Author: Game Infliction

XDefiant Y1S0.2 Update Blocks PS5 Players From Using Activities to ‘Sneak Into Places They Shouldn’t’

XDefiant developer Ubisoft San Francisco has issued an update for the free-to-download shooter, targeting a range of issues across all platforms.

The XDefiant Y1S0.2 patch (Ubisoft uses a patch naming convention based on the year and season from now on) fixes issues across social play and other parts of the game. As has become XDefiant’s style, Ubisoft has had a bit of fun with the patch notes, below, picking out a change on PlayStation 5:

  • Fixed a thing on PS5 where people could sneak into places they shouldn’t via PS5 Activities.

XDefiant launched its pre-season last month and Ubisoft’s Call of Duty competitor appears to be off to a decent start, earning praise from competitive shooter fans hankering for an old-school experience. IGN’s XDefiant review returned a 7/10. We said: “The fundamentals of XDefiant are good, but conflicting ideas and mechanics stop it from standing above a crowded shooter field.”

Ubisoft San Francisco has said it plans to fix a number of issues with the game as development continues, including the busted hit registration.

XDefiant is not available on Steam, so we do not have an idea of concurrent player numbers, but according to a report from Insider Gaming, XDefiant hit 1.5 million players within just a few hours of launch. Of course, Ubisoft’s hope is XDefiant proves popular enough long-term to make its free-to-play live service a money-spinner throughout the rest of 2024 and beyond, with Activision reportedly preparing Call of Duty Black Ops 6 for release in late October.

XDefiant Y1S0.2 patch notes in full:

Social

  • While in a party, we now display the most restrictive Crossplay setting among the party members, as it applies to the whole party. Also fixed an issue where party members with differing Crossplay settings couldn’t matchmake.
  • Fixed an issue with displaying incorrect player names on some Social screens.
  • Fixed a crash caused by spamming open/close View Party Invites, but who would even do that, calm down.
  • On consoles, Ubisoft Connect party invites could display as if they were coming from Xbox or PlayStation Network friends. Fixed that, along with some other weird invite-related things.

Miscellaneous

  • Fixed some missing terrain textures when players joined matches in progress on some maps.
  • Input-Based Matchmaking setting status now updates correctly after changing it on Xbox.
  • Fixed a thing on PS5 where people could sneak into places they shouldn’t via PS5 Activities.
  • Security improvements, various.

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.

IKEA Will Pay People £13.15 an Hour to Serve Meatballs at Its Virtual Roblox Store

Furniture store IKEA will pay people £13.15 / €14.80 per hour to work in a virtual store it’s opening inside Roblox.

The Co-Worker Game, as it’s called, will let players “experience working in IKEA’s virtual universe”, the company said. “Fans will be able to live their home furnishing dreams and get paid for it, with a limited number of paid roles available,” IKEA continued. Applications run to June 16, with the game itself launching June 24.

“The immersive experience gives players the opportunity to experience IKEA’s unique approach to careers where non-linear career journeys are the norm and lateral moves across departments are commonplace,” IKEA said. It is IKEA’s first foray into mainstream gaming.

There are paid shifts on offer for 10 successful applicants. They’ll help customers and get promoted to move departments, working in different sections of the store like the Showroom and Bistro, helping people choose their furniture, and even serving meatballs.

“We’re excited to be the first brand to launch paid work on Roblox to showcase how we do careers differently, bringing our unique careers philosophy to life,” commented IKEA’s Country People and Culture Manager, Darren Taylor. “At IKEA, there is no set route to career progression. Our co-workers are able to change roles, switch departments, and grow in any direction they choose, both in the game or in the real world. There are many ways to learn and grow at IKEA, and that’s what IKEA on Roblox is all about.”

Digging into the detail, virtual interviews for shortlisted applicants take place for the fully remote virtual role between Thursday, June 14 and Tuesday, June 18. Each successful applicant will be paid an hourly IKEA Co-Worker rate for their time on the game. You have to be 18+ and in the UK or Republic of Ireland to apply. Successful applicants will be paid £13.15 (approx $16.78) per hour, the IKEA hourly rate of pay for a London member of staff. The wage matches the London Living Wage set in the UK, rather than the lower National Living Wage.

Roblox, which has an incredible 77.7 million daily active users, is used by a number of companies to promote their brands with virtual experiences. But the platform and the company behind it has been accused of “exploiting” children who develop many of the experiences available to play. Roblox has denied this.

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.

