US immigration enforcers use Halo art to promote mass detention, while the White House and Gamestop swap Master Trump memes

The USA’s Immigration Customs Enforcement service, aka ICE, have started using imagery of Microsoft’s sci-fi shooter Halo for recruitment posts on social media, even as Gamestop and the US administration indulge in some bantz characterising Donald Trump as Master Chief, and even as Microsoft attempt to flog a new Halo game.

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Bully Online sees modders have another go at schoolyard multiplayer mayhem, arrives in paid early access this year

Bully, Rockstar’s classic boarding school Bart Simpson simulator, is about to have another massive multiplayer mod fired at it from a slingshot. The mod’s dubbed Bully Online, stands atop the battered blazer of a previous attempt to let a bunch of folks play Bully together, and is set to arrive in paid early access this December.

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Civilization 7 will bring back the ability to play as one civ for the whole game, bypassing the divisive Age system

After much wrangling with players over Civilization 7’s Age system, which sees you taking charge of different civilizations as you progress from Antiquity into the Modern era, Firaxis are bringing back the option to play as one culture all the way to the endgame. They’re now playtesting the feature internally, and want players to help by way of a new community testing initiative, the Firaxis Feature Workshop.

Firaxis have also shared a few snippets from Civilization 7’s update 1.3.0, due in the week of November 3rd alongside the Tides of Power DLC, which will be free to existing owners of the troubled 4X strategy game over the Xmas holidays. Update 1.3.0 is all about nautical doings and conspirings, with new naval units and buildings, the addition of ranged combat to ocean warfare, and some delightfully soggy terrain features.

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Jump Space’s first big update adds daft yet lovable deflect-o-parrying

Co-operative starship mishap sim Jump Space just received the first major update of its early access phase, bringing both functional capitalism and a surprisingly enjoyable trio of melee weapons. The former takes the shape of newly opened item shops at your home base, giving you a chance to stock up on guns, repair kits, or artifact buffs before shipping out on a mission. And, having thwacked a few bots with the latter, I’m liking how worthy they are of a precious weapon slot, even in a game previously set up entirely for gunplay.

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Battlefield’s battle royale mode is a free-to-play experience called REDSEC

Battlefield 6’s battle royale mode has a name, and it isn’t quite as awful as I was expecting, though it falls well short of the exhilarating cringe of “Battlefortnite”. Battlefield REDSEC, they’re calling it. Such a Tom Clancelled, Limp Bizkit-ass moniker. What does REDSEC stand for, EA? Rampant Ennui Detected, Send Emergency Cookies? Or is it a game about hunting down commie office assistants? See, this is why they pay me the big bananas here at Rock Paper Shitpun Dot Com.

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Euro Truck Simulator 2 is motoring off to Ireland with an expansion being worked on alongside a UK revamp

Ideal podcast game and source of all my lorry knowledge Euro Truck Simulator 2 is expanding its map to Ireland in the future, devs SCS Software have revealed. The DLC, dubbed Isle of Ireland, will include both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland as fresh trucking locales.

It’s another entry in the list of add-ons in the works for Euro Truck Sim 2, which also includes a Nordic map expansion, coaches, and a number of reworks to existing areas. The latter includes a UK revamp announced just the other week, which should ensure that driving from Birmingham to Belfast shouldn’t resemble a voyage from 2013 to 5.

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Bloodlines 2 is losing a drinking buddy as spinoff Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt plans server shutdown

In further evidence that the Vampire game series is as cursed as its toothy goreguzzlers, the developers of troubled battle royale offshoot Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt have announced that it’s shutting down for good – mere days after Bloodlines 2, the long-delayed (yet apparently still okay-ish) mainline sequel finally released.

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Nearly half the 1.48 million Stop Destroying Videogames signatures have been okayed, as campaigners seek “expert” backing

Almost half of the 1,448,270 signatures amassed by the Stop Destroying Videogames EU citizens’ initiative have now been verified, according to the campaigners’ latest update. Meanwhile, the group are working to “secure expert backing” which doesn’t rely on “expensive consulting firms” for their effort to push EU lawmakers to look into the issue of publishers rendering online games unplayable when servers are switched off.

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Bluepoint’s cancelled God Of War game revealed by alleged leaked screenshots

Screenshots for Bluepoint’s cancelled live service God Of War game appear to have slipped through the titan fingers of publishers Sony. Assuming they aren’t a dream woven by Morpheus (via his earthly emissaries at MP1st), they reveal a few work-in-progress environments from the abandoned project, which Sony reportedly cancelled earlier this year alongside a new game from Days Gone devs Sony Bend.

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Break open a dead MMO and find what goofs and horrors await in Gorgon’s Garden

MMOs are a strange facilitation of games because they are, ostensibly, dead on arrival. Not dead in the sense of “lol dead game,” that exact comment you see littered in the comments of articles, videos etc. about literally any online game, no matter how popular it is. Dead in the sense that it will die, as all things do, because one day the servers will go down and there will be no (legal) way to play it anymore. I put the legal in brackets there because there are many a fan effort that allow you to play a range of “officially” dead MMOs, but what would a game about a Frankensteinian revival of such a thing look like? Probably, Gorgon’s Garden.

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