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Wars

Putting Star Wars in Destiny 2 sounded like a slam dunk, but the morning after Renegade’s release date was announced, players seem unhappier than ever

by admin September 11, 2025

It’s not a good time for Bungie. This year’s Destiny 2 expansion, The Edge of Fate, is widely regarded as one of the worst expansions the game has ever seen – a big feat to achieve when you’re 11 years old. As intriguing as some of the new story developments in the expanding world of Destiny are, little could soften the impact of some atrocious decision-making from the sandbox and gear teams within the studio: the grind in Destiny has rarely been worse, and fans’ patience for the MMOFPS is becoming increasingly thin.

Even the blowout reveal of what should have been a slam dunk for Bungie – a Star Wars collab that was initially announced back in May – has been met with apathy and disinterest. Renegades (to give the event its proper name) will be the first ever crossover-themed campaign in Destiny’s complicated history, and operates in a muddy middle ground between full crossover and vague skin-based collab.

“Renegades merges Destiny’s distinctive storytelling and gameplay with themes and elements drawn from the iconic sci-fi franchise,” Bungie enthuses in its own press release. In the expansion, we “will defy the Vanguard” to pursue Drifter across Sol, navigating a world of shadows and syndicates in the new social hub, Tharsis Outpost, as we work across story missions to build a crew and resist a rising faction tied to the Nine.

Go and see a Star War.Watch on YouTube

As you can see from the video above, Renegades positions an activity called the Lawless Frontier front and center: per Bungie, it’s “a chaotic, cooperative new game mode, where players take on a variety of high-risk jobs and contracts to earn reputation, unlock all-new Renegade abilities that change the tide of battle, and wield weapons that include the iconic Praxic Blade and an energy-based arsenal from the new Blaster archetype.” A new dungeon is also promised to land after the expansion’s launch on 2nd December.

But, frankly, who cares? This should have been a home run for Bungie – a big crossover like this is often catnip for MMO ride-or-dies – but the general consensus amongst the community at the moment is one of exhausted apathy. After the presentation that debuted information on both Renegades and the other incoming expansion, Ash & Iron, the top post on Destiny’s dedicated Subreddit reads: I think tonight this is a breakpoint for many people and Bungie as a whole. Another bemoans “Almost everything in this “Major Update” is reskinned/reissued, except [the paid shop]”, and every single top post in the dedicated megathread about Renegades is critical of Bungie.

Now, I’ve been a member of /r/DestinyTheGame for about 12 years, and even since the early days (alpha and beta for D1!), the sub has had toxicity issues. Go figure. But this is something else: I don’t think I’ve ever seen the community so fed up and bored with basically everything that is suggested.

The problem is three-fold: as well as Bungie losing key staff that have overseen the Destiny vision since inception, the remaining designers have also implemented sandbox aspects players actively hate – namely, The Portal, a high-grind, low-reward anomaly of game design that actively punishes you for wanting choice in the things you do and the gear you equip. Decisions like these seem to manifest because of a studio culture that “stem from a lack of player empathy, disconnected leadership, and a corporate-first culture,” per one recent report.

Diminishing returns. | Image credit: Eurogamer/SteamDB

At this point, it feels like Bungie’s back is against a wall: player numbers are dropping, player satisfaction is low, and even massive crossover events like Star Wars are failing to stem the haemorrhaging. As a big new update lands, concurrent player counts on Steam are even struggling to reach 50k – a historic low for the game. Will this trend reverse by December, when the Star Wars update actually launches? We’ll have to wait and see but right now, it doesn’t seem likely.

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September 11, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

A Star Wars AR Game Got Me Playing With Virtual Action Figures Like I Was 6 Years Old

by admin September 10, 2025

It took less than a minute after donning a Meta Quest 3 headset before I was reliving some of my best memories from childhood in augmented reality, sitting on the floor with my digital Star Wars action figures creating fantastical scenes from a galaxy far, far away.

Last week, I visited Meta’s Los Angeles offices a mile from the city’s sunny beaches to try out an upcoming game, Star Wars: Beyond Victory, due out October 7 only for the Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S headsets. The game is developed by Industrial Light and Magic, the special effects wizards that brought the Star Wars galaxy to life with starships and lasers, lightsabers and space battles.

Star Wars: Beyond Victory was first revealed at Star Wars Celebration earlier this year, where ILM teased the game’s central story mode. In it, players take on the role of an up-and-coming podracer guided by the legendary Sebulba, racing rival of Anakin Skywalker in Episode I: The Phantom Menace. In Meta’s offices, I donned a Meta Quest 3 headset and played an early section of the story, including a podrace.

