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Game Reviews

Sony ending its PlayStation Stars loyalty programme ahead of future evolution

by admin May 21, 2025

Sony is ending its PlayStation Stars loyalty programme, in its current form, after three years.

The programme first started in July 2022 and allowed players to earn reward points to be redeemed for PSN wallet funds and other products on the store. It became available in the UK later that year.

However, Sony is now ending support for the programme as it evaluates “the types of activities our players respond best to”, though it could return in some form in the future.

Ghost of Y&omacr;tei – The Onry&omacr;’s List | PS5 GamesWatch on YouTube

From today, new members to the PlayStation Stars programme will no longer be accepted and if current members cancel they won’t be able to rejoin this version of the programme – all earned Points will be lost.

Current PlayStation Stars members can still earn points and products until 23rd July 3:59pm UK time (7:59am PDT, 11:59pm JST). No new campaigns will be available after this time.

This version of PlayStation Stars will fully end on 2nd November 2026. Current members can still earn points until this time. Digital Collectibles will still be accessible after these changes take place.

“Since launching the programme, we’ve learned a lot from evaluating the types of activities our players respond best to, and as a company, we are always evolving with player and industry trends,” said the company on the PlayStation Blog.

“Through this evaluation, we have decided to refocus our efforts and will be winding down the current version of PlayStation Stars. We will continue to evaluate our key findings from this programme, and are looking into ways to build upon these learnings.”

At the launch of PlayStation Stars, Sony confirmed its Digital Collectibles were not NFTs, were not tradable, and did not leverage blockchain technology.

It’s unclear how the programme will evolve, but it would seem this isn’t the last time we’ll see PlayStation Stars.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Impossible Movies Deserve A Great New Game

by admin May 21, 2025

The fuse has been lit and the mission has been accepted. That’s right folks, it’s time for a new Mission: Impossible film. Final Reckoning, the latest entry in the popular action franchise, arrives in theaters this week. But if this new film has you all excited about the series again and you want to play a Mission: Impossible video game, well, bad news: It’s been over 20 years since the last one. That’s not cool. It’s time for a new MI game!

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This article was originally published on July 13, 2023. It has been updated as part of Kotaku’s Mission: Impossible Week.

The Mission: Impossible franchise technically started as a spy-themed television series from the 1960s, which got a sequel series in the ‘80s. But when most people talk about the Mission Impossible franchise in 2025, they are likely referring to the long-running action film franchise starring Tom Cruise that has grown into something much larger and over-the-top than the old TV shows. These films, which began in 1996, typically showcase Cruise risking his life in at least three or four large stunts and also, bizarrely, have only gotten better with each release. A globe-trotting action-adventure franchise that makes tons of money, is loved by critics, and has a massive fanbase seems like ideal material for a video game adaptation. Oddly, that’s not been the case.

Since the beginning of the franchise, only five Mission: Impossible video games have been released. (Confusingly, four of them are just named Mission: Impossible.) The first game launched in 1990 for the NES. The second game was released the following year for DOS. These two were based on the 1980s sequel series that aired on ABC.

Then in 1998, two years after the first Tom Cruise film, another Mission: Impossible game launched on the Nintendo 64. This one has some fans, and played a lot like a third-person spin on Rare’s popular GoldenEye 007 game. Two years after that, right before the second film hit theaters, a very short and not-good Mission: Impossible game landed on Game Boy Color. However, this game did include a neat feature that let players use the Game Boy as a remote control.

Finally, in 2003, Mission: Impossible — Operation Surma launched on PlayStation 2 and later GameCube. This third-person action-adventure spy-thriller takes place between the events of Mission: Impossible II and the third film, but is also never directly referenced in the films and doesn’t even feature the likeness of Tom Cruise. It was essentially a Metal Gear Solid/Splinter Cell clone and in 2025 has been mostly forgotten, like the rest of the M:I video games.

**It’s time for a new Mission: Impossible video game**

And…that’s it! After 2003, we stopped getting new Mission: Impossible games. I understand that the film series hit a six-year lull between the second and third, but after 2011’s Ghost Protocol, the franchise kept getting bigger and better with each entry. 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout is probably the best film in the series. (Dead Reckoning, sadly, couldn’t keep the trend going.)

