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The Linux Mint team have given a roadmap update, after previously suggesting they would be looking at longer development times to get things right. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

April 17 is a big day for Marvel Rivals as its midseason update arrives, alongside ****** Cat as the newest playable Duelist hero. Nearly a month after Season 7 kicked off, adding White Fox into the game's massive roster, the Lower Manhattan map, as well as other features like the Album System, NetEase is readying the game's next major update. As the studio has already teased, Marvel Rivals fans will have more content to dig into as well as a massive patch to further change things up. View the full article

There are just about a gazillion games about ninjas, but shockingly far fewer about pirates. Swashbucklers deserve more attention if you ask me, and thankfully they seem to be getting it when it comes to the new survival game Windrose... Read more.View the full article

Mozilla are leaning even more into AI, with the announcement today of Thunderbolt - their open-source and self-hostable AI client. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

In Tomodachi Life Living the Dream, every Mii you create is assigned a specific personality. Depending on who you're making, you may want to select certain qualities to ensure they're given the personality you desire for them. Luckily, you can fully dictate the personality each Mii gets by carefully selecting the right values for them during the character creation process. Precision is key here, so if you're having trouble making it work out the way you want, here are all of the personalities featured in Tomadochi Life Living the Dream, and how to get each one. Table of contentsAll personalities in Tomodachi Life Living the DreamHow to get each personality in Tomodachi Life Living the DreamCan you change a Mii's personality in Tomodachi Life Living the Dream?All personalities in Tomodachi Life Living the Dream Screenshot by Destructoid In total, there are 16 unique personality types in Tomodachi Life Living the Dream. Each one falls under a larger category, including Considerate/Easy-going, Energetic/Outgoing, Confident/Ambitious, and Reserved. The name for some personalities varies slightly depending on your region, but the effects are exactly the same, and we've listed both possible names for every personality here to help you sort through them. Here are all the personality types your Miis might be assigned. Considerate/Easy-goingSweetie/SoftieCheerleader/OptimistBuddy/CarerDaydreamer/DreamerEnergetic/OutgoingMerrymaker/BubblyCharmer/CharmerDynamo/Hot-BloodedGo-Getter/AdventurerConfident/AmbitiousVisionary/LeaderAchiever/Busy-BeeMaverick/HeadstrongRogue/IndividualistReservedThinker/ThinkerStrategist/PatientPefectionist/PefectionistObserver/IntrovertHow to get each personality in Tomodachi Life Living the Dream Screenshot and remix by Destructoid You can choose the personality your Mii gets by selecting certain values in each category when you get to the personality portion of character customization. There are five categories you edit at this point: Movement – Slow to QuickSpeech – Polite to HonestEnergy – Flat to VariedThinking/Attitude – Serious to ChillOverall – Normal to Quirky Each category plays a role in shaping your Miis chosen personality, except for the Overall category, where you can select any values without affecting it. We've marked each box on the scale from one to eight in the image above, and below, you'll find a complete table of which value you want to select for each category to achieve your desired personality. CategoryPersonalityMovementSpeechEnergyThinking/AttitudeConsiderate/Easy-goingSweetie/Softie2 (Slow)1 (Polite)7 (Varied)7 (Chill)Considerate/Easy-goingCheerleader/Optimist8 (Quick)1 (Polite)6 (Varied)7 (Chill)Considerate/Easy-goingBuddy/Carer1 (Slow)2 (Polite)6 (Varied)6 (Chill)Considerate/Easy-goingDaydreamer/Dreamer5 (Quick)4 (Polite)5 (Varied)5 (Chill)Energetic/OutgoingMerrymaker/Bubbly6 (Quick)6 (Honest)6 (Varied)6 (Chill)Energetic/OutgoingCharmer3 (Slow)7 (Honest)7 (Varied)7 (Chill)Energetic/OutgoingDynamo/Hot-Blooded8 (Quick)8 (Honest)1 (Flat)8 (Chill)Energetic/OutgoingGo-Getter/Adventurer8 (Quick)6 (Honest)7 (Varied)6 (Chill)Confident/AmbitiousVisionary/Leader8 (Quick)8 (Honest)8 (Varied)1 (Serious)Confident/AmbitiousAchiever/Busy-Bee1 (Slow)8 (Honest)7 (Varied)2 (Serious)Confident/AmbitiousMaverick/Headstrong8 (Quick)6 (Honest)2 (Flat)2 (Serious)Confident/AmbitiousRogue/Individualist4 (Slow)8 (Honest)1 (Flat)2 (Serious)ReservedThinker6 (Quick)3 (Polite)1 (Flat)1 (Serious)ReservedStrategist/Patient1 (Slow)1 (Polite)8 (Varied)1 (Serious)ReservedPefectionist4 (Slow)4 (Polite)5 (Varied)4 (Serious)ReservedObserver/Introvert1 (Slow)1 (Polite)1 (Flat)4 (Serious)Can you change a Mii's personality in Tomodachi Life Living the Dream? You can freely edit and change any Mii's personality whenever you like. To do so, you need to click on their personality on their unique character page. It can be a bit tricky to find the first time around, so here's how to do it. Open the Menu by pressing X. Selecting this option pulls up a bunch of different settings.Choose the Residents tab. It's the second option down. This page displays all residents who live on your island. Select the Mii you want to change. Choose any character from this section to edit. Scroll down and select the personality section. On their character page, highlight and select the personality box, which is near the bottom left corner. Modify their personality. Adjust the sliders to match the numbers listed above for whichever one is your desired new personality for the Mii. Finalize your choice. Lock in the new personality by pressing the + button when you're done. The post Tomodachi Life Living the Dream personality chart – How to get all personalities appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

