connections is unique, handcrafted and has a distinctive style synonymous with New York Times Games".

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A new duplication glitch has been discovered in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which can fill up your wallet very quickly, depending on how fast you can press the A button.

The glitch is relatively simple and requires a couple of weapons, some raw meat, and at least 57 Zonaite. It should be replicable in versions of the game up to 1.1.2, which is the version I tested it on and can confirm it works.

If you want a video guide to follow, the earliest video I can find of the glitch is from YouTube channel No Hypothesis. YouTuber Austin John Plays has a thorough guide too, in which he notes where things could go wrong.

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Final Fantasy 16 will have a day one update to address a small variety of issues, but will not be required to play the game.

The developer apologised for this update, stating the team "didn't want to do any pre-release or release day updates" for Final Fantasy 16 - even one this minor.

Here are the full Final Fantasy 16 day one patch notes:

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Henry Cavill has praised his co-stars on The Witcher, complimenting their work bringing characters to life that could otherwise have been "oversimplified".

Cavill was speaking at Netflix's Global Fan Event, Tudum over the weekend. There, the actor was joined on stage by fellow Witcher stars Freya Allan, Anya Chalotra, and Joey Batey to discuss the show's upcoming third season, which will apparently feature "a very shocking death". Also, those of us who have not read the books are going to be "blown away" by season three's "big bad".

But, of course, what most people wanted to hear about was Cavill's departure from the show, something he announced towards the end of last year.

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Final Fantasy 16 will include a New Game Plus mode, Square Enix has confirmed.

Named as "Final Fantasy Mode", this option will sit on the game's main menu once you have beaten the main campaign, and allow you to carry over your items, abilities and level progression into a fresh playthrough.

Here, the level cap will be raised to 100, though you'll also have to face "far more powerful" enemies.

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Chad Stahelski, director of the upcoming Ghost of Tsushima film adaptation, has stated he is looking for ways to "leave [the film] open to expand further from there".

Stahelski made the comments in an interview with Comic Book Movie to promote John Wick: Chapter 4's release on Blu-ray.

The adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima was announced in 2021 with Stahelski as its director, and Takashi Doscher was named as its writer in 2022. Since then, Stahelski has stated the adaptation will be "a complete Japanese cast, in Japanese" with Sony on-board backing his choice.

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You've got to love flatscreen to VR modders. They continue to keep PC VR alive and kicking by working tirelessly to produce epic VR conversions of some of gaming's greats, and it's all seemingly done in their own time for little to no financial reward. Aside from maybe the occasional Patreon subscription that is.

Case in point are talented modding due Necro and Kaaliba, who will soon be unleashing a brand new flatscreen to VR mod for the much-loved zombie survival game, 7 Days to Die (no Patreon yet but one is planned). I was given an early preview build of their mod to try out for this week's VR Corner and you can watch me put it through its paces in the video player above (or on YouTube).

For those unfamiliar with 7 Days to Die, all you need to know is that this is a hardcore survival game with an undead twist. At almost 10 years old now, 7 Days to Die is regarded as a classic in its genre and it is well known for its increasingly brutal gameplay that only gets more intense the longer you stay alive.

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Here's a question for all you armchair General Pattons and Joan of Arcs: has a tactics or strategy game ever made you jump? I've been thinking about this a lot while playing Tindalos Interactive's promising movie adaptation Aliens: Dark Descent, out next week on console and PC, in which you guide a quartet of gung-ho yet fragile troopers around xeno-infested bases, tracking down survivors and trying not to wake the full wrath of the Hive.

The problem with Aliens adaptations at large is that most horror fans know the 1986 film back-to-front, and are therefore immune to its scares, however creatively reimagined. You certainly wouldn't expect a top-down squad management sim to rekindle the frenzy and claustrophobia of that first-act battle beneath the atmosphere processing station - what Lieutenant Gorman would have given for a top-down view, to say nothing of a slow-mo command interface! But I've felt genuine fear at times while playing Aliens: Dark Descent, thanks to rather than in spite of its elevated perspective. On the basis of an hour's playtime, at least, it's a solid test-case for the idea that strategy games can make for gripping horror experiences, precisely because the two genres seem to have nothing in common.

Some Final Fantasy players have revealed they plan to boycott Final Fantasy 16 due to the development team's "continuously questionable response" to the lack of diversity in the game.

Last November, producer Naoki Yoshida addressed the lack of diversity in an interview, and the response did little to assuage the concerns of Black and minority ethnic players.

In direct response to this, some players are now planning to "boycott Final Fantasy 16 due to the lack of diversity and minority characters".

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Nvidia's RTX 4060 is coming at the end of the month - and as a result, it seems that price-cutting in the entry level graphics card market is absolute carnage at the moment, to the point where we've even seen the potent RTX 3060 Ti available at sub-£300 prices. Meanwhile, the RTX 3060 - the world's most popular GPU, according to the Steam Hardware Survey - is now available for well under £300/$300, pricing on Intel's Arc A750 can deliver some preposterously good value, while last-gen AMD RDNA 2 cards are so cheap, it's causing problems for the new RDNA 3-powered RX 7600.

So, initially, this piece was planned as a review for the RX 7600, but the more I looked at the surrounding GPUs in the market and the more I saw the extent of the price-cutting involved, the more I realised that this topic is exceptionally complex. The Radeon RX 7600 hasn't been reviewed well, but it's actually a very sound piece of hardware. The problem is that massive price-cuts on older cards are making its value proposition look less than compelling - and I'm going to be curious to see if this also has an impact on the upcoming RTX 4060, bearing in mind that its own gen-on-gen performance increases look relatively modest.

Pre-orders are now open for Sony's Marvel's Spider-Man 2, and both the Digital Deluxe and the Collector's Edition include extra skill points.

To secure your copy when the game releases on 20th October 2023, you can pre-order one of three editions now: the standard edition, the Digital Deluxe Edition, and the Collector's Edition and also earn additional skill points.

The standard edition is exactly what it says on the tin and will set you back £70/$70/€80, whilst the Digital Deluxe Edition boasts the base game with 10 extra suits – five each for Peter and Miles – additional photo mode items, and two additional skill points. That will cost around £80/$80/€90.

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Blizzard has revealed that the "significant majority" of players have yet to complete Diablo 4.

That's according to Diablo 4's game director, Joe Shely, who confirmed on a recent fireside chat that whilst it may feel as though players are rocketing through the story campaign, the truth is that most players are taking their time, albeit "playing through content much more quickly".

"The significant majority of our players haven't finished the game yet," Shely said in the livestreamed discussion. "But many of the people who are watching this stream, and our dedicated players, play through content much more quickly and have been experiencing this situation with the dungeons."

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