Providing most of their workings and rationale, Angie also believes Expedition 33 has secured more Players’ Choice awards than anything else — The Last of Part II received 115, Elden Ring 97, Baldur’s Gate III has 89, while Sandfall’s record-breaking JRPG has 125 — but interestingly, when Game of the Year wins are calculated by the percentage of total awards given out during the release year, Clair Obscur takes the bronze. Though it has scooped 70% of all the awards given out this year, Street Fighter II received 80% back in 2005, and 1998’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time did even better at 87%.
Not all award years are equal, of course — the number of awards will depend upon the number of outlets/organizations publishing a Game of the Year winner (Clair Obscur was IGN’s 2025 game of the year), and this list includes awards given not just by gaming press, but also newspapers, radios, podcasts, and more — but it’s nonetheless a testament to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s impact. Hop on over to ResetEra for the full list (thanks, GamesRadar).
While accepting the Game of the Year award at last month’s The Game Awards, Sandfall shadow-dropped new DLC and Patch 1.5.0, which introduces new location Verso’s Drafts and some truly challenging boss fights.
IGN’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 review returned a 9/10. We said: “Wearing its inspirations on its sleeve, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 paints itself into the pantheon of great RPGs with a brilliant combat system and a gripping, harrowing story.” Here’s a Handy Guide for Beginners if you’re looking to give it a try, too.
Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world’s biggest gaming sites and publications. She’s also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.
Luke Ross, creator of the R.E.A.L. VR mods for games such as Elden Ring, Days Gone, and Far Cry, reportedly earns $20,000 a month through Patreon, which acts as a paywall for his work.
Ross extended his VR conversion framework to support Cyberpunk 2077 in February 2022. A few months later, he contacted CD Projekt to ask if the Polish studio was interested in turning the mod into an official port. It declined, Ross told IGN.
Then, on January 9, 2026, Patreon alerted Ross to CD Projekt’s DMCA notice for the removal of the mod, which it had already taken down. “I had absolutely no say in the matter, because as is the norm in these cases (at least for Patreon), the Patreon team had already complied with the request and taken down my mod of their own initiative, making it inaccessible,” Ross said.
Ross then got in touch with CD Projekt to, as he put it, “negotiate a mutually beneficial solution.” CD Projekt then replied to say Ross needed to comply with its terms of service. “No negotiation, no comments on my proposals, no interest for instance in knowing how many of their users would be affected by the sudden removal.”
The situation hit the headlines this week when Jan Rosner, VP, Business Development at CD Projekt Red, tweeted to say the company issued the DMCA strike because Cyberpunk VR was a paid mod, which violates its fan content guidelines.
“We never allow monetization of our IP without our direct permission and/or an agreement in place,” Rosner said. “We were in touch with Luke last week and informed him that he needs to make it free for everyone (with optional donations) or remove it.
“We are big fans of mods to our games — some of the work out there has been nothing short of amazing, including Luke’s mod for Cyberpunk 2077. We’d be happy to see it return as a free release. However, making a profit from our IP, in any form, always requires permission from CD Projekt Red.”
Ross responded to Rosner’s tweet to take issue with his work being characterized as fan content. Rather, Ross insisted, it is independent software and thus does not infringe on CD Projekt’s IP rights.
“I’m sorry but I don’t believe you are within your rights in demanding that my software needs to be free,” Ross said. “It is not ‘derivative work’ or ‘fan content’: it supports a large number of games which were built upon different engines, and it contains absolutely zero code or assets from your IP. Saying that it infringes your IP rights is equivalent to maintaining for example that RivaTuner violates game publishers’ copyrights because it intercepts the images the game is drawing on screen and it processes them in order to overlay its statistics.”
IGN followed up to ask Ross if he has plans to make the Cyberpunk VR mod free, thus complying with CD Projekt’s terms of service. Responding, Ross said that while he wouldn’t rule out doing so, it would be a lot of work.
“I do not rule out releasing the mod free for everyone,” he said. “But it would take time, because my software supports 40+ games and various completely different engines, which makes creating a version that specifically supports only Cyberpunk 2077 a non-trivial task. Also, the people who have voluntarily given their money to me in order to support my development efforts for the framework might not be happy about seeing the mod being given away all of a sudden to everyone just because I’ve been bullied into it.”
At this point, Ross said that making the mod free had become a moot point because people were now pirating it — and publishing abusive comments directed at him.
“Anyway, it’s kind of become a moot point, because following to the unexpected DMCA strike, after the mod was forcibly removed from my Patreon, people afraid of losing VR support for their favorite games have started pirating and illegally exchanging the mod all over the Internet, brazenly saying that since I was not complying with CDPR’s ToS, my work is now fair game and I should be punished by having it stolen. So in a sense CDPR already got what they wanted,” he said.
The following is a snippet of the response to the DMCA strike and Ross’ comments about it.
“Ehhh, without the game the mod is useless. I’m glad some people have found ways to pirate his shitty mods, he deserves it,” one person said on social media.