A member of the machine learning team at Embark Studios has further explained how the developers are continuing to evolve the AI enemies, known as ARC, in ARC Raiders. For many months, the ARC Raiderscommunity was under the impression that Embark was making use of an AI system that allowed ARC to learn and adapt to players' tactics in real-time. This was later debunked by the studio, but a developer has now explained the manual process the team goes through to make enemies smarter. View the full article

Xboxgamers have been on a bit of a roller-coaster ride lately, with multiple major changes to subscription tiers and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions in the past few years, a shake-up in leadership that saw Phil Spencer recently replaced by former Microsoft CoreAI president Asha Sharma, and more. View the full article

NTE's Launch Gameplay Preview video goes over mini-games, combat, exploration, driving, diving, and much more. View the full article

Turtle Beach has revealed the new Stealth Pro II, and its hot-swappable batteries and charging base could make it my future favorite headset.View the full article

Netmarble has launched Mongil: Star Dive for mobile devices and PC with consoles to follow. View the full article

I've accepted that Command and Conquer is unlikely to return in any meaningful way at this point, but that means there's room for new blood to prove that RTS games are just as good as ever. It brings me great joy, therefore, to see DORF, the '90s-inspired newcomer with a tremendous modern twist on the visuals of the era, blasting dramatically past its Kickstarter goal. Raising nearly $300,000, it's picked up sufficient funding along the way to introduce full co-op campaigns and even another programmer to speed up development. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: New RTS DORF's unique infantry units are worthy of Command and Conquer's finest New game feels like Command and Conquer set in the world of classic Fallout Stunning Command and Conquer style RTS game finally shares new update View the full article

