Category: Video Games

Ubisoft has already come under fire for single-player game Star Wars Outlaws having a Season Pass, but fans are expressing frustration once again upon noticing its highly anticipated Jabba the Hutt mission is locked behind it.

As reported by Spanish outlet Area Jugones, Ubisoft’s website outlining the contents of the Season Pass —an optional extra to the $70 / £70 standard game so far only available through its $109.99 gold edition and even more expensive $129.99 ultimate edition — reveals it includes access to the Jabba’s Gambit mission at launch.

“Play the exclusive Jabba’s Gambit mission at launch,” the Season Pass explainer reads. “Just as Kay is putting together a crew for the Canto Bight heist, she receives a job from Jabba the Hutt himself. Turns out that ND-5 owes Jabba a debt from years ago, and he has come to collect.”

It’s unclear how much of the Jabba the Hunt content will be locked behind the Season Pass, but Ubisoft has said in the past players can work for and even betray Jabba as the head of one of Star Wars Outlaws’ criminal factions. It’s now unclear whether this content comes at a premium or if it’s a part of the standard game.

The mission description very much sounds like the introduction to working for Jabba, however, and at the very least, this confirms $70 / £70 won’t give players access to all of Star Wars Outlaws. IGN has asked Ubisoft for clarification and comment.

“And that’s why you don’t defend these sh**ty early access editions with arguments like, ‘it’s not taking anything away from other players, it’s just to play a few days earlier’,” Zephy said on ResetEra.

“I get missions and stuff being added after release, free or paid depending on the scope and what have you, but I think it’s a jerk move to lock stuff that’s otherwise going to be there day one behind an extra paywall,” added Temascos.

Star Wars Outlaws was revealed in 2023 as a scoundrel adventure set between Star Wars: Episode 5 – The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode 6 – Return of the Jedi. It stars Key Vess, her droid partner ND-5, and her beastie companion Nix as they attempt to carve out their own success during Star Wars’ golden era of criminal activity.

It arrives August 27, 2024 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC, with the $70 / £70 Standard Edition joined by the aforementioned $110 / £105 Gold Edition, which comes with three days of early access alongside the Season Pass.

An even more expensive, digital-only Ultimate Edition comes with both of these perks alongside cosmetics (the Rogue Infiltrator Bundle and the Sebacc Shark bundle) alongside a digital art book.

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

The boss of Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has ruled out a transmog system coming to the hit PC and PlayStation 5 co-op shooter, insisting: “it doesn’t make sense.”

Ever since Helldivers 2’s explosive launch in February, some players have called for a transmog system for the game’s myriad armor pieces. Transmog, short for transmogrify, itself a portmanteau of “transfigure” and “modify”, would theoretically let players change the appearance of armor pieces without affecting their stats.

Helldivers 2 armor does feature gameplay affecting stats, and some are deemed more “meta” than others. One of the most popular armor pieces gives players a 50% chance not to die when taking lethal damage, for example.

Responding to a user on X/Twitter, Arrowhead CEO Johan Pilestedt said a transmog system wouldn’t make sense for Helldivers 2, and put that down to a commitment to realism.

“We are not doing transmog,” Pilestedt said. “It doesn’t make sense – equipment looks different because it has different effects. Swapping one for the other is like having an apple that tastes like bacon or the other way around.”

While Pilestedt’s comments are sure to disappoint some Helldivers 2 players, it is consistent with the philosophy underpinning the game. Things work as they look like they should, from the way weapons fire to enemy weak points. Even loading into a mission and dropping down onto a planet is rooted in this idea that everything you see is happening in real-time and for a reason. Indeed, much of Helldivers 2’s eye-catching emergent gameplay stems from this design. A transmog system would perhaps undermine Helldivers 2’s thus far crystal clear visual communication.

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.

The success of Prime Video’s Fallout TV show has spilled over into the video games upon which it is based, boosting player numbers in even decades old titles.

Steam data tracker SteamDB reported that Bethesda’s Fallout games have collectively more than doubled their concurrent players on Steam with the release of the Fallout TV series. That’s for Fallout 4, released in November 2015, Fallout New Vegas, released in October 2010, and Fallout 76, released in April 2020. The boost is significant enough to propel Fallout 76 to a new peak concurrent players Steam record of 39,455 — four years after it came out.

Even the older, non-Bethesda developed Fallout games are enjoying a resurgence, albiet more modest. Fallout 2 has a new Steam concurrent peak of 1,062 players, achieved on April 14, and the first Fallout video game hit over 2,300 concurrents on the same day.

While Steam maker Valve makes player concurrents public, equivalent stats for games on console and PC are unavailable. But it seems safe to assume the Fallout games are enjoying a boost everywhere they are played, given the breakout success of the Fallout TV show.

