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Destiny 2's Star Wars-inspired expansion is finally here. Renegades offers a campaign available in Legend and Normal difficulties, as has been standard fare since the wildly popular The Witch Queen started doing so in 2022. This presents a choice: should you do the campaign on Legendary or Normal? Completing the campaign in either difficulty gets you access to most post-campaign activities, and in Renegades, this opens up the Lawless Frontier activity. It takes after The Nether in Heresy, lack of health regen included, and you can get a slew of goodies there by siding with different factions. What do you get by completing the Renegades campaign in Legendary difficulty? Here are the goodies. Screenshot by Destructoid Based on the tooltip, completing the campaign on Legendary gets you a set of 550 Power gear and the Renegades Exotic for your class (Deimosuffusion for Warlocks, Praxic Vestment for Titans, and Fortune's Favor). In The Edge of Fate, you could obtain the expansion's Exotics on your main character by doing the Legendary campaign, then unlock the others through the Sieve, Kepler's post-campaign activity. Renegades could see a similar formula. Can you change the Renegades campaign difficulty in Destiny 2? Dredgen Bael does know how to make an entrance. Screenshot by Bungie Going by The Edge of Fate, you can change the difficulty for the Renegades campaign before launching a mission. This lets you rerun missions in a different difficulty even after you've cleared the main story, so there's no harm in changing your settings along the way. You can get all rewards from completing the campaign even if you change your difficulty along the way, but you must finish every mission on Legend difficulty to unlock the additional goodies. Is it worth doing the Renegades campaign in Legendary difficulty? That's a hard-hitting crew. Screenshot by Destructoid There's no set answer for this since it depends on your skill level, your tolerance for a challenge, and how quickly you'd like to complete the campaign. If you can take on the Legendary campaign on your first try, it's worth accepting the challenge. If you're torn, give it a go and adjust the challenge as you see fit, and if you're just aiming for a quicker, more relaxing clear, normal can do the job just right. The post Should you do the Renegades campaign on Legendary or Normal? appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

The De Paul vs Berhalter Showdown SBC is now live in FC 26 Ultimate Team, and you can complete it to earn items that will receive upgrades in the future. The card getting the upgrade will be decided by the results of the upcoming MLS Cup Final between Inter Miami and the Whitecaps. The cards have similar stats, but specialize in separate areas. This guide will help you complete the sets. Table of contentsFC 26 De Paul vs Berhalter Showdown SBC tasksFC 26 De Paul vs Berhalter Showdown SBC solutionsDe PaulBerhalterFC 26 De Paul vs Berhalter Showdown SBC tasks De Paul Top Form Min. 1 Players: Team of the WeekMin. Team Rating: 83 Argentina Min. 1 Players from: ArgentinaMin. Team Rating: 84 Berhalter Top Form Min. 1 Players: Team of the WeekMin. Team Rating: 83 United States Min. 1 Players from: United StatesMin. Team Rating: 84FC 26 De Paul vs Berhalter Showdown SBC solutionsDe PaulTop FormAny 86-rated TOTWAkanji 82Bruun 82Milinkovic-Savic 84Angeldahl 81Doan 82Murphy 81de Vrij 84Carrasco 81Schar 82Wood 82ArgentinaDamaris Egurrola 84Viggosdottir 84Nusken 84Palacios 84Doorsoun 84Lawrence 84Greenwood 84Golovin 79Milinkovic-Savvic 84Sorloth 84Joao Cancelo 84BerhalterTop FormAny 86-rated TOTWAkanji 82Bruun 82Milinkovic-Savic 84Angeldahl 81Doan 82Murphy 81de Vrij 84Carrasco 81Schar 82Wood 82United StatesDamaris Egurrola 84Viggosdottir 84Nusken 84Palacios 84Doorsoun 84Lawrence 84Greenwood 84Catarina Macario 83Milinkovic-Savvic 84Sorloth 84Joao Cancelo 84 Both cards have decent stats, roles, and playstyle+. Whichever card receives an upgrade in the future will be an excellent to your team. These cards should also become eligible for evolutions in the near future, allowing you to improve their stats further. The post FC 26 De Paul vs Berhalter Showdown SBC tasks and solutions appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

