Former EA CEO John Riccitello has spoken up about microtransactions in video games, saying what while those who avoid implementing monitization early on in the creative process are some of the "most beautiful and pure, brilliant people," they are also "some of the biggest f****** idiots."

Riccitello is now the CEO of Unity Technologies and he spoke to PocketGamer.Biz about this topic following the announcement of Unity and ironSource's upcoming merger. When asked about the pushback that some developers have given regarding implementing monetization early on in developing a game, Riccitello did not hold back.

"Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives," Riccitello said. "It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest f****** idiots.

"I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.

"But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product. And I don’t know a successful artist anywhere that doesn’t care about what their player thinks. This is where this cycle of feedback comes back, and they can choose to ignore it. But to choose to not know it at all is not a great call.

"I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even notice the product difference between a massive success and tremendous fail, but for this tuning and what it does to the attrition rate. There isn’t a developer on the planet that wouldn’t want that knowledge."

Monetization indicators being a focus early on is very important to Unity as it has worked to say it has "democratized creation." This mission is part of the reason why Unity believes there is a "beauty in tools that let people find out that this is how they want to make their livelihood."

"Looking at ironSource, they came with the same ideas," Unity Create senior vice president and general manager Marc Whitten said. "Making feedback and publishing more transparent, as opposed to locked in a black box of marketing people. Now creators can look at minute information about monetisation and feedback in the same way they would look at load times or where they need to optimise their C# code."

Microtransactions have been and will continue to be a hot topic for the games industry, and there has been a constant battle between developers/publishers and customers as to what the right way to go about it is. EA, in particular, has been in the microtransaction hot seat in the past, and one of the most notable incidents was related to Star Wars: Battlefront 2.

For more, check out our look at how loot box and microtransactions addiction destroys lives and Valve's thoughts on microtransactions and their place in the industry.

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.

Stray is already promising plenty of feline hijinks and cuteness when it launches next week, but Travel Cat is ensuring that your own cat can get in on the fun with some real-life branded cat travel items – a Stray-themed backpack and a harness modeled after the one worn by the game's four-legged protagonist.

The bubble backpack, which can hold up to a 25lb cat, sports a colorful design and a Stray patch on one side. The bubble in the center allows your fluffy pal to get a good look at their surroundings while you're doing all the walking and they're doing what they do best – being lazy.

Meanwhile, the harness is a direct replica of the black and white one worn by the cat in Stray, though the listing states that it doesn't come with the game's robot companion B-12. Bummer. Even so, it also includes a 6ft nylon leash so that you can let your cat go sit in someone else's lap.

Both items are available for pre-order on the official Travel Cat website, and the first wave of shipments is estimated to go out by August 31, with a second wave expected on September 21.

Stray is shaping up to be quite a mysterious and engaging catventure through a cyberpunk world. In our hands-off preview, we feel "confident in the love and care the developers have for cats, and for translating that into a journey worthy of them."

Stray pounces onto PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC on July 19. It will be included at no extra charge for PlayStation Plus Extra and PlayStation Plus Premium members.

Billy Givens is a freelancer at IGN with over a decade of experience writing gaming, film, and tech content. His work can also be found on GameSpot, USA Today, Digital Trends, Tom's Guide, and more. You'll find him blabbering on about video games and more on Twitter at @mektige.

The Kenaissance is upon us. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight promoting his new film The Gray Man, Ryan Gosling spent some time dropping teasers for his role as Ken in the upcoming Barbie film.

Citing Gosling’s six pack abs in Barbie, ET's Lauren Zima asked which role he was more buff for. Gosling mused, “That Ken life is even harder than The Gray Man life, I think. He’s got no money, no job, no car, he’s got no house. He’s going through some stuff.”

In The Gray Man, Gosling is called a “Ken doll” by Chris Evans’ character as an insult but Gosling says that “is not an insult at all! I’m proud of that."