Mech Engineer’s demo is for people who love hateful interface design

If you heard loud swearing last night in the Watford area it may have been one of two things: 1) me cussing out my (borrowed) Steam Deck while stealthily accessing the wifi from outside a closed public library, as I don’t currently have broadband at home, or 2) me subsequently trying to make head or tail of Mech Engineer, in which you take charge of a mobile undersea metropolis and send squads of painstakingly assembled robosoldiers to semi-auto-battle squidgy alien fauna.

Engineering a mech is a Herculean labour whose completion eludes today’s puny scientists, and Mech Engineer doesn’t aim to make life easier, whatever its putative status as a “means of fun”. Mech Engineer is a game with an attitude problem, frankly. I realised this on in-game day two, when the interface coughed up a bunch of damage reports presented as pieces of paper, which I then had to crumple up and toss away individually.

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MultiVersus Tournament Player Sees Their Main Character Pulled From the Game Mid-Bracket, Wins Anyway

A MultiVersus players had to react fast after the developer pulled their main character out of the game in the middle of a tournament.

A post on the MultiVersus X/Twitter account signaled the removal of Iron Giant from the recently released brawler due to various issues with the character, which players believe include overpowered combos and an infinite chain grab. Garnet was added to the Preview Rotation in response.

Fair enough, you’d think. But for one MultiVersus player the removal of Iron Giant couldn’t have come at a worse time. As revealed in an X/Twitter post by @NickSF_SSB, co-owner of No Style eSports, a player going by the name of ‘FlaSHFReeeze’ was in the middle of a bracket when their main, Iron Giant, was pulled from the game. Cue bemused conversation between the two players. Brilliantly, FlaSHFReeeze switched character and won the set anyway, proving that fighting game players always need a backup in case of emergency.

This week, developer Player First Games said a number of missing features are on their way back to MultiVersus. After close to a year long hiatus, the Warner Bros. brawler featuring Gizmo from Gremlins, Rick and Morty, Lebron James, Batman, Arya Stark, Bugs Bunny, Shaggy, Tom and Jerry, Jason, and more returned in May 2024 to many players and many complaints.

“Some of the missing settings and features from the open beta are incoming,” wrote game director Tony Huynh on X/Twitter. “Team colors, end of game stats, swapping side and neutral attack, adjustable input buffer settings, etc.”

Huynh then said the team didn’t have time to add these features during Multiversus’s offline period. “Many of these features are currently implemented and are in testing and we had planned, but were left out due to time as we had to rebuild every screen and feature again to support our new netcode and Unreal Engine 5 switch,” he explained.

No timeframe for the features was given, though as Huynh said more information is coming soon, the actual release may not be imminent.

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.

How Deep Rock Galactic Season 5 drills back down to basics

Dwarven co-op caper Deep Rock Galactic has spent years raising the stakes. Where its offworld mining concern once dealt merely with steep drops and irate bugs, it’s since had to face down the robotic army of a rival mineral corp and an omnicidal alien plague. If the subsequent question is “It used to be about the rocks, y’know?” then DRG’s imminent Season 5 update, Drilling Deeper, is the answer.

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Random: Unofficial Legend Of Zelda NES Remake Gets 20-Minute Gameplay Video

Link’s Re-awakening?

If you’ve been longing for an official remake of the original Legend of Zelda on the NES, then chances are you’ll have a pretty hefty wait on your hands. Thankfully, then, you can at least assuage your pain by checking out the latest gameplay video of an unofficial remake from fan Lloyd Empty (thanks, Wccftech). It’s been up for a little while at this point, but hey, it’s never too late to highlight excellent projects like this.

Clocking in at just over 20 minutes, the video showcases the game from the beginning, albeit with some interesting alterations to the structure and dialogue. Link will no longer receive a sword from the Old Man; instead, you need to venture into the basement and solve some simple puzzles before you can get yourself equipped.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

(For Southeast Asia) PlayStation VR2 players can access games on PC with adapter starting on August 7

When PlayStation VR2 launched last year, we were thrilled to introduce PS5 players to a new generation of VR games with innovative gameplay and immersive sensory features. Inspired by our passion to bring gamers even more content options, we’ve been working to enable access to additional games on PC, complementing the diverse PS VR2 games lineup available on PS5. Today, we’re happy to share that we’ll be rolling out this support on August 7.

Players will have access to buy and play Steam’s expansive library of thousands of VR games, including fan favorites like Half-Life: Alyx, Fallout 4 VR, and War Thunder.