Spotify Wrapped for the year 2025 is coming very soon, and we have some information on how it could appear. If you've been a regular user of the music streaming service over the past year, you'll be able to visit your annual recap to find out your favorite tracks and jams over the last 12 months. While the recap isn't available as of writing, it should be available pretty soon. Moreover, we have already confirmed how to access your Spotify Wrapped this year. Table of contentsHow to find your Spotify Wrapped for 2025Spotify Wrapped 2025 expected release dateHow to find your Spotify Wrapped for 2025 The process of checking out your Spotify Wrapped in 2025 remains the same. To view it, you'll need to use the Spotify app. This is applicable for the phone and PC app, and either works. To view your Wrapped for this year, click on the following link. [Hidden Content] This will take you to the home page for Spotify Wrapped for this year. As of writing, Spotify has yet to update the stats of our yearly recaps. In the meantime, you can visit the top songs of last year. Once the update is complete, we will be able to view what rocked our library over the last 12 months. Screenshot by Destructoid Here's what you can expect from and do with your Spotify Wrapped. Get a deeper look into what you listened to, along with a recap mode. Ability to share a snap of your Wrapped with your friends on social media. To get your Wrapped for 2025, you'll need a Spotify account and have at least a few hours of streaming. Spotify Wrapped 2025 expected release date Spotify Wrapped for this year is yet to be released, but speculation hints that the date is really close. Annual recaps for both Twitch and YouTube are already available, and there's a strong chance for Spotify to release its Wrapped on Wed, Dec. 3. Additionally, the existence of the web page possibly means that Spotify is almost ready to release this year's Wrapped. If a confirmed date is announced, we will update it on our guide. The post How to get your Spotify Wrapped for 2025 appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

It isn't every day that a banned game on Steam garners so much interest from players, but the recently viral indie horror gameHORSES has become a hot topic of debate after Steam failed to offer a proper explanation for its decision. Santa Ragione Game Studio, developers behind the banned game, asked for clarification multiple times, eventually deciding to move ahead without Steam approval. View the full article

This game can't catch a breakView the full article

Sleep Awake review: "An all-timer horror premise is let down by tired stealth that I feel like I'm sleepwalking through"View the full article

Developer Worsehorse Studios has released a brand-new hotfix update for its smash-hit medieval RPG, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. The new patch is available to download now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, bringing the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2game version to 1.5.2 with a plethora of fixes across some of the game's most vital elements, including one for yet another issue with the title's rain mechanics. Players have voiced their concerns with rain visuals in the past, but now there has been a prominent issue with the game's audio when it rains, which has thankfully now been addressed in the December 2 update. View the full article

