gaming – Page 4

Gaming news site Polygon gutted by massive layoffs amid sale to Valnet

gaming / Shannon Garcia / May 1, 2025

End of an era

Polygon was founded in 2012 when Vox Media spent significant money to poach top journalists from popular gaming blogs like Kotaku, Joystiq, and The Escapist. After initially publishing as the Gaming section of Vox.com for a few months, the Polygon domain launched alongside a series of flashy videos hyping up the staff’s lofty goals for video game journalism.

In the years since, Polygon has become a respected source for news and views on the gaming and entertainment industries—one that Ars Technica has cited frequently during my tenure as senior gaming editor.

“Just completely sickened by this news,” Polygon cofounder Brian Crecente shared on Bluesky. “Mostly for those so suddenly and deeply impacted, but also for the dwindling number of publications seriously covering video games.”

New Polygon owner Valnet publishes dozens of Internet content brands, which collectively have over 260 million page views. But the publisher, founded by Pornhub co-founder Hassan Youssef, has earned something of a reputation over the years for exploitative work conditions and quick-churn, clickbait content. One contributor to Valnet-owned Collider told The Wrap last year that the site runs as “a content mill, borderline like almost sweatshop-level,” with writers “constantly being pushed to write more, to do it quicker.”

“We’re proud to have built Polygon into the gaming authority for both experts and casual fans alike, a publication that has informed and delighted tens of millions of gaming enthusiasts since its founding at Vox Media more than a decade ago,” Vox Media co-founder, chair, and CEO Jim Bankoff said in a statement.

Gaming news site Polygon gutted by massive layoffs amid sale to Valnet Read More »

Microsoft raises prices on Xbox hardware, says “some” holiday games will be $80

gaming / Mike M. / May 1, 2025

Microsoft is increasing the recommended asking price of Xbox hardware and accessories worldwide starting today and will start charging $79.99 for some new first-party games this holiday season. The announcement comes after “careful consideration given market conditions and the rising cost of development,” Microsoft said.

In the United States, this means Microsoft’s premiere Xbox Series X will now cost $599.99 for a unit with a disc drive (up from $499.99), while the Digital version will cost $549.99 (up from $449.99). On the lower end, a 1 TB Xbox Series S will now cost $429.99 (up from $349.99), while a 512GB unit will cost $379.99 (up from $299.99).

The new prices are already reflected on Microsoft’s official online store, and Microsoft says it will “provide updated recommended pricing to local retailers.” That might leave a small window where you can get Xbox hardware and accessories from those retailers at the older, lower price while supplies remain available.

For headsets specifically, Microsoft said that pricing will change “in the US and Canada only,” a potential recognition of the Trump administration’s tariffs on foreign goods imported into the United States. Microsoft also warned that “Xbox Series S and X availability may continue to change over time depending on the retailer and by country” as those tariffs threaten to upend international trade worldwide.

On the software side, Microsoft said the increase to $79.99 will apply to both digital and physical versions of “some” new games this holiday season. Existing Xbox games will not be seeing a price increase, and “different games and expansions will continue to be offered at a variety of price points.”

Microsoft raises prices on Xbox hardware, says “some” holiday games will be $80 Read More »

Fortnite will return to iOS as court slams Apple’s “interference“ and ”cover-up“

Apple, Apple v Epic, fortnite, gaming, Policy / Shannon Garcia / May 1, 2025

In a statement provided to Ars Technica, an Apple spokesperson said, “We strongly disagree with the decision. We will comply with the court’s order and we will appeal.”

An Epic return

With the new court order in place, Epic says it will once again submit a version of Fortnite to the iOS App Store in the US in the next week or so. That new version will offer players the option to use standard Apple App Store payments or its own, cheaper “Epic Direct Payment” system to purchase in-game currency and items.

That would mirror the system that was briefly in place for iOS players in August 2020, when Epic added alternate payment options to iOS Fortnite in intentional violation of what were then Apple’s store policies. Apple removed Fortnite from the iOS App Store hours later, setting off a legal battle that seems to finally be reaching its conclusion.

For those few hours when Epic Direct Payments were available on iOS Fortnite in 2020, Sweeney said that about 50 percent of customers “decided to give Epic a shot,” going through an additional step to register and pay through an Epic account on a webpage outside the app itself (and saving 20 percent on their purchase in the process). The other roughly 50 percent of customers decided to pay a higher price in exchange for the convenience of paying directly in the app through the iOS account they already had set up, Sweeney said. “Consumers were making the choice… and it was a wonderful thing to see,” he said.

Speaking to the press Wednesday night, Sweeney said the new court order was a “huge victory for developers” looking to offer their own payment service alongside Apple’s on iOS devices. “This is what we’ve wanted all along,” he said. “We think that this achieves the goal that we’ve been aiming for in the US, while there are still some challenges elsewhere in the world.”

While Sweeney said the specific iOS developer account Epic used to publish Fortnite in 2020 is still banned, he added that the company has several other developer accounts that could be used for the new submission, including one it has used to support Unreal Engine on Apple devices. And while Sweeney allowed that Apple could still “arbitrarily reject Epic from the App Store despite Epic following all the rules,” he added that, in light of this latest court ruling, Apple would now “have to deal with various consequences of that if they did.”

