A server browser will be available in Battlefield 6 via Battlefield Portal, developer DICE has announced.

As DICE gets ready to “resume testing the latest updates and content” with its Battlefield Labs closed player tests, the team has revealed players will not only get to try out new maps not previously available in either closed or open betas, but they’ll also get “a first look at the Server Browser.”

As EA explains it, Battlefield Labs is an experimental environment where “the latest changes and work-in-progress ideas are tested with players in a closed and private space.” The content available will be in various stages of production, including items in alpha state, which may result in less polished and/or unstable builds. This allows DICE to balance and make adjustments much faster as it “shapes the future of the game with the community to shape the future of the game.”

Nearly a year on from the launch of MachineGames’ brilliant Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the studio is back with an additional chapter, The Order of the Giants, which arrives on September 4.

For those who enjoyed the base game’s blend of puzzle-solving and fisticuffs, this fresh DLC adds more of what you love — and takes a novel approach to tuning its difficulty, based on your experience with the Great Circle so far.

Speaking to IGN last week at Gamescom, creative director Axel Torvenius and lead game designer Zeke Virant explained how The Order of the Giants will smartly adapt its combat to suit both new and veteran players, due to the DLC’s addition within the base game’s narrative, branching off of its Rome location. And while the pair remained tight-lipped on word of an Indiana Jones sequel, discussion was still had about MachineGames’ intention for the overall narrative of the game — and how it’s sometimes best to leave players keen for more.

“The conventional way of doing DLC is to add something that stands after, or a miniature game on the side,” Torvenius begins, “but we didn’t really feel that that was the best for our game.” He pauses, smiles. “Though it would’ve been the easiest.

“I can tell you we had a lot of struggles or challenges with the technical side of things, making sure that people’s existing save states [work]. The systems we had in place did not fully support us just splicing in a lot of new content in the middle of the game. So there was a lot of hard work from engineers and programmers and also on the design side. It was not an easy thing to do, but we felt it was the best to do.”

For those who are yet to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, the idea is that Order of the Giants simply adds onto the game’s already generous Rome section, with additional areas outside and underneath the Vatican to explore. And for players who have finished the game already, who will likely be familiar with dipping back into previous areas to hunt down remaining side-missions and collectibles via their journal, the DLC simply acts as a huge new side-quest to pursue.

“The integration makes the experience the most seamless,” Torvenius continues, “and makes it feel like it’s really expanding on the existing content. There was a balance, because obviously the DLC is its own completely standalone adventure. So there are hooks and the red threads between the main storyline and the DLC, but the DLC story does not impact the main story, even if the DLC story will give you a deeper understanding of some elements. So it was absolutely not the easiest [way to do DLC], and maybe not the smartest, but the best.”

Obviously, though, players still finding their feet in the Vatican’s sunny courtyards will have a different experience approaching Order of the Giants’ content than those who have played another 40 hours, seen Indy’s journey to the end and buffed up their archeologist with all sorts of upgrades and bonuses. And it’s because of this, Virant says, that MachineGames was forced to get even smarter under the game’s hood.

“Players who are at the end of the game don’t need to worry about the difficulty [being too easy] as actually we have a new system in place where players are dynamically scaled based on how far they progressed,” Virant explains. “We know a lot of players are coming back from the endgame and would like to have a continuation of that difficulty, especially if they have health upgrades and a lot of abilities.

“We tried a few different things, but the one that was simplest and actually just what felt right was that if you’ve progressed to the Vatican but you haven’t gotten to Giza yet, we keep it on a first tier of difficulty. If you’ve gotten to Giza, then we adjust it up to a second tier. And then once you’ve gotten to Sukhothai, we adjust to a third tier. From there we [can tune] the different amount of combos enemies can use, different amounts of health and also how many will gang up on you at the same time.”

