Mike Morhaime was quite enjoying not having a job, for a while. Almost three decades after co-founding the company that would become Blizzard Entertainment – steering it through multi-billion dollar acquisitions, and releasing some of the best-loved games of all time – he finally had time to focus on other things for a while. After he and his wife Amy (who was vice president of Blizzard eSports) left the company, they’ve been able to travel, to relax, to consider projects they simply didn’t have time to complete before. Morhaime talks at length about how much he’s been enjoying playing Marvel’s Avengers with his five year-old daughter, watching her get the same excitement out of meeting her heroes as Kamala Khan does onscreen. Perhaps more than anything else, disconnecting was what he felt he needed: “In the 28 years at Blizzard, I mean, it was just heads-down, focusing on what Blizzard was doing. And so people would always reach out and want to chat about this or that. But unless it was related to what we were doing, I rarely had time to do that. [...] At first we tried just to not make any decisions, not decide what we wanted to do. We actually didn't know if we wanted to go back into gaming.” What finally changed his mind was hearing that some of his old colleagues, Jason Chayes and Dustin Browder, had also left Blizzard after the collapse of a project, and were looking to start a studio of their own. The idea of a Blizzard executive producer and the game director of StarCraft 2 working on something new of their own excited him – but Morhaime’s interest wasn’t so much an impetus to get involved in making it with them, as to remove some of the burden he knew they’d run into in the early days of starting a new company. [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=We%20actually%20didn't%20know%20if%20we%20wanted%20to%20go%20back%20into%20gaming."]“You have these really awesome game developers and they go off and they start up a new company. What's the first thing they have to do? They have to think about incorporation and trademarks and all this stuff that's not actually making games. And then you have a whole funding question, which is a huge distraction and source of anxiety. So we felt like we were in a position – maybe we could remove a lot of these barriers. [Amy and I] have a lot of experience on the operational and organizational and go-to-market side of gaming that maybe we could try to structure what we think is the ideal gaming corporate environment to house a small number of wholly-owned, but independent feeling studios.” “We knew others that were going to go off and do this, people that we have a ton of respect for and a ton of talent. We could either wait and watch these guys do it in little pods and scatter in the wind, or we could try to create a home for some of that and actually be ready in the future when opportunity presents itself.” Dreamhaven was born out of that line of thought – Morhaime’s new company is less a developer itself than a support network for new studios. It feels closer to something like old-fashioned patronage than a traditional developer/publisher deal (not least because everyone who becomes a part of Dreamhaven gets equity in the company). It feels very new amid an industry that so often reverts to decades-old business structures to get by. After a dinner where Morhaime laid out his vision, Chayes and Browder came aboard and formed Moonshot, Dreamhaven’s first internal studio. The second wasn’t far behind. “We were slightly later to the party”, explains Chris Sigaty, newly minted studio head for Secret Door, Dreamhaven’s second internal developer. Sigaty was drawn in not just by the stability Dreamhaven could offer a brand new venture, but by the very fact that the likes of Morhaime and Chayes were involved – people he already knew shared his ideals for development, and had guided him through his career, which, over 23 years at Blizzard, included producing Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, and the original Warcraft 3. “It was very exciting to think about the idea of forming something specifically to make a game with our own studio, with our own sort of vision for that studio; but knowing it's built on these core shared values that we'd built up over many, many years working together. [There was] already excitement before we even knew the name of the studio or what sorts of games we might do, just the idea of getting together to work with this stellar group of people.” [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=dreamhavens-key-developers-and-what-theyve-worked-on-before&captions=true"] That group of people comes with some incredible pedigree. Apart from Chayes, Browder, and Sigaty, Moonshot and Secret Door have attracted the likes of Eric Dodds (director of Hearthstone, game designer on World of WarCraft and StarCraft), Alan Dabiri (game director on Heroes of the Storm), Ben Thompson (creative director of Hearthstone), and many others who have worked on Blizzard titles and beyond. Dreamhaven aims to take full advantage of the experience it has behind its doors from day one. The idea is to offer not just a stable place to work for new studios, but an enriching one, and that’s key to how Morhaime thinks about Dreamhaven, even in its earliest days. Both Moonshot and Secret Door will have autonomy over the games they create, and will work without any team overlap, but will be encouraged to swap feedback between themselves. Morhaime, and Dreamhaven as a whole, will advise where necessary, but the CEO is prizing agency above almost everything else – he wants his new