Pragmata is Capcom’s second RE Engine-based game in just a few months, and while the gameplay feels like it was ripped straight out of the Xbox 360 era, the game looks much better. And, because it’s a relatively small game built on the engine Capcom built for Resident Evil, it runs extremely well across a wide range of hardware. Hell, it even looks pretty good on the Nintendo Switch 2. Most gaming PCs should be able to run Pragmata with little issue, but just like with any PC game, the trick is finding that perfect middle ground between image quality and performance. For anyone with a high-end machine packing something like an RTX 5080, this will just mean cranking up all the settings, turning path tracing and frame generation on and just going wild, but for most people, some light tweaking can go a long way here. The Ray Tracing Problem Pragmata largely takes place on a giant space station on the moon or something – I don’t know, I didn’t really pay much attention to the story. Because of this setting, there are a ton of reflective surfaces and cool lighting effects that really lend themselves to ray tracing. And, well, yeah, ray tracing does make the game look much better, but only if you’re lucky enough to have a high-end Nvidia card. There are basically two types of ray tracing effects on offer in Pragmata, a ‘ray tracing’ toggle which will enable RT Global Illumination and Reflections, and Path Tracing, which completely replaces the rasterized lighting engine with ray tracing. You’d think that in a game with so many shiny surfaces, the regular ray traced reflections would go a long way to enhancing the look of the game, but in some places it actually makes the game worse. This is very apparent in the Hideout, the Firelink Shrine in space that you return to whenever you die or have to make some upgrades. The metallic floors have a dark gray reflective sheen to them, which looks awesome when combined with the path traced lighting. But on the lower ray traced settings, the reflections from the indirect lighting are incredibly noisy. There’s one hallway I found a couple hours into the game where this setting makes it look like there are raindrops falling on the floor, even though we’re indoors… in space. Curiously, this type of floor looks better with no ray tracing at all, which is excellent news for anyone that wants to maximise performance anyway. It’s a shame, though, because when you’re in an environment with a lot of more transparent reflective surfaces, the ray tracing genuinely looks fantastic. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s worth the trade off of noisy, static-y floors. A solution for this, at least for Nvidia graphics cards, would be the DLSS Ray Reconstruction setting, but that’s conveniently grayed out unless you’re using path tracing. That’s likely because it does come with a performance cost, but it would go a long way to making the baseline ray tracing look better, especially when combined with upscaling. However, if you have a mid-to-high-end Nvidia graphics card, I’d recommend at least trying the path tracing, because it looks incredible. Unfortunately, you can’t even turn it on with an AMD graphics card, even with FSR. Pragmata Recommended Graphics Settings With how easy it is to run Pragmata, most people are going to be able to run the game at high settings, even with modest graphics cards. For instance, with the RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p, you can get a good 97 fps with ray tracing enabled, and with no DLSS upscaling. It does struggle a bit when you try to turn on path tracing, with the frame rate dropping down to 44 fps, especially since that card is a bit too old to support frame generation. Instead, the question comes down to what your performance goals for pragmata actually are. If you’re good with 60 fps, most people will be able to reach that by just turning the preset to “Quality” or “Balanced” and calling it a day. But PC gaming is, at its core, all about tweaking things to get it running just right, and you can tune Pragmata to give you close to the "Balanced" preset when it comes to performance, while looking extremely similar to the “Quality Preset.” In the interest of time, it’s best to start with the “Balanced” preset and tweak it from there. Luckily, the settings menu has a little preview image that shows you roughly what each setting is changing, along with the impact to your VRAM and the GPU itself. My goal here is to keep image quality as good as possible, particularly in combat, while maximising the frame rate. Global Illumination Quality: Medium In most modern games, lighting is one of the biggest drags on GPU performance. There are three different settings, and the Balanced preset sets the global illumination quality to high. However, while this does make a big difference to atmospheric lighting and really enhances reflections, it is quite heavy on your performance. By my measurements, moving from the high setting to medium will save you a solid 11% performance. That will give you a bit of a hit to image quality, to be sure, but with the RTX 5080 it took me from 101 fps with max lighting to 113 fps at 4K. That’s worth it. Hair Quality: MediumFor some reason, modern developers keep trying to work some version of fancy hair technology into games, and every time it comes with a huge cost to performance. The same is true here, too. The worst part is that there’s only really hair on one character, so it feels completely unnecessary. My gut tells me that most people should turn this setting down to low, but it genuinely looks bad when turned all the way down. I’d pick the middle ground here, and set it to medium. Or, if you just care about maximising frame rate, and especially if you’re on a handheld, just turn this all the way down. Texture Quality: It Depends When you select the “Balanced” preset, it’s going to default to the “High: 2GB” setting for textures. That’s fine if you have a low-end card, but my advice would be to crank this setting all the way up and only lower it if your game starts stuttering. Texture Quality only affects game performance if you’re running out of VRAM, so the right setting really depends on what kind of GPU you’re using. If you have at least 8GB of VRAM, just leave it maxed out, unless you’re playing at 4K. And, really, if you’re playing at 4K, you should have a GPU with more than 8GB anyway. Texture Filtering: It Also DependsJust like with Texture Quality, Texture Filtering only really affects your performance if you’re running out of VRAM. Turn it all the way up if you have the VRAM budget for it, and only turn it down if you start stuttering. Mesh Quality: Max Mesh Quality is another VRAM budget question. It changes how 3D models are rendered, and I prefer to keep character models looking as high-end as possible. Especially with all the weird robots that you’ll be going against in Pragmata. Max out mesh quality, and then turn it down to “High” if you’re over your VRAM budget. Shadow Quality: High Ok, hear me out. The Balanced preset sets shadow quality to medium, which does save quite a bit of performance. But with the way that the lighting is set up in this game, there are shadows all over the place, and moving it up to high just goes that extra little way to making it look better, especially since we turned down Global Illumination earlier. Bumping up the shadows like this hardly touches the actual processing load of the game, and only slightly increases the VRAM demand. So, if you’re right up against your VRAM limit, absolutely keep shadows at medium. For everyone else though, you probably won’t notice the performance hit of High Shadows. Shadow Cache: OnThe shadow cache is simply a toggle that lets the game store shadow information in your VRAM. If you have the spare VRAM, this will greatly