And yet, even as the franchise grows bigger and bigger, no new video games are on the horizon. What a shame! So many moments in recent MI films feel almost like setpieces from AAA video games of the last decade. It makes sense to me that this series would translate well into a modern video game.

I understand that over the last decade or so, we’ve stopped getting crappy games based on popular films. And I’ve been mostly fine with that, as the vast majority of games based on films were awful and not worth playing. Then again, we are getting a new 007 game from the Hitman devs, and a new Avatar one from Ubisoft, so it’s not like games based on movies are impossible to make these days.

And I think a Mission: Impossible game—if done right and given enough time and resources—could be amazing. Honestly, a game where you just recreate all the famous and dangerous stunts from the films would be great, like a new Stuntman but based entirely on Mission: Impossible scenes. Actually, it’s been a long time since we got a good Stuntman game, too.

Okay, new plan: Someone convince the right people to fund the development of a new Stuntman-like game based on Tom Cruise’s wildest Mission: Impossible stunts. That’s the game I want. Thank you.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Mario Kart World started off as an OG Switch game, and don’t worry, its driving cow is “still in touch with her animal nature”

by admin May 21, 2025

Mario Kart World started development back in 2017 as a game for the original Switch, but ended up becoming a Switch 2 one because it devs felt the tech boost was necessary to deliver the world bit of it. Said devs have also offered us some more info about its most important character – Cow.

Yep, that’s right. Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, they can all go do one. Moo Moo Meadows cow is the king of these streets, with an aura so powerful she can momentarily stop even the most outraged of Ninty fans from being unhappy about prices or worrying that they might not be able to make the switch to Switch 2 right away.

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These tidbits and more come from a new interview Nintendo’s put out with Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki, programming director Kenta Sato, art director Masaaki Ishikawa, planning team lead Shintaro Jikumaru, and music lead Atsuko Asahi that so long it’s been divided into four parts. So, make sure you go grab your beverage of choice first if you plan on reading it all in one go.

We were thinking about what to do for the next Mario Kart game even during the development of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and we began prototyping in March 2017,” Yabuki explained, “It was at the end of that year when we officially started work on it as a project. I felt that in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we were able to perfect the formula that we’d been following in the series up to that point, where players race on individual courses. That’s why, this time, we wanted the gameplay to involve players driving around a large world, and we began creating a world map like this.”

“When we were developing for the Nintendo Switch system,” Sato explained further on in the chat, “it was difficult for us to incorporate everything we wanted, so we were always conscious of what we were giving up in return. We discussed things like toning down the visuals, lowering the resolution, and we even considered dropping the frame rate to 30 fps in some cases. It was a tough situation.

“Yabuki-san first brought [the idea of switching to Switch 2] up around 2020. Back then, we already had an idea of the next system’s expected specs, but it wasn’t until a bit later that we actually received working development units. Until then, we just had to proceed with development based on provisional estimates.”

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“Of course, the graphics needed to be more detailed [due to being on Switch 2],” Ishikawa added, “But like Sato-san, I also felt like it was outweighed by the sense of relief. From the beginning, the designers were saying they wanted to make the art richer, so I thought we could achieve that now.”

The devs also explained how the driving Cow came to be, and offered a glimpse into her…er…mindset.

“Each new Mario Kart game features new characters to race with, but since we added so many to the previous game, we wondered where we could go from there,” Ishikawa explained, “And then one of the designers came up with [a] silly sketch of Cow cruising along, and I thought to myself, “This is it!” (Laughs) So that’s when we realized the course surroundings actually contained a lot of untapped resources.”

MK World’s devs call these environmental decoration characters who’ve gotten behind the wheel “NPC drivers”, with Yabuki noting that “it’s pretty funny to see a four-legged Cow holding onto motorcycle handlebars with her front hooves.”

Though, you shouldn’t worry, as Ishikawa insisted that he’s pretty sure Cow is “still in touch with her animal nature” due to the pose she assumes when she jumps, and that she’s “actually a pivotal character in the Mario Kart series” as a legacy of giving the devs ideas for other characters.

Will Cow become a pivotal character in your life once you get your hands on Mario Kart World? Let us know below!

