Valve has pulled a handful of fake Steam listings for Helldivers 2 that were different games, potentially even cracked games, disguised as the hugely popular co-op shooter to fool people into spending money.
Helldivers 2 community manager Twinbeard posted a warning on the game’s Discord that shone a light on the scam.
“There are unfortunately two (three now?!) fake games being marketed as Helldivers 2 on Steam at the moment,” Twinbeard said. “THESE ARE FAKE. They are not made by Arrowhead but they claim to be. We do not know what they contain, but they are not affiliated with us in any way.
“Our legal department is on it and we hope Valve will remove the products as soon as possible.
“The only two genuine copies are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2: Super Citizen Edition. BOTH OF OUR GENUINE GAMES WERE RELEASED FEBRUARY 8TH. All remaining Helldivers 2 games are fake.
“People posting as us trying to scam people is obviously very sad and frustrating, and for that as well as for security reasons we urge you to stay clear of them. Again, the only two Helldivers 2 products we market are Helldivers 2 and Helldivers 2 Super Citizen Edition. (I haven’t had time to check the details on the fake store pages yet since I just got up.)
“Additional information will follow if or when there is any new information.”
Thankfully, Valve did pull the fake Helldivers 2 listing, per an update this morning from Twinbeard: “All fake store pages now seem to have been taken down by Valve, who acted very swiftly after we reached out. We´ll assess everything in due time. Also, a big THANK YOU to everyone who DM:ed or pinged me/us about the fake pages and games. Together we stand.”
While Valve moved quickly to stamp out the scam Helldivers 2 pages, it appears the problem is not isolated to Arrowhead’s shooter. Palworld community chief Bucky tweeted to say there had been a “wave” of fake games that suddenly appeared on Steam today, a development they called “quite concerning.” According to Bucky, Steam took down a fake Palworld listing almost immediately after developer Pocketpair got in touch. “Hope no one was tricked into buying it!” Bucky said.
Valve is now facing questions over how these listings were able to make it onto Steam in the first place. The hope is of course that the high-profile nature of the fake Helldivers 2 Steam listings will cause Valve to close whatever loophole was exploited here.
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.
For today only, Best Buy is offering the official Xbox Series X|S Core wireless controller in Stellar Shift for only $49.99. That’s almost 30% off the original $69.99 MSRP. Aside from the difference in color scheme, this is the same controller as the one that’s included with your Xbox Series X or S console.
Xbox Core Controller in Stellar Shift for $49.99
Stellar Shift is a color-shifting, blue-purple pearlescent shimmer that, in my opinion, looks better than most of the other Xbox color schemes out there. It also features a rubberized purple swirl grip that has different pattern varations among each individual controller.
This is the same official controller that you get bundled with the Xbox Series X and S consoles. It features textured grips, hybrid D-pad, button mapping with the Xbox app, a 3.5mm audio jack that works with any wired headset, and a Share button to send your screenshots and video out into the world.
The Xbox Core controller features both Xbox wireless and Bluetooth connectivity. That means you can also use it for your PC or mobile device as long as it supports Bluetooth. In fact, the Core controller is considered one of the best PC controllers you can get. If your PC doesn’t have Bluetooth, then you can connect your controller via a USB cable or with the Xbox wireless adapter.
For more discounts on the Xbox and accessories, check out the best Xbox deals today.
We may have just gotten our latest look at Kingdom Hearts 4 (kind of) in the form of a social media post celebrating the release of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
Earlier today, the official Kingdom Hearts X/Twitter account shared an image of Sora on what looks like the streets of Shibuya, glancing up at various big-screen advertisements featuring Sephiroth. The reason we’re counting this as a look at Kingdom Hearts 4, however, is that it’s set in Quadratum, the bustling city in which the sequel will take place.
We can tell because the intersection in which Sora is standing, with the big 104 building in the background, is one of the few true glimpses we’ve seen of Quadratum. The setting is based on Tokyo, specifically the Shibuya district.
In a cute touch, the image references a real-life ad campaign that’s currently taking place in Shibuya, with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth taking over various billboards and screens, as captured by @Genki_JPN on X/Twitter below.
It’s not much, but it is the latest crumb we’ve gotten on Kingdom Hearts 4, with Square Enix officially announcing the sequel in 2022. We got a brief trailer back then, but little information since, including a release window (see everything we have managed to figure out right here).
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
Sometimes it’s fun to match wits in a board game with other players in competitive matches. But many of the best board games go the other way and embrace the spirit of cooperation. Co-op board games come in a wide variety of themes, with varying levels of complexity so you can find one for players of all ages. Below, we’ve selected our favorites on the market. For more game night ideas, check out our other roundups, including the best board games for kids and the best two-player board games.
