Category: IGN

Microsoft’s high-profile legal battle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the fate of its $69 billion buyout of Activision Blizzard unearthed a number of explosive revelations, among them the fact Microsoft renegotiated ZeniMax’s deal with Disney to make Bethesda’s upcoming Indiana Jones game exclusive to Xbox and PC, thus ditching the PlayStation 5 version.

During the trial, Bethesda’s Pete Hines revealed that Disney had an agreement with Bethesda owner ZeniMax for a multiplatform AAA Indiana Jones game, but after Microsoft bought the company, the agreement with Disney was amended to transition the Indiana Jones game to an Xbox and PC exclusive. At the time, Hines said the game was set to hit Game Pass on day one.

Several emails and conversations shown during the trial added colour to the decision to make Indiana Jones a platform exclusive. “While it is not in our messaging, I think it is important to highlight that Lucasfilm brought up the issue of platforms because we have a signed agreement with them to develop the game for multiple consoles,” read an email between Hines, Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, Xbox Studios head Matt Booty, and several other executives.

“The upside here is a game coming from Bethesda that everyone will be excited about. This is the most important thing. The downside for Xbox… is that a large percentage of output from Bethesda won’t directly benefit the Xbox community in any way,” Spencer wrote in January 2021.

Hines said he was told by Spencer in a subsequent call that Bethesda should continue to look at title exclusivity on a case-by-case basis. Asked why Indiana Jones was ultimately amended, Hines attributed it to “reducing risk and trying to get a degree of clarity.”

“You’re dealing with a licensor who is giving a ton of feedback on what you’re making, is going to add a ton of time to your scheduling, these agreements, you don’t get to take as long as you want, you have a window of time in which you’re going to release a game, you immediately have a clock that’s ticking on you,” Hines said.

In short, while Bethesda had a degree of control over what happened with Starfield, it has much less control over Indiana Jones, which is owned by Lucasfilm. “Truthfully, we also kind of liked the idea of embracing, bringing it to Game Pass and how many players we could get there,” Hine said.

A subsequent court document revealed how Microsoft believed it could use Game Pass and console sales to help offset the losses it would incur from making Indiana Jones and the recently released Starfield Xbox console exclusives.

The FTC cited Microsoft Gaming Chief Financial Officer Tim Stuart’s testimony, stating that Microsoft had forecasted “more than 10 million” sales on PlayStation “for both Starfield and Indiana Jones,” before it decided to make both games exclusive to Xbox.

Now, Speaking to Axios, Disney’s head of gaming, Sean Shoptaw, explained why the company was happy to renegotiate on Indiana Jones. With “Xbox still being one of the bigger marketplaces for games, we didn’t feel like we were going to be overly exclusionary”, Shoptaw insisted. “We felt like it’s still going to reach a broad set of folks, and we felt, financially and strategically for the game, that made sense at the time.”

Essentially, Microsoft made it worth Disney’s while to ensure Indiana Jones on Xbox as a console exclusive, thus adding further value to Game Pass and encouraging sales of the Xbox console.

Microsoft and the issue of console exclusivity has come up multiple times in recent years. Microsoft announced its plans to acquire Bethesda owner ZeniMax back in 2020, and outside of honoring the timed-exclusivity deals PlayStation previously inked with Bethesda for timed console exclusivity for Arkane’s Deathloop and Tango Gameworks’ Ghostwire: Tokyo, projects coming from developers under the ZeniMax umbrella were announced as a console exclusive for Xbox consoles, including the previously mentioned Starfield and Indiana Jones.

Indeed, Arkane Studios was working on a PS5 version of Redfall before Microsoft acquired ZeniMax. Arkane Studios’ Harvey Smith noted in the interview that the developer was then instructed to focus on “Game Pass, Xbox, and PC.”

The exclusivity of Activision’s Call of Duty was at the heart of the FTC’s case against Microsoft, a case it ultimately lost. While Bethesda games, including the upcoming Elder Scrolls 6, are PC and Xbox exclusive, Microsoft signed a 10-year deal with Sony to ensure Call of Duty remains on PlayStation.