While I was expecting immersive full-screen podracing much like in the Nintendo 64 classic game Episode 1: Racer, Star Wars: Beyond Victory is very different, leaning into the Meta Quest’s augmented reality capabilities to portray racing on, functionally, a digital game table hovering above the real world room I was in. ILM’s developers told me that given concerns over making players nauseous when racing in high-speed VR, they opted to make the game’s action play out on a table in AR that gamers can resize to their liking, while still controlling their racer from a bird’s eye view.

“The original podracing prototypes were based on slot car races because that was like thinking about racing cars in your room,” said David Palumbo, senior experience designer at ILM and for Star Wars: Beyond Victory. “Eventually we hit on that holo-table prototype, and that sort of shifted the way we thought about mixed reality gameplay in a really fun way.”

In my four-person race I finished a distant third, but there’s a delightful novelty in reaching out with my Meta Quest controllers and — this will be important later — digitally grabbing the gameplay board to move it around or resize it to my liking. It felt tactile and responsive, letting me place it in the perfect spot to survey the action as I stood up. The ILM developers described their different approaches: one placed it before them while they were sitting, while another got down on the ground to play, much like they did with toy cars as a kid.

“I also think it plays really well with the nostalgia of what we’re doing with action figures and playing with these little toys,” said Harvey Whitney, senior producer at ILM and for Star Wars: Beyond Victory. “I remember as a kid every Christmas either getting a slot car or RC car, and so now being able to do that with Star Wars toys and flying them around and driving around, it just works so well.”

Star Wars: Beyond Victory’s Adventure mode is a story campaign around a rookie podracer climbing the ranks, while Arcade lets players jump into quick races.

Industrial Light and Magic

I only spent around 20 minutes with the Adventure mode, so it’s impossible to comment on how the storyline or podracing gameplay will be in its full release, though it does have an interesting voice cast including Lewis MacLeod (returning to voice Sebulba as he did in The Phantom Menace) and Saturday Night Live’s Bobby Moynihan. Set in the period between the third and fourth Star Wars movies with the Galactic Empire in power but before the Rebel Alliance gets organized, Beyond Victory will tell a story about racing life on the fringes of the galaxy — an aspect of the franchise that’s surprisingly rarely explored given how important hot-rodding was to creator George Lucas and how much it influenced the original films.

Throughout Beyond Victory’s story mode, your podracing rookie will run into some characters from ILM’s previous AR game, Star Wars: Tales From The Galaxy’s Edge, along with a few iconic figures from the movies. But you won’t just be meeting them: many of the cast in the Adventure mode can be unlocked to play with in the Playset mode, which is where I spent most of my time in my preview assembling my own Star Wars scene, bringing my childhood play to the augmented reality future.

Playset mode allows players to pick and choose models of characters, structures and vehicles to move and pose as they please.

Industrial Light and Magic

Star Wars: Beyond Victory is for reliving your childhood

Adventure mode plays through a story with cinematics and climactic races, while Arcade mode allows you to play quick podracing matches, including taking your story rivals’ speedsters for a spin. The aptly named Playset mode lets players make their own dioramas using the characters, scene elements and special effects from Adventure and Arcade.

I clicked on Playset mode from the game’s menu…and immediately felt like I’d popped open a toybox. I used my Meta Quest controllers to sort through an in-game menu and pluck out aliens, droids, vehicles and objects to populate my scene. While I couldn’t physically pick them up, using the grabber functionality on my controllers (which looked like a pair of robot claw arms) was very intuitive. I carefully hovered over specific parts of each character, tweaking limbs and joints to pose them just so.

Regrettably, I wasn’t allowed to take photos of my creation, which was less a film-accurate recreation and more a hodgepodge of oddball characters scattered around a metal causeway — exactly how it felt to upend my toy chest and cobble together a scene from whatever random action figures I had on hand. I sat bounty hunters and podracers around a table, lorded over by a giant slug-like Hutt walking on spider legs (Graccus, a crime boss from Adventure mode) and stood C-3PO up on the side wielding a lightsaber, because why not.

Arcade mode lets players use racers and pods from rivals they raced against in Adventure mode.

Industrial Light and Magic

While I couldn’t physically touch everything, there are several advantages to the digital nature of augmented reality. I could grab a character and make them bigger to more precisely move their limbs around and then shrink them back to the size I wanted (or leave them huge, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman-style). There were also digital effects to add, like explosions, smoke and laser bolts. It was while angling one of the Empire’s iconic TIE Fighter vehicles up above my diorama and placing green laser blasts as if they’d just been shot from the fighter that I felt a sort of technical glee from staging a scene — a frozen moment of tension and adventure that felt, well, Star Wars.

