Epic Games has announced that Fortnite is receiving a significant graphics overhaul as part of the game's 17.00 update, which kicks off season 7 on June 8.Fortnite already looks good on PC: Its adaptable art style conforms to whatever the ever-growing multiverse of marketing crossovers throws at it, and coming from the creators of the Unreal Engine, it runs fast with industry-standard rendering features.There was room for an upgrade, though: Epic says that if you play on the "Epic" graphics quality preset, both battle royale and creative mode will feature better storm and cloud effects. Smoke and liquid simulations are also being modified, which is supposed to result in better car explosions, better looking lakes and Slurp juice, and my personal most-anticipated update, better fire effects for when you inevitably hit a house with a flaming arrow or firefly jar.Epic says it's also adding improved postprocessing features for lens flare, bloom, and shadow quality.So what will it all cost you in terms of hardware? Here are the new PC specs for the "Epic" graphics setting:

As once-confidential court documents continue to emerge from Epic's ongoing legal battle with Apple, it's now been revealed that Fortnite earned a staggering $9.1 billion between 2018 and 2019. In a financial presentation dated January 2020 (via The Verge), Epic reports that the battle royale raked $5.8 billion in 2018 and $3.7 billion in 2019. That grossly outshines any other game owned by Epic (including Rocket League and Battle Breakers), which account for $108 million over those 2 years. The Unreal Engine achieved a more impressive $220 million—over double what non-Fortnite games earned, but still vastly less than Fortnite itself.Epic's overall profits for those two years came to $5.5bn. That includes all sides of its business, including the Epic Games Store—which, as we found out this year, has been running at a loss in trying to brute force a space as a viable Steam competitor. What's staggering is the extent to which Fortnite dominates Epic's income streams.A presentation from later in 2020 (via Eurogamer) further breaks down Fortnite's successes. Marvel has been by far the most successful brand collaboration, and Epic plans to move Fortnite even further beyond battle royale as an "open world simulation sandbox". Epic had also planned to give Fortnite's revenue a shot in the arm by partnering with Apple on mobile optimisations, Party Royale promotions, and a bigger Marvel push.Something tells me that's not exactly in the cards right now.Epic's three-week court case with Apple began in earnest today, and has already been spilling secrets such as Sony's cross-platform charges, and the amount Epic pays for those store exclusives. That is, when the case hasn't been halted by an open phone line leading to hundreds of kids shouting "free Fortnite".

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."