PlayStation hardware architect Mark Cerny has recalled his time working at ***** in the late 1980s, a ******* in which he likened conditions at the company behind Sonic the Hedgehog to a "sweatshop." Speaking on the My Perfect Console podcast, Cerny made clear he was talking about *****'s Tokyo office during a specific ******* of time, when the company was under immense pressure to compete with the hugely dominant Nintendo, and teams sizes across the video games industry were tiny compared to the projects worked upon today. "Atari had been one person making a game, maybe two or three," Cerny recalled. "By this point there were actual teams, it tended to be about three people at ***** making a cartridge. So you'd have a programmer — that was me — a designer and an artist. "I've got to caveat this," Cerny continued. "I'm only talking about the second half of the 1980s at Tokyo office. But man, ***** was a sweatshop. Three people, three months, that's a game. And, you know, we would sleep at the office. And this is because [former ***** president Hayao] Nakayama's idea was, 'Why is Nintendo successful? They have 40 games. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna have 80 games for the Master System, and that's going to be our path to success.'" In short, *****'s boss wanted to flood the market with games to simply outnumber the range of titles available on Nintendo's top-selling NES. But this was the wrong approach, Cerny said, arguing that ***** should have narrowed its focus and encouraged its employees to work in larger teams on fewer, but more impressive titles. "If you look at the history of games I think if you're trying to sell a console, you need about two good games, and that sells you your console," Cerny said. "Like Nintendogs and Brain Training, I think that's what sold the DS, if I remember that properly for Nintendo. So the bulk software thing is not the approach." Ultimately, ***** did allow a particular game more resources: Sonic the Hedgehog. But even then, and alongside its huge success, Cerny says that Sonic's creator Yuji Naka was berated for going hugely over budget. "The pressure was to make a game that could sell a million copies. ***** actually had — this was another one of Nakayama's brainstorms — the Million Seller Project," Cerny continued. "Sonic was terribly controversial — part of the idea there was, let's put much more resource on the project than usual... They were going to do, if I remember properly, three people, 10 months. But they ended up needing four and a half people for 14 months — I'm a little hazy on the numbers these days. And though it was a success, they blew their budget so badly... that Yuji Naka was just getting yelled at, and quit the company." Asked whether ***** ultimately learnt its lesson from Sonic's success, Cerny noted that while the game's huge sales paid off "fantastically" for *****, "Yuji Naka was pretty tired of the situation by that point." According to Cerny, Naka had been "making $30,000 a year" at the time of Sonic 1's success, though this was increased that year because he got the "president's bonus." "I guess that is interesting, how could he be yelled at but get it [the bonus] as well? It was an interesting environment, I have to say," Cerny mused. "It probably doubled his salary. So, we're talking about somebody who's a top-level creator making $60,000 in their best year and getting yelled at a lot. And he'd had it. And so that's what led to Sonic 2 being developed in the States." Cerny also discussed some happier moments from his time at *****, and noted that his "room of 40 people back in 1987" had included some luminaries of the games industry, including Naka and the late Rieko Kodama, who would go on to create the beloved Skies of Arcadia. Still, Cerny did not stick around long-term, moving back to the U.S. in 1991 (and working on Sonic 2) before eventually beginning his long partnership with PlaySation, for which he is now most famous. Image credit: Mintaha Neslihan Eroglu/Anadolu Agency/Getty. Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social View the full article

Last week, we reported that disturbing horror game Horses had been banned from Steam, with developer Santa Ragione claiming that Valve refused to provide a clear reason for the ban or discuss it further with the studio. Now, at the last possible minute before the game was set to release widely across other PC store fronts, Epic Games Store has also banned Horses. This news was shared with us by Santa Ragione, who passed on a press release stating that Epic informed them 24 hours before the game's release that it would not be distributing Horses, despite the studio's build being approved for release weeks earlier. Per the developer, no specifics on what content was at issue were provided, "only broad and demonstrably incorrect claims that it violated their content guidelines." When Santa Ragione appealed, the studio says it was denied 12 hours later "without further explanation." As Santa Ragione explains it: Epic's decision comes after the overwhelming support Santa Ragione received last week upon the disclosure of Steam's ban, including the public announcement by Epic's and Steam's competitor GOG that they would promote and support the game. We do not know what triggered Epic's sudden decision. Following the announcement of Steam's ban, Horses became highly visible online, with strong support and a small but vocal opposition. It is difficult not to wonder whether this visibility played a greater role in Epic's choice than any newly discovered issue with the game itself. IGN has asked Epic Games for comment and will update when and if we hear back. At the time of this article's publication, Horses is still listed as "Coming Soon" on the Epic Games Store. Horses was previously revealed several years ago, and has made appearances in showcases like The Indie Horror Showcase and Day of the Devs. It's gained some attention for its deeply unsettling premise: a young man travels to a remote horse farm to work for several weeks over the summer, only to find the farmer's "horses" are actually enslaved, naked humans with horse masks affixed to their heads. Horses, says Santa Ragione, is meant to be upsetting: it's at least partly a commentary on what sorts of morally horrifying things people will accept or even participate in without pushback, a subject we found was executed artfully, if upsettingly, in our 7/10 review of the game. And yet, the game has been banned from now both Steam and Epic. Last week, we reported that developer Santa Ragione said it was rejected from Steam after the team submitted an unfinished but playable build of the game in order to create a store page, an unusual request that Valve said was necessary. Valve then rejected Horses, generally citing its Steam Onboarding Documentation, as well as the sentence, "Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product, we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict ******* conduct involving a minor." Santa Ragione has since guessed this was in relation to a scene in the game at the time that depicted a fully clothed child "riding" one of the horses on their shoulders. However, the studio says it has since changed that scene to involve an adult instead of a child, and that all characters in the game are clearly adults in their 20s and up, a fact that has remained true in the final version of the game that IGN reviewed, ironically, on the Epic Games Store. Santa Ragione says it was not given the opportunity to resubmit a build to be reconsidered by Valve, and remains unsure if this scene was even what triggered the ban in the first place. The studio claims that without being able to reach Steam's much larger audience, it is likely it will have to shut down following the launch of Horses. In response, Valve issued a statement claiming it "gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines" and that its internal content review team discussed a re-review "extensively" but decided against it. Horses is now available on itch.io, GOG (which publicly expressed support for the game last week), and Humble (which Santa Ragione says confirmed to the studio it would be available). Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article