Fortnite will return to iOS as court slams Apple’s “interference“ and ”cover-up“ Read More »

Nintendo imposes new limits on sharing for digital Switch games

gaming / DJ Henderson / April 30, 2025

A March video explaining the new Virtual Game Card system that launched via system update today.

While that old system could be cumbersome to set up, it actually allowed for quite a bit of flexibility when it came to game sharing. As Nintendo noted on its official FAQ as recently as last week, two users could play a single digital game purchase at the same time, as long as the Nintendo Account that purchased the game was playing on the secondary console (with an active Internet connection).

But Nintendo’s FAQ explanation for “how to play the same digital game at the same time with different Nintendo accounts” has been removed from the current version of Nintendo’s Switch digital game sharing FAQ. In its place is a link to a new page detailing the Virtual Game Card system. While the new FAQ also discusses the Online License feature for sharing games “even if you don’t have a virtual game card loaded,” there is no longer any discussion of how to access a single digital game on two consoles simultaneously.

Ars’ own testing confirms that trying to load a digital game while another Switch is actively playing the same game results in a “play is being suspended” error on one console. This seems to be true even if one console has a loaded Virtual Game Card for the game being played and even if the consoles use different Nintendo Accounts from the same family group.

Players can simultaneously play different games from the same digital library on two different Switch systems, but only if at least one of those games is on a loaded Virtual Game Card.

A partial workaround

Players who want to play a single digital game purchased across multiple Switch consoles simultaneously can still use a partial workaround. A Switch console with a Virtual Game Card currently loaded should be set to Airplane mode (or have Wi-Fi disabled), and the user’s Online License feature should be enabled for the game’s original purchaser. The first system will still be able to play that Virtual Game Card offline, while the Online License feature will allow the same game to be played at the same time on a second system.

Nintendo imposes new limits on sharing for digital Switch games Read More »

Is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion still fun for a first-time player in 2025?

Elder Scrolls, gaming, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered / 9u50fv / April 26, 2025

How does a fresh coat of paint help this 19-year-old RPG against modern competition?

Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down… Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

For many gamers, this week’s release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has provided a good excuse to revisit a well-remembered RPG classic from years past. For others, it’s provided a good excuse to catch up on a well-regarded game that they haven’t gotten around to playing in the nearly two decades since its release.

I’m in that second group. While I’ve played a fair amount of Skyrim (on platforms ranging from the Xbox 360 to VR headsets) and Starfield, I’ve never taken the time to go back to the earlier Bethesda Game Studios RPGs. As such, my impressions of Oblivion before this Remaster have been guided by old critical reactions and the many memes calling attention to the game’s somewhat janky engine.

Playing through the first few hours of Oblivion Remastered this week, without the benefit of nostalgia, I can definitely see why Oblivion made such an impact on RPG fans in 2006. But I also see all the ways that the game can feel a bit dated after nearly two decades of advancements in genre design.

One chance at a first impression

From the jump, I found myself struggling to suspend my disbelief enough to buy into the narrative conventions Oblivion throws at the beginner player. The fact that the doomed king and his armed guards need to escape through a secret passage that just so happens to cut through my jail cell seems a little too convenient for my brain to accept without warning sirens going off. I know it’s just a contrivance to get my personal hero’s journey story going, but it’s a clunky way to dive into the world.

A face only a mother could love. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

The same goes for the way the king dies just a few minutes into the tutorial, and his willingness to trust me with the coveted Amulet of Kings because the “Dragonblood” let him “see something” in me. Even allowing for some amount of necessary Chosen One trope-iness in this kind of fantasy story, the sheer speed with which my character went from “condemned prisoner” to “the last hope of the dying king” made my head spin a bit. Following that pivotal scene with a dull “go kill some goblins and rats in the sewer” escape sequence also felt a little anticlimactic given the epic responsibility with which I was just entrusted.

To be sure, Patrick Stewart’s regal delivery in the early game helps paper over a lot of potential weaknesses with the initial narrative. And even beyond Stewart’s excellent performance, I appreciated how the writing is concise and to the point, without the kind of drawn-out, pause-laden delivery that characterizes many games of the time.

The wide world of Oblivion

Once I escaped out into the broader world of Oblivion for the first time, I was a bit shocked to open my map and see that I could fast travel to a wide range of critical locations immediately, without any need to discover them for myself first. I felt a bit like a guilty cheater warping myself to the location of my next quest waypoint rather than hoofing through the massive forest that I’m sure hundreds of artists spent countless months meticulously constructing (and, more recently, remastering).

This horse is mine now. What are you gonna do about it? Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

I felt less guilty after accidentally stealing a horse, though. After a key quest giver urged me to go take a horse from a nearby stable, I was a bit shocked when I mounted the first horse I saw and heard two heavily armed guards nearby calling me a thief and leaping into pursuit (I guess I should have noticed the red icon before making my mount). No matter, I thought; they’re on foot and I’m now on a horse, so I can get away with my inadvertent theft quite easily.

Determined not to just fast-travel through the entire game, I found that galloping across a rain-drenched forest through the in-game night was almost too atmospheric. I ended up turning up the recommended brightness settings a few notches just so I could see the meticulously rendered trees and rocks around me.

After dismounting to rid a cave of some pesky vampires, I returned to the forest to find my stolen horse was nowhere to be found. At this point, I had trouble deciding if this was simply a realistic take on an unsecured, unmonitored horse wandering off or if I was the victim of a janky engine that couldn’t keep track of my mount.