TLDR: Best Co-op Board Games
Have no time to read blurbs? The links above lead directly to retailer pages where you can buy the games in question.
Nemesis: Lockdown
Lots of board games have tried to replicate the success of the Alien franchise, but it took this unlicensed homage to perfect it. Players must work together to survive a terrifying incursion of hostile life-forms into a Martian base. You’re on a constant high-wire between staying slow and quiet or getting things done fast but attracting alien attention. It’s full of detailed mechanics that can spin the game out in crazy directions, from literal firefighting to a gung-ho battle against the extraterrestrial foe. The challenge is tough, the narrative detailed and the tension always escalating. But the real kicker is that it’s possible for your friends not to be friends at all thanks to hidden goal cards that could be supportive or could be murderous, or the corporate military wing could be coming to take you all out to ensure your silence.
Sleeping Gods
Narrative-heavy board games have always faced a content problem: there’s only so much variety you can achieve with boards and cards. Sleeping Gods belongs to a family of adventure games that bypassed this problem by putting everything into a huge flip-book, featuring a mix of maps for different quests. Sleeping Gods stands head and shoulders above its peers thanks to two things. First, it’s outstandingly rich storytelling, as you run through a rich mixture of encounters, characters and side-quests as you attempt to guide the lost ship, The Manticore, and her crew home from the strange dimension in which it finds itself. Second, is the detail with which the ship is brought to life, both in terms of strategic resource management to keep her going and her presence in the game world. Such is the wealth of content available that you can easily see a whole different story on a second play through, and such is the fun of doing so that you’ll surely want to try.
Marvel Champions: The Card Game
This is a “Living Card Game”, which means it’s kind of collectable, like Magic: The Gathering, but there’s no random element. You just buy sets and expansions knowing what cards are in each. And unlike a lot of LCG’s, deck building is easy because it’s modular, seeing players pick fixed sets of cards to create decks for their hero and the villain you’re all working against. The meat of play features some classic concepts like dual-use cards alongside novel ideas like each player being able to flip from their hero to their alter-ego, with different abilities and hand sizes. This sets up some really interesting combo-based play where you pull off cinematic moves as you work together to thwart the villain’s schemes and save the day.
Frosthaven / Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
To call Gloomhaven a fantasy adventure game is technically accurate, but a bit reductive. It tells the story of mercenaries chasing different goals in a changing world, and the legacy they leave behind. Gloomhaven takes the legacy system from Pandemic Legacy and weaves it into an epic fantasy campaign that takes place over generations. Each hero comes with a personal goal that, when completed, sends the hero into retirement and unlocks new classes and story elements. Upon retiring a hero, you will take control of another, which results in an impressive sense of time progression. The game includes several sealed boxes that are only opened upon reaching certain milestones, which makes Gloomhaven a game with a grand scale that is unmatched in the board game medium.
This epic game now has a sequel, Frosthaven, with an all-new narrative and fresh subsystems which see you expending and guarding the titular town. And if the price and length of either of the big-box titles turns you off, the excellent prequel Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion has most of the gameplay value at a fraction of the price.
Exit: The Game (Series)
An escape room in a box, the Exit series of games does a surprisingly good job of simulating the real thing. Players work together to find clues and solve riddles in real time in an effort to complete the scenario. Each scenario tells you to bring some pens and a pair of scissors because you’ll be permanently modifying your game throughout the session, making these games a one-and-done experience.
There are many different scenarios available for purchase, with titles like The Secret Lab, The Abandoned Cabin, The Sinister Mansion, The Forgotten Island, The Mysterious Museum, and a lot more. Priced at around $15 each (and usually cheaper on Amazon), the Exit series is an ideal replacement for a night at the movies and one of the best escape room board games.
Paleo
At first glance, this game of stone-age survival doesn’t look anything special. You create a deck of cards for the scenario you want to play and distribute them between the players. Then you take it in turns to flip a card from your pile and face the challenges thereon with the skills and stone tools available to your tiny tribe. The magic happens when tribes come together, pooling their resources to overcome one tough encounter, but doing so loses them the chance to interact with the other tribe’s card. All at once, this mirrors a real slice of stone-age life, agonizing over passing up opportunities in order to secure an important prize, while giving players real emergent cooperation in how much they choose to aid each other. The survival narrative and variety of scenarios are just the icing on the rock cake.
