Civilization 7 has been through a sizeable array of changes since launch in February next year, amid some very uncivilised reactions to boat-rocking features like the new age format. The next update, Test Of Time, will restore the ability to play as one civilization through the whole game, while making changes to how victories are earned in the hope of creating some lategame variety.
All these tweaks and rejigs invite a more fundamental question. “Why didn’t they just launch it as an early access game?” I remember moaning to another journalist last year. I should have directed my moaning at executive producer Dennis Shirk, who says that Firaxis are tentatively open to the idea and, indeed, “jealous” of developers taking this approach.
Riftbound landed late in 2025, and the general vibe around Riot’s League of Legends card game has been that it’s fun to play – it’s just not always easy to get hold of.
With an Origins restock dropping this week, the Riot storefront once again crashed out, leaving players frustrated in their attempts to get starter sets, decks, packs, and more.
While it remains to be seen if Riot can fix those teething issues from its first set, the good news is that there are four planned for 2026. Here’s everything coming to Riftbound this year, updated in February 2026 thanks to Riot’s new roadmap.
February 13, 2026 – Spiritforged
Spiritforged will be the first post-launch set for Riftbound, and will likely give us a good idea of what to expect from sets going forward.
New this time around are mechanics like Equipment which can be attached to Units, Gold that can be spent, and new keywords like Quick-Draw, Repeat, and Weaponmaster.
As for new Legends, you’ll be able to grab cardboard versions of Azir, Draven, Ezreal, Fiora, Jax, Rumble, Rek’Sai, Ornn, Sivir, Lucian, Rneata Glasc, and Irelia.
May 8, 2026 – Unleashed
While other TCGs (ahem, Magic: The Gathering) will overlap previews with releases, Riot is squarely focused on Spiritforged for now – so details about Unleashed are pretty scarce at the time of writing.
Expect it to introduce new mechanics as with its predecessor, but we’re also expecting to see the arrival of fan-favorite Vi as a Legend, alongside Master Yi, Rengar, and LeBlanc.
We’ll update this page as more information becomes available, but for now we know it’ll launch on May 8 (or April 10 in China). Expect Pre-Rift events on May 1 – 3.
31 July, 2026 – Vendetta
Again, information for another upcoming set is thin on the ground for Riftbound’s Vendetta. We know it’ll come at the end of July, and that Mel, Akali, and Ambessa are likely to arrive.
Riot has also suggested that Vendetta will see it merge the Chinese and North American release schedules into one. Here’s hoping the supply issues are sorted by then…
Pre-Rift will be 24 – 26 July.
23 October, 2026 – Radiance
While we have the set name for Radiance, we have no further information. What Legends will it include? What mechanics? ANYTHING!?
Until Riot is ready to talk, it remains a mystery, but as always we’ll have this page updated as we hear more. Pre-Rift is pencilled in for 16 to 18 October.
What about Origins?
Origins is still Riftbound’s current set, and while it’s tough to get hold of, that should get easier in the coming months (otherwise, Riot will be in big trouble).
The launch set’s tutorial set, dubbed Proving Grounds, is still going for inflated prices on the secondary market, making it tricky to, you know, learn how to play the game.
The same can be said of the preconstructed decks for Jinx, Lee Sin, and Victor, but anecdotally, I’ve at least seen some stock of those on local game stores, even if they’re not always readily available online.
Boosters are a mixed bag – sometimes you’ll find some, but you’re unlikely to find a box right now.
As we said at launch: “Sadly, as the first set of Riot’s first card game hits shelves, it’s being snapped up by scalpers and put on the secondary market.
“It’s a standard practice in TCGs, but Riot is reportedly printing more. If you can hold out, there will be more product.”
That still rings true today – stay strong, and wait it out.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He’s a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife’s dismay.
Everything’s a show! Everything’s a show! Everything’s a show! Everything’s a show! Did you know Baldur’s Gate is a show? Well, it will be soon. One that’ll carry on from the events of Baldur’s Gate 3 and star characters both old and new. Baldur’s Gate 3 developers Larian, though, don’t seem to be directly involved outside of the show’s boss asking if he can pop into their studio for a chat.
“I think a lot of survival games are really boring,” Geoff ‘Zag’ Keene, founder of Deep Field Games, developers of Half-Life adjacent co-op survival game Abiotic Factor, said in a recent interview. However, despite these strong words, please hold onto your spit take for just a moment.
It’s not the first time Keene’s said something like it and, in fact, in the episode of The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook, he’s responding to a question about when he said it to cheery RPS fanzine PC Gamer back in 2024. So, please, calmly swallow your spit take liquid of choice, so I can explain why I’m reporting on something Keene originally said two years ago.
If you just can’t hold out until the game’s March 2026 release date, the good news is a “trial version” is now available on the eShop. Capcom notes how you can start your adventure right now, and you’ll even be able to transfer your save data over to the full game on release.
It’s been another action-packed week for Nintendo and on top of all the Partner Direct announcements, it’s also been rolling out a bunch of new updates this week.