The camera gets stuck inside my character model, which is itself stuck in the scenery. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

The jank was a bit clearer when I randomly stumbled across my first Oblivion gate while wandering through the woods. As I activated the gate to find a world engulfed in brilliant fire, I was surprised to find an armed guard had also appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and apparently still mad about my long-lost stolen horse!

When I deactivated the gate in another attempt to escape justice, I found myself immediately stuck chest deep in the game’s scenery, utterly unable to move as that hapless guard tried his best to subdue me. I ended up having to restore an earlier save, losing a few minutes of progress to a game engine that still has its fair share of problems.

What’s beneath the surface?

So far, I’m of two minds about Oblivion‘s overall world-building. When it comes to the civilized parts of the world, I’m relatively impressed. The towns seem relatively full during the daytime—both in terms of people and in terms of interesting buildings to explore or patronize. I especially enjoy the way every passerby seems to have a unique voice and greeting ready for me, even before I engage them directly. I even think it’s kind of cute when these NPCs end a pleasant conversation with a terse “leave me alone!” or “stop talking to me!”

Conversations are engaging even if random passers-by seem intent on standing in the way. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

Even the NPCs that seem least relevant to the story seem to have their own deep backstory and motivations; I was especially tickled by an alchemist visiting from afar who asked if I knew the local fine for necrophilia. (It can’t hurt to ask, right?) And discussing random rumors with everyone I meet has gone a long way toward establishing the social and political backstory of the world while also providing me with some engaging and far-flung side quests. There’s a lot of depth apparent in these interactions, even if I haven’t had the chance to come close to fully exploring it yet.

I bet there’s a story behind that statue. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

On the other hand, the vast spaces in between the cities and towns seem like so much wasted space, at this point. I’ve quickly learned not to waste much time exploring caves or abandoned mines, which so far seem to house a few middling enemies guarding some relatively useless trinkets in treasure chests. The same goes for going out of my way to activate the various wayshrines and Ayelid Wells that dot the landscape, which have hardly seemed worth the trip (thus far, at least).

Part of the problem is that I’ve found Oblivion‘s early combat almost wholly unengaging so far. Even at a low level, my warrior-mage has been able to make easy work of every random enemy I’ve faced with a combination of long-range flare spells and close-range sword swings. It definitely doesn’t help that I have yet to fight more than two enemies at once, or find a foe that seems to have two strategic brain cells to rub together. Compared to the engaging, tactical group combat of modern action RPGs like Elden Ring or Avowed, the battles here feel downright archaic.

I was hoping for some more difficult battles in a setting that is this foreboding. Credit: Bethesda Game Studios

I found this was true even as I worked my way through closing my first Oblivion gate, which had recently left the citizens of Kvask as sympathetic refugees huddling on the outskirts of town. Here, I thought, would be some battles that required crafty tactics, powerful items, or at least some level grinding to become more powerful. Instead, amid blood-soaked corridors that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Doom game, I found the most challenging speedbumps were mages that sponged up a moderate amount of damage while blindly charging right at me.

While I’m still decidedly in the early part of a game that can easily consume over 100 hours for a completionist, so far I’m having trouble getting past the most dated bits of Oblivion‘s design. Character design and vocal production that probably felt revolutionary two decades ago now feel practically standard for the genre, while technical problems and dull combat seem best left in the past. Despite a new coat of paint, this was one Remaster I found difficult to fully connect with so long after its initial release.

Kyle Orland has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, writing primarily about the business, tech, and culture behind video games. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He once wrote a whole book about Minesweeper.

Is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion still fun for a first-time player in 2025? Read More »

Nintendo Switch 2’s gameless Game-Key cards are going to be very common

gaming, Nintendo, Nintendo Switch, nintendo switch 2, Tech / Mike M. / April 24, 2025

US preorders for the Nintendo Switch 2 console went live at Best Buy, Target, and Walmart at midnight Eastern time last night (though the rush of orders caused problems and delays across all three retailers’ websites). The console listings came with a wave of other retail listings for games and accessories, and those listings either fill small gaps in our knowledge about Switch 2 game packaging and pricing or confirm facts that were previously implied.

First, $80 Switch 2 games like Mario Kart World will not cost $90 as physical releases. This is worth repeating over and over again because of how pernicious the rumors about $90 physical releases have been; as recently as this morning, typing “Switch 2 $90” into Google would show you videos, Reddit threads, news posts, and even Google’s own AI summaries all confidently and incorrectly proclaiming that physical Switch 2 releases will cost $90 when they actually won’t.

Google’s AI-generated search summary about $90 Switch 2 games as of this morning. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

While physical game releases in the EU sometimes cost more than their digital counterparts, there was actually no indication that US releases of physical games would cost $90. The Mario Kart World website listed an $80 MSRP from the start, as did early retail listings that were published before preorders actually began, and this price didn’t change when Nintendo increased accessory pricing in response to import tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

But now that actual order confirmation emails are going out, we can (even more) confidently say that Switch 2 physical releases cost the same amount as digital releases, just like original Switch games and most physical releases for other consoles. For example, the physical release for the upcoming Donkey Kong Bananza is $70, also the same as the digital version.

Third-party releases run a wider pricing gamut, from as little as $40 (Square Enix’s Bravely Default remaster) to as much as $100 (a special edition release of Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, also available at $70 for the standard release).