Microsoft exclusivity hit the headlines again last week following the reveal of Arkane’s Blade game during The Game Awards 2023. Microsoft is yet to announce launch platforms, leaving a potential PS5 version up in the air. But with Disney seemingly happy for Indiana Jones to leave PlayStation behind, perhaps it has agreed a similar deal for Blade.

In September, Todd Howard indicated Bethesda will talk more about the Indiana Jones game, developed by Wolfenstein maker MachineGames, in 2024.

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.

Tekken 8 is getting a demo for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and PC ahead of its January 26 release date, Bandai Namco has announced.

The demo arrives on PS5 first on December 14. PC and Xbox Series X and S users get the demo from December 21. In a post on Twitter/X, Bandai Namco said the demo lets players access the first chapter of Tekken 8’s story mode as well as local versus fighting mode.

For those unsure where the Tekken 8 story is set in the timeline, Bandai Namco previously revealed that Tekken 8 is set six months after the events of Tekken 7. The story mode will again focus on the Mishima’s internal feud, specifically on Kazuya and his son Jin.

“It’s rare for a fighting game to truly move the needle and advance the genre because of how well-established and codified it is,” we wrote in our final preview for Tekken 8. “Even truly great fighters often don’t manage to do it. But over the last few years, we’ve had several fighters, from Guilty Gear: Strive to Street Fighter 6, push the genre forward in exciting ways. Tekken 8 feels like it has the potential to be the next name on that list.”

Tekken 8 is out on January 26. For more, check out our IGN First interview with Tekken 8’s producer, and if you are planning to play Tekken 8 on PC, be sure to check out the system requirements beforehand.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Hasbro has announced a huge wave of layoffs that affects over 1,000 staff just before the holidays.

The toymaker, which owns Dungeons & Dragons via its Wizards of the Coast subsidiary, as well as Transformers, Monopoly, Play-Doh, and My Little Pony, is cutting nearly 20% of its workforce, or around 1,100 staff, due to weak sales for toys and games, The Wall Street Journal reported. This is on top of 800 layoffs earlier this year. Hasbro had about 6,500 employees as of the end of last year.

According to the AP, Hasbro wants to save up to $300 million annually by 2025. Chief Executive Officer Chris Cocks said Hasbro will “focus on fewer, bigger brands; gaming; digital; and our rapidly growing direct to consumer and licensing businesses.”

Wizards of the Coast licensed the Dungeons & Dragons setting to developer Larian for the blockbuster video game Baldur’s Gate 3, which has sold millions of copies and won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2023. But it seems toy sales are faltering even as the digital and licensing business show growth.

In an email sent to employees on Monday, Cocks said: “We entered 2023 expecting a year of change including significant updates to our leadership team, structure, and scope of operations. We anticipated the first three quarters to be challenging, particularly in Toys, where the market is coming off historic, pandemic-driven highs. While we have made some important progress across our organization, the headwinds we saw through the first nine months of the year have continued into Holiday and are likely to persist into 2024.

“To position Hasbro for growth, we must first make sure our foundation is solid and profitable. To do that, we need to modernize our organization and get even leaner. While we see workforce reductions as a last resort, given the state of our business, it’s a lever we must pull to keep Hasbro healthy.

“I know this news is especially difficult during the holiday season. We value each of our team members – they aren’t just employees, they’re friends and colleagues. We decided to communicate now so people have time to plan and process the changes. For those employees affected we are offering comprehensive packages including job placement support to assist in their transition.”

The layoffs are expected to be completed in the next 18 to 24 months.

Image credit: Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures

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.

A former developer at Rockstar has attempted to explain why Grand Theft Auto 6 is coming to PC after it hits PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S, and called on PC gamers to give the studio the “benefit of the doubt” over its controversial launch plans.

Grand Theft Auto 6 saw the release of its debut trailer last week and with it confirmation of a 2025 release date. But it’s the platforms Rockstar has listed for GTA 6 at launch, notably only PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, that sent shockwaves throughout the PC gaming community. PC gamers now face the prospect of either waiting to play GTA 6 from 2026, or perhaps beyond, or go for the famous Rockstar game double-dip and get the game on console at launch and again when it comes out on PC.