Playset mode and the “action figure”-esque technology behind it are inspired by a pre-visulization tool ILM built for filmmakers to stage their own scenes, albeit one far more technically complex that’s full of “menus within menus,” as Palumbo described it. The game’s developers made Beyond Victory’s version far more simplified for gamers, he continued, citing a mantra I heard repeated multiple times during my preview: “The main driving philosophical difference was toys, not tools.”

Palumbo has been working in virtual reality since the Oculus Rift’s second developer kit was released back in 2014 and emphasized how much playtesting went into developing Beyond Victory. He called out the game’s accessibility options like having both seated and standing modes to play as well as completely mirrored controls for players to be able to use either hand. It should be no surprise that ILM is filled with Star Wars fans who offered feedback on how things should feel in the game, with Whitney shouting out quality assurance manager Marissa Martinez-Hoadley’s specific corrections about how things like a lightsaber should feel and operate.

That attention to detail has been what’s made Star Wars toys the implements of magic for decades of kids (and kids at heart). Beyond Victory brings that joy to augmented reality with some novel perks using its visualization tech: during my preview upon the ILM developer’s suggestion, I took the lightsaber out of my toy-sized C-3PO’s hands and scaled it up fill my hand. With the press of a button, I ignited the lightsaber and waved it around, looking and sounding straight from the films — digital, perhaps, but real enough to thrill the kid inside me.

Star Wars: Beyond Victory will be released on Oct. 7 exclusively for the Meta Quest 3 and Meta Quest 3S.

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September 10, 2025 0 comments

Destiny 2 Guardians celebrate a new expansion.

Game Reviews

If Star Wars Can’t Save Destiny 2 I’m Not Sure Anything Can

by admin September 9, 2025

This year’s The Edge of Fate is arguably one of Destiny 2‘s worst expansions ever. Some great story beats and cool moments could not salvage one of the most disappointing loot grinds in the history of the game. Less than two months since launching, Steam concurrent numbers for Bungie’s MMO shooter have fallen off a cliff to all-time lows. On Tuesday the Sony-owned studio streamed a deep-dive into what feels like Destiny 2‘s last chance for a major rebound: the Star Wars-themed expansion Renegades.

Out December 2, the first crossover-themed campaign in the live service game’s history was originally teased back in May. Fans had been wondering just how deep the collaboration would go. Would it just incorporate Star Wars motifs into Destiny 2‘s world, or be a full-on mash-up that would bleed more deeply between the disparate science fictions? The answer is somewhere in the middle.

“Renegades merges Destiny’s distinctive storytelling and gameplay with themes and elements drawn from the iconic sci-fi franchise,” Bungie wrote in its announcement. In practice this seems to mean a sci-fi Western with ties to deep Destiny 2 lore that features lightsabers, AT-ST walkers, and lots of Star Wars sound effects, if for no other reason than it all sounds really cool. Also an X-Wing jumpship that is literally just an X-Wing.

Destiny 2: Renegades will revolve around rising through the ranks of the criminal underworld in a Mos Eisley-like outpost called Tharsis as players confront a new Cabal faction called the Barant Imperium. You’ll perform jobs for competing syndicates to curry favor and unlock new gear and options as the difficulty, rewards, and chaos keep escalating. Following the Drifter’s lead and going rogue, Renegades will ultimately try to tie things back to the mystery of The Nine that kicked off Destiny 2‘s current Year of Prophecy.

There’s a lot of ideas that sound interesting, and fun mechanics like a very Helldivers 2-coded option to call down ammo crate drop pods that kill enemies in the process. And there’s also a lot of Star Wars stuff like the lightsaber, which is actually a new weapon called the Praxic Blade that players will collect and customize the parts for across the Renegades campaign and the upcoming dungeon. There will be different colors and even the ability to deflect incoming fire back at enemies like in the movies.

Will all of this fit together in a way that feels exciting and natural and not like a licensed cash-grab that only further dilutes the mystery and mystique around the Destiny 2 universe? I have my doubts. Would I like a mercenary-themed Destiny 2 campaign about navigating competing factions and featuring non-linear mission progressions? Absolutely. Do I want to play a Star Wars MMO that functions like a shooter? Hell yeah. Do I want those things thrown into a blender? At this point, definitely not. Hopefully Renegades can prove me wrong.

Fixing Destiny 2 starts with Ash and Iron

Today’s mini-showcase was also the latest milestone on Bungie’s “fix Destiny 2” tour which continues with the free Ash and Iron update. It brings back the Plaguelands from the original Destiny and adds a new three-player activity called Reclaim, about golden age tech and the Vex. There’s lots of new gear, more lore drops around Maya, and an event coming later called Call to Arms that will see Devrim Kay finally leave his European Deadzone bell tower. There’s a new exotic mission coming as well with Iron Banner, Festival of the Lost, and more that will be detailed in an upcoming roadmap.

