With the release of Sniper Elite: Resistance, IGN Store has launched a new Sniper Elite Collection featuring all kinds of custom apparel you won’t want to miss! This officially licensed collection is the best way to share your love of Sniper Elite with IGN Store-exclusive tee designs, jackets, beanies, and more based on the series. Check out this hot new collection below!
Shop the Sniper Elite Collection at IGN Store
This collection features eight different tees, each with a unique design that any Sniper Elite fan is sure to love. All tees in the IGN Store Sniper Elite Collection are officially licensed, perfect for your next mission. You can expect premium comfort with tees made from ultra-soft 100% ringspun cotton, and with the high thread count, you won’t have to worry about your new shirt shrinking from a wash or dry.
Additionally, this collection features a Sniper Elite branded European Style Rucksack, which you can use on your next expedition. There are also numerous hoodies, jackets, and even beanies to choose from so you can rep Sniper Elite regardless of the weather.
For this week only, you can save 15% off all items in the collection, so be sure to get your order in before this discount goes away. Check out a few of our favorite picks in the Sniper Elite Collection below:
Sniper Elite: Resistance moves the series to France in a new story that plays out side by side of Sniper Elite 5. As Special Operations Executive Agent Harry Hawker, it’s up to you to coordinate with the French Resistance and disrupt the Nazi’s plans.
About IGN Store
IGN Store sells high-quality merch, collectibles, and shirts for everything you’re into. It’s a shop built with fans in mind: for all the geek culture and fandom you love most. Whether you’re into comics, movies, anime, games, retro gaming or just want some cute plushies (who doesn’t?), this store is for you!
EA and Maxis are celebrating the 25th anniversary of The Sims franchise with a truly excellent surprise. Today, both The Sims 1 and The Sims 2 are available on PC once again via two Legacy Collections and The Sims 25th Birthday Bundle.
EA has announced that it’s releasing The Sims: Legacy Collection and The Sims 2: Legacy Collection today on PC. The two are available separately as well as combined for $40 in The Sims 25th Birthday Bundle.
Both games include all expansions and almost all stuff packs, as it looks like The Sims 2: Legacy Collection is missing the IKEA Home Stuff pack from 2008. But otherwise, everything’s there. In fact, both collections include some bonus content, with The Sims 1 getting something called Throwback Fit Kit and The Sims 2 receiving a Grunge Revival Kit on top of all the other add-ons.
EA’s re-release of the two older The Sims games marks the first time in over a decade that both gave have been readily available to play. The Sims 1 was only ever released on disc, so for years now unless you were able to track down an old physical copy and somehow make it run on a modern Windows machine, there was just no way to get ahold of it (and that doesn’t even include the expansion packs!). The Sims 2 was available more recently in 2014 via an Ultimate Collection on EA’s Origin store, but the Ultimate Collection was taken down a while ago. So unless you took advantage of it at the time, The Sims 2 remained unavailable to you unless you could similarly find a physical disc. With these two new collections, all four The Sims games are now easily purchaseable and playable again through digital storefronts.
We gave The Sims 1 a 9.5/10 and The Sims 2 an 8.5/10 waaaaay back in the day when we first reviewed them both. While the series has added numerous new features and ironed out a lot of kinks since then, the originals are still worth checking out for their goofiness, relative simplicity, challenge, and legacy.
The Sims: Legacy Collection and The Sims 2: Legacy Collection are both available now on Steam, the Epic Games Store, and through the EA app.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Player First Games has announced that MultiVersus Season 5 will be its last, bringing the Warner Bros. platform fighting game to a close May 30, 2025, at 9 a.m. PST.
The studio revealed plans to discontinue support for the crossover brawler with a blog post on its website. MultiVersus, which launched May 28 last year, will launch into Season 5 starting next week, February 4, and will continue through its May 2025 end date. It’s at this point that support for online play will come to an end, with Player First promising that players will still be able to access all earned and purchased content while offline via the local gameplay mode and training mode.
“Most importantly, we want to thank every player and person who has ever played or supported MultiVersus,” a message from the MultiVersus team says. “All of us on the Player First Games and Warner Bros. Games teams have poured our heart and soul into this game. We will be forever grateful for the incredible support of the MultiVersus community throughout this journey.”
Player First adds that real-money transactions for MultiVersus are no longer available as of today, though fans will still have the option to use Gleamium and character tokens to access in-game content until support ends come May 30. MultiVersus will also be delisted from the PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, Steam, and Epic Games Store at this time.