Pandemic Legacy
Pandemic put cooperative games on the map, and for good reason. Much of the genre’s hallmark mechanics originated here, from action point allocation to player roles with unique abilities. It also spawned a bevy of expansions and spinoffs, but Pandemic Legacy is the best and more revolutionary take on the virus-eradicating co-op game.
It takes the core rules of Pandemic and stretches them into a campaign-length adventure played out over several sessions as you race to cure disease and prevent epidemics. This version introduces permanence as a mechanic, as the rules force you to rip up cards, sticker the board and alter the physical components in other ways as things (inevitably) don’t go your way. The only potential drawback is that you must play with the same players each session, but because the game is so good everyone will be eager to jump back in.
Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island
Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is a daunting and dark game, but players willing to wade through the sea of iconography, hefty rulebook and stifling theme will be rewarded with a satisfying survival simulation that rewards communication and teamwork. Based on the 1719 novel, players take on the role of survivors of a shipwreck that are must work together to gather food, build shelters, stave off attacks and explore the island. The combination of different scenarios and player characters ensure good replayability, while the survival mechanics do a fantastic job of selling the theme.
Just One
A lot of games on this list are, to a greater or lesser extent, strategy affairs. But cooperation is a great mechanic to use in party games too, and Just One tops the list. All the players bar one get to see a clue, and they have to write down a word related to that clue. Then all the clues get revealed to the remaining player who has to guess the original word. Sounds too simple, except the catch is that if any of the clues are the same they get wiped, leaving the guesser far less to work with. It’s an ingenious idea that leaves players caught in an uncertain vice over just how obscure they cant get away with being, while still being worried they might be the victim of doublethink.
The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
You likely know trick-taking games from long time classics like Whist and Bridge. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea cleverly repurposes the concept into a cooperative game through the use of missions, demanding that certain players win tricks of particular types. So you might have to win a trick containing a yellow one, for example, or two consecutive tricks or even no tricks at all. This would be easy if you could show each other your cards, so your communication is limited to one card for the entire hand, recasting the game as a strategic puzzle with plenty of tension as you wait to see whether having to follow suit will tease out a critical card or fail the mission. Fast, fun and with fifty varied undersea missions, this is a pearl of a design. This game earned a spot on our best family board games list as well.
Return to Dark Tower
Some of you may have childhood memories of the original Dark Tower, an extraordinary 1981 fantasy board game powered by an electronic gizmo that gave it a real sense of magic and wonder. Most copies of that original no longer work, but it’s been resurrected and revamped in this new edition, which features an all-new, all-tech tower that connects to a mobile app via bluetooth. It allows you to select from a far wider variety of characters and quests, villains and monsters than the original. The board layout and major concepts of the original, such as collecting warriors, are retained, but between the app and a raft of new mechanics, the game is transformed into a narratively rich, strategic challenge where you must prioritise and deal with a series of ever-growing threats: it can also be played cooperatively as well as the competitive setup of the original. The app provides detail such as dungeon exploration, while the tower lights up and rotates of its own accord, spilling deadly skulls out into the kingdoms below.
Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
Sherlock Holmes is one of the most enduring fictional characters of all time, and for good reason. Watching him solve a seemingly impossible mystery with all the confidence and bravado of a stage actor has been a favorite pastime of generations of book readers and television watchers.
With Consulting Detective, you finally get the chance to step into the shoes of Holmes and test your own deduction skills in a series of nonlinear mysteries. What makes the game great is how it refuses to hold your hand; each mystery presents a short setup and then sets you loose on London, leaving you to visit notable locations, interview suspects, and make educated accusations. Be warned, however, that these mysteries are tough, and may make you question your intelligence on more than one occasion.
If you like these types of games, you can also check out our guide to murder mystery board games for similar options.
Arkham Horror: The Card Game
If your co-op group could use an eldritch touch, get Arkham Horror: The Card Game to the table. In this cooperative card game, players take on the role of detectives who are investigating various supernatural occurrences within HP Lovecraft’s world of cosmic horror. It’s a scenario-based experience with each mission at the mercy of an arcane Mythos, a set of conditions that must be met lest the investigators succumb to insanity.
Arkham Horror features customizable decks that are built around each investigator’s special abilities, and most scenarios can play out over a handful of sessions, lending a feeling of progression to the game. As you investigate new location cards, gather clues, and fight monsters, your detective will amass weaknesses that can hinder future games which, thematically, illustrate the mental toll of dealing with arcane horrors. It’s a great horror board game you can play with loved ones.