More important are the fixes Bungie is promising leading up to Renegades in December. The studio wants to make the current power climb faster and improve overall rewards from activities. There will be upcoming buffs for supers and subclasses, alongside a pause on nerfs and balance changes as Bungie tries to right the ship. The “road to Renegades” will begin with making the loot chase more rewarding across the entire game, especially in raids and dungeons and for fireteams of three taking on the hardest activities. The proof will be in how that actually gets implemented, though.

Bungie is still trying to tinker around the edges of its new systems implemented in The Edge of Fate. It could be an improvement, or it could lead to even more convoluted overlapping systems that foster bad incentives and boring activity loops. Destiny 2 is at the point where it needs drastic overhauls that make it more fun but also much simpler. With 10 years of storytelling wrapped after last year’s The Final Shape expansion, it feels like Destiny 2 needs to be content with becoming a casual session-based game rather than a weekly second job and build from there. There’s plenty of interesting stuff coming down the road, but I’m not yet convinced hitting the Star Wars button will be enough.

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September 9, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Switch 2’s Most Impressive Port, Star Wars Outlaws, Just Got Better

by admin September 9, 2025

Star Wars: Outlaws recently landed on Nintendo Switch 2, and despite some initial fears that it would look and run terribly, the game is a bit of a technical marvel and easily the most impressive Switch 2 port yet. And now, a new update has improved this already wonderful-looking open-world action game on Nintendo’s hybrid console. Plus, a demo is coming, too.

Ubisoft and Massive’s open-world Star Wars: Outlaws was an incredibly gorgeous game when it launched last year. Sure, stealth sections could be annoying and combat could feel a bit stiff, but getting to walk around a perfectly recreated section of the Star Wars universe freely was amazing. And some later updates improved the game a lot, introducing some visual improvements on top of some significant gameplay tweaks. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when I booted up Outlaws on a Switch 2. Turns out, Ubisoft Red Lynx, who ported the game, did an amazing job. While it’s capped at 30FPS and lacks some of the higher-fidelity assets from the bigger console ports, this version of Outlaws is extremely playable, looks sharp, and feels great in handheld mode. As explained by Digital Foundry, it’s truly an extraordinary port. Now, Ubisoft has made it look even better with the game’s first Switch 2 update.

On September 8, Ubisoft put out a patch for Star Wars: Outlaws on Switch 2 that features numerous visual improvements. Players should now see less “pop in,” less flickering smoke, better shadows, nicer-looking leaves, and a host of other “small visual fixes.” For a game that already felt like it was pushing the Switch 2’s hardware to its limits, I’m impressed by Ubisoft cranking the knob a bit more to eke out an even nicer-looking port.

Oh, and if you want to see the game in action on your Switch 2 without buying it, good news: Ubisoft has updated the game’s FAQ page to confirm that a demo for Outlaws is coming. Ubisoft says it will “share more information soon” about this upcoming demo. Anyway, here’s the full patch list for the new Outlaws update on Switch 2.

General Gameplay

Fixed several issues where NPCs would not spawn, e.g. when chasing Kay during the ‘Crashed’ quest on Toshara
Reduced likelihood of Kay being stuck when traversing the environment
Improved hiding and detection when in tall grass on Akiva
Various stability improvements and other minor fixes

Graphics

Improvements made to visual quality when moving quickly through the world or using binoculars, with less “pop in”
Reduced flickering with smoke and lighting
Improved shadows at the edge of the screen when moving in cities and stations
Improved quality of leaves, cloth and other things that let light through
Various other small visual fixes and improvements

Camera

Fixed camera movement when traversing certain objects in certain ways with Kay

Fixed controller image types and directional button prompts when switching between Joy-Con and Pro Controller
Fixed the gadget inventory HUD not resizing when using the handheld preset custom scaling settings

Wild Card Story Pack

Fixed an issue where NPCs would not be highlighted when using Nix to plant a card

A Pirate’s Fortune Story Pack

Mynocks are now visible when attached to your ship

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September 9, 2025 0 comments

Esports

Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 launch on Game-Key Card was down to performance, not cost

by admin September 8, 2025

Star Wars Outlaws made its Nintendo Switch 2 debut last week, but rather than releasing the game on a physical cartridge Ubisoft opted for the Game-Key Card.

No data is stored in this card – instead it includes a digital license that requires the full game to be downloaded to the console’s internal storage to play.

