Microsoft has announced Wave 2 of the Xbox Game Pass July 2025 lineup, which includes the launch of Grounded 2 via Xbox Game Preview, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, and more.

As revealed in a post on Xbox Wire, returning today, July 15, is High on Life (Cloud, Console and PC) across Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Standard. Next up is the arrival of RoboCop: Rogue City (Cloud, PC and Xbox Series X/S) on July 17, for Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Standard.

Also on July 17 are My Friendly Neighborhood (Cloud, Console and PC), before Back to the Dawn (Cloud, Console and PC) on July 18. Abiotic Factor (Cloud, PC and Xbox Series X/S) follows on July 22, before Wheel World (Cloud, PC and Xbox Series X/S) then rolls around on July 23 — all for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass.

Microsoft then saves its biggest hitters for the end of the month, with the launch of promising-looking Soulslike action RPG Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (Cloud, PC and Xbox Series X/S) on July 24, before the launch of Obsidian’s garden survival sequel Grounded 2 (Cloud, PC and Xbox Series X/S) in Game Preview on July 29 — both for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass subscribers.

Capping off the end of the month — or, technically, next month — is the arrival of Farming Simulator 25 (Cloud, Console and PC) on August 1 for Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass and Game Pass Standard.

Xbox Game Pass Wave 2 July 2025 lineup:

• High On Life (Cloud, Console, and PC) – July 15
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
• RoboCop: Rogue City (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S) – July 17
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard
• My Friendly Neighborhood (Cloud, Console, and PC) – July 17
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Back to the Dawn (Cloud, Console, and PC) – July 18
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Abiotic Factor (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S) – July 22
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Wheel World (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S) – July 23
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Wuchang: Fallen Feathers (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S) – July 24
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Grounded 2 (Game Preview) (Cloud, PC, and Xbox Series X/S) – July 29
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass
• Farming Simulator 25 (Cloud, Console, and PC) – August 1
  Game Pass Ultimate, PC Game Pass, Game Pass Standard

As always, whenever Microsoft giveth, it also taketh away. The following games are set to leave Game Pass on July 31, though subscribers can get a 20% discount to keep the games in their library.

• Gigantic (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (Cloud, Console, and PC)
• Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (Cloud, Console, and PC)

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Bethesda has quietly fixed a door in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered that had left Dark Brotherhood lore fans scratching their heads.

Warning! Potential spoilers for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered follow.

Let’s cast our minds back to April and the hugely successful release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Soon after launch, players of the original, much-loved open-world role-playing game noticed the door to the Dark Brotherhood’s Cheydinhal sanctuary entrance was inexplicably changed in a way that broke the lore.

The door in question is at the centre of an iconic moment in Oblivion, one players who took on the excellent Dark Brotherhood quest will probably remember well. In the original Oblivion, the glowing door has a heavy mood aesthetic and a relief showing the Night Mother (who members of the assassination-obsessed Dark Brotherhood worship) murdering five children. The Oblivion Remastered version of this door has no glow, is light on atmosphere and, weirdly, has two extra children.

You can see a comparison with accompanying complaint in the reddit post from alvaro-elite, below:

The Elder Scrolls lore fans were quick to point out that the addition of two kids on the relief makes no sense given what we know about the story of the Night Mother. This moment in time is meant to represent the Night Mother’s murdering of the five children she conceived with Sithis, the Elder Scrolls deity who represents emptiness and the Void. As the story goes, the Night Mother is murdered by the locals for killing her kids, which turns her into the immortal Night Mother in the first place. In fact, in Oblivion, the Night Mother’s tomb includes skeletal remains of one adult and five children, reinforcing this lore.

Fans had wondered whether Bethesda and developer Virtuos would patch Oblivion Remastered to change the door to be lore compliant, and so it has proved. As noticed by PC Gamer, with the recent release of Update 1.2 in Steam beta form, those who have opted in to test the patch now have a lore-compliant door with five children, rather than seven in the relief. Strangely, this change isn’t in the officially released patch notes, below.

