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How Stop Killing Games Ups the Ante in the Fight for Video Game Preservation

Last December, Ubisoft announced it was delisting its MMO racing game The Crew from all digital storefronts but shutting down the servers on March 31, 2024. Weeks after the servers were slated to shut down, Ubisoft began notifying players who owned a copy of The Crew that it was removing it from their Ubisoft accounts.

Though Ubisoft is not the first company to shut down servers for an online-only game, the recent closure of The Crew’s online servers has inspired one individual to push for legal and government intervention to address the ever-growing industry trend. It’s a trend that has sparked even debate in the industry after Microsoft announced the closure of Arkane Studios, the developer behind Redfall. This decision has led to the cancellation of future updates and planned DLC for this online-only game.

Although Redfall’s servers are still operational, its long-term support remains uncertain, as it remains to be seen how long Microsoft will keep the servers up and whether or not it will provide an offline mode once it finally sunsets its support for Redfall.

Aside from the obvious fact that it means that players who spent money on this game feel cheated, there are plenty of stakes for the hundreds of people who poured their creative energy into bringing it to market in the first place. Shutting down and delisting a game becomes more than a surface-level decision; it’s stripping away the creative work of the thousands, possibly millions, of people who played or developed it.

Enter Stop Killing Games.

An initiative created by YouTuber Ross Scott, Stop Killing Games aims to hold publishers accountable by ending the common practice of making games designed to be “completely unplayable” after support ends, particularly MMOs and other online-only games. The initiative itself is a new branch in an even bigger fight to preserve video games for future generations.

Scott’s strategy is simple: file public complaints. Lots of them. After Ubisoft shut down the servers for The Crew, Scott encouraged those upset and angry to file a complaint with France’s Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Prevention (DGCCRF) since Ubisoft is headquartered in France.

“Due to the game’s size and France’s strong consumer protection laws, this represents one of the best opportunities to hold a publisher accountable for this action,” Scott wrote on the official website for Stop Killing Games. “If we are successful in bringing charges against Ubisoft, this can have a ripple effect on the videogames industry to prevent publishers from destroying more games.”

In a statement sent to IGN, a Ubisoft spokesperson told IGN it had “no further comment” regarding The Crew’s shutdown. The spokesperson reiterated that although the news could disappoint players, “it was necessary” for Ubisoft, citing server infrastructure and “licensing constraints.”

The painful limits of online games

Scott’s efforts are an attempt to address a trend that has been going on for years now, but in recent years has only become more acute

Newzoo Senior Market Analyst Michael Wagner says that in the past, it was common for games to lose online support after a certain period, usually when the “player bases move on to other titles.” Still, extra features would keep the game playable, like a single-player campaign, local multiplayer, and the option to set up private servers. However, in recent years, the idea of online games being completely unplayable has become “a fairly new phenomenon,” Wagner explains.

According to Wagner, publishers shut down games because of dwindling player bases and the need for more profitability of upkeep when newer entries are released in existing franchises, with examples including Battlefield and Call of Duty. Wagner explains how older games could threaten the newer games’ ability to turn a profit. “Players may continue with older iterations but may not spend within the game the new game. Removing functionality, in theory, means increased revenues for the new title.”

Liam Deane, principal analyst at Omdia, shares similar sentiments, noting “almost all online-only games have a finite lifespan.” While there are a few rare exceptions, most notably Blizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft, Deane reiterates Wagner’s comments on player bases dwindling after a few years as a main reason for publishers shutting down servers.

“Almost all online-only games have a finite lifespan.”

“Until the mid-2000s or so online games typically allowed players to host private servers,” Deane explained. “But these days, the publisher usually shoulders the cost of maintaining the game servers. At some point, this is a cost which they are going to want to stop paying once a game’s player base drops below a certain level.”

With an increase in live service games and in-game purchases becoming a big source of revenue, the worrying trend of online-only games will continue for the foreseeable future. Deane explains that “across the entire industry,” 54% of revenue comes from microtransactions or in-game purchases, according to his research. The proportion is “obviously even higher” for live service games, where it’s common to have a surplus of microtransactions or in-game items purchasable for players.

When the player base dries up, so does the revenue, and with it, the chances of a game’s survival.

Nevertheless, the games industry is industry placing more and more emphasis on multiplayer games, particularly live service titles, such as Fortnite, Palworld, and Helldivers 2. These projects not only rely on a player base consistently coming back to play the game, but also on players being online to access this content. When they shut down, they take their communities with them. Friday the 13th, which will have its servers permanently turned off on December 31, 2024, is just one game suffering this fate.

Scott explains that while licensing agreements can prevent companies from selling additional companies of a game once the license expires, it does “not prevent existing buyers from continuing to use the game they have already paid for.”

Yet, the ownership of some games remains a gray area, especially in the United States, where legal precedent has significantly stripped consumers of their rights. The most significant legal case impacting this is ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenbger, which reworked U.S. Contract Law, allowing the courts to defer to End User License Agreements. Essentially, the case meant that these agreements allow publishers to be absolved of any accountability and obligation owed to consumers who purchased a product and assert authority over when their online-only games become unplayable once support ends.

“If you bought a game, if you made a game, if you love a game, technology shouldn’t get in the way.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has led the fight for ownership rights in the since 1990, with the agency mainly focusing on advocating for creators, technologists, and technology users’ digital rights. As Cory Doctorow, EFF Special Advisor, emphasizes, “If you bought a game, if you made a game, if you love a game, technology shouldn’t get in the way of that game’s ongoing existence. Instead, technology should preserve that game for players who love it today, for the people who are proud of making it, for players who come later, and for games makers of the future.”

However, the challenge is wider than the United States. In countries like Canada and the UK, there is little precedent preventing companies from revoking a purchase post-sale. In contrast, the EU and Australia need help getting a governmental examination of the issue. One common global challenge is lobbying groups’ influence, particularly in the gaming industry, which may work to maintain the status quo of an uneven balance of power between game companies and consumers.

A domino effect

Nevertheless, despite the varying degrees of laws influencing consumer rights worldwide, Scott explains that this proposed domino effect of filing complaints to the DGCCRF would still have a worldwide impact. For example, in 2014, when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission sued Valve for not providing customers an option to refund games on Steam, the company had no choice but to modify its policy to allow refunds on Steam in Australia and other countries like the United States.