As you’d expect, PC gamers reacted with a mix of downbeat acceptance and shock at Rockstar’s plans to skip PC for GTA 6’s launch in this day and age. But speaking in a new video, Mike York, who worked as an animator at Rockstar New England for six years, helping to build GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 before leaving the company in 2017, moved to explain the potential thinking behind Rockstar’s decision.

(It’s worth noting that IGN has asked Rockstar about the lack of a PC version for the 2025 launch of GTA 6, but it hasn’t responded.)

York, who IGN has already reported on for his reaction to the GTA 6 trailer, begins by explaining why the PlayStation is, historically for Rockstar, the console of focus when it comes to its games.

“The reason why a PC port comes later and not the first thing that comes out, is because they want to prioritise what sells,” York said. “Most of the time, especially in the past, PlayStation was the big seller. PlayStation was the console to have. It sold more than any other console for the most part. Everybody’s playing PlayStation.”

York said that for GTA 5, Rockstar prioritised the PS3, and built the Xbox 360 port simultaneously, before getting to the PC version post-launch. GTA 5 launched on PS3 and Xbox 360 in September 2013 before launching on PS4 and Xbox One in November 2014, and it didn’t launch on PC until April 2015. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S versions also launched March 2022.

Then we get to the meat of York’s argument: the nature of building a PC version of a game as complicated and vast as GTA for a huge number of potential hardware configurations, and the sheer amount of testing that has to be done to ensure a quality launch. This, York said, is the main reason Rockstar releases PC versions of its games after the console versions, and why GTA 6 is set to follow the pattern.

“This is very important for everybody to remember: one of the main reasons why a PC port will take so long is because it’s different architecture and different components,” York said.

“They have to accommodate for all these different things that can happen. Because on a PlayStation and an Xbox, each one of those has one graphics card, and it’s the same graphics card, it’s the same architecture inside the box as every single PlayStation that’s shipped to millions of people. But when it comes to a PC, every single person has a different PC. They’re running it differently. They have different hardware in there. They have different CPUs and GPUs. The memory usage and the different things the game is doing in the background can sometimes hit a fail and mess up during different configurations. It’s hard to explain, but that’s what it boils down to.

“They need to test the game more on PC than they would on Xbox or PlayStation. If you think about it, you already have to test the game a ton in order to get it to work. So a PC is even harder. You got to throw more resources at it. You have to test things a lot more. And when you’re doing the PC port you have to test things on multiple different hardwares, different GPUs. Not just one or two, but 10 or 20. There’s so many different configurations out there that you’ll just never be able to test them all. And there’s a lot of things that can go wrong once you release that PC port, because it just hasn’t been tested by millions of people. It’s only been tested by a thousand people at work. So you can only take it so far.”

York pointed to the backlash against the 2015 PC port of Batman: Arkham Knight as a warning sign for what can happen if a PC version of a complex game isn’t given enough time in the oven. “If it was tested more against different configurations it would have made it out okay and unscathed,” York insisted.

“A lot of times people are so antsy for the PC port, they want it right now,” York continued. “It’s hard to do that as a developer because the team isn’t big enough. If they had a huge team, if they had just one team working on the PC, one team working on the Xbox, and the whole time they’d be trying to optimise all three at the same time, but it just doesn’t work that way. We don’t have the money, we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the manpower. So we prioritise what’s best for the company’s money, right? What’s going to sell best? Well, most likely it’s the PlayStation. So let’s put all our energy into the PlayStation, and then the Xbox, and then the PC.”

There will no doubt be a number of counter arguments in response to York’s video, chief among them the vast resources available to Rockstar compared to many other developers who build and release PC ports of their complex open world games. And yes, there will be plenty who say this decision is about nothing more than Rockstar’s push for the double-dip two years after the big console launch. Again, IGN has asked Rockstar for comment, but it has yet to respond.

Whatever the case, York called on PC gamers to give Rockstar the “benefit of the doubt”, and not send angry messages to staff about the GTA 6 launch plans.

