Spoilers for a side quest in God of War Ragnarok are ahead!

God of War Ragnarok has a sidequest that is a beautiful tribute to Jake Snipes, a gameplay programmer at Santa Monica Studio that passed away in 2020.

The side quest in question is called Across the Realms, and its significance was shared on Twitter by Sam Handrick, a senior gameplay programmer at Santa Monica Studio who was also Snipes' partner.

There's something in God of War Ragnarok which is the most special to me. I got to pitch it and the team made it into everything I could have hoped.

I had hoped to wait for some time to talk about it but want to share it now, just in case.

It's the Ballad of Jari and Somr. pic.twitter.com/S9itiutGbq

— Sam Handrick (@MDSVeritas) November 18, 2022

"There's something in God of War Ragnarok which is the most special to me," Handrick wrote. "I got to pitch it and the team made it into everything I could have hoped. I had hoped to wait for some time to talk about it but want to share it now, just in case. It's the Ballad of Jari and Somr."

Those traveling through God of War Ragnarok's world may have noticed the first signs of the side quest by the green hearts that are painted on rocks across the realms, and the origin of them and the quest began with an idea by Handrick and Snipes formed years ago.

The two would talk about how much they'd "love to leave some symbol of us in Ragnarok. Some indication within this game that had been the reason we'd first met, our first game made together. He once suggested simply a heart, with our initials in Norse runes, carved into this world we made."

We'd talk about how much we'd love to leave some symbol of us in Ragnarok. Some indication within this game that had been the reason we'd first met, our first game made together. He once suggested simply a heart, with our initials in Norse runes, carved into this world we made pic.twitter.com/3QpcS5MMNu

— Sam Handrick (@MDSVeritas) November 18, 2022

Sadly, Snipes passed away in 2020. Once Handrick was able to return to work, he knew he wanted to make God of War Ragnarok "everything [Snipes] deserved." He also wanted to ensure Snipes' memory would forever live on in the game.

Snipes asked God of War director Eric Williams if it would be possible to include a memorial to Jake in the games, and he "made it so much more."

"I told Eric and the team about Jake's suggestion of our initials carved into a heart," Handrick shared. "And he and the team returned with that and something even more special. A story of two men who find each other in an often cruel world, and who find a place to belong simply with each other.

"I wanted this story to be one many queer people know: journeying through a world that doesn't always understand you to find a place that truly feels like home. And sometimes that place is simply a person. And something as simple as a recipe can be a link back to that home."

During the quest, you will happen upon a rainbow campfire that "never stops burning." This is part of the memory of Jake that will live on forever more.

This fire never stops burning. Through the coldest days, through the nights you don't want to live through. It will stand in this world we at @SonySantaMonica created for all of time, carrying the story of a man in whom I found something unnamable. Something I still carry now. pic.twitter.com/I9XbP5DGJZ

— Sam Handrick (@MDSVeritas) November 18, 2022

"This fire never stops burning," Handrick said. "Through the coldest days, through the nights you don't want to live through. It will stand in this world we at @SonySantaMonica created for all of time, carrying the story of a man in whom I found something unnamable. Something I still carry now."

The quest, for those curious, has you traveling across the realms to find four ingredients that will create a Meal of Comfort that permanently increases all of your stats by five. It is a "delicious creation that warms the body and soul."

For more on God of War Ragnarok, be sure to check out our review, how its puzzle-filled level design is a gift from the gods, and how some on the team said, three months before the highly-anticipated sequel launched, "holy crap, the game's not good."

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.

The official Twitter account of former United States President Donald Trump has been reinstated by Elon Musk.

The decision to bring Trump back to Twitter was made official following a poll posted by Musk on November 18 that asked if he should "reinstate former President Trump." After over 15 million votes, 51.8% of the voters said yes, he should return.

After the poll ended, Musk tweeted, "The people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated, Vox Populi, Vox Dei." For those unfamiliar, Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a Latin phrase that roughly translates to "the voice of the people is the voice of god."

Twitter, well before Musk bought the company for $44 billion, permanently banned Trump's Twitter account shortly after the attack on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021, by Trump supporters.

