Team Cherry has revealed it’s thinking about making a brand new game rather than a Hollow Knight 3 — but admitted that their only time concern is “death.”

Co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen took seven years to make Silksong, the hotly anticipated follow-up to breakout hit Hollow Knight — although they didn’t plan to. During a sweeping interview with Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, in which the duo confirmed plans for Silksong DLC, talk turned to what’s next.

It sounds like Team Cherry has yet to decide whether to make Hollow Knight 3 or a brand new video game, but Gibson and Pellen are thinking about how much time they have left to make video games at all.

“... we do have other games that we plan to make,” Gibson said. “The only time concern really is — and we’ve talked about this before — death. It’s not that far off if you spend seven years per project, and potentially add another two. So it’d be nice to do a few more games. Apparently our timeframe still allows us to fit a few more in. Short of an unexpected tragedy.”

It’s a grim thought, but one that's been on the minds of a number of high profile video game developers. In 2023, ahead of the release of Starfield, Bethesda development chief Todd Howard said The Elder Scrolls 6 may be the last game in the fantasy series he makes, given how long the Microsoft-owned studio takes to make its games.

“And then as we look to an Elder Scrolls 6, that is one where... I probably shouldn't say this, but if I do the math, I'm not getting any younger,” Howard said. “How long do people play Elder Scrolls for? That may be the last one I do. I don't know.”

In May, 62-year-old Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima revealed he had thought about his own mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic, during which he became very sick. “Turning 60 was less of a turning point in my life than my experiences during the pandemic,” he said. “I fell seriously ill at that time, and also had an eye operation. Until then, I didn’t think I was old, you know? I just didn’t feel my age, and I assumed I would be able to create for as long as I live.

“But then I became sick, and I couldn’t create anything. And I saw lots of people around me passing away at that time. I was confronted with death. Of course, I recovered, but now I was thinking, ‘Wait, how many years do I have left to make a game or a film?’ Perhaps I have 10 years?”

Kojima even put a number of ideas on a USB stick and gave it to his assistant during the pandemic "kind of like a will," at a time when he was worried about his studio, Kojima Productions, and making sure the staff would continue to get paid if he was unable to make games.

As for Team Cherry, Gibson and Pellen said whatever they end up doing next, whether it’s a brand new game or Hollow Knight 3, it’ll be along similar lines to the games the studio has made before.

“We have said we’ll go elsewhere as well,” Gibson said. “Although we’ve also said those experiences will still be about exploring big worlds full of weird characters and giant bosses and whatnot. So there would be a through line there that people will be familiar with. That’s not to say we won’t return to these Hollow Knight worlds. We do have ideas around what forms those would take. But we also don’t want to be exclusively people that make Hollow Knight.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

We finally have our first look at Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2’s new class, the Techmarine, as well as an image of its Omnissian Axe.

Publisher Focus Entertainment released one screenshot of the Omnissian Axe, below, as well as an image showing off the Techmarine model from multiple angles.

Hollow Knight: Silksong developer Team Cherry has confirmed it’s working on DLC — but it doesn’t know when it will come out.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Team Cherry co-founders Ari Gibson and William Pellen said that while the developers do not plan to take “an excessive amount of time” building this new content for Silksong, “we still are pursuing the same development philosophy, which sometimes can expand our timeframe.”

It took seven years for Silksong to come out, so who knows when this mystery DLC will be released? But Team Cherry did tease it will feature the Steel Assassin, a character shown in a prior trailer but who has yet to show up in Silksong itself.

Here’s the relevant exchange with Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier:

Do you want to do a mix of smaller updates like Lifeblood, or are you thinking bigger stuff like Godmaster and Grimm Troupe? Is there a cadence you have in mind?

Gibson: In simple terms yes, we’d be thinking about different things arriving at different scales. That might mean larger things like Godmaster. Certainly, we’ve noticed that people would like an expansion in that way, being able to enter pantheon spaces and refight bosses. And there is already a huge number of them.

Pellen: We were talking about the next project in general. We’re not thinking about the size. We just started making new stuff and working on bits and pieces. We’re still in this world, thinking about stuff to present to people.

Gibson: It is interesting working out how you expand an already huge game, to make sure you don’t completely overwhelm new players, because obviously new players will be experiencing the new stuff, very naturally integrated. It’ll just seem like the base experience. Some of that might mean finding ways to hide away the access, because otherwise potentially by the end of the our expansions and developments it would just be gargantuan.

