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.

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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.

Update:

Sony shared a first look at some of the items that will be available as part of its free PlayStation Stars loyalty program, as well as a timeline for when you can try to collect them yourself.

Sony's Grace Chen said the program will begin rolling out in certain regions of Asia later this month. It will then launch in the Americas and Europe in the weeks that follow, but no specific timeline was given.

Alongside the new timeline, PlayStation revealed some of the first digital collectibles players will be able to earn through the program, including a PocketStation, Toro and Kuro, Polygon Man, and Punto from Ape Escape 2.

Check out the digital collectibles in the video below.

Original Story:

Sony has announced a new reward points programme called PlayStation Stars that will allow players to earn points with real cash value.

Announced on the PlayStation Blog, the loyalty programme will begin later this year (though Sony didn't say when exactly) and will be free to sign up to. Players will be able to complete objectives - with some as simple as playing a game once a month - to earn points that can be later redeemed on the PlayStation Store or for other rewards.

The catalogue of items " may include PSN wallet funds and select PlayStation Store products," and members of PlayStation Plus will also receive points for purchasing items on the store, similar to the My Nintendo programme on Switch.

Outside of PlayStation Store related rewards, users can also earn "digital collectibles" that are "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."

Additionally, according to The Washington Post, the first player to get the Platinum trophy in certain games will receive an extra special award, which no one else can get. It's not clear exactly how this will work - there's mention of it being within a local time zone, so it could be a territory race for the Platinum rather than a global one - but PlayStation has promised it will crack down on any attempts to get the rewards through fraudulent means.

New collectibles will be added regularly, with Sony stating that some will be particularly rare and something for players to continuously work towards.

The programme will mark another upgrade to Sony's digital offerings as it recently introduced new PlayStation Plus tiers. While the basic tier is more or less the same as the previous PlayStation Plus, the middle and most expensive tiers offer hundreds of extra games in a service similar to Xbox Game Pass.

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

Rumbleverse, the Fortnite meets pro wrestling Battle Royale game, will be released next month on August 11, for PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series, and PC through the Epic Games Store.

The free-to-play, 40-person Battle Royale will feature a battle pass too, but its Season 1 doesn't start until a week after launch on August 18. Iron Galaxy Studios has not announced pricing for the battle pass but, given that Fortnite's Epic Games is also publishing Rumbleverse, it will likely cost around $10 for the standard version.

A new trailer (below) was released alongside the release date announcement, showcasing some of the wackiest moments from Rumbleverse's network tests.

"Rumbleverse has been a passion project for us and a real testament to the skills and experience of our team,” said Iron Galaxy co-CEO Adam Boyes. "We can’t wait to see everyone pour into Grapital City and discover the singular joy of suplexing a friend off a skyscraper."

The game was first announced in December last year and was originally expected to be released in February. The studio later delayed the game indefinitely but eventually settled on this new August release date.

In our preview of the game, IGN said: "With a unique angle, a familiar but visually appealing cartoony art-style, and more wrasslin’ than you can shake a steel chair at, Rumbleverse seems primed to be a legitimate new contender in the competitive battle royale genre."

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

Tengen Uzui is now available in Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles as the first DLC fighter in the Character Pass.

Though Uzui is also available as a standalone purchase, publisher SEGA is putting the Character Pass on sale to celebrate the launch. A free DLC stage, the Entertainment District, is also being released today to celebrate Uzui coming to the game, referencing his introduction in the Demon Slayer anime. Those who purchase Uzui will also receive a set of profile photos and quotes.

Also being released across all platforms today is the Kimetsu Academy Summer Uniforms pack, which was previously only available on Nintendo Switch. Players on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X/S, and PC via Steam can now purchase the DLC outfits for $4.99.

As Uzui is just the first DLC character available in Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles, joined by six other characters released across five packs by the end of 2022. These include: Nezuko Kamado, (Advanced Demon Form), Tanjiro Kamado (Entertainment District), Zenitsu Agatsuma (Entertainment District), Inosuke Hashibira (Entertainment District), Daki, and Gyutaro.

The additional characters will help address a flaring issue in the game, as in our 7/10 review, IGN said: "Demon Slayer: The Hinokami Chronicles is a fighter that balances depth and accessibility well, but it’s hamstrung by an inconsistent story mode and a slim roster."

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

The latest trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been released and, alongside Galadriel and Elrond, it features a first look at characters from the island kingdom of Númenor, including Elendil, Pharazôn, Queen Regent Míriel, and Isildur, the man who would eventually cut the One Ring off of Sauron's finger.

The trailer begins by featuring the Two Trees of Valinor - which were destroyed before the time in the Second Age the series mainly takes place in - and we are then shown many of the locations that will be brought to life in The Rings of Power, including the Elven realms of Lindon and Eregion, the Dwarven realm Khazad-dûm, the Southlands, the Northernmost Wastes, the Sundering Seas, and the island kingdom of Númenór.

Speaking of Númenor, the kingdom whose rise and fall is one of the main events of the Second Age, many of its most high-profile citizens are shown for the first time, and Isildur may be the one more recognizable to fans.

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Isildur was said to be the one who cut the One Ring off of Sauron's hand, seemingly ending his reign of terror. However, his refusal to destroy the ring allowed Sauron's spirit to live in and later return in the Third Age.

Elendil was Isildur's father and, alongside helping establish Arnor and Gondor and becoming the first High King of Dúnedain, helped lead the battle against Sauron at the Siege of Barad-dûr. Pharazôn was the last king of Númenor who usurped the throne by marrying Míriel, who was the rightful Ruling Queen of Númenor. Without spoiling too much, Pharazôn has an important role to play in the Second Age.

A big part of the teaser sees Galadriel speaking to Elrond and claiming that the "enemy is still out there." Elrond attempts to have Galadriel stop this search, but she tells him that "you have not seen what I have seen."

In the two-minute, 30-second teaser we are also given further glimpses of "High King Gil-galad (Benjamin Walker), the Harfoots Marigold Brandyfoot (Sara Zwangobani), Elanor ‘Nori’ Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh), Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) and Sadoc Burrows (Sir Lenny Henry), The Stranger (Daniel Weyman), the Dwarves King Durin III (Peter Mullan) and Prince Durin IV (Owain Arthur), Halbrand (Charlie Vickers), and Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova)."

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is set thousands of years before the adventures of Frodo and the Fellowship, and its eight-part first season will begin on Friday, September 2, and new episodes will be released each week.

For more, read on as to why Gandalf (probably) isn't in this prequel series, our further look at who's who in The Rings of Power, and our exclusive look at the show's take on Middle-earth's orcs.

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.