Comic-Con attendees will have to wait until at least 2022 to return to the San Diego Convention Center. Comic-Con International: San Diego is cancelling its 2021 convention in light of the pandemic. As with last year's SDCC, the physical convention will be replaced with a virtual Comic-Con@Home event, which will run July 23-25. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/17/san-diego-comic-con-2020-cancelled"] This news comes just weeks after Comic-Con International also cancelled WonderCon for 2021. That convention, which is normally held in Anaheim, California, will also be replaced by a virtual WonderCon@Home event on March 26-27. CCI writes, "While we are buoyed by the rollout of the vaccine and the growing number of individuals being inoculated, it appears that July will still be too early to safely hold an in-person event of the magnitude of Comic-Con. For this reason, we have made the challenging decision to postpone Comic-Con 2021 as an in-person gathering until our 2022 dates, and once again hold this year's celebration as the free online Comic-Con@Home. Unfortunately, the challenges of this past year and the multiple postponements of our two largest events have left us with limited financial resources, so this year the online experience will be reduced to a three-day event, spanning July 23-25, 2021." CCI also clarifies that attendees who rolled their 2020 badges over to 2021 will have their badges again rolled over to 2022. Those who prefer a refund can submit a request through the Comic-Con website. As CCI notes in its statement, this cancellation reflects the fact that the entertainment industry is still struggling to return to normalcy in 2021, even as the COVID-19 vaccine is becoming more prevalent. A number of upcoming movies have seen further pandemic-related delays this year, while Paramount is the latest studio to begin pursuing a more aggressive theatrical/streaming release strategy. However, as of mid-February, Disney has no plans to release the long-delayed Black Widow on Disney+. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-delayed-movie-due-to-coronavirus-so-far&captions=true"] CCI has yet to reveal an event lineup for Comic-Con@Home. Stay tuned to IGN for more Comic-Con news as it develops. And in case you missed out on our virtual IGN Fan Fest event, check out all the big Fan Fest announcements and reveals. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Comic-Con attendees will have to wait until at least 2022 to return to the San Diego Convention Center. Comic-Con International: San Diego is cancelling its 2021 convention in light of the pandemic. As with last year's SDCC, the physical convention will be replaced with a virtual Comic-Con@Home event, which will run July 23-25. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/17/san-diego-comic-con-2020-cancelled"] This news comes just weeks after Comic-Con International also cancelled WonderCon for 2021. That convention, which is normally held in Anaheim, California, will also be replaced by a virtual WonderCon@Home event on March 26-27. CCI writes, "While we are buoyed by the rollout of the vaccine and the growing number of individuals being inoculated, it appears that July will still be too early to safely hold an in-person event of the magnitude of Comic-Con. For this reason, we have made the challenging decision to postpone Comic-Con 2021 as an in-person gathering until our 2022 dates, and once again hold this year's celebration as the free online Comic-Con@Home. Unfortunately, the challenges of this past year and the multiple postponements of our two largest events have left us with limited financial resources, so this year the online experience will be reduced to a three-day event, spanning July 23-25, 2021." CCI also clarifies that attendees who rolled their 2020 badges over to 2021 will have their badges again rolled over to 2022. Those who prefer a refund can submit a request through the Comic-Con website. As CCI notes in its statement, this cancellation reflects the fact that the entertainment industry is still struggling to return to normalcy in 2021, even as the COVID-19 vaccine is becoming more prevalent. A number of upcoming movies have seen further pandemic-related delays this year, while Paramount is the latest studio to begin pursuing a more aggressive theatrical/streaming release strategy. However, as of mid-February, Disney has no plans to release the long-delayed Black Widow on Disney+. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-delayed-movie-due-to-coronavirus-so-far&captions=true"] CCI has yet to reveal an event lineup for Comic-Con@Home. Stay tuned to IGN for more Comic-Con news as it develops. And in case you missed out on our virtual IGN Fan Fest event, check out all the big Fan Fest announcements and reveals. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie adds another member to its growing cast of rogues. Ariana Greenblatt, who some of you will recognize from Avengers: Infinity War, is set to play Tiny Tina in the upcoming live-action adaptation. Greenblatt, who played young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War (“What did it cost?”), will play the young explosives expert introduced in Borderlands 2. She joins a cast that already includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black. In a statement, Eli Roth says of Greenblatt’s casting, “Ariana is a spectacular new talent in cinema. She has already worked with many of my close collaborators and… She blew us all away in her audition, and I cannot wait to see her bring the wild, insane, and unpredictable Tiny Tina to the big screen.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-video-game-movie-in-development-almost&captions=true"] The Borderlands live-action movie will bring the best-selling video game series from Gearbox to the big screen. The current draft of the screenplay is by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin, who is also working on an adaptation of The Last of Us for HBO. Blanchett will play Lilith, Hart will play Roland, Curtis will be Dr. Tannis, and Jack Black will voice Claptrap. Video game adaptations, whether in film or television, are moving along quickly. Mazin’s aforementioned Last of Us TV series for HBO has already cast actors to play Joel and Ellie, and Tom Holland’s Uncharted movie has wrapped filming. This doesn’t include the animated series in the works at Netflix, including a Dota anime. What video game adaptation are you most excited about? [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor.