Ultimately, Scott and Doctorow encourage individuals to advocate for the change they want. They encourage fans to file complaints and force governments to examine the company’s behavior and practices. In the meantime, Scott’s initiative is gaining momentum in raising awareness and urging players to defend their rights and challenge this frustrating trend dictated by publishers.

“I think by taking the customer’s money, that creates an obligation for publishers to give customers a reasonable expectation to run the game in some fashion,” Scott says, “even after support ends.”

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Save 20% Off the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit and Open Up Your Gaming Console, PC, or Phone With Ease

iFixit might be a familiar brand name for you from all of the helpful teardown videos of various electronics that they host on YouTube. Well, they also sell an awesome toolkit that helps you do the same. Amazon is offering the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit for electronics, smartphones, gaming consoles, PCs and laptops, tablets, and more for only $59.96. It normally retails for $75 and we haven’t seen a price drop for this kit in over a year. In fact, it wasn’t even discounted on Black Friday. This is one of the very best tool kits you can buy for disassembling and repairing your electronics — including your Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck — without spending hundreds of dollars on a commercial kit.

Save 20% Off the iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit

The iFixit Pro Tech Tookit contains pretty much every tool you’ll never need to get inside your electronics. They include a 64 precision bit set that includes flathead, screwdriver, hex, torx, and star bits as well as plenty of other bits you’ve probably never seen or heard of. You also get the screwdriver handle, flex extension, tweezers, opening tools, and more, all packed in a hard shell magnetic case. iFixit also includes a generous lifetime warranty: they’ll replace any of the pieces that break, even if you caused it.

I’ve owned this toolkit for a few years and it has served me very well. I’ve changed the shells on my Joy-Con controllers, swapped the SSD in my ASUS ROG Ally, rebuilt my gaming PC quite a number of times, replaced the heatsink on my GPU, modified my keyboard, opened up my fishing reels for maintenance, and more with the help of this toolkit. Aside from the plastic spudger and opening picks (they supply quite a few), everything still looks and works as new. I wouldn’t hesitate to buy another.

The Best Family Board Games to Play in 2024

Family game fixtures have become more and more popular over recent years, in part as a way to reclaim some fun time with family members away from the tyranny of screens. And it’s a great option: everyone has to get involved, it’s a workout for your brain, and often a tense thrill-ride to the finish if you pick the right titles. But in the ever-expanding board game scene, that can be a problem, as not all games are as fun for your pre-teen kids as they are for their grandparents as well as the generation in between.

If you want the best board games for adults, or the best board games for kids, we’ve got you covered with separate lists. Our picks here are sure to please whatever the age and skill level of the participants, as they offer a mix of strategy and luck that keeps everyone on their toes and in with a chance.

TL;DR: Best Family Board Games

Don’t have time to scroll? These are our picks. Read on for details about each one.

My City

Legacy games, where your actions in one game carry over into the next, have been a hot item in tabletop over the last decade or so, but most of them are too complex and involved for family play. Not so My City from one of board gaming’s most prolific and acclaimed designers, Reiner Knizia. It’s a simple, zen-like tile-laying game where you’re trying to fit buildings of different shapes together onto a virgin wilderness, grouping things together to score points. But after each game, you’ll add new rules and stickers to your map, so that each individual player’s board becomes unique. This gives it a thrillingly addictive edge as you wait to unlock each tranche of new content, and means it’ll come back to the table time and time again as you work through the campaign.

Scout

Japan has a burgeoning board game scene of its own, translations from which are only slowly making their way into the west. This card game is perhaps its most engaging export yet, winning a nomination for the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award. At heart it’s a Rummy-type affair that’s easy to pick up, where you have to lay sequences of cards from your hand to get rid of them, but it has two novel catches. Firstly, if you can’t beat the sequence currently on the table, you have to pick up a card from it instead, Second, you can’t rearrange your initial hand, only insert picked-up cards where you want them. This gives each hand a fascinating long-term strategic aspect, an astonishing achievement for a fifteen-minute game that’s already highly addictive.

Heat: Pedal to the Metal

Heat was, ironically enough, one of 2022’s hottest titles, an easy to pick up racing game that still delivered a thrilling dash to the chequered flag. The core of the game is very straightforward: the higher gear you’re in, the more movement cards you can play, but all the corners on the track have a maximum gear value. Exceed it, and you’re at risk of spinning off and losing ground. This creates a tense game of push your luck and hand management, where you’re shepherding cards to maximise your movement without downshifting until the very last minute, then angling to pick up speed again down the straights. And don’t forget the value of slipstreaming behind the leader for a last-minute overtake. With a variety of tracks and fun plastic toy car pieces, it’s certain to keep you racing into the small hours.

Takenoko

Takenoko is a game about taking care of a very hungry panda. Players spend their turns watering plots of land to grow bamboo that the panda will then eat. There are lots of ways to score points, such as placing land tiles in a certain patterns and feeding the panda specific colors of bamboo.Because there is more than one way to score points, the game does not shoehorn players into one strategy. With colors that pop and towers of bamboo that reach far above the table, Takenoko is just as fun to look at as it is to play.

Cascadia

There are few games with quite the wide appeal of Cascadia. For starters, it’s got a wholesome theme of exploring the ecology of the Pacific Northwest. The mechanics are very simple, involving you picking one of four pairs of animal token and terrain hex to add to your growing map. The aim is to satisfy a random range of scoring cards by getting animals into particular patterns, and they range in difficulty from an easy family version to challenging gamer-level objectives. There’s even a fun solo campaign where you’re tasked with crossing off a range of variants and objectives. If there ever was a game for absolutely everyone, this is it.

For more like this, you can check out our guide to the best solo board games.

King of Tokyo

The best way to describe King of Tokyo is “Yahtzee meets Godzilla.” In this monster mash-up, players control one of a stable of greatest-hits monsters straight out of science fiction past. The goal is to take control of Tokyo while fending off the other monsters. Attacks and special abilities are carried out through dice rolls which lends a bit of suspense to the giant-sized boxing matches. Of course, controlling Tokyo makes you a target, and no monster can stay in the city for too long without taking lots of damage. It’s up to you to recognize when to retreat and when to press the attack, but beware: other monsters are out there and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Kingdomino

Released in 2017, Kingdomino is the most recent game on this list. It also won the coveted Spiel des Jahres, the German board game of the year, cementing its place as a go-to family game for years to come. Players take turns claiming tiles to add to their kingdom, but it’s not as simple as picking a tile and moving on. The tile you choose directly affects the turn order for the next turn, so you must be careful when making your decision lest you leave a valuable tile on the table for your opponents. Your tableau is limited to a five-by-five grid, which adds a spatial awareness element to the game as well. Because of its short play time and how easy it is to learn the rules, Kingdomino is an ideal choice for your next family game night.