Ubisoft’s decision to put Outlaws on a Game-Key Card became a topic of discussion on social media, with Digital Foundry’s John Linnerman pondering whether it was to do with the cost of manufacturing the Switch 2’s 64GB cartridge.

In response, Ubisoft audio architect Rob Bantin said the Switch 2 cards “simply don’t give the performance” needed to run the developer’s engine Snowdrop.

“Snowdrop relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments, and we found the Switch 2 cards simply don’t give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for”, Bantin wrote.

“I don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion – probably because it was moot.”

They continued: “I think if we’d designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up, it might have been different. As it was, we’d build a game around the SSDs of the initial target platforms (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC), and then the Switch 2 came along a while later.

“In this case I think our leadership made the right call.”

Overall, Nintendo’s decision to introduce Game-Key Cards has been a controversial one. Especially when it comes to game preservation, as many are concerned that these cards will be dependent on servers supporting them.

Once those servers are turned off, as happened with the Wii U and 3DS eShops, these games may become unplayable. You can read more about developers’ concerns with Game-Key Cards and game preservation here.

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September 8, 2025 0 comments

Key Vess and Nix have a campfire moment.

Game Reviews

Star Wars Outlaws’ Switch 2 Game Key Card Is Due To Tech Issues

by admin September 6, 2025

The Switch 2’s game key cards have proven a source of extreme consternation since the launch of Nintendo’s latest console. Physical carts in plastic boxes that don’t actually contain the game at all, making a mockery of game preservation and the entire purpose of owning a physical copy of your game. The reason for their use is usually presumed to be cost, given how expensive a 64GB Switch card is for a publisher (apparently $23 each!), and that Nintendo right now is not offering a smaller option to publishers. However, in the case of Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws it seems it’s due to a more significant weakness of the Switch 2.

So far, tech geeks are super-impressed with how Ubisoft has managed to get such a large, complex open-world game working on the handheld console. As much of a step up from the original Switch as the Switch 2 might be, it’s still not exactly cutting-edge technology, and the requirements to be able to run on a handheld device can be restrictive. So great work by all involved! However, Outlaws has become yet another entry in the very long list of games releasing with nothing but a game key on an otherwise blank cart, and understandably people are narked about spending $60 to buy a pile of empty plastic.

More than anything else, it’s the knowledge that Nintendo absolutely will one day switch off the eStore that processes the keys to allow the games to be downloaded. As with every previous generation of digital store, the servers will go away, and the purchased games will disappear into the ether. This leaves people either looking at emulation (which Nintendo deeply loathes), or re-buying the same game again when it’s released as a “Classic” download on the newer device (where, hilariously, Nintendo makes it available via emulation). This all enormously sucks. So yes, one day your copy of Star Wars Outlaws Switch 2 will be nothing but a very bad-tasting SD card.

Except, it seems in this particular instance this isn’t an act of cost-cutting on a premium-price game. (For whatever reason, Nintendo has only offered 64GB cards for the Switch 2, driving up production costs and encouraging many to resort to key cards instead.) However, according to Rob Bantin (thanks Nintendo Life), the audio architect on Outlaws‘ engine Snowdrop, it’s because the streaming speeds between the Switch 2 carts and the console just aren’t fast enough to run the game properly. And that seems like it could be a big deal.

Digital Foundry‘s John Linneman posted on BlueSky to report how impressed he was with the port, reposting VGC‘s video about the tech, adding that DF has its own video on the way. Others replied, one person pointing out that the game is somehow only 20.2GB, but another expressing disdain that it’s a key card. After a bit of back and forth, Rob Bantin entered the conversation and revealed all.

“Snowdrop relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments,” said Bantin. “And we found the Switch 2 cards simply didn’t give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for.” In other words, the game needs to be fully installed on the console’s SSD drive to be able to run properly. The audio architect continued, “I don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion – probably because it was moot.”

It’s hard to know how big of an issue this is going to be for the Switch 2 over the next seven or eight years of its likely life, but given a 2024 port can’t run off the card because of speed limitations, other larger, open-world games could share some similar issues. We’re talking about games releasing in 2030 after all. However, Bantin offers some optimism. “I think if we designed a game for Switch 2 from the ground up it might have been different,” they added. “As it was, we’d build [sic] a game around the SSDs of the initial target platforms, and then the Switch 2 came along a while later. In this case I think our leadership made the right call.”

