Category: IGN

Just before the upcoming dungeon crawler Dark and Darker was slated to launch a playtest, its team was served a cease and desist letter and a DMCA takedown in March. Now, development team Ironmace is going ahead with another playtest as originally scheduled, albeit via an interesting method.

Today, Ironmace began encouraging people to participate in Dark and Darker’s playtest through torrents made available in a message in the game’s Discord server. The playtest will be available until April 19.

“Rest assured that we are working around the clock to safeguard the continuance of Dark and Darker,” the team’s Discord message, which was reposted on Reddit, reads. “Unfortunately, due to the complexities of our situation, especially across international lines, it is taking time to resolve the Steam situation. In order for us to keep our promise to our fans we’ve had to go old school this time.”

Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0 and Modern Warfare 2 Season 3 is now out, and it introduces quite a few cosmetics and a new battle pass. However, a few of the update’s paid cosmetics grant players advantages in Warzone’s DMZ mode, and some fans aren’t happy.

On April 12, Activision introduced a new cosmetic bundle to Warzone 2.0. In what Activision referred to as a “DMZ boost,” the game’s new $12 Bomb Squad bundle gives players a skin for Fender, a SAKIN MG38 LMG blueprint, an active duty slot, a sticker, and an emblem.

But, as PC Gamer pointed out, the boosts that this bundle provides in DMZ, the game’s extraction mode, are quite valuable. Players who equip Fender’s skin are given a medium backpack, and the LMG has a cooldown that’s much shorter in comparison to free guns.

Because of the advantage that this paid bundle provides, fans are taking to Twitter to express their disappointment with the game becoming “pay-to-win.”

They added a Pay To Win bundle to DMZ which gives you access to a 4th Operator slot, a PERMANENT Medium Bag when you use the Operator skin in the bundle and a blueprint that has a separate, shorter 15min cooldown.

This is wrong & completely tone deaf.pic.twitter.com/vCgO3aovh4

— Westie (@MrProWestie) April 12, 2023

There has been several bundles added with Season 03 that give players a benefit in DMZ, practically making DMZ a pay to win experience. Activision should absolutely reconsider and stop attempting to grab sales based on P2W mechanics. This is leaning very similar to locking… pic.twitter.com/FLhybnN9X7

— CharlieIntel (@charlieINTEL) April 13, 2023

DMZ, Warzone 2.0’s extraction mode, is still in beta, but it seems that Activision might stick with this model going forward — according to a datamine on Reddit, more bundles that provide DMZ advantages could be on their way.

We gave Warzone 2.0 an 8 in our review, calling it “a positive update to Call of Duty’s battle royale mode, even with few drawbacks of its own.” In January, Microsoft announced it was “confident” it could bring Call of Duty to the Nintendo Switch, though Sony has raised concerns about Xbox sabotaging the franchise’s performance on PlayStation.

Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve contributed to sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.

Spotify is shutting down Heardle, its musical version of Wordle less than a year after acquiring it.

The music streaming service bought Heardle for an undisclosed amount in July 2022 shortly after it was born out of the Wordle craze. Today, players were shocked to find the following announcement that popped up when logging into the game Friday morning: “Heardle is going away on May 5th.”

The rest of the announcement read, “Thanks for playing Heardle, but unfortunately we have to say goodbye. From May 5th, Heardle will no longer be available. If you have stats that you would like to save, make sure you go to your stats and take a screenshot by May 4th. It won’t be possible to access them after May 4th.”

A Spotify spokesperson confirmed the company is sunsetting the music guessing game in a statement: “After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to say goodbye to Heardle as we focus our efforts on other features for music discovery.”

Some fans had some snarky responses to Heardle’s demise, with more than a few feeling that the service had gone downhill since being acquired by Spotify.

Did #Heardle run out of Imagine Dragons songs? pic.twitter.com/XrfXuWkAFA

— Emily (@BallroomPink) April 14, 2023

The end of Heardle

Spotify’s decision to sunset Heardle comes after the company made sweeping changes to the streaming platform in the past month, from TikTok-style discovery feeds for music and podcasts to the AI DJ, which figures out what kind of music subscribers like and plays it for them based on the algorithm. Heardle hasn’t received any updates, and its playerbase declined significantly.

Heardle launched in February 2022, putting a musical twist on the uber-popular Worldle by giving players six attempts to guess the name of the song and the artist that sang it. When Spotify bought the music game last summer, the company said Heardle is seen “as more than a trivia game: It’s also a tool for musical discovery.” In other words, whether players guess the song right or wrong, the answer will show up at the end of the game and allow them to play that song on Spotify and save it to their playlists.