Lots of third-party games are getting Game-Key card releases

A Game-Key card disclaimer. It tells you you’ll need to download the game and approximately how large that download will be. Credit: Nintendo/Sega

When preorders opened in Japan yesterday, all physical releases of third-party games had Nintendo’s Game-Key card disclaimer printed on them. And it looks like a whole lot of physical third-party Switch 2 game releases in the US will also be Game-Key cards, based on the box art accompanying the listings.

These have been controversial among physical media holdouts because they’re not physical game releases in the traditional sense—they don’t have any actual game data stored on them. When you insert them into a Switch 2, they allow you to download the game content from Nintendo’s online store, but unlike a pure digital release, you’ll still need to have the Game-Key card inserted every time you want to play the game.

Nintendo Switch 2’s gameless Game-Key cards are going to be very common Read More »

Backward compatible: Many old Oblivion mods still work on Oblivion Remastered

gaming / DJ Henderson / April 24, 2025

The modding community is already hard at work despite lack of “official” support.

Thanks to a circa 2008 mod, I have a ton of armor and weapons from the jump in Oblivion Remastered Credit: Kyle Orland / Bethesda

Bethesda isn’t officially supporting mods for the newly released Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. But that hasn’t stopped some players from discovering that many mods created for the 2006 original seem to work just fine in the new game with a bare minimum of installation headaches.

As noted on Reddit and the Bethesda Game Studios Discord, some .esp mod files designed years ago for the original Oblivion have the same effect when plugged into the new Remastered game. Ars confirmed this during some quick testing, using a mod uploaded in 2008 to easily add high-end weapons and armor to the opening jail cell scene in the Remastered version.

While players of the original game could use the Oblivion Mod Manager to easily install these mods, doing so in the Remastered version requires a bit more manual work. First, users have to download the applicable .esp mod files and put them in the “Content/Dev/ObvData/Data” folder (the same one that already houses DLC data files like “DLCHorseArmor.esp”). Then it’s just a matter of opening “Plugins.txt” in the same folder and adding that full .esp file name to the plaintext list.

Early testers report that some more complex mods designed for the original Oblivion will lead to crashes or mixed results when loaded in the Remastered game. Others theorize that “the game seems to read OG Oblivion as its base, so manually adding a mod that doesn’t have new assets … would work.”

As the community continues to analyze this modding backward compatibility, other modders have already rushed to release dozens of new mods designed specifically for the Remastered version, even without official support from Bethesda. At this point, most of these seem focused on some basic UI tweaks or quality-of-life hacks to make the game more enjoyable (we’re particularly fond of this one that makes slow-walking NPCs a bit faster).

More complex mods may require diving into the Unreal Engine’s pak file format to replace in-game assets with new, modded versions. That means it’s probably just a matter of time before we get the equivalent of the custom Mystic Elf race modded back into the newer version of the game.

Backward compatible: Many old Oblivion mods still work on Oblivion Remastered Read More »

Bethesda isn’t shutting down ambitious fan-made “Skyblivion” remaster project

gaming / Shannon Garcia / April 23, 2025

“Bethesda has always been supportive of community projects like ours, and we don’t see that changing anytime soon,” the team wrote at the time.

The latest “making of” trailer for the ambitious Skyblivion modding project.

Other publishers aren’t always similarly open to competition from fans, though. Nintendo has long taken a legal scorched earth approach to a wide variety of fan games that use its licensed characters or trademarks. And last year, Valve also took steps to shut down a number of fan remakes of its legacy games.

In 2016, Blizzard shut down a couple of fan-run “classic” World of Warcraft servers in the run-up to its announcement of official World of Warcraft Classic servers. Activision and EA have similarly shut down modded servers for legacy online titles.

Some publishers have mirrored Bethesda’s more open approach to modders, though. Sega actively encouraged official Steamworks modding for some Sega Genesis classics released as PC downloads back in 2016. And the heavily Halo-inspired Installation 01 continues to thrive with something close to official support from Microsoft and developer 343 Industries, as long as it remains a non-commercial project.

As for Skyblivion, while the project’s last public Roadmap update is months old at this point, the team is still confident it will be able to release a version of its ambitious mod later this year. “We are confident that players will be the true winners, having the opportunity to experience both a community-driven reimagining and a professional, modern version of this beloved game.”

Bethesda isn’t shutting down ambitious fan-made “Skyblivion” remaster project Read More »

Teen coder shuts down open source Mac app Whisky, citing harm to paid apps

Codeweavers, codeweavers crossover, Crossover, game compatibility, gaming, isaac marovitz, james b. ramey, Mac gaming, macOS, Whisky, Wine / Mike M. / April 22, 2025

A tipped-cap moment

The center of Whisky’s homepage. The page now carries a persistent notice that “Whisky is no longer actively maintained. Apps and games may break at any time.” Credit: Whisky

CodeWeavers’ CEO wrote on the company’s blog late last week about the Whisky shutdown, topped with an image of a glass of the spirit clinking against a glass of wine. “Whisky may have been a CrossOver competitor, but that’s not how we feel today,” wrote James B. Ramey. “Our response is simply one of empathy, understanding, and acknowledgement for Isaac’s situation.”

Ramey noted that Whisky was a free packaging of an open source project, crafted by someone who, like CrossOver, did it as “a labor of love built by people who care deeply about giving users more choices.” But Marovitz faced “an avalanche of user expectations,” Ramey wrote, regarding game compatibility, performance, and features. “The reality is that testing, support, and development take real resources … if CodeWeavers were not viable because of CrossOver not being sustainable, it would likely dampen the future development of WINE and Proton and support for macOS gaming,” Ramey wrote.

