Author: Game Infliction

Pokémon Go Director Says Obtrusive Ads Will ‘Not Now, Not Ever’ Happen After Scopely Acquisition

Pokémon Go, alongside Niantic’s broader gaming division, was recently acquired by mobile gaming juggernaut Scopely. The $3.5 billion sale has players a little worried about what it means for the walk-around monster-catching game, and its director is trying to assuage those fears.

In a new interview with Polygon, Pokémon Go senior product director Michael Steranka discussed the sale to Scopely and what its plans are under the Monopoly Go! publisher. Steranka said he’s been looking online at some of the player theories. “What I would love to be able to get across is like, ‘Hey, it’s actually great,'” Steranka said. “It’s going to be a good thing for the game and for the communities out there.”

Concerns over Pokémon Go’s future run the gamut, from monetization and mechanics to influence from Saudi-based ownership. When asked about the potential for intrusive ads and playtime restrictions, Steranka said “definitively no, that is not happening in Pokémon Go — not now, not ever.”

“Again, Scopely really recognizes how unique this game is, and they’ve told us themselves that they would be foolish to try to change the recipe of what’s made this such a huge hit and a success,” Steranka insisted.

“So yeah, absolutely not. We will not be building into our games any type of obtrusive ads or anything like that. I just really want to reiterate Scopely as a company, the way that they operate is they give all of their teams the agency to make the decisions that’s right for their games. And that is not something that we feel would ever be right for Pokémon Go.”

Steranka went on to stress that the Go team does not sell player data to third parties, “full stop,” and that it only leverages location data for game operations, with any data needed stored on U.S.-based servers and following all “incredibly strict” regulatory best practicies as best it can.

Getting out and going outside will remain a core focus, too, even after leaving Niantic: “And I would be remiss if through this transaction, Pokémon Go became Pokémon Stay at Home,” Steranka said.

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

In Mortal Kombat 1, the T-1000 Has a Skeleton, Intestines, a Heart, and A… Soul?

Mortal Kombat 1’s T-1000 update has added the iconic Terminator 2 villain to the fighting game, and with it revealed how the developers at NetherRealm have handled its liquid metal form in the face of the series’ trademark Fatalities.

The gory fighting game franchise is famous for slicing and dicing characters in all sorts of gruesome ways, ripping out organs and even complete skeletons. Some characters tear the very soul from their hapless foe’s body, or break bones every which way possible.

But none of this should work on the T-1000, right? The T-1000 is made entirely out of a liquid metal called mimetic polyalloy, meaning it can reform into any shape it touches of the approximate size. And that’s exactly how the T-1000 works in Mortal Kombat 1, with his moveset, Fatalities, and Brutalities all in keeping with the character’s movie rules.

Of course, when it comes to damage being done to T-1000 in the game, some of those rules had to be broken. But as players have discovered, the developers at NetherRealm have done a fantastic job creating a custom look for the T-1000 when it’s on the receiving end of Fatalities and other devastating attacks.

X / Twitter user @daehnny published a series of videos showing how the T-1000 reacts to being torn to pieces. We see that in Mortal Kombat 1, the T-1000 melts as it does in the movies.

But we also see that in Mortal Kombat 1, the T-1000 has a skeleton of sorts and even an intestine. And, not to get too philosophical, but in the world of Mortal Kombat 1, the T-1000 has a soul.

There are some cool visuals at play here, with a dissolve effect for the T-1000 that makes the character look a little more unique than it would otherwise.

And yes, it turns out even the relentless T-1000 has a heart.

There are also unique effects for when the T-1000 is on the receiving end of a Fatal Blow, and we see the character turn to liquid form when it’s “dead,” which is a cool detail.

Of course, none of these Fatalities and Fatal Blows would actually kill the T-1000 were Mortal Kombat 1 playing by the rules established by the films. But then, Mortal Kombat 1 has never really made much sense. It’s about over-the-top, laugh-out-loud violence, and there’s no reason the T-1000 shouldn’t get in on the fun.