Silksong remains one of the most-played games on Steam following its huge September 4 release. Here are some essential guides for your journey upwards: the Silksong Interactive Map, how to grind for Rosary Beads, our ever-expanding Walkthrough with boss videos and guides, how to get your first life bar upgrade (first four mask shards), and a great guide to the Simple Keys and the doors they open.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

After a long wait, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is finally coming to Switch 1 and Switch 2 on December 4. Nintendo recently revealed exactly what each of its Metroid Prime amiibo figures will allow you to do in the game — ranging from customizing Samus’s new ride to letting you unlock a secret movie without having to 100% the in-game collectables.

Nintendo is releasing three new amiibo figures for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond — namely Samus Aran herself, Samus riding the Vi-O-La motorbike, and bounty hunter antagonist Sylux. According to the announcement on Nintendo’s official Japanese website, the three Metroid Prime 4 amiibos will let you do different things with the game — with Sylux’s greatly lowering the threshold for what you need to do to unlock a secret movie.

Basically, the Sylux amiibo will allow players to view a special movie straight after beating the game’s main story. The movie will apparently be an edited-together cutscene of fragmented clips featuring the bounty hunter that play during your journey through Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s story. It seems that watching the special movie will likely help players further understand Sylux’s motivations. Sylux has always been a bit of a mysterious antagonist and hopefully Metroid Prime 4 will shed more light on Sylux’s backstory and his apparent hatred of the Galactic Federation and Samus. As an added bonus, Sylux will say a random line of his dialogue each time you touch his amiibo to your Switch console.

If you don’t fancy forking out the money for the Sylux amiibo ($29.99) or would much rather put in the hard work yourself, then the special movie can also be unlocked by achieving a 100% scan rate and finding every single item in the game (so get ready to have guides and checklists on hand).

The Metroid Prime 4 Samus and Vi-O-La amiibo features the tough protagonist astride her brand-new, high-tech motorbike, Vi-O-La. Making its debut in Metroid Prime 4, Vi-O-La will allow Samus to speedily travel around the vast planet of Viewros. Therefore it comes as no surprise that the amiibo gives you several Vi-O-La related benefits. The Samus and Vi-O-La amiibo lets you quickly replenish your bike’s boost energy once per day, as well as allowing you to change the motorbike’s color. Touching the amiibo will tell you the distance you have travelled on the Vi-O-La.

The Metroid Prime 4 Samus amiibo lets you do a couple of things. Once a day, you can activate a handy shield that will not only restore Samus’s life but also blocks up to 99 damage. As an added bonus, you can use the Samus amiibo to change the music when riding the Vi-O-La across Sol Valley, Viewros’ vast desert.

Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 is out now on Netflix, and with it comes major reveals not just for what’s gone before, but what’s coming next.

Warning! Spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 follow:

In Season 5, Episode 4, we see Noah Schnapp’s Will display powers, complete with Eleven-style nosebleed. When all seems lost, he is able to take control of multiple Demogorgons and kill them, stopping the invasion from claiming the lives of much of the cast.

It’s a huge moment for Stranger Things and a significant development in what we know of Will’s abilities. Season 5 had built up to this moment by showing a growing connection between Will and the hive mind Vecna had created within the Upside Down, to the point where he was able to see through the eyes of the Demogorgons himself. In a prior scene, Will was seemingly able to force a Demogorgon to hold back against his mother (Winona Ryder), and then, right at the death, he levels up, eyes white and arms aloft as this new power ignites inside of him.

Where this is all going in Volume 2 is a matter of intense speculation among fans — and something we here at IGN have discussed ourselves (check out our article, Stranger Things Season 5: Our Biggest Burning Questions After Episodes 1-4, to find out more).

In an interview with IGN, Noah Schnapp and Millie Bobby Brown reacted enthusiastically to the revelation that Will would get powers, and teased that Volume 2 will explain how it works. We asked the pair if they shared notes on how to do the arm movements associated with Stranger Things psychic powers, but Noah countered to say he wanted Will’s movement to feel different.

“I remember talking about this with The Duffers,” Noah said. “They’ll explain more in Volume 2, like how it works. But the powers come differently, so I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t Eleven’s thing.”