The expectation is this new door is what Oblivion Remastered will include across the board when Update 1.2 launches fully.

Be sure to check out our comprehensive guide to everything you’ll find in Oblivion Remastered, including an expansive Interactive Map, complete Walkthroughs for the Main Questline and every Guild Quest, How to Build the Perfect Character, Things to Do First, every PC Cheat Code, and much more.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered update 1.2 patch notes:

SETTINGS CHANGES

• We’ve added additional difficulty settings to allow players to further tune their “Player Combat Damage” & “Enemy Combat Damage”. Players can now select from “Novice”, “Apprentice”, “Adept”, “Journeyman”, “Expert”, and “Master” options in the Gameplay menu. We hope the “Journeyman” setting, specifically, will act as a better bridge between “Adept” and “Expert” for players.

UI

• Fixed map markers disappearing
• Fixed missing punctuation in Simplified Chinese text
• Fixed “Toggle All” button on Map screen to work as a ‘Hold’
• Various fixes to localized text
• Fixed controller issues in Spell making menu
• Fixed menus being cropped incorrectly in 1280×1024
• Fixed the incorrect player stance in the inventory menu after fast travel
• Fixed rebinding keys for Lock Picking
• Fixed keybinds not updating in AZERTY
• Fixed soft lock with controller in Enchanting menu
• Fixed stats not updating when equipping enchanted items
• Fixed a character skin glitch when closing the inventory menu

CRASHES

• Fixed crashes that could occur while fighting Jyggalag
• Fixed crashing when killing a paralyzed NPC with an arrow
• Fixed crashing when paralyzing an already-paralyzed NPC
• Fixed crashing in Spellmaking menu when rapidly removing & implementing effects
• Fixed various GPU crashes
• Fixed crashes that could occur during auto saves

AUDIO

• Fixed underwater SFX persisting after leaving exiting water
• Fixed missing ambient SFX in Shivering Isles

QUESTS

• Fixed NPCs floating after being knocked down during Priory of the Nine quest
• Fixed crashing when entering Flooded Mine during Final Justice quest
• Fixed pathing for Shaleez in Flooded Mine during Final Justice quest
• Fixed crashing when opening Gate to The Fringe during Retaking the Fringe quest
• Fixed mages loading without clothes in Fort Ontus during The Necromancer’s Amulet quest
• Fixed NPC pathing issues in Gardens of Flesh and Bone during ‘Through the Fringe of Madness’ quest
• Fixed missing VFX during the closing of the Great Gate
• Fixed Ilav Dralgoner’s missing facial animation during ‘Saving Time Itself’ quest
• Fixed Sir Thredet’s speech during ‘Umaril the Unfeathered’ quest
• Fixed NPC pathing issues during ‘Baiting the Trap’ quest
• Fixed Obelisk Crystals spawning disconnected during ‘Baiting the Trap’ quest
• Fixed crash at end of ‘Through a Nightmare, Darkly’ quest
• Fixed wall crumbling in Malada during ‘Nothing You Can Possess’ quest
• Fixed misaligned food at the Castle Leyawiin County Hall dinner party during ‘Sanguine’ quest
• Fixed an issue with visibility of ghosts during ‘Ghosts of Vitharn’
• Fixed cutscene not playing during ‘Light the Dragonfires’
• Fixed missing textures in Cropsford Campsite after finishing ‘Goblin Trouble’

PERFORMANCE

• Fixed frame rate drop in Deepscorn Hollow
• Fixed frame rate drops in Black Rock Caverns
• Fixed frame rate drop between Skingrad and Skingrad Castle
• Fixed frame rate drop south of Bravil Castle courtyard
• Reduced the frequency of hitches in the open world.
• General improvements to frame time in many locations.
• Optimize updating of character attachments.
• Optimize rendering of water volumes in the open world.
• Optimize light/shadow updates in several lairs.
• Optimize waterfall particle FX and rendering.
• Optimize the weather system.
• Optimize character animation system.