“I’m currently working on transferring this guy’s mod files to my PC. I’ll look through and do some tweaking, and then I’ll release his VR mod for Cyberpunk for free,” said another.
“What really bugs me is that instead of just releasing it for free and continuing development with donations, which Take-Two already allows and which would almost definitely still bring in the same money from the VR community, he chose to kill the mod entirely once he couldn’t sell it anymore,” added another. “That’s the part I don’t respect. He already made his money, he had options, and he still chose the nuclear one. End result is players lose the only real Cyberpunk VR experience, VR modding takes another hit, and publishers get painted as villains again even though this outcome was kind of obvious.”
The following is a comment posted on Ross’ Patreon page:
“Upon reading more about this case: they gave you a way to keep it alive, and you decided to be a greedy little bish about it so I’m cancelling my Patreon subscription to you and giving all your mods to anyone I know for free from now on (also there’s places online to find all your mods immediately after release for free, I was choosing to pay you, but now you’re being a dickhead so I’ll just steal your mods from now on and tell everyone where to find them).
“You’ve made 20k a month for years, for modding these games — they’re asking you to make ONE OF THEM free — for a game which is largely done updating and would be version locked.
“Really gross by CD Project Red, and by you — shows where your priorities are you greedy little proud man.”
It seems unlikely that CD Projekt will back down here, which leaves Ross with a decision to make: ditch the Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod for good, or release it for free, as CD Projekt requests.
Ross restated to IGN that he is open to finding “creative solutions,” and that his work to make AAA games playable in VR fills a void, but he has yet to confirm plans to release the Cyberpunk 2077 VR mod for free.
“I do not modify the content of the games, or try to sell an experience which is in competition with what the IP creators are producing,” he continued. “To play in VR you always need to own the original game, and the only thing that changes is that the experience is more immersive, visceral and memorable, which can only benefit the IP owners. In the end, when gamers are playing for example Cyberpunk in VR, they are not playing my mod. They are playing Cyberpunk, and loving it. How this could ever hurt the publisher and trigger free-or-kill reactions still baffles me.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Ah, no, not that one. That, I assume, has been the reaction of folks who’ve gone to pre-order the Marathon reboot on Steam, and immediately been informed that Destiny 2 is sneaking its way back onto their machines. Thankfully, Bungie have now fixed whatever issue was causing the latter to take pre-purchases of the former as a cue to re-install itself.
If you happen to be lucky enough to own a Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X, then chances are you’ve had to do a little rearranging just to get them all to fit correctly underneath (or to the side of) your TV.
Well, YouTuber Xiao Ningzi has come up with a rather novel – and surprisingly elegant – solution, by combining all three consoles into one giant machine. The result is pretty cool, albeit not one that we’d be in a rush to emulate anytime soon.
Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios has said players who spawn late don’t realize they “economically profit way more” than players who don’t.
In an interview with GamesRadar, design lead Virgil Watkins discussed the extraction shooter’s divisive late spawn system, which can see players join games with around 20 minutes left to go. The feeling from some is that this can be a frustrating experience because it gives late joiners less time to complete objectives, and there isn’t as much loot around. But Watkins suggested the data tells a different story.
“We 100% acknowledge the whole thing of, ‘Man, I came in to do that trial and now I clearly don’t have enough time to do that, and that sucks, so I’m just going to leave,’ or whatever. That aspect is definitely not great,” Watkins admitted.
“But similar to the perception of free kits versus what they do, the perception around late joining and what it affords you has been quite interesting. Players are like, ‘The loot’s all gone,’ or whatever else. But players who late join economically profit way more than people who aren’t. The session, when they are fresh, does eventually get quieter, and very often they come across the remnants of fights or can maybe take out bigger drones or hit high-ticket areas more readily than other players. So that’s been a very interesting thing to look at.”
So what is the goal behind the late join system? According to Watkins, it helps mitigate deserted raids. Indeed, Embark distributes loot in such a way so “there should be plenty of stuff for players to do” even if they join late.
It will be interesting to see if Watkins’ explanation here turns sentiment on late spawns around. Since Arc Raiders’ explosive launch, its late spawn system has come under fire from some who feel it needs to be overhauled. There’s frustration on both sides, with those who have to face late spawns having been in a game from the start also expressing concern.
“It’s crazy that my team can clear a section of Stella Montis, place traps near the popular entrances, and start looting… only to have a full team of three, heavy shield, volcano running players spawn 50 FEET AWAY from us in a random room in the corner of the area… spawning basically on top of us, at 15 MINUTES REMAINING,” said one fan last month. “There is no counter, there is no chance of winning, they bypassed our traps as they spawned in the room next to me.
“The ONLY players who should be spawning in five minutes into the raid or later are FREE LOADOUTS. Tarkov got that system down with the player Scavs, and it works very well. The initial spawn should be player loadouts only, then free loadouts come in at 25, 20, and 15 minutes remaining. Does that sound reasonable?