Meanwhile, Mortal Kombat 1 players have been working out the T-1000’s Brutalities, and there are some cool Easter eggs in there, as well as references to Terminator 2 itself.

T-1000 is the final DLC character in the Khaos Reigns expansion, and follows playable fighters Cyrax, Sektor, Noob Saibot, Ghostface, and Conan the Barbarian. Fans have wondered for some time now whether NetherRealm plans a third set of DLC characters, or a Kombat Pack 3, amid questions about the 5 million-selling Mortal Kombat 1’s success.

Parent company Warner Bros. Discovery has indicated, however, that it still believes in the Mortal Kombat franchise. In November, CEO David Zaslav said that on the games side of things, the company plans to double down on just four titles, one of which is Mortal Kombat.

And just this week, NetherRealm offered a first look at skins based on the Mortal Kombat 2 movie that are coming to Mortal Kombat 1 at some point in the future.

In September, Mortal Kombat development chief Ed Boon said NetherRealm had decided on its next game three years prior, but promised to support Mortal Kombat 1 “for a long time to come.”

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.

Review: 8BitDo Ultimate 2C Bluetooth Controller – Probably The Best Budget Switch Pad

8BitDid it again.

It’s no secret that 8BitDo is one of the premier manufacturers of third-party Switch accessories, with the firm making waves over the years with the likes of the SN30 Pro Gamepad and the M30. Its latest Switch pad, the Ultimate 2C Bluetooth Controller, is another slam dunk, offering up a compelling alternative to Nintendo’s Pro Controller with minimum concessions at half the price ($29.99 / £24.99 / €29.99).

Available in pink and two shades of blue, the Ultimate 2C rocks most of the functionality you want in a Switch pad. You’ve got gyro support, Hall effect analogue sticks, a proper D-pad, roughly 15 hours of playtime on a single charge, and rumble (not HD), with an extra pair of remappable ‘L4’ and ‘R4’ shoulder bumpers thrown in for good measure. The only major missing component is NFC support for your amiibo; a shame, for sure, but potentially not a dealbreaker for many.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Steam Accounted for More Than Half of Monster Hunter Wilds’ Total Dollar Sales in the U.S.

Monster Hunter Wilds is a smash hit across the globe, with an incredible 8 million copies sold in just three days. In the U.S., Capcom’s action game is the best-selling game of 2025 so far, and it’s PC in particular that’s dominating.

According to Circana, not only was Monster Hunter Wilds the best-selling game of February, but launch month dollar sales more than doubled the total Monster Hunter: Rise achieved during its March 2021 debut.

As you’d expect, Monster Hunter Wilds was the best-selling game of February across PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam. But here’s the interesting stat: Steam accounted for more than half of Monster Hunter Wilds’ total dollar sales. That’s despite some high-profile performance issues on PC that have led to a ‘mixed’ user review rating for Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam.

Perhaps Monster Hunter Wilds’ PC success shouldn’t come as a surprise, given PC has become increasingly important for multiplatform releases. Speaking to IGN in a recent interview, Strauss Zelnick, boss of Rockstar parent company Take-Two, said the PC version of a multiplatform game can generate 40% of overall sales, or even more with certain games.

That stat came as part of a discussion about the current console generation. In the U.S., February video game hardware spending fell by 25% when compared to a year ago, to $256 million. That’s the lowest February total for video game hardware spending since the $184 million reached in February 2020.

Zelnick pointed to the PC platform as growing in importance while publishers wait for Sony and Microsoft’s next moves and with the Nintendo Switch 2 waiting in the wings.

“We have seen PC become a much more and more important part of what used to be a console business, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that trend continue,” he said. “Of course, there will be a new console generation.”

Monster Hunter Wilds is evidence of the trend, then. But it wasn’t the only new release in February to do well. In fact, according to Circana’s data, the top four best-selling games of February 2025 were new releases, with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, and PGA Tour 2K25 joining Monster Hunter Wilds. Other new releases appearing among the month’s top 10 best-sellers included Obsidian’s Avowed, which also launched day-one into Game Pass, and Sega’s Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

Circana said the launch month dollar sales total Kingdom Come: Deliverance II reached in February 2025 was more than five times higher than the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance achieved during its February 2018 debut. Embracer Group, parent company of Kingdom Come: Deliverance developer Warhorse Studios, has already hailed the sequel’s sales success.