“We ‘tip our cap’ to Isaac and the impact he made to macOS gaming,” Ramey wrote, strangely choosing that colloquial salute instead of the more obvious beverage analogy for the two projects.

Marovitz told Ars that while user expectations were “definitely an issue,” they were not the major reason for ceasing development. “I’ve worked on other big projects before and during Whisky’s development, so I’m not a stranger to tuning out the noise of constant user expectations.”

Open source projects shutting down because of the tremendous pressure they put on their unpaid coders is a kind of “dog bites man” story in the coding world. It’s something else entirely when a prolific coder sees a larger ecosystem as not really benefiting from their otherwise very neat tool, and chooses deference. Still, during its run, the Whisky app drew attention to Mac gaming and the possibilities of Wine, and by extension Apple’s own Game Porting Toolkit, itself based on CrossOver. And likely gave a few Mac owners some great times with games they couldn’t get on their favorite platform.

Marovitz, while stepping back, is not done with Mac gaming, however. “Right now I’m working on the recompilation of Sonic Unleashed and bringing it fully to Mac, alongside other folks, but for the most part my goals and passions have remained the same,” Marovitz told Ars.

Teen coder shuts down open source Mac app Whisky, citing harm to paid apps Read More »

Nintendo raises planned Switch 2 accessory prices amid tariff “uncertainty”

gaming / Beth Washington / April 18, 2025

The Switch 2 hardware will still retail for its initially announced $449.99, alongside a $499.99 bundle including a digital download of Mario Kart World. Nintendo revealed Thursday that the Mario Kart bundle will only be produced “through Fall 2025,” though, and will only be available “while supplies last.” Mario Kart World will retail for $79.99 on its own, while Donkey Kong Bananza will launch in July for a $69.99 MSRP.

Most industry analysts expected Nintendo to hold the price for the Switch 2 hardware steady, even as Trump’s wide-ranging tariffs threatened to raise the cost the company incurred for systems built in China and Vietnam. “I believe it is now too late for Nintendo to drive up the price further, if that ever was an option in the first place,” Kantan Games’ Serkan Toto told GamesIndustry.biz. “As far as tariffs go, Nintendo was looking at a black box all the way until April 2, just like everybody else. As a hardware manufacturer, Nintendo most likely ran simulations to get to a price that would make them tariff-proof as much as possible.”

But that pricing calculus might not hold forever. “If the tariffs persist, I think a price increase in 2026 might be on the table,” Ampere Analysis’ Piers Harding-Rolls told GameSpot. “Nintendo will be treading very carefully considering the importance of the US market.”

Since the Switch 2 launch details were announced earlier this month, Nintendo’s official promotional livestreams have been inundated with messages begging the company to “DROP THE PRICE.”

Nintendo raises planned Switch 2 accessory prices amid tariff “uncertainty” Read More »

Sunderfolk review: RPG magic that transports your friends together

chris sagaty, dreamhaven, gaming, Review, role-playing game, sunderfolk, Tabletop, tabletop gaming, tactical rpg / Shannon Garcia / April 18, 2025

Using your phone as a controller keeps you engaged with this accommodating RPG.

The creators of Sunderfolk wanted to make a video game that would help players “Rediscover game night.” By my reckoning, they have succeeded, because I am now regularly arguing with good friends over stupid moves. Why didn’t I pick up that gold? Don’t you see how ending up there messed up an area attack? Ah, well.

That kind of friendly friction, inside dedicated social time, only gets harder to come by as you get older, settle into routines, and sometimes move apart. I’ve hosted four Sunderfolk sessions with three friends, all in different states, and it has felt like reclaiming something I lost. Sunderfolk is a fun game with a lot of good ideas, and the best one is convincing humans to join up in pondering hex tiles, turn order, and what to name the ogres who shoot arrows (“Pointy Bros”).

Maybe you already have all the gaming appointments you need with friends, online or in person. Sunderfolk, I might suggest, is a worthy addition to your queue as a low-effort way to give everyone a break from being the organizer. It does a decent job of tutorializing and onboarding less experienced players, then adds depth as it goes on. Given that only one person out of four has to own the game on some system, and the only other hardware needed is a phone, it’s a pretty light lift for what I’m finding to be a great payoff. Some parts could be improved, but the core loop and its camaraderie engine feel sturdy.

I haven’t reached the mine cart missions yet but am glad to know they exist. Credit: Dreamhaven

Pick a class, take a seat

My party getting a well-deserved level up. From left: Boom Boom the berserker, Roguefer, Bob the mage, and Fire Bob. Credit: Kevin Purdy

Sunderfolk is a turn-based tactical RPG, putting you and your friends on a grid filled with objects, enemies, and surprises. You pick from familiar role-playing character classes—my party picked rogue, berserker, wizard, and a kind of pyromancer—and choose one ability card each turn. The cards put a Gloomhaven-like emphasis on sequence and map positioning. One of my rogue’s potential moves is a quick attack, then gaining strength by picking up nearby gold. Another involves moving, hitting, moving, hitting, then one more single-hex move at the end, to stay out of danger and get a protective “Shrouded” effect.