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: passable GPU, shame about the drivers

by admin May 21, 2025

Zotac Gaming GeForce RTX 5060 Solo specs:

CUDA Cores: 3840
Base Clock Speed: 2.28GHz
Boost Clock Speed: 2.49GHz
VRAM: 8GB GDDR7
Power: 145W
Recommended System Power: 550W
Price: From £270 / $299

I’d so desperately like to do a graphics card review without the fug of a wider controversy (or cacked-up market conditions), but the RTX 50 series hasn’t been particularly cooperative in that regard, so why should the RTX 5060 be any different? This time, the sadness cloud comes wafting from Nvidia themselves, amid accusations of engineering dodgy RTX 5060 previews and attempting to trade access for greater coverage of its Multi Frame Generation (MFG) capability.

Such scheming, if true and intentional, would suggest a remarkable lack of faith in the RTX 5060’s core, un-frame-genned performance. Yet now that I’ve spent some quality time with the card myself – independent of any tit-for-tat preview shenanigans, obviously – it really isn’t that bad, on pure hardware terms. It’s not equipped for cut-price 1440p but as an affordable 1080p pusher, it’s fine. Adequate. Reasonable. Hardly some catastrophe that needs a thunder-running PR offensive to cover up with MFG figures.

The drivers, though? Now there’s a disaster. And not because of the convention-breaking lack of early review software for press hacks – I got access to the RTX 5060’s Game Reader Driver 576.52 update at the same time everyone else did, when both it and the GPU released on May 19th. The real problem is that it’s the latest in a series of GeForce driver updates that have invited all manner of unforced errors upon games old and new, including several of my benchmarking regulars.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Some, like Horizon Forbidden West and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, began suffering sustained framerate drops that they’ve never exhibited before. Meanwhile, Metro Exodus would crash on startup, and F1 24 would perform worse with Nvidia’s precious DLSS frame generation than without. Even if these aren’t the fault of the RTX 5060 hardware, these driver problems are just yet more bad vibes around a graphics card that should be – like the RTX 3060 and, after a while, the RTX 4060 before it – a people’s champion.

This is, after all, the more affordable RTX 50 GPU of the bunch, and thus the least taxing entry point (literally, if you’re over the pond in Tariffs Land) into full-spectrum DLSS 4 support. In fact the very model you see here, the nicely compact Zotac GeForce RTX 5060 Solo, is one of several that are actually selling at RRP/MSRP, or £270 / $299. That’s a snip, by 2025 standards, especially when most RTX 5060 Ti models have already gained a few quid. If nothing else, then it’s at least worth looking for some upsides.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: 1440p benchmarks

Granted, 1440p maybe isn’t the best place to start the search. After various restarts and reloads, I did eventually get some usable data from the 576.52 drivers, and at native resolution the RTX 5060 does make for visibly smoother framerates than the RTX 4060 in most games – Metro Exodus and Total War: Warhammer III especially. But then it only produced a single extra frame in Forbidden West, forcing it to drop behind the older and cheaper Intel Arc B580. That’s an underdog GPU that the RTX 5060 could also only hold to a draw in both Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 24.

Click to embiggen! | Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

The RPS test PC:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
RAM: 32GB Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5
Motherboard: MSI MPG X870E Carbon WiFi
PSU: NZXT C1000 Gold

Points for coming close to the Radeon RX 7700 XT, a potential challenger from the second-hand market, but if I was speccing a 1440p rig on a budget, I’d still save up for an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB. In part because the VRAM difference does become evident at this kind of rez, particularly in Forbidden West, which had a certain jittery quality that I don’t think is entirely explained by the lower frame output alone. Playable evidence suggests 8GB is okay for most 1080p games, despite recent grumbles from tech enthusiasts, but an extra 8GB on top of that likely will help cope with the rigours of Quad HD.

You’ll also need to invest more if you want to partake in path tracing. Even with Quality DLSS upscaling, neither of my path traced test games could reach 30fps on the RTX 5060, again making an argument for the RTX 5060 Ti. MFG could get the numbers up, but only Cyberpunk 2077 at 2x felt remotely playable: at 4x, input lag went off the charts, and Alan Wake II had a similarly sludgy feeling (along with noticeable blurring on camera movements).