Indeed, Fallout 4 is the top-selling video game on Steam by revenue, ahead of Counter-Strike 2 and Helldivers 2. Fallout 4: Game of the Year Edition is fourth, Fallout 76 is fifth, and Fallout New Vegas is 11th. Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition is 14th. Fallout 76 is up a whopping 41 places in the chart.

Social media is littered with anecdotal reports of people who have finished the Fallout TV show and are now either jumping back into a Fallout game they already own, or buying one to experience more of the post-apocalyptic world.

Fallout has more than doubled its concurrent players on Steam with the release of the Fallout TV series. pic.twitter.com/eE0dQiYXQW

— SteamDB (@SteamDB) April 14, 2024

Bethesda was ready to capitalize on the expected renewed interest in all things Fallout with a number of promotions and sales across the series. It also announced a release date for the hotly anticipated next-gen update for Fallout 4, although that has had consequences for the equally hotly anticipated DLC-sized mod, Fallout London.

Elsewhere, we know Bethesda has Fallout 5 in its long-term schedule, but don’t expect that to come out for many years, given The Elder Scrolls 6 is next after Starfield and that itself isn’t due out until at least 2018.

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.

The creators of the long-awaited Fallout London mod have delayed it indefinitely out of fear that the Fallout 4 next-gen update will break it.

Last week, Bethesda announced an April 25 release date for the long-awaited next-gen update for Fallout 4, upon which the ambitious, DLC-sized Fallout London is based. That’s just two days after Fallout London’s already announced April 23 release date.

As modders have experienced in the past, Bethesda game updates have a tendency to break existing mods, and it’s exactly that fear that sparked an announcement from a clearly exacerbated Fallout London mod team.

“We’ve just been tweaking and testing non-stop in order to get things as stable as we can for you all in time for that release,” said Team FOLON project lead Dean Carter in an announcement video. “But with the new update dropping just 48 hours later, the past four years of our work stand to just simply break.”

The expectation is the Fallout 4 update will break the Fallout 4 script extender, upon which Fallout London and many other Fallout 4 mods rely. And so Team FOLON must wait for the creators of the Fallout 4 script extender to issue compatability fixes of their own before it can hit the go button on Fallout London. But without knowing when those modders, who are all volunteers, will have the time to deal with the problem, a new Fallout London release date is impossible to announce.

Carter is clearly disappointed with the delay (“this pains us, honestly, it really, really hurts us”). April 23 is St. George’s Day, the celebration of England’s patron saint, and Fallout London would have enjoyed a nice tie-in if it had hit its announced release date. Similarly, April 23 is the day Fallout London begins in-game, so players who jumped in on St. George’s Day in real-life would have been aligned with the game.

Carter also claimed that Team FOLON does not have a line of communication with Bethesda, which perhaps explains how the Fallout 4 next-gen update release date blindsided the modders. “Bethesda has never reached out to us during our entire tenure,” Carter said. “We’ve never had an in-depth conversation with them. Ever.”

Ultimately, Carter sounded philosophical about what’s happened to Fallout London. He said any potential engine improvements and performance upgrades will benefit the mod, letting the team “push the engine even harder than we’ve already pushed it, so we’re gonna get these great quality-of-life improvements all in the mod.” One example Carter provided is widescreen compatability, which was previously up in the air (the Fallout 4 update for PC adds widescreen and ultra-widescreen support).

Carter concluded the announcement with a reference to that classic Fallout line: “War. War never changes.” “As soon as we’ve fixed it, it’ll drop,” Carter said, “but yeah, Bethesda. Bethesda never changes.”

Fallout London is, as you’d expect, not set in America but in London, and as such explores a new setting for the series as well as pre-war European history, and the effects the Resource Wars had on the class structured society of pre-war Britain. Players will engage with everything from “stuffy parliamentary aristocrats to a resurrection of the Knights of the Round Table to an uncompromising cult of revolutionaries.” Neil Newbon, the actor behind Baldur’s Gate 3‘s much-loved vampire companion Astarion, plays an unannounced role, as does Anna Demetriou, who voiced Sophia in A Plague Tale: Requiem and Dorys in Final Fantasy 16.

When the creators of Fallout London say it’s a DLC-sized mod, they mean it. It currently weighs in at around 30 to 40 GB, which makes it too big for Fallout 4 on console and even Nexus Mods itself. GOG, which specializes in selling DRM-free PC games, has apparently stepped in to make Fallout London available to Fallout 4 owners across GOG, Steam, and potentially the Epic Games Store, after the next-gen update goes live.

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.