It’s a smart system, though one which need not come into play at all during the DLC’s first hour, as Indy kicks off his new adventure with some impressive-looking new adventuring and puzzle sections, set just outside the bounds of the base game’s existing area. It’s here that Indy meets Father Ricci, a priest obsessed with the legend of a secret chamber that houses a giant helmet – something that immediately sparks our hero’s interest. (Brilliantly, Father Ricci also has a pet parrot, Pio, who rather steals the show. Torvenius confirmed that while the parrot speaks, this is not another turn from the talented Troy Baker, and is instead another voice actress who provides the parrots’ voice and much of its chirping sounds.)

The DLC’s focus on the main game’s race of giants, otherwise known as the Nephilim Order, will likely pique the intrigue of fans who enjoyed piecing together their story during the Great Circle’s campaign. Sadly, the late Tony Todd, who played Locus, was not able to contribute to the DLC — though Torvenius said his presence “would have been amazing.”

“To some extent this was never really about telling the background story of Locus as a character,” he said. “Even though for me personally, I would’ve loved to play a game that was where you just play as Locus for 15 hours on all of his grand adventures. That would’ve been interesting. But this was more about deepening the story of the tribe of the giants and the Nephilim Order. And obviously Locus is part of that since he’s part of the race, but it’s more about the origins and the mystery of it and how it connects with the Vatican and the streets of Rome.”

When asked whether players will learn everything there is to know about the giants before the end of the DLC, or whether MachineGames was purposefully keeping some elements of their story secret, Torvenius remained coy. “Yes and no,” he replied. “I would say I think absolutely this will help for people that have played through the main game, and when they have played the DLC in addition to that, they will get a deeper understanding of the mystery around the Nephilim Order. But there are things that maybe are to some extent left unanswered, though the majority of it I think starts to paint a pretty good picture.”

Was this secrecy a desire to hold some story elements back for use in the future, I wondered, or simply a decision not to explain too much — the Midichlorians effect — of something that could otherwise remain a cool mystery? “In my mind, both as a consumer myself but also as a creator, I enjoy when maybe sometimes everything isn’t explored,” Torvenius responded. “Sometimes there will be still like a fog of war on the map that is best left unexplored.

“We have internally fleshed it out completely,” he continued, discussing the lore of the giants. “I could write a blurb that explains how everything is connected, but would that be fun?” Yes, I say, to which Torvenius laughs. “We are always working towards giving players the sensation they have figured it out and it should make sense when it’s all connected. But for me it’s always important to make sure you slowly get a bigger picture without saying too much.”

For Torvenius and Virant, Order of the Giants has been a challenging but enjoyable victory lap for one of 2024’s most widely-praised games. Development on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle began amid the height of Covid lockdowns, with the studio forced to collaborate via Microsoft Teams. For the DLC, however, its developers have been together throughout, able to build on what has come before, in the knowledge they’re working on something that is already beloved.

“The overall quality of the DLC is absolutely on par and in some instances higher than main game,” Torvenius concludes. “For people that love the Great Circle and the world of Indiana Jones that MachineGames built, this is more of that. It’s really for them. And if you haven’t played the base game, we are really hoping that this is a great opportunity for people wanting to play. It’s been a great adventure doing it, a lot of hard work, but it’s been fun to see. Sometimes you work on a game for many years and towards the end there can almost be a bit of fatigue, or you’re a bit exhausted. But when production really geared up on the DLC, people were still energized. I think that passion for Indiana Jones shines through, and we are extremely proud of it.”

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

A group of over 450 developers on the game Diablo at Blizzard have voted in favor of unionization with Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Per a press release, this new union consists of game developers, artists, designers, engineers, and support staff across the Diablo franchise, and has been formally recognized by parent company Microsoft.

“With every subsequent round of mass layoffs, I’ve witnessed the dread in my coworkers grow stronger because it feels like no amount of hard work is enough to protect us,” said Kelly Yeo, a game producer and a member of the organizing committee. “I am overjoyed that we have formed a union—this is just the first step for us joining a movement spreading across an industry that is tired of living in fear. We are ready to begin fighting for real change alongside our Diablo colleagues.”