Tiny Towns

In Tiny Towns, players are mayors of newly developing villages and are tasked with planning and building the town’s cottages, taverns, factories and more. On a turn, the active player chooses one of the available resources, then all players take one cube of the matching resource and place it in their town. Those cubes stay there, taking up precious space, until you can match the pattern on one of the building cards. Then, you place the building in your town and gain its effect, usually in the form of end-game points based on the building’s scoring conditions. Because everyone at the table takes a resource on every turn, there’s little to no down time in Tiny Towns. Keeping players engaged while forcing them to meticulously plan their buildings makes this family game a brain burner in the best possible way.

Azul

A game that is as beautiful as it is enjoyable, Azul is a contest of planning and opportunity. You’re a mason in 15th or 16th century Portugal, and King Manuel I has asked you to decorate his palace with strikingly colored tiles reminiscent of Spain’s Alhambra. On a turn, you choose all tiles of a single color from one of the available groups of four, and the rest get sent to a common area that can be pilfered later. You must insert your chosen tiles into rows on your player board, and when you complete a row you’ll add one tile to your palace wall. Points are scored for meeting various pattern requirements, like covering all tiles of one color on your wall, or completing an entire row or column. Filling up your display is satisfying in a way that few tile-laying games can boast, and the play time is generally short enough that multiple plays in a night are not uncommon. It’s not hard to see why Azul won Germany’s game of the year award in 2018.

Read our review of Azul.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

Trick-taking games like Whist are well-known, but The Crew takes the concept to a new level by using it in a cooperative card game. You’ll work together over a long series of missions that require you to win tricks that meet certain objectives. One player might have to win a trick with a blue 5 in it, while another must not win any of the first 5 tricks. The catch is that you can only ever tell your fellow players about one card in your hand: the rest must be kept secret. This straightforward concept hides a surprising amount of tactical depth as you try to trump and throw-away cards to ensure the right players win the right tricks.

Downforce

In 2017, Restoration Games reproduced Wolfgang Kramer’s 1996 classic Top Race as Downforce. It’s a racing game where the winner isn’t necessarily the one whose car comes in first place. Players’ hands are filled with cards that depict various combinations of colors and numbers, and playing a card moves the corresponding cars forward that number of spaces. Throughout the race, you can bet on which cars you think will do the best, netting you a sweet bonus to your score. The game is over in about half an hour, and provides a surprisingly satisfying mix of luck and strategy, a tough balancing act for many family games. It also has custom rules for younger players.

The Isle of Cats

Who doesn’t love an adorable cat? The evil Lord Vesh, that’s who, and it’s up to you to fit as many sinuous felines on your boat as you can before sailing them away from him to safety. This is really an excuse for this great game of polyomino arrangement, with the gorgeous artwork for the sinuous felines filling the shapes. You must pack your boat as best you can, trying to cover rats, fill holds and satisfy a random assortment of scoring conditions. As a bonus, the box includes two games modes: a family one and a rather more complex and challenging full game that sees you have to buy and deploy traps and tricks to lure the cats before stashing them safely on your ship.

The Quacks of Quedlinburg

You’d never imagine that concocting phoney potions in medieval Germany would be this much fun. Each game has a different set of effects on a range of ingredients that you can add to your snake oil, and it’s down to you to sniff out the likely combos and get brewing. But there’s a catch: you do so by adding your ingredients to a bag and drawing them blindly, gradually pushing up the tally of dangerous cherry bombs. Pull one too many and your whole batch will be ruined for the round. This combination of weighted push your luck and light strategy is an absolute winner for families, bringing you both tension and tactics as you compete to drum up the best draughts.

Upcoming Family Games

Wiggles 3D, publisher of the excellent (and now sadly out of print) cooperative symbol-matching game 5-Minute Dungeon, has created a successor in the brilliant-sounding One Hit Heroes. Like its predecessor, it’s a simple conceit: each of you is a hero down to their last hit point while battling a boss monster. It’s up to you to try and keep them alive against the odds and triumph! To succeed, you’ll need a balance of attack and defence, rushing down your opponent’s health while deploying the right combos to deflect its attacks and keep your heroes alive. With some novel campaign elements across the supplied scenarios, this sounds like another cooperative family-grade winner.

At the opposite end of the feel-good spectrum, but no less fun, is Vicious Gardens which plays up the contrast between its peaceful pastime theme and its brutal gameplay, alongside some delightful nonsense characters and produce for your growing garden. Your goal is to collect sets of cards across different categories, then cultivate and harvest them, using your specialist helpers, for points. Or you could use those specialists to, y’know, go and trample all over your opponent’s plots instead. Nice or nasty, the choice is yours in the race to become the top gardener.

When Is The Best Time to Buy Board Games in 2024?

If you love board games, it can unfortunately be a rather expensive hobby. With Black Friday 2023 starting soon, you should still wait for Friday, November 17 to make any big purchases. The Amazon Black Friday sale is starting a week early and has historically been one of the best times to buy board games at a discount. After Black Friday ends, you’ll likely still be able to find board game deals on Cyber Monday and beyond.

On top of the recommendations we’ve listed above, families with shared interests may get a kick out of the best Marvel board games or Harry Potter board games. And if that’s not enough, you can check out our list of best two-player board games, as well as the best trivia board games.

Matt Thrower is a contributing freelancer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. He’s also been published in The Guardian, Dicebreaker and Senet Magazine as well as being the author and co-author of several books on board games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.

Homeworld 3 Multiplayer Review

This review covers the multiplayer modes of Homeworld 3. For thoughts on the multiplayer skirmish and War Games co-op mode, see the Homeworld 3 Single-Player Campaign review.