February 2025 U.S. Top 20 Best-Selling Games:

  1. NEW Monster Hunter: Wilds – Capcom USA
  2. NEW Kingdom Come: Deliverance II – Plaion
  3. NEW Civilization VII – Take-Two Interactive
  4. NEW PGA Tour 2K25 – Take-Two Interactive
  5. NBA 2K25 – Take-Two Interactive
  6. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – Microsoft (Corp)
  7. NEW Avowed – Microsoft (Corp)
  8. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii – Sega
  9. Grand Theft Auto V – Take-Two Interactive
  10. Madden NFL 25 – Electronic Arts
  11. Minecraft – Multiple Video Game Manufacturers
  12. EA Sports FC 25 – Electronic Arts
  13. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 – Sony (Corp)
  14. Red Dead Redemption II – Take-Two Interactive
  15. Hogwarts Legacy – Warner Bros. Games
  16. EA Sports College Football 25 – Electronic Arts
  17. Helldivers II – Sony (Corp)
  18. Elden Ring – Bandai Namco Entertainment
  19. Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero – Bandai Namco Entertainment
  20. Astro Bot – Sony (Corp)

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 games industry is “broken” say the CWA – so they’re building an “industry-wide union”

The Communications Workers of America (CWA) are set to launch an industry-wide union of video game workers in the U.S. and Canada at this year’s GDC. The United Videogame Workers-CWA (UVW-CWA) will bring together “video game artists, writers, designers, QA testers, programmers, freelancers and beyond to build worker power irrespective of studio and current job status”.

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All InZoi early access DLC “will be provided for free” because of course it should be

Forthcoming life sim InZoi – the plucky (genAI-ridden) David to The Sims 4‘s Goliath – will cost $40 at its early access launch, the developers have announced. What’s more, “all updates and DLCs will be provided for free” until the game hits 1.0, according to translated commentary from game director Hyungjun Kim.

This is being styled as a gift unto the gamers, and another way of tempting them from the clutches of The Sims, whose DLC packs commonly sell for full-game prices. The other way of looking at it is that of course early access “updates and DLC” should be free. The point of early access is that you’re paying for an unfinished game with the expectation that it’ll eventually be worth the money. Also, what’s the difference between an update and a DLC? My my, Inzoi, what a can of worms you have opened.

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There Was Once an Idea for a ‘Marvel Gaming Universe’ That Would Tie All the Video Games Together Like the MCU, but ‘It Didn’t Get Funded’

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to dominate entertainment with its interconnected series of films and TV shows that all tie together to form a long-running, cohesive narrative. Marvel video games, however, do not exist in the same universe, telling stories entirely separate and unrelated to each other. Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man games, for example, have nothing to do with Eidos-Montreal’s Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Similarly, upcoming Marvel games such as Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel’s Wolverine, and Marvel’s Blade, have no connective tissue.

But there was once an idea at Disney to create a Marvel Gaming Universe that would do for Marvel video games what the MCU went on to do for Marvel movies and TV shows. So what happened?

Speaking on The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine recalled this MGU idea, which both worked on, and revealed why it fell by the wayside.

Seropian, perhaps best known as one of the founders of Halo and Destiny developer Bungie, went on to run Disney’s video game business before leaving in 2012. Irvine was the long-running writer of Marvel games, most recently working on the world-building, dialogue, and character backstories for smash hit Marvel Rivals.

Discussing his prior work on Marvel games, Irvine discussed the scrapped MGU.

“When I first started working on Marvel games, there was this idea that they were going to create a Marvel gaming universe that was going to exist in the same way that the MCU did,” Irvine said. “It never really happened.”

Seropian then explained that the MGU was his “initiative,” but it never got funded by the higher-ups at Disney.