“I’m not crazy right? I’ve spawned literally on top of players who were looting and have gotten extremely unfair free kills because of it. Even reworking the spawning mechanic wont fix it, as you shouldn’t have to worry about a random full geared 3-man at 15 minutes remaining after 5 minutes of silence after your team wiped out 12 players.
“Spawning in a 20 with gear sucks. Most of the PVP is gone, half the loot is already extracted. It sucks for everyone else too, they are low on meds, shields are nearly broken, and now 3-9 completely fresh, geared players have arrived at unexpected locations you just cleared.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Surprise! Nintendo has released an unexpected free update for Donkey Kong Country Returns HD, adding Dixie Kong and a new Turbo Attack mode for the game on both Switch and Switch 2.
The Switch 2 version of Donkey Kong Country Returns HD gets additional improvements, meanwhile, with improved loading times, higher resolution visuals, and the ability to play in co-op with a friend who doesn’t have the game themselves via GameShare.
Swapping out Diddy Kong for Dixie allows you to benefit from her higher, further jumps. Turbo Attack, meanwhile, tasks you with clearing levels at breakneck speed and within a tough time limit. In other words, Nintendo seems to have added something here for both new players and veterans.
A free update is rolling into #DonkeyKong Country Returns HD!
Swing into action as Dixie Kong in both single-player and two-player local co-op, and race through high-speed versions of each level in Turbo Attack. Plus, players on #NintendoSwitch2 can enjoy enhanced resolution,… pic.twitter.com/k66mpkhaOC
While today’s update has dropped out of the blue, Nintendo has been updating its many games originally released for Switch with fresh features, and improvements for those now playing on Switch 2. Some of these have included paid upgrades — such as last week’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons update — while Donkey Kong Country Returns HD’s new additions are free.
Today’s full Donkey Kong Country Returns HD patch notes lie below.
Donkey Kong Country Returns HD: Ver. 1.1.0 (released January 20, 2026) patch notes:
The following updates have been made when playing the game on Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch:
You can now play as Dixie Kong. Her action when jumping is different from when Diddy Kong jumps.
When playing alone, as you grab a barrel, you can switch between either Diddy Kong or Dixie Kong as the character that appears.
When playing with two people, P2 can switch between Diddy Kong or Dixie Kong by pressing the stick (the L Stick in the case of playing with both Joy-Con 2 or Joy-Con controllers) on the world map.
A Turbo Attack mode where you can race through the stage at high speed has been added.
If you clear the course once, it will appear at the same time as the Time Attack mode.
If you can clear it within the time limit, you will acquire a turbo medal.
Now supports Brazilian Portuguese language.
You can switch the language in the “Language” setting in the “System” menu of “System Settings.”
Several other issues have been addressed and image quality enhancements have been made to improve the gameplay experience.
The following updates have been made when playing the game on Nintendo Switch 2:
Now supports “GameShare (Local User).”
You can select “GameShare (Local User)” from “2 Players” on the game start screen or the menu screen of the world map.
Optimized for the Nintendo Switch 2 display and high-resolution TVs for improved image quality.
The loading time is now shorter.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
As much as single-player solitude’s a big reason why I love getting lost in The Witcher 3, running around its world with a small crew of mates also seems like it’d be a nice time. A good thing it is then that a new mod for the decade old RPG allows it to host online multiplayer sessions with several players running amok at once.
Alongside GameStop’s exit from the New Zealand market.
Last week, we got an update about GameStop’s EB Games business in New Zealand, which confirmed 38 stores in the country would be closing at the end of this month. At the time, no information was provided about the future of the 336 Australian stores, but we’ve now got some details.
As reported by local Nintendo fan site Vooks, the video game retailer will be closing “at least” 10 stores across Australia this month, and many have already shut their doors. One of these stores includes an EB ‘Zing Pop Culture’ shop, which specialises in merchandise, trading cards and various other items.
I am in the dusty basement of Manchester cathedral. On the streets above me, there are police searching for anyone who would challenge the state. Someone like me. I am supposed to be working on a weapon to use against these fascists. It isn’t a gun or a bomb, it is a machine that eats books.
At least, that’s what I should be doing; instead, I’m searching for the final letter between the members of a love triangle of 1950s academics. I’ve tracked down all their trashy novels and papers on temporal dynamics, but I want to find the last bit of saucy gossip. Smashing the state can wait a moment.
There is a lot I won’t tell you about TR-49, Inkle’s latest puzzle game. I don’t want to ruin any of the epiphanies that lie in wait for you. But it is a treat for anyone looking to get all up in the personal lives of some long-dead fictional authors.
I know there are many of you curtain twitchers out there.
Last week, the PlayStation Blog revealed a demo for Yakuza Kiwami 3 & Dark Ties would be released for the PlayStation 5. It’s now been officially confirmed for the Switch 2 and multiple other platforms.