When coming up with a real-time strategy game’s multiplayer modes, a developer generally has two options: let us play with all of the toys in an all-out brawl until the other side is dead, with maybe a few minor twists thrown in, or try something new, different, and a little risky. In Homeworld 3, Blackbird Interactive has had it both ways, delivering both the bog-standard multiplayer skirmish match between Motherships and an inventive new co-op mode that, if the content continues to flow, has the potential to take on a life of its own.

There are few surprises to be found in skirmish if you’ve ever played a Homeworld game before – or even if you haven’t. It’s limited to team matches or free-for-alls with up to six players or AI bots, and it doesn’t really rock the boat with its straightforward “beat the other team” objective (you can set it to kill the mothership, kill all motherships and carriers, or kill every ship). There aren’t a ton of maps right now – just six, and only one that supports six players, though that’s a void that community-made maps should fill in short order. The only other real option is to turn off harvesting in favor of resource injections every minute (or you can have both) if you don’t want to bother with pesky logistics, but it’s precisely the sort of sandbox we need to make creative use of all of the ships Homeworld 3 offers. Heck, people would be up in arms if it weren’t here, and rightfully so.

Naturally you can’t pause the action like you can in the campaign, which can be frustrating as you’re getting the hang of ordering ships around these expansive areas of 3D space. But that’s balanced out by the fact that your opponents are struggling with the same thing, so it’s not as though you’re at an inherent disadvantage – unless you’re playing against the AI, which has its own weaknesses to compensate for. Learning to spin all of these plates at once while keeping your eyes on what’s important is part of the challenge (I tend to spend a lot of time in the zoomed-out sensor view here) and I felt myself getting better at it with every match.

The Hiigarans and the Incarnate fleets aren’t wildly different in how they play.

Much like previous Homeworld games, the two playable factions – the Hiigarans and the Incarnate – aren’t wildly different in how they play. The Incarnate, for instance, have no bombers but instead have more durable assault corvettes that fill basically the same role and have the same cloaking ability, and their multi-beam frigates are roughly equivalent to the Hiigarans’ ion canon frigates. Both sides have missile frigates as well, and their carriers, destroyers, battlecruisers, and turrets have stat differences that don’t really make you think outside the box when switching from one to the other.

Certainly, faction-specific tactics for each will emerge to capitalize on those subtle advantages – as well as things like the Hiigarans having superior scouting abilities thanks to their recon ships – but the thing that seems most significant in my experience has been how repair and capturing abilities are shuffled between ships. The Hiigarans have a dedicated support frigate that does nothing but repair damaged ships, but if you want to be sneaky and attempt to capture an enemy vessel you’ll have to pull one of your resource controllers off of mining duty and use it to attempt the abduction. The Incarnate remix this by putting the repair functionality on their resource controllers and using smaller, more fragile capture corvettes to do their pilfering – and they require two to survive long enough to latch on instead of one.

Having to choose between income and repair power is a big deal for an Incarnate player. In practice, though, having support frigates in the fray against a human opponent doesn’t shift the balance too much in the Hiigarans’ favor because anyone with a brain is going to target those first, and the Incarnate’s minor firepower advantage makes up for the rest.

If you don’t change Hiigaran fighters’ stance the moment they’re built, they’re as good as dead.

There’s one other difference between the Hiigarans and Incarnate that baffles me, though: the Hiigaran ships default to neutral stance, while the Incarnate default to aggressive. That sounds thematically appropriate, certainly, but it means that the Incarnate have a real advantage when it comes to building ships – especially strike craft – while under attack. Aggressive ships will immediately scramble and go after enemy ships that come into range, but neutral ships will fire back without moving other than to turn to face their attackers. When we’re dealing with small, fragile fighters, that means they’re sitting ducks and will get picked off almost immediately (probably before you notice you’re under attack), so if you don’t manually select them and change their stance or give them attack orders the moment they’re built, they’re as good as dead. That’s not a bug like some other issues, such as a voice chiming in to announce the loss of a resource ship that was actually the enemy’s or calling a corvette a frigate, but it might as well be.

It’s impossible to know what will happen when Homeworld 3 is out in the wild and the most competitive players get hold of it, but in the matches I’ve played, the big trend has been that the Motherships are very active participants in the early fighting instead of hanging back, as they usually do in traditional Homeworld matches. Part of that is that these maps, which are largely based on those from the campaign, aren’t nearly as vast as Homeworld vets are used to, and also Homeworld 3’s Motherships are relatively quick to move and can get around easily. They’re also decently armed against fighters and corvettes, and you’ll need all the help you can get to keep the pressure off of your resource harvesters and defend them from rush attacks aimed at crippling your economy before you can tech up and unlock heavier ships. However, knowing when to pull back is crucial if you don’t want to be caught by destroyers and battlecruisers, because they’ll burn through your Mothership’s armor very quickly.

Motherships are very active participants in the early fighting.

Terrain also plays a significant role because it’s often close to resource patches, and that means you can cover it with heavy turrets (and anti-strike craft turrets to defend those) that’ll make short work of an enemy resource collector that autonomously wanders near. It’s also viable to turtle up by parking your Mothership near a floating platform, making it difficult for an enemy to get near without being bombarded by turrets and tripping over mines. Other than that, I haven’t found using terrain as cover terribly useful because it’s difficult to manage sight lines in real time for anything smaller and faster than a destroyer – but again, that doesn’t mean the community won’t find ways to do it.

Homeworld 3’s most exciting multiplayer mode, though, is War Games – I haven’t seen too many co-op modes in this vein since the Last Stand mode from Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 – Retribution, and it’s given me thrills that remind me of those memorable battles. Alone or with up to two allies, you take control of a scaled-down fleet headed by a single carrier and build options decided by your chosen loadout; you’ll start with one focused on Hiigaran strike craft, but as you level up you’ll gain access to others that cater to bombers, missile frigates, Incarnate ships, and more. While it’s a bummer to not have access to heavy-hitting destroyers and battlecruisers, there’s a lot going on to make up for their absence, and you’ll generally want to be as mobile as possible.

You’re never entirely sure what you’ll get.

Rather than simply holding out against waves of enemies, you’re given randomized objectives to complete on a series of three maps: destroy a carrier, capture some points on the map, salvage some objects, escort AI-controlled ships, that sort of thing. You’re never entirely sure what you’ll get, so you’ll have to be at least somewhat flexible with how you gear yourself to handle what’s coming. Meanwhile, the incoming fleets keep getting stronger, so once you’ve completed your objective you have to make the decision of whether to hold out and scour the map clean of resources, or hyperspace jump to the next one to avoid taking more losses than those resources can replace.