“When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, ‘Hey, let’s tie these games together.’ It was pre-MCU,” Seropian said. “But it didn’t get funded.”

Irvine, who had worked on the iconic Halo alternate reality game (ARG) I Love Bees while at Bungie, went into some detail on how this MGU would have worked.

“That was so frustrating because we came up with all these great ideas about how to do it,” he said.

“And I was coming out of ARGs at that point and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some ARG aspects?’ There would be a place where players could go that all the games touched, and we could move them back and forth from game to game. We could link in comics, we could loop in anything, we could do original stuff. And then, as Alex said, it didn’t get funded. So we made a bunch of games.”

But why did the MGU fail to get the internal buy-in to move forward? Irvine suggested the idea became so complex it ended up putting some people at Disney off.

“Even back then, we were trying to figure out, ‘If there’s going to be this MGU, how is it different from the comics? How is it different from the movies? How are we going to decide if it stays consistent?’ And I think some of those questions got complex enough that there were people at Disney who didn’t really want to deal with them,” Irvine explained.

It’s fun to imagine what might have been had the MGU idea got the funding it needed to become a reality. Perhaps if it had, Insomniac’s Spider-Man games would have existed in the same universe as Square Enix’s ill-fated Marvel’s Avengers and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, with characters from each game making cameo appearances across the titles or the stories all building towards some epic Endgame-style event.

Looking ahead, there are questions over Insomniac’s Marvel’s Wolverine game. Will it be set within the same universe as Marvel’s Spider-Man? Could Spider-Man or any other character from those games end up making a cameo in Wolverine in some way?

Alas, the MGU goes down as yet another scrapped video game idea. Although, perhaps in another universe somewhere, it is a reality…

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.

Ok, Fallout 76’s Ghoul Within update: I’ll play as a ghoul if you stop using words like “Ghoultastic”

What’s the pettiest reason you began to distance yourself from an old friend? I once casually suggested to a mate that I found toast more filling than bread, which prompted them to bang on for far too long about how I was actually wrong, since the act of toasting necessarily diminishes the structure of bread or somesuch. I’m not sure whether that’s true and I don’t care. I was speaking my truth about toast and you undermined it. Jog on, toast denier.

Fallout 76‘s new Ghoul Within update is 18.9 GB, which may well conclusively prove that searing ghoulification actually ends up with the victim weighing more than they did previously. I wish I’d known this at the time of my yeasty bust-up, because I’d have probably tried to make the same argument about toast. We might have stayed mates then. Maybe we could have played Fallout 76 together? Why, that’s the subject of this very Steam blog! Incredible.

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Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Launch Trailer Brings The Hype

One more sleep!

If you’re one of the lucky few who happens to have games delivered a day or two before their official release date, then congratulations, we hope you’re having an absolute blast with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition!

For the rest of you, there’s only one more sleep to go until you can venture back into Mira on the Nintendo Switch, whether it be for the very first time or a repeat trip. Since we were so busy yesterday getting our review all ready to go (and checking out opinions from other outlets, too), we didn’t quite catch the launch trailer that dropped from Nintendo’s official YouTube channel.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Palworld Update 0.5.0 Adds Crossplay Across All Platforms, Blueprint Upgrading, Photo Mode and More

Palworld has a big new update that adds crossplay across all platforms among many other new features.

Update v0.5.0 also lets players store Pal data in the Global Palbox and transfer Pals between worlds. A new storage system has 10 times the capacity of the regular Palbox. Not only can guild members access it, but it can be used as a personal storage with private settings.

Elsewhere, you can now change your character’s appearance without affecting armor stats (transmog), there’s a photo mode, blueprint upgrading, and dedicated servers for Mac, among other changes detailed in the patch notes below.

Developer Pocketpair said it’s working on adding dedicated servers for the PlayStation 5 version and will release them at some point in the future.

Palworld has had an incredible 32 million players since its early access launch in January 2024. The studio has laid out a content roadmap for Palworld’s 2025 that looks fairly lengthy; alongside crossplay, there is an “ending scenario” and more new content on the way for the hugely popular creature-catching survival game.