Eli Roth’s Borderlands movie adds another member to its growing cast of rogues. Ariana Greenblatt, who some of you will recognize from Avengers: Infinity War, is set to play Tiny Tina in the upcoming live-action adaptation. Greenblatt, who played young Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War (“What did it cost?”), will play the young explosives expert introduced in Borderlands 2. She joins a cast that already includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jack Black. In a statement, Eli Roth says of Greenblatt’s casting, “Ariana is a spectacular new talent in cinema. She has already worked with many of my close collaborators and… She blew us all away in her audition, and I cannot wait to see her bring the wild, insane, and unpredictable Tiny Tina to the big screen.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-video-game-movie-in-development-almost&captions=true"] The Borderlands live-action movie will bring the best-selling video game series from Gearbox to the big screen. The current draft of the screenplay is by Chernobyl creator Craig Mazin, who is also working on an adaptation of The Last of Us for HBO. Blanchett will play Lilith, Hart will play Roland, Curtis will be Dr. Tannis, and Jack Black will voice Claptrap. Video game adaptations, whether in film or television, are moving along quickly. Mazin’s aforementioned Last of Us TV series for HBO has already cast actors to play Joel and Ellie, and Tom Holland’s Uncharted movie has wrapped filming. This doesn’t include the animated series in the works at Netflix, including a Dota anime. What video game adaptation are you most excited about? [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor.