“I heard one guy say, ‘it’s not rocket science.’ But it might be harder than rocket science in some situations. Like, literally,” York said. “This stuff is very complicated, with the coding and the different things you have to do in order to get it to work properly, and all the testing you have to do.

“So, don’t get mad at the developers or come at them and be upset. Just try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Try to give them the time to hopefully deliver these ports. Go in the comment sections on these and say hey, it’s okay guys, take your time. Take your time! Let the developers know it’s okay to take their time so they can deliver the best game they can to you.”

The GTA 6 trailer was awaited with bated breath from the gaming industry and finally arrived with plenty of classic Rockstar satire. The 90-second trailer featured a ton of intricate details (here are 99 things IGN spotted) and plenty of references to wild and wacky real life events too. It also showed off GTA 6’s dual protagonists, Jason and Lucia, and the internet has already grown obsessed over the latter. The GTA 6 trailer has already surpassed predecessor Grand Theft Auto 5’s reveal trailer’s views, reaching 101 million views in less than two days. It’s now the most-viewed video game reveal on YouTube over a 24 hour period, and the most viewed non-music video on YouTube in 24 hours.

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 developer of Baldur’s Gate 3 has issued an update on the deleted save bug that’s affecting the recently released Xbox version of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

The issue causes saves to disappear after a crash, which for a game as involved and long as Baldur’s Gate 3 is a significant concern.

Yesterday, December 11, Larian issued a small update to Baldur’s Gate 3 that included stability fixes, but players reported it failed to stamp out the bug. This morning, December 12, Michael Douse, the Director of Publishing at Larian, tweeted to say the developer is working with Microsoft on a second fix “that should hopefully solve it”.

“It’s looking optimistic,” Douse continued. “Not as simple as just patching the game itself, so kudos to the green team for being so on top.”

In the meantime, Douse referred Xbox players to Microsoft’s recommendations to “help limit” the possibility of running into the problem.

“Good news is it shouldn’t be present on the Xbox retail version,” Douse said, “so long as your Xbox firmware is up to date.”

Here’s are Microsoft’s recommendations to limit the Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox crash save bug:

• Ensure your console remains powered, even when turned off.
  • Your Xbox console is designed to still perform checks and functions when turned off to help optimize your experience. When you turn your console off, make sure it is done properly. Any method that involves turning power off to the console directly can cause unexpected issues.
    • Examples of these are below, but not limited to
      • Turning power off at the wall or outlet the console is connected too.
      • Turning off a power strip or surge protector the console is plugged into.
      • An unexpected power outage
  • To turn off your console properly, follow these steps.
    • Hold down the Xbox button on your controller.
    • Select Turn off console.
      • You can also just press the Power button on the front of the console to initiate a shut down.
  • To learn more about power options and various power states for your console, go here
• Make sure your Xbox is up to date.
  • Ensure your system is up to date as console updates usually include fixes to how games operate.
  • Even if your console is set to receive automatic updates, you may still have to do a manual update to ensure your console is as up to date as it can be.
  • To perform a manual update, follow these instructions.
    • Make sure that your console is connected to the internet, and then press the Xbox button to open the guide.
    • Select Profile & system,
    • then go to Settings.
    • then to System.
    • and finally Updates.
      • Under Updates, you’ll see:
        • Console update available. Select this to begin your update, or
        • No console update available. This means your console is up to date.
  • To learn more about Xbox console updates, go here.
  • To see the history of Xbox updates and what each update includes, go here.
  • If you would like to keep your console updated but do not have an Internet connection available, check out our article on performing an offline system update.
• Close your game completely when you are done playing.
  • Save your progress in the game first.
  • Exit the title to your Home screen.
    • You can use the Xbox button on your controller to select Home to get here.
  • On the Home screen, select Baldur’s Gate 3 from your recently played list.
    • This will be towards the top of the dashboard.
  • Highlight the game, and then press the Menu button on your controller.
  • Select Quit
    • If it’s not present, the game is not currently running.
  • To learn more about Quick Resume, go here.

Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on Xbox Series X and S last week over four months after it came out on PC and three months after it launched on PlayStation 5. Larian worked with Microsoft to help get the game running well enough on the less powerful Xbox Series S, which had caused issues. The concession: Xbox Series X consoles have the split-screen feature, but Xbox Series S does not.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the biggest games of 2023, and took home the top prize of Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2023.

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.

Editor’s Note: Faster than we could publish our early access review, the developer announced it was shutting down and The Day Before was removed from sale. The servers remain up for those who have bought it and not yet refunded, but since our reviewer went to the trouble of playing it, it seems only right that you should get to read what he thought of the experience while it lasted.

Five long years. That’s the amount of development time the (now-defunct) developer FNTASTIC supposedly took to assemble The Day Before. This wholly disappointing online zombie survival shooter contains essentially nothing of what was originally promised over the years leading up to its disastrous early access release. Not only is it not an MMO, but it hardly passes as a survival shooter, and I barely had time to put in a handful of hours before it went belly-up. During the very first – and, it turns out, the only – weekend I spent with it, I ran into such severe performance issues on my GeForce RTX 4070 Ti and Ryzen 3900x-equipped PC that it would’ve felt like a waste of my time to continue anyway. That is, even if the only thing to do in The Day Before – run around its questionably designed city, collecting loot until you either die or manage to bring enough back to purchase better gear for the next trip – was any fun to begin with.

There’s a basic yet functional story here: you wake up on a makeshift hospital bed in a ramshackle survivor camp in a decently-sized metropolis based loosely on New York City. It’s filled with questionable artwork and decals that look precariously similar to existing logos used by real-world businesses, but that might be forgivable if it was a parody. (Is it? That’s for the courts to decide.) Unfortunately, its generic survivors seem to take its zombie outbreak seriously, though it’s unclear where the zombies are coming from or why I should care about what happened to this unimaginative world.

After a decently-paced tutorial, The Day Before comes up short on even the most basic features one would expect in any survival game. Gone are the dynamic environments and tight firefights shown off in its now mysteriously absent trailers; instead, you’ll mostly spend your time running around a static cityscape that looks pretty at first glance… but offers absolutely no depth. You might find a zombie or two while scavenging for loot, but they rarely pose any threat.

What shocked me most about The Day Before was the notable absence of almost any UI. Sure, there’s a touchscreen display for your quests – which you can only track one of at a time – as well as a makeshift map, which is clunky to use because (after the long animation to set it up) you have to navigate it exclusively with your WASD keys, leaving your character a sitting duck while you do. The inventory screen is also barebones, and even if you manage to find yourself in the same squad with other players, it’s almost impossible to figure out where they are or even if they’re still on your team.

Not only is there no multiplayer menu – there’s no voice chat either, so if you really want to you’ll have to friend up and use Steam’s chat or Discord. At least you can communicate with your party in a rudimentary in-game chat window, but even getting that to work properly is an exercise in patience. I’d have had a more enjoyable time actually hiding under a dumpster surrounded by zombies than waiting for The Day Before’s multiplayer to work right.

Since there isn’t much guidance at all, I had to find out the hard way that The Day Before wasn’t simply not telling me how to do certain things – like melee combat, or setting up camp in the alleged “open world” – it literally doesn’t have those features at all. That’s right: if you find yourself running around without a gun for some reason, good luck outrunning these absolutely brainless zombies because your hands and feet are useless. And better luck next time.

The Day Before is not an MMO, or even an open world, despite claims from its developer that it would be both of those things. Instead, it’s fundamentally an extraction shooter with only one goal: sluggishly run around the (mostly empty) city, grab some loot, and get to one of the extraction points before you die. There’s no persistent progression system at all, and the only things you carry over between runs are any gear you manage to take with you, as well as any currency you save up by selling the scraps of loot you successfully schlep back to base. If you somehow die before making it home (which is the norm thanks to an unrestricted free-for-all PvP system) you lose everything you had on your body – meaning you’ll often progress backward as the small number of coins provided to every new character dwindles. You don’t respawn with a weapon or any basic gear, so in theory, it would only take three or four early deaths to end up with a useless character.

