Category: Video Games

The eminently popular live service game Roblox is involved in an active investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) according to a new report, though the extent is unclear.

As reported by Bloomberg, a Freedom of Information Act request elicited a statement from the commission, confirming Roblox had been referenced in an “active and ongoing investigation.”

“We have confirmed with Division of Enforcement staff that there are responsive emails between Enforcement staff referencing Roblox and that these emails are a part of an active and ongoing investigation,” the SEC told Bloomberg.

The extent to which Roblox is involved, or even the subject of the investigation, is unclear right now. The commission told Bloomberg it couldn’t share staff correspondence referencing Roblox, as it would cause “harm to the ongoing enforcement proceedings.” Bloomberg could not confirm the subject of the investigation, nor did Roblox respond to the outlet’s requests for comment. The SEC declined to comment further.

Roblox has been under some scrutiny from various sources, however. Last October, a report accused Roblox Corporation of deliberately inflating its daily active user (DAU) statistics and fostering a “hellscape” for children. Roblox responded at length on its own site to strongly deny the accusations, asserting “safety and civility” are foundational to its live service platform. It’s also acknowledged that undetected fraud and unauthorised access to Roblox may contribute to an overstatement of DAUs. In 2024, Roblox announced major updates to its safety systems and parental controls.

Further back, families sued Roblox in 2023, accusing the corporation of being misleading about its “ability to make the site safe and appropriate for children.” A 2021 report from People Makes Games looked into the user-generated content of Roblox, and whether it was exploiting creators.

Last week Roblox shares fell 11%, as the Roblox Corporation reported 85.3 million daily active users, short of a StreetAccount estimated 88.2 million. Roblox CEO David Baszucki said the company would continue to invest in its virtual economy, app performance, and “AI-powered discovery and safety, empowering creators and enhancing the user experience.”

Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.

Sony has said the 24-hour outage that knocked out PlayStation Network over the weekend was due to an “operational issue.”

In a tweet confirming the recovery of its network services, Sony apologized for the downtime and thanked the PlayStation community for its patience. As a make-good, it’s giving all PlayStation Plus members an additional five days of service.

However, some PlayStation customers are demanding more information on the cause of the downtime beyond the vague “operational issue,” and have pointed to the high-profile PSN data breach of 2011 that saw personal details from approximately 77 million accounts compromised.

Civilization 7 dataminers have unearthed evidence to suggest the game is set to receive a fourth, unannounced Age — and developer Firaxis has teased its plans in an interview with IGN.

A full campaign in Civilization 7 is one that goes through all three Ages: Antiquity, Exploration, and Modern. Once the Age is completed, all players (and any AI opponents) experience an Age Transition simultaneously. During an Age Transition, three things happen: you select a new civilization from the new Age to represent your empire, you choose which Legacies you want to retain in the new Age, and the game world evolves. The Civilization games have never had such a system.

Based on the unit types and victory conditions currently in-game, the Modern Age ends before the Cold War. In an interview with IGN, Civilization 7 lead designer Ed Beach confirmed this timeline, explaining how Firaxis settled on ending the current version of the game at the conclusion of World War 2.

“We spent a lot of time looking at the ebbs and flows of history,” Beach said. “Once we knew that our game would benefit by breaking it up into chapters, obviously the first thing we ask ourselves is, ‘well, when does a chapter start and when does a chapter end?’ And our senior historian on the project, Andrew Johnson, was working very closely with me, comes from a study of Southeast Asian history. My tendencies are way too focused on Western history, but he’s very good at making sure that we’re looking at the whole picture worldwide. But we did notice that all the big empires of antiquity, it wasn’t just the Roman Empire, but even the big empires over in China and India crumbled under outside pressure in the rough same time period, the 300 to 500 common era time period that Rome was being challenged. Those big empires face challenges across the world.

“So we’re like, okay, that’s a great ending chapter for the first block of our game or what we’re going to call the Age. So that’s where Antiquity ends. And so we started looking for other places where the other chapters should end. The transition from Exploration to Modern is all about those big monarchies that were established, especially in places like Europe being challenged by people’s revolutions, like the French Revolution or the American Revolution. There were a lot of revolutions in Europe in the 1840s as well. So that felt like a good grounding point. And then the nations emerging from it, the Americas and the French and so forth, could be in the Modern Age that follows.

“Then we looked for where’s the next big shakeup worldwide in history, and it was the World Wars. We had to feel like there was a big pivot in history in 1945 essentially after the World Wars. Especially because we have new gameplay systems that can be unique for each Age, so we can change the rules of diplomacy or the rules of warfare, which commanders you have access to, whenever we change Ages, we need to make sure that those breaks have enough conformity to what happened in real life that they make sense to us.

“So yeah, we very deliberately did not push into the Cold War time period because that is one that just felt very different than the rest of the Modern Age. It just sort of dips its toes in the Cold War, like you’ve identified with the thermonuclear device being the one that ends the military victory path there.”