“We are always looking for innovative and playful ways to enhance music discovery and help artists reach new fans,” Spotify’s global head of music Jeremy Erlich said at the time. “Heardle has proven to be a really fun way to connect millions of fans with songs they know and love and with new songs … and a way to compete with their friends as to who has the best musical knowledge. Since its debut, the game has quickly built a loyal following, and it aligns with our plans to deepen interactivity across the Spotify ecosystem.”

Spotify won’t lay off any employees as a result of Heardle’s closure.

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

Editor’s Note: The war in Ukraine is an ongoing, painful and emotive topic. IGN urges community members to be respectful when engaging in conversation around this subject and does not endorse harassment of any kind.

With its operations in Russia wound down to the bare minimum, Nintendo still has some obligations to customers in the country who bought Nintendo products before the company left. But according to a recent official statement, Nintendo seems to be looking at a fairly controversial figure to form that partnership.

Questions about Nintendo’s Russian operations began thanks to a report by Russian outlet Kommersant (via Eurogamer), which pointed out the sale of Metroid Prime Remastered in Russia thanks to a company called Achivka. Its appearance on the market was surprising, given that Nintendo wound down operations in the country over a year ago following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including the shutdown of the Russian eshop.

Achivka is owned by Yasha Haddazhi, who also happens to be the head of Nintendo Russia, and a fairly controversial figure even without the side import business. Back in 2018, fans called for Haddazhi’s removal as Nintendo Russia head after footage circulated of him verbally abusing hosts of a Russian Mario Kart stream. Additional Russian language reports suggested further abusive behavior toward employees, especially inappropriate remarks made to women who worked with him, and at the time Nintendo confirmed it was investigating his conduct. While the results of the investigation were never published, Haddazhi clearly remained in his role at least until the shuttering of Nintendo Russia last year.

Nevertheless, Nintendo now appears to be considering an ongoing relationship with him. In a statement to Eurogamer, Nintendo reaffirmed its cessation of Russian operations except for “legal, contractual, and administrative requirements.” Its Russian employees contracts have ended, but Nintendo did not say one way or another whether or not Haddazhi was still in his role.

Blizzard is making a ton of changes to Diablo 4 based on feedback provided by players who participated in its two betas.

Combining this feedback with actual gameplay data allowed Blizzard to review and make changes to Diablo 4 in time for its official launch on June 6.

Minimizing backtracking

The first thing changing is dungeon layouts, with Blizzard saying one of the most common pieces of feedback it received was around backtracking within certain dungeons. Multiple dungeons have since been optimized to reduce this, including Caldera Gate, Defilied Catacombs, Derelict Lodge, Forbidden City, Hoarfrost Demise, Immortal Emanation, Kor Dragan Battacks, Maulwood, and Rimescar Caverns.

“Our primary goal with the layout changes was to reduce certain kinds of backtracking which detract from a player’s experience,” Blizzard said. Structure objectives that previously existed down side paths have now been repositioned to the main area, for example.

Dungeon events will also occur much more frequently in the final version, as Blizzard has increased the chance for an event to spawn in dungeons from 10% to 60%. Quality of life improvements were made too, such as removing the wait time when depositing an Animus, increasing movement speed when carrying Ancient Statues and equivalent items, and adding a mini-map ping to newly open doors.

“While our dungeons offer a variety of objectives to complete, player feedback stated that the action of completing each objective felt tedious,” Blizzard said. “We hope that providing bonuses, such as the increase to mobility while carrying certain objective items, will streamline and vary the experience of completing objectives. This adjustment is merely a starting point, and we intend to extend this philosophy to keys in a future update.”

Cellars have seen similar changes, as Blizzard has increase the chance for a dungeon event to occur in Cellars. They also now consistently reward players with a chest upon completion. Issues have also been fixed where Cellars would prematurely be marked as completed and the guaranteed elite monster would be absent from the Cellar.

Classes are also changing

Changes have been made to classes too. The Barbarian has received a passive 10% damage reduction, its Whirlwind skill now deals more damage and costs more Fury, and the Double Swing enhancement refunds its full Firy cost when used on Stunned or Knocked Down enemies.

The Druid’s Companion skills will now deal heavily increased damage, all Ultimate skills have had their cooldowns reduced, the usability of Maul and Pulverize has been improved, and using a non-Shapeshifting skill will now transform a Druid back to their human form.