You and your squad are all watching the same screen, be it a living room TV, a laptop, or a window streamed over Zoom or Discord. You choose your cards, plot your movement, and interact with everything using your phone or tablet’s touchscreen. Once you’ve won a quest by beating the baddies and/or hitting other markers, you head back to town and do a whole bunch of housekeeping tasks. Sunderfolk has mechanics for both players not being present (scaling the quests and keeping the missing leveled up) and for someone having to drop mid-battle (someone else can play their seat and their own). It’s accommodating to players of different RPG experience levels and different schedules.

Sunderfolk launch date trailer.

You have my sword—and my phone

Let’s address the phone controls, the roughly 6-inch-diagonal elephant in the room. My three friends all had to spend a few minutes getting used to using their phone screen as a multi-modal controller: touchpad for hex movement and cursor pointing, card picker and info box reader, and then the town landscape screen. After that, nobody had any real issues with the controls themselves. The tactile feedback guides your finger, and there was no appreciable lag in our sessions.

Sometimes we’d get momentarily flummoxed by the card-choosing flow, and there is perhaps some inherent mental tax in switching between screens. But the phone controls, besides making couch co-op possible, also allowed everyone in my group to play in their most comfortable spot: a TV streaming the Discord app, a tablet on the couch, a laptop at the kitchen counter.

Not for nothing, but with each player using their phone for controls—and the game announcing when players had “disconnected” if they switched to another app too long, only for them to come right back—Sunderfolk can apply some anti-scrolling pressure and keep everyone checked in. You could get around this with secondary devices or tiled windows, but it’s better to be present and ask your friends whose turn it is to fire off their Ultimate card.

(To clarify how remote play works: One owner of the game can screen-cast their game to Discord, Zoom, Meet, or whatever service, everyone playing can chat there or elsewhere, and players log in their phones/controllers with a QR code that is displayed from the screen-casted main title screen)

Cheerhaven

Most times, your party will be spread out all over the town, but in this provided screenshot, everybody has remembered to upgrade their Fate cards at the Temple. Credit: Dreamhaven

All this adventuring takes place in a world of anthropomorphized animals and overgrown woods and purple-blue ogres that strongly evoke World of Warcraft’s style (at least in Act 1). When you’re back in town, you tap around to chat with recurring NPCs, gain friendship levels that sometimes result in gifts, and upgrade parts of the town to your liking. The town hub provides more opportunities for strategy and bonding with players. You might send some of the gold you greedily picked up on the last quest to the friend so they can nab a great weapon. You might, as a group, buy a quirky town upgrade just for the chance to rename some things.

But the town is one place I felt some friction, familiar from more in-depth board games. Some players will be done with making their decisions and speeding through dialogue faster than others and may or may not be more engaged with the town chatterboxes. Just as with cardboard games, you can take this moment to get up, stretch your legs, and maybe refresh a drink. But you might have to nudge people along if they’re overwhelmed by gear choices.

The non-gory, often goofy nature of Sunderfolk’s setting makes it appropriate for a wider range of players. The voice acting, almost all of it by Anjali Bhimani (i.e., Symmetra), re-creates the feel of having a game master switch between “Frightened Blue Jay miner” and “Furious Ogre Queen” in one session. I’m not too engaged in the broad plot after one act—ogres, fueled by Darkstone, want to extinguish the village’s Brightstone—but it’s not a big deal. The game has given my group something else to latch onto: naming things.

Touching the Neatos to heal Boom Boom

Michael Keaton must reach an exit hex! Credit: Kevin Purdy

The chance to name things in Sunderfolk, and have those names stick for the whole campaign, is something a good GM would do to engage their players and break up tension. Sunderfolk is clever about this, offering both secret naming prompts to individual players on their phones or dishing out naming opportunities in town. In my party’s campaign, healing statues are named Neatos, the town bridge is Seagull Murder (a misremembered, obscure Peace Bridge reference), and the beetle we rescued is named, as it was during my preview, Michael Keaton. It’s fun to build your own stupid world out of goofy names, something too few games provide.

Individual phone controls give the game a chance to pull off a few other tricks, like only telling certain players about how a certain enemy looks like they’re carrying great loot. If Sunderfolk added even more of this, I would not mind at all.

I’m generally enjoying the combat, difficulty ramp (on the default setting), and upgrade paths of the characters. After three or four sessions, your character has much more move variety, and items and weapons are more useful and varied. The town of Arden, while overly chatty, has more to offer. It feels like a game that has had its pacing and onboarding fine-tuned.

But I have nits to pick:

There are cheap but great upgrades you can easily miss in town, like tavern meals and temple fate cards
Enemy variety feels slightly lacking in the first act
Some things, like mission selection, demand all-party agreement; perhaps the game could figuratively flip a coin when parties are divided
Everyone in my party has accidentally skipped an attack once or twice, despite an “Are you sure?” prompt
Movement traces and signaling could be clearer, as we have all also wasted hexes and shoved each other around

A very human computer game

You and your friends deal with a lot more stuff as *Sunderfolk* goes on: Boom Shrooms, loot, pits, explosives, and lots of little coin piles. Credit: Kevin Purdy

It’s been hard to be overly critical of a game that has all but forced me to log off and talk to friends for a couple hours each week. The downsides of Sunderfolk have mostly been the same as those of playing any tabletop game with humans: waiting, expertise imbalance, distraction, and someone’s dog needing attention.