studios to feel as creative as possible, not to mention responsible for fixing problems they might come across along the way. With that idea of quality and responsibility in mind, I ask Morhaime if he wants Dreamhaven to apply the same stringent, some might say brutal, standards he oversaw at Blizzard. Famously, Morhaime once explained that Blizzard canceled almost half of the game projects it began while he was at the company because of its commitment to releasing a high-quality product. Is Dreamhaven going to be as forceful with its smaller teams? “I don't think anybody aspires to a 50% ship rate,” laughs Morhaime. “I think the more impressive number is that a hundred percent of those that actually were released were great. That's what we aspire to and hopefully, we can do better. It's hard to hope that we'll do better than what Blizzard was able to do, but we're going to try, and I think you always set out to try. You try to make the choices every step of the way, trying to increase your odds of having what you're working on be the thing that ends up achieving greatness. It's certainly a lot more fun if it's a hundred percent along the way.” [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=%E2%80%9CI%20don't%20think%20anybody%20aspires%20to%20a%2050%25%20ship%20rate.%20I%20think%20the%20more%20impressive%20number%20is%20that%20a%20hundred%20percent%20of%20those%20that%20actually%20were%20released%20were%20great."]There are other areas where Dreamhaven aspires to work differently to Blizzard, too. Fairly obviously, Morhaime points to the fact that, when he co-founded the company that would become Blizzard, the team was forced to work out its own way forward, writing its own tools and creating its own place in the gaming market – which naturally limited what they could make in the beginning. With the benefit of decades of experience, and a far more welcoming development landscape, Dreamhaven’s studios can “hit the ground being a bit more ambitious”. Morhaime also makes clear that he wants Dreamhaven to feel like a very different kind of developer to the early Blizzard, simply by dint of those working there: “We are paying a lot more attention to the makeup of our studio in terms of diversity, which is not something that we really spent much time thinking about or talking about back in the early days. But I think we've all come to believe that we want to build a place that is inclusive and welcoming to people of all backgrounds and we want to make our games for the world. We think we can be stronger if we have a lot of diverse voices at the company.” That commitment to doing things differently should only strengthen over time. While Moonshot and Secret Door are all the studios Dreamhaven wants right now, Morhaime envisages it growing to accommodate more: “We're not actively searching and frankly, I think we have bitten off a lot right now, so we need to be able to start digesting what we've bitten off and start building our central services to be able to scale up to accommodate these two studios. But eventually, we do anticipate growing beyond the two studios. We just don't really have a time frame or target for when that might happen.” So what of those existing studios – what are Moonshot and Secret Door actually making? Morhaime makes clear that every part of Dreamhaven is “very early”, and neither he nor his studio heads will be drawn on specifics about their games right now. That’s as much down to the creative philosophy of the company as it is the free-form ideas themselves – while both studios are now actively working on a game idea each, they’re thinking without platforms in mind right now, trying to come up with game ideas that work for them, rather than ones that work for specific hardware. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=dreamhaven-moonshot-and-secret-door-logos&captions=true"] What we can draw on, however, is the philosophy – or maybe personality – of Moonshot and Secret Door themselves. “I think if you go and look at their pages on the website, you'll see a pretty different feel between the two”, explains Morhaime. “They already do have a different personality and the types of games that they've chosen to focus on for their first game is also quite different and complementary.” For Sigaty and Secret Door, that philosophy revolves as much around board gaming as it does video gaming. “The individuals I'm working with, there's a number of seasoned veterans within the studio itself, and we really came together around this idea of ‘social’, and bringing people together in positive ways and really exploring that space. [...] We are consummate board gamers, Dungeons & Dragons players, video game players, of course, as well. And we get great joy about getting together with our friends and playing. What could that mean for a game that we create? So we spent a lot of time in the early days discussing what each of us were passionate about in that space, and eventually aligned around a singular idea pretty recently at this point and are in the beginning points of exploring this specific idea that we're very excited about.” For Chayes and Moonshot, he too is thinking in terms of the ways players come together, but with a different end goal in mind. “This idea of ‘wonder’, enthuses Chayes. “We remember times back when we were kids growing up, and you see things for the first time and really have this feeling when you see it for the first time of, ‘Wow, I didn't imagine that kind of a thing was possible in the world.’ The very first time you ever saw an elephant, it's this sense of how incredible this thing, this creature is. And as you get older, you kind of lose that connection to seeing things with fresh eyes for the very first time. So one of our major goals at Moonshot is to try and evoke this sense of wonder, which can be wonder for beautiful and incredible things, or wonder for sometimes things that can be quite scary, and finding ways to kind of create that emotional resonance with the games we're pursuing.” While both studios are aiming to make different kinds of games, their scope should be relatively similar. Secret Door is currently made up of 7 developers, with Moonshot boasting 10 – both are hiring, but both studio heads are keen not to expand too soon. “We're somewhat designing the size of the studio based around our ambitions and what the game requires,” explains Chayes. “What I can say certainly is we're not shooting for hundreds of people for our game. And at the same time, I think that there is a point where it's difficult to hit the sense of wonder and the sense of big feel to the titles we're thinking about with the team that's a little too small.” [poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=We're%20somewhat%20designing%20the%20size%20of%20the%20studio%20based%20around%20our%20ambitions%20and%20what%20the%20game%20requires."] Sigaty and Chayes both avoid terms like ‘AAA’ or ‘indie’ to describe what they’re doing, with Sigaty preferring different qualifiers: “Quality is going to be something that comes out of our backgrounds, I think, and the games that we've worked on in the past. I think it's somewhat subjective on what thing you call ‘indie’ or not, but we definitely want [the game] to have high fidelity and be super high-quality.” As for when we’ll get more concrete details, that remains up in the air, with Morhaime cautioning that, “I think that they're actually able to create things that they can interact with much quicker than they were able to do that in the old days, but it's going to be quite a while before we're ready to start talking about what we're doing.” But even at such an early stage, Morhaime’s confident about what his new studios can create, and what Dreamhaven – this experiment in making games differently – could mean as a result. “We want to make a positive impact on the industry. We also want to do things that make the world a better place. [...] We talk about trying to have this independent studio model where you have these studios that feel like they're in control of their destiny, that they're making decisions for themselves about their work environment and their games. And then they can pivot when those things aren't working with access to central support, central services and enough resources to enable them to do what they want. I think that if we're going to have a positive impact on the industry, it's through showing that this can be a successful model and giving encouragement and inspiration to others that share our values and beliefs so that maybe we can help turn the tide in the industry and show that there's a better way of approaching game making and business.” He sounds excited – everyone I speak to at Dreamhaven does – and it occurs to me that this is surely Morhaime’s main motivation. If you can afford not to need a job, what’s going to get you to start a brand new company, amid a pandemic no less? Well, something exciting enough not to feel like much of a job in the first place. I ask Morhaime what excites him about the industry as a whole and he reels off a string of thoughts: VR (specifically the Oculus Quest), Discord, real competition on the PC platform, and a wider interest in smaller gaming companies from the perspective of big business. And then he sums up what that means for Dreamhaven: “I think that we just see opportunity everywhere.” Yes, Mike Morhaime was quite enjoying not having a job, for a while. But then having this one suddenly seemed far more exciting. If the philosophy pays off, with the calibre of developers at its disposal, Dreamhaven feels very much worth being excited by.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that the company will continue considering buying video game companies "where it makes sense." In an interview with CNET about the company's $7.5 billion acquisition of ZeniMax Media and Bethesda, Nadella confirmed that Microsoft would continue looking to expand. Explaining what Microsoft would look for, Nadella said, "We'll always look for places where there is that commonality of purpose, mission and culture. We will always look to grow inorganically where it makes sense." Nadella appears to see buying established companies as a more efficient means of adding to Xbox's line-up than opening new studios (although Microsoft has created 'AAAA' studio The Initiative in recent years): "You can't wake up one day and say, 'Let me build a game studio'. The idea of having content is so we can reach larger communities." Head of Xbox Phil Spencer added, "Content is just the incredible ingredient to our platform that we continue to invest in." [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/22/the-5-biggest-takeaways-from-xboxs-bethesda-acquisition"] Nadella and Spencer didn't offer any indication as to whether other acquisitions were in the works. The surprise purchase of ZeniMax and Bethesda is one of the biggest purchases in game industry history, and we've listed the 5 biggest takeaways from the deal. It's led to speculation as to whether Bethesda games will become Xbox exclusives now, with some at IGN saying they'd be shocked if The Elder Scrolls, Fallout or Doom appeared on PS5 now. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