The Necromancer’s summoned minions will die more often, meaning players will need to utilize corpses more often. Meanwhile, many Book of the Dead stat bonuses have been increased, the Corpse Explosion skill has had its damage reduced, and the brightness of Skeletal Warriors and Mages has been lowered.

The Rogue’s Subterfuge skill have had their bonuses increased alongside multiple passive skills, while all Imbuement skills have had their cooldowns increased.

Finally, the Sorcerer’s Charged Bolt’s damage has been increased and the mana cost reduced, Chain Lightning’s damage has been reduced, and the cooldown of the Incinerate skill’s enchantment bonus has been reduced. Firewalls will also now spawn underneath enemies more frequently when using its enchantment bonus and the Lucky Hit chance has been increased for the Meteor skill’s enchantment bonus.

“Whenever we introduce changes to our Classes, it is with the goal of making both them and their Skills feel impactful and powerful,” Blizzard said. “Your feedback has helped us uphold this ideal.

“Some players have adeptly noticed that certain Skills were too powerful. One of our goals for Skills is to have them be interesting to wield and interactive in terms of itemization and combat feel. We’ve made some changes to help in this regard, with one example being the Necromancer’s Minions. We’ve made a change that makes them more vulnerable in combat, which will make raising the dead a more active component of the Necromancer’s gameplay. Launch is just the first step of our class balance journey, and you can expect further updates that iterate on this pillar of Diablo 4.”

A better quality of life.

Blizzard is making further quality of life changes alongside fixing a ton of known issues in Diablo 4 like the Butcher boss becoming unresponsive. A lot of these changes are coming to the game’s user interface, as Blizzard is shifting things around to allow for a better experience.

This starts with the Chat box now being displayed on the left side of the screen when using the centred action bar configuration. A character’s stats will also now be displayed by default when players click the Materials and Stats button within their inventory, while the Move and Interact inputs can now be mapped to one button while the Primary Attack input is mapped to a secondary button. Finally, the text is being changed to a new serif font.

Blizzard will discuss these changes and more in a developer update livestream taking place on April 20 at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 7pm UK. Game director Joe Shely, associate game director Joseph Piepiora, and associate director of community Adam Fletcher will also share details about the endgame.

The betas, that were a struggle to even join for some people for both KFC and queue time related issues, saw the Sorcerer and Necromancer classes played most, though a total of 46,924,644 deaths were recorded in total in more than 60 million hours played.

Despite all the talk of launch, Blizzard also shared recently that Diablo 4’s Battle Pass will take around 80 hours to complete.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer and acting UK news editor. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Destiny 2 developer Bungie has revealed a hardened policy designed to deal with cheaters who use third party peripherals that “manipulate the game” to provide an unfair player versus player advantage.

“Our community has grown increasingly frustrated by a form of cheating that uses third-party peripherals with the intent to manipulate the game client,” read a post on the Bungie website spotted by GI.biz “These devices are plugged into a computer or console, where they can, for example, execute simple scripts or trick the game into giving you extra aim assist.”

Bungie made a point of not naming the creators of the offending hardware, but stressed that it would hand out restrictions, warnings, and bans to individuals who use “external aids” specifically designed to “gain an advantage over other players”.

These aids include “programmable controllers, keyboard and mouse adapters, advanced macros, or automation via artificial intelligence” that improve a players ability to control the game by, for example, reducing weapon recoil or increasing aim assist.

However, the Destiny 2 developer stressed that it’s trying to balance protecting its community from cheaters while making sure that the maximum amount of people can play the game. To this end the policy notes that “simply using an accessibility aide to play Destiny 2 where a player could not play otherwise” would not be a violation of the policy.

Bungie often takes a hard stance with Destiny 2 cheat peddlers. Back in 2022 the developer won a legal battle against the company Elite Boss Tech for developing cheat codes for the game, forcing it to stop creating the software and to pay out an eye watering $13.5 million in damages.

Later in 2023 Bungie won another $4,396,322 from cheat makers AimJunkies, who were responsible for creating and selling aimbots for use in Destiny 2. The developer has since filed yet another lawsuit, this time against the company LaviCheats, in which it is pursuing $6.7 million in damages.

Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer

Like its predecessor, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is a game packed full of massive, striking environments and memorable creatures. It seems only fitting that the game receives an art book that delves deeper into the design and evolution of such an ambitious Star Wars project.

IGN can exclusively reveal The Art of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the latest in Dark Horse’s ever-growing lineup of video game-themed art books. Check out the cover art below:

The Art of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is a 192-page hardcover book featuring a mixture of concept art and developer commentary on the game. The art featured within ranges from early concept designs to final renders of the games environments, characters, weapons and ships.