Beyond that, I think Sunderfolk is a success at what it set out to do: Put the cardboard, cards, and dice on the screen and make it easier for everyone to show up. It won’t replace the traditional game night, but it might bring more people into it and remind people like me why it’s so good.

This post was updated at 10: 45 a.m. with a note about how remote play can work.

Kevin is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering open-source software, PC gaming, home automation, repairability, e-bikes, and tech history. He has previously worked at Lifehacker, Wirecutter, iFixit, and Carbon Switch.

Sunderfolk review: RPG magic that transports your friends together Read More »

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the dad rock of video games, and I love it

assassin's creed, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Assassin's Creed Shadows, gaming, open world, RPG, Star Wars Outlaws, ubisoft / Beth Washington / April 18, 2025

It also proves AAA publishers should be more willing to delay their games.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows refines Ubisoft’s formula, has great graphics, and is a ton of fun. Credit: Samuel Axon

Assassin’s Creed titles are cozy games for me. There’s no more relaxing place to go after a difficult day: historical outdoor museum tours, plus dopamine dispensers, plus slow-paced assassination simulators. The developers of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows seem to understand this need to escape better than ever before.

I’m “only” 40 hours into Shadows (I reckon I’m only about 30 percent through the game), but I already consider it one of the best entries in the franchise’s long history.

I’ve appreciated some past titles’ willingness to experiment and get jazzy with it, but Shadows takes a different tack. It has cherry-picked the best elements from the past decade or so of the franchise and refined them.

So, although the wheel hasn’t been reinvented here, it offers a smoother ride than fans have ever gotten from the series.

That’s a relief, and for once, I have some praise to offer Ubisoft. It has done an excellent job understanding its audience and proven that when in doubt, AAA publishers should feel more comfortable with the idea of delaying a game to focus on quality.

Choosing wisely

Shadows is the latest entry in the 18-year series, and it was developed primarily by a Ubisoft superteam, combining the talents of two flagship studios: Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla) and Ubisoft Quebec (Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Immortals Fenyx Rising).

After a mediocre entry in 2023’s Assassin’s Creed Mirage—which began as Valhalla DLC and was developed by B-team Ubisoft Bordeaux—Shadows is an all-in, massive budget monstrosity led by the very Aist of teams.

The game comes after a trilogy of games that many fans call the ancient trilogy (Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla—with Mirage tightly connected), which was pretty divisive.

Peaking with Odyssey, the ancient trilogy departed from classic Assassin’s Creed gameplay in significant ways. For the most part, cornerstones like social stealth, modern-day framing, and primarily urban environments were abandoned in favor of what could be reasonably described as “The Witcher 3 lite”—vast, open-world RPG gameplay with detailed character customization and gear systems, branching dialogue options, and lots of time spent wandering the wilderness instead of cities.

An enemy fort sits in a wild landscape — As in *Odyssey*, you spend most of your time in *Shadows* exploring the wilds. Credit: Samuel Axon

I loved that shift, as I felt the old formula had grown stale over a decade of annual releases. Many other longtime fans did not agree. So in the weeks leading up to Shadows‘ launch, Ubisoft was in a tough spot: please the old-school fans or fans of the ancient trilogy. The publisher tried to please both at once with Valhalla but ended up not really making anyone happy, and it tried a retro throwback with Mirage, which was well-received by a dedicated cohort, but that didn’t make many waves outside that OG community.

During development, a Ubisoft lead publicly assured fans that Shadows would be a big departure from Odyssey, seemingly letting folks know which fanbase the game was meant to please. That’s why I was surprised when Shadows actually came out and was… a lot like Odyssey—more like Odyssey than any other game in the franchise, in fact.

Detailed gear stats and synergies are back, meaning this game is clearly an RPG… Samuel Axon

Similar to Odyssey, Shadows has deep character progression, gear, and RPG systems. It is also far more focused on the countryside than on urban gameplay and has no social stealth. It has branching dialogue (anemic though that feature may be) and plays like a modernization of The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

Yet it seems this time around, most players are happy. What gives?

Well, Shadows exhibits a level of polish and handcrafted care that many Odyssey detractors felt was lacking. In other words, the game is so slick and fun to play, it’s hard to dislike it just because it’s not exactly what you would have done had you been in charge of picking the next direction for the franchise.

Part of that comes from learning lessons from the specific complaints that even Odyssey‘s biggest fans had about that game, but part of it can be attributed to the fact that Ubisoft did something uncharacteristic this time around: It delayed an Assassin’s Creed game for months to make sure the team could nail it.

It’s OK to delay

Last fall, Ubisoft published Star Wars Outlaws, which was basically Assassin’s Creed set in the Star Wars universe. You’d think that would be a recipe for success, but the game landed with a thud. The critical reception was lukewarm, and gaming communities bounced off it quickly. And while it sold well by most single-player games’ standards, it didn’t sell well enough to justify its huge budget or to please either Disney or Ubisoft’s bean counters.

I played Outlaws a little bit, but I, too, dropped it after a short time. The stealth sequences were frustrating, its design decisions didn’t seem very well-thought out, and it wasn’t that fun to play.

Since I wasn’t alone in that impression, Ubisoft looked at Shadows (which was due to launch mere weeks later) and panicked. Was the studio on the right track? It made a fateful decision: delay Shadows for months, well beyond the quarter, to make sure it wouldn’t disappoint as much as Outlaws did.