“We took another $100 million plus impairment due to the underperforming releases, primarily MultiVersus this quarter, bringing total writedown year-to-date to over $300 million in our games business, a key factor in this year’s studio profit decline,” chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said during the November call.
Although today’s news means the free-to-play Warner Bros. fighting game will shut down just days after celebrating its one-year launch anniversary, Season 5 will at least send it out with a bang. In addition to the usual new content seasonal updates bring, new characters Lola Bunny and Aquaman will also be joining the fight as playable characters. Both will be available starting next week, with the Looney Toons icon able to be unlocked as a daily calendar reward and the DC superhero available through the battle pass.
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).
The developer of Civilization 7 has explained why it strongly recommends even veteran Civ players stick with the tutorial for their first full campaign.
In a post on Steam, Ed Beach, creative director at Firaxis Games, offered his tips for your first game of Civilization 7.
“Civilization 7 is a big game, with many new systems and mechanics that differentiate it from earlier games in our series,” he began. “There’s a lot to learn, so we felt that it was important that we provide some suggestions to ensure everyone has a successful first experience.”
This is a reference to Civilization 7’s Ages system, which is a drastic change for the long-running strategy series. A full campaign in Civilization 7 is one that goes through all three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Once the Age is completed, all players (and any AI opponents) experience an Age Transition simultaneously. During an Age Transition, three things happen: you select a new civilization from the new Age to represent your empire, you choose which Legacies you want to retain in the new Age, and the game world evolves. The Civilization games have never had such a system.
Beach then explained why Firaxis chose Small as the default map size for Civilization 7.
“We know that many veteran Civ players love to play on the largest map size and see the maximum number of empires battle it out,” he said. “However, there’s a very deliberate reason that we chose Small as the default map size. With three other empires on your home continent, and a few more to discover later in the game, Small Maps make for a very comfortable experience while you are learning the ins and outs of Civ 7.
“We especially recommend this map size as you get your feet wet with our new Diplomacy system. Tracking your relationship and ongoing diplomatic activities with a manageable number of opponents makes it way easier to get the hang of how you want to spend and manage your Diplomatic Influence.
“We also recommend sticking with Continents Plus for your Map Type selection. The extra islands just off-shore help ease you into the ocean exploration – a key element of the Exploration Age, the second chapter of our game.”
As for the Tutorial and Advisors, Beach confirmed that when you launch into your first game of Civilization 7, it turns the Tutorial on for you. He also strongly recommended Civ pros play with the Tutorial on, at least for their first full game.
“The Tutorial is designed to provide tips and explanations exactly when you first encounter something new,” Beach explained.
“Fans experienced with earlier Civ titles may scoff at the idea of playing with the Tutorial on, but with so many of our game systems having received upgrades and revisions, we really do recommend sticking with the Tutorial for your first full campaign through our three Ages.
“Keep in mind that the game has four different Advisors, and you can control which ones are actively leading you through a series of quests to teach you their portion of the game. If it’s too much to take in all at once, we suggest listening to only a single Advisor at a time.”
Even after you’ve mastered enough systems to turn the tutorial off, you should switch to the setting Only Warnings, Beach recommended.
“This setting allows these same Advisors to jump in and warn you if your empire’s progress is about to undergo a major setback,” he said. “Even our internal team at Firaxis that knows this game so well plays with these warnings enabled!”
Overnight, Firaxis unveiled Civilization 7’s post-launch roadmap as part of a special livestream event (Great Britain has been relegated to DLC). Civilization 7 itself launches on PC via Steam, on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X and S on February 11, although the more expensive Deluxe Edition grants access from February 6.
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 decision followed EA’s announcement that Dragon Age: The Veilguard had underperformed on its expectations for the long-awaited action RPG. EA said Dragon Age “engaged” 1.5 million players during its recent financial quarter, which was down nearly 50% from the company’s projections.
Notably, EA did not say the 1.5 million number was unit sales (Dragon Age: The Veilguard was also available as a part of EA’s Play Pro subscription service). Additionally, it’s not clear whether EA is counting a free trial of the game that was available through the cheaper EA Play subscription in the 1.5 million number either.
Either way, EA’s announcement, its restructure of BioWare, and confirmation of layoffs have combined to create the sense within the Dragon Age fandom that the series is pretty much dead. There is no DLC planned for The Veilguard, and BioWare’s work on the game came to an end last week with what sounded like its last major update.
But Dragon Age: The Veilguard senior writer Sheryl Chee, who was moved from BioWare to Iron Man and Battlefield developer Motive, took to social media to offer words of hope.