That line about the powers coming differently is an interesting one. It’s something the Duffers explained in detail in a recent interview with Variety. They confirmed Will’s powers are proximity based — unlike Eleven, who can turn her powers on and off at will, essentially Will must be near the hive mind, which Vecna created within the Upside Down in order to take control of its various monsters.

“He taps into the hive mind,” Matt Duffer explained, “and then he can manipulate anything within the hive. You’ll see how far he can take it as you continue to watch. But that’s how he’s able to manipulate the monster. So he can’t open a door, because the door is not part of the hive mind.”

And how did Will get his powers? They came as a result of being hooked into the hive mind, which we see at the start of Season 5 in a flashback scene that takes us back to the moment Will was kidnapped by Vecna a decade ago. “So it’s very different from Eleven in that regard,” Matt continued.

Also in our interview, Millie Bobby Brown reacted to the shock return of Kali/Eight, who it turns out was captured by the military and confined to a room in a base inside the Upside Down.

"I didn’t know that she was coming back, so when I read it I was like, oh my god! Kali!" she said. "It just felt like that storyline started and never actually got the closure it deserved. So I’m really excited. I think what’s really exciting about the next volume is that she’s back for a reason and it’s pretty impactful.”

Kali, otherwise known as Eight, is one of the children who were experimented on in Hawkins Lab, and is a sort of sister to Eleven. She has psychic abilities, but not telekinetic powers like Eleven does. Given what has happened to Kali, it seems likely she’s not going to be happy about recent events.

Stranger Things Season 5 debuts on Netflix in three parts, with the first four episodes arriving for the Thanksgiving holiday on November 26. The next three episodes premiere on Christmas, and the series finale will debut on the streamer and in over 350 theaters nationwide on New Year’s Eve.

Stranger Things Season 5 release dates:

• VOL 1 - November 26, 5pm PT
• VOL 2 - Christmas, 5pm PT
• THE FINALE - New Year’s Eve, 5pm PT

We’ve got plenty more on Stranger Things, including Ross Duffer’s call to arms for fans to turn off “garbage” TV settings before watching Season 5. And be sure to check out our Stranger Things: Season 5, Vol. 1 spoiler review.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Amazon’s Fallout TV show is canon, so the question of which Fallout: New Vegas ending it will rubber stamp as official has been a burning question within the community ever since it was confirmed that Season 2 would take place in what remains of the city. But recent comments from one of the actors on the show suggest Season 2 will dodge the question entirely.

Warning! Spoilers for Fallout Season 1 and Fallout New Vegas follow.

The Fallout TV show is set after all the Fallout games and is considered canon, so when it was confirmed that Mr. House would be in Season 2, it sparked all sorts of fan theories about how he would make his live-action appearance, and what it would mean for Obsidian’s much-loved New Vegas itself.

Robert House appears in New Vegas as Mr. House. He rules the Strip as a brain plugged into a supercomputer that has extended his existence from the pre-war era hundreds of years into the post-war era. Robert House makes a cameo appearance in Season 1 during a pre-war scene in which the then RobCo Industries boss plots with Vault-Tec management and the heads of other companies to not only survive the inevitable nuclear apocalypse, but maybe even trigger it.

Season 1 ends with a Power Armor-clad Overseer Hank stomping towards New Vegas, with The Ghoul and Lucy MacLean in hot pursuit. Much of Season 2 — based on trailers released so far — will be set in New Vegas and deal with the coming together of the main characters there.

A quick reminder of where we’re at in the Fallout timeline: the Fallout TV show is set in 2296, nine years after the events of Fallout 4 and 15 years after the events of Fallout: New Vegas. We’ve already seen a debate about which Fallout 4 ending should be considered canon, if any. And now we know Mr. House is in Season 2, does that suggest a canon ending is being used?

Depending on the choices the player, aka The Courier, makes throughout the course of the game, New Vegas can end with victory for the player during the Battle of Hoover Dam, which drives out all factions including Mr. House himself, a victory for Mr. House in which he remains in control of New Vegas and takes over Hoover Dam, a victory for Caesar's Legion, or a victory for the New California Republic.

There are variations within these endings, but given Mr. House is in Season 2 in a post-war setting, as in alive (sort of) when the main characters turn up at New Vegas, then it’s likely he survived the events of New Vegas the video game.