Major plot details have yet to be revealed about the film, but numerous set photos have leaked showcasing Gosling and Margot Robbie as Barbie in retro, throwback outfits inspired by Barbies from years past.

When asked about the set photos, Gosling said, “That’s nothing. I can’t wait for people to see the film. That's all I can say, otherwise Mattel will come in and box me up."

The film found its director in Lady Bird’s Greta Gerwig last summer. Earlier this year, Will Ferrell joined the film and will reportedly play the CEO of a toy company.

Since the film’s announcement, we’ve gotten one official look as Robbie as Barbie who took the role after Amy Schumer dropped out. Fans of Barbie might be disappointed to know that the iconic ‘Barbie Girl’ song by Danish pop group Aqua won’t be in the film. Despite that, if the official photos of Robbie as Barbie and Gosling as Ken are any indicator, the film is definitely embracing the campier side of things.

Casey is a freelance writer for IGN. You can usually find him talking about JRPGs on Twitter at @caseydavidmt.

Sony has clarified that its new PlayStation Stars loyalty programme will not reward members with NFTs. Speaking to The Washington Post, vice president of network advertising, loyalty, and licensed merchandise Grace Chen made clear that the "digital collectibles" on offer were absolutely not related to the controversial non-fungible tokens.

"It's definitely not NFTs. Definitely not," Chen said. "You can't trade them or sell them. It is not leveraging any blockchain technologies and definitely not NFTs."

Sony announced PlayStation Stars earlier today as a reward points programme that will allow players to earn points with real cash value.

For completing campaigns like playing a PlayStation game, winning tournaments, or being the first person to unlock a Platinum Trophy, players will earn points they can spend in a rewards catalogue. This will include PSN wallet funds and other PlayStation Store products, but also these new digital collectibles.

The description Sony offered did make them sound a little like NFTs, as it called them "digital representations of things PlayStation fans enjoy, including figurines of beloved and iconic characters from games and other forms of entertainment, as well as cherished devices that tap into Sony’s history of innovation."

Given Chen's response to the idea, however, this is seemingly far from the truth. New collectibles will be added regularly, and Sony said that some will be particularly rare and something for players to continuously work towards.

NFTs, on the other hand, aim to allow for ownership of digital items and some developers and publishers have already explored letting gamers own certain unlocks, such as Ghost Recon Breakpoint's limited edition Quartz gear.

The exploration of NFTs in games has been a widely controversial topic in the gaming sphere so far, however, though interest appears to have quietened down a little in the last few months. Companies such as GSC Game World and Team17 went all in on them before quickly cancelling those plans, while others such as PlatinumGames and Steam taking a stance against NFT implementation in games.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

MultiVersus, Warner Bros. Games and Player First Games' free-to-play crossover platform fighter featuring such characters as Batman, Superman, Bugs Bunny, Arya Stark, and Iron Giant, will begin its Open Beta on July 26, 2022.

The Open Beta will be available on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC with "full cross-play support and dedicated server-based rollback netcode for robust online competition."

MultiVersus will also have an Early Access period that will start on July 19 and will be accessible by those who participated in the MultiVersus Closed Alpha. If you were not part of the alpha, you can earn a code via Twitch Drops. You can learn more about the Open Beta and Early Access by visiting MultiVersus' FAQ.

Iron Giant was featured in Multiverse's Open Beta gameplay trailer and is part of a roster that includes Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, Shaggy, Velma, Bugs Bunny, Tasmanian Devil, Arya Stark, Tom & Jerry, Jake the Dog, Finn the Human, Steven Universe, Garnet, and the original character Reindog.

Multiversus' Open Beta and Early Access will have eight maps, including The Batcave, Adventure Time's Tree Fort, and Scooby's Haunted Mansion. There will also be a variety of game modes available like the 2 vs. 2 team-based cooperative mode, 1 vs. 1 matches, 4-player free-for-all, co-op vs. A.I. matches, custom online lobbies, The Lab (practice mode), tutorials, and local play for up to four players.