Yesterday, we got a new update for Splatoon 3, and today it’s now released an update for Super Mario Galaxy + Super Mario Galaxy 2, bumping the games up to Version 1.3.1. This follows the release of Version 1.3.0 in December last year.
Larian Studios’ multi-award-winning fantasy RPG, Baldur’s Gate 3, is set for its own TV series on HBO, and will be helmed by The Last of Us co-creator Craig Mazin.
As reported by Deadline, a television adaptation of the acclaimed game set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe is in development at the network, and interestingly, will be a continuation of the story from the Baldur’s Gate 3 game. The television show will reportedly take place after the events of Larian’s RPG and follow the characters players grew to love over time as they grapple with the aftermath of its world-changing ending.
The series will be helmed by Craig Mazin, no stranger to adapting video games to live action, following his work co-creating HBO’s The Last of Us with Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann. A huge fan of Baldur’s Gate 3, Mazin told Deadline that “After putting nearly 1000 hours into the incredible world of Baldur’s Gate 3, it is a dream come true to be able to continue the story that Larian and Wizards of The Coast created”.
“I am a devoted fan of D&D and the brilliant way that Swen Vincke and his gifted team adapted it”, he continued. “I can’t wait to help bring Baldur’s Gate and all of its incredible characters to life with as much respect and love as we can, and I’m deeply grateful to Gabe Marano and his team at Hasbro for entrusting me with this incredibly important property.”
By taking on this project that has no ties to any other Baldur’s Gate game in the pipeline, Mazin will have free rein over what story he wishes to tell, but we do know that it will include both existing and brand new members of the BG3 cast. Shadowheart? Karlach? Astarion? Who are you most looking forward to seeing on your television screen? Mazin reportedly plans to reach out to the cast of the games to sound out how best to approach their roles in the TV show, and if they’d want to be involved, something The Last of Us did with Merle Dandridge reprising her role as Marlene, for example.
Of course, the ending of Larian’s multiple game of the year award-winning RPG can vary massively depending on how you chose to play the game, so it will be highly intriguing to see how Mazin and co. go about choosing which ending is canon for them.
It may well be a while yet before we see Baldur’s Gate arrive on the small screen, with Mazin still attached to complete production on The Last of Us, which is gearing up for its third, and maybe final, season.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.
And it may well be a reworking of a mobile favourite.
In a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment during today’s Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase, you may have caught a glimpse at a cute-looking RPG called Another Eden Begins. Coming to Switch 2 and Switch 1 this summer, it features time travel, turn-based combat, ten different endings, and New Game+.
What if we also told you that the creator was none other than Masato Kato, one of the writers of acclaimed ’90s Squaresoft RPGs Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, as well as the director of Chrono Cross? And that the game’s music is composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, who also worked on all three of those games? The pieces are starting to fall into place now.
Embark Studios has opened up about how it will make the second Expedition in Arc Raiders more enticing after the first left its community wanting more.
The developer behind the popular sci-fi extraction shooter updated fans with a blog post on its website. Included are a February 25 sign-up date and a March 1 departure date for the account reset event, as players are told to look forward to more worthwhile rewards before sending their beloved Raiders into the unknown and starting from scratch.
Stash value requirements were the first thing Embark addressed, telling fans that they’ll now need just 3 million coins to reach the maximum bonus of five skill points. That means you’ll need only 600,000 per point, a significantly more achievable task than the previous Expedition’s ask of 1 million per skill point.
What’s more, Raiders who participated the first time around but didn’t amass enough coins can benefit from a new catch-up feature. Missed points can be claimed for 300,000 each, with coins first going toward Expedition 2 before being used for the makeup points for Expedition 1. In other words, you’ll need the 3 million for the five new skill points and an additional 300,000 per skill point missed. As Raiders jump into Expeditions for the first time, they’ll need to start by unlocking rewards from Expedition 1, leaving the catch-up feature only for returning players.
Other new permanent rewards for the second reset include a new Scrappy outfit, an evolved Patchwork outfit with more toggles and colors, and, thankfully, 12 more stash space slots. Returning expeditioners gain 5% more XP (10% total), a 6% boost to Scrappy materials (12% total), and a 10% increase to repair value (70% total).
All of the upcoming changes to Expeditions arrive after Embark noted a somewhat disappointing reception to its first crack at the account wipe feature. Design director Virgil Watkins told PCGamesN last month that “a little over a million players” successfully cleared their accounts and suggested the studio would keep its ear to the ground going forward.
“We completely acknowledge that it isn’t the most engaging thing to just go for money,” he said at the time, “[and it has] the potential outcome of disincentivizing using your gear, which is kind of what people look forward to towards the end of a reset cycle. So yeah, we’re looking at revisions on that.”
Arc Raiders launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X | S October 30, 2025. Its Escalation roadmap laid out Embark’s early 2026 plans late last month, with Expedition windows planned for February and April. Headwinds kicked things off with a solo vs. squads queue option and the Bird City map condition when it arrived January 27.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
.jpg?width=690&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp)
