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Vampire Survivors, the minimalist survival RPG from developer Poncle, is joining Apple Arcade in August, along with Temple: Run Legends and Vision Pro update for Castle Crumble.

Vampire Survivors has, of course, been available on iOS as a free-to-play release for some time, but its Apple Arcade version (Apple Arcade being Apple’s £6.99/month game subscription service for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV) will be ad-free and include some paid DLC.

Specifically, Vampire Survivors+ (the ‘+’ being Apple’s way of denoting a game has previously been available on its App Store, usually with in-app purchases) will bundle in its Legacy of the Moonspell and Tides of the Foscari paid expansions. Whether the game’s Emergency Meeting and Operation Guns DLC, both cur…

XDefiant producer Mark Rubin has told players it’s “okay to move on” if the game “isn’t for you”, but disputed claims the game was “rushed out” to avoid releasing at the same time as other big games.
Responding to an X/Twitter post in which a fan suggested the shooter was “rushed out because of GTA 6 and Call of Duty Black Ops 6”, Rubin – who has previously worked on Call of Duty games – was quick to refute the claim, saying: “Rushed out? No”.
“What we have is an engine that has only ever been an MMO,” Rubin said. “And so all of the infrastructure for an FPS has had to be built up from the ground floor. Even CoD started on ID tech which was a shooter engine. Apex started on a shooter engine.

Newscast: With the death of Keystone, will Xbox give up it…

An issue with Final Fantasy 14 on Xbox is still not resolved, despite maintenance over the weekend.

Director and producer Naoki Yoshida last week offered his “sincere apologies” for issues discovered in new expansion Dawntrail, including transition freezes on Xbox.

On Saturday the game was down for maintenance and, in a follow up post, Square Enix noted it had “taken preliminary steps” to address the issue but it’s still not fixed.

FINAL FANTASY XIV: DAWNTRAIL Launch Trailer

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Following a few early teases last month, EA has formally unveiled The Sims 4’s spooky new Life & Death expansion, which arrives on 31st October, adding everything from new neighbourhoods where the boundaries between the living and the dead are especially thin to a new grim reaper career and the ability for ghosts to WooHoo in objects small and large.

Life & Death looks to be a particularly busy expansion, touching not only on what happens to the living when a loved one is lost – think Wills and more elaborate funerals – but what Sims experience after shuffling off this mortal coil. That includes spectral romances, ghostly powers, the ability to helpfully haunt their old homes as part of the family, even reincarnation.

Living Sims looking to make the m…

FromSoftware has announced a salary increase for its employees of “approximately” 11.8 percent. This increase will begin in April next year.
Along with this salary increase for employees, the Elden Ring developer is also raising the starting salary for new graduates from ¥260k to ¥300k. That’s an increase of 15 percent.

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The Alters – the upcoming release from the This War of Mine team 11 bit Studios, described as an “emotional” sci-fi game featuring plenty of cloning action – has been delayed.
In a post on social media, which has been laid out like a letter to the game’s main character Jan Dolski, the studio said this delay will allow time to “optimise all mission-critical systems”, while ensuring “every aspect of your journey is as seamless as possible” on the game’s release.
This note added that reception to the game so far had been positive, but “good” is “never enough” for Ally Corp, the company coordinating Jan’s rescue from the hostile planet he is trying to escape from within the narrative of The Alters.

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With Amazon’s live-action TV adaptation of Like A Dragon/Yakuza fast approaching, the streaming service has shared a first proper trailer for those wanting to get a better look at its exuberant chaos ahead of its 24th October arrival on Prime Video.

Like A Dragon: Yakuza, as the series is known, spans two different time periods – 1995 and 2005, to be exact – as it charts the life of protagonist Kazuma Kiryu, a “fearsome and peerless Yakuza warrior with a strong sense of justice, duty, and humanity”.

“In 1995, eager to escape their restrictive lives, Kiryu and his friends, Nishiki, Yumi, and Miho plan a heist at a local arcade,” explains Amazon. “However, the arcade is under the control of the Dojima Family, a powerful yakuza organisation that rules Kamurocho.…

Parents and guardians of Fortnite-obsessed kids can now set in-game time limits for how long children can play.

Time Limit Controls, introduced to Fortnite today, do exactly what they say on the tin. Set in-game via Fortnite’s Parental Controls section, or via the Epic Account Portal online, these allow parents to set playtime limits and specific playtime windows.

Parents can even chose whether to let their child request more time, as the minutes count down.

Time Reports, which can be viewed online, then show the results of all this – how long the game has been played per day, with totals for the week so far and for any extra time granted.

Fortnite parental controls settings, from the Epic Account Portal. | Image credit: Epic Games

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Sony and developer Shift Up are being sued by Louisiana-based film production company Stellarblade, which – in case you haven’t already guessed where this is going – is alleging trademark infringement following the release of this year’s PS5 action-adventure Stellar Blade.

As reported by IGN, the complaint was filed in a Louisiana court earlier this month by Stellarblade LLC and its owner, Griffith Chambers Mehaffey. It’s specifically targeting Sony, Shift Up, and and Sony’s unnamed liability insurance company, amid claims Stellarblade’s business (that’s the film company) is being damaged by Stellar Blade (the game’s) use of the name.

Stellarblade was established to provide “multimedia entertainment services” – including film, documentary, and music video pro…