PUBG: Battlegrounds will move to a free-to-play structure on PC and consoles from January 12, 2022 – bringing it in line with most of the battle royale games that followed it.

Announced at The Game Awards 2021, from January 12, the game will feature two tiers: a free Basic Account that "offers access to most game features", and Battlegrounds Plus which offers more, including a Ranked mode, for a one-time $12.99 fee. Those who have paid for the game previously will automatically be a part of Battlegrounds Plus.

The full list of Battlegrounds Plus benefits are:

• Bonus 1,300 G-COIN
• Survival Masters XP + 100 percent boost
• Career - Medal tab
• Ranked Mode
• Custom Match functionality
• In-Game items, including the Captain’s Camo set, which includes hat, camo mask and camo gloves

Those upgraded to Plus having bought the game before will also receive a Special Commemorative Pack, incuding the Battle-Hardened costume skin set, the Shackle and Shanks Legacy Pan and the Battle-Hardened Legacy nameplate.

In the weeks leading up to the free-to-play switch, developer Krafton is opening a pre-registration website to try the new version of the game, as well as offering other activities that let you earn free in-game items.

PUBG was the first in the wave of wildly successful battle royale games that have dominated the gaming market in recent years. When it came out of early access, we awarded it a 9.5/10 review and it's since gone from strength to strength, spawning a universe that will include a horror game from the creator of Dead Space and a TV show from the producer of Netflix's Castlevania.

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.

Bokeh, the new studio from Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, has revealed its first game, entitled Slitterhead.

Shown off at The Game Awards 2021, we got a look at a truly upsetting trailer that appears to be set in Japan, where various people's heads -- and then their whole bodies -- get real messed up as they transform into loathesome creatures.

You appear to play as someone fighting these skeletal, messed up monsters, though it's hard to tell at this early stage exactly what the plot is beyond "everything is pretty messed up and trying to kill you." Apropos from the creator of Silent Hill.

Toyama set up Bokeh Game Studio after leaving Sony Japan alongside Junya Okura (Gravity Rush) and Kazunobu Sato (The Last Guardian). He went on to announce that the studio's first project would be a horror action-adventure and showed off some suitably grotesque concept art. Toyama will serve as the game's creative director, while Akira Yamaoka will be doing the music.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade is coming to PC, via the Epic Games Store.

The news was confirmed at The Game Awards 2021.

It will arrive on PC on December 16, 2021.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade was revealed earlier this year and arrived on PS5 in June. In May it was confirmed the game would be exclusive to PS5 for at least six months.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.

A group of ex-Bioware devs including former GM Aaryn Flynn have announced Nightingale – a shared world survival crafting game with first-person combat and a fantastical Victorian setting.

Developed by Inflexion Games, published by Improbable, and arriving into PC early access next year, Nightingale has players take on the role of a Realmwalker – a character who's been cut off from their home and needs to use portals to make their way back across a number of dangerous areas.

Each realm promsies to be an open world, asking you to scavenge and craft to survive, and even seeing you build "estates, farms, and communities". The game can be played alone or with friends, and features first-person combat featuring guns, melee weapons, and magic – and Inflexion says they're infinitely replayable.

“From the beginning," wrote Flynn in a press release, "we knew we wanted to build an intricate fantasy setting as rich and full of history and life as anything we’ve worked on in the past. The realms of Nightingale are vast and have many secrets to uncover, and we cannot wait for players to start discovering them.”

The game will open closed betas ahead of its early access launch next year, and you can register to take part on the game's website.

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 promised, we got a brand new trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog 2: The Movie at The Game Awards this evening, in which we finally got a good look at Sonic's good buds Miles 'Tails' Prower and Knuckles the Echidna.

The trailer begins with Sonic overlooking Seattle, fully settled in as a crime-fighter. But with Jim Carrey's Robotnik back in action, Sonic has to team up with Tails to protect the Master Emerald. The trailer even shows off a good grip of Sonic's two-tailed friend but saved Knuckles for the very end. And Knuckles, *shock* is working with Robotnik.

Aside from the new faces, Jim Carrey will reprise his role as Dr. Robotnik and Ben Schwartz will once again lend his talent to voice Sonic.

There's been a lot of buzz around the Sonic sequel lately. We got a look at a movie poster just yesterday, and also recently learned that Tails voice actor Colleen O'Shaughnessey would be returning to voice Tails once again for the film alongside Idris Elba as Knuckles, who reassured everyone that he would not be characterizing Knucles as sexy. We've also gotten some leaks about a potential plot synopsis earlier this year.

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

After over a decade, Remedy Entertainment has officially announced a sequel to Alan Wake at The Game Awards 2021.

During the show, Remedy premiered a briefly trailer officially announcing Alan Wake 2. We don't know much about the plot, but apparently the story will "eat you alive."

"We know this is going to be a pretty scary experience," Remedy's Sam Lake said at The Game Awards.

It will be Remedy's first ever survival horror game. The original had survival horror elements, but it was an action game, Lake said. Remedy will be going dark "for a while" and will be back when the studio is ready to show more.

Alan Wake is a critically-acclaimed adventure mystery game starring the eponymous Alan Wake, a writer who visits the small town of Bright Falls, Washington to cure his writer's block. While on the trip, his wife is kidnapped by a mysterious force and he must use the power of light to rescue her.