I’m not privy to the inside discussions about that decision, but given that the business was surely counting on Shadows to deliver for the all-important holiday quarter and that Ubisoft had never delayed an Assassin’s Creed title by more than a few weeks before, it probably wasn’t an easy one.

It’s hard to imagine it was the wrong one, though. Like I said, Shadows might be the most polished and consistently fun Assassin’s Creed game ever made.

A sprawling vista viewed from one of the game's viewpoints — No expense was spared with this game, and it delivers on polish, too. Credit: Samuel Axon

In an industry where quarterly profits are everything and building quality experiences for players or preserving the mental health and financial stability of employees are more in the “it’s nice when it happens” category, I feel it’s important to recognize when a company makes a better choice.

I don’t know what Ubisoft developers’ internal experiences were, but I sincerely hope the extra time allowed them to both be happier with their work and their work-life balance. (If you’re reading this and you work at Ubisoft and have insight, email me via my author page here. I want to know.)

In any case, there’s no question that players got a superior product because of the decision to delay the game. I can think of many times when players got angry at publishers for delaying games, but they shouldn’t be. When a game gets delayed, that’s not necessarily a bad sign. The more time the game spends in the oven, the better it’s going to be. Players should welcome that.

So, too, should business leaders at these publishers. Let Shadows be an example: Getting it right is worth it.

More dad rock, less prestige TV

Of course, despite this game’s positive reception among many fans, Assassin’s Creed in general is often reviled by some critics and gamers. Sure, there’s a reasonable and informed argument to be made that its big-budget excess, rampant commercialism, and formulaic checkbox-checking exemplify everything wrong with the AAA gaming industry right now.

And certainly, there have been entries in the franchise’s long history that lend ammunition to those criticisms. But since Shadows is good, this is an ideal time to discuss why the franchise (and this entry in particular) deserves more credit than it sometimes gets.

Let’s use a pop culture analogy.

In its current era, Assassin’s Creed is like the video game equivalent of the bands U2 or Tool. People call those “dad rock.” Taking a cue from those folks, I call Shadows and other titles like it (Horizon Forbidden West, Starfield) “dad games.”

While the kids are out there seeking fame through competitive prowess and streaming in Valorant and Fortnite or building chaotic metaverses in Roblox and—well, also Fortnite—games like Shadows are meant to appeal to a different sensibility. It’s one that had its heyday in the 2000s and early 2010s, before the landscape shifted.

We’re talking single-player games, cutting-edge graphics showcases, and giant maps full of satisfying checklists.

In a time when all the biggest games are multiplayer games-as-a-service, when many people are questioning whether graphics are advancing rapidly enough to make them a selling point on their own, and when checklist design is maligned by critics in favor of more holistic ideas, Shadows represents an era that may soon by a bygone one.

So, yes, given the increasingly archaic sensibility in which it’s rooted and the current age of people for whom that era was prime gaming time, the core audience for Shadows probably now includes a whole lot of dads and moms.

The graphics are simply awesome. Samuel Axon

There’s a time and a place for pushing the envelope or experimenting, but media that deftly treads comfortable ground doesn’t get enough appreciation.

Around the time Ubisoft went all-in on this formula with Odyssey and Valhalla, lots of people sneered, saying it was like watered-down The Witcher 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2. Those games from CD Projekt Red and Rockstar Games moved things forward, while Ubisoft’s games seemed content to stay in proven territory.

Those people tended to look at this from a business point of view: Woe is an industry that avoids bold and challenging choices for fear of losing an investment. But playing it safe can be a good experience for players, and not just because it allows developers to deliver a refined product.

Safety is the point. Yeah, I appreciate something that pushes the envelope in production values and storytelling. If The Witcher 3 and RDR2 were TV shows, we’d call them “prestige TV”—a type of show that’s all about expanding and building on what television can be, with a focus on critical acclaim and cultural capital.

I, too, enjoy prestige shows like HBO’s The White Lotus. But sometimes I have to actually work on getting myself in the mood to watch a show like that. When I’ve had a particularly draining day, I don’t want challenging entertainment. That’s when it’s time to turn on Parks and Recreation or Star Trek: The Next Generation—unchallenging or nostalgic programming that lets me zone out in my comfort zone for a while.

That’s what Assassin’s Creed has been for about a decade now—comfort gaming for a certain audience. Ubisoft knows that audience well, and the game is all the more effective because the studios that made it were given the time to fine-tune every part of it for that audience.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows isn’t groundbreaking, and that’s OK, because it’s a hundred hours of fun and relaxation. It’s definitely not prestige gaming. It’s dad gaming: comfortable, refined, a little corny, but satisfying. If that’s what you crave with your limited free time, it’s worth a try.

Samuel Axon is a senior editor at Ars Technica, where he is the editorial director for tech and gaming coverage. He covers AI, software development, gaming, entertainment, and mixed reality. He has been writing about gaming and technology for nearly two decades at Engadget, PC World, Mashable, Vice, Polygon, Wired, and others. He previously ran a marketing and PR agency in the gaming industry, led editorial for the TV network CBS, and worked on social media marketing strategy for Samsung Mobile at the creative agency SPCSHP. He also is an independent software and game developer for iOS, Windows, and other platforms, and he is a graduate of DePaul University, where he studied interactive media and software development.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows is the dad rock of video games, and I love it Read More »