Palworld launched on Steam priced $30 and straight into Game Pass on Xbox and PC a year ago, breaking sales and concurrent player number records in the process. Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe has said Palworld’s launch was so big that the developer couldn’t handle the massive profits the game generated. Still, Pocketpair acted swiftly to capitalize on Palworld’s breakout success, signing a deal with Sony to form a new business called Palworld Entertainment that’s tasked with expanding the IP, and launching the game on PS5.

Looming over all this is a lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, who seek “an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages” on the grounds that Palworld has allegedly infringed on “multiple” patent rights. Pocketpair has provided an update, identifying the patents the studio is allegedly infringing, and it has since tweaked how players summon Pals in Palworld, apparently in response. Pocketpair has vowed to take on Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in court, saying: “We will continue to assert our position in this case through future legal proceedings.”

Palworld update 0.5.0 patch notes:

▼New Content
・Crossplay!
⤷ Cross-play is now available across all platforms.

・Global Palbox
⤷ Store Pal data in the Global Palbox and transfer Pals between worlds!

・Dimensional Pal Storage
⤷ A new storage system with 10 times the capacity of a regular Palbox! Guild members can access it, and it can also be used as a personal storage with private settings.

・Cosmetic Armour System!
⤷ You can now equip armour cosmetically in the Antique Dresser. Change your character’s appearance without affecting armour stats!

・Photo Mode
⤷ Accessible from the Pal Command Wheel. Hide the UI and move the camera around to take stunning screenshots.

・Drafting Table
⤷ Combine low-rarity blueprints to create higher-rarity ones!

・Dedicated Servers for Mac
▼Specification Adjustments
・Buildings can now be placed even if they overlap with a Pal
・When connecting foundations or roofs, the connected pieces will now automatically align in the same direction
・Assigning an Ice Pal to the Flea Market will slow down item decay in storage and sales
・Added torches at the entrances of random dungeons for better visibility
・Players can now sit on chairs and cushions
・Some weapons that dealt ultra-high damage to trees will no longer drop items upon destruction
・Added new NPCs and improved NPC behaviour during conversations
▼Balance Adjustments
・Adjusted elemental chest rewards. Dog Coins will always drop from these chests and they also have a small chance of containing work suitability books. (Existing chests in current worlds will retain old drop tables; new ones will follow the updated table.)
・Increased EXP gained from defeating the Attack Chopper
・Increased the DPS of Flamethrowers
・Adjusted the default attack used by Electric and Dark Pals when all active skills are on cooldown, making them more in line with the other elements
・Some human NPCs now have work suitability and work animations when assigned tasks at a base
・Summoned raid bosses can no longer damage other bases
・Added Water attribute to Dumud
・NPC event rewards have been adjusted. To maintain fairness, all NPC conversation logs have been reset, allowing players to claim rewards again!
▼UI
・Favourites have been categorised into Favourite 1, 2, and 3 groups
・Holding the +/- button in the Pal Soul Enhancement UI will now continuously increase/decrease values
・Added a new sorting option for Pal Box: Sort by Work Suitability Level
・Added a “Extra Large” text size option
・Added Fullscreen Mode
▼Achievements
・Added several new achievements
▼ Bug Fixes
・Fixed an issue where players could get launched into space while climbing
・Fixed a bug where getting stunned by an enemy while riding a flying Pal over water would send the player flying into the sky
・Fixed an issue where commanding a summoned Pal to attack would also target the Black Marketeer and Medal Merchant
・Fixed a bug where Bounty Tokens with identical passive effects did not stack properly
・Fixed an issue where players would sometimes get launched upward when dismounting Azurmane
・Fixed an issue on dedicated servers where Pals could get stuck on top of feed boxes
・Fixed an issue where raiding NPCs could attack players through walls if they couldn’t reach them
・Fixed a bug on dedicated servers where Bounty Token effects were not applied upon login
・Fixed an issue where attacking some NPCs did not add to the player’s crime level
・Various many other minor bug fixes

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.