As part of a consultation on loot boxes, the UK government is looking to hear from "video games players and adults responsible for children and young people who play video games" to figure out if they "may encourage or lead to problem gambling." Surveys can be filled out here and will inform the government's review of the Gambling Act 2005, which could lead to new regulations on loot boxes. The call for evidence will run until the 22 November 2020, and is also seeking consultation from video game businesses, researchers and organizations. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/08/07/nintendo-sony-microsoft-working-on-loot-box-odds-policy"] Back in January 2020, England's top mental health nurse Claire Murdoch released a report calling for a review of microtransactions, noting that loot boxes were "setting kids up for addiction." The UK government then formally announced a call for evidence in June 2020, to "gather evidence and understand the impact of loot boxes." In August 2019 it was announced that Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo were working on new loot box policies that would disclose a range of odds for a player's purchase. The ESRB recently launched a new ratings label that will inform consumers about whether a game includes random items as part of its in-game purchasing system. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Netflix has released a nightmarish new trailer for The Haunting of Bly Manor - the second season of Mike Flanagan's horror anthology series which began with The Haunting of Hill House. The latest trailer plunges the Bly Manor residents into an abyss of sinister secrets and dark tragedies from the centuries of love and loss that possess the haunted building at the centre of the new season, which is scheduled to hit Netflix on October 9, with nine brand new episodes for audiences to unlock. Watch the new trailer for The Haunting of Bly Manor below: [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/09/23/the-haunting-of-bly-manor-official-trailer"] The Haunting of Bly Manor is a loose adaptation of Henry James' 1898 novel The Turn of the Screw, which is said to be "a jumping-off point" for Hill House Season 2's "much scarier" narrative. The new chapter will feature several actors from the first season of Netflix's The Haunting of... anthology series. The returning stars will portray new characters in the upcoming season, which is set in 1980s England. The story will follow the unexplainable events that occur after Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas) hires a young American nanny (Victoria Pedretti) to care for his orphaned niece and nephew (Amelie Bea Smith, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) who reside at Bly Manor with the estate's chef Owen (Rahul Kohli), groundskeeper Jamie (Amelia Eve) and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose (T'Nia Miller). [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-haunting-of-hill-house-season-2-first-look-at-the-haunting-of-bly-manor&captions=true"] Want to know more about Bly Manor? Take a "look beneath the surface" of the show's chilling poster, make a phone call to apply for the "live-in nanny" role at the haunted residence or watch the show's first teaser trailer for some more frightening footage from the new series. Alternatively, if you need to attend to house duties and are short on time, check out our broader round-up of everything we know about Netflix's Hill House Season 2. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Head of Xbox Phil Spencer has confirmed that Bethesda will continue to run semi-independently after the company's acquisition by Microsoft. Speaking to CNET, Spencer made clear that, while Bethesda games will adopt some of Xbox's new practices - including launching into Xbox Game Pass and becoming playable through game streaming - the company will retain some of the autonomy that resulted into some of the biggest games of all time: "It is about the culture of those teams," Spencer explained. "They're not about becoming us." The specifics here aren't clear, but it seems likely that that Microsoft will allow for Bethesda to retain the development culture at its studios, as well as the existing connections between individual studios and the wider Bethesda Softworks organisation. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/will-bethesda-games-be-xbox-exclusives-now"] This tallies with previous comments from Bethesda SVP of global marketing Pete Hines, who said, "We’re still working on the same games we were yesterday, made by the same studios we’ve worked with for years, and those games will be published by us." The implication here may be that, while Bethesda's 8 studios are now owned by Microsoft, they may not become a part of the formal Xbox Game Studios group (the listed publisher for Microsoft's other owned studios). Apart from a difference in development oversight, this could also have some effect on whether Bethesda games become Xbox exclusives - it may be that Bethesda is able to choose to continue releasing games across all platforms. There's much still to learn about Bethesda's status as a Microsoft company after the planned acquisition goes through in the second half of 2021, but here are the 5 biggest takeaways from the move. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Blizzard co-founder and ex-CEO Mike Morhaime has announced Dreamhaven, a new games company with two internal development studios, each of which is working on a new game, and is headed by other Blizzard veterans. As reported by GamesBeat and The Washington Post, Dreamhaven is designed as an overarching company - offering guidance and funding - within which development studios can open. Its first two internal studios are Moonshot and Secret Door. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/30/blizzard-veterans-reflect-on-starcrafts-past-and-future"] Moonshot’s studio head is Jason Chayes (executive producer on Hearthstone and lead producer on StarCraft 2). He’s joined by Dustin Browder (game director on StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, and Command and Conquer), and Ben Thompson (creative director on Hearthstone), as well as a group of other seasoned developers. Secret Door’s studio head is Chris Sigaty (executive producer on Hearthstone, StarCraft 2, and Heroes of the Storm, and lead producer on the original Warcraft 3). He’s joined by Eric Dodds (first game director on Hearthstone) and Alan Dabiri (game director on Heroes of the Storm) and a team of other veteran developers. Both team's games are currently unknown, and the entire company is in its early stages, meaning we shouldn't expect announcements anytime soon. Morhaime will act as CEO of Dreamhaven as a whole, which will be based in Irvine, California. It marks his first major move in the games industry since stepping down as Blizzard president in 2018 and leaving the company he helped create in 2019. Stay tuned to IGN for more – we have an interview with Morhaime, Chayes, and Sigaty coming later today. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance and Konami Collector's Series: Castlevania and Contra have been rated for PC in Taiwan. Gematsu spotted the ratings on the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee website, suggesting that PC ports for some of Konami's most famous titles may be on their way to PC. This would mark the first port of Metal Gear Solid to PC since its initial CD-ROM launch in the year 2000. The disc-based PC version of the critically acclaimed Kojima game is not playable on modern systems, so this port would help a new generation get their hands on it. The same can be said for Metal Gear Solid 2, which hit PC as part of the Substance release in March of 2003. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2002/12/16/metal-gear-solid-2-substance-commercials"] The 'Substance' version of Metal Gear Solid 2 includes a number of new features including extra VR missions and supplemental game modes, such as the 'Snake Tales' missions and the Casting Theater mode, which let players modify character models in cutscenes. It's not clear just what features will arrive in this updated PC port, but given that the rating is tagged with Substance, it's to be expected that it may resemble this edition of the game. This potential string of ports would also bring the original 2D Metal Gear to PC for the first time since its initial launch on the MSX 2 in 1987. In other Metal Gear Solid news, check out this interview with voice actor David Hayter as he reflects on the legacy of Solid Snake. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN hoping that Silent Hill is next. Follow him on Twitter.

