Monthly Archives: March 2022

1 5 6 7 8 9 61

Uncharted Mobile Spin-Off Closes Down

The Uncharted: Fortune Hunter mobile game has been shut down.

Developer Naughty Dog announced the news on Twitter (below), saying the game will no longer be available to download on Android or iPhone devices, and all in-game purchases have been disabled.

Fortune Hunter is a puzzle platformer game that released alongside Uncharted 4: A Thief's End in May 2016, featuring more than 200 levels for series' protagonist Nathan Drake to overcome.

The game will still be playable in offline mode for those who have it downloaded already, but once users delete the app or change phones, Uncharted: Fortune Hunter will be gone forever.

Despite not making a huge splash in the gaming sphere when it launched and remaining relatively quiet since, the game was fairly well received by users. Its rating on the Apple App Store is a 4.4 out of 5 while on the Google Play Store it has a 3.9 out of 5.

While the Uncharted Movie was released earlier this year, the gaming side of the franchise has been relatively dormant since 2017 when Uncharted: The Lost Legacy was released on PlayStation 4.

It was remastered and re-released in January however, as part of the Legacy of Thieves Collection that also brought Uncharted 4 to the PlayStation 5.

While there's no word on a brand new entry, Uncharted creative director Shaun Escayg recently teased that Uncharted is "a world we want to see more of".

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Fortnite Zero Build Is a No-Build Battle Royale Mode That Is Here to Stay

Fortnite Zero Build is a new no-build battle royale mode that is here to stay following the beginning of Chapter 3, Season 2: Resistance that saw building temporarily removed from the main game for a short time.

As detailed by The Fortnite Team, Zero Build can be found in the Discover page as Solo, Duos, Trios, and Squads playlists. As the team notes, "You can access the Discover page by clicking on the "CHANGE" button above "PLAY!" in the Lobby."

Much like it was in the main game, all players will have access to a recharging Overshield that will help make up for the lack of cover that building would usually provide. Without building, you will need to "show off your sharp shooting, sharp thinking, and sharp sense of space as you take on the battle full-tilt."

Building has been gone since Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2 began, and when it returns, those who had been waiting for this new way to play will still be able to play with a no-build mode.

Alongside the launch of the new season, Epic Games announced that it would be donating all of its Fortnite proceeds to humanitarian relief for people affected by the war in Ukraine for a two-week period. As of March 25, the donations have amounted to $70 million.

For more, check out all the details for Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2: Resistance, which has added a Battle Pass that includes Doctor Strange and Prowler.

Correction: Building has not yet returned to the main battle royale mode as of this writing.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Fortnite Zero Build Is a No-Build Battle Royale Mode That Is Here to Stay

Fortnite Zero Build is a new no-build battle royale mode that is here to stay following the beginning of Chapter 3, Season 2: Resistance that saw building temporarily removed from the main game for a short time.

As detailed by The Fortnite Team, Zero Build can be found in the Discover page as Solo, Duos, Trios, and Squads playlists. As the team notes, "You can access the Discover page by clicking on the "CHANGE" button above "PLAY!" in the Lobby."

Much like it was in the main game, all players will have access to a recharging Overshield that will help make up for the lack of cover that building would usually provide. Without building, you will need to "show off your sharp shooting, sharp thinking, and sharp sense of space as you take on the battle full-tilt."

Building has been gone since Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2 began, and when it returns, those who had been waiting for this new way to play will still be able to play with a no-build mode.

Alongside the launch of the new season, Epic Games announced that it would be donating all of its Fortnite proceeds to humanitarian relief for people affected by the war in Ukraine for a two-week period. As of March 25, the donations have amounted to $70 million.

For more, check out all the details for Fortnite Chapter 3, Season 2: Resistance, which has added a Battle Pass that includes Doctor Strange and Prowler.

Correction: Building has not yet returned to the main battle royale mode as of this writing.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Bungie Sues Those Behind Fake YouTube Copyright Claims – Before It Knows Who They Are

Bungie is suing those behind a series of fake copyright claims that plagued Destiny content creators (and Bungie itself) last week. It just needs to find out who they were first.

As reported by TorrentFreak, the developer is targeting ten anonymous individuals, and while Bungie doesn't yet know their identities, the lawsuit claims "it will discover them soon, via subpoena or otherwise."

Several channels, including Bungie's own, had DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes filed against them, causing YouTube to take a number of videos down. Bungie has criticised the site for not identifying the claims as fraudulent.

