Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League released into early access for owners of the Deluxe preorder edition earlier this week, granting armchair supervillains prepared to shell out £100 or $100 a headstart on players buying the regular edition, which launches this Friday 2nd February. Or at least, that was the idea.
Like many an online-required live service game before, Suicide Squad’s premium access release has been marred by technical bugs and glitches, the most severe of which saw players logging in to discover the main storyline already completed. I guess Rocksteady were serious about not wanting people to treat it like a “life commitment”.
The developer of Palworld has warned people against downloading fake mobile phone games that look like they’re Palworld.
In a tweet, Palworld developer Pocketpair said “there is no Palworld application for phones”, after noticing apps using names and product images from Palworld had popped up on the App Store and Google Play.
“They are not affiliated with our company in any way,” the statement continued. “We have reported this issue to Apple, which operates the App Store, and Google, which operates Google Play. Please be aware that downloading these apps may lead to the leakage of personal information stored on your smartphone or to fraud.”
It’s perhaps unsurprising to see fake Palworld mobile apps appear given the enormous sales success of the original, which launched in early access form on PC via Steam and on Xbox to the tune of eight million sales in just six days.
Meanwhile, Palworld continues to blow up on Steam, where it became the second most-played game in the platform’s history. If you’re playing, be sure to check out IGN’s interactive Palworld map.
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.
When Square Enix announced the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for Final Fantasies 1 through 6 back in 2021, I was overjoyed. For too long had PC folks had to ‘make do’ with the quite nasty mobile ports of these games, and the Pixel Remasters looked set to finally rectify that with proper versions replete with their original artwork. But one thing was missing. Well, several things were missing it turns out, but chief among them were, of course, its damn fonts – a point of contention that’s plagued many a Square Enix PC port in recent years, and one that fans quickly set about trying to fix with mods. Extra salt was then added to the wound when Square Enix said that last year’s Switch and PS4 versions of the Pixel Remaster series would have two different font options straight out of the box – and it’s only now that the PC versions have finally caught up.
SEGA of America has submitted a notice of layoffs which will affect 61 of its employees on 8th March 2024.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice was submitted earlier this month on 8th January in Orange County, California, and was flagged by the Twitter account @WhatLayoff (via GamesIndustry.biz).
Warner Bros. has gifted Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League Deluxe Edition owners $20 of in-game currency as a make-good for server issues that rendered the always-online game unplayable for periods during launch.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League arrived on January 30, 2024 for those who paid $100 for the Deluxe Edition, granting customers a three days’ head start over everyone else.
But the early launch had issues, including a bizarre bug that automatically completed Suicide Squad for some and forced the game offline for more than six hours. Additional downtime prevented players from logging on before the servers stabilized, but not before disgruntled customers complained about not getting their money’s worth.
Now, Warner Bros. has sent affected customers an in-game message about the gift. “Thank you for being one of our first console players during early access of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League,” the message reads, per a post from X/Twitter user @JayShockblast. “We recognize that you’ve been patient with us during our initial launch server updates and we’d like to show our appreciation for your patience with a special gift of 2000 LuthorCoins. Thank you again!”
2000 LutherCoins cost $20, and will get you a couple of standard in-game skins or a single deluxe or legendary skin.
Check your mailboxes in Suicide Squad Kill The Justice League. WB/Rocksteady just sent out 2000 vbucks for the server issues on launch day. About $20 value give or take. pic.twitter.com/JvmBLkvwAl
The furore over Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’s launch issues have renewed calls for the promised offline mode to be added to the game as soon as possible. With Suicide Squad launching for standard edition owners on February 2, all eyes on are on the servers to see if they hold firm, or render the game unplayable once again.
This week, IGN reported that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League isn’t the late Kevin Conroy’s final Batman performance, as previously suspected. Conroy, of course, is beloved for his performance as Batman both in The Animated Series and Rocksteady’s Arkham series of video games. With that in mind, controversy arose in regards to one of his scenes in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. We won’t spoil the specific details (you can learn more here), but one scene had many fans feeling that it was an unceremonious goodbye to Conroy’s time as Batman.
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.
If I’m over at someone’s place with a bunch of people and they say, “Let’s play Overcooked!” I will always visibly recoil. The game is bad for my blood pressure and for the solidity of my friendships. So, I am terrified by the prospect of Speed Crew, an Overcooked-like set in racing pit stops as opposed to kitchens. I gave it a whirl and it has promise! Even if I now need a big lie down. I am not cut out for jobs involving manual labour, nor games where I play as someone who needs to perform manual labour.
There’s some industry news coming out of Japan today that Square Enix has absorbed the developer Tokyo RPG Factory.
As part of this, Tokyo RPG Factory will be immediately dissolved and “will cease to exist as an individual entity” (thanks, Gematsu). Tokyo RPG Factory was a subsidiary of Square Enix and was founded by Yosuke Matsuda a decade ago.