improve performance, because the game has less to dig for whenever it’s drawing a scene. For most people that aren’t VRAM-limited, turning this off will basically just shave 10% off of your fps. Nobody wants that. Leave this on unless you’ve already turned everything else off and you still need VRAM. Contact Shadows: On This is another toggle, and it changes the way shadows are cast on 3D objects. Turning it off makes basically no impact on your performance, so I’d just leave it on. The game looks a tiny bit better with them enabled, and unless you’re really scraping by with low-end hardware, it’s going to run fine. Effects Quality: Max This is largely why I turned down the global illumination earlier. Listen, after you fight basically any enemy, it explodes into a mass of fire, metal and some kind of blue goo. It looks really freaking cool. You can save a bit of performance by lowering the effects quality, but you’d really be missing out. This is definitely one of those things that come down to personal preference, though. So, if you care more about environmental lighting than explosions, then turn up Global Illumination instead. I, for one, wouldn’t trade these robot explosions for the world. Video Quality: It Depends on What Resolution You’re Playing At There are only two options for Video Quality, and it only affects cutscenes. If you’re playing at 1080p, keep the video quality at 1080p. And, then, if you’re playing at 4K, turn it up, it’s that simple. Of course, turning up the cutscene quality will lower your frame rate in cutscenes a bit, but it’s a cutscene, it doesn’t need to be running at 120 fps. I said it. Anti-Aliasing: FXAA+TAA The right setting for anti-aliasing is going to depend entirely on whether or not you’re using upscaling. If you’re turning on DLSS or FSR, then you don’t really need the game’s built-in Anti-Aliasing. However, if you’re intent on playing the game at native resolution, just enable FXAA+TAA or turn Anti-Aliasing off if you’re really struggling with performance. Ambient Occlusion - SSAO Ambient Occlusion is one of the most obvious places to cut in order to save performance. By turning it off, you’ll get around 5% more frames, but the game will lose a lot of subtle detail in various objects. I prefer to keep it on, but this is one of the first things you should turn off if you’re having trouble hitting 60 fps. Bloom: Personal Preference Bloom doesn’t really affect your performance, so keep it on or turn it off depending on how much you like the effect. Screen Space Reflections: On Because of the sheer amount of reflective surfaces in Pragmata, Screen Space Reflections make a huge impact on how the game looks. There are so many glass panels and shiny floors that look really cool with this enabled. That said, turning it off will probably improve your frame rate by 10%, so it makes a lot of sense to disable it if you’re trying to maximise frame rate at all costs. Subsurface Scattering: Off Subsurface Scattering changes the way that light interacts with skin, making it look much more realistic. This was a huge deal in something like Resident Evil: Requiem, because everything was human or human-adjacent. In Pragmata, though? It really only affects Diana, and you’ll be spending most of the time looking at the back of her head as she rides on your shoulder hacking robots. It doesn’t affect performance that much, but it’s still not really worth the performance cost. Motion Blur, Lens Flare, Lens Distortion and Depth of FieldAll of these are post-processing effects that hardly impact game performance. They do change the overall presentation, but it’s really down to your personal taste here. I despise motion blur, so I turn that off in every game that’ll let me, but really it’s up to you. How Do These Settings Affect Performance? To test my settings for Pragmata, I found a section relatively early on, with a bunch of lasers and glass surfaces, along with a little combat encounter at the end to give me a good idea how well it would perform. I then tested the game at three separate resolutions, with three different graphics cards to get a rough idea of how the game would perform. I ran the game with an RTX 3060 Ti at 1080p, an AMD Radeon RX 9070 at 1440p and an RTX 5080 at 4K. I was most surprised by how well the RTX 3060 Ti held up. That graphics card is getting quite old at this point, but with my tweaked settings, it was able to get around 100 to 110 fps in this section. The GPU was even able to stretch up to 1440p, getting around 60-70 fps at that resolution. Then, the Radeon RX 9070 absolutely soars at 1440p, able to get between 130 and 140 fps with my recommended settings.This GPU was also able to stretch up to 4K, getting around 70 to 80 fps. At 4K, the RTX 5080 is able to swing between 100 and 110 fps with the recommended settings, with plenty of space left over for ray or path tracing if you really want to make the game look better. Though, with the latter, I’d suggest setting DLSS to the Performance setting. To test each of the presets themselves, though, I tossed in an RTX 5090 and set the resolution to 4K to see how much of an impact each change would have on the massive second boss battle. This is a scene with a lot of complicated effects and lighting, so the differences are really going to show themselves. It’s important to keep in mind though, that every time I did this boss fight was slightly different, so there’s some wiggle room in these results. The minimum preset is what you’d be playing on a handheld, and it’s no surprise that the RTX 5090 was able to get a solid 195 fps, but the game looks incredibly flat and lifeless. That’s kind of fitting for a game about 3D printed robots, though. The balanced preset brings the average frame rate down to around 126 fps, but it already looks much better. The reflections in the little puddles around Times Square make the game pop, and the boss’s attack effects actually have some meat to them. What’s interesting, though, is that my recommended settings, even though I turned up effects settings and shadows, the frame rate actually goes up to an average of 129 fps. That’s not a huge difference by any means, but it does make all the little explosions look much better, without having too much of an impact on the ambient details of the scene. Then, of course as we start turning up the settings the frame rate starts to drop. Bringing it to the Quality preset enables ray tracing, and the frame rate drops all the way down to 115 fps. That’s still a very solid frame rate, and you can always enable DLSS to bring the performance up a bit higher. Finally, maxing out every setting with path tracing comes with a pretty massive performance hit. However, the game won’t actually let you turn on path tracing without DLSS, so that softens the blow a little bit. But, even with DLSS set to balanced and without frame generation, the RTX 5090 only gets an average of 59 fps here. So, you should really only turn this setting on if you’re going to set DLSS to performance, and even then you might need to turn on frame generation to fully saturate your monitor. At the end of the day, Pragmata runs extremely well no matter what hardware you’re running it on. Even on the RTX 3060 Ti, which is almost six years old at this point, you’re able to get nearly 120 fps at 1080p, which is going to be more than enough for most people. But even though the game is extremely accessible for lower-end hardware, it still has plenty of room to scale up, so that even the most high-end gaming rigs can stretch their legs a bit. Tuning Pragmata really does come down to what you want out of the game, I’m just glad that it’s scalable enough to actually let people make meaningful choices about its performance. Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra View the full article