“I’m now with Motive,” Chee began. “It’s been a hard two years seeing my team get chipped away and having to still keep going. But I’m still employed, so there’s that.”
Then, in response to a fan who lamented the death of Dragon Age, Chee replied to say the series now belongs to the fans who will keep it alive with their own contributions.
“So a cool French woman dropped a cool quote from Camus on me today: ‘In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.’ (I mean, who does resistance like the French, right?) We’re going through it right now. It’s a lot, everywhere…
“But DA isn’t dead. There’s fic. There’s art. There’s the connections we made through the games and because of the games. Technically EA/BioWare owns the IP but you can’t own an idea, no matter how much they want to.
“DA isn’t dead because it’s yours now.”
Then: “So someone just reposted my thing saying they’ll write a giant AU and that’s what I’m talking about. If DA has inspired you to do something, if it sparks that Invincible summer, then it’s done it’s job, and it has been my greatest honor to have been a part of that.”
Dragon Age began life with 2010’s Dragon Age: Origins, which was followed up just a year later by Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age: Inquisition released three years later, in 2014. But it took a decade for the latest sequel, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, to come out.
In September, former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah, who left BioWare in 2020, revealed that Dragon Age Inquisition had sold over 12 million copies, and “massively” oversold EA’s internal projections for the game.
EA has yet to outright say Dragon Age is dead, but it’s hard to see a new game in the series any time soon, if ever, given what’s happened to BioWare itself and the full focus on Mass Effect 5. As for Mass Effect, EA said a “core team” at BioWare is developing the next Mass Effect game under the leadership of veterans from the original trilogy, including Mike Gamble, Preston Watamaniuk, Derek Watts, Parrish Ley, and others. “While we’re not sharing numbers, the studio has the right number of people in the right roles to work on Mass Effect at this stage of development,” EA told IGN.
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.
Spider-Man 2 on PC was shaping up to be surprisingly performant once its system requirements were revealed. However, the Nixxes-developed port has debuted to a ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating, with many players complaining about technical issues.
Currently, 55% of Spider-Man 2’s Steam reviews are positive. “Despite having a high-end GPU and running the latest Nvidia drivers (5.66.36), the game frequently crashes,” said one RTX 4090 user. Another read: “The game is completely unplayable on PC. The game crashes to desktop every five minutes. I have already requested a refund.”
“Hold off on buying until they get a couple of stabilization patches out because holy hell,” one reviewer added. “To say this is ‘rough’ is an understatement. Lighting doesn’t load in some cutscenes, those same scenes run at seconds-per-frame, audio desync issues up the wazoo, freezing, stuttering, and just about every other performance issue I can think of.
“I’m gonna get a refund for now because frankly, there’s other stuff I could use $70 for right now.”
The main issue appears to be that the game’s graphics controller crashes frequently, even with users on higher-end PCs. According to one reviewer, the error reads: “A problem has occurred with your display driver. This can be caused by out of date drivers, using game settings higher than your GPU can handle, an overheating GPU, or an error with the game. Please try updating your graphics drivers, or lowering your in-game settings.”
Other users have complained that features like DLSS and ray tracing are not working properly, while others have mentioned long loading times, missing textures, and audio issues.
Several players alleged that performance can also stutter after several hours of gameplay, before leading to a hard crash. Some believe a memory leak could cause the problems.
Nixxes has responded to the reported crashes on the Steam forums, stating to one user: “Sorry to hear you are experiencing issues.
“Please refer to the troubleshooting guides on the Nixxes Support website and contact us if the problem persists. Make sure to include your logs and crash dumps as outlined on the support website, so we can troubleshoot as quickly as possible.”
Additionally, Nixxes was made aware of other bugs that can occur during the photo-op missions in Spider-Man 2. “We are aware of a bug that can occur if your framerate is very low during this scene (below 20 FPS). As a workaround, try lowering your graphics settings and or resolution to pass this point.”
Sayem is a freelancer based in the UK, covering tech & hardware. You can get in touch with him at @sayem.zone on Bluesky.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket received its Space Time Smackdown expansion yesterday, January 30, and players have expressed shock and heartbreak at one specific card’s artwork that depicts a particularly brutal scene for Pokémon.
The card in question is Weavile ex, and while this comes in three separate forms, it’s the 2 Star full art card that has fans in an uproar. In the artwork, below, a group of Weavile are hiding in the treetops with claws at the ready, preparing to prey on an innocent Swinub.