"After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them -- specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter -- we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," Twitter wrote in a blog.

Twitter cited two tweets from Trump on January 8, 2021, that led to the decision, and they are as follows;

“The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future," Trump wrote. "They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

Shortly after, he made his final Tweet - “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

"Due to the ongoing tensions in the United States, and an uptick in the global conversation in regards to the people who violently stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, these two Tweets must be read in the context of broader events in the country and the ways in which the President’s statements can be mobilized by different audiences, including to incite violence, as well as in the context of the pattern of behavior from this account in recent weeks," Twitter wrote. "After assessing the language in these Tweets against our Glorification of Violence policy, we have determined that these Tweets are in violation of the Glorification of Violence Policy and the user @realDonaldTrump should be immediately permanently suspended from the service."

Trump was also banned on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and he moved over to another platform called Parler, which had been particularly popular with his supporters. However, the platform was quickly removed from Apple's App Store and Google Play Store as it hadn't taken adequate measures to "address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety."

On November 18, Musk announced a new Twitter policy - "freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach." This means "negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet."

In the same thread, he announced that Kathie Griffin, Jorden Peterson, and Babylon Bee would be reinstated on Twitter, but a decision on Trump had not been made yet. Now, it has.

For more on the ongoing saga following Musk's acquisition of Twitter, be sure to check out our look at the complete timeline of the news so far.

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.

James Gunn has had a busy few months.

The new co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios is currently finishing up his final Marvel projects, including the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special as well as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gunn admits that writing the Holiday Special, a 44-minute special presentation, was a bit easy.

“I’ll be honest, I wrote the screenplay in a few hours, so it just kind of spilled out of me. It was very easy,” Gunn said. “Everything about shooting it was easy. Everything about getting the performances out of people was easy, whereas Vol. 3 was torture in every way.”

Gunn didn't elaborate on why Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 3 was so torturous, though his complex history with the series and the fact that it's his final MCU movie might be a clue. Gunn is currently deep into post-production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, calling it "emotional."

“It’s a big movie, and it’s so different from the special because the special is so wacky and insane," the director said. "The movie is so emotional, but it’s been a real joy making it. So it’s coming along great. I still have a ton of visual effect shots I’m working on, and of course, putting the score together with John Murphy, which is gigantic. So those are the things I’ve been focusing on most, lately.”

The Holiday Special, meanwhile, will see the Guardians taking on Christmas as Drax and Mantis try to help Peter Quill rediscover his love of Christmas. How will they ever do that? Well, they decide to gift him his favorite actor, Kevin Bacon.

"The idea of doing a holiday special with the Guardians was both a really funny idea to me and also something I really wanted to do," Gunn said. "And once I sat down and started trying to figure out what the story was, the Kevin Bacon idea came up very, very quickly, and I wrote the whole story within a few hours."

Guardians 3 will be Gunn's last project in the Marvel Studios franchise before he dives head-in to leading DC Studios through a new era. Alongside Peter Safran, the duo look to be the Kevin Feige of DC, and they are very busy planning the next decade of programming. However, it seems the duo is planning to unveil their master plan soon.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

James Gunn has had a busy few months.

The new co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios is currently finishing up his final Marvel projects, including the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special as well as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gunn admits that writing the Holiday Special, a 44-minute special presentation, was a bit easy.

“I’ll be honest, I wrote the screenplay in a few hours, so it just kind of spilled out of me. It was very easy,” Gunn said. “Everything about shooting it was easy. Everything about getting the performances out of people was easy, whereas Vol. 3 was torture in every way.”

Gunn didn't elaborate on why Guardians of Galaxy Vol. 3 was so torturous, though his complex history with the series and the fact that it's his final MCU movie might be a clue. Gunn is currently deep into post-production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, calling it "emotional."

“It’s a big movie, and it’s so different from the special because the special is so wacky and insane," the director said. "The movie is so emotional, but it’s been a real joy making it. So it’s coming along great. I still have a ton of visual effect shots I’m working on, and of course, putting the score together with John Murphy, which is gigantic. So those are the things I’ve been focusing on most, lately.”