There aren’t that many objectives, though – if you play through a handful of times you’ll see them all – so what really keeps each match feeling different from the last is the randomized artifacts that you’ll collect as you go. I quickly realized that scouting for and gathering them was one of the most important things to worry about when I arrived on each map.

Scouting for and gathering artifacts is a high priority when arriving on a new map.

Each one gives you a choice of three randomized upgrades for your fleet, such as buffing your fighters’ damage and armor at the cost of speed, unlocking more powerful tactical bombers or barrage missile frigates that launch twice as many warheads per volley, increasing your frigate unit cap at the expense of your strike craft cap, or enhancing up your carrier to crank out ships faster but also reduce its armor. There are a lot of possibilities that all stack together, and I often found myself pivoting away from what I thought would be my strengths toward a series of enticing upgrades that supercharged my assault frigates. I also found it easy to make the mistake of going too far and turning my fighters into glass cannons that melted under fire faster than they could take out a target, but that’s the kind of error most people probably won’t make twice as they learn to craft builds in any roguelike.

This format works well enough playing alone (though the third and final stage can be a beast to solo) but when you’re working with a team to specialize in different directions you can coordinate so that, for instance, one of you focuses on taking out enemy strike craft while the other burns down incoming destroyers as quickly as possible. That can come together in ways more than powerful enough to overcome the Incarnate destroyers, battlecruisers, and even Motherships that’re thrown at you, but don’t worry: there are plenty of options to upgrade the challenge, so I wouldn’t expect War Games to become a pushover anytime soon.

Blackbird clearly doesn’t either, because its roadmap for updates is focused around more content for War Games. Based on what I’ve played thus far, it’s a safe bet that it’ll have legs – so long as we keep getting more new rewards to unlock than the six fleet types that’ll all be available once you hit level 20 (I made it to level 11 as of this writing after about as many hours of play).

Another thing that will certainly expand on the longevity of Homeworld 3 is mods, and there’s a handy section of the menu where you’ll be able to select them. Eventually, that is – the actual implementation of that and the release of the official mod tools has been pushed back from launch. Even so, I’m encouraged by the fact that Blackbird is giving modding the prioritization that it deserves. Homeworld has a long, proud history of mods that includes some of the finest Star Wars and Star Trek (among others) total conversions ever created, and I look forward to that tradition carrying forward.

PUBG Is Bringing Back Erangel Classic for a Limited Time

Long-time PUBG players, you’re getting a gift this month. The original Erangel map is returning, and changes to the gunplay, map layout, and visuals are designed to give you a nostalgic blast from the past while still delivering the evolved gameplay you’ve come to expect.

For those who don’t know, PUBG first launched in Steam’s Early Access in March 2017. It became one of the most popular games of all time, shattering Steam’s record with 3.2 million concurrent players. Erangel was the game’s first battleground and is still part of the rotation, but it’s seen countless updates and changes over the years as PUBG has grown. This new update will take Erangel back to its roots.

The first thing you’ll notice is that the UI has been reverted to the Early Access version of the game. That includes the match start timer, kill/survival UI, original world map and minimap, and old-school font and graphics. As soon as you drop into your first match, you’ll feel like you stepped into a time capsule.

The layout of the map also has been changed back to its original form. Remember when you started each match by rushing to grab your favorite weapon? Well that’s back, with bench weapons reinstated on the starting island. You can also find the Tommy Gun in the Care Package, just like the good old days.

Once you get your hands on that favorite weapon, you might notice it fires a little differently too. While not an exact copy of the old-school design, many guns have reduced recoil to emulate the OG experience (these changes won’t apply to sniper rifles, handguns, or crossbows). You also might notice that it’ll take more time to knock down enemies, like it used to.

In the leadup to the throwback event, publisher Krafton has collaborated with popular PUBG streamers and influencers to celebrate. Shroud is a popular Twitch streamer with more than 10 million followers, and he established himself as one of the best PUBG players in the world early in the game’s lifespan. He became well-known enough in the community that he got to design his own in-game weapon skins.

WackyJacky101 is a PUBG player and content creator who specializes in guides, tutorials, testing, and analysis to help gamers get the most out of their PC games. He created a massive spreadsheet called PUBG Tools with detailed information — including base damage, time between shots, average bullet velocity, and bullet travel time — for every weapon in the game, and he updates it whenever a new weapon is added or changes are made to weapon balancing. It’s become an invaluable resource for players.

Shroud and WackyJacky101 teamed up for a time-traveling video to build excitement for the release of Erangel Classic, and Shroud will put together a team for a Squad Battle event on May 18. The Erangel Classic update will be live for two weeks for all players — May 14–28 on PC and May 23–June 6 on console. The classic map will replace the current Erangel map in Normal Match during those two weeks.

Best Nintendo Switch Deals Today (May 2024)

Nintendo games often come with a hefty price tag, but that doesn’t mean Switch fans can’t find great deals. Throughout the year, there are plenty of sales on games, Switch consoles, and accessories worth checking out. Below, we’ve compiled the very best deals currently available. In particular, you can save huge on future-proof micro SD cards, select Switch OLED models, and even newer games, like Princess Peach: Showtime!. You can also follow @IGNDeals on Twitter or Threads for even more updates on the latest discounts, or check out all our handpicked Switch deals just below.

TL;DR – Best Switch Deals

The Best Nintendo Switch Deals – Navigate to:

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (Physical Edition) Preorder

While waiting for Nintendo’s Switch successor, you can enjoy some absolute classics with the Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition. This is a collection of over 150 challenges from 13 different NES games that’s coming exclusively to Switch on July 18, and you can preorder it today. We’ve included links to the physical edition’s preorder below, but if you’re looking for even more information on digital editions, check out our Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition preorder guide.

Perfect Switch SD Card On Sale Right Now

The best Switch SD card should be fast, reliable, and as future-proof as possible. That last one is important, especially with the Switch successor on the horizon. Therefore, you’re going to want to opt for the latest in SD card tech, which is a micro SDXC UHS-I U3 A2 V30 memory card. That’s a lot of random letters, so to save you a bit of time we’ve left our top suggestions and deals just below for your convenience. To see even more SD card deals, make sure to check out our roundup of the best SD card deals.