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

DLSS 4 is still the best overall upscaler/frame gen package in the biz, but as I seem to say every time it comes up, it just doesn’t work as a means of smoothening out low performance. It’s great at taking quite-fast games and making them look even slicker, but that really needs a foundation of ordinarily rendered frames for DLSS to generate new ones from; without that, it’s the gaming hardware equivalent of sitting in a rusty wheelbarrow with a Ferrari livery. You’ll pick up some good speeds on the right hill, but won’t enjoy the sensation.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 review: 1080p benchmarks

Life is much better at 1080p. The B580 still beats the RTX 5060 in Horizon, but only by a few frames, and it’s practically on par with the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in Metro and Cyberpunk. Not far behind in Warhammer III or Assassin’s Creed Mirage, either.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Vitally, there’s also – more often than not – a decent improvement on the RTX 4060, especially in Metro and Cyberpunk. This is sustained with the application of regular ray tracing, too. Adding Ultra-quality RT effects to Metro only brought the RTX 5060 down to 77fps, while the RTX 4060 managed 62fps.

Will it consistently fill out a 165Hz monitor on max quality? No, but then for less than £300 it doesn’t need to. It’s fine. Adequate. Reasonable, I remember someone saying. VRAM-wise, you should probably think about whether you might like to upgrade to 1440p within this card’s shelf life, but for the time being it does look like you can get away with 8GB at 1080p. I didn’t see much more of that jittering in Forbidden West, for one thing, and a side-jaunt into Doom: The Dark Ages – with its always-on ray tracing and Ultra Nightmare settings – produced a smooth, stutter-free 73fps, once again besting the RTX 4060 at 60fps.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

Path tracing remains a questionable endeavour, mind. Although the RTX 5060 could crawl to an ostensibly playable 30fps-plus in both games at this lower rez, this wasn’t enough to avoid an offputting deluge of input lag once MFG tried to make up the difference. Alan Wake 2 wasn’t as blurry as at 1440p, but still, it felt sharper to just have Ultra-quality ray tracing at 44fps instead.

In fairness, I did find a use case for MFG in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. With Ultra settings, DLSS on Quality and all ray tracing effects enabled, Nvidia’s tech turned 53fps into 88fps on 2x and 150fps with a 4x override. Crucially, neither of the heightened results came with excessive latency, thanks largely to the fact that the RTX 5060 was already running the game acceptably without them.

Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun

It’s just unfortunate that to get these numbers, I had to re-run the test every time one of those newfound framerate collapses took place, on top of having to restart the game after every settings change because otherwise they’d kill performance for no apparent reason. That’s not because of a recent bad patch on Bioware’s part, and it’s certainly not a problem with how the RTX 5060 itself is engineered, with Zotac’s single fan keeping peak GPU temps to a sensible 68°c. Nope, this was the fault of my lifelong enemy for the past two days: those 576.52 drivers.

A possibility exists that they’ll be fixed, and might not even be replaced by something worse, but at this point, there have been enough faulty Game Ready drivers – whose faults are usually specific to the RTX 50 series – that it’s become a problem for the entire GPU family. Sadly, that has to include the RTX 5060. By Nvidia’s own hand, this puts it in the unenviable position of being the most powerful and flexible 1080p graphics card in its price range yet also one that makes the words “Yes, you should buy this” disproportionately difficult to say out loud. Why would, or should, someone invest in a component when its requisite drivers have such a high chance of breaking their games?

This review is based on a retail unit provided by the manufacturer.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Michael Bay Skibidi Toilet adaptation officially in production

by admin May 21, 2025

A Skibidi Toilet adaptation from Michael Bay is officially in production.

The project was first floated last year, when it was reported there had been talks to launch a Skibidi Toilet film and TV franchise, with The Rock and Armageddon director attached. It left me scratching my head a bit, to be honest.

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But fast forward to today, and those talks are now firmed up, with the news that yes, we are indeed going to be getting a Skibidi Toilet adaptation from Michael Bay.

Media Company Invisible Narratives – of which Bay serves as a chief creative advisor – will be producing, developing, and financing the project. You can see an image of its Skibidi Toilet project on the company’s website (or you can look at the screenshot I took below).