Microsoft laid off around 9,100 employees earlier this year, including members of its gaming division at Activision Blizzard.

The Diablo team follows in the footsteps of hundreds more of their Activision Blizzard and broader Xbox colleagues who have unionized in recent years with some security due to Microsoft’s labor neutrality agreement. Like Diablo, the entire World of Warcraft team unionized last year, and the Overwatch developers followed in May of this year. Xbox’s other unions include Raven Software workers who just won their first contract earlier this month, Zenimax QA workers who got a contract in May, the Bethesda union, the story and franchise development team, and several others.

Over 3,500 workers at Microsoft have organized with CWA to date.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Elden Ring: Nightreign’s previously-rumored ultra-hard difficulty mode is real and official, according to Bandai Namco, and it’s coming to the game on September 11.

As announced in an official post, the new mode is called “Deep of Night” and is essentially a challenge mode of the base game. While previously, Nightreign’s ongoing challenging endgame content has been limited to more difficult bosses, Deep of Night will impact an entire run, from start to finish.

For one, enemies will just be stronger than normal across the board. You also won’t get a heads up about which Nightlord you’ll be fighting, nor will you know if you’re getting a Shifting Earth event in advance, so you won’t be able to prep a build for any specific type of run.

However, to counterbalance this, players will be able to collect new types of weapons and relics with even more powerful effects…though they may also have some new drawbacks attached as well.

As you play and win Deep of Night you will descend to deeper depth levels, going at least as far as Depth 5. Each new Depth gets even more challenging, though losses will push you back up to easier Depths.

This mode was previously datamined, with dataminers getting all the announced details correct. Not announced but suggested by the datamine is that Deep of Night will feature skill-based matchmaking, and that some enemies will get special additional effects, such as being “magmafied,” or covered in magma. The datamine also suggests that players can unlock access to three additional relic slots for Deep of Night only, giving them up to a total of six.

We gave Elden Ring Nightreign a 7/10, saying “when Elden Ring Nightreign is played exactly as it was designed to be played, it’s one of the finest examples of a three-player co-op game around – but that’s harder to do than it should be, and playing solo is poorly balanced.” The game recently got a much-requested duos mode, and currently has two Everdark Sovereign bosses available for players wanting a challenge before Deep of Night: Libra, and Caligo.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Final Fantasy 14’s community is once again in a tizzy about the use of mods in game, to the point where the game’s producer and director, Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), has weighed in.

First, some background. While modding is an extremely common practice across many games, including other MMORPGs like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14 has always had a slightly more hostile relationship with them. That’s not to say players don’t use mods in FF14 – they absolutely do. But officially, they’re not allowed. Even so, Square Enix has largely operated for a long time on a policy of letting mods slide…as long as players aren’t too loud or obvious about it. So players might use mods to customize their UIs, or change the way their character looks just on their own screen. As long as they aren’t interfering with other people’s games or, say, being very public about their mod use, the publisher has mostly turned a blind eye.

But that strategy hasn’t always worked out for Square Enix, especially due to the lack of real clarity for players as to what Square Enix will be permissive about, versus what it will immediately ban. And recently, mods have been in the crosshairs of the developer once again. Earlier this year, Yoshi-P himself threatened legal action after a mod went around that could track other people’s player data – a mod that’s pretty obviously not permitted by any standards. But more recently, a different, less obviously problematic mod has entered the discourse: Mare Synchronos.

Mare Synchronos is a mod that’s become popular with Final Fantasy 14 players over the years, especially for role-playing communities. Essentially, it lets those who use it “synchronize” their character appearances with those of other players. Here’s an example. If I’m playing FF14 and don’t have a lot of cool gear to dress my character up in, and don’t want to run the content needed to acquire it for whatever reason, I can use a mod that will let my character appear exactly how I want them to – but only on my screen. However, with Mare Synchronos, everyone else using Mare Synchronos can also see that modded appearance. Players who do not use the mod will see my character in whatever bland gear I’m actually wearing. And critically, Mare doesn’t actually let you change your character’s appearance – other mods are needed for that. Mare just lets you see other mods, and be seen.

