Category: IGN

If you thought video games were an expensive hobby, you should check out board games. These things can cost a lot, so it’s great that you can save money on a bunch of popular board games during Amazon’s October Prime Day, which runs until midnight October 8. Tons of popular board game favorites are on sale right now, often at the lowest price they’ve ever been. So if you’re looking to stock up your board game collection, you’ve come to the right place.

Board Games on Sale

A wide range of board games are on sale, with a good variety of genres and prices. Pandemic Legacy is a great campaign board game to pick up if you have a board game group that meets regularly, because it’s a has you play a series of game sessions, each one leading into the next. Catan and Ticket to Ride are great beginner board games for people who are interested in getting into the kinds of deeper games on the list.

Dominion and Splendor are fantastic engine-building games that can become quite cutthroat as you and your opponents piece together resource-making machines. Azul is a beautiful game that’s easy enough to learn that you can play it with the family. If you like it, check out our Azul buying guide, which has info about the base game and its many, many spinoffs and expansions.

And if you like board games based on video games, you’re in luck here. There’s not one, but two games based on Bloodborne, the video game that everyone wants to be remastered but maybe never will? The board or card game may have to keep you occupied until it happens. Or if you’re more into the Fallouts and Cyberpunks of the world, you can pick up board games for those on sale now too.

Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN’s board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Threads.

Another day, another video game adaptation has been announced. This time, it’s Sega’s Shinobi series.

Universal and Sega announced Tuesday that they’re developing a film adaptation of the hack-and-slack video games, and they’ve found a director appropriately well-versed in action to take the helm. Sam Hargrave, a stuntman and filmmaker best known for directing the Chris Hemsworth-starring Netflix movie Extraction, is on board to direct. Ken Kobayashi will write the script.

Plot details haven’t been revealed yet, but the Shinobi series largely followed the ninja Joe Musashi as he fought evil. The first Shinobi game originally launched in arcades in 1987, with Musashi becoming one of Sega’s flagship characters. The series spans 14 games and in an unexpected announcement at last year’s Game Awards, Sega revealed that a new Shinobi game is in development (alongside new entries in other Sega series like Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, and Golden Axe).

Roblox Corporation stocks dipped on Tuesday after a new report from investment firm Hindenburg Research, which accused it of deliberating inflating its daily active user stats and fostering what it described as an “X-rated pedophile hellscape” for children.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, Hindenburg Research is a well-known short-selling firm known for investigating high-profile stocks and making bets against them, which sometimes leads to investigations by the U.S. Justice Department. Its previous targets have included green transportation company Nikola, India’s Adani Group, and Super Micro Computer.

In its report, Hindenburg Research says Roblox’s claim of 79.5 million daily active users is inflated by between 25 percent and 42 percent, citing a technical consultant that it says monitored 7,200 Roblox games across 2.1 million server, collecting 297.7 million rows of real-time player data. It also notes that in 2023, Roblox told the SEC that it is “unable to identify if a user has multiple accounts,” and claims that a large amount of engagement stems from bot rings operating out of countries such as Vietnam.

“A former data scientist told us that activity in Vietnam ‘inflated a lot of our numbers. Like crazy, insane, in terms of engagement, DAU[s],” the reports says.

Elsewhere, the report accuses Roblox of being a haven for groomers and pedophiles due to its lack of “up-front screening to prevent them from joining the platform.” In one of its most serious accusations, the report claims to have found a group called “Adult Studios,” which has since been blocked, with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts.

Roblox’s response is an abject failure to address the two core allegations in our report, including:

1. Evidence that Roblox has been systematically lying for years about the number of people on its platform and their genuine level of engagement.

2. That the platform is a… pic.twitter.com/Tj2KiANOnI

— Hindenburg Research (@HindenburgRes) October 8, 2024

A Roblox spokesperson called the report “misleading” in a statement to the Wall Street Journal and accused Hindenburg Research of having an agenda. “We firmly believe that Roblox is a safe and secure platform and in the financial metrics we report.”

Hindenburg Research responded by arguing that the company’s response failed to address the report’s core allegations. IGN has reached out to the Roblox Corporation for any further comment.

Many of the accusations within the report have been circulating for some time now. A 2023 class action lawsuit in California accused the Roblox Corporation of being misleading about “the efficacy of its filtering technologies and its ability to make the site safe and appropriate for children.” A 2021 report by YouTube channel People Make Games alleged that Roblox was exploiting child labor.

