Electronic Arts announced the second year of the Apex Legends Global Series esports league today, which will feature new league formats for pro and amateur players, and a $5 million total prize pool. But the most interesting news of all is that Year 2 will also bring console players into the action—not in its own league, but straight into the PC lion pit.The addition of Xbox and PlayStation players will bring "a large majority of our players and fans under the same competitive umbrella," EA said. "The battle between controllers vs mouse and keyboard is about to reach a whole new level of intensity!"Well, sort of, anyway. To help compensate for the inherent speed and precision advantages of a mouse and keyboard setup, controller players will use "PC-value aim assist settings" in competition, which is about 50% weaker than the console's default aim assist stickiness. In a recent update, Respawn added a toggle for all platforms to switch between the console and PC assist strengths. That little bit of help is almost certainly necessary to preserve some semblance of balance in battle, but I feel like it will inevitably lead to questions and complaints (and plenty of attendant ugliness) if a player with a controller triumphs over a mouse-and-keyboard-equipped rival. (In theory, a PC player could use a controller as well, if they thought it helped. For some reason.)Crossplay, which enables PC and console gamers to get together in multiplayer action, is becoming increasingly common and popular. It's still a rarity in pro esports, though, because of the need for a balanced playing field when actual money is on the line. When the Call of Duty League announced that it was moving from PlayStation 4 consoles to PC for its 2021 season, for instance, it ruled that players would continue to be restricted to controllers in competition—no mouse and keyboard allowed, despite being on PC. Despite the clear potential for headaches, it'll be very interesting to see how this cross-platform competition shakes out. My expectation is that M&K will dominate, which could force Respawn to fiddle with aim-assist settings or perhaps even hive off console players entirely. But it's possible that the controller squad will surprise us with some wall-to-wall ass-kickings—which, again, could prompt calls for action from Respawn if the impression is that console competitors are getting too much of an advantage from their controllers.Of course, it's possible that I'm being overly gloomy about the whole thing: If this experiment works, it could lead to more widespread cross-platform competition in pro esports. We'll find out in a couple of months—the ALGS Year 2 pre-season qualifiers are set to begin in September.

Apex Legends is finally set to make its appearance on mobile platforms. After having previously announced this new iteration of the game, developer Respawn Entertainment finally announced when it's bringing its popular battle royale shooter to handheld devices. And while it might take a bit for [...]

We are thrilled to announce that The Witcher Remake is being worked on!

Experience the true meaning of joyful chaos in Warcraft Arclight Rumble, a mobile action strategy game developed by Blizzard Entertainment.

CD Projekt has confirmed that a new Witcher game is in development, "kicking off a new saga for the franchise."The new game will be built using Unreal Engine 5 rather than CD Projekt's REDengine, which the studio said will begin "a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games.""It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant," CD Projekt said. "We'll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences."CD Projekt said that the change to the new engine was made to help streamline the development process.  "From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership," CD Projekt Red CTO Paweł Zawodny said. "It is vital for CD Projekt Red to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. "This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools. I can’t wait for the great games we’re going to create using Unreal Engine 5!"  The studio also confirmed that despite the shift to a new engine, the new Witcher game is not planned as an Epic Games Store exclusive.

Microsoft Corp said on Tuesday it would buy videogame publisher Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion in cash, the largest deal in the sector.

Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 have been delayed from 2022 to possible 2023 release dates, Blizzard Entertainment announced Tuesday.

Developers over at Riot Games are broadening their strategies when it comes to countering behavior they don't like, and are going to trial new penalties for players who leave or engage in AFK behavior during matches. According to Riot, about 9% of players worldwide engage in consistent AFK behavior.Riot defines AFK as two behaviors that waste time for others: people who idle during matches and people who just up sticks and leave the match entirely. Right now, the worst those players can get is a queue delay: "Queue Delays are a speed bump on an offending player’s way to their next few games: Upon clicking the play button, the queue blocks them behind a short timer. The purpose of this is to change behavior," says Riot.Now, however, players can get escalating penalties of between 1 day and 14 days of a queue lockout. That means no playing at all: They're removed from the player population entirely. "We're removing the player from the population for a while so they can't continue to AFK in games," says Riot.For now, the new punishments are being trialed in specific regions, as Riot is concerned about certain region-specific connectivity problems. (The SEA region, at least in other MOBAs, is infamous for connectivity issues that players can't control.) Players who would be immediately subject to the new punishments have been reset to a lower tier, so they have a change to change their ways before the new punishments are levied.You can read the whole developer log, with stats, on the League of Legends site.Nice spot, Eurogamer.

Battlefield 2042, which was slated to release on October 22, has been delayed. Electronic Arts announced today that because of "unforeseen challenges" created by the Covid-19 pandemic, it has elected to push the game to November 19."Building the next generation of Battlefield during a global pandemic has created unforeseen challenges for our development teams," DICE studio general manager Oskar Gabrielson said in a statement. "Given the scale and scope of the game, we had hoped our teams would be back in our studios together as we move towards launch. With the ongoing conditions not allowing that to happen safely, and with all the hard work the teams are doing from home, we feel it is important to take the extra time to deliver on the vision of Battlefield 2042 for our players."

Overwatch is finally testing the new Deathmatch map Malevento, a peaceful Italian town with a very dark secret and potentially even a curse.