Video Game Culture: Last News

note sent to customers and displayed on their website, GAME wrote:“The Trade-In programme operated by GAME which offers customers the ability to trade-in unwanted consoles, games or gaming accessories in-store for credit will cease. GAME will also stop selling pre-owned games and consoles in-store and online at game.co.uk once stocks have run out.”“We haven’t taken this decision lightly and we are extremely grateful for your loyal custom throughout the years and remain committed to continue to give our passionate gaming fans the best customer experience,” they added.According to GAME, customers should still be able to sell or exchange games, consoles and accessories up until February 16 but stores “do have a right to refuse trade ins”.GAME was taken over by The Fraser Group in 2019, who have since shut down a number of standalone high-street shops and opened up concessions in larger department stores like House Of Fraser and Sports Direct.The news comes as Walmart, the largest retailer in the United States, has spoken about stopping the sale of physical games at some point this year.

Homeworld 3 has received a free demo in Steam Next Fest, along with a new release date.Developer Blackbird Interactive and publisher Gearbox announced the delay on X (formerly Twitter) yesterday evening (February 7).“Watching you share your experiences, exchange and debate strategies, and give us constant feedback has been incredible. This was our first time seeing the game played at scale, which is always an equally thrilling and nerve-wracking moments,” the post read.“We also recently gathered a dedicated group of players from outside our organizations to play through the full game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is offering a free trial this week for players who haven’t yet jumped on the game.To celebrate the launch of Season Two, the game is free for all to play from February 8 to February 12. Highrise, Rust, Meat, Shipment, Stash House, Terminal, Rio, Karachi and Scrapyard are all the maps available for players to experience in the free trial.The modes Team Deathmatch, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed, Team Gun Game and Domination will be available over this four day period for users to play with friends.

Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is receiving a new game plus mode next month, after developer Insomniac Games previously confirmed the mode would be coming to the game after launch.The news was officially announced on Insomniac Games X (formerly Twitter) account, and confirmed that a full list of what to expect from the update will be released just before the update arrives on March 7.

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata.Iwata was president of Nintendo from 2002 until his death in 2015 and oversaw both the Nintendo DS and the Wii.However, he was also CEO during the turbulent Wii U era of Nintendo, which was considered a flop by many. Following the failure, he took a 50 per cent pay cut while other executives reduced their salaries by 20 per cent.Speaking about the decision in 2013, Iwata said: “If we reduce the number of employees for better short-term financial results, employee morale will decrease.

Legend Of Zelda theme park could be in the works after producer Eiji Aonuma was spotted in a behind-the-scenes video at Orlando’s Universal Studios.As it stands, the Mario-themed Super Nintendo World is open at both Universal Studios Japan and Universal Studios Hollywood, with further areas planned for Universal Studios Singapore and Universal Orlando Resort. A Donkey Kong expansion is also being built at Japan, but this new clip has fans thinking a Zelda world is on the cards.The video in question was released by Universal in an attempt to show the public what everyday life was like at its parks for employees, as well as teasing what the future had to offer.

Nintendo has announced that it will be streaming both a Legend Of Zelda concert and a Splatoon concert next month.The concerts were originally supposed to take place at two different Nintendo Live events which were scheduled to take place on December 16-17 2023 and January 20-21 2024 respectively.However, the events were both cancelled due to “persistent threats targeting our employees”, with the announcement of the cancellation spotted by Eurogamer. In a translated version of the full statement by VGC, Nintendo explained their reasoning for the cancellation.“Our company has been persistently receiving threatening behaviour targeting our staff.

Palworld could be coming to PlayStation soon, per a post on X (formerly Twitter) from PlayStation head of indies Shuhei Yoshida.Yoshida replied to a post which asked for the team to “support SIE [Sony Interactive Entertainment] so that the PS5 version can be released as soon as possible”.Yoshida tagged the development partner at PlayStation in the reply, writing “Yes”.Previously, the community manager of Palworld posted that the title “won’t be on PlayStation” and will only be available on “Xbox and Steam“. However, on January 21 the community manager posted on X to state that Palworld may still come to PlayStation.“The above post said Palworld may release on PS4, PS5, Xbox or PC.

League Of Legends developer Riot Games has laid off 530 staff members and shut down all development on spin-off games.Yesterday, Riot Games announced in a blog post that it is laying off 530 roles globally (11% of overall staffers). Alongside this announcement, the developer has stated that it is stopping all active development on new spin-off games of League Of Legends after the release of Bandle Tale: A League Of Legends Story.“We’re ending new game development under Riot Forge after the upcoming release of Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story. Forge was an experiment to see what would happen when Rioters partnered with their favourite indie devs and let them loose on Runeterra with their unique viewpoints, styles and expertise,” the blog post read.“Across six titles spanning different game genres, regions, and characters, it’s been inspiring to see what these devs created in partnership with the Forge team.