The developer said in the lawsuit: "Given the ease with which malicious actors can exploit YouTube’s flawed DMCA practice and harm Bungie’s community, Bungie brings this action to recover for the [John] Doe defendants’ tortious and illegal conduct, and, frankly, to demonstrate to anyone else stupid enough to volunteer as a defendant by targeting Bungie’s community for similar attack that they will be met by legal process."

The defendants allegedly created Google accounts to launch the takedown requests between March 17 and 22, and as Bungie added: "as far as YouTube is concerned, any person, anywhere in the world, can issue takedown notices on behalf of any rights holder, anywhere.

"This caused Bungie significant reputational and economic damage, for obvious reasons. As discussed below, the Destiny community was bewildered and upset, believing that Bungie had reneged on a promise to allow players to build their own streaming communities and YouTube channels on Destiny 2 content."

It will likely take months, if not years, for the lawsuit to resolve, but Bungie seemingly won't hold back in sharing details of the investigation as it seeks to make an example of the defendants.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Bungie Sues Those Behind Fake YouTube Copyright Claims – Before It Knows Who They Are

Bungie is suing those behind a series of fake copyright claims that plagued Destiny content creators (and Bungie itself) last week. It just needs to find out who they were first.

As reported by TorrentFreak, the developer is targeting ten anonymous individuals, and while Bungie doesn't yet know their identities, the lawsuit claims "it will discover them soon, via subpoena or otherwise."

Several channels, including Bungie's own, had DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) strikes filed against them, causing YouTube to take a number of videos down. Bungie has criticised the site for not identifying the claims as fraudulent.

The developer said in the lawsuit: "Given the ease with which malicious actors can exploit YouTube’s flawed DMCA practice and harm Bungie’s community, Bungie brings this action to recover for the [John] Doe defendants’ tortious and illegal conduct, and, frankly, to demonstrate to anyone else stupid enough to volunteer as a defendant by targeting Bungie’s community for similar attack that they will be met by legal process."

The defendants allegedly created Google accounts to launch the takedown requests between March 17 and 22, and as Bungie added: "as far as YouTube is concerned, any person, anywhere in the world, can issue takedown notices on behalf of any rights holder, anywhere.

"This caused Bungie significant reputational and economic damage, for obvious reasons. As discussed below, the Destiny community was bewildered and upset, believing that Bungie had reneged on a promise to allow players to build their own streaming communities and YouTube channels on Destiny 2 content."

It will likely take months, if not years, for the lawsuit to resolve, but Bungie seemingly won't hold back in sharing details of the investigation as it seeks to make an example of the defendants.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Disney CEOs Bob Chapek And Bob Iger Reportedly Had An “Extremely Awkward” Falling Out

Disney CEO Bob Chapek has reportedly fallen out with former CEO Bob Iger, causing a rift that could cause issues for the wider company.

The rift apparently started when Iger stepped down as CEO, before announcing that he would then stick around to help in the wake of the pandemic.

“A crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob [Chapek] and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years,” he told the New York Times.

According to CNBC, this infuriated Chapek. “Chapek was furious when he saw the story, according to three people familiar with the matter,” they explained. “He had not expressed a need or desire for extra help. He wasn’t looking for a white knight.”

It’s claimed that Chapek felt that Iger was simply using this as an excuse to stick around. After all, he had already postponed his retirement three times at this point.

“Chapek felt he was essentially doing it again, leaving him as a hapless second banana, according to people familiar with his thoughts. Chapek was already reporting to Iger, the board’s chairman, anyway.”

Iger had served as Disney CEO since 2005, overseeing huge growth for the company. He oversaw Disney’s acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion, its acquisition of Marvel for $4 billion, the acquisition of Lucasfilm for $4.06 billion, and the acquisition of 21st Century Fox for $71.3 billion.

But despite these huge wins, Disney didn’t want a fight on its hands. “It was a turning-point moment,” said a CNBC source close to the situation. Since Iger’s comments to The New York Times, the pair have reportedly been unable to fix their working relationship.

This, it seems, has spilled over into the business’s practice. Chapek apparently soon began making key decisions about the company’s future without Iger’s input. This included his decision to out Scarlett Johannson’s pay amid disputes over the release of Black Widow.

“It became clear the executives weren’t speaking with one voice,” noted CNBC sources. One notable incident saw Iger thanking his former colleagues during a leaving party late last year, while barely mentioning Chapek. “It was extremely awkward,” said one of the guests. “The tension was palpable.”

Both Iger and Chapek have stayed silent on their relationship, but it’s thought that these tensions could affect Disney going forward. After all, their differing leadership styles have already been a point of contention at the company.