In addition, Dark Horse will be releasing a Deluxe Edition version of The Art of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The Deluxe Edition includes additional bonuses like metallic printed elements, a protective slipcase and a folio with an exclusive lithograph print.

The standard hardcover is priced at $49.99, while the Deluxe Edition is priced at $99.99. Both versions will be released on December 12, 2023 in bookstores and December 13 in comic shops.

Dark Horse also recently revealed The Art of Octopath Traveler, which will also hit stores in December.

EA recently released the final gameplay trailer for Jedi: Survivor ahead of the game’s releaselater in April. In our preview of the game, IGN said: Our “main takeaway from roughly five hours with the upcoming sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, is that it felt like [we were] systematically crossing off the issues I had with Fallen Order.”

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

A good strategy game is ultimately one about choice. Which units to create, where to allocate resources, which strategies to implement. The right decisions lead to victory, while the wrong ones force you to adapt and adjust or else suffer bitter defeat. I found myself at the crossroads of these decisions time and again as I played Minecraft Legends, Mojang and Blackbird Interactive’s simplified take on an action-RTS. It doesn’t always do a perfect job opening the door of this often intimidating genre to a wider audience, but the way it largely manages to streamline things without losing most of those important tactical moments is what makes Minecraft Legends work.

Simplicity is one of Minecraft Legends greatest strengths. Evil Piglins from the Nether are invading, because that’s what evil Piglins do, and it’s your job to build up the forces needed to drive them back. You’ll do that by exploring a procedurally generated continent for resources, allies, and secrets to discover, destroying Piglin bases and defending friendly settlements from the invaders as you do. There are no levels, and the minimalistic story is mostly just cutscenes announcing the arrival of larger Piglin forces. Once you’ve cleared all the Piglins out, victory is yours, and you can start another run from scratch on a brand new map.

Minecraft’s iconic blocky style has been well established across its many spin-offs and adaptations by now, but it’s still extremely well implemented here. The entire world looks like it was pulled straight from the main Minecraft series, with landscapes, NPCs, and blocks of ore that are identical to their counterparts. It all looks great thanks to a vibrant color palette and some excellent lighting – as is Minecraft tradition, nights bring added danger from aggressive enemies, but it’s hard to dread their arrival when it’s preceded by gorgeous sunsets over stunning vistas.

Unlike Starcraft or Command and Conquer, where you occupy the seat of some far off overseer commanding a complex legion of forces from above that landscape, Legends puts on you the field of battle directly similar to the Overlord series, giving you control of a warrior fighting alongside a small squad of summonable units. There’s a handful of interesting unit types, each with a very clear niche that they fill. Cobblestone Golems have a lot of health but aren’t great at dealing damage quickly, Plank Golems are the opposite, Mossy Golems heal, etc. The fact that it is so straightforward is great, as it makes it easy to jump right into the action without a steep learning curve or thick manual to memorize.

The commands you give your soldiers tend to boil down to “go kill things over there” or “follow me” and are equally easy to issue whether you’re using a gamepad or mouse controls. That’s partly thanks to armies being made of dozens of units rather than hundreds, which keeps things manageable. It’s genuinely fun to smash the gate of a Piglin Fort and send in a horde of your own to run roughshod over everything in its path.

There are some drawbacks to that simplicity, however. In theory, certain units work great as counters to specific enemies – Skeleton Archers, for example, should be the go-to choice for dealing damage to the massive flail-wielding Portal Guards from a distance. But abundant resources and the ability to instantly spawn forces sometimes makes it easier to just overwhelm enemies with pure numbers, taking a lot of the thought out of certain battles.

It’s also disappointing that there’s no way to create battle groups of specific units – you can command all of a certain unit type at once, but not custom groups of mixed troops. It would have been great fun to be able to quickly issue orders to a squad of damage spongy zombies mixed with healing units to push the front line, supporting them with a group of archers protected by Plank Golems raining pain upon the Piglins. But that level of fine control isn’t really feasible, and that’s a shame.

Fortunately, the fact that you participate directly in battles brings with it a chance to make some clever choices. As the hero, you are significantly more powerful than any individual soldier in your army, always mounted and armed with a sword that swings in wide arcs. This opens up opportunities to do things like create swarms of Cobblestone Golems for an invasion, then tell them to focus on destroying buildings while you protect them, or send units to guard one side of a friendly settlement while you cover the other. It’s the kind of mental push-pull that makes strategy games so much fun.