The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time‘s Deku Tree may be released later this year, according to known Lego leakers.READ MORE: ‘Persona 3 Reload’ is shaping up to be a must-play remakeAccording to known leakers ‘Brickmerge’ and ‘1414falconfan‘ on Instagram, The Great Deku Tree Lego set could be released in September 2024 and consists of 2,500 pieces. This would be the first set based on The Legend Of Zelda franchise and would come off the back of several collaborations with Nintendo for both Animal Crossing and Mario.Rumor: Could this Zelda lego set be coming soon? pic.twitter.com/2Kea6I6FTT— Zelda Gif World (@GifZelda) February 3, 2023Last year a potential leaked image of the Lego Deku Tree appeared online, supposedly coming from an internal survey that featured other allegedly in-production sets such as a Rivendell set from Lord Of The Rings, which was later confirmed as being real, leading to speculation that the Lego Deku Tree could also be real.Lego later started copyright striking any YouTube video that reported on the leaks, further leading credence to the suspicion that the leak was legit and that a set based on The Legend Of Zelda was coming sooner rather than later.The latest game in The Legend Of Zelda franchise, The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom, launched last year and was nominated for several awards, including Game Of The Year at The Game Awards.

Palworld by developer Pocketpair, as it causes an “impossible to recover” from bug.The warning was issued in the Palworld discord, with PCGamesN reporting on what Pocketpair community manager ‘Kei’ posted regarding the bug.“Currently, using the item ‘Memory Reset Drug’ that resets the player’s status may reduce the player’s capture power and make it impossible to recover. We are currently investigating this issue, so we apologise for the inconvenience, but please refrain from using it until the investigation/correction is complete,” the community manager posted.Palworld launched three days ago (January 19) in early access, so issues are to be expected.

Palworld has sold five million copies in three days, despite increasing concern over potential AI use in the game.The title launched in early access on January 19, and since then, it has shot up in Steam charts to the point it had more concurrent players than games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Elden Ring, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Call Of Duty.Those users don’t include the number of players who are playing the game through the Xbox Game Pass release, and neither do the five million copies sold, meaning that the actual total number of people who have downloaded the game and played it could be much higher.The conversation around Palworld, however, isn’t focused on sales. It’s instead focused on similarities that beasts in the game have to popular Pokemon characters, and the fact that the company openly released a title in early access last year named AI: Art Imposter which uses artificial intelligence in gameplay to generate images.Several posts have circulated on X (formerly Twitter) showing similarities between Pokemon creatures and Palworld creatures, with previous comments from the CEO of Pocketpair discussing AI art, and specifically how to use AI art in order to create new Pokemon, leading people to wonder if the game used the technique at all.There’s currently no confirmation as to whether or not there’s any credibility behind these claims, however.

Fallout Shelter, The Elder Scrolls: Castles, has been announced.The news was announced on the official X (formerly Twitter) Bethesda account, with the post stating that the team is “excited to finally share The Elder Scrolls: Castles, our new mobile game from the team behind Fallout Shelter. The team has been hard at work on it for the last few years and we absolutely adore it.”The game allows you to control and expand your castle over various generations, making decisions that dictate exactly how your citizens perceive you and whether or not they attempt to overthrow your regime.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Xbox save woes should be over from today following a new update.Baldur’s Gate 3 launched on Xbox in December 2023 after winning Game of the Year at the 2023 Game of the Year awards. However, it wasn’t released without several issues, such as reports of save files deleting themselves after a crash.

Rock Band 4 DLC updates are stopping next week.The news was announced in a post on developer Harmonix‘s blog.“After over 8 years of weekly Rock Band 4 DLC releases, we’re here to let you know that January 25 will be the last DLC release of the RB4 era,” the post explains.“All other live services will continue as normal, including Rivals seasons [weekly online challenges that rotate], online play, and everything else.”Rock Band 4 was released in 2015, and DLC has been released weekly for the game since it was launched. Over 3,000 songs have been released over the years as DLC, with the soundtracks from previous Rock Band titles available to people who have previously imported the licences for the games.The official announcement also explained exactly what to expect from Harmonix in the future, now that they won’t be working on Rock Band 4.“Looking ahead, the Harmonix team has been hard at work over the last two years to develop Fortnite Festival, which brings rhythm action gaming (and more) to the Fortnite ecosystem.