In our MultiVersus preview, we said that we came away from our time with the alpha "extraordinarily impressed."

"Gameplay-wise, it’s not as tight as any of the Smash Brothers games, but to be fair, it’s also aiming to provide a type of experience that’s very different from Smash Brothers, or any other platform fighter for that matter," IGN's Mitchell Saltzman said. "Its 2v2 mechanics are well designed and add new wrinkles to a familiar formula, its roster of characters is a wonderful mix of the new and the nostalgic, and its gameplay is immediately pick up and play friendly while still having plenty of tech for the more hardcore to dig into."

For more, check out 13 cool little details we discovered in the closed alpha.

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.

Alongside Full Circle revealing that Skate 4 is officially called skate, the studio confirmed that it will be free-to-play on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. Furthermore, it will also have cross-play and cross-progression support.

The news was shared via Full Circle's The Board Room update, and the team confirmed that skate. will take place in San Vansterdam, which is a sister city of sorts to Skate and Skate 2's San Vanelona.

It also explained why it chose to go with the name "skate." as opposed to Skate 4, saying this is not a sequel, reboot, or remake but a new platform that will be built upon for years to come. This means fans shouldn't expect a Skate 5 or 10, but should instead look forward to a skateboarding game that will continue to evolve for a very long time. As they put it, it is "skate, period."

Full Circle explained a bit more about the free-to-play model skate. will implement, saying the team laid down hard ground rules when designing how it will look in regards to microtransactions. The four rules they shared are as follows;

• No Pay to Win
• No Map Areas Locked Behind Paywall
• No Paid Loot Boxes
• No Paid Gameplay Advantages

EA began recruiting playtesters for Skate in June and the team talked about how it was a tough decision to allow players to see the game in a "pre-pre-pre-alpha" state. In the end, however, they want to build this game with the fans and get feedback as early and as often as possible.

While Full Circle won't be able to get "everyone in this summer," it plans on letting in a lot more players in to the skate. playtests in the "coming months."

Skate was first announced by Cuz Perry and Deran Chung in 2020's EA Play and gave Skate fans who have been waiting since 2010's Skate 3 for a new entry in the franchise some great news.

skate. currently has no release date, but the team promises it will become available as soon as it's ready.

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.

One element of World of Warcraft that has frequently garnered criticism from its community is the growing number of discarded features that have piled up over the years: introduced for an expansion or two, and then forgotten when some new fancy thing replaces it. Looking at you, artifact weapons.

But with Dragonflight, production director Patrick Dawson says the team wants to focus more on improving existing features for the long haul rather than implementing a bunch of new stuff it will throw away later.

“That’s one of the things we really wanted to engage with, with Dragonflight, is to try and make as much of it for evergreen World of Warcraft as possible,” he says. “That’s why you see things like the HUD updates, the talent updates, and the crafting system, those are all fundamental, core things about World of Warcraft that will continue outside of Dragon Isles and beyond Dragon Isles.”

Dawson is referring to several of the key announced features of Dragonflight. It’s implementing a much more customizable HUD with an even sleeker default design that’s intended to reduce the need for addons for casual play, and a major overhaul to professions that will touch all eras of crafting, not just Dragonflight’s added recipes. It’s also bringing back talent trees, albeit much more modernized and easy to reconfigure with new features like loadouts and default talent sets for those who don’t want to look up theorycrafted guides every patch. Dawson reassures that Blizzard intends to keep the trees around for multiple expansions as opposed to its criticized tactic of adding a new power MacGuffin with its own abilities each time around.

That philosophy doesn’t just apply to explicit features either, Dawson says. We also discussed the new elements that the hero class, the Dracthyr, are bringing to the game. For instance, Dracthyr Evokers can use “empower” spells – basically spells that have different effects depending on how long they’re charged up. For now, they’re limited to just the Dracthyr, but Dawson says Blizzard is open to looking at how they might work with other classes later on once they have a better idea of how Dracthyr play in raids, PvP, and high-level dungeons.