“Overall, we think Roblox has adopted the Silicon Valley approach of ‘growth at all costs’, whether by misleading or outright lying to investors about its key metrics or by opening its platform to dangerous
predators and illicit content unsuitable for children,” the report says, with the Hindenburg Group saying that it has taken a short position in shares for the Roblox corporation.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Doctor Who nerds, check out this bigger on-the-inside Magic: The Gathering deal at Amazon for its October Prime Day sale. Down to just $128.99, falling from $199.99, this time-bending discount includes all four of the Doctor Who MTG Commander decks: Masters of Evil, Blast From the Past, Timey-Wimey, and Paradox Power. From one fan to another, these decks are absolutely amazing and worth the pain and trauma Doctor Who has inflicted on me.

Paradox Interactive seems ready to be done with Vampire: The Masquerade — and with RPGs in general — with deputy CEO Mattias Lilja telling PC Gamer that any potential Bloodlines 3 will be “done by someone else.”

Lilja opened up about Bloodlines 2’s development in the course of an unusually frank interview, itself part of a media tour seemingly designed to show how Paradox was being reset after a string of problematic releases and reports of a toxic work culture. Paradox’s overarching message? It’s sticking to what it’s good at, and what it’s good at is strategy games.

“It is not in our strategic direction to make this kind of game,” Lilja told PC Gamer. “So if Bloodlines 2, God willing, is successful, Bloodlines 3 [will be] done by someone else, on the license from us. I would say it’s the sort of strategic way this would work. So it’s still an outlier from what we’re supposed to do, we don’t know that stuff, so we should probably let other people do it.”

In short, Lilja considers Bloodlines a “dead end” for the company regardless of how well it does, which is made more awkward by the fact that Paradox Interactive owns Vampire: The Masquerade creator White Wolf Publishing. Lilja didn’t talk about Paradox’s plans for White Wolf, but it seems as if any future Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines RPGs will be licensed out to other developers.

“I think some studios do strategic investments, long term things, because they feel that the cost of not doing it is too high. But, I mean, I think it’s fairly clear, at least to me, and I think to you, even in the best of cases, Bloodlines does not have a super long shelf life. That’s not the way these games behave. You have an influx of players, there’s a bit of word of mouth, and they have a high peak, and then they trail off. And it’s not the type of gameplay that develops over time that much. So I think that’s part of why these types of games are not really that attractive to us.”

Lilja’s comments come amid the still-ongoing development of Bloodlines 2, which was announced back in 2019 as a faithful successor to the original game by Troika Games — considered one of the greatest RPGs ever made. The original development was handled by Hardsuit Labs, but numerous delays and other problems led to its near cancellation before Paradox handed development to The Chinese Room .

“If we hadn’t found The Chinese Room,” deputy CEO Mattias Lilja said, “and seen what they’d done with the early work, [cancellation] would have been the next logical step, because we could not continue as we did.”

The Chinese Room is taking what looks like a very different direction from Hardsuit Labs, boiling it down into more of a straightforward action RPG. Fans have posted various comparisons between the two online, noting the differences between the melee combat among other things.

“Generally, it’s a continuation of the same vision but they had to make it theirs,” Lilja told GI.biz in a separate interview. “When a game has been going this long with a sizable team in Seattle for a number of years before we moved it… It might have commercial challenges, but we liked the direction.”

Lilja says that Paradox is targeting a first half of 2025 release for Bloodlines 2, and that development is currently on track after its suffered yet another delay in August.

Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.

Sony Santa Monica’s God of War Ragnarok will indeed get a PS5 Pro Enhanced update after the first-party PlayStation Studios game skipped the announcement of the $700 mid-gen upgrade.

Push Square spotted the PlayStation Store listing for God of War Ragnarok now includes the ‘PS5 Pro Enhanced’ label. Neither Sony nor Sony Santa Monica have announced the game’s PS5 Pro support yet, and there’s no detail on what it will involve, but of course the hope is Ragnarok’s resolution will be boosted while maintaining 60 frames per second.

God of War Ragnarok joins the likes of Blizzard’s Diablo 4 in a list of over 60 games with confirmed PS5 Pro Enhanced updates, according to eagle-eyed fans who’ve been keeping an eye on the PlayStation Store (IGN has a list of all the PS5 Pro Enhanced games so far).

PS5 Pro has an AI-powered upscaling feature called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) that can automatically improve the image clarity of games, but PS5 Pro Enhanced games take particular advantage of the beefier console’s features.