But does Season 2 make a decision on who won Fallout New Vegas? In a new interview with The Spill, Aaron Moten, who plays Maximus, a Brotherhood of Steel squire, suggests not — and it sounds like this was a talking point among the cast and showrunners.

“Actually, you know what's really interesting is our storyline, where we are in time, it's a number of years after the events of New Vegas,” Moten began when asked if Fallout fans will be surprised by the New Vegas they see in Season 2.

“An interesting thing, a conversation Geneva [Robertson-Dworet, co-showrunner] and I have been having, was actually about how history is written in the wasteland by whoever writes it. And different perspectives will have a different perspective on who won and who lost. It's a really beautiful thing. We see it really early on that you guys [Ella Purnell’s Lucy and Walton Goggins’ The Ghoul] find out who believes themselves to be winning, and The Ghoul offering a different perspective.”

So, based on these comments, it sounds like Season 2 will largely dodge the thorny issue of New Vegas canon and include pretty much every faction from the game to some degree. Indeed, trailers have shown Mr. House in supercomputer form and Caesar’s Legion, although it's unclear in what state they're in. So perhaps we’re in for a bit of a New Vegas mashup where everyone thinks they won the Battle of Hoover Dam.

Moten's comments echo those of co-showrunners Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet last year: “All we really want the audience to know is that things have happened, so that there isn't an expectation that we pick the show up in season two, following one of the myriad canon endings that depend on your choices when you play [Fallout: New Vegas],” Wagner said.

“With that post-credits stuff, we really wanted to imply, guys, the world has progressed, and the idea that the wasteland stays as it is decade-to-decade is preposterous to us. It’s just a place [of] constant tragedy, events, horrors — there's a constant churn of trauma. We're definitely implying more has occurred.”

It won’t be long until we find out. Fallout Season 2 kicks off December 17.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios released update 1.4.0 this week, and in the patch notes teased a “very hot fix for the locked room exploits.” It turns out they weren’t kidding.

Following the release of the patch, players — as they often do — jumped into the hugely successful extraction shooter to give this fix a proper test. They’ve been able to cheat their way into locked rooms as before, but what they now find inside… well, Embark called it a “very hot fix” for a reason.

As redditor Forward_Problem_7550 discovered, locked rooms now turn you into a fireball if you glitch inside. The clip below shows the trap in action.

Reaction to the change is positive, with most players getting a kick out of what Embark has done here. “Best part of this is the clowns doing the glitch lose all their stuff to someone who legitimately opens the door with a key. CLASSIC!” enthused A_Tortured_Crab. “It's genuinely a really good fix,” added vedomedo. “Hopefully this is the mindset they keep going forward. Punish the exploiters and reward legit players.”

Now, some players are saying they’re more inclined to use their keys to enter locked rooms legitimately in the hope of finding “some dingus who hasn't read the patch notes.”

Technically this isn’t a fix, as players can still use the exploit to enter locked rooms. But it is an eye-catching workaround, and will surely put off players from trying to cheat their way inside a room after they’ve been cooked once.

“Would’ve been better if they just didn’t say anything and rolled this out,” suggested Maverixk_. “Imagine all the door glitches finding this out and losing all of their s**t before word of mouth spread. Would’ve been hilarious.”

That’s not all the update did. It’s also patched the gun quick swap exploit. Full patch notes are below.

Arc Raiders Patch Notes 1.4.0:

Content and Bug Fixes

• Exploit mitigation mechanisms have been added for all locked rooms across all maps.
• Fixed the gun exploit that allowed you to shoot quicker than intended by swapping to a quick use item and back.
• The exterior access to Spaceport's Control Tower locked room has been blocked off.
• Fixed the issue that sometimes caused low resolution textures in the Main Menu.
• Fixed players being able to push each other by jumping on each other’s backs.
• Fixed lighting artifacts that would sometimes occur upon entering maps.
• Raider Voice now correctly respects the selected voice option after restarting the game.

What if you exploit the doors now: 😂 https://t.co/JndqMjMpUn pic.twitter.com/81aFPE0ucD

— Scrappy (@TheRooster) November 27, 2025

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Wizards of the Coast has announced it has gone “back to the drawing board” with its Magic: The Gathering Secret Lair x Monster Hunter collaboration, admitting it wasn’t good enough.