Remedy combined elements of Stephen King and Twin Peaks to create a memorable adventure, but aside from an arcade-style pseudo-sequel, Alan Wake's American Nightmare, the series became dormant as Remedy began work on games like Quantum Break and Control.

There were also some rights issues when Remedy confirmed in 2018 that Alan Wake requires Microsoft's permission as the publishing rights holder. But in 2019 Remedy confirmed it acquired the full rights to Alan Wake from Microsoft, opening the door for future releases.

This became apparent when Alan Wake, who was already referenced in Control's Case Files scattered around the map, was a main character in the post-launch DLC AWE. Remedy confirmed that Control and Alan Wake exist in a shared Remedy universe.

Check out IGN's Control review and why we chose Control as our 2019 game of the year.

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

Lucasfilm Games has officially revealed a new Star Wars game: Star Wars Eclipse.

Announced at The Game Awards 2021, the first look at Star Wars Eclipse offers little clarity regarding its story but features heavy doses of lightsaber combat and plenty of glimpses of iconic Star Wars aliens and locations. The new official site for the game describes it as a "action-adventure, multiple-character branching narrative game set in the High Republic era of the iconic Star Wars galaxy."

It also notes it is "early in development."

We first heard rumours that Heavy Rain and Detroit developer Quantic Dream was making a Star Wars game back in September, but this is the first official confirmation.

Star Wars Eclipse marks another part of Disney's major expansion into building Star Wars games with multiple developers after recreating the Lucasfilm Games brand.

Luke is Games Editor at IGN's Sydney office. You can find him on Twitter every few days @MrLukeReilly.

WB Games and developer Monolith Productions has announced Wonder Woman, a new game from the Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War games.

No release date has been announced, but WB showcased a first teaser trailer cinematic, revealing its take on the classic DC hero.

According to the official description, Wonder Woman will be a single-player, open-world action game featuring an original story as players star as Diana in a "fight to unite her Amazon family and the humans from the modern world." WOnder Woman will use Monolith's Nemesis System from the Middle-earth games, and it appears the system will be used with both enemies and friendly characters in the world.

This is one of several DC-related games in the works at WB's suite of studios, including Rocksteady's Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as well as Gotham Knights from WB Montreal. We last saw both games at DC Fandome, where we saw new story teases for Gotham Knights' Court of Owls, as well as a new story trailer for Suicide Squad. Kill the Justice League is also set for a new look at The Game Awards.

While we wait to hear more about Wonder Woman, check out everything announced at The Game Awards so far. And for more on Monolith's past work, be sure to check out IGN's Middle-earth Shadow of War review.

At last, we finally got our first actual look at Senua's Saga: Hellblade 2 today at The Game Awards via its first ever actual gameplay trailer. Before the announcement, we learned the trailer is apparently entirely gameplay, with no pure cinematics involved. Take a look at the 6 minutes of gameplay below.

The trailer shows Senua and a group of allies taking on a Giant with no legs, using its hands to drag its body towards the group. The footage was a great showcase for the game's fire effects, which was very prevalent throughout the gameplay. The footage takes place in a cave area, and out in the open, showing multiple types of environments we can expect in the game.

No release date was given for the game, but Hellblade 2 is set to come to Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Since Microsoft and Ninja Theory announced Hellblade 2 in 2019, we've learned that Hellblade 2 will use Unreal Engine 5, but have unfortunately seen very little of the game itself until now. We got some behind-the-scenes footage back in June of this year without gameplay, but that's about it.

IGN's Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice review scored the original a 9 for being a visually stunning and appropriately serious story tackling difficult subject matter.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

At the opening of The Game Awards this evening, host Geoff Keighley kicked off the show by calling attention to the ongoing problems of abuse and harassment in the games industry.

"We gotta be real, and we can't ignore the headlines that are out there," he said. "Game creators need to be supported by the companies that employ them. I think we all agree with that. So let me just say this before we get to any of the news, announcements, or awards. We should not and will not tolerate any abuse, harassment, and predatory practices by anyone, including our online communities. We all love games, and if we want this industry to keep going, we must build an even brighter and more inclusive future.

"The games we play and the games that we love teach us that we can impact the world around us, and tonight I call on everyone to do their part to build a better, safer video game industry. Speak out online, vote with your time and with your dollars, empower these world builders who are creating the future of all entertainment."

This speech was accompanied by a banner referring viewers to the Games and Online Harassment Hotline, which is a free, text message-based hotline offering support for victims of harassment and abuse either online or within the games industry.

Keighley, however, stopped short of calling out any specific names or companies, despite the fact that his statement comes in the midst of an ongoing lawsuit filed against Activision-Blizzard alleging harassment, discrimination, and abuse toward the company's employees and subsequent employee walkouts. Keighley was previously criticized for his response to a question about Activision-Blizzard's involvement in the awards in an interview with The Washington Post, but later clarified that the publisher would not be involved in the ceremony beyond its award nominations. Activision Blizzard president Rob Kostich is on the board of directors for The Game Awards.

The Game Awards will continue throughout the evening, and you can catch up on the ceremony and watch along with us here at IGN.

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