Spirit Island
Protect your island from a vicious mob of colonizers in this heavy co-op experience. Players are spirits of the land, and must use their unique powers to fend off settlers. Every turn, you’ll play a card from your deck of powers. Matching a card’s element with the element of the spirit usually grants a bonus effect, meaning that careful planning is necessary.
As the game goes on, the colonists will inevitably spread and ravage the land, making Spirit Island a race against the clock. They’re predictable, though, and if you plan efficiently you can head them off before they do too much damage. Players’ cards combo off of each other nicely, too, and there are few things in tabletop gaming as satisfying as eliminating a host of settlers in one fell swoop. Spirit Island is substantially more complex than other games of this style (Pandemic, Forbidden Island, etc.), making it an ideal choice for those seeking a meatier co-op experience. This game can also be found on our list of the best board games for adults.
Zombicide: Black Plague
Who doesn’t like to bond over some good old fashioned zombie slaying? Zombicide is a cooperative survival game where players work together to complete scenarios. The Black Plague version puts a fantastical spin on the original game, and drops players into the role of paladins, magicians, and knights to take down the evil necromancers responsible for the zombie outbreak.
You’ll pick up new weapons like crossbows and swords, explore a citadel crawling with the undead, and take on several missions in this dungeon-crawling adventure. It’s a tense and thematically-refreshing take on the tried and true zombie formula with surprisingly easy-to-learn rules.
Cthulhu: Death May Die
Cooperative games where you try and save the world from some deranged monstrosity out of the work of arch-racist HP Lovecraft are ten a penny. What makes Cthulhu: Death May Die stand out isn’t just the beautifully horrible miniatures in the box but the way it integrates help and harm. In order to gain new skills, your characters have to also lose some of their sanity, resulting in a clever balance of tactical trade-offs while encouraging you to come up with daring gameplay plans that deliberately expose yourselves to danger. The resulting reel of cinematic action-horror moments doesn’t feel much like Lovecraft but it is a ton of fun.
EA has joined Square Enix in failing to see the leap year coming, as just like Theatrhythm Final Fantasy on Nintendo Switch, EA Sports WRC isn’t working because it’s February 29.
Fans of the rally racer took to social media to complain about the game crashing upon launch today, and EA soon published a statement explaining it was looking into it. “We are aware of an issue on console in which the game may crash on startup,” it said on X/Twitter. “This is currently being investigated and will be fixed as soon as possible.”
Guidance for PlayStation players:
1⃣ On your console, go to Settings > System > Date and Time > Set Date and Time > Set Manually.
2⃣ Change the date to March 1, 2024.
3⃣ Once this change has been done, the game should function normally.
The fix isn’t complicated despite involving a little bit of time travel, as EA returned soon after telling players to change their hardware to March 1. This isn’t just an in-game solution, however, as players have to change their entire console’s date in the system settings.
Not including functionality to have a game work on February 29, which of course arrives every four years, may seem a tad ridiculous, but EA Sports WRC developer Codemasters isn’t the only studio to make the mistake.
When No Rest for the Wicked was first revealed at The Game Awards last year, its painterly art style was unsurprisingly a big topic of discussion. Simply put, it was the most striking trailer of the show. While it looked akin to Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook artwork in motion, the gorgeous art also made it somewhat obvious as to who was behind the images.
“This is almost like our DNA,” says Gennadiy Korol, co-founder of Moon Studios and its director of technology. “That’s the trademark of Moon, we want our games to look timeless. We want them to look like a painting that is animated.”
That much was obvious to anyone who played Moon’s Ori games, but No Rest for the Wicked seems to take that idea and push it into the next dimension. By transitioning to 3D, Moon has left the ‘illustrated’ vibe of Ori behind for something that looks like a painted reality. It’s hard not to draw parallels to projects like Netflix’s Arcane or the Spider-Verse films, which make their 3D animation appear like 2D, hand-drawn artwork. Those projects will likely prove timeless, and Moon Studios hopes the same for No Rest for the Wicked.
Achieving art design immortality requires an approach that bucks many industry trends. Aiming for higher visual metrics than that used in other games simply won’t cut it. “I think it’s always about art direction and art style more than just ray tracing and polygons,” says Thomas Mahler, Moon co-founder and No Rest for the Wicked’s creative director.
“We definitely make a conscious choice to always go against the trend, because the trend right now is doing physical-based rendering and all of this stuff,” he explains. “My problem is that a lot of these games that do that start looking the same.”