Microsoft has revealed that more Xbox Series X and S units will be available when the console launches on November 10, following "record-breaking demand" for pre-orders. The official Xbox Twitter account thanked fans for the excitement on September 22 as pre-orders went live around the world. The tweet notes that those who didn't manage to secure a successful preorder should "sign up with retailers for updates" as more units will be made available upon launch day, November 10.

We are humbled by the record-breaking demand for Xbox Series X and S. Huge thanks to everyone for the excitement.

If you weren't successful today be sure to sign up with retailers for updates, and expect more consoles to be available on November 10. — Xbox (@Xbox) September 22, 2020

Demand was through the roof when preorders launched, causing havoc at a number of major online US retailers including Best Buy and Amazon, with most retailers now reporting the consoles as sold out. The sales ranking for the Xbox One X also suffered a significant spike on Amazon, suggesting that many users may have mistakenly purchased the current-gen console instead of the next-gen Xbox Series X. Xbox Series X retails at $499 USD / £449 / $749 AUD, while Xbox Series S comes in at $299 USD / £249.99 / $499 AUD. Both Xbox Series consoles will be released on November 10. In other Xbox news, Microsoft recently acquired Bethesda in a record-breaking $7.5 billion deal. Check out our video considering whether future Bethesda games like Starfield or The Elder Scrolls VI are going to be Xbox exclusives going forward. [poilib element="poll" parameters="id=bd4cd3f3-bf6d-439b-896d-7745108098b0"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