You at least get a small bit of currency if you didn’t have any left in your storage after dying to offset this, which is enough to buy one little handgun and a few bullets. This is done at the main outpost, Woodberry, which serves as a headquarters for your daily operations. That zone is set up well enough, with a clear layout to keep you situated. There are merchants, a few NPCs that spout bland set-dressing dialogue, and a storage area for your loose gear and currency. It’s cool that it’s also populated by other players between loot runs, and it’s great that you can team up with anyone while you’re in this hub. It’s significantly less cool, however, that the hub area’s NPCs – the only NPCs in The Day Before, mind you – are so dryly written and unenthusiastically voice-acted that they sound like the poor result of a generative AI.

It’s difficult to forgive that on its own, but it’s even harder still when you realize there’s genuinely no story content after the first thirty or so minutes it takes to complete the tutorial. There’s also no reason to do any of its procedurally-generated quests – which have you looting random items for an NPC back at camp – other than to earn a meager amount of extra currency, which really makes it suck that you can only take on one at a time.

Except for the useless ranch area – where you can dump currency into furniture, even though it’s off to the side and doesn’t do anything to help you – The Day Before almost entirely takes place outdoors during the day, and there are no unique weather effects to shake things up. The landscape of New Fortune City is a largely static zone with limited space, where the most exciting thing you’ll find is an occasional container with one or two pieces of junk loot. But despite these lackluster environments, the framerate struggled to remain stable on my mid-end gaming PC. It had trouble staying consistent even with DLSS and Frame Generation turned on, and the constant bugs and stuttering made it downright annoying to push through.

There are no unique zombie encounters or bosses, either, and very little in the way of landmarks or special areas containing different types of loot. The few there are only seem to exist to house unique gear, not that they were very good at it – for example, you could expect to find something like a suit of riot armor or a shotgun in a police armory, but these spots are generally empty instead, and usually only serve to make excellent traps for other, more coordinated bands of players to gank you for all of your hard-earned scrap.

Surviving all the way to extraction is frustratingly difficult on higher-population servers, even with a squad by your side, thanks to a limited number of extraction points on the map – all of which are situated next to chokepoints constantly abused by more powerful groups that can instantly stop you from progressing at all. Not only is this unfair and unfun on its own, but there’s currently an unfixed currency duplication glitch – which means you can bet most of those other players are cheating to get high-powered armor and weapons. Now that FNTASTIC is no more, the hopes of that ever getting fixed are slim to none.

The good news here is at least that there’s a surprisingly decent variety of weapons, ranging from handguns to scoped sniper rifles. In all, there are around 14 or so options available at the weapon dealer in town, though you’ll struggle to afford anything that packs a real punch until you’ve survived enough rounds gathering loot (or until you’ve cheated your way into wealth). It’s nice that you can invest in upgrades like scopes and muzzle attachments, which you can still conveniently attach to your weapons at the workshop in town; though there is no mobile crafting system, as was promised pre-release. Weapons also handle reasonably well, though their cheap and underwhelming sound design leaves a lot to be desired.

The bigger your backpack, the more loot you can carry – but just like everything else in your inventory, you’ll lose your backpack, armor, clothing, and anything else in your inventory as soon as you die. This sucks because backpacks are relatively expensive to replace, and you essentially need one in order to haul anything worthwhile back from a run. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find one on another player’s corpse, but it’s more likely you’ll be under-equipped and unprepared to fight anyone if you find yourself in a tight spot, money-wise.

There are also cars for some reason, even though they’re exorbitantly expensive (costing upwards of millions of currency) and essentially useless. They’re so fragile that it doesn’t take too much to make them explode, sending all the currency they took to get up in flames in an instant. Adding insult to injury, the car explosion animation is so pathetic and underwhelming that you can’t even enjoy losing all your hard-earned coins. The silver lining, if you can even call it that, is that The Day Before didn’t last long enough to implement a planned microtransaction system that promised to make all these currency problems even worse.

Earlier this week, The Day Before launched its early access lauch to near universally negative reviews, quickly landing itself a spot among Steam’s 10 worst reviewed games list. Now, just after announcing its closure a few hours ago, studio FNTASTIC has removed the purchase button on the game’s Steam page and is now seemingly wiping its presence from the internet.