Payday 3 has been a thorn in Starbreeze's side since it arrived back in 2023. Despite its predecessor being one of the most beloved and best co-op games around, Payday 3 launched in a terrible state and with a web of new and reworked systems that players just didn't gel with. The result? On Steam at least, Payday 2's recent daily player counts are roughly 20 times higher than they are in Payday 3. Instead of calling it quits though, Starbreeze is committed to turning things around - it recently canceled a DnD project it was working on and handed Payday 2 support over to a different studio, all so it could put more resource behind the struggling game. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Starbreeze passes Payday 2 over to a new developer, but it couldn't be in better hands Payday 3 promised players an offline mode months ago, now it's "not feasible" Payday 3 best settings for PC View the full article

We caught up with refint/games to discuss the Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga remaster, Switch 2 enhancements without a devkit, rollback netcode, and more View the full article

IO Interactive recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of its flagship series Hitman, which has certainly been on a journey. Agent 47's beautiful, barcoded bald head has become one of the industry's icons, with the series' growth into its own identity truly impressive: from the early days where it was a more traditional 3D action game with cool ways to kill people, to the lightbulb moment of Blood Money's flexibility, to the sprawling sandbox extravaganza of the most recent trilogy (and not to forget false starts like Absolution)... Read more.View the full article

I loved 2019's Outward. The fantasy RPG from Nine Dots Studio embraced survival in a way few RPGs do, making everything from casting a basic spell to packing for a trip between cities a methodical and thoughtful process. Even its permalife system, which sounds forgiving—you don't die if you lose a fight, you lose consciousness and wake up elsewhere—meant you had to live with your decisions and failures, no matter how painful they were... Read more.View the full article

Arrowhead Game Studios has officially launched Helldivers 2's 5.0.0 update, revealing numerous bug fixes, balance changes, and the new Python Commandos premium warbond. The update continues to build upon Helldivers 2's Into the Unjust content, which added Terminid hive worlds to the title in September 2025. Helldivers 2 was originally released on February 8, 2024, and is currently available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. View the full article

Junya Ishizaki, Nightreign's director, says, "It's not like there's a rule"View the full article

Light of Motiram also won't release before Q4 2027, Tencent agreesView the full article

The in-house engine "positions us to deliver a far better game"View the full article