Nintendo’s upcoming release Mario vs. Donkey Kong will revive the 2004 Game Boy Advance title next month on the Switch.
If you haven’t already seen our own “hands on” here on Nintendo Life, we mentioned how “psyched” we were for the full release, as the Switch version is a game filled with meaningful changes, new modes, and a modern look and feel that should make it even better than the original game.
Warning: The below story contains a potential spoiler for Persona 3 and Persona 3: Reload.
The Persona series has long had issues with gay and trans panic, but Persona 3: Reload at least removes the transphobia from one scene in particular.
The Persona 3 scene in question had the party trying to hit on women at the beach, with Akihiko, Junpei, and the protagonist approaching a character referred to as “Beautiful Lady.” After some back-and-forth, Akihiko points out a bit of facial hair on her chin, to which Beautiful Lady responds, “I-I missed a spot?!” Junpei then exclaims “she’s a he?!”
The dialogue is very slightly changed in Persona 3 Portable (the character is named “Pretty Lady” instead of “Beautiful Lady”), but still includes the same trans panic.
As first reported by Kotaku and verified by IGN, however, Persona 3: Reload changes the dialogue quite a bit. The end result is the same – the party running away from the woman – but instead of it being due to her being trans, it’s because she’s actually a conspiracy theorist trying to sell them sunscreen.
In the new scene, the conversation starts to go awry after “Pretty Lady” tells them, “You know that sun in the sky isn’t real, right? That’s an artificial sun that got sent into space back into the 1980s.”
Her character name then changes to “Delusional Lady” as she tells them that “normal sunscreen doesn’t” work” against that fake sun, and tries to sell them “special” sunscreen for 300,000 yen. The gang figures out this character is a little off, and scurry. The scene’s still a little odd, but the transphobic aspect, at least, is gone in this new version.
This isn’t the first time Altus has made a change based on homophobic or transphobic content in the Persona series. In 2020, Altus changed certain scenes in Persona 5 that were considered offensive and homophobic by fans for the Western release of Persona 5 Royal.
For more on Persona 3: Reload, check out our review, where Michael Higham gave the remake a 9/10. With a stellar visual overhaul and countless small but impactful changes, Persona 3 Reload tells a timeless story of tragedy and hope with sharp emotional sincerity,” Higham wrote.
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Though wild speculation around metaverses has calmed somewhat in the last year, the idea is far from dead, with a number of companies still hard at work trying to find ways to integrate all their properties into one massive, interconnected space. The latest to discuss these ideas is Electronic Arts, with CEO Andrew Wilson responding to a question during today’s earnings call about a potential EA Sports metaverse with what sounds a heck of a lot like a concrete plan to make one in the near future.
During the Q&A portion, Wilson was asked if he had ever thought about “taking all of your siloed sport communities and thinking about a way to bring them all together” to “just sort of create, for lack of a better word, a metaverse?”
To this, Wilson gave a lengthy response outlining a whole lot of reasons why a publisher like EA might consider doing exactly that. He began by reiterating the enormity of the EA player community: over 700 million players, about half of which interact with the sports catalog in some way. EA Sports itself is, per Wilson, “one of the most recognizable and recognized sports brands.” And the upcoming generations Z and Alpha, he continued, often use EA Sports as an entry point to a love of sports in general.
“What we know to be true right now is our players spend on average about 90 minutes a session inside one of our games. They then leave that game experience where they’ve been deeply connected with their core friend unit, then they go and talk about that experience on another platform, then they go and create content about that experience on yet another platform, then finally they go and watch that content on another platform. We do believe we have a meaningful opportunity over the coming years to harness the power of that community both inside and outside of our games, which is really the third pillar of our core strategy, and will be led by our EA Sports brand.”
Wilson then reiterated that while he had nothing to announce today, EA sees “an incredible opportunity” in all these interconnected relationships between EA Sports’ popularity, how players behave within it and outside of it, and how it can interact with other experiences. “So best I can say is: watch this space,” he concluded.
While speculation on the metaverse has cooled in the last year, Wilson’s strategy seems far more tactical and focused than some of the more grandiose metaverse propostions floated by companies like Epic and Meta in the past. And his remarks are unshocking in light of the company’s continued EA Sports success. In today’s earnings report, EA reported net bookings of $2.37 billion and net revenue of $1.945 billion for the quarter ending on December 31, 2023, largely driven by EA Sports FC outperforming expectations with 7% year-over-year growth. Madden also remains a moneymaker, bringing in 5% year-over-year net bookings growth. And that doesn’t even get into its other properties: NHL, UFC, F1, PGA Tour, WRC, and the long-awaited EA Sports College Football. With its live services now consisting of 73% of EA’s business, it’s no surprise that EA would want to find ways to capitalize on that power, especially now that it’s proven it doesn’t need the FIFA name attached to succeed.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