Last week, IGN reported on the official announcement of Wizards of the Coast’s Secret Lair Monster Hunter Superdrop for Magic: The Gathering, which was set to be available December 1-22.

The collaboration includes four separate drops, each priced at $29.99, with a foil edition for $39.99. All cards involved are reprints of existing cards with Monster Hunter themes, nothing mechanically unique or new.

It’s fair to say fans reacted negatively to the announcement, and based on Wizards of the Coast’s statement on the matter, that backlash went right to the top.

“Let's cut to the chase: the Secret Lair x Monster Hunter Superdrop we revealed last week fell short of expectations,” the company said. “We heard loud and clear that you were disappointed, and we believe we can do better. So, we're going to postpone this release and rework this Superdrop entirely.

“Like many of you, we're big fans of Monster Hunter. It's why we put this Superdrop together. But in our excitement, we missed the mark on elements like card selection and faithfully integrating the world and mechanics of Monster Hunter. As a result, the overall construction of this Superdrop is not up to the standard you have come to expect.

“Pulling Superdrops back isn't something we're going to do very often, but we're committed to doing better. Capcom is on board for us to take another swing at this Superdrop as well.

“So, we're going to pull this one back and will share new details and an updated release date in a few months. Keep an eye out for more information in 2026.”

It's been a busy year for both Secret Lair and third-party Magic collabs in general, with some incredible Secret Lair card drops including Sonic, Final Fantasy, Deadpool, SpongeBob, The Office and more. We're currently eagerly awaiting the release of the Avatar: The Last Airbender Universes Beyond set, following close on the heels of Marvel's Spider-Man. Next year is looking equally stacked, with planned Universes Beyond sets featuring TMNT, The Hobbit, Marvel, and Star Trek. Now we can add Monster Hunter to 2026.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

What happens if Avatar: Fire and Ash doesn’t make enough profit to convince Disney to bankroll Avatar 4 and 5? Creator James Cameron has said he’s ready to walk away from the franchise, adding he’ll write a book to resolve the one thread Avatar 3 leaves open.

The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar: Fire and Ash, due out in December, is expected to follow suit — and the pressure is on it to deliver for Disney so director James Cameron can realize his vision and release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years.

Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash’s box office performance, and was mindful of the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025.

There’s the potential for “sequelitis,” Cameron noted. "People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.”

And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of what it was in 2019, Cameron suggested.

When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn’t be drawn into divulging a figure, but did dance around the issue by suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money.

“It is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,” he said. “I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”

There is increasing concern that skyrocketing RAM prices will impact high-end gaming not just in the short term, but the long term.

With the explosive growth of generative AI, AI data centers are hoovering up the world's memory and storage supply, sparking price hikes that some experts fear could last for decades. Cheap SSDs, DRAM, and HDDs are pretty much a thing of the past, with prices rising as AI demand outstrips supply.

This has already caused price rises, with PC retailer CyberPowerPC announcing a hike for memory modules across the U.S. and the UK “due to market conditions.”

“Recently, global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%,” CyberPowerPC said. “This has had a direct impact on the cost of building gaming PCs since 10/1/25.” Price rises thus kick in on December 7.

The impact on PC gaming could be significant and long-lasting, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney tweeted. “RAM price increases will be a real problem for high-end gaming for several years,” he said. “Factories are diverting leading edge DRAM capacity to meet AI needs where data centers are bidding far higher than consumer device makers.”

The situation has become so out of control that, as PCWorld reports, stores are beginning to sell RAM at 'catch-of-the-day' market prices. As CyberPowerPC pointed out, these price rises come with the holidays right around the corner, which is less than ideal.

Just checked the price of the RAM that is currently installed in my gaming PC; the AI bubble cannot implode fast enough. pic.twitter.com/G7N5lthE9O

— Rin | 凛 (@TheIshikawaRin) November 24, 2025

"Bro stop being such a loser, get a gaming PC"

CPU: $500
GPU: $1000
Motherboard: $300
RAM: Notify me when available
Primary SSD: $150
CPU Cooler: $150
PSU: $150
Case: $125
OS: $50

Just take my kidney and go pic.twitter.com/nr257QpAr1

— Bahamut (@Icewallowcumin) November 23, 2025

But the issue may stretch out for years to come. “The AI build-out is absolutely eating up a lot of the available chip supply, and 2026 looks to be far bigger than this year in terms of overall demand,” Dan Nystedt, vice president of research at TriOrient, told CNBC.