Notably, current Disney employees have been angered by Chapek’s response to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay legislation. According to Deadline, this led to Disney staff experiencing “the worst week they’ve ever had working at the company.”

Chapek has since apologized to Disney staff for not fighting hard enough against it. Meanwhile, Iger took a very public stand against the legislation.

Whatever happens, it looks as though Disney has a long way to go to get back on track, and Chapek has a lot to prove. Disney shares have plummeted 30% in the last year alone, and the CEO will need to win the company around to his new leadership soon – Chapek’s current contract ends in February 2023.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Disney CEOs Bob Chapek And Bob Iger Reportedly Had An “Extremely Awkward” Falling Out

Disney CEO Bob Chapek has reportedly fallen out with former CEO Bob Iger, causing a rift that could cause issues for the wider company.

The rift apparently started when Iger stepped down as CEO, before announcing that he would then stick around to help in the wake of the pandemic.

“A crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob [Chapek] and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years,” he told the New York Times.

According to CNBC, this infuriated Chapek. “Chapek was furious when he saw the story, according to three people familiar with the matter,” they explained. “He had not expressed a need or desire for extra help. He wasn’t looking for a white knight.”

It’s claimed that Chapek felt that Iger was simply using this as an excuse to stick around. After all, he had already postponed his retirement three times at this point.

“Chapek felt he was essentially doing it again, leaving him as a hapless second banana, according to people familiar with his thoughts. Chapek was already reporting to Iger, the board’s chairman, anyway.”

Iger had served as Disney CEO since 2005, overseeing huge growth for the company. He oversaw Disney’s acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion, its acquisition of Marvel for $4 billion, the acquisition of Lucasfilm for $4.06 billion, and the acquisition of 21st Century Fox for $71.3 billion.

But despite these huge wins, Disney didn’t want a fight on its hands. “It was a turning-point moment,” said a CNBC source close to the situation. Since Iger’s comments to The New York Times, the pair have reportedly been unable to fix their working relationship.

This, it seems, has spilled over into the business’s practice. Chapek apparently soon began making key decisions about the company’s future without Iger’s input. This included his decision to out Scarlett Johannson’s pay amid disputes over the release of Black Widow.

“It became clear the executives weren’t speaking with one voice,” noted CNBC sources. One notable incident saw Iger thanking his former colleagues during a leaving party late last year, while barely mentioning Chapek. “It was extremely awkward,” said one of the guests. “The tension was palpable.”

Both Iger and Chapek have stayed silent on their relationship, but it’s thought that these tensions could affect Disney going forward. After all, their differing leadership styles have already been a point of contention at the company.

Notably, current Disney employees have been angered by Chapek’s response to Florida’s Don’t Say Gay legislation. According to Deadline, this led to Disney staff experiencing “the worst week they’ve ever had working at the company.”

Chapek has since apologized to Disney staff for not fighting hard enough against it. Meanwhile, Iger took a very public stand against the legislation.

Whatever happens, it looks as though Disney has a long way to go to get back on track, and Chapek has a lot to prove. Disney shares have plummeted 30% in the last year alone, and the CEO will need to win the company around to his new leadership soon – Chapek’s current contract ends in February 2023.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Nvidia’s Long-Awaited RTX 3090 Ti Gets Release Date and Price

After announcing the card at CES 2022 and remaining silent in the weeks following, Nvidia has finally shared pricing and release date information for its new flagship graphics card, the RTX 3090 Ti, which is available starting today.

Designed to be the new flagship in the RTX 30 series, the RTX 3090 Ti features 24Gb of 21Gbps GDDR6X memory. Like the RTX 3090 announced a few years ago, Nvidia touts its new high-end GPU as a capable graphics card for gaming in 8K resolution. It claims that the RTX 3090 Ti will let you play, capture, and watch games in 8K HDR with DLSS Ultra performance mode enabled. It will also support HDMI 2.1.

The RTX 3090 Ti includes 10,752 CUDA cores, 78 RT-TFLOPs, 40 Shader-TFLOPS, 320 Tensor TFLOPs, and like other graphics cards that belong in the RTX 30 series, it uses Ampere architecture. In other words, it supports real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing, Nvidia's supersampling tech DLSS, and a suite of additional RTX applications created by the GPU maker.

Performance-wise, Nvidia claims that the RTX 3090 Ti will deliver a "top-of-the-line" performance for people looking to have a powerful rig. The RTX 3090 Ti will reportedly run 64% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and 52% faster than the Titan RTX. If we compare it to the company's previous flagship, Nvidia claims that the RTX 3090 Ti is faster than its non-Ti variant by nine percent.