The Xbox Series X and Series S both went up for pre-order on Tuesday morning. And while Series X and S preorders went quickly, there was also a jump in Xbox One X sales, Microsoft’s soon-to-be last-gen console. According to Amazon’s sales rank and to our own IGN Deals data, there was a notable bump in Xbox One X purchases on the day Xbox Series X, and S, went up for preorder. Amazon says there was a 747% jump, while our data shows there were twice as many Xbox One sold on Tuesday than in the past 60 days.

Xbox One X sales rank is up 747% on Amazon lol...

Wonder how many people bought an Xbox One X instead of an Xbox Series X https://t.co/atj4thPwqD pic.twitter.com/CUzRkib3Sr — Andrew Alerts (@AndrewAlerts) September 22, 2020

For additional IGN Deals data, it should be noted that there were zero PS4 sales on the days the PS5 preorders went live. There are plenty of reasons why the Xbox One X saw a spike in sales beyond just human error — though there was plenty of that to go around also. One Twitter user announced they ordered an Xbox One X by mistake, while another social media user shared how they had to check multiple times to make sure they were ordering the correct Xbox “X” system. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=confirmed-xbox-series-x-games&captions=true"] Others theorized that some auto-purchasing bots were poorly optimized and ended up purchasing Xbox One X systems instead of the Xbox Series X. Either way, any of you who successfully pre-ordered an Xbox Series X should double-check that order, just in case. And for anyone else still looking to preorder the Xbox Series X or S, check out IGN’s Xbox Series X preorder guide for all the latest updates and retail links as they go live. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt T.M. Kim is a reporter for IGN.

Naughty Dog has celebrated its Last of Us fan community via Outbreak Day in the real world, tying it to a major event in The Last of Us' lore. But given the COVID-19 pandemic this year, the Uncharted developer has decided to change the name for 2020 and beyond. Announced via Twitter, Naughty Dog confirmed that its usual September 26 celebration of The Last of Us and its fandom will now be known as The Last of Us Day. The studio does have plans for this first rebranded celebration of the series, so stay tuned this weekend for more. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/06/12/the-last-of-us-part-2-review"] Previously, the developers used the term "Outbreak Day" as a reference to the in-fiction day when the Cordyceps virus reached mass infection. Naughty Dog explained that, in thinking about "the events of the last year and the challenges we all continue to face with COVID-19," it didn't make sense to keep using the same naming convention, especially for a day meant to show "our appreciation for our fans." Naughty Dog's full statement reads:

"For the last 7 years, September 26 has been our opportunity to recognize and celebrate the increasing passion of The Last of Us community. However, as we thought about the events of the last year and the challenges we all continue to face with COVID-19, we didn't feel right continuing on under the 'Outbreak Day' banner. While the name and date are rotted in the fiction of the game, September 26 means so much more than lore. It's about showing our appreciation for our fans. "That's why, this Saturday and moving forward, September 26 will be known as The Last of Us Day - a name that not only acknowledges the world around us, but also reflects the growth of the community as we welcome millions of new players with the release of The last of Us Part II. We have a lot of exciting things planned and we can't wait to share them with you in just a few days!"

[widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=the-best-ps4-games-summer-2020-update&captions=true"] Past celebrations have included last year's The Last of Us Part 2 line of merch and early The Last of Us Part 2 posters and t-shirts in 2017 following its 2016 reveal. This will be the first celebration since The Last of Us Part 2 was released on PS4 earlier this year, debuting to huge sales success in its launch month. For more on the sequel, be sure to check out our The Last of Us Part 2 review, and our interview with Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross of Naughty Dog about the making of the sequel. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/the-last-of-us-part-2-neil-druckmann-halley-gross-interview-a-podcast-beyond-special-episode"] [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jonathon Dornbush is IGN's Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.