More Switch Micro SD Card Deals

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The Best Nintendo Switch Game Deals

At the moment, there are quite a few Switch games discounted that are worth picking up. Some of our favorite deals right now are on some of last year’s biggest hits, like Super Mario Bros. Wonder and WarioWare: Move It!, but you can even get the recently-released Princess Peach: Showtime! at a slight discount at Amazon. You can find even more of our favorites listed below.

More Switch Video Game Deals

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Save on Select Switch OLED Models at Woot and Walmart

Looking to save on some Switch OLED models? We have some good news for you: a few are discounted at the moment at both Walmart and Woot! At the latter, you can score a White OLED model for $314.99, while at Walmart you can get the Neon Red & Neon Blue version for $308.95 and the Mario Red version for $316.97.

When Should You Buy a Nintendo Switch?

The short answer is that you should buy a Nintendo Switch whenever there’s any kind of sale, regardless of the time of year. Amazon will likely offer the same console bundles on any other sale as it will on Black Friday, so there’s no real reason to wait if you’re in need of a Nintendo Switch.

That being said, there are sometimes some unique bundles and promotions during Black Friday that you won’t find any other time of the year. They usually includes additional games (like the infamous Mario Kart 8 bundle) or accessories for free, but quantities tend to be limited. As always, do your research into the seller before you make a purchase.

Where to Buy a Nintendo Switch in 2024

With how expensive gaming is getting in 2024, we’re trying to save you as much money as possible on the games and other tech you actually want to buy. We’ve got great deal roundups available for all major platforms such as PlayStation and Xbox, and keep these updated daily with brand-new offers. If you’re trying to keep costs down while maintaining your favorite hobby, stay tuned for more incredible discounts.

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Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.

Animal Well Contains a Hidden Puzzle That Requires at Least 50 People to Complete

Mind-bending puzzle metroidvania Animal Well just released yesterday, and already a community of players is tearing the game apart to find its many, many, many, many secrets. Right now, that includes a ridiculously complicated puzzle that requires at least 50 different people to participate. And just one day after launch, the community is on the cusp of completing it.

Warning: Massive spoilers for Animal Well’s “third layer” of secrets follow! If you want to get into its multi-tiered puzzle layers yourself, please shift into reverse and come back later! Read our spoiler-free review instead!

Animal Well effectively contains a three-tiered secret hunt of sorts. The first tier just involves collecting four flames and seeing the credits roll, while the second is a very literal Easter egg hunt. The third, which many players may never discover, is about collecting rabbits hidden in increasingly esoteric ways. While reviewing the game, the small Discord community of reviewers I was in managed to find a total of 12 rabbits collectively in two weeks, and we suspect there are at least 20. In the first 24 hours since the game has been out, the community has handlily pushed that total to 14, and seems to be on the cusp of working together as a group to achieve bunny 15 by participating in a bonkers group puzzle.

Early on in the game, players will pass a massive, 40×10 mural of a pixelated rabbit mid-hop. At first, it seems like this mural is just decoration, but once you enter the late-game rabbit hunt, it becomes increasingly suspicious. Poking around further in the same room reveals a control panel that lets players manipulate the mural’s tiles, and digging even deeper will give players access to a 4×4 grid of tiles similar to the ones on the rabbit mural. But taken alone, it’s not clear what the solution to this is or how the 4×4 grid factors into the big rabbit.

It turns out, every player has a different 4×4 grid of tiles, that when put together, seem to form a complete image. That means in order to finish the new image that needs to replace the existing rabbit, the community needs to work together to assemble a total of 50 unique tiles – and that’s assuming no one shows up with a duplicate. Our review Discord managed to put together almost 20 (including tile contributions from developers Billy Basso and Dan Adelman) before the game was out, but it wasn’t near enough on its own to establish anything close to a meaningful picture. However, in just the first 24 hours since release, the community has figured out the mural’s secret and contributed even more tiles. As I type this, a few intrepid secret hunters are playing around in PhotoShop, Canva, and in-game to assemble the tiles into something readable, and it looks like one in particular (Discord user CruM) might be on the verge of cracking it.

Wacky as this might sound, this is somehow not even the most absurd secret Animal Well has to offer. In the same period as the mural was being solved, players have found even more obscure hidden secrets that may lead to more rabbits or even more esoteric collectibles – and we still don’t know what all the bunnies will do when assembled. The dive into the depths of Animal Well has only begun.

If it’s not evident from my obsession with this secret hunt that I loved Animal Well, I also reviewed it for IGN and gave it a 9/10. I called it “a beautiful, multi-layered puzzle box that’s both fun to simply play around with, and an utter delight to slowly crack open, secret by secret.”

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

The Rogue Prince of Persia Delayed to Avoid Hades 2 Competition

Upcoming 2D roguelite The Rogue Prince of Persia has been delayed from its May 14, 2024 release date to avoid competition with Hades 2, which was released into Steam Early Access on May 6.

Developer Evil Empire announced the delay on X/Twitter but assured it wouldn’t push the game too far. Though it won’t reveal an exact release date until May 13, Evil Empire said it would still be in May 2024.

“Seeing as everyone and their mum is playing [Hades 2] (including out entire team and their mums), we have decided to let people have their fun with it before we release The Rogue Prince of Persia,” the developer said.

“While we have every confidence in The Rogue Prince of Persia, it’s not every day that a game in the same genre as you, which is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2024, will release into Early Access a week before you plan to do the same.

“We are not prideful enough to ignore the implications of that, and we truly believe that this short delay is the best decision for us and our Early Access journey.”

Evil Empire said it would keep polishing the game in the meantime by adding “more cool things” and removing bugs, but said it understands the delay is still frustrating. “We can only hold our hands up, apologise, and hope you understand,” the developer said. “It will be worth the wait.”

Hades 2 is certainly proving popular on Steam despite only being in Early Access, having doubled the original game’s concurrent player count in a single day. As a sequel to the critically acclaimed Greek mythology themed roguelite, Hades 2 returns players to that world as they meet legendary figures like Odysseus, Nemesis, and Dora through a blend of storytelling, action gameplay, and dungeon crawling.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

God of War: Ragnarok Reportedly the Next PlayStation Exclusive to Hit PC

God of War: Ragnarok is the next PlayStation exclusive to launch on PC, according to a fresh report.