To start, players will need to purchase a PlayStation VR2 PC adapter, which will be available at Suggested Retail Price of of SGD 89.90 / MYR 279 / IDR 999,000 / THB 2,090 / PHP 3,290 / VND 1,599,000 at local retailers.  Players will also need a commercially available DisplayPort cable (sold separately) that is compatible with DisplayPort 1.4, as well as a Steam account and a PC that meets the minimum requirements below.*

Minimum PC requirements

Here are the minimum requirements for PS VR2 gameplay on PC:

Operating systemWindows 10 64-bit / Windows 11 64-bit 
ProcessorIntel Core i5-7600 / AMD Ryzen 3 3100 (Zen 2 or later architecture is required)
RAM / memory8 GB or more
GPU / graphics card-NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 or later (Turing or later architecture is required)
-NVIDIA RTX series
-AMD Radeon RX 5500XT or later / AMD Radeon RX 6500XT or later
(For the best performance, we recommend that you use an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 or later or AMD Radeon RX 6600XT or later graphics card)
DisplayPortDisplayPort 1.4 (must have a standard DisplayPort or Mini DisplayPort output port)
USBDirect connection only
BluetoothBluetooth 4.0 or later**

Setup is easy: simply connect PlayStation VR2 to your PC using the PS VR2 PC adapter and the DisplayPort 1.4 cable. Then, download the PlayStation VR2 App and the SteamVR App from Steam. This will allow you to set up PS VR2 on your PC, customize your settings and play area, and start purchasing and playing games in SteamVR.

As with all PC gaming technology, performance may vary depending on your PC setup, including system compatibility and the quality of your DisplayPort 1.4 cable. Please ensure your setup meets the minimum requirements. SteamVR titles also have individual system requirements, so please refer to the game information on Steam.

Feature differences with PS VR2 on PS5

PS VR2 was designed from the ground up specifically for PS5 – so you’ll notice that some key features, like HDR, headset feedback, eye tracking, adaptive triggers, and haptic feedback (other than rumble), are not available when playing on PC. However, other high-fidelity and sensory immersion features of PS VR2 are supported, including 4K visuals (2000 x 2040 per eye), 110-degree field of view, finger touch detection, and see-through view, as well as foveated rendering (without eye tracking) and 3D Audio in supported games.***

While the most immersive way to experience PS VR2 gaming remains on PS5, we hope players will enjoy the ability to play an expanded lineup of VR games on PC using the same headset. You can check out Steam’s huge library of multiplayer open worlds, survival horror and stealth action games, sports sims, puzzlers, and free-to-play fan favorites on the Steam Store. 

Additionally, as part of our Days of Play celebration, gamers in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam can get PS VR2 at discounted price until June 12. Please check this blog for details of the offers.

Let us know which games you’re excited to try!

*While DisplayPort 1.4 is a common standard, be sure to check that your PC supports it before purchasing a cable.

**Some Bluetooth adapters may not work due to Bluetooth adapter compatibility. We will share more details closer to launch.

***The 3D Audio experience uses SteamVR’s audio technology instead of Tempest 3D AudioTech, which is only supported on PS5.

Steam Hit Content Warning Reaches 2.2 Million Sold After 2 Months

Steam viral hit game Content Warning has sold 2.2 million copies in two months, with a console version possibly waiting in the wings.

That’s up from the one million sold in mid-April, itself an impressive figure that came after an eye-catching free launch period.

Publisher Landfall released Content Warning for free for the first 24 hours, signaling that it planned to charge for the game after the launch period. The Lethal Company-style co-op survival horror saw an impressive peak concurrent player number of 204,439 on Valve’s platform off the back of the promotion, but some questioned whether it would prove successful in the long run.

Landfall said this week that over 8.8 million players own Content Warning on Steam two months after launch. 6.6 million players got the game for free on launch day, Landfall explained. There was also a tease for a console version in response to a user question on X/Twitter, although an announcement has yet to be made.

It’s a remarkable success for Content Warning, which was developed by just a handful of people and released on April 1 as part of Landfall’s tradition of releasing a game on April Fools’ Day. Take a look at IGN’s Guides for all the info we’ve gathered so far on the monsters, useful items available to purchase, and our tips and tricks for maximum views.

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.

Tactical Breach Wizards is refreshingly unlike XCOM despite wearing the same tactical underwear

We’ll never know exactly what sort of fiction Tom Clancy would have written if he was less interested in the calibre of specific bullets and their effiency at dismantling burgeoning socialist governments, and more so in the specific sigils required to blast a riot cop through a third story window. While charity shops across the land mourn this devasting loss to their paperback shelves to this very day, we do at least have a glimpse into what such a literary venture may have looked like. Oh, did you like that door? Was it your favourite door? Soz, pal. Strategy game Tactical Breach Wizards just hexed right through it with a new demo as part of Steam Next Fest. I’ve played it, and it’s very exciting stuff, not least for how differently it plays than what I’d expected.

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