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed player character height scaling
• Fixed armor items hiding Argonian and Khajiit tails
• Fixed slow camera movement when initiating NPC dialogue
• Fixed soft lock when a player with a high bounty goes to jail
• Fixed Orrery animations
• Fixed physics bug with floating necklaces
• Fixed vampire sleeping animations
• Fixed NPC beards not following facial animation.
• Fixed ghost NPCs being completely invisible
• Fixed missing animation when talking to Shamada in Leyawiin
• Fixed occasional very long load times when fast traveling
• Fixed missing facial animation for Snak gra-Bura
• Fixed falling unconscious in water preventing player from getting up
• Fixed NPCs losing collision when swimming
• Fixed NPCs stopping combat when player is blocking
• Fixed female Dremora teeth clipping
• Fixed soft lock after choosing player class
• Fixed Amber weapons clipping in first person view
• Fixed vines clipping into columns
• Fixed helmets clipping into player character’s head
• Fixed missing textures on Daedric statues
• Fixed duplicated pages between Oghma Infinium and Mysterium Xarxes

SYSTEM

• Fixed flickering shadows when using XeSS Upscaling
• Fixed title properly restarting after purchasing the Deluxe Upgrade on PC
• Fixed settings properly migrating between PC and XBOX
• Fixed water disappearing after fast travel
• Fixed cursor slowdown when enabling high frame rate V-Sync
• Fixed shaders not preloading due to cloud save replication
• Fixed long blackout during loading screens
• Fixed weather VFX flashing while outside
• Fixed motion blur artifacts while in the Oblivion Plane
• Fixed NPCs not obeying the Wait action from the player

This update will be in the Steam Beta. If you would like to opt in to the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Beta update, please follow these instructions:

1. Open your Steam Library and navigate to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

2. Right click on “The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered” and select “Properties”

3. In the new properties pop-up window, select “Betas”

4. In the beta drop down to opt into, select “[beta]”5. Wait for app to download new build and launch.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

A former head of communications at Dead Island 2 publisher Deep Silver has opened up about the “eight-year product delay” Dead Island 2 endured after early playtests reported “horrific feedback.”

At the end of a Develop:Brighton talk as reported by GamesIndustry.biz, Martin Wein — now at GameFlex Consultants — talked candidly about the sequel’s troubled development, and how it was decided at a major milestone meeting with then-developer, Yager, that the game as it was then “sucked.”

Dead Island 2 was revealed at E3 2014 but soon went quiet before “mutual differences” separated Yager from Deep Silver. It was then moved to Sumo Digital before being shifted again in 2019 to its final home of Dambuster Studios. A new trailer and gameplay video was released on December 6, 2022, during a Dead Island 2 Showcase that announced it was delayed once again, slipping 12 weeks to April 2023. It was the first proper look at the game fans had since it was re-revealed after years of troubled development in August 2022.

“I was working on that with the creative team, and we were mightily proud of that [trailer],” Wein said. “But then, about three to four weeks later, we had a major milestone with the development studio that was in charge at that time. And boy, that game sucked.

“It had nothing to do with what [made] the original Dead Island […] really fun. So we commissioned a play test and got horrific feedback. And we sat down with the development team and said, ‘Okay, what’s the course of action?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, leave it with us.'”

But at the next touch-point, Wein said little had changed, with playtest feedback indicating the sequel was “not fun, not engaging, [and] does not feel like the Dead Island that I played.”

“So at the end of the day, we had to take the game away from that external developer, find a new studio, and that put the game on a journey of… well, it was supposed to launch in 2015. When did it come out? 2023?

“Sometimes you have to make hard decisions,” Wein added. “Because we could have, at that point, put out a sh*t game. It might have made some money, but it would have killed the franchise.

“I cannot really speak to the conversation between the production team and the development partner as I was not part of those, but as the developer wanted to pursue their vision rather than follow player feedback, the ultimate decision was made to part ways.”

When it did finally release in 2023, IGN’s Dead Island 2’s review returned a 7/10. We said: “Dead Island 2 is a hilarious gore-fest and a competent zombie-slaying adventure, but lacks creativity outside of its great sense of humor.”

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.