Reliable PlayStation Store leaker billbil-kun, writing for Dealabs, claimed Sony Santa Monica’s hugely popular action game will soon land on PC, although they failed to offer a release date. An announcement, billbil-kun said, is set for sometime in May.

God of War: Ragnarok launched on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in November 2022 and was a monster hit with critics and players. It became the fastest-selling first-party game in PlayStation history, shifting 5.1 million units in its first week. As of November 2023, God of War: Ragnarok had sold over 15 million copies. Last year’s Valhalla DLC was equally well-received. A PC release this fall would come two years after the game’s console debut.

Sony has form when it comes to launching its games on PC, with Guerrilla’s Horizon Forbidden West, Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part 1 all launching on Steam in recent years. Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima launches on PC on May 16 having launched on PS4 in July 2020.

This is all part of Sony’s increasing push to make more of its PlayStation games by releasing them on PC also, but it has so-far resisted the temptation to follow in Microsoft’s footsteps by launching its console exclusives on PC at the same time. There have been a handful of exceptions, however. This year’s smash hit shooter Helldivers 2 launched on PC and PS5 with cross-play, but it’s worth noting that Arrowhead’s game revolves around co-op and live service, as opposed to single-player story.

Sony is yet to comment on the latest report, but rumors are swirling that it is set to host a State of Play broadcast in May.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Skyrim Speedrunner Reveals Bizarre and Brilliant Method to Reach Level 80 and Kill Infamous Ebony Warrior in Under 10 Minutes

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is a sprawling role-playing game that usually requires hundreds of hours of gameplay before players can reach Level 80 and fight the infamous Ebony Warrior, but one player has condensed all that down to less than 10 minutes.

Speedrunner and YouTuber nucular uploaded his record-breaking Skyrim Ebony Warrior speedrun (which can also be viewed below) where he defeated the foe, which only appears at Level 80, in just nine minutes and 55 seconds. How the heck? Well, it’s complicated.

Speaking to IGN, nucular broke down his extensive strategies and reason for doing so, explaining the run was conceptualised by legendary Skyrim speedrunner Waz, who held the previous world record of 14 minutes and 27 seconds.

But the methods used by Waz could be improved upon, nucular said, as they used an outdated version of something called the Restoration Loop, Skyrim’s best-known method of gaining a bunch of levels really fast.

Restoration Loopy

The Restoration Loop works by drinking several Fortify Restoration potions in order from weakest to strongest, which multiplies their effectiveness exponentially. Items with a Fortify enchantment then get a serious buff due to Fortify being classed as a Restoration effect.

“By crafting and drinking a Fortify Restoration potion, re-equipping your Fortify Alchemy gear, and repeating, your Alchemy and Restoration effect multipliers will buff each other in a positive feedback loop until you can make extremely powerful potions,” nucular explained.

“This will give you an extreme amount of XP; enough to instantly raise your Alchemy from 15 to 100, so you can then reset it to 15, allowing it to be raised again.” Myriad items and gold are required to make these potions, of course, but a couple of simple vendor glitches allow these to be acquired easily.

Levelling in Skyrim is based on these skill increases, and once maxed out skills can be reset to gain experience from them again. Level 80 can therefore easily be attained using this method of gaining and resetting levels, but moving through the myriad animations required to do so can slow things down considerably (in the context of speedruns).

“Since the run had no major mistakes, I needed to get creative if I wanted to beat it.

It’s this element that nucular focused on when he set out to beat Waz’s time. “All of the techniques in Waz’s run are essentially standard practice in Skyrim speedruns,” he said. “Since the run had no major mistakes, I needed to get creative if I wanted to beat it.”

But nucular detected two shortcomings in the strategy. “First, his Fortify Restoration loop could’ve been made faster simply by making more than one potion each time he used the alchemy lab,” he said. “It’s not entirely necessary to re-equip the Fortify Alchemy gear every time you craft a potion, and doing so would require duplicating the ingredients only one or two more times while greatly reducing the number of times Waz needed to go through the slow animation of entering and exiting the alchemy lab.

“Second, as soon as he was able to make extremely strong potions there were faster ways he could use that to power level some skill other than Alchemy. Some others pointed out that he could make a batch of extremely valuable potions at once and sell them individually to repeatedly increase the Speech skill to 100.”

Superstacking

The 14-minute run still required a lot of time, effort, and practice, of course, so no-one attempted to beat it themselves. But nucular’s attention was grabbed when YouTuber Sickliff outlined a technique dubbed “Superstacking”, which was claimed to be “an easier Restoration loop.”

Superstacking has players repeatedly click an enchanted item in their inventory to stack its enchantment effects, meaning if, for example, a Fortify Health +40 Ring was clicked 100 times, the player would gain 4,000 health.

“This sounds extremely useful, and can potentially be used to significantly speed up the Fortify Restoration loop by reducing the number of alchemy cycles, but it has some hefty requirements,” nucular said.

Players must be a Werewolf or Vampire Lord before they’re able to use Superstacking. This is because no pieces of apparel have valid meshes for these character models, and there are four specific items which don’t have valid meshes for specific races. This essentially means certain items can’t be equipped properly while in these forms and a bug is triggered that duplicates the enchantment.

Three of the four items, the Bone Hawk Amulet, Falmer Gauntlets, and the Worn Shrouded Cowl, are relatively hard to get in the context of speedruns, but the fourth is a simple Gold Ring, which can be crafted with just a Gold Ingot. Gold Rings don’t have valid meshes specifically with Khajit Vampires, and this obscure bug would lay the foundation for nucular’s first unconventional speedrunning decision.

Standard practice sees players choose the High Elf race because they have the highest movement speed of all Skyrim characters at 1.08. Male Khajits have a movement speed of 1.0 while female Khajits have a speed of 0.95, meaning nucular’s choice of race already put them at a disadvantage on paper.

So it Begins

Skyrim speedruns begin when players gain control of their character’s movement, “which is just a rule the whole community agreed on a long time ago for convenience, so we don’t have to sit through the whole carriage ride at the beginning of every speedrun,” nucular said.

His unconventional decisions didn’t stop with choosing a Khajit, however, as choosing to become a vampire also set them on a different route. Skyrim speedrunning typically sees the player literally jump out of the starting town of Helgen via a hole the dragon Alduin makes in a tower, instead of having to follow the typical route of moving through the sewers to emerge in a cave near Riverwood.