And then there are the Dracthyr customization options, which are far more robust than any other playable race to date.

“We definitely spent a lot of effort in making sure we could customize the heck out of them,” he says. “I think we have the ability for every single player on the planet to make their own, unique Dracthyr customization so we don’t have any duplicates. That’s how many we have. By orders of magnitude too, it’s not just a small amount.”

While it’s true that Blizzard has worked to add more options to some of its older playable races over the years as well, Dawson differentiates that from what the team has done with the Dracthyr. Updates to older characters are, he says, more in the interest of representation and allowing players to see themselves in their characters rather than gunning for sheer robustness. But Blizzard is always looking to do more. So while Dawson doesn’t think we’ll see many updates to other races for Dragonflight’s release, there may be future opportunities for updates down the line – perhaps for customizable diverse body types, a feature that the Dracthyr are pioneering currently in the alpha.

There is, however, one element that Dawson says is sticking with Dragonflight only: the new dragon riding feature.

“I think dragon riding is the one thing that felt thematically tied to the area that you’re going to, so that one is kept a little more with the theme of the Dragon Isles,” he says. “But other than that we’ve been trying to expand into more evergreen things.”

We also spoke to Dawson about how Dragonflight’s Dragon Isles are the largest expansion continent Blizzard has made yet, as well as why the studio is making big changes to how it tests new content. Blizzard is on the cusp of opening up its Dragonflight alpha to the first wave of players, so we’re sure to hear more about Dragonflight in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our full preview of what we’ve seen so far.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

Hellboy and Abe Sapien are far from the weirdest characters created by Mike Mignola. That honor may rest with a Civil War-era hero named The Amazing Screw-On Head. And with that comic being reprinted in a new 20th anniversary collection, fans are being treated to a lost story from Mignola's archives.

IGN can exclusively reveal a preview of that story, dubbed "Axxor, Slayer of Demons." Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:

For those unfamiliar, The Amazing Screw-On Head was a one-shot comic released through Dark Horse in 2002. The story revolves around a sentient robot who works as a secret agent for the Lincoln Administration. Inspired by classic action figure lines of the '80s and '90s, The Amazing Screw-On Head can attach his head to different bodies, each with powerful abilities of its own.

While the original comic remains, to date, the only to feature the character, it was later adapted as an animated pilot episode in 2006, written and executive produced by Hannibal's Bryan Fuller.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the comic, Dark Horse is releasing a new hardcover collection called The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects. That book will include roughly 40 pages of new material, including the Axxor story. The book will be released in comic shops on July 20 and bookstores on July 26.

Dark Horse is also marking this anniversary with a new Amazing Screw-On Head fine art print. Featuring a new image from Mignola and colorist Dave Stewart, this print is being sold exclusively through Dark Horse Direct.

The print measures 18" x 24" and is priced at $49.99. It's limited to 300 units worldwide. You can preorder an Amazing Screw-On Head print now.

Both of these releases are being timed to the upcoming first public screening of the documentary film Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters. The premiere event is being held at Los Angeles' Million Dollar Theatre on Saturday, August 13. Tickets are available for purchase now.

That documentary will offer Mignola fans another glimpse of a lost project, as it turns out Mignola worked on a Thor animated series based on traditional Norse mythology.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

With World of Warcraft preparing to roll out its Dragonflight alpha this week, one notable concern is that, if Dragonflight is indeed intended to drop this year, this will be the shortest alpha/beta cycle World of Warcraft has had in recent memory. But Blizzard says this is due to a change in how it’s doing testing, and not a cause for concern.

Speaking to IGN ahead of the alpha release, production director Patrick Dawson reassures that Dragonflight will have plenty of time to cook. For one, he says, it’s been in development since before Shadowlands shipped, and the team has had about as much time working on it as they have any other expansion.

But to answer the question of the late alpha, Dawson admits that while it’s coming at an “awkward” time compared to past alphas, it’s just because Blizzard is shifting how it handles public World of Warcraft testing pretty dramatically.