However, a week ago, Mare Synchronos announced it was shutting down. The cited reason was that it had received a “legal inquiry” surrounding the project, and after reviewing options, the creator decided to wind it down. It officially went dark last Friday. While some fans were unphased by the shutdown, or even claimed they’d expected it eventually, many others were deeply upset. Though Mare’s developer hadn’t specified who the legal inquiry was from, many speculating it was likely Square Enix, and even took to the FF14 official forums to complain about the third-party mod shutting down. It’s even getting review bombed on Steam right now, currently sitting at “Mixed” recent reviews versus “Very Positive” total reviews.

Which is what has prompted Yoshi-P to speak up. In a lengthy post on the official Final Fantasy 14 website, the producer reiterated his past-stated stance on mods: he tolerates them. That stance, he says, hasn’t changed. Mods made entirely for one’s own personal use that only impact the individual using them, Yoshi-P explains, are fine with him. “I’d like to stress the importance that players follow two rules: that their style of gameplay does not infringe upon others, and that they do not negatively impact the core game, its services, or intended game design, as mentioned above.”

Yoshi-P goes on to detail exactly what he means by “negative impacting the intended game design” and “infringing upon others.” He offers an example of a player, Player A, who loves to raid and acquires a new title and weapon by successfully finishing an Ultimate raid. Player B does not have time to raid, and uses a mod that allows them to see their character with the same title and weapon as Player A. As long as that only displays on Player B’s screen, that’s not a problem for Yoshi-P.

However, where Yoshi-P takes issue is when this begins to impact others. If Player B’s changes are visible to Player A somehow, “it considerably negates the cooperation, time, and effort invested, not to mention the pride they might have felt in their achievement.”

He goes on to illustrate another example that is unacceptable: a mod that allows players to freely equip optional items purchased from the FF14 Online Store and display them to others:

“Some may say that Square Enix is to blame for trying to make money by demanding that players spend extra on optional items,” he writes. “We operate our servers and data centers twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred-sixty-five days a year with the hope that our players can enjoy a reliable gaming experience. Currently, global inflation is taking its toll at a rapid pace, driving up server electricity costs, the cost of land, and even the price of servers themselves. We do not want to increase subscription fees for players, if at all possible─but keeping our game running requires sufficient income. If we start creating a deficit, FFXIV may no longer be able to operate. This is an example of damage dealt to the services we provide.”

In a third example, Yoshi-P mentions the possibility of a mod that displays a character completely naked. Even if this is only displayed on the player’s screen, he explains how it could potentially still be harmful. For instance, if a player posts a screenshot of their naked character on social media, FF14 may face legal consequences.

“Laws that regulate the content of video games grow stricter by the year,” he says. “These laws are there to protect minors and for a variety of other reasons, but the fact remains that they are tangibly becoming stricter. We have a duty to provide our services in adherence to the laws of all countries where FFXIV is available, and if we are unable to do so, the distribution of our game can be prohibited. This is another example of damage dealt to our services.”

Yoshi-P ends his post by saying he intends to listen to player feedback and try to increase the freedom of players to equip different types of gear. “While paying respect to the long-standing tradition of modding PC games, I ask that all players in turn respect our game by enjoying their fun within the confines of some basic rules,” he concludes.

While this post contains some much-needed clarification, it ultimately does leave Final Fantasy 14 in the same odd limbo state it’s always been in: no mods allowed, except it’s fine if no one ever knows you’re using them. While that will likely be sufficient clarification for many players, it’s still a potentially frustrating place for players who have built their gameplay styles around the modding community and what it has to offer. At least over on console, no one has anything to worry about.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.