The usual speedrun route sees players escape to a nearby cave and use a technique called Load Warping to essentially trick Skyrim into thinking their bound hands from the start of the game have been untied by replicating an old save. The player can therefore continue as normal, running for a horse in anticipation of the next step.

The new technique changes things up though, as nucular instead heads straight for Haemar’s Shame to perform the Load Warp, as this is where he can become a vampire. While this is a lot farther than the usual spot, it’s right next to a horse “so it’s actually only a few seconds slower”, nucular said.

Horses aren’t needed for their natural speed increase, however, as by this point nucular has already performed a sprint glitch by pressing sprint, quick saving, releasing sprint, and quickloading in succession. This allows jumping while sprinting and stops stamina being consumed too. Horses are instead required for a movement glitch dubbed Horse Tilting, which lets the player move at supersonic speed across the map as long as there’s a body of water at the end for safe landing.

Now nucular had to decide on a destination, but as Gold Ingots or Gold Rings aren’t sold by any blacksmiths or jewellers or even equipped by any of Skyrim’s non-player characters, he had to think outside of the box again. Thankfully, an island to the north east of Windhelm has a random pile of Gold Ingots sitting on it.

Unprecedented Levels

The route to this island came with the added benefit of passing over Windhelm, meaning nucular unlocked the city’s fast travel point while shooting over it on a sound barrier-breaking horse. He therefore could travel back to Windhelm immediately after obtaining the Gold Ingots and carry out the rest of the speedrun there.

Now it was time for nucular’s own version of power levelling. It started the same as standard speedruns do, by brewing some potions, but instead of using the Restoration Loop, nucular used the exploit to make one super powered Fortify Smithing potion and one super powered Fortify Health potion, raising his Alchemy skill to Level 100 in the process. He then used the smithing potion to craft an incredibly powerful weapon (taking his Smithing to Level 100 too), gave it to a hired follower, provoked them, and survived the incredible hits with the Fortify Health potion.

“I could level my Block and Heavy Armor skills to 100 in a single hit,” nucular said. “This reduced the number of times I needed to open the Level Up menu from 18 to eight, since I’d already levelled Alchemy and Smithing to 100, so I just needed to level Block and Heavy Armor eight times each.

“I could quickly reset them both too in the same menu, because they’re conveniently right next to each other in the skill tree. I already made my super weapons, so once I hit Level 80 I can just walk outside and one shot the Ebony Warrior.”

This is an infamous, incredibly strong enemy in Skyrim who only appears once players hit Level 80, challenging them to a duel to the death. But instead of accepting his invite to meet later for the battle, nucular’s single attack brings the Ebony Warrior down before he even gets a chance to speak.

Using this unconventional strategy, nucular achieved a time of 14:27 and thus achieved a new world record for the Ebony Warrior speedrun, but unsatisfied with that alone, he then dropped it to 13:50, 11:47, and 11:25 in just a few days. But crossing the 10 minute mark required a bit more tweaking.

Just Riften

After experimenting with Horse Tilting further, nucular discovered a route which would take him right over Shor’s Stone, unlocking its fast travel point, on the way to the Gold Ingot island. Riften guards patrol this area, so doing something illegal would have nucular quickly taken to the city’s jail.

There was some risks with going to Riften though. Only one vendor sells enchanted gear, and just one at a time, meaning if nucular couldn’t get the Fortify Alchemy equipment on the first attempt he’d lose time resetting it. Additionally, the only follower in Riften is the magic-wielding Marcurio, meaning nucular would instead have to reverse pickpocket a regular NPC and provoke them into attacking, which could take some time.

Some of these concerns were soon mitigated, however, as the blacksmith in Shor’s Stone actually had a much better chance of stocking the required gear than the one in Riften. The city also has easily accessible ingredients for the Fortify Health and Fortify Smithing potions.

Reverse pickpocketing an NPC, meaning placing an item on them instead of taking one away, was still a challenge though. “It was surprisingly difficult to find a suitable NPC for this,” nucular said. “You want them to have a maximum Confidence value so they don’t flee from fighting you, but they can’t be already holding a weapon that they prefer it over the weapon you give them.

“I settled on the blacksmith in Shor’s Stone since he was right next to a grindstone where I could make the super smithed weapons, but since he doesn’t have a maximum Confidence value, I had to buy the Courage spell and cast it on him so he kept attacking me.”

But despite these additional complexities, nucular’s strategy worked, and he was able to drop the time to 10:17 before finally reaching his goal of getting under 10 minutes with the 9:55 final time. This is without loading times, a common mitigation in speedrunning communities so PC performance doesn’t affect results, but with loading times it came to 10:52.

“Getting under nine minutes without loads (and under 10 minutes including loads) is possible with my current route, and I do have a few ideas for how a time under eight minutes could happen eventually, but I’m taking a break from Ebony Warrior for now,” nucular said. “If someone beats my time, I’ll come back.”

What’s Next?

In the meantime, nucular has his sights set on more of Waz’s records. “I’m going to beat as many of Waz’s times as I can,” he said. “A lot of his speedruns that are still world records actually used outdated techniques.”

But beyond that, nucular wants to plant his flag in the first serious take on an all Achievement run of Skyrim. This “is a category that no one has really taken seriously before,” he said. “No one has taken the time to plan out such a long category before. At least no experienced Skyrim speedrunner has done so, so I’ll be the first.”

An all Achievement run, as the name suggests, means unlocking all 75 Steam achievements for Skyrim, a feat which takes 80 to 100 hours of dedicated regular gameplay. It’s unclear how long nucular will bring it down to, but it will certainly be a lot shorter than that, and you can keep up with his progress (and other speedruns) on his YouTube page here.

Speedruns are one of the many ways players are still entertaining themselves with the 12 year old game. But as The Elder Scrolls 6 is still several years away, Skyrim will have to last a little longer. New technology is one way to keep things interesting, with one player creating a mod which lets their Twitch chat voice NPCs and another adding haptic feedback suits to an already $15,000 set up, letting them feel real pain when hurt in game.

The most sentimental of fans recently booted up their old Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s to “retire” their original characters too, showing how much Skyrim has remained in player consciousness in its more than a decade on the market.

In our 9/10 review of the beloved RPG, IGN said: “Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced.”

Image and Video Credit: nucular on YouTube

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.