According to the game’s Steam page, The Day Before is no longer available for purchase, marking the end of its short-lived four days in early access. The game’s SteamDB page also shows changes to the game’s listed developer from FNTASTIC to Mytona Fntastic and back, possibly showing an internal struggle after the studio announced its closure.

Alongside the game’s delisting, FNTASTIC is now seemingly removing its presence from the internet entirely. Journalist Nick Calandra compiled a thread showing off the studio’s essential disappearance, revealing that its website, YouTube channel, and even Medium account were shut down. CEO Eduard Gotovtsev also deleted his accounts on X/Twitter and LinkedIn.

If you needed any more indication The Day Before is a scam, the CEO of FNTASTIC has nuked himself from Twitter. pic.twitter.com/oosad3bwUe

— Nick Calandra (@nickjcal) December 11, 2023

Calandra noted that the website’s closure leaves players, who were promised updates to the game and paid $39, without a way to contact the studio at all. The game is still facing bugs and server issues along with complaints of false promises — players were quick to notice that the game is not an open-world MMO despite its advertising.

FNTASTIC’s departure from Steam and social media is just the latest development in a saga that’s been unfolding since long before the game’s controversy-filled early access launch. Before its release, players grew skeptical after delays (even after the studio promised no more delays), a trademark dispute, and the studio’s open use of unpaid workers.

Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN who loves all things indie and Nintendo. Outside of IGN, they’ve contributed to sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.

Hideo Kojima formally revealed his next game, OD (Overdose), at The Game Awards last week. And while there is plenty to say about it, such as the fact that Jordan Peele and Euphoria actress Hunter Schafer are tied to the project, the biggest surprise appears to be what may be Silent Hill references in the trailer.

The first one that many people quickly pointed out was at the 1:14 timestamp in the trailer. You can see a door through actress Sophia Lillis’ eyes. Many have quickly pointed out that it appears to be a reference or easter egg of sorts for the opening scene of P.T. — the playable teaser for the canceled game Silent Hills, which Kojima was working on before his falling out with Konami.

It does not help that Kojima would appear on stage walking through a door similar to the one shown in the first few seconds of P.T. after the OD trailer premiered at The Game Awards.

HIDEO KOJIMA PT REFERENCE WE ARE SO BACK pic.twitter.com/syN8UFGyqI

— esteemed colleague (@carcrashsaint) December 8, 2023

Then fans on Reddit spotted the quick shot of an MRI brain scan and suggested that the glimpse of it was referring to the brightness slider that P.T. had to adjust the brightness.

Now, you are probably thinking those two references could be a stretch. But the next reference, as spotted by Central Xbox is in the OD trailer. When actor Udo Kier appears, fans notice that letters appear in his mouth. Now, those who spotted this had to slow down the trailer and adjust the brightness, but analyzing the frames closely; it was discovered that those letters spelled the word “Atami.”

Foi descoberto que durante o trailer de OD, algumas letras aparecem durante os frames. Elas formam a palavra Atami, que é uma cidade em Shizuoka, em JP é 静岡

Separando os kanjis e pegando sua tradução literal, nós temos:
静: quieto, silencioso (silent, quiet)
岡: colina (hill) pic.twitter.com/e47ESzlokM

— Central Xbox (@centralxboxbr) December 11, 2023

As Central Xbox notes, Atami is a city located in the Shizuoka prefecture of Japan, but the account also pointed out that a loose English translation when separating the kanjis of Shizouka means “silent hill.”

Kojima and his studio worked on Silent Hills from 2012 until 2015 when Konami officially canceled the project. The game would have included actor Norman Reedus as the main protagonist, and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro was also tied to the project. In the years since, P.T. — which was pitched as a platable test demo — has become popular obsession, with fans porting it to numerous platforms. Kojima remains estranged from Konami, but fans continue to have plenty of conspiracy theories over whether he’ll eventually return to the series.

OD, for its part, does not have a release date. For more, check out everything else announced at The Game Awards.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

In case you have not heard, FNTASTIC, the developer behind The Day Before, announced its closure less than a week after launching its zombie game in Early Access.