Is 2025 the greatest year ever for exceptional indies? If you don't think it is, it's surely on the podium. Alongside the likes of Silksong and Blue Prince, Ball x Pit helps back up this year's case. Taking the simple ball-bouncing joy of Pong and Breakout and turning into a deep, addictive, chaotic roguelike, it's just been revealed that it's shifted a million copies. I can't say I'm surprised. Given its huge popularity, it felt inevitable that we'd see more content arrive in Ball x Pit in the future, but I didn't expect fans to be eating so good, so quickly, and for the low, low price of nought. A trio of free updates are heading the game's way next year, and they're all totally free. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Ball x Pit Evolutions tier list - best combos and fusions The videogame that started it all gets a roguelike reimagining 53 years after launch, and it's free to try View the full article

The Forsaken Hollows update for Elden Ring Nightreign has two different release schedules for consoles and SteamView the full article

Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead has created a “slim” version of its explosive co-op third-person shooter that massively reduces its file size on PC. For some time now PC gamers have complained about Helldivers 2’s bloated installation size on PC, and Arrowhead recently outlined plans to bring it closer to the size of the console version. In a post on Steam, Arrowhead said it had worked with Sony-owned PC port specialist Nixxes to reach its goal sooner than expected, reducing the PC installation size from 154GB to 23GB for a total saving of 131GB (85%). Arrowhead has now rolled out this slim version of Helldivers 2 as part of a public technical beta, which PC players are free to opt into. “Our testing shows that for the small percentage of players still using mechanical hard disk drives, mission loading times have only increased by a few seconds in the worst cases,” Arrowhead explained. The studio had warned that changing the file size of Helldivers 2 might have increased load times by a factor of 10 — indeed that’s why it duplicates data with update releases. But it turns out that its worst case projections did not come to pass. “These loading time projections were based on industry data — comparing the loading times between SSD and HDD users where data duplication was and was not used,” Arrowhead explained. “In the worst cases, a 5x difference was reported between instances that used duplication and those that did not. We were being very conservative and doubled that projection again to account for unknown unknowns. “Now things are different. We have real measurements specific to our game instead of industry data. We now know that the true number of players actively playing HD2 on a mechanical HDD was around 11% during the last week (seems our estimates were not so bad after all). We now know that, contrary to most games, the majority of the loading time in Helldivers 2 is due to level-generation rather than asset loading. This level generation happens in parallel with loading assets from the disk and so is the main determining factor of the loading time. We now know that this is true even for users with mechanical HDDs.” Once the beta confirms no issues, Arrowhead will roll out the slim version of Helldivers 2 to all players and make it the default version for everyone. Assuming all goes smoothly, the legacy version will be discontinued some time next year. The slim version arrives at the same time as Helldivers 2’s big 5.0.0 patch as well as its jungle-themed Python Commandos Warbond, which adds a number of fan-requested weapons including a minigun. Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article