At a recent PS5 Pro preview event, we spoke with the technical leads of some of PlayStation’s biggest games, including Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and The Last of Us Part 2, to discuss the improvements we can expect to see now there’s a more powerful PS5 on the market.

In an interview with IGN, Saber Interactive Chief Creative Officer Tim Willits said he’s hopeful the PS5 Pro will improve Space Marine 2 by default via PSSR, but did not confirm a PS5 Pro Enhanced patch. PS5 Pro itself launches November 7.

Just days after God of War Ragnarok launched on PC to a ‘mixed’ Steam user review rating over its forced PlayStation Network account linking, a mod was released that bypassed the requirement entirely. The creator of the mod eventually pulled it offline out of fear of reprisal from Sony.

The PC port includes the long sought after ability to tone down puzzle hints from companions. Sony has said this will soon to be added to the console version, but we don’t have a release date yet. Perhaps it will arrive alongside the PS5 Pro Enhanced update.

Though God of War Ragnarok met with critical and commercial acclaim, selling a whopping 11 million copies in less than three months on sale and earning a 10/10 in IGN’s review, one gripe players had was with the companions throwing out puzzle solutions before players had a chance to solve them.

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.

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare finally hit PC on October 29, 2024 — 14 years after Rockstar’s Wild West epic first launched on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back in 2010.

“For the first time in its storied legacy, John Marston’s beloved journey can be experienced on PC in stunning, new detail, with both Red Dead Redemption and its iconic zombie-horror companion story, Undead Nightmare, arriving to PC on October 29,” Rockstar said.

The PC port, developed by Double Eleven (Double Eleven worked on the 2023 PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch ports of Red Dead Redemption), adds PC-specific enhancements including native 4K resolution at up to 144hz on compatible hardware, monitor support for both Ultrawide (21:9) and Super Ultrawide (32:9), HDR10 support, and full keyboard and mouse functionality.

There’s also support for Nvidia DLSS 3.7 and AMD FSR 3.0 upscaling technologies, Nvidia DLSS Frame Generation, adjustable draw distances, shadow quality settings, and more, Rockstar added.

The PC trailer is below:

Red Dead Redemption and Undead Nightmare launch on PC across Steam, the Epic Games Store, and the Rockstar Store.

Confirmation of the PC port of Red Dead Redemption comes as little surprise, given Sony recently leaked its existence via the PlayStation Store and a datamine of developer Rockstar Games’ website in May 2024 also mentioned a PC port.

Rockstar has long neglected PC players, not even releasing Grand Theft Auto 5 on PC at the same time as consoles but a year later instead. It’s the same situation for Grand Theft Auto 6, which will likely be the biggest video game launch of all time despite no PC version being announced.

Now Red Dead Redemption is finally confirmed for PC, PC gamers are wondering whether Rockstar plans further upgrades for the game and its sequel on other platforms. Will Red Dead Redemption 2, for example, received a PS5 Pro Enhanced update, perhaps to add a 60fps and 4K resolution mode?

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.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla players have reacted with a mix of surprise and delight to an unannounced update that signals the arrival of Steam Achievements on Valve’s platform.

After Assassin’s Creed Valhalla launched on Steam in December 2022, some two years after its original Epic Games Store PC exclusive release, players complained about a lack of Steam Achievements. At the time Ubisoft simply said Valhalla didn’t support Steam Achievements, and left it at that.

Now, two years later, Ubisoft has updated Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to finally add Steam Achievements. The update, visible via SteamDB but not yet live in-game, has already sparked a positive reaction from players. “Is old Ubisoft coming back?” wondered one player on the Steam forum. “I finally can play the checklist simulator with a checklist,” declared another.

The Valhalla update comes amid Ubisoft’s high-profile return to Steam following years of Epic Games Store timed exclusivity for the PC versions of its games. The switch in policy was made following the poor performance of Star Wars Outlaws, which also skipped Steam at launch. Outlaws itself releases on Steam on November 21, 2024. Assassin’s Creed Mirage, meanwhile, launches on Steam later in October, a year after it launched exclusively on the Epic Games Store and Ubisoft Connect on PC. Assassin’s Creed Shadows launches day-one on Steam on February 14, 2025.

Ubisoft’s return to Steam comes amid a tumultuous year for the company that’s seen disappointing returns from Call of Duty competitor XDefiant and the aforementioned Star Wars Outlaws. Ubisoft delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows into 2025 following lower than expected sales of Outlaws, and its staff have arranged a strike for later this month.