Bay along with partner Jeffrey Beecroft have reportedly been working on their Skibidi Toilet project since last summer, with a press release stating it is “an early creative take on the franchise”, which will bring “Bay’s signature visual intensity to one of the internet’s most unlikely breakout IPs”.

Image credit: Invisible Narratives

Skibidi Toilet, for those still mercifully unaware, is an enormously-popular online animation series made using Valve’s Source Filmmaker software and featuring assets from Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike. It features a race of evil toilets with human heads, and has clocked up a whopping 65bn views on YouTube, another 15bn on Tiktok, and is ubiquitous on Roblox, where countless spin-off games lie.

Elsewhere in adaptation news, yesterday Netflix announced it was gearing up to release a Clash of Clans animated series, which will feature a “determined but in-over-his-head Barbarian who must rally a band of misfits to defend their village and navigate the comically absurd politics of war”.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Jurassic World Rebirth Trailer Reveals Super Cute Backpack Dino

by admin May 21, 2025

Screenshot: Universal / Kotaku

Jurassic World Rebirth’s second and final trailer is here and while it gives us a good look at the big nasty dino stalking our heroes, the only thing I care about is that cute dinosaur hanging out in a backpack. I love that dinosaur now and I’ll protect it with my life.

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On May 20, Universal released the final trailer for its upcoming Jurassic sequel, Jurassic World Rebirth aka Jurassic Park 7: Jurassic World 4: Rebirth. In the trailer we get a better look at the new hybrid monstrosity as it seemingly breaks out of Ingen’s lab. We also see what might be another hybrid with wings attack our heroes, too. And for fans of the original Jurassic Park books, this new movie is going to finally recreate the scary T-Rex river sequence.

But whatever, who cares about all of that. What I want to see more of is that adorable dino hanging out in that young girl’s backpack. It looks like a baby triceratops and I love it so much. Hopefully she and her new owner make it off dino island in one piece.

Here’s the full synopsis from Universal:

Five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, the planet’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived.

The three most colossal creatures within that tropical biosphere hold the key to a drug that will bring miraculous life-saving benefits to humankind.

Johansson plays skilled covert operations expert Zora Bennett, contracted to lead a skilled team on a top-secret mission to secure genetic material from the world’s three most massive dinosaurs.

When Zora’s operation intersects with a civilian family whose boating expedition was capsized by marauding aquatic dinos, they all find themselves stranded on an island where they come face-to-face with a sinister, shocking discovery that’s been hidden from the world for decades.

Jurassic World Rebirth is directed by Garth Edwards (Rogue One, Monsters) and written by OG Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp. The new sequel is set to hit theaters on July 2 and stars Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey, and Mahershala Ali.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Fortnite is back on the US App Store, as Epic and Apple’s legal battle royale over it concludes with a 55-year-old exec tweeting the word “fam”

by admin May 21, 2025

Fortnite’s available on iOS in the US again, with Epic and Apple’s legal tussle over it seemingly having concluded, at least for now. Epic Games has at least managed to get one of the outcomes it wanted out of all the hoohah, and its CEO has reponded as only he could – by letting all know we’re his “fam”.

As we’ve recently chromicled, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney launched a fresh effort to get Apple to agree to re-admit the game to its App Store following a judge issuing a pretty damning verdict against the fruit company earlier this month. The suit was actually all about payment options and the cut Apple takes of them, in case you’ve forgotten in the five years it’s rumbled on for.

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Now, though, tensions have seemigly cooled, with the two sides having concluded their bickering over Fortnite’s return to the US App Store by filing a joint notice stating they have “resolved all issues”. That’s after Epic went back to the judge presiding over the case in response to the initial trouble it appeared to be having getting the game through Apple’s review process.

“Fortnite is BACK on the App Store in the U.S. on iPhones and iPads…and on the Epic Games Store and AltStore in the E.U,” Epic has since announced, “It’ll show up in Search soon!”

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“We back fam,” Epic CEO Tim Sweeney, a 55-year-old exec, tweeted in response to the game making its comeback. Am I being a bit harsh suggesting that it’s a bit embarrassing for someone firmly in the dad to grandad age range to be using the word fam in reference to them getting their way in some legal wranglings over who gets the cash people spend on games that turned into an argument over one game returning to one storefront? Maybe, but does have a very ‘How do you do, fellow kids’ feel to it.