Mahler also notes games that chased huge technical innovations a decade ago haven’t all stood the test of time. Technology continues to evolve, and what was astonishing back then can look old today. “But, if I go into a museum and I look at these paintings that are literally 500 years old, I still think, ‘Oh, my God, that looks amazing,’” he says. “That’s the path that we are going down.”
Physics doesn’t matter, it’s what people feel when they play that matters.
On one hand, abandoning the tech race is liberating. You don’t need dozens of people solely focused on squeezing the most polygons out of your engine, or implementing photo realistic ray tracing. But freedom from those problems creates another equal challenge. Korol notes that there’s no “handbook” for a painted art style. Where developers chasing photorealism can turn to literal science for the answers on how to recreate light and reflections, No Rest for the Wicked’s art direction is entirely based on Moon’s own creativity. That can be somewhat mentally exhausting, but it allows the team complete control over the game’s look and feel.
“With the way we approach it, it really doesn’t matter what the physics is if the end result is boring, if the end result is not exciting,” says Korol. “Because physics doesn’t matter, it’s what people feel when they play that matters.”
While Moon had learned a huge amount about crafting a painted art style while creating Ori, the shift to three dimensions for Wicked required a whole new way of thinking. “I think the big challenge was to find something that works in 3D, that works with all of these 3D pipelines,” explains Korol, “but that still gives you this really direct artistic control and allows our artists to really create something that feels like a painting, as opposed to more of this ray-traced or normal-mapped 3D look.”
Creating a set of rules and principles for this art direction ensures that No Rest for the Wicked looks striking in every shot. But the direction ultimately fails if the characters, creatures, and world are bland and forgettable. As such, the project relies as much on its design as it does the digital brush strokes they’re painted with. That’s why Moon has tried to craft a fantasy setting that feels believable and relatable, while also being fresh and unusual.
“We don’t want our games to look like stuff that you’ve seen before,” says Mahler. “Obviously we take inspiration from historical stuff, and so on. We look at armor designs, like crazy stuff that was done hundreds of years ago, but then we always try to give it our own touch.” The result of this can be seen in the golden suits of armour featured in the trailer, with their bizarre coin-like headpieces and an unnerving lack of eyes.
“I think it goes back to world building,” adds Korol. “It’s exciting to build a world that people have never seen before, that we have never seen before, and go through that creative process of exploring and imagining it, and see what it can be.”
As technology evolves and we could potentially do photorealism, I still hope there’s going to be a part of the industry that does not just do that.
Part of Moon Studio’s approach to creating this exciting new world is a strict attention to detail. Like the paintings that inspired it, each frame of No Rest for the Wicked is filled to the edges with flourishes and carefully placed elements.
“Despite it not being photorealistic, we do like detail,” says Korol. “We didn’t go for this more simplistic, cell-shaded look. You will see a lot of detail in the reflection and the specular, in the way the materials react, because we did want this game to feel immersive.”
While it had to be adapted and evolved for 3D, much of this philosophy is the same as what powered the Ori games. Unsurprisingly, Moon hopes for similar results. “A lot of people would say that Ori [and the Blind Forest] still feels and looks great to play, and it’s eight, nine years later,” says Korol. “We hope the same thing happens with No Rest for the Wicked.”
That hope doesn’t just come from looking inwards, though. “I think it’s very interesting how people react now to games like Zelda: Wind Waker,” says Mahler. “Here’s cell shading, and even 20 years after, it still looks pretty good.”
“As technology evolves and we could potentially do photorealism, I still hope there’s going to be a part of the industry that does not just do that,” he continues. “That actually also just makes sure that, ‘Here’s this really unique looking game that looks unlike anything else in the market.’”
Of course, it goes without saying that Moon Studios will likely always be a part of that industry segment that holds the torch for unique art design. But as for the here and now, I look forward to seeing even more of No Rest for the Wicked’s strange creatures and beautiful landscapes in action, both as part of Wicked Inside on March 1, and when the game releases in early access later this year.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Features Editor.
Like many video games, ones from Nintendo don’t come cheap. This was especially true when The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was revealed to be $69.99 on release, a whole $10 more expensive than other Switch titles. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t deals to be had for Nintendo fans. In fact, there are plenty of sales on games, Switch consoles, and various accessories that are worth checking out throughout the year, and we’ve made sure to gather the very best going on at the moment below.
TL;DR – Best Switch Deals
You can also follow @IGNDeals on Twitter or Threads for even more updates on the latest discounts, or check out all our handpicked Switch deals just below.
