Category: IGN

Split Fiction players have stumbled upon a secret level that fans have dubbed “Laser Hell,” and it’s so difficult that Hazelight is rewarding the first pair who managed to beat it.

Co-op fans found yet another reason to celebrate the studio’s latest cooperative story after content creators E1uM4y and Sharkov shared their successful run on Chinese social media platform Bilibili. Their three-minute video showcases not only what a successful run looks like but also the hellish tasks that await inside it. Split Ficition’s Laser Hell level is a gauntlet of demanding platforming challenges that see players dodging up and around a series of laser rooms, but it is doable — and there’s a special video for those who see it through to the end.

As demonstrated in E1uM4y and Sharkov’s video, reaching the end of Split Fiction’s hardest level rewards Mio and Zoe with a clip recorded by Hazelight’s own Josef Fares. After opening the video with applause, he says he’s “super amazed” by anyone who was able to beat the level while joking that his praise isn’t for “you guys who are looking (at) this on YouTube.”

“Wow. Amazing. You have to understand, this challenge, there are barely people on our team that can make it,” Fares says in the video. “It took us a lot of time to finish it. I’m telling you; this is a crazy, crazy achievement you have done.”

It’s a feat worth celebrating indeed, but wait, there’s more! Fares promises that the first pair of players who manage to beat Split Fiction’s Laser Hell level and confirm their success will be flown out to Hazelight in Sweden for an early look at the studio’s next game along with a few “other surprises.” It’s a promise that the director personally followed up on and confirmed in a post on X/Twitter.

Congrats to ”sharkOvO” and ”E1uM4y” for finishing the secret challenge ”Laser Hell” in #splitficton. VERY impressive! I will keep my promise and invite you both to Sweden for an early look of our next game😎

We´ll be in touch!

— Josef Fares (@josef_fares) March 19, 2025

If you and a friend (for some reason) feel like taking a shot at Laser Hell yourselves, YouTuber ItzBytez uploaded a solid look at the whole level from front to back, including the puzzle that needs to be solved to even access it. All you need to do is input a binary code listed under a Skotos label at the location shown, have your partner stand beside you, and you’ll be taken down to a room where you’ll surely spend countless attempts trying to see Fares’ video in person.

As for what exactly Hazelight will be showing E1uM4y and Sharkov, those details remain a mystery. Fares recently shared that the studio has been working on its next project for around a month but declined to spill much in terms of its story, name, or release plans. We do know, at least, that the Hazelight team is “very excited” about it.

Split Fiction launched earlier this month for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S and quickly became yet another co-op success for the studio. After securing 1 million sales in just 48 hours, Mio and Zoe’s story pulled a total of 2 million in just one week. We’ve yet to hear any more information about sales stats, but it sounds like Hazelight is very happy with how Split Fiction has performed so far.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Cyberpunk 2077 was a massively popular video game. And considering all the board game adaptations of video games that now exist, it was no surprise when Cyberpunk eventually made its tabletop debut. It’s a fun game. It’s also on sale right now for nearly 30% off at Amazon, dropping the price to $78 instead of its usual $110. If you’ve been thinking about adding Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City to your shelf, now is a good time to do that.

Save 29% Off Cyberpunk 2077: Gangs of Night City

Thanks in no small part to his role in Marvel Rivals, it’s safe to say Jeff the Land Shark is one of Marvel’s most popular new characters to come along in recent years. If you’re the type of collector with a Jeff-shaped hole in your Marvel figure lineup, Diamond Select Toys has you covered with the Marvel Animated-Style Jeff the Land Shark Resin Statue.

Check out the slideshow gallery below for an exclusive look at this adorable new collectible:

First revealed at New York Toy Fair earlier this month, this Jeff statue is the latest addition to DST’s long-running Marvel Animated line of statues. But whereas most of these pieces have been based on the artwork of Skottie Young, Jeff is instead inspired by the work of the Japanese artistic duo Gurihiru (specifically, the cover to It’s Jeff #1).

This Jeff statue is cast in resin and measures about 3 inches tall. It was sculpted by Casen Barnard. The statue is priced at $59.99 and is limited to 3000 pieces worldwide. The statue is slated for release during the Holiday 2025 period. Preorders will open on the Diamond Select Toys website and other retailers on Friday, March 21.

For more Diamond Select collectibles, have a look at their epic Spider-Man 2 diorama and their stylish Phoenix Legendary Scale Bust.

Also, be sure to check out the many Marvel collectibles available on the IGN Store.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Hollow Knight fans have been waiting quite a while for news about its sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong. The wait has been so unbearable that even a casual mention, like the one Xbox dropped in a recent ID@Xbox post, can ignite the fires of those holding out for a 2025 drop.