The Finals has received a massive new update today (January 17) adding a new game mode, new outfits, and more.The main attraction of update 1.5.0 is a new player vs player mode named ‘Solo Bank It’, which changes the already existing ‘Bank It’ mode from a trios-based game to a game mode where twelve players are all fighting against each other to try and grab as much money as they can.This mode is a limited-time event, with no real indication as to how long it’ll be sticking around other than the fact that according to the patch notes the mode is being put out to “learn more about your experience”. Developer Embark Studios will be opening a Discord channel to gather any feedback about the mode and decide on any tweaks that need making.The update also comes with several balance changes, tweaks to gameplay, and bug fixes to issues that fans have been complaining about since the game was originally released.

streamer JSR_, speedran the Nintendo Entertainment System title Gyromite by listening to commands from JSR. For those unfamiliar with Gyromite, the player is tasked with both raising and lowering various platforms for a scientist so that they can proceed to the end of a level.JSR got Peanut Butter to play the game by giving various commands, which would cause the Shiba Inu to press a button that corresponded to one of the actions that could be taken in the game.Peanut Butter’s final time was 26 minutes and 24 seconds and falls just shy of beating the second and first place world records of 25 minutes and 26 seconds and 24 minutes and 56 seconds, which were set by StarCrystas and TascoDLX respectively.

Total War: Pharaoh is receiving a new free DLC update as an apology to players.The new DLC allows players to play as ‘The Sea Peoples”, who are described as a faction that must “stay on the war path to survive” and need to constantly win battles in order to do this.Two new factions are also being added to the game: the Sherden and the Peleset. The Sherden use a new mechanic named Spoils of War to gain extra resources (such as the new resource Eminence) that you then use to build new camps to make your army stronger.Players who choose this faction can command new units such as the Nuraghe Warriors, who form a turtle-formation to protect themselves, Harpooners, who throw barbed javelins, and Sherden Archers who use sulfur-tipped arrows to set your enemies alight.The second faction is the Peleset, a faction that can both take over cities on the campaign map and pitch camp.

Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl has received a new release date.After previously being announced for a Q1 2024 release window, the game has been delayed to September 5 and will be released on Xbox Series X|S and PC. The game will be released on Xbox Game Pass at launch.The trailer announcing the new date is weirdly calm and features a very nice campfire song being played as the point-of-view character reaches for a cup of what looks like coffee.Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl was originally revealed back in 2010, with a release date set for 2012.

Grand Theft Auto parent company Take-Two Interactive and Alan Wake 2 developer Remedy Entertainment are engaged in a trademark dispute over Remedy’s logo.Trademark claims for two different versions of the Remedy logo were filed in May 2023, but both of the claims are opposed by Take-Two Interactive.As reported by RespawnFirst, the reason for this opposition is that Take-Two Interactive believes “there exists a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public”.Both trademarks are currently in what is referred to as a ‘cooling-off’ phase which means Remedy has until May to file a counterstatement in opposition to the filing, unless a further extension is agreed before that time by both parties.NME has reached out to Remedy Entertainment for comment.The Alan Wake developer’s new logo was revealed in April 2023, with a blog post at the time explaining the reason behind the change.“As a game development studio, we have come a long way since 1995 when we got our start. Remedy is constantly evolving,” the post explained.Remedy Entertainment and Take Two Interactive are in a trademark dispute over Remedy's logo.Disputed Logo 1: https://t.co/wY29pyReIvDisputed Logo 2: https://t.co/oOlzd47usG pic.twitter.com/FuIMLRtBdj— Jake (@usemyhandle) January 15, 2024“The bullet in the letter R in the old logo represented the era of Max Payne, but the Remedy of now is much bigger than a single game; we have a whole portfolio of games, new and old.

Elden Ring‘s DLC is closer than previously thought.The DLC section of Elden Ring on SteamDB hasn’t been updated for over a year, with the last update being the “Elden Ring Adventure Guide”. At the time of writing this article (January 16), however, a new entry simply named “SteamDB Unknown App 2778580” was updated seven hours ago, suggesting a release date for the already-announced expansion Elden Ring: Shadows of the Erdtree could be coming soon, perhaps in tandem with the fast approaching second anniversary of the original game on February 25.This would line up with a leak in December 2023 that suggested the expansion could be released in February 2024, with retailer DataBlitz briefly uploading a page for Elden Ring-themed controllers planned to release in February to “sync with new ‘Shadow of the Erdtree’ expansion release”, along with stating a second wave of controllers would be released in 2025 to celebrate a “major keybeat or new game expansion”.Elden Ring: Shadows of the Erdtree was first revealed in February 2023, mere days after the first anniversary of the initial game’s release.