Folks in the EU have been able to enjoy iOS Fortnite again for a little while now, but this is a big day for Apple users in the states who’ve been having to get their mobile Fortnite fix by listening to this song on repeat.

You can finally talk to the AI Darth Vader that’s led Epic and Llama Productions to have an unfair labour practice charge filed against them by SAG-AFTRA.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Fortnite finally back on Apple devices in US and Europe

by admin May 21, 2025

Fortnite is finally back on iOS devices in the US and Europe, after a five-year legal battle between Epic and Apple.

Despite a “peace proposal” being offered by Epic at the start of the month, Apple later blocked the return of Fortnite in the US. When Epic returned to the judge of the legal case to review its Fortnite submission, the judge responded Apple is “fully capable of resolving this issue without further briefing or a hearing” and warned the official who is “personally responsible for ensuring compliance” would have to return for a hearing (thanks TheVerge).

The two companies have since filed a joint notice stating they have “resolved all issues”.

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As such, Fortnite has now returned to iOS devices, with Epic boss Tim Sweeney writing on social media “we back fam”.

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Though Fortnite had already returned to iOS devices in the European Union, Apple’s block of the game in the US delayed a regular update to the game, forcing all versions to be taken down.

Of course, the UK is no longer in the EU, meaning Fortnite is not yet available here on iOS. It’s expected in the second half of this year.

Back in 2020, Epic added a direct in-game payment option in Fortnite to circumvent Apple and Google’s official in-app purchase options, from which those companies take a 30 percent cut.

In retaliation, Apple pulled Fortnite from its App Store, sparking the five-year feud.

A verdict was finally reached earlier this month, when the US District Court of Northern California found Apple in “wilful violation” of the court’s previous injunction designed to prohibit the company’s “anticompetitive conduct and anticompetitive pricing”.

That injunction meant Apple had to allow purchases for apps from outside websites, to which it agreed but levied a 27 percent fee. The court stated this move “strains credulity” and that Apple’s goal “was to dissuade customer usage of alternative purchase opportunities and maintain its anticompetitive revenue stream”. The court verdict added: “In the end, Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this Court’s Injunction.”

Sweeney wrote on social media “Game over for the Apple Tax” and stated Fortnite would return to the iOS App store. Now, it finally has.

Writing on social media last night, Sweeney said: “Thanks to everyone who supported the effort to open up mobile competition and #FreeFortnite from the very beginning. And thanks to all of the folks who initially sided with Apple then later came around to the winning side, supporting app developer rights and consumer rights.”

Fortnite has immediately risen to the top free game on iOS in the US.

Epic has this week been in hot water due to the addition of AI Darth Vader to Fortnite, which was quickly used to spout bad language. A hot fix has since been issued, but actors’ union SAG-AFTRA has filed an unfair labour practice charge in retaliation for the use of AI.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Tom Cruise Is A Movie Theater Popcorn Sicko

by admin May 21, 2025

Tom Cruise is one of the most famous and successful actors in history. He’s starred in huge movies and franchises. He’s pulled off some of the most amazing stunts ever performed on film. And he’s become Hollywood’s ambassador of Going To The Movies. But I can’t relate to any of that. So let’s talk instead about how this famous dude seems be a big movie theater popcorn sicko.

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On May 20, the official Mission: Impossible Twitter account posted a short video of Cruise chatting up AMC employees during a big pre-release screening of the latest entry in the long-running series. As he talks about the upcoming film, Final Reckoning, Cruise can be seen eating popcorn in his distinctive way.

We can also see the famous actor munching on popcorn in this same way in a different video recently posted to social media. Once again, Cruise can be seen carrying a bucket of popcorn with one hand and chucking small handfuls of the snack food into his mouth with the other.

It’s a bit odd, but it looks cooler than how I eat popcorn at a movie theater. (I just grab a big handful of the stuff, smoosh it into my face, and eat it like a pony being fed at a petting zoo.)