Celebrate International Pokémon Day with These Game Deals
International Pokémon Day landed on February 27, but there’s still plenty of deals leftover that are worth checking out. In particular, in the world of Pokémon video games, there are a few marked down to $40 at Walmart. You can check out these excellent game deals below, and to see even more Pokémon deals outside of games, check out our roundup of the best Pokémon deals today.
The Best Nintendo Switch Game Deals
Outside of the Pokémon game deals listed above, there are still quite a few Switch games discounted right now that are worth adding to your collection. Our favorite deal is on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which you can get for $20 off at Walmart right now for $49.90. You can save on other big hits from last year as well, like Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Super Mario RPG, which we’ve listed below alongside some more game deals.
Perfect Switch SD Card for $25.99 (and More Deals)
The best Switch SD card should be fast, reliable, and as future-proof as possible. That last one is important, as it’s quite likely we’ll be getting a Switch successor / the next Nintendo console within the next year or so (if rumors are to be believed). Therefore, you’re going to want to opt for the latest in SD card tech, which is a micro SDXC UHS-I U3 A2 V30 memory card. That’s a lot of random letters, so to save you a bit of time we’ve left our top suggestions and deals just below for your convenience. To see even more SD card deals, make sure to check out our roundup of the best SD card deals.
While an outstanding deal might not always be available at the time of searching, there are still some incredibly affordable Switch-related products out there if you look hard enough. You can see our favorite budget to best items here, including deals on the best Switch micro SD Card, power banks, and an affordable Switch Pro controller alternative.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Official Guide for $27 (Save $18)
With these, you’ll have a detailed overview of Hyrule, a helpful walkthrough to get you through the game, and much more. Not only that, but they have gorgeous covers as well, especially the Collector’s Edition. The Standard Edition has an MSRP of $29.99 but is on sale for $18.74, and the Collector’s Edition normally runs for $44.99, but you can get it for $26.85. Plus, if you want to complete the set, the Breath of the Wild guidebook is also down to $22.38 right now as well.
The short answer is that you should buy a Nintendo Switch whenever there’s any kind of sale, regardless of the time of year. Amazon will likely offer the same console bundles on any other sale as it will on Black Friday, so there’s no real reason to wait if you’re in need of a Nintendo Switch.
That being said, there are sometimes some unique bundles and promotions during Black Friday that you won’t find any other time of the year. They usually includes additional games (like the infamous Mario Kart 8 bundle) or accessories for free, but quantities tend to be limited. As always, do your research into the seller before you make a purchase.
With how expensive gaming is getting in 2024, we’re trying to save you as much money as possible on the games and other tech you actually want to buy. We’ve got great deal roundups available for all major platforms such as PlayStation and Xbox, and keep these updated daily with brand-new offers. If you’re trying to keep costs down while maintaining your favorite hobby, stay tuned for more incredible discounts.
Days before the release of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, Square Enix unveiled an update making several tweaks to its predecessor, Final Fantasy 7: Remake. The change most noticeably impacts one of Tifa’s outfits, though there are a few other tweaks. But one other major change we haven’t written about yet is the change to Aerith’s final line in the script of Final Fantasy 7: Remake in the English translation of the game.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of people got upset about the line change. Without digging into the specifics of it, on the surface, the change appears to turn a line that previously hit a very specific emotional beat for the character into something a little less…poetic. It also seemed like a weird change to make now, of all times. The game’s been out for several years at this point! What gives!
Well, we think we have a pretty good idea why the change was made. The most I can say right off the bat is that it has to do with some plot events that take place in Rebirth, so if you’re planning to play Rebirth, just go do that and then come back later.
Because in order to talk about what’s going on here, we’re going to have to spoil the heck out of both Final Fantasy 7: Remake and Rebirth.
ONE MORE TIME: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE ENDINGS OF FINAL FANTASY 7 REMAKE AND REBIRTH ARE AHEAD. Read onward at your own risk! We’re talking about the LAST SCENES OF BOTH GAMES! The endings! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! I’m even putting a video in the way of the spoilers!
Okay, phew. That’s out of the way.
The line in question in Final Fantasy 7: Remake previously read “I miss it. The steel sky.” It’s said by Aerith after the group flees Midgar and finds themselves no longer under a giant metal plate, but under an open sky. It’s a beautiful line, referencing Aerith’s genuine love for the complicated, imperfect place she calls home and her grief in the wake of the Sector 7 plate falling. The new line read is far less emotive: “This sky…I don’t like it.” Yeah! I can see why people think that’s a worse version.