In its recent note to investors, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot acknowledged that the company’s “second quarter fell short of expectations” and vowed to launch “a review aimed at further improving our execution.” He also addressed some of the cultural conversations happening around Ubisoft lately, which have intensified around Star Wars Outlaws and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Last week, Ubisoft’s founding Guillemot family and shareholder Tencent were said to be considering teaming up to take the company private following the collapse of its share price.

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.

Sony’s Until Dawn remake for PlayStation 5 and PC is having a rough launch, with not just technical issues but low player numbers too.

The remake of the 2015 horror game — which comes with updated graphics, technical improvements, and minor story changes — launched October 4 with a full price tag of $59.99 and no cheaper upgrade option for those who own the original.

This seemingly wasn’t too appealing for PC players, as Until Dawn has debuted to a peak concurrent player count of just 2,607 players on Steam, according to tracking website SteamDB. Other single-player PlayStation games performed much better when making the jump to PC, with Ghost of Tsushima reaching 77,154 concurrent players, God of War reaching 73,529, and Spider-Man reaching 66,436 on Valve’s platform. Until Dawn’s Steam launch is the worst Sony debut on Steam since the ill-fated Concord and Sackboy: A Big Adventure.

This small player base is reporting myriad issues too. Until Dawn currently has a “mixed” user review rating on Steam with just 69% of reviews being positive. The review deemed most helpful recommends the game but complains about the required PlayStation Network account, poor optimisation, music changes from the original, bugs, and poor controls at times.

Other reviews also comment on ray tracing and DLSS not working alongside graphical issues which “destroy immersion.” Others comment on the full price tag for the originally nine-year-old game and it still launching with issues.

Developer Ballistic Moon, which suffered a “significant” round of lay-offs even before the Until Dawn remake launched, has acknowledged the problems in an post released today, October 8. “We understand that some of you may have encountered some technical issues or bugs, and we’d love to hear from you so we can address these concerns,” it said.

“We are also aware of a couple of recurring issues, such as HDR and AMD FSR frame generation settings not functioning as intended, and issues with save/load. We hear you and we’re actively testing fixes for these issues (and more). We will provide further information with our next patch update.”

Issues are not exclusive to the PC version of the game, however. The tech experts at Digital Foundry noted that the PS5 version has frame pacing or frame ordering issues, 30 frames per second and 1440p output with significant aliasing on high contrast edges, and break up when there’s motion on-screen.

Ballistic Moon has at least said updates are coming, but these may be too little, too late for those who’ve already spent $59.99 on the remake. No release dates or windows have been shared for these fixes.

Until Dawn fans otherwise got a kick out of story changes in the remake (when it all leaked ahead of launch) with some even thinking a sequel is on the way. The universe is expanding elsewhere too, as filming wrapped on the Until Dawn movie adaptation earlier in October.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Throne and Liberty, the free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by NCSoft and published by Amazon Games, has seen more than three million players in just a week.

Originally billed as a Lineage sequel, Throne and Liberty is an MMO with PvE and PvP set in a dynamic and seamless world. It suffered numerous delays over the course of a development cycle spanning several years.

Throne and Liberty finally launched on October 1 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S, and soon proved a hit on Steam with an impressive player concurrent peak of 336,300. That’s enough to make Throne and Liberty one of the most-played games on Valve’s platform right now. Neither Sony nor Microsoft make player numbers public.

Amazon added that Throne and Liberty players had amassed 24 million hours in the game, with more than 11 million hours watched on Twitch.

“Bringing Throne and Liberty to players around the world has been a huge shared undertaking by our team and our friends at NCSoft, and we’re so pleased to see the results as players join the game,” said Christoph Hartmann, VP, Amazon Games.

“We’re only getting started, and we have a series of updates planned including our first castle siege coming soon.”

Throne and Liberty’s early performance is all the more impressive in light of its ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam, with most of the negative reviews about server issues and the typical monetization you get from these sorts of F2P MMOs. IGN’s impressions of Throne and Liberty during its beta said the game “is fun but doesn’t do enough to stand out.”

For Amazon Games, Throne and Liberty’s success comes as it continues to support its own developed MMO, New World, and Smilegate’s action role-playing game Lost Ark, which it published in 2022. Amazon is also publishing Crystal Dynamics’ next Tomb Raider game, and has a The Lord of the Rings MMORPG in the works, among other projects.

In August, Hartmann told IGN the Lord of the rings MMO was “still early,” and the next Tomb Raider a “huge, huge task.”

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.