As CNBC points out, AI servers primarily run on processors from chip designers like Nvidia. These AI processors heavily rely on High-Bandwidth Memory or HBM. Nystedt said AI server companies are willing to pay top dollar for premium chips. “It could be very bad for PCs, laptops, consumer electronics and automotive, which depend on cheap memory chips,” he added.

And there is concern for the price of video game consoles, too. There are online rumors that Microsoft may soon be forced to up the price of Xbox consoles again in reaction to the RAM crunch. Valve has yet to announce a price for its next-gen Steam Machine, and fluctuating RAM prices may have something to do with it.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Photo by Mohamad Salaheldin Abdelg Alsayed/Anadolu via Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer has called on fans of the Netflix series to turn off what he described as “garbage” TV settings before watching Season 5, as they “destroy the color” and present an image that is “not the filmmakers’ intent.”

In a post on Instagram, Duffer walked through the process of turning off the likes of dynamic contrast, super resolution, and edge enhancer, saying: “there’s a bunch of crap in here you’re gonna want to make sure is off.”

The “worst offender of all,” Duffer continued, is ‘TruMotion,’ aka smooth motion, “or the dreaded soap opera effect.”

Then, Duffer added: “whatever you do, do not switch on anything called ‘vivid’ — because it’s going to turn on all the worst offenders, it’s going to destroy the color, and is not the filmmaker’s intent.”

The TV settings Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer recommends fans turn off before watching Season 5:

• Dynamic contrast
• Super resolution
• Edge enhancer
• Color filter
• Noise reduction
• TruMotion
• Vivid

Given the huge popularity of Stranger Things, Duffer’s PSA could end up resulting in changed settings for quite a lot of television sets. Last night’s release of the first volume of episodes for Stranger Things Season 5 sparked such interest that it briefly crashed Netflix.

And, after sorting your TV out you need a brief catch-up, here’s the official blurb on Stranger Things Season 5:

The fall of 1987. Hawkins is scarred by the opening of the Rifts, and our heroes are united by a single goal: find and kill Vecna. But he has vanished — his whereabouts and plans unknown. Complicating their mission, the government has placed the town under military quarantine and intensified its hunt for Eleven, forcing her back into hiding. As the anniversary of Will’s disappearance approaches, so does a heavy, familiar dread. The final battle is looming — and with it, a darkness more powerful and more deadly than anything they’ve faced before. To end this nightmare, they’ll need everyone — the full party — standing together, one last time.

Stranger Things Season 5 debuts on Netflix in three parts, with the first four episodes arriving for the Thanksgiving holiday on November 26. The next three episodes premiere on Christmas, and the series finale will debut on the streamer and in over 350 theaters nationwide on New Year’s Eve.

Stranger Things Season 5 release dates:

• VOL 1 - November 26, 5pm PT
• VOL 2 - Christmas, 5pm PT
• THE FINALE - New Year’s Eve, 5pm PT

Check out IGN’s Stranger Things: Season 5, Vol. 1 spoiler review to find out what we think of the first batch of episodes.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

As the debate around the use of generative AI to build video games rages on, Tim Sweeney, boss of Fortnite developer Epic Games, has waded in to call on Valve to ditch its AI Generated Content Disclosure for Steam games.

Valve’s rules mean developers must disclose their use of AI-generated content on a game’s Steam store page. For example, the Steam page for Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders includes a note from the developer on how the game uses AI-generated content: “during the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.”

Activision’s Call of Duty also includes an AI disclosure: “our team uses generative AI tools to help develop some in game assets.”

The Japan Commercial Broadcasters’ Association issued a statement against OpenAI’s Sora 2 and other similar AI video generation models, warning of the dangers that their unregulated use poses, both to Japan’s content industry and society as a whole. It demanded that OpenAI and other AI start-ups take action to prevent unauthorized training of AI models on Japanese anime and other copyrighted content, calling on AI companies to take proactive steps to remove copyright-infringing AI-generated content from the internet.

OpenAI publicly released Sora 2 on September 30, and people were soon sharing 20-second clips generated using the new model across social media. Many of these clips contain the likenesses of Japanese anime and video game characters (including popular characters like Mario and Pikachu), prompting concerns about copyright infringement. A couple of weeks later, the Japanese government made a formal request to OpenAI, calling on the American tech company to cease infringing upon Japanese IPs. This was followed by a statement on October 28 from Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (a group representing companies including Bandai Namco, Square Enix, and Studio Ghibli), which demanded that OpenAI stop unauthorized training of Sora 2 on the copyrighted IPs of its members.