On Xbox Wire, ID@Xbox director Guy Richards shared a post detailing how over $5 billion have been paid to independent developers through the program. It mostly goes over the success of past ID@Xbox launches, ranging from Phasmophobia and Balatro to Another Crab’s Treasure and Neva. Then, in a portion about upcoming games, we get the name-drop:

“Looking ahead, our lineup is incredible with upcoming games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Descenders Next, and FBC: Firebreak to play across the whole Xbox universe… and of course Hollow Knight: Silksong too!”

This mostly confirms that Hollow Knight: Silksong will launch sometime between me typing this, right now, and the end of all time. Granted, those games are interesting mentions. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is set for April 24, Descenders Next for April 9, and FBC: Firebreak has had a tentative 2025 window. This could imply Hollow Knight: Silksong is within some measure of grasp.

Fans are, to some degree, understandably impatient to learn whether Silksong might arrive, as it’s been roughly six years since its announcement. Now, let’s see how the Silksong faithful are reacting to this mention.

“Where’s the bait?” one commenter asked on the Silksong subreddit. Another said: “Silksong being mentioned by Xbox?” and followed it up with an image of the Squid Game Season 2 scene where protagonist Seong Gi-hun declares: “I have played these games before!”

There is a palpable air of both joking and irony that comes with communities like this, where groups have essentially bonded over waiting for news about something. Another post draws attention to this, noting that “we” — the Silksong holdouts — are a “circus at this point,” making their point with the Patrick Star/Man Ray meme format.

The prevailing hope, or joke, is that news about Hollow Knight: Silksong is destined for April 2, during Nintendo’s Switch 2 Direct. To fans’ credit, developer Team Cherry did stoke the flames a bit with some vague posting around the official reveal of the Switch 2. The believers hold out hope, while the doubters sow doubt. “We are an [$8] Mega Buffoon Pack,” one commenter said in response to the circus meme.

Hope and doubt comes in all shapes and sizes. But my favorite response to Xbox casually saying, “and of course Hollow Knight: Silksong too!” and all the speculation and cycles this causes, came from Reddit user u/cerberusthedoge: “We got Hollow Knight Silksong 2 before Hollow Knight Silksong.”

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

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.

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.

Mileena will eat anything! pic.twitter.com/FNkvtKFRut

— dähn 🇧🇷 (@daehnny) March 18, 2025

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.

But he does have a soul! pic.twitter.com/nDexvb6RVN

— dähn 🇧🇷 (@daehnny) March 18, 2025

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.

I like how the skeleton dissolves in the end pic.twitter.com/w53f00DGlu

— dähn 🇧🇷 (@daehnny) March 18, 2025

Apparently Quan Chi spells work on any kind of machine pic.twitter.com/DdJxYmB2BQ

— dähn 🇧🇷 (@daehnny) March 18, 2025

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

Turns out even he is capable of loving. T-1000 has a heart #confirmed pic.twitter.com/KilRsllwam

— dähn 🇧🇷 (@daehnny) March 18, 2025

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.

and this is how the Fatalities look:

he turns completely silver when he’s supposed to be dead, such a neat detail pic.twitter.com/Z3KTMhbTD8

— dähn 🇧🇷 (@daehnny) March 14, 2025

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.

Spamming some input will turn T-1000 into liquid form after brutality, I’m unsure of the input but i managed to trigger it a few times.@thethiny @iScreamFGC @interloko pic.twitter.com/BJEueaOKLN

— SHAAR (@ShaarYtube) March 18, 2025

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.

Here’s is a sneak peek at the MK2 movie skins in Mortal Kombat 1 🐉

Koming later this year. pic.twitter.com/51Bkq6wGbX

— Ed Boon (@noobde) March 17, 2025

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.

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 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.

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.

Ubisoft has confirmed the global release times for Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Unlike previous games in the series and indeed Ubisoft games generally, Assassin’s Creed Shadows has a unified, actual release date. You cannot pay more for early access.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ release date on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S is 12am local time on March 20, but it’s worth noting there are separate release times for the game on PC depending on whether you’re getting it on Steam or Ubisoft’s own platform, Ubi Connect.

Pre-load is already available on Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

There is of course enormous pressure on Assassin’s Creed Shadows to do well for Ubisoft after a number of delays and last year’s Star Wars Outlaws failed to sell as well as the company had hoped. Indeed, Ubisoft has suffered a number of high-profile flops, layoffs, studio closures, and game cancellations in the run up to Assassin’s Creed shadows’ release.

IGN’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows review returned an 8/10. We said: “By sharpening the edges of its existing systems, Assassin’s Creed Shadows creates one of the best versions of the open-world style it’s been honing for the last decade.”