“No Swinub,” look up! Look up!” reads a Reddit post featuring the artwork with nearly 10,000 upvotes. “Always got to be one card per set that shows Pokémon in the process of straight up killing each other,” one user replied. “Leave the lil guy alone,” said another.
“The ecology of Pokémon is always so crazy to imagine,” another fan added. “Like these are still animals, some smarter than others. Just they have the ability to fire laser beams.”
Some are choosing to believe the full art card for Mamoswine, the final evolution of Swinub, depicts a happy ending though, as it shows the mammoth pocket monster looking up while protecting a handful of Swinub.
“Hey, Mamoswine protected his baby. Don’t worry. He most definitely saw those Weaviles,” said one desperate fan. “The Mamoswine alt card already looks above. He saw them. He saw…” said another.
Space Time Smackdown arrived as a Pokémon Diamond and Pearl themed set bringing the likes of Weavile and Mamoswine alongside Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, and more. It includes a total of 207 cards and is therefore significantly smaller than Genetic Apex’s 286. That being said, 52 of these are the alternate art, Star and Crown rarity cards, and as Genetic Apex had 60 of these, there is a higher percentage of rare pieces to collect.
Creatures Inc. still hasn’t commented on the controversial trading update which arrived the day before, with its social media accounts and the game itself only really focusing on Space Time Smackdown. It also failed to respond to IGN’s request for comment.
A “Trade Feature Celebration Gift” did arrive with 500 Trade Tokens and 120 Trade Hourglasses (the former of which is enough to trade a single ex Pokémon), but the developer has otherwise remained quiet on fan complaints.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
Cardy, Jesse, and Wes are here to go through some of Xbox’s most famous franchises, and rank each of them in tier lists based on which they enjoy the most. Is Halo still S-tier? Can Playground’s Fable return the series back to its Lionhead heights? Does anyone want a new Fuzion Frenzy? Some of these questions will be answered.
Remember to send us your thoughts about all the new games, TV shows, and films you’re enjoying or looking forward to: ign_ukfeedback@ign.com.
Midnight Society, the game studio co-founded by stream Guy ‘Dr. Disrespect’ Beahm, has announced that it will be closing its doors and canceling its FPS game, Deadrop.
The studio announced its closure on a post on X writing, “Today we are announcing Midnight Society will be closing its doors after three incredible years, with an amazing team of over 55 developers[.]” The studio added a call asking if any studio is hiring and could offere employment opportunities to its team members.
Midnight Society was founded by Beahm, as well as veterans of games like Call of Duty and Halo Robert Bowling and Quinn Delhyo. The studio’s first game, Deadrop was meant to be a free-to-play FPS that would build on the team’s expertise. Deadrop was targeting a 2024 release, but missed their target.
Midnight Society parted ways with Beahm in 2024 after the streamer announced exchanging messages with a minor through Twitch’s Whispers feature that “sometimes leaned too much in the direction of being inappropriate.” Despite the split, Midnight Society continued development on Deadrop until this year when it shut down.
The game was set in a fictional universe where “the 80s never ended,” according to the studio. Images shared by Midnight Soceity shows characters wearing Daft Punk-like helments and wielding guns and swords. The gameplay was set to be a PvPvE style extraction shooter.
Midnight Society joins the list of studios that have experienced closure or layoffs in this difficult time for the games industry that has impacted companies like Ubisoft, BioWare, Phoenix Labs, and many many more.
Xbox’s popular racing game Forza Horizon 5 is heading to PlayStation.
In a surprise announcement, Playground Games announced that the most recent Forza Horizon game is coming to PS5 this spring. It will be the latest Xbox exclusive heading to the PlayStation console following Bethesda games like Starfield, Sea of Thieves, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.
The PS5 version was developed by Panic Button in partnership with Turn 10 Studios and Playground Games and will feature the same content as the Xbox and PC version. Furthermore, Car Packs, and the Hot Wheels and Rally Adventure expansions will also be included.
The move comes amid growing interest from Xbox in releasing its games on non-Xbox platforms including PlayStation and Nintendo Switch, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirming its intention to support the Switch 2.
In the most recent investor call, Microsoft revealed that while Indiana Jones and the Great Circle reached 4 million players, and Game Pass on PC grew 30% to increase services revenue by 2%, overall gaming revenue fell with console sales dropping nearly 30%. This may incentivize Xbox to prioritize Game Pass and push for more games on other hardware.
Forza Horizon 5 is the continuation of the open world racing series. A little more arcade than its racing sim sibling, Forza Mortorsport, Forza Horizon 5 allows drivers to race and explore beautiful Mexico. You can read our full review here.