EA has shifted Criterion Games off of its current Need for Speed project to help EA DICE with development on the next Battlefield game. This game, which is currently untitled, is expected to release this Fall on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and it seems DICE needed some extra help getting the game ready for that release, according to a new report from Polygon. EA insists that Criterion Games will return to development of its Need for Speed title in 2022, though. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/28/new-battlefield-coming-in-2021-no-more-star-wars-battlefront-2-and-battlefield-5-updates"] EA made the call to have Criterion work with DICE on the next Battlefield project due to pandemic-related working conditions and because of the fact that following the Codemasters acquisition made last month, EA will have at least one racing game release this year — likely its annual Formula One title. EA chief studios officer, Laura Miele, told Polygon that neither the Battlefield franchise or the Need for Speed franchise are in trouble. "There's no way we would have made a decision like this without including [Criterion] and discussing this with them first, and the impact that they could have on [Battlefield]," Miele said. "They've worked on [Star Wars] Battlefront, they've worked on Battlefields, and they have a really tight, close collaborative partnership with DICE. I'm really confident that this is going to be a pretty positive win for them." As far as the Need for Speed franchise goes, Miele told Polygon that Criterion owns the Need for Speed franchise, which is why they managed the recent remaster of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and why the studio is responsible for the next project in the series. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-greatest-racing-games-ever&captions=true"] Miele said an urgent solution for Battlefield, which is expected to release this Holiday season, was needed as a result of the potential the project has and the difficulty in developing a game during a pandemic with work-from-home conditions. "Making games is one of the most sophisticated and complicated forms of media that exists, and it requires creative energy and connection to team members," Miele said. "I think that there's been, you know, fatigue and some burnout, working from home. A lot of that even has to do with just the needs that people have with their families. Some people are taking care of their kids at home. So our productivity is not as high, and then the creative connection and creative energy isn't as high when they're working from home." She continued and said that rather than pushing to get the next Need for Speed game out this year at a time when it might be cannibalized by a Codemasters racing game release, Criterion's efforts are better suited for working on the next Battlefield at the moment. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/11/06/need-for-speed-hot-pursuit-remastered-review"] She also insisted that the Need for Speed series is not being taken away from Criterion in any form and that the studio will return to its development next year, where the team will work to launch the game on current and previous PlayStation and Xbox generations of hardware. It was announced last June that Criterion Games, the studio behind the Burnout series, was taking the reins of the Need for Speed franchise from Ghost Games. While waiting for the next Need for Speed, check out this story about EA's $1.2 billion acquisition of racing game developer, Codemasters, and then read about how Codemasters is to remain an 'independent group' even after this acquisition. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

EA has shifted Criterion Games off of its current Need for Speed project to help EA DICE with development on the next Battlefield game. This game, which is currently untitled, is expected to release this Fall on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, and it seems DICE needed some extra help getting the game ready for that release, according to a new report from Polygon. EA insists that Criterion Games will return to development of its Need for Speed title in 2022, though. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/04/28/new-battlefield-coming-in-2021-no-more-star-wars-battlefront-2-and-battlefield-5-updates"] EA made the call to have Criterion work with DICE on the next Battlefield project due to pandemic-related working conditions and because of the fact that following the Codemasters acquisition made last month, EA will have at least one racing game release this year — likely its annual Formula One title. EA chief studios officer, Laura Miele, told Polygon that neither the Battlefield franchise or the Need for Speed franchise are in trouble. "There's no way we would have made a decision like this without including [Criterion] and discussing this with them first, and the impact that they could have on [Battlefield]," Miele said. "They've worked on [Star Wars] Battlefront, they've worked on Battlefields, and they have a really tight, close collaborative partnership with DICE. I'm really confident that this is going to be a pretty positive win for them." As far as the Need for Speed franchise goes, Miele told Polygon that Criterion owns the Need for Speed franchise, which is why they managed the recent remaster of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and why the studio is responsible for the next project in the series. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-greatest-racing-games-ever&captions=true"] Miele said an urgent solution for Battlefield, which is expected to release this Holiday season, was needed as a result of the potential the project has and the difficulty in developing a game during a pandemic with work-from-home conditions. "Making games is one of the most sophisticated and complicated forms of media that exists, and it requires creative energy and connection to team members," Miele said. "I think that there's been, you know, fatigue and some burnout, working from home. A lot of that even has to do with just the needs that people have with their families. Some people are taking care of their kids at home. So our productivity is not as high, and then the creative connection and creative energy isn't as high when they're working from home." She continued and said that rather than pushing to get the next Need for Speed game out this year at a time when it might be cannibalized by a Codemasters racing game release, Criterion's efforts are better suited for working on the next Battlefield at the moment. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/11/06/need-for-speed-hot-pursuit-remastered-review"] She also insisted that the Need for Speed series is not being taken away from Criterion in any form and that the studio will return to its development next year, where the team will work to launch the game on current and previous PlayStation and Xbox generations of hardware. It was announced last June that Criterion Games, the studio behind the Burnout series, was taking the reins of the Need for Speed franchise from Ghost Games. While waiting for the next Need for Speed, check out this story about EA's $1.2 billion acquisition of racing game developer, Codemasters, and then read about how Codemasters is to remain an 'independent group' even after this acquisition. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Wesley LeBlanc is a freelance news writer and guide maker for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @LeBlancWes. 