We’re stepping beyond my nerdy understanding here, but from my research the Switch 2 cards are limited to 400MB/s transfer rates, while the Switch 2’s SSD can offer close to 900MB/s. So that’s a obviously a significant difference. However, it’s crucial to note that Cyberpunk 2077 runs from its game card at 400MB/s, and there are few complaints there. So if games are intentionally designed for the Switch 2’s card limitations, this might not be a frequent issue? But, again, it does mean that releasing a cross-platform game could require a huge amount of heavy lifting to make a version that runs from a card, when the PlayStation, Xbox and PC versions will all be installing to SSD. (Why Nintendo doesn’t allow SSD installation from game cards is another massive question, and seemingly a very obvious solution.) And, let’s not forget, the Switch 2 will be overlapping the second half of its life with the inevitable PlayStation 6 and Xbox Series 2.

It’s all a pretty pickle for developers looking to release big games on the Switch 2, without pissing off audiences and rendering their games ethereal.

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September 6, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Star Wars Outlaws dev comes out with first actually good reason for using Switch 2’s controversial Game Key Cards

by admin September 5, 2025

Many of us have a few things to say about the Nintendo Switch 2’s controversial game key cards, which don’t actually contain game data, and instead trigger a download from the Nintendo eShop when they are popped into the device. However, developer Rob Bantin, who is an audio architect on Ubisoft’s game engine Snowdrop, has revealed why the studio opted for key cards when it came to Star Wars Outlaws on Switch 2.

In a reply to Digital Foundry’s John Linneman about Star Wars Outlaws’ use of key cards and whether or not cost was a factor, Bantin explained that full-fat cards “simply didn’t give the performance we needed at the quality target we were going for”.

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Bantin noted the Snowdrop engine “relies heavily on disk streaming for its open world environments”, adding they “don’t recall the cost of the cards ever entering the discussion – probably because it was moot”.

The developer said had Star Wars Outlaws been designed for Nintendo’s Switch 2 console from the beginning, things may have been different. “As it was, we’d build a game around the SSDs of the initial target platforms, and then the Switch 2 came along a while later,” Bantin said.

“In this case I think our leadership made the right call.”

Image credit: Eurogamer

Many third party developers have also opted for key cards for their own Switch 2 release. One high profile outlier was CDPR, which released Cyberpunk 2077 as a physical game cartridge with the actual game on it. Last month, it was revealed that out of all Cyberpunk 2077’s Switch 2 sales in June, over 75 percent were physical.

This is a news-in-brief story. This is part of our vision to bring you all the big news as part of a daily live report.

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September 5, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Check Out This Lego Star Wars AT-ST UCS Bundle Deal Before It’s Gone

by admin September 3, 2025

As part of Walmart’s Bricktember Sale, Star Wars fans can get Lego’s Darth Vader Helmet display model for only $10 with the purchase of the AT-ST Walker Ultimate Collector Series. The AT-ST Walker launched August 1 for $200, and Walmart’s bundle deal is $210. This deal has already sold out once since Walmart’s big Lego promotion started September 1, and the retailer only had a few remaining at the time of writing on September 2.

It’s one of four Lego Star Wars bundle deals available exclusively at Walmart. The Darth Vader Helmet is also featured in a bundle with the new Kylo Ren Lego Helmet for $99.

Lego Star Wars 2-in-1 Bundles at Walmart

Walmart also has an exclusive Lego Star Wars 3-in-1 Gift Set featuring a bunch of minifigures and droids for $45.

Updated on September 2

Editor’s Note: You can read our original story from August 1 below, but prices and deals listed below may no longer be accurate.

Lego launched nine new Star Wars playsets and display models on August 1, including the latest Ultimate Collector Series build for adults. The 1,513-piece, highly detailed recreation of the AT-ST Walker transport vehicle costs $200, which makes it the cheapest member in the exclusive UCS club in print today.

The AT-ST Walker UCS was revealed in early July, but preorders were only ever available at Amazon. Now that launch day has arrived, you can grab the AT-ST Walker at Walmart, Target, Lego Store, and Best Buy. It’s also worth noting that Jango Fett’s Firespray-Class Starship, the UCS build for Star Wars Day this year, is no longer exclusive to the Lego Store. The 2,970-piece model from Attack of the Clones is up for grabs for $300 at Amazon.

Lego Star Wars New Sets (August 1)

$200

The All Terrain Scout Transport, better known as AT-ST, has been part of the Star Wars movie universe since The Empire Strikes Back. The 1,513-piece building set creates a detailed replica that looks quite similar to the AT-ST from Return of the Jedi.

The completed build measures 14.5 x 8.5 x 8.5 inches and has multiple interactive components, including an openable top hatch covering the cockpit, a rotating head, viewport shutters, and adjustable laser cannons. The AT-ST is well-known for its unique gait that resembles a chicken. Lego’s AT-ST has articulated legs, so you can move it around like a real chicken walker.