To accompany the announcement, FNTASTIC posted a statement on X/Twitter that was oddly structured, which included in the end of an abridged timeline of FNTASTIC’s history from stem to stern.

Not long after this statement was released, the developers behind DayZ and Rust decided to troll FNTASTIC. DayZ developer Bohemia Interactive was the first to troll FNTASTIC with a statement of them celebrating DayZ’s 10th anniversary of its release in Early Access (even though it’s not for another five days). Bohemia Interactive also took a few other jabs at FNTASTIC, including how the Early Access version of DayZ launched with melee.

/s🤭 pic.twitter.com/xwfNIGpY0W

— DayZ 🖥 🎮 ❤️ (@DayZ) December 11, 2023

Meanwhile, the developers behind Rust also decided to play along. But instead of making their own statement parodying the same structure as FNTASTIC’s, they simply used a “red marker” approach to replace certain words when applicable, as you can see from its post below.

/s🤭 🫶 pic.twitter.com/xbVCzd81ES

— Rust (@playrust) December 11, 2023

For those unaware, both DayZ and Rust are two open-world survival games. The former is an open-world game set in a zombie apocalypse, while the latter is an open-world survival game where you have to focus on surviving in the wilderness. Both games started as mods based on Arma 2 before becoming games that would be released in Early Access and eventually see full releases years later.

There is a certain level of irony that these two accounts are trolling FNTASTIC. Both games in theory should have been competitors to The Day Before, but as many players discovered last week when it launched in Early Access, FNTASTIC’s zombie game was anything but an open-world, but rather an extraction shooter.

The Day Before was once the most wishlisted game on Steam and just four days after its launch on Early Access, its player count dropped to almost 90 percent and it is now one of the worst reviewed games on Valve’s digital store.

Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

From Star Wars to Naruto, Epic Games has managed to nab all kinds of brand crossovers for its skins and characters – and it still hasn’t counted out going for Nintendo.

Sax Persson, Epic’s head of ecosystem in Fortnite, recently told Axios how difficult their attempts have been to add Mario, Princess Peach, Donkey Kong, Link, Zelda, Samus, and other characters from the Nintendo universe to Fortnite’s ever-expanding roster of skins and avatars. He explained that Epic’s efforts to convince Nintendo to allow the company to insert Mario and the gang into Fortnite have gone nowhere.

“I don’t know what the word for, like, making diamonds is,” Persson said. “Nintendo has their strategy and we have our strategy, and we hope at some point [to use their characters]. Our players would love it.”

Over the years, Fortnite has managed to secure characters from across the gaming and entertainment industries, including Master Chief from Halo, Kratos from God of War, Indiana Jones, John Wick, Spider-Man, Rick from Rick and Morty, and more recently Peter Griffin from Family Guy. The game has also gotten skins based on celebrities, including tennis player Naomi Osaka, Olympic snowboarder and gold medalist Chloe Kim, singer Ariana Grande, and rapper Eminem.

During The Game Awards, Epic Games launched LEGO Fortnite within the base game as a direct result from the company’s partnership with LEGO.

So why has Nintendo not budged on allowing its characters in the metaverse game? Speculation has largely swirled around the fact that Fortnite is a multiplatform game allowing, for example, PlayStation character Kratos to run around on Xbox consoles. It’s possible that Nintendo doesn’t want the same deal for its beloved characters.

Kit Ellis, a former Nintendo public relations managers who’s since left the company, offered a pretty straightforward explanation in a video as well: “They don’t need Fortnite. They’re bigger than Fortnite. The stuff that they do is bigger than Fortnite.”

“They’ve spent decades building up these characters, building up this IP to the point where it is now where The Mario Movie can be a billion dollars and Nintendo Switch is the best-selling console,” Ellis said. “…They can just be one of a other dozen characters that all play the same, put into a game that’s all about shooting people and is so against their brand? It makes no sense… This isn’t gonna happen.”

Still, while the prospects look dim, it’s at least clear that Epic hasn’t given up on it.

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.