The Holiday Special, meanwhile, will see the Guardians taking on Christmas as Drax and Mantis try to help Peter Quill rediscover his love of Christmas. How will they ever do that? Well, they decide to gift him his favorite actor, Kevin Bacon.

"The idea of doing a holiday special with the Guardians was both a really funny idea to me and also something I really wanted to do," Gunn said. "And once I sat down and started trying to figure out what the story was, the Kevin Bacon idea came up very, very quickly, and I wrote the whole story within a few hours."

Guardians 3 will be Gunn's last project in the Marvel Studios franchise before he dives head-in to leading DC Studios through a new era. Alongside Peter Safran, the duo look to be the Kevin Feige of DC, and they are very busy planning the next decade of programming. However, it seems the duo is planning to unveil their master plan soon.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of medical startup firm Theranos, has been sentenced to 135 months (just over 11.25 years) in prison for her role in defrauding investors and consumers with a faulty blood-testing device that she claimed had massive potential.

A jury found Holmes guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this year, and U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila announced the sentence on Friday after a four-hour hearing. Following Holmes' time in jail, she will face three years of supervised release.

Holmes' story hit television screens this year in the Hulu limited series The Dropout. Starring Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews, the show recounted the story of the Stanford University dropout who became the face of fraud in Silicon Valley. The series was highly acclaimed, and Seyfried won an Emmy in September for her portrayal of Holmes. Now, Seyfried's real life subject is going behind bars.

Back in the mid-2010s, Holmes was heavily promoted as a visionary entrepreneur. She was touted as the first self-made female tech billionare, and she promised that Theranos was developing a revolutionary technology that would make blood testing cheaper, easier and less painful. The company raised nearly $1 billion in private investment despite never proving that the technology worked.

In late 2015, Holmes' empire started to crumble, with investigative reporting from The Wall Street Journal casting doubt on the company's claims. Eventually, the Securities and Exchange Commission got involved and federal fraud charges were levied.

Holmes' story has been followed on many other forms of media aside from The Dropout. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, a book by the reporter who broke the original story, was transformed into a podcast, and a documentary for HBO titled Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley was released in 2019.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and former CEO of medical startup firm Theranos, has been sentenced to 135 months (just over 11.25 years) in prison for her role in defrauding investors and consumers with a faulty blood-testing device that she claimed had massive potential.

A jury found Holmes guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud earlier this year, and U.S. District Court Judge Edward Davila announced the sentence on Friday after a four-hour hearing. Following Holmes' time in jail, she will face three years of supervised release.

Holmes' story hit television screens this year in the Hulu limited series The Dropout. Starring Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews, the show recounted the story of the Stanford University dropout who became the face of fraud in Silicon Valley. The series was highly acclaimed, and Seyfried won an Emmy in September for her portrayal of Holmes. Now, Seyfried's real life subject is going behind bars.

Back in the mid-2010s, Holmes was heavily promoted as a visionary entrepreneur. She was touted as the first self-made female tech billionare, and she promised that Theranos was developing a revolutionary technology that would make blood testing cheaper, easier and less painful. The company raised nearly $1 billion in private investment despite never proving that the technology worked.

In late 2015, Holmes' empire started to crumble, with investigative reporting from The Wall Street Journal casting doubt on the company's claims. Eventually, the Securities and Exchange Commission got involved and federal fraud charges were levied.

Holmes' story has been followed on many other forms of media aside from The Dropout. Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, a book by the reporter who broke the original story, was transformed into a podcast, and a documentary for HBO titled Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley was released in 2019.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

Update 11/18 3:45 pm PT: A half hour after the outage, Steam appears to be back online. Happy gaming!

Original Story: Steam appears to be down as users are reporting a sudden outage at the world’s largest PC games launcher and store.

According to IGN’s sister site DownDetector, users are reporting a sudden outage on Steam. Our own attempts to log into Steam have been unsuccessful. It’s unclear what caused the sudden outage.

There’s been no official word from Valve on what caused the outage and when services might resume.

Steam is getting ready to launch its next big sale, the Steam Autumn Sale which will begin on November 22 and last through November 29.

IGN will update this story when Steam services resume, but until then you can keep checking IGN for regular updates.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Update 11/18 3:45 pm PT: A half hour after the outage, Steam appears to be back online. Happy gaming!

