Category: Video Games

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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.