gaming

With 2021 soon coming to an end, Niantic has now announced its first Pokémon GO Community Day for 2022. Slated to take place on January 16, 2022, the upcoming event will place Spheal in the spotlight, with the Clap Pokémon and its shiny variant appearing more often for those playing the game. Once you’ve evolved it to Sealeo, you’ll also be able to evolve it afterward to a Walrein that knows two special attacks limited to the event and two hours after: Charged Attack Icicle Spear and Fast Attack Powder Snow. On top of Spheal’s increased appearance, you can expect the usual Community Day bonuses, including 3x experience points for catching Pokémon, extended durations for Lure Modules and Incense which will both last three hours, and receive a special “surprise” for taking snapshots. There’l...

Sonic the Hedgehog fans will be delighted to learn that gaming peripheral maker HORI has now unveiled its latest Split Pad Pro Nintendo Switch controller dedicated to the blue speedster. Officially licensed from Nintendo and SEGA, the new controller features Sonic on both expanded sides of your screen, with a fully illustrated version on the right and a blue outlined sketch on the left, paired with solid blue buttons for the former and red for the latter. The Split Pad Pro itself offers an upgraded gaming experience on the nifty handheld device as well, providing better ergonomics than the original JoyCons, although on the flip side they’ll only work when attached to the Switch and doesn’t come with motion controls. It also features assignable rear triggers for custom gameplay and a Turbo ...

Chinese tech and gaming giant Tencent has now acquired Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood developer Turtle Rock Studios. According to a press release announcing the new acquisition, Tencent will now own both Turtle Rock Studios and its parent company Slamfire Inc., although no purchase price was revealed for the transaction. Most importantly for fans, the new deal will still allow the video game developer to operate independently in California, and Back 4 Blood and its coming updates won’t be affected at all. “We are all looking forward to joining the Tencent family of studios,” said Turtle Rock president and GM Steve Goldstein. “Tencent’s outstanding partners, global reach, deep knowledge of gaming and unprecedented support will help us create the kinds of ambitious games we...

Hades has become the first game ever to win the Hugo Award. For those unfamiliar, the Hugo Award is a literary award that celebrates the best of science-fiction and fantasy writing, and has traditionally focused on other mediums outside of the gaming sphere. Luckily for gaming enthusiasts and those within the industry, the idea of bringing a special category for it had been floating around for a while now and finally became a reality in 2021. Speaking about winning the award, Supergiant Games‘ creative director and Hades writer Greg Kasavin noted what an honor it was to become the first video game awardee. “We — myself included — grew up experiencing these classic works of science-fiction and fantasy from Ursula K. Le Guin to Philip K. Dick and what have you,” he said. “That’s wh...

VeeFriends — an NFT community composed of 268 individual characters and 10,255 tokens made by Gary Vaynerchuk — has teamed up with Mattel Creations on a reimagined UNO deck featuring the blockchain-backed collective’s signature NFTs. Each deck will include one special, non-playable foil card for collectors that will feature one of 17 signature VeeFriends characters, including Charming Cheetah, Sweet Swan, Gary Bee, Perspective Pigeon and more. Notably, this collaborative deck marks UNO’s first inclusion of randomly inserted foil cards with different rarity levels. “As Mattel continues to pioneer bringing toy brands into the NFT space, we are thrilled to be working with Gary and his impressive VeeFriends collectibles,” said Richard Dickson, President and Chief Operating Officer at Mattel. “...

Secretlab teams up with CD PROJEKT RED once again since their explosive Cyberpunk 2077 Edition chair for the release of The Witcher Edition. In celebration of the Netflix premiere of the long-awaited The Witcher Season 2, the Secretlab The Witcher Edition chair pays tribute to the phenomenal world-building of the magical realm. From meticulous embroideries of twin steel and silver swords on the chair’s back to metal-studded details adorning its side wings — design elements are inspired by the legendary monster slayer Geralt of Rivia and the Grandmaster Legendary Wolven armor. Finishing the chair is the iconic medallion of the School of the Wolf on the backrest. “Our designers wanted to bring the same magic and detail to the world’s first official The Witcher seat…every aspect of the chair ...

CD Projekt Red has now settled its lawsuit with investors over the botched launch of Cyberpunk 2077 with an agreement to pay them $1.85 million USD. The lawsuit was first filed following the release of the highly-anticipated title, which proved catastrophic for the Polish developer when most gamers on lower-spec PCs or last-gen consoles like the Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 practically weren’t able to run the game at all. The class-action lawsuit itself claims that Cyberpunk 2077 was “virtually unplayable” at launch “due to an enormous number of bugs,” and sought damages from the developer. After a year of discussions with the Manhatten-based law firm Rosen, the two companies have finally come to an agreement for a payout of $1.85 million USD to investors. According to a ...

Brazilian football superstar Neymar Jr. has officially signed an exclusive streaming deal with Facebook Gaming. As one of the most popular athletes in the world and in the sport, Facebook has secured a major opportunity for gaming content with their new partnership with Neymar. Amidst Facebook Gaming’s ongoing battle with streaming sites including Twitch and YouTube, Neymar Jr. has placed Facebook in an even more competitive position. Each month, Neymar Jr. is expected to stream gameplay multiple of times and once a month the footballer is expected to play with a different creator. In a statement, Neymar said, “I’m very happy to partner with Facebook Gaming on my live streams!” The gaming world has always been one of my greatest passions after football, and I can barely wait to hang out an...

Square Enix has temporarily suspended sales of Final Fantasy XIV‘s Starter and Complete editions, in an effort to alleviate congestion on the game’s server that has been occurring since the official launch of the Endwalker expansion. The suspension includes both physical and digital editions of the game and will be enforced in the coming weeks. We’d like to share an update from #FFXIV Producer & Director Naoki Yoshida on the ongoing congestion, additional game time compensation, suspension of sales, error codes, and our upcoming plans. https://t.co/3WcXX6eVkf — FINAL FANTASY XIV (@FF_XIV_EN) December 16, 2021 Since the November Endwalker launch, Final Fantasy XIV players have experienced substantial congestion when logging into the game, typically waiting hours to g...