Notably, though, the original Japanese version of the line (which resembles the new English translation) hasn’t changed in the update. That’s almost certainly because the line was always intended to be closer to the new version. Why? Because Aerith is, from this moment in the story onward, looking at a very different sky than everyone else in the party. And she’s not too thrilled about what it means.
Okay really and truly, one final time, I am about to just spoil the bejeezus out of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, including literally the last scene. Please go away if you don’t want to read that!!!
In Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, we eventually see what Aerith is looking at above her head through a series of strange, dream-like interstitial scenes that appear to take place in an alternate universe where Aerith’s old boyfriend and Cloud’s old best friend, Zack Fair, never died. We see Zack waiting in Aerith’s house, presiding over a comatose Aerith and Cloud, and interacting with Biggs, who in the original FF7 dies when the Sector 7 plate collapses but whose fate seems a little more ambiguous in the FF7 Remake trilogy. And when Zack goes outside, the sky is noticeably messed up – there’s a giant rift running through the whole thing.
Much later in the game, following the events at Temple of the Ancients, Aerith and Cloud find themselves falling together from a great height. Cloud appears to pass out, and we once again see a scene from this strange, alternate world. Except now, Cloud and Aerith have both woken up. Zack is out, so the two go out on a date, during which Aerith warns Cloud not to look up. He does, and lo and behold, the sky rift. Cloud has little time to ponder the meaning of this as Aerith drags him around town, and eventually, he snaps back out of it and into the “real” world, where the sky isn’t messed up and the party has found him, gravely injured but alive after his fall.
The torn apart sky comes back in the final chapter of the game, present throughout a series of battles where the idea of alternate realities is explored and confused even further. And it’s brought home in the final scene of the game, where the party seems to believe Aerith died at Sephiroth’s hands. But Cloud can see her, and even speak with her, implying he’s crossed over into a reality where he saved her. In a poignant moment, he tells his teammates not to look up – referencing Aerith’s advice from the date before. We, the player, see the sky blue and normal, but it’s clear in this moment that Cloud now sees the same torn sky he saw in the alternate reality – the same torn sky it’s now apparent Aerith saw at the end of Final Fantasy 7: Remake, when she remarked, “This sky…I don’t like it.”
Having only just digesting all of this, I’m still at a bit of a loss as to what all this actually means. It’s apparent that the torn sky comes packaged in with the weird, alternate reality stuff Final Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth are playing with, and that characters get pulled into these weird, converging planes of existence with messed up skies every time they defy fate. Aerith sees it at the end of Remake, and Cloud is looped in at the end of Rebirth. And as my colleague and reviewer Nick Limon pointed out, it’s possible the rift is connected to something called the “universe of death” mentioned in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Materials Ultimania book.
What likely happened with the line change is that the localizers didn’t know the context of Rebirth at the time Remake was released, and interpreted Aerith’s line in Japanese as grief about the events that had just taken place. Nomura even validated this reading of the line in an interview. And Aerith, canonically, seems to hate the sky just generally – she brings it up repeatedly in Crisis Core. But the reflective “I miss it. The steel sky” line, beautiful as it is, is only able to hold the one meaning, that of grief. The new version, even if it is a bit more straightforward, is quietly carrying a double meaning. The sky is both symbolic of Aerith’s sorrow, and it’s also quite literally messed the heck up. In that light, the line change makes a whole lot more sense.
With Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth out today, I cannot wait for lore experts to dig into all this deeper and explain what it means, because that entire game was a wild ride. If you for some reason read to the end of this without having finished it, get yourself back to our Wiki guide for some helping wrapping it all up (or doing the tens of hours of extra side content).
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
Developers at Rockstar Games have hit out at the company’s decision to force staff to return to the office five days a week to close out work on GTA 6.
This week, Rockstar notified staff of its return-to-office order, due to start in April, which it said had to do with completing development on GTA 6 “at the level of quality and polish we know it requires”, and to mitigate security breaches. GTA 6 is developed primarily at Rockstar North in Edinburgh, Scotland, although support comes from a number of other Rockstar studios across the UK and the world.
Now, the Independent Workers’ union of Great Britain, which represents video game developers in the UK, has publicly criticized Rockstar for the move, and published testimony from current developers who warn it will significantly affect their well-being.
According to the IWGB, last year 170 Rockstar Games workers in the UK signed a petition opposing mandatory three-day office work. Now, workers accuse Rockstar of “broken promises”, and have expressed concern about health, caring responsibilities, living arrangements, and a heightened risk of overwork (crunch). Some workers have said they moved their lives further away from studio locations that would now need to be reversed in under six weeks to comply with Rockstar’s demands. Rockstar is yet to comment.
