Bandai Namco’s ill-fated MMORPG Blue Protocol has officially had a tombstone ordered on its behalf, as the company has announced it’ll be ceasing service in January 2025. What that means in basic terms is that the servers will be shut down and the game will die, but what’s particularly interesting here is that Bandai Namco has also announced that the worldwide port of Blue Protocol – which was being handled by Amazon Games – is also dead. That version of the game was never actually released, quietly shifting its summer 2024 release date to a vague 2024 window earlier this year.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings It’s a sad end for a game that unfortunately didn’t bring in the anticipated revenue Bandai Namco was looking for. In a financial report, the…

Sit down. I’ve got bad news. Helldivers 2’s most recent Major Order, the one about collecting plastic so you could unleash some napalm barrages, well, folks have come up short in it. As they now get started on the fresh mission Arrowhead’s just put in motion, some members of the player base have been busy dicussing why they think the quest to set stuff on fire from orbit ended in defeat.The main conclusion they’ve come to so far? Well, aside from the long-established pet peeve of some players refusing to deviate from battling the bugs to take on an Automaton front MO with their brethren, the big reasons being cited probably won’t be a surprise if you’ve been keeping up with the community over the last little while.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings I…

Look, modders are like sand. Let me explain. I mean that as a compliment – they get everywhere, and often do it faster than you’d ever think. Take, for example, the modder who’s already managed to unearth and unlock a developer mode in Baldur’s Gate 3’s brand new official modding tools, which could soon make custom levels a reality.Yep, if you’re counting, Patch 7 only came out last Thursday, bringing with it that long-awaited official mod support after a few months of beta testing, and we’re already chatting about people going ‘Sod the official stuff you’re making it a lot easier for me to do Larian, I’m gonna try something properly difficult’.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings The mod that unlocks the chance for folks to have a go at this complex s…

Those of you worried that Palworld will go the full live-service route likely don’t need to be, as developer Pocketpair has no plans to make it free-to-play.Palworld is the kind of game that’s pretty perfectly poised to go free-to-play if it wanted to, as all those sales certainly put it in a strong position for a good long while. Many games of its ilk typically are free-to-play these days, opting for microtransactions and DLC as the main form of revenue, but in a recent interview with ASCII Japan (as translated by Automaton), Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe was asked about whether Palworld will switch to the live-service model in its lifetime. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings “When you think about it from a business perspective, making [Palworld] a l…

Most of us Star Wars fans are still cleaning up Outlaws’ secondary activities and taking lots of pictures ahead of the Lando-centric DLC coming soon, but we shouldn’t forget that another trip into the galaxy far, far away’s underworld is right around the corner. Skeleton Crew is now ramping up the marketing ahead of its early December debut on Disney Plus, and it genuinely sounds like a ton of simple fun.Via Entertainment Weekly, more has been revealed about Vane’s (the Nikto pirate from The Mandalorian’s third season) new pirate friends as well as Jude Law’s mysterious Force-sensitive character Jod Na Nawood, who could very well be a fresh new take on the Jedi figure according to series creators/showrunners Jon Watts and Christopher Ford.To see this content please enable targeting cookies…

While the notes for Helldivers 2’s most recent patch were longer than some books, it seems there were a few changes that flew under the radar and didn’t quite get a mention, for various reasons.As the studio has been starting to reveal/tease some of the weapon and equipment changes it might include in the patch that’ll follow Patch 1.001.100 at some point down the line, players on the game’s Discord server have been asking about some changes they think they’ve found while playing after this most recent patch got deployed that don’t seem to have been mentioned or explained properly by Arrowhead. Well, until now.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings “Regarding the frequently asked question about intended changes or “stealth” nerfs in the latest patch, my …

God of War Ragnarok’s PSN requirement on PC was no problem thanks to a mod, except that mod has now been removed for fear of legal action.When God of War Ragnarok finally launched on PC this month, it came with one little snag: you had to connect your PSN account to play it. This, of course, led to the game being review bombed slightly, though there’s been no sign of PlayStation changing its mind on the matter. Then, in came one modder who made a mod that just let you sidestep the PSN sign-in malarky, though it didn’t seem to work all of the time. This mod was always going to be a bit of a risky one, and now the modder has made the decision to delete the mod entirely, for the understandable reason of being worried that Sony might take legal action.To see this content please enable targetin…

With the impending release of Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered, Sony has elected to include the open-world action game into the list of games that eschew millions of players in over 170 countries around the world.The reason, of course, is the PlayStation Network account requirement, something the original Horizon Zero Dawn release on PC did not require. The problem? You can no longer buy the 2020 release.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Players, via ResetEra, noticed that Sony has removed the ability to purchase Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam and the Epic Games Store, in preparation for Remastered’s release on October 31. While the game’s page on Steam remains, you’ll no longer find an ‘Add to Cart’ button.Anyone who wants to play Horizon…

According to a new report, Microsoft is planning to introduce the ability to cloud stream any Xbox game you own starting from next month.Those of you that have Xbox Game Pass know that the cloud streaming option has been around for a while, letting you play many titles available on the service without having to download them. It’s been a useful way to quickly jump into something to try it without the hassle of having to wait for it to download, though isn’t always the best way to play – with the amount of visual information going on in Vampire Survivors, you’ll be lucky if you end up looking at more than one pixel. To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings But so far this feature has been relegated to Game Pass games only, except as reported by The Verge, f…

VariousThere are so many ways to be a Dungeons & Dragons fan these days. The tabletop RPG mainstay has been synonymous with pen-and-paper adventuring for 50 years now, and 2024 marks a major reworking of its core rulebooks to make the game more approachable. Anyone who’s played even just a couple of sessions knows how easy it can be to covet a friend’s set of custom dice, appreciate the care a Dungeon Master has taken in setting the right ambience for a crafted campaign, or even obsess over their choice of pen and notebook — after all, it’s what you’ll be spending a large chunk of time staring into as you ponder your character’s next heroic action.But what’s amazing is that you can be a huge D&D fan without ever touching a character sheet. D&D and the Forgotten R…