Original Story: Steam appears to be down as users are reporting a sudden outage at the world’s largest PC games launcher and store.

According to IGN’s sister site DownDetector, users are reporting a sudden outage on Steam. Our own attempts to log into Steam have been unsuccessful. It’s unclear what caused the sudden outage.

There’s been no official word from Valve on what caused the outage and when services might resume.

Steam is getting ready to launch its next big sale, the Steam Autumn Sale which will begin on November 22 and last through November 29.

IGN will update this story when Steam services resume, but until then you can keep checking IGN for regular updates.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Millie Gibson is Doctor Who's newest companion. Gibson will play Ruby Sunday, joining Ncuti Gatwa in the fifteenth generation of Doctor Who. The announcement was made live on BBC Children in Need on Friday.

Gibson, who is currently 18-years-old, is best known for her role on Coronation Street as Kellie Neelan. She has also appearend in the shows Butterfly and Love, Lies and Records. Now, Gibson will join the Time Lord in the Tardis when the series returns in the end of 2023.

"Whilst still being in total disbelief, I am beyond honoured to be cast as the Doctor’s companion," Gibson told the BBC. "It is a gift of a role, and a dream come true, and I will do everything to try and fill the boots the fellow companions have travelled in before me. And what better way to do that than being by the fabulous Ncuti Gatwa’s side, I just can’t wait to get started."

Gibson is joining a new era of Doctor Who that is striving to break barriers. Gatwa, the 30-year-old Sex Education star, is the first black actor to portray the Doctor as a series lead. He will take over the helm of Time Lord from Jodie Whittaker, the first female protagonist on the show. Throughout her four-year tenure, Mandip Gill played Whittaker's sidekick, Yasmin Khan. Now, Gibson and Gatwa are taking over the reins.

"Millie just is the Companion," Gatwa said. "She is full of talent, strength, she has a cheeky sparkle in her eye and is sharp as a razor. From the moment she walked into the room she captured all of our attention with her effervescence and then solidified that attention with the sheer torque of her talent. This adventure is going to be so wild and so fun, I cannot WAIT to sail the universe with Millie!"

Doctor Who is expected to return next year with Russell T Davies at the helm. Before Gatwa's debut is aired, David Tennant will return as the Doctor in three episodes for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.

Millie Gibson is Doctor Who's newest companion. Gibson will play Ruby Sunday, joining Ncuti Gatwa in the fifteenth generation of Doctor Who. The announcement was made live on BBC Children in Need on Friday.

Gibson, who is currently 18-years-old, is best known for her role on Coronation Street as Kellie Neelan. She has also appearend in the shows Butterfly and Love, Lies and Records. Now, Gibson will join the Time Lord in the Tardis when the series returns in the end of 2023.

"Whilst still being in total disbelief, I am beyond honoured to be cast as the Doctor’s companion," Gibson told the BBC. "It is a gift of a role, and a dream come true, and I will do everything to try and fill the boots the fellow companions have travelled in before me. And what better way to do that than being by the fabulous Ncuti Gatwa’s side, I just can’t wait to get started."

Gibson is joining a new era of Doctor Who that is striving to break barriers. Gatwa, the 30-year-old Sex Education star, is the first black actor to portray the Doctor as a series lead. He will take over the helm of Time Lord from Jodie Whittaker, the first female protagonist on the show. Throughout her four-year tenure, Mandip Gill played Whittaker's sidekick, Yasmin Khan. Now, Gibson and Gatwa are taking over the reins.

"Millie just is the Companion," Gatwa said. "She is full of talent, strength, she has a cheeky sparkle in her eye and is sharp as a razor. From the moment she walked into the room she captured all of our attention with her effervescence and then solidified that attention with the sheer torque of her talent. This adventure is going to be so wild and so fun, I cannot WAIT to sail the universe with Millie!"

Doctor Who is expected to return next year with Russell T Davies at the helm. Before Gatwa's debut is aired, David Tennant will return as the Doctor in three episodes for Doctor Who's 60th anniversary.

Carson Burton is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter at @carsonsburton.