Hytale developer Hypixel Studios is taking legal action against a copycat game that popped up on the Nintendo eShop last week. Hytale, the sandbox RPG, is taking action against Hytale: Sandbox RPG, a recently released Switch game with striking similarities that go far beyond just its name, including a suspiciously similar art style and promotional images. Asked if he was aware of the possibly copyright-infringing game, Hypixel Studios founder Simon Collins-Laflamme confirmed he had, writing on X/Twitter: "Yeah, it's being handled by the legal team" (thanks, Automaton). The clone seems to have been developed by the same team behind Coin Pit, a "scam knock-off of Clover Pit," as one player accurately surmised. "This is just the tip of the iceberg on the Switch eShop," wrote another Hytale fan on Reddit. "It's littered with knock-off games still despite Nintendo saying they are cracking down on them." Another admitted they were nearly misled into buying it, writing: "Recently bought a Switch 2 and saw this in the eShop. My first thought was, 'Why was Hytale released on Switch before Steam?' Insane how Nintendo does zero vetting for products on their platform." Unfortunately, Hytale is not the only victim of these prolific copycats. Many hit games spawn low-effort clones as unscrupulous developers hope to fool players into believing their copycat game is the real deal. For instance, this time last year, The Pokémon Company was awarded "substantial" damages for ******** copycat mobile game, Pocket Monster: Remake. The game featured seemingly unaltered Pikachu artwork from the Pokémon Yellow box as the app icon, while other branding for the game featured what appeared to be Ash Ketchum, Pikachu, Tepig, and Oshawott, again unaltered. The real Hytale is currently available via early access on PC and can only be purchased on its official website. It blends the freedom of a sandbox with the momentum of an RPG, letting players explore a procedurally generated world full of dungeons, secrets, and a variety of creatures, then shape it block by block. Our early access Hytale review returned a 7/10. "Hytale's Early Access launch already offers an enjoyable take on Minecraft with some thoughtful additions and lots of room to grow," we wrote. Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky. View the full article