One of the hallmarks of Cyberpunk 2077, particularly after its Phantom Liberty update, is its dynamic police chases. In these, a player committing crimes might find themselves quick surrounded by cops and, a few crimes later, the extra spicy MaxTac. But what you might not have caught onto is that when trying to avoid this massive swarm of cops, you're essentially playing a really, really sophisticated version of a very, very old arcade game: Pac-Man. At the Game Industry Conference in Poznań, Wielkopolska, I attended a talk by CD Projekt senior AI programmer Maciej Celmer entitled "Heat, MaxTac, and Blockades: Police System, in Cyberpunk 2077 and more." In the talk, Celmer went into a lot of interesting detail about how exactly Cyberpunk 2077's police chase system was revamped following criticism from players that at launch, the system was way too forgiving and unengaging. The new system, implemented in 2023, was far more dynamic and popular with players. And according to Celmer, it had an unusual inspiration: Pac-Man. "Remember the game of Pac-Man, and the fact that every ghost had a different approach on how to catch the player?" Celmer said during his talk. "We did a similar thing in our car chases. For instance, one of them can try to reach the player on the shortest possible path, while the other can try to flank him or intercept on the intersection. There are seven different strategies that we applied to our cars with that part of the chase." We reached out to CD Projekt following the talk to get a little more detail on what Celmer meant. Over email, he confirmed that Pac-Man was one of "many" inspirations for the police chase update, "especially for the designers who came up with the idea. We wanted to surround the player with chasing vehicles but, at the same time, always try to leave at least one 'road to freedom' — basically, a way to escape. However, the situation in Night City, especially during a chase, can be very dynamic, so 'try' is definitely the right word here." Celmer broke down the aforementioned seven "strategies" that police cars would take in a chase for us too. Each strategy combined a mix of logic for where the vehicle would spawn with its behavior after spawning, and which strategy was used was dependent on the heat level, the state of the police system (relaxed, alerted, or combat) and other factors. From there, cars could also perform different maneuvers depending on the situation, such as ramming, shooting, blocking, overtaking, or aligning with the chased car. The seven strategies were, in Celmer's words: Drive towards the player — Move directly toward the player in a straight line. Used in the Alerted state.Drive away from the player — Move directly away from the player. Used in the Alerted state.Patrol the quadrant — Patrol the area around the player.Intersection trap — Try to flank the player at the next intersection.Get to the player from anywhere — The aggressive one.Search for the player — Perform an initial search around the crime scene. Used in the Alerted state.Search from anywhere — A fallback strategy used when we can’t find a suitable spawn point for strategy 6, so the car simply spawns anywhere and begins searching for the player. The result was, if you look at Cyberpunk 2077's roads from the top down, something like a game of Pac-Man where the ghosts are the police cars chasing the player. In Pac-Man, each ghost has its own strategy it will typically perform, such as Pinky trying to ambush the player or Blinky chasing him directly. "We simply wanted to do something a bit different from other games with similar systems," Celmer said. "The combination of a classic game AI design inspired by Pac-Man seemed like a great fit for implementing police chases in Cyberpunk 2077." Cyberpunk 2077's turnaround is one of the most dramatic in video game history. After its disastrous launch in December 2020, CD Projekt continued to update the game, and now, as it nears its fifth birthday, it's sitting on an incredible 35 million copies sold. Indeed, Cyberpunk 2077 is currently CD Projekt's main source of revenue. In a recent financial briefing, CD Projekt said it was “laying the foundations” for Cyberpunk 2, outlining plans to scale up its development teams in Boston, Warsaw, and Vancouver and through to the end of 2027. 135 people were working on Cyberpunk 2 as of October 31, 2025, up from 116 at the end of July. At GIC Poland, I also chatted with the director of Valor Mortis about difficulty options in Soulslike games and whether Valor Mortis should count as a Soulslike. I also went hands-on with the dog secret agent game Barkour. Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to [email protected]. View the full article

The road to release of Hollow Knight: Silksong was long for the small independent studio Team Cherry, but now that it's in the hands of players and a round of post-launch tweaks have been made, the developers are looking toward new horizons. Acclaimed side-scrolling metroidvania Silksong nabbed a Game of the Year nomination at The Game Awards, but Team Cherry may skip the ceremony, citing their busy schedule and a prediction that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 will take home the prize. View the full article

It's a terrible night for a curseView the full article

EA Sports FC 26 has added ten Classic XI squads to the game’s Kick Off and Kick Off Rush modes. The ten squads take Icon, Hero and current players from the game’s existing roster and group them into ‘best of’ line-ups for specific teams or leagues. While the game’s Ultimate Team mode has a wide range or Icon and Hero players from football’s past, they only appear in one or two special teams in Kick Off mode, which players often use for local competitive matches. Read More... View the full article

Being a Half-Life 3 fan isn't easy, and it's been a struggle for players to keep their hopes alive after constantly being disappointed by leaks and having no official confirmation from Valve that the game even exists. Recently, there's been an escalation in rumors over an upcoming official Half-Life announcement, possibly at this year's The Game Awards. View the full article