As an Ultimate Collector Series set, this AT-ST has a myriad of small details that you won’t find on transport walkers in Lego’s playsets. The spacious two-person cockpit has finer details that make it more aligned with its appearance in the movies. UCS builds also take a more thoughtful approach when it comes to layering and visible studs, and the promotional images reflect that here. The build process is generally more complex with an Ultimate Collector Series set, so the AT-ST and UCS sets are recommended for experienced builders ages 18 and up.

Like all UCS Star Wars builds and other large-scale display models, the AT-ST comes with an information plaque and a minifigure. Appropriately, the minifigure for this kit is an AT-ST Driver.

Lego Star Wars: AT-ST UCS 75417

The rest of the kits in Lego’s August lineup are marketed toward younger Star Wars fans, but adult builders will probably be interested in at least two of the large buildable character figures. Lego designed an adorable 1,010-piece Wicket the Ewok model from Return of the Jedi and an 845-piece K-2SO Security Droid from Rogue One.

Technically, there’s a 10th new set, as two of them are also available in a discounted bundle called the Epic Battle Set, which comes with a bonus miniature Millennium Falcon (Lego Polybag). Speaking of bundles, Walmart released an exclusive 3-in-1 Lego Star Wars Gift Set this week for $45, and it’s likely to sell out fast.

The new AT-ST is actually the second in Lego’s Ultimate Collector Series. The first one released back in 2006 and has been retired for many years at this point. The upcoming model is far more detailed, partially because it has roughly 500 additional pieces, but also simply because Lego has upped its game over time.

As mentioned, the $200 AT-ST Walker is currently the most affordable set in the Star Wars Ultimate Collector Series. There are a few others available for under $250, including the TIE Interceptor Starfighter, X-Wing Starfighter, and Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder.

AT-ST Walker (1,513 pieces) — $200
Jango Fett’s Firespray-Class Starship (2,970 pieces) — $300
TIE Interceptor Starfighter (1,931 pieces) — $230
Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder (1,890 pieces) — $240
X-Wing Starfighter (1,949 pieces) — $240
Jabba’s Sail Barge (3,942 pieces) — $500
The Mandalorian’s Razor Crest Starship (6,187 pieces) — $600
Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser (5,374 pieces) — $630 ($650)
Millennium Falcon (7,541 pieces) — $815 ($850)
AT-AT Walker (6,785 pieces) — $1,148 (MSRP was $850)

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September 3, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

The $3M Star Wars Lightsaber That Shows Why Information Is the Next Big Asset Class

by admin September 2, 2025

About the Author

Loxley Fernandes is CEO at Dastan, the parent company of Myriad, Rug Radio, and Decrypt. He served as CEO of Rug Radio before co-founding Dastan. Prior to Dastan he had spent over a decade as a serial entrepreneur, founder and operator with an emphasis on financial technologies that advanced the direct to consumer movement.

When Darth Vader’s lightsaber goes up for auction this week, all eyes will be on the price tag. Memorabilia vendor Propstore estimates the saber (used in the “Star Wars” films “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”) could fetch between $1 million and $3 million. For collectors, it’s a holy grail artifact. For one bidder, it may be the ultimate trophy. But for everyone else? The moment the gavel falls, the story is over.

Unless, of course, the real story isn’t the sale itself, but the market that could form around it.

The Auction Is Just the Beginning

The sale of Vader’s saber is more than a collectible transfer. It’s a signal. A data point that tells collectors, auction houses, and investors what cultural artifacts are worth.

But it’s a signal that only arrives once, at the closing hammer. Until then, we’re left with speculation: Will it break $3 million? Will it set a new record for a “Star Wars” prop? How much cultural cachet does Vader command compared to Luke or Han? These are the kinds of questions prediction markets are built to answer.

Turning Belief Into a Trade

In a prediction market, an auction like this becomes a tradeable event.

Imagine markets for:

“Will Darth Vader’s lightsaber sell above $3M?”
“Will it beat the record for most expensive ‘Star Wars’ collectible?”

Anyone, anywhere, could back their conviction with real money.

A film historian who knows the scarcity of screen-matched props. A collector who’s tracked bidding trends across decades. A casual fan who is convinced a billionaire will need to own this.

Instead of waiting for the outcome, and reading a headline, they can trade the odds of it happening and turn passive content consumption into active participation.

One Object, Infinite Markets

The key difference is this:

The lightsaber is finite. One object, one buyer.
The event market is infinite. Thousands of contracts, tens of thousands of participants.

The saber sale will redistribute wealth between one seller and one buyer. The market around it could redistribute wealth across an entire ecosystem of traders.

In dollar terms, the physical sale may generate $3 million. The parallel market could generate 10x that volume, as contracts are created, traded, and repriced in real time.