Kill Bill director Quentin Tarantino has said The Hunger Games “ripped off” Battle Royale, and expressed surprise that the Japanese writer of the cult classic original didn’t sue The Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins.

Speaking on The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, the Oscar-winning director of the likes of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Django Unchained, said that book critics failed to call out The Hunger Games, whereas film critics did.

Battle Royale, released in 2000, was directed by Kinji Fukasaku from a screenplay by Kenta Fukasaku. It was based on the 1999 book of the same name, by Koushun Takami, and stars Beat Takeshi as a school teacher who ends up putting his unruly students through a fight to the death.

The Hunger Games is a series of novels written by American author Suzanne Collins that kicked off in 2008. It follows teenage protagonist Katniss Everdeen, who similarly battles with other children in a fight to the death. The Hunger Games movie, starring Jennifer Lawrence, came out in 2012 and was a global hit.

Speaking on the podcast, Tarantino hit out at The Hunger Games novels. “I do not understand how the Japanese writer didn’t sue Suzanne Collins for every f***ing thing she owns,” Tarantino said. “They just ripped off the f***ing book! Stupid book critics are not going to go watch a Japanese movie called Battle Royale, so the stupid book critics never called her out on it. They talked about how it was the most original thing they’d ever fucking read. As soon as the film critics saw the film they said, ‘What the f**k! This is just Battle Royale except PG!'”

Tarantino’s criticism of The Hunger Games is a long-standing one, and his comments here have sparked a debate among fans about where inspiration for creative works like novels truly comes from. Collins has talked about the creation of The Hunger Games in interviews before. In a 2008 interview with School Library Journal, Collins said The Hunger Games was based on the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, which she read when she was eight years old.

“I was a huge fan of Greek and Roman mythology,” she said, when asked how she came up with the idea. “As punishment for displeasing Crete, Athens periodically had to send seven youths and seven maidens to Crete, where they were thrown into the labyrinth and devoured by the Minotaur, which is a monster that’s half man and half bull. Even when I was a little kid, the story took my breath away, because it was so cruel, and Crete was so ruthless.

“The message is, mess with us and we’ll do something worse than kill you—we’ll kill your children. And the parents sat by apparently powerless to stop it. The cycle doesn’t end until Theseus volunteers to go, and he kills the Minotaur. In her own way, Katniss [the heroine of The Hunger Games] is a futuristic Theseus. But I didn’t want to do a labyrinth story. So I decided to write basically an updated version of the Roman gladiator games.”

Collins went on to say she was inspired to write The Hunger Games while channel surfing between reality TV programs and actual war coverage.

“On one channel, there’s a group of young people competing for I don’t even know; and on the next, there’s a group of young people fighting in an actual war,” she said. “I was really tired, and the lines between these stories started to blur in a very unsettling way. That’s the moment when Katniss’s story came to me.”

Of course, Battle Royale also inspired a new genre of video game, which ended up spawning the likes of PUBG, Fortnite, and Warzone. Tarantino's comments are especially ironic as he is now partnering with Fortnite itself.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Photo by Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis via Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

The release of the first volume of episodes for Stranger Things Season 5 sparked such interest that it briefly crashed Netflix.

Users report the streamer went offline for a few minutes at 5pm PT on Wednesday, November 26, as the first four episodes went live. Some have experienced bugs on Netflix throughout the evening.

The error message shown to users included a background image of a terrible cake baked on Netflix’s reality cooking competition show Nailed It!, which feels appropriate. Social media was awash with the error message as fans desperately tried to jump into Stranger Things Season 5.

CD Projekt has ruled out an appearance from The Witcher 4 at The Game Awards this year, despite its cinematic reveal trailer premiering during last year’s show.

While acknowledging The Witcher 4’s nomination in the Most Anticipated Game category at The Game Awards 2025, joint-CEO of CD Projekt, Michał Nowakowski, took to social media to manage expectations, confirming its hotly anticipated sequel is being kept under wraps for now.