This wouldn’t be a Minecraft game without gathering resources and building, and that’s translated in a slick and intuitive way. Allays are small fairy-like creatures that assist with these tasks – one type focuses on resource gathering, letting you point them at a grove of trees or a quarry filled with ore and strip the resources completely independently, while the other carries out building instructions, quickly assembling structures like golem spawners or arrow towers, provided the resources are available. It’s an exceptionally easy system to use that works in a very natural way, letting you go from idea to construction with just two button presses or mouse clicks.

The Piglin army will attack a settlement most nights, with each new assault highlighted on the world map, but quickly assembling walls and gates to hold them back is a breeze thanks to those industrious Allays. Figuring out the best way to build each base is a lot of fun – adding structures like an Architect Hut to repair buildings or a Masonry to convert wooden defensive structures to stone is a constant drain on resources, but they can lead to a much more fortified town that’s better able to withstand the rampaging armies of the Nether. The choice of whether to forage for more resources to keep building or hunker down for the coming battle is compelling, and I relished each opportunity to make and execute a plan.

The independent operation of your Allays feeds into the strategy elements of combat in interesting ways, too. I would often find myself defending a settlement from an invading force of Piglins and command walls be built as I fought. If wood supplies ran low, I would have to ride to a nearby forest and start the collection process, letting both sets of Allays work while I continued the fight. But Piglins will go out of their way to target the fragile Allays, keeping this mid-battle backup from being too overpowered by forcing me to think twice before leaving them unprotected.

A structure called the Well of Fates acts as your primary home base. This is where you start, the default respawn location when you die, and where you do most of your upgrading. Destroyed Piglin structures drop Prismarine, which is used to construct upgrade structures that allow you to do things like command more troops or store more materials in general. There’s a limited number of places these can be built, and I found myself sweating the decisions about whether to increase the size of my army, open up opportunities to mine specialty ores like coal and redstone, or add more Allays to expedite resource gathering.

The Piglins themselves don’t sit on their hands (hooves?) waiting for you to build up armies to come smash them, either. They produce bases and outposts of their own, with increasing complexity as time goes on. What begins as some quick pillaging of a few buildings at the start eventually becomes long sieges of intricate fortresses that can take multiple in-game days. Whether to press the advantage or turn your attention toward defending vulnerable areas elsewhere is a constant mental struggle that creates a nice sense of tension.

Unfortunately, the difficulty curve has a few kinks in it. The last few hours of my 16-hour playthrough slowed to a crawl as enemies with massive amounts of health joined the fray, like the heavily armored Pigmadillos. It’s great that enemies with unique designs and attacks still continue to show up, but the size of the armies they fill becomes a slog. This is an even bigger problem when attacking an enemy base on a high plateau – assembling an attack force only to realize half of them fell off a cliff on the march up due to suspect pathfinding is frustrating. Legends loses some of its potential as an onboarding opportunity for the strategy genre because of these endgame struggles.

Fortunately, good construction options can mitigate some of those pain points. Siege tools like the Redstone Launcher, which acts somewhat like a long range cannon fixture, can help clear a landing point, and crafting bridges or stairs to cross gaps and ascend hills is a snap. The Cure Netherrack ability that slowly transforms the corrupted ground under Piglin bases is a standout difference maker, too, allowing the assembly of buildings and golem spawners inside enemy territory. These are fun ways to turn the tide, but it can be a little uncharacteristically daunting that making the most of every single tool in your belt feels like the only viable option to clear the highest level outposts.

Minecraft Legends is fun solo, but it excels in multiplayer. The entire campaign can be played in co-op with up to three other friends, where resources are split but everyone has full autonomy to act independently. Dividing tasks like resource gathering, base building, and combat alleviates many frustrations, and it’s just a lot of fun to charge into battle with your allies. It’s the best way to play, and sharing the elation of victory with friends doesn’t get old.

PVP, meanwhile, has an interesting wrinkle to it: two teams go head-to-head on a randomized map, with players on each team controlling a hero while sharing resources and golems. Matchmade games are designed for 3v3 or 4v4, but private games can have any mix of up to four players on either side. One game my team worked to destroy Piglin bases early so we could afford upgrades quickly, focusing on making the most powerful army possible before clashing with other humans. Another game we were wiped out when our opponents stealthily built a Redstone Launcher within range of our base, focusing almost entirely on defending that while it crushed our structures. The strategic elements that other humans can bring are much more interesting than facing the CPU.