The Rise of Derivatives on Culture

This is exactly the frontier we are exploring at Myriad: a derivatives marketplace for information.

Just like Wall Street offers futures on oil or indices on tech stocks, Myriad lets users trade futures on cultural events. Auctions, elections, sports outcomes, policy decisions… all become liquid markets.

That changes both the scale and scope of participation. The gavel may fall for a single bidder, but thousands can still have financial exposure to the outcome through derivative contracts.

There’s another layer, too.

The auction produces one data point: the final hammer price. The prediction market produces a living dataset:

How expectations shifted over time.
How rumors and provenance updates moved the odds.
How consensus or polarization developed in the crowd.

For collectors, auction houses, and insurers, that’s far more valuable than the single figure in the catalog. It’s an x-ray of market sentiment, an epistemic dataset about what people believed and how they priced that belief.

Knowledge as Capital

The deeper implication is this: prediction markets turn knowledge into capital.

Historically, information has been hard to monetize unless you were a journalist, an analyst, or an insider. You needed a platform or an audience and the ability (or desire) to extract from them.

Now, whether you’re a “Star Wars” historian, a quant, or just a fan with a hunch, you can own the upside of being right. Beliefs become financial assets and ideas become tradeable.

Why It Matters Beyond “Star Wars”

If this sounds like a novelty, remember: It’s not about lightsabers. It’s about the financialization of information itself. Every high-profile cultural event can spawn parallel markets that are:

Transparent: providing real-time odds instead of presale guesses.
Democratic: open to anyone, not just insiders.
Scalable: capable of generating more liquidity than the underlying event.

From auctions to elections, sports, or climate, prediction markets create a meta-layer of finance where beliefs are surfaced, priced, and tradable.

A Saber or a Signal?

When the gavel falls this week, one collector will own a piece of cinematic history. But the bigger story might be what happens outside the auction room, where thousands more could have owned the event itself.

A $3 million lightsaber sale proves the cultural weight of “Star Wars.” A liquid prediction market on that auction proves something bigger: that the future of finance may not be built just on oil, gold, or equities, but on information, attention, and maybe even on something as simple and intangible as belief.

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September 2, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

NetEase shut down studio of Fallout and Star Wars alumni who were making an online sci-fi action game

by admin September 1, 2025

NetEase have shut down T-Minus Zero Entertainment, a studio founded in 2023 by former BioWare developer and Star Wars: The Old Republic executive producer Rich Vogel.

The studio had been working on an online multiplayer sci-fi action game, with contributions from a number of ex-BioWare and Bethesda staff including Fallout 76 design lead Mark Tucker and senior producer Scott Malone. However, that project and T-Minus Zero Entertainment’s on-going existence are not a good fit for “current market conditions”.

Vogel announced the end of NetEase’s partnership with T-Minus in a LinkedIn post on 26th August. Game Developer have now obtained confirmation that the studio has been closed down, in the absence of other funding.

“Every journey has its twists and turns, and ours with NetEase is coming to an end,” Vogel writes in the LinkedIn statement. “We deeply appreciate NetEase for providing us with both ample runway and support – from helping us find potential investors to giving us the time and budget to develop our game into a fully playable hands-on demo. It has generated a lot of interest. However, despite this progress, current market conditions have prevented us from securing the funding we need at this time.”

Vogel goes on to celebrate his team’s “dedication and passion” adding that “now may not be the best time to seek funding given today’s climate, but our playable demo proves our potential to develop something fresh and exciting that will resonate with players for years.”

As Game Developer report, senior NetEase staff have commented on the post to praise the bygone studio’s work, with former NetEase president of global investments and partnerships Simon Zhu commenting that the prototype “delivers [the] great fantasy of fighting against 15th floor kaiju to protect the city you care about” while NetEase head of brand/publishing for North America & Europe Cisco Maldonado called it a “super great concept and [in my opinion] a solid market fit”.

Approached for comment, a NetEase spokesperson told Game Developer that “this decision was made with careful consideration, as we have been inspired by our partnership with the studio and their bold vision. However, we have had to reassess our business priorities and are now working closely with the studio to provide support and explore next steps.”

NetEase have been cutting staff and projects recently, after investing in several studios founded by big names in the triple-A business. Last November, they called time on Worlds Untold, a studio founded by former Mass Effect writer Mac Walters. In January this year, they did likewise for Jar Of Sparks, the studio founded by former Halo Infinite head of design Jerry Hook. In February, they trimmed down the Marvel Rivals development team and made layoffs at Liquid Swords, the studio founded by Avalanche co-founder Christofer Sundberg.

Best of luck to all the former T-Minus Zero Entertainment employees now looking for a safe port.

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September 1, 2025 0 comments