The Founder's Edition of the RTX 3090 Ti will retail for $1,999, but depending on the OEM you purchase from, you will most likely be paying more as the price of Nvidia GPUs has been marked up from their debut price. However, it appears GPU pricing is starting to calm down. Asus announced yesterday that it would be marking down the costs of its graphics card SKUs by up to 25%. MSI announced pricing for its RTX 3090 Ti SKUs, with its three SKUs ranging in price from $1,999.99 up to $2,199.99.

Although Nvidia says sales of the RTX 3090 Ti, the company warned that the GPU availability will be impacted due to "the latest COVID surge and shutdowns in China," though the company anticipates that supply will improve throughout the next month.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

Nvidia’s Long-Awaited RTX 3090 Ti Gets Release Date and Price

After announcing the card at CES 2022 and remaining silent in the weeks following, Nvidia has finally shared pricing and release date information for its new flagship graphics card, the RTX 3090 Ti, which is available starting today.

Designed to be the new flagship in the RTX 30 series, the RTX 3090 Ti features 24Gb of 21Gbps GDDR6X memory. Like the RTX 3090 announced a few years ago, Nvidia touts its new high-end GPU as a capable graphics card for gaming in 8K resolution. It claims that the RTX 3090 Ti will let you play, capture, and watch games in 8K HDR with DLSS Ultra performance mode enabled. It will also support HDMI 2.1.

The RTX 3090 Ti includes 10,752 CUDA cores, 78 RT-TFLOPs, 40 Shader-TFLOPS, 320 Tensor TFLOPs, and like other graphics cards that belong in the RTX 30 series, it uses Ampere architecture. In other words, it supports real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing, Nvidia's supersampling tech DLSS, and a suite of additional RTX applications created by the GPU maker.

Performance-wise, Nvidia claims that the RTX 3090 Ti will deliver a "top-of-the-line" performance for people looking to have a powerful rig. The RTX 3090 Ti will reportedly run 64% faster than the RTX 2080 Ti, and 52% faster than the Titan RTX. If we compare it to the company's previous flagship, Nvidia claims that the RTX 3090 Ti is faster than its non-Ti variant by nine percent.

The Founder's Edition of the RTX 3090 Ti will retail for $1,999, but depending on the OEM you purchase from, you will most likely be paying more as the price of Nvidia GPUs has been marked up from their debut price. However, it appears GPU pricing is starting to calm down. Asus announced yesterday that it would be marking down the costs of its graphics card SKUs by up to 25%. MSI announced pricing for its RTX 3090 Ti SKUs, with its three SKUs ranging in price from $1,999.99 up to $2,199.99.

Although Nvidia says sales of the RTX 3090 Ti, the company warned that the GPU availability will be impacted due to "the latest COVID surge and shutdowns in China," though the company anticipates that supply will improve throughout the next month.

Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.

New PlayStation Plus Won’t Add First-Party Exclusives at Launch

Sony's upcoming overhaul of the PlayStation Plus subscription service may sound a bit like Xbox Game Pass, but there's one important distinction: first-party exclusive games will not be added to PlayStation Plus on the day they release (at least not yet).

Talking to GamesIndustry.biz, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said: "[In terms of] putting our own games into this service, or any of our services, upon their release... as you well know, this is not a road that we've gone down in the past. And it's not a road that we're going to go down with this new service. We feel if we were to do that with the games that we make at PlayStation Studios, that virtuous cycle will be broken. The level of investment that we need to make in our studios would not be possible, and we think the knock-on effect on the quality of the games that we make would not be something that gamers want."

That makes it pretty clear: God of War Ragnarök will not be available day one on PlayStation Plus. Nor should we expect brand new games from the likes of Naughty Dog, Insomniac, or Guerrilla to arrive on the service the day they launch.

At least, not for now. Ryan said, "I don't want to cast anything in stone at this stage. All I'm talking to today is the approach we're taking in the short term. The way our publishing model works right now, it doesn't make any sense. But things can change very quickly in this industry, as we all know."

While it is a marked difference from Game Pass, Ryan's reasoning is understandable, given that Sony's first-party outings currently have a tendency towards being self-contained single player games with little in the way of microtransactions (which remain a way to make money in a service like Game Pass). However, with the company looking to make "more than 10" live service games by 2026, it's possible we'll see that stance shift.

Sony has just today announced the new version of PlayStation Plus, which will offer three different subscription tiers. The basic is the same service we have today, but higher tiers will offer hundreds of PS4 and PS5 games, as well as access to retro games from previous PlayStation generations across both downloads and streaming.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

1 5 6 7 8 9 61