“In prior alphas…we’d have a two, two-and-a-half-month-long process where different things came online in a haphazard and less structured way,” he says. “Maybe you’d get one zone, then have to wait two to three weeks, maybe even longer for the next zone. Systems wouldn’t come on at a consistent rate, that kind of stuff.

“But…one of the models we liked was how we do things like raid testing. What we do is we open up a boss for people to focus on, everybody plays that boss, we get great, focused feedback on that, and then we shut it down and move onto the next boss. Likewise, we looked at our alpha strategy, and we said, ‘How can we get that type of feedback out of an alpha?’ And the answer was, instead of having this long alpha, let’s compress it a bit and focus the feedback on specific things each and every week.”

What this means for Dragonflight, he continues, is that while the upcoming alpha is focused on one zone, the Azure Span, it won’t be available in the alpha for the duration of the test. Once Blizzard gets focused feedback on that specific zone, they’ll shut the Azure Span down, and open up a completely different zone.

But there’s another reason for the new model, aside from just testing efficiency. World of Warcraft is a very heavily community datamined game, between its alphas, beta, and public test realm. But this time, Blizzard wants to keep more secrets back from the public until it’s ready to fully release them.

“Let’s not spoil everything in the alpha,” Dawson says. “Let’s not spoil everything in test. We’ll make sure to test that level of gameplay so that everyone has a quality experience when they play, but there maybe are some things we’re going to hold back a bit to surprise and delight the players.”

We also spoke to Dawson about how Dragonflight’s Dragon Isles are the largest expansion continent Blizzard has made yet, as well as how Dragonflight is building more evergreen updates than expansion-specific. Blizzard is on the cusp of opening up its Dragonflight alpha to the first wave of players, so we’re sure to hear more about Dragonflight in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our full preview of what we’ve seen so far.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.

World of Warcraft’s dragons come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, but historically, its most important and interesting dragons have been, well, really darn big. So it’s unsurprising that their home in WoW’s upcoming Dragonflight expansion, the Dragon Isles, needs space for all of them to hang out.

Which is why, according to production director Patrick Dawson, the Dragon Isles are the biggest continent Blizzard has ever made for an expansion.

“This is the biggest expansion continent we’ve ever done, and that was designed with dragon riding in mind so you can traverse it a little more simply,” Dawson tells IGN. “It’s the land of dragons. They need space.”

When you think of pure geographical size, it’s easy to limit that scope to just horizontal size, but critical to Dragonflight’s alleged enormity is its verticality. The Dragon Isles are built for dragon riding, one of the biggest new features being added this expansion, so there need to be enough heights, valleys, and open spaces for WoW players to rapidly zip, flip, and barrel roll all over the continent.

In fact, the Dragon Isles are so expressly designed around dragon riding that Dawson says Blizzard is unlikely to ever break the feature out of Dragon Isles and take it to other zones, though it’s certainly considering bringing the existing flight feature into the isles at a later point if it makes sense.

For now, Blizzard is focusing on getting the feel of dragon riding just right. In our preview of the pre-alpha, our dragons only knew a couple of flight tricks, but Dawson reassures us that we’ll unlock plenty more flight abilities as the story progresses and won’t always be running out of stamina at the bottom of a hill.

And because the Dragon Isles are so large and flight-focused, he hints that Blizzard may have taken some cues from Mists of Pandaria’s cloud serpent riding and the unique flight side quests and minigames that came with that to give dragon riders more activities to do across the isles.

“I think there’s some stuff we’ll show in the alpha and some stuff maybe we’ll hide and keep back so players can experience it for the first time in release,” he says.

Blizzard is on the cusp of opening up its alpha to the first wave of players, so we’re sure to hear more about Dragonflight in the coming weeks. For now, you can check out our full preview of what we’ve seen so far, and hear more from our interview with Dawson on how Dragonflight is building more evergreen updates than expansion-specific, and why the studio is making big changes to how it tests new content.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.