A Grand Theft Auto Online modder says they've figured out a way to reduce the game's lengthy loading times by nearly 70% – and claims Rockstar could implement the fix in the space of a day. As reported by PCGamer, user T0ST has published a fascinating blog post detailing how they reduced the GTA Online loading screen time down from six minutes to a far more healthy one minute and 50 seconds. You can check out T0ST's code for yourself here on GitHub, though be warned, it's just a proof of concept, and as they point out on the page, modifying your game in online mode may lead to an account suspension. Users on social media have reported using the fix themselves and finding similar results. In their write-up of the process, T0ST points to the game's single thread CPU bottleneck and a "poorly built" 10MB JSON file that may contain all of GTA Online's purchasable in-game items and upgrades. When it finds an item, this file checks an entire array with 63 thousand entries, and T0ST says that it performs this check nearly 2 billion times, which is what they believe to be delaying the loading process. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/06/07/gta-online-gunrunning-trailer"] T0ST attempted to smooth this process out and, with some patching, dropped the loading time by 69.4%. "This won’t solve everyone’s load times - there might be other bottlenecks on different systems, but it’s such a gaping hole that I have no idea how R* has missed it all these years," T0ST says. Rounding off their piece, the coder addresses Rockstar directly, noting that it "shouldn't take more than a day for a single dev to solve," and offering a set of solutions for the company to implement the fix. There's been no word from Rockstar on having seen the post, but T0ST has had to update the post to ask players to stop sending the link to the company's support account, in case it gets in the way of normal customer service requests. In other GTA Online news, Take-Two Interactive recently forced a GTA Online cheat maker to close and donate their proceeds to charity. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN, who has lost hours of his life to GTA Online loading screens. Follow him on Twitter.

A Grand Theft Auto Online modder says they've figured out a way to reduce the game's lengthy loading times by nearly 70% – and claims Rockstar could implement the fix in the space of a day. As reported by PCGamer, user T0ST has published a fascinating blog post detailing how they reduced the GTA Online loading screen time down from six minutes to a far more healthy one minute and 50 seconds. You can check out T0ST's code for yourself here on GitHub, though be warned, it's just a proof of concept, and as they point out on the page, modifying your game in online mode may lead to an account suspension. Users on social media have reported using the fix themselves and finding similar results. In their write-up of the process, T0ST points to the game's single thread CPU bottleneck and a "poorly built" 10MB JSON file that may contain all of GTA Online's purchasable in-game items and upgrades. When it finds an item, this file checks an entire array with 63 thousand entries, and T0ST says that it performs this check nearly 2 billion times, which is what they believe to be delaying the loading process. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/06/07/gta-online-gunrunning-trailer"] T0ST attempted to smooth this process out and, with some patching, dropped the loading time by 69.4%. "This won’t solve everyone’s load times - there might be other bottlenecks on different systems, but it’s such a gaping hole that I have no idea how R* has missed it all these years," T0ST says. Rounding off their piece, the coder addresses Rockstar directly, noting that it "shouldn't take more than a day for a single dev to solve," and offering a set of solutions for the company to implement the fix. There's been no word from Rockstar on having seen the post, but T0ST has had to update the post to ask players to stop sending the link to the company's support account, in case it gets in the way of normal customer service requests. In other GTA Online news, Take-Two Interactive recently forced a GTA Online cheat maker to close and donate their proceeds to charity. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN, who has lost hours of his life to GTA Online loading screens. Follow him on Twitter.

Lawyers behind a PS5 drift lawsuit are encouraging potential members of a class action to opt out of a clause in the PS5's terms, potentially allowing the case to more easily reach a courtroom.

Lawyers behind a PS5 drift lawsuit are encouraging potential members of a class action to opt out of a clause in the PS5's terms, potentially allowing the case to more easily reach a courtroom.