The inevitable follow-up question is, of course, whether Firaxis plans to expand Civilization 7 down the line with the addition of a fourth Age where players may, perhaps, go to space, land on the moon, and get to play with up to day units.

Executive producer Dennis Shirk wouldn’t confirm this outright, but did tease the developer’s future plans.

“You can imagine the possibilities with this, honestly,” Shirk said. “The way that the design team set it up so that each age is chockfull of systems, visuals, units, Civs, all specific to that age, and what you could do with that and where you could take it… we can’t talk about the specifics. We can just talk about it in generalities. We’re excited for where this is going to go.”

Hot on the heels of this tease, Civilization 7 players have already datamined the game, which is available in advanced access to those who paid more, and found reference to the Atomic Age.

Redditor ManByTheRiver11 revealed mention of unannounced leaders, civilizations, and word of the Atomic Age. New leaders and civs are of course expected, given Firaxis’ DLC strategy for previous games in the series. And this Atomic Age would certainly fit the bill with where Civ 7 currently ends and Shirk’s tease in our interview.

In the shorter term, Firaxis is working on addressing various community complaints that have led to a ‘mixed’ user review rating on Steam. In an interview with IGN ahead of the release of its third quarter financial results, Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick acknowledged that Civilization 7 had received some negative reviews from press and players, but insisted that the “legacy Civ audience” will come around the more they play, and called Civilization 7’s early performance “very encouraging.”

Looking for tips to help you take over the world? Check out our guide to completing every Civ 7 victory, our run down of the biggest Civ 7 changes for Civ 6 players, and the 14 crucial Civ 7 mistakes to avoid. We’ve also got explanations on all the Civ 7 map types and difficulty settings so you know what you’re getting into.

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.

Grand Theft Auto 6 is set to launch fall 2025 on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S only, leaving one platform in particular out in the cold: PC.

It’s an omission in keeping with developer Rockstar’s playbook for its previous games, but in 2025 feels outdated. And, given the increasing importance of the PC for a multiplatform game’s success, is GTA 6’s no-show on PC a missed opportunity or even a mistake?

IGN put that question to Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick ahead of the company’s recent financial results, and in his response he teased GTA 6’s eventual release on PC.

“So with Civ 7 it’s available on console and PC and Switch right away,” Zelnick said of Firaxis’ recently launched Civilization 7. “With regard to others in our lineup, we don’t always go across all platforms simultaneously. Historically, Rockstar has started with some platforms and then historically moved to other platforms.”

Rockstar fans have noted the studio’s historical reluctance to release other past games on PC day-and-date with console, as well as its fraught relationship with the modding community over the years. Still, some had hoped that a game as big as GTA 6 could be a turning point for the studio’s PC gaming attitude.

Big Rockstar titles tend to get to PC eventually, but the question of how long PC gamers will have to wait for what could end up being one of the biggest games ever remains. Given GTA 6’s fall 2025 release window, which Take-Two is still confident in, it seems likely PC players won’t get to play the game until 2026 at the earliest.

In December 2023, a former developer at Rockstar attempted to explain why GTA 6 is coming to PC after it hits PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, and called on PC gamers to give the studio the “benefit of the doubt” over its controversial launch plans.

But how big of a missed opportunity could skipping PC for GTA 6’s launch be? Zelnick told IGN that the PC version of a multiplatform game can generate 40% of overall sales, or even more with certain games.

That stat came as part of a discussion about the current console generation, which has seen sales of the PS5 and Xbox Series X and S — the two consoles GTA 6 launches on later this year — plummet. While Nintendo has the Switch 2 waiting in the wings, neither Sony nor Microsoft have announced their next-gen consoles. How long before the industry needs the PlayStation 6 and whatever Xbox is next?

Zelnick pointed to the PC platform as growing in importance, even as console sales fall, while publishers wait for Sony and Microsoft’s next moves.

“We have seen PC become a much more and more important part of what used to be a console business, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see that trend continue,” he said. “Of course, there will be a new console generation.”

In any case, according to Zelnick, the release of GTA 6, which is expected to be the biggest entertainment launch of all time, will drive console sales as fans jump into the current generation for the first time in order to play the game.

“When you have a big title in the market and we have many of them coming, historically that has sold consoles,” Zelnick said.

“And I think that will happen this year. I don’t think tariffs are going to be our friend, but I think there will be a meaningful uptick in console sales in calendar 25 because of the release schedule, not just coming from us, but coming from others. So I’m not concerned about that [console sales falling]. I think the trend that you’d want to focus on is this increasing share of the market that is reflected in PC.”

Indeed, many see the PlayStation 5 Pro as a future ‘GTA 6 machine,’ in the hopes it will be the best platform to play the game when it comes out. However, tech experts believe the PS5 Pro probably won’t run GTA 6 at 4K60.

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.