The IWGB also alleges Rockstar had insisted flexible work options would remain available in an employee-wide email that said: “This isn’t our first step to five days a week. No one wants to go back to the old way of working.” The IWGB went on to claim Rockstar management has so-far refused to engage with workers on the issue, and will “pull the plug” on remote access to technology on April 15.
After so many broken promises we now fear management may even be paving the way for a return to toxic ‘crunch’ practices.
An anonymous Rockstar worker is quoted as saying: “Working from home has been a lifeline for many of us at Rockstar, allowing us to balance care responsibilities, manage disabilities, and relocate as we need. Now, Rockstar is snatching away that lifeline without a second thought for the workers who’ll be impacted most. After so many broken promises we now fear management may even be paving the way for a return to toxic ‘crunch’ practices. Senior leadership need to rethink their reckless decision making and engage with their staff to find an arrangement that works for everyone.”
Another said: “As usual, there has been zero consultation with us: the people who these policy changes most affect. Just one of my concerns is being forced to work late hours in the office to maintain contact with global teams when before we could log on from home to attend late meetings. This will mean missing out on spending time with our families. I am also aware of colleagues who have health issues preventing full time office work who are now left in limbo.”
And here’s another member of staff: “We the staff care greatly about the games we make and our passion, skill, and talent should never be taken for granted by studio management. It is together, through collaboration and a healthy work life balance and workplace culture that we continue making some of the most beloved and spectacular games in our industry.”
For years, Rockstar had a notorious reputation within the video game industry for brutal crunch in the making of Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead games. However, following the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018 and the shocking stories about the human cost of its development, media reports suggested changes were made to the company’s culture to avoid the same thing happening during the development of GTA 6.
It is unacceptable that Rockstar leadership have gone back on their word time and time again and have ignored the workers’ requests for basic working conditions.
Austin Kelmore, IWGB Game Workers Chair also hit out at Rockstar: “The workers in the IWGB Game Workers Union at Rockstar are pushing for transparency over pay and promotions, a healthy and inclusive workplace culture, and work life balance centred around what each worker needs. It is unacceptable that Rockstar leadership have gone back on their word time and time again and have ignored the workers’ requests for basic working conditions.
“Workers across the industry are done with letting executives make reckless and harmful decisions and the Rockstar workers are showing us the start of what’s to come if they’re continually ignored. There’s no better time than now to join our union and push for this to be the healthy and sustainable games industry we know it can be.”
The video game development industry has wrestled with an increasing call from executives to return to the office following the sea-change sparked by the pandemic. Last year, IGN revealed Ubisoft Montreal employees were left fuming over what they called broken promises in regards to the studio’s return-to-office mandate. And, more recently, Star Citizen developers criticized a relocation plan at developer Cloud Imperium Games.
GTA 6, meanwhile, is expected to launch at some point in 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. Some predict it will become the best-selling video game of all time after its debut trailer set viewership records.
Image credit: Ken Jack/Getty Images
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 series of Helldivers 2 gameplay leaks have revealed a look at the upcoming mech vehicle type.
One snippet of gameplay, revealed by redditor fozzye18, shows a player exit and then enter a mech before stomping around a battlefield firing what looks like an auto cannon.
Since that initial post, more mech gameplay has emerged showing what looks like a datamined stratagem explainer video. In the clip we see a dropship set the mech down on the battlefield for the Helldiver to jump into. This mech, though, fires what looks like a machine gun on one side and a rocket launcher on the other.
And, even more recently, Helldivers 2 mech gameplay is popping across social media, giving us another look at the mechs.
The addition of mechs to Helldivers 2 would come as little surprise, and not just because of these leaks. Mechs were shown in an official Helldivers 2 trailer released on the PlayStation YouTube channel a month ago. Alongside the first look, mechs were said to be coming “soon after launch”.
Meanwhile, players are speculating about the addition of a stratagem that calls in AI soldiers, and another that calls in a nuke-like meteorite. For a game that does explosions so well, a meteorite would no-doubt cause a spot of camera shake.
Now developer Arrowhead appears to have sorted out Helldivers 2’s server issues, it has time to return to its original post-launch plan, so hopefully we’ll get an idea of what to expect in terms of new content soon.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty to be getting on with in the world of Helldivers 2, including the ongoing galactic war against the bugs and bots. As revealed this week, Arrowhead employs a “game master” who runs the Helldivers 2 campaign like a D&D dungeon master. Perhaps, if Super Earth loses the current major order to push back the Automatons, the addition of mechs will help level the playing field.
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.