If these were the only clips of Tom Cruise eating popcorn, well, I’d not be writing this blog. But this is just the latest evidence that Tom Cruise, the movie star, is a popcorn sicko. Here’s a clip of him leaving that AMC theater while eating more popcorn. There’s also a video of Cruise walking by someone and pointing out that they already ate all of their popcorn before the movie had even started. Here’s a clip from 2015 of Cruise warning people to hold onto their popcorn during that year’s big Mission: Impossible movie, Rogue Nation.

Apparently, before this recent Final Reckoning screening, Cruise asked the assembled audience of critics and reporters if they all had popcorn. Once he seemed satisfied that, yes, they all had plenty of the popular buttery snack, he then admitted how much popcorn he eats during a movie. Cruise reportedly eats two buckets of popcorn while enjoying a film. As someone who has had to routinely leave a movie right before it starts to refill my bucket, I get it, dude.

I am far from the first person to recognize that Cruise really seems to have an affinity for the stuff. In 2023, a short video of Cruise eating popcorn and talking about how much he loved it went semi-viral.

“I love my popcorn. Movies. Popcorn,” said Cruise in the 2023 clip. And I have to agree with the man. Movie theater popcorn rocks.

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May 21, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

“Cannot wait for what is yet to come” As The Witcher 3 turns 10, CD Projekt devs share the defining memories it created and look to the future

by admin May 21, 2025

The Witcher 3 has just turned 10 years old. Yep, time flies when you’re running around The Continent slaying beasties and also saving the world from becoming a bit chilly. Naturally, a bunch of devs at CD Projekt have chosen to commemorate the anniversary be sharing their defining memories of the game’s development, as well as do a bit of looking forward.

Most of their thoughts were shared on Twitter, as a response to the studio putting out a post in recognition of it being ten years since TW3 debuted all the way back on May 18, 2015. God, I can’t even process how many hours of my life the game’s nicked since that point, and I was relatively late to the party with it – bouncing off a couple of times before things finally clicked.

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Starting off, Pawe&lstrok; Sasko – current associate game director on Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel and a quest designer on TW3, wrote as part of a thread: “I was there from the very first day, saw it develop from the first pitch, have been so lucky to impact it’s shape to some small degree, and never thought you will love it this much. Art does not exist without the audience and you all are an important part of this story.

“I want to make you proud of us and excited again,” he added, “Capture the lightning in the bottle, give you lifetime of memories, make you laugh and break down crying. So we can have another anniversary like this, one day again.”

Decade ago we have shipped The Witcher 3 — game that now only changed the course of my life, but impacted the future of the whole studio. I had such a high hopes regarding this game, but never really thought any of it is really possible. Feeling really blessed and thankful 🥺 pic.twitter.com/EE98kQNGDi

— Pawe&lstrok; Sasko (@PaweSasko) May 18, 2025

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Meanwhile, CD Projekt joint-CEO Micha&lstrok; Nowakowski recalled: “10 years ago, I remember being exhausted, anxious (to see the scores and players’ reactions), buzzing with excitement I think no one on the team had a decent sleep that night and we were all refreshing websites of media sites.

“In the year prior to that launch I spent more time on the road preaching W3 to our partners than I did at home with my family. If there ever was game changer in my professional life, I think that was it more than anything else before. Cheers to the fantastic CDPR Team and to all the fans that have been with us through all the good and bad. Cannot wait for what is yet to come.”

Those two were far from alone, with a number of devs currently working on The Witcher 4 and/or Cyberpunk 2 – including narrative director Philipp Weber, cinematic director Kajetan Kapu&sacute;ci&nacute;ski, and senior cinematic designer/coordinator Micha&lstrok; Zbrze&zacute;niak – joining in. “I still remember just watching the wind in the trees on an early version of Skellige,” Weber wrote.

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CD Projekt comms staffers Marcin Momot and Pawel Burza both wrote about firing the game up for the first time, and we even got a post from the voice of Geralt. “What a time it’s been friends…” wrote actor Doug Cockle, clearly keen to provide a line that’d sound cool in a gravelly voice ahead of featuring in a CD Projekt stream celebrating the anniversary that’s set for later today (May 19) – you can catch that stream here at 4PM BST/11AM ET.

What are your favorite Witcher 3 memories and how tough a task do you think the series’ currently under construction next entry will have following in its award-winning footsteps? Let us know below!

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May 21, 2025 0 comments