“I’m very happy to see The Witcher 4 nominated in the Most Anticipated Game category at The Game Awards,” Nowakowski began. “Thanks to everyone who has already voted — your support means a lot to us. We won’t be bringing any new content to TGA this year, but we’re, as always, excited to watch the show and celebrate this amazing industry’s great night alongside all of you.”

So, that rules out more of The Witcher 4, last seen via a hugely impressive Unreal Engine 5 tech demo in June, any time soon. When might CD Projekt have more to show? Given CD Projekt has indicated The Witcher 4 won’t be out until 2027 at the earliest, perhaps The Game Awards 2026 is a safe bet. According to CD Projekt's latest financial report, 447 people are currently working on The Witcher 4, up slightly from the number reported at the end of July. Clearly, it is CD Projekt's focus right now.

And don’t go expecting anything from Cyberpunk 2, either. CD Projekt recently said it’s still “laying the foundations” for the sequel while ramping up staff at its development studios. That one’s even further out.

Still, we do know of one title that will be at The Game Awards this year: Exodus. The official Twitter page for the game confirmed that a new Exodus trailer will be shown at The Game Awards on December 11. Exodus is a new sci-fi RPG in development at Archetype Entertainment, a studio founded by former BioWare developers James Ohlen, Chad Robertson, and Drew Karpyshyn, and published by Wizards of the Coast.

While you wait for that, check out all the nominations for The Game Awards 2025.

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Publisher Paradox Interactive has today taken the blame for the poor sales of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2.

The long in development sequel launched in October and was met with a ‘mixed’ Steam user review response, with fans saying it failed to meet the expectations they had for the sequel to Troika’s 2004 cult classic Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. IGN’s Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 review returned a 7/10. We said: “Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 takes another flawed but unique and remarkable bite at the jugular, with plenty to love and loathe alike, but I certainly enjoyed my time as an elder vampire at the very least.”

Now, after 30 days on sale, Paradox has issued a note to financial markets signalling a write-down valued at 355 million SEK (approx. $37 million) of capitalized development costs for Bloodlines 2. This write-down, Paradox said, was based on an updated sales forecast now it has had a month to look at Bloodlines’ commercial performance.

Fredrik Wester, CEO of Paradox Interactive, said the blame for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2’s failure lay at the publisher’s door, not that of The Chinese Room, which had been drafted in to save the project after years of development hell.

“Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is a strong vampire fantasy and we are pleased with the developers’ work on the game,” Wester said.

“We’ve had high expectations for a long time, since we saw that it was a good game with a strong IP in a genre with a broad appeal. A month after release we can sadly see that sales do not match our projections, which necessitates the write-down. The responsibility lies fully with us as the publisher. The game is outside of our core areas, in hindsight it is clear that this has made it difficult for us to gauge sales. Going forward, we focus our capital to our core segments and, at the same time, we’ll evaluate how we best develop World of Darkness’ strong brand catalogue in the future.”

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 has two expansions planned as part of the game’s Premium Edition, and Paradox said it remains committed to delivering them. “Our post-release plan remains firm; we will deliver updates and the promised expansions to the game in the coming year,” Wester added.

Swedish game company Paradox’s main focus is on grand strategy games, which have proven enormously successful over the years. Games such as Stellaris, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings, and Cities: Skylines have all enjoyed big sales, and, in total, Paradox games have six million players each month.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2, however, falls outside that core grand strategy genre, and always looked like it would struggle upon release. And while its development trouble began years ago, it suffered issues right up to launch. In September, a month before release, Paradox and The Chinese Room announced that the Lasombra and Toreador clans would be available in the base Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 experience following a backlash from players.

Paradox announced Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 all the way back in 2019 with then-developer Hardsuit aiming for a Q1 2020 release window. That, of course, never happened, as Paradox would go on to announce an indefinite delay alongside Hardsuit's departure from the project. The Chinese Room was then announced as its new developer in 2023.

In a recent interview with the Goth Boss podcast, former creative director Dan Pinchbeck said the development team tried to work out how to get Paradox to not call the game Bloodlines 2.

"The tricky question around it was Bloodlines 1," Pinchbeck said. "Are you making a sequel to Bloodlines 1? We used to sit there and have these planning sessions of how do we get them to not call it Bloodlines 2? That feels like the most important thing we do here, to come at this and say this isn't Bloodlines 2. We can't make Bloodlines 2; there's not enough time, there's not enough money.”

If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.