On Wednesday, Games Workshop revealed more details about the changes coming to the Warhammer 40k combat phase in 11th edition. There are a lot of little changes that, together with the recently revealed new terrain layouts for the game, should make melee armies a lot more viable - and it's clear that the 40k design team has been taking notes from the Age of Sigmar developers down the hall in Warhammer World. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Warhammer rival One Page Rules reveals massive 3D printing campaign with 18 creators and 500+ minis The first Warhammer 40k author, Ian Watson, has died After 18 years, Warhammer 40k reveals a new Ork Weirdboy, and he's odder than ever View the full article

"The f*** you mean there's an extra step?"View the full article

Sails milestoneView the full article

Pragmata is a relatively short and sweet action gameView the full article

Pragmata has quite a few different resources to collect, so here's what you spend them onView the full article

Here's how Pragmata's hacking minigame worksView the full article

With the next generation of consoles poised to start releasing in the coming years, PlayStationfans in particular have been sweating it out thinking about how costly the PlayStation 6 could end up being. Already, current-gen console prices and the PS5 in particular have spiked in recent months due to chip shortages, the cost of tariffs being passed to consumers, inflation, etc., and it doesn't seem likely that will change for next-gen hardware. View the full article

Idea Factory International has also released a Digital Deluxe Edition for delivery service RPG Calamity Angels: Special Delivery on Steam. View the full article

As you may have gathered by this point, I'm a sucker for a cool Cyberpunk 2077 mod. Hence, when I saw that the modder behind some of the RPG's most unique custom vehicles had dug up some of CD Projekt's abandoned models to bring to life a flying police interceptor that never made it into full game, you best believe I stuck that on my must cover list. It's called an and they've also put together a short quest to unlock it. Read more View the full article

Developer Kraken Express says "we're still trying to figure out what exactly is going wrong here"View the full article

Ashes of Creation director Steven Sharif has hit out at alleged "coordinated attacks" against him and his studio, Intrepid Studios, insisting recent claims about the company's finances were "completely false and already faltering under judicial review," and calling the drama "one of the craziest stories gaming has ever seen." Earlier this week, the public fallout of ill-fated MMO Ashes of Creation continued, this time with an alleged full breakdown of Intrepid Studios' expenses. It painted "a troubling picture of a company that was on the threshold of financial death at multiple points in its history," and revealed millions of dollars allegedly spent on dubious purchases. Sharif has disputed the claims. YouTuber NefasQS claimed to have "obtained and processed the entire Intrepid Studios general ledger from 2015 to 2026," and to have corroborated documents and records that "help us finally finish most of what remains of the mystery surrounding Ashes of Creation and the implosion of Intrepid Studios." He published the full ledger online and uploaded a video discussing some of the details, including "the interesting numbers ranging from mysterious withdrawals by John Moore (former Intrepid CEO Steven Sharif's husband) to the costs of game development, especially when it comes to outsourcing." NefasQS's claims were damning. The video alleged his team had uncovered evidence of a "lavish lifestyle," with $220,066.46 spent on DoorDash, $48,568 on antiques, $21,000 for a personal chef, $8717.15 on plants, $15,981.70 on movie theater tickets, $595,098.83 on Amazon orders, $21,346 on Magic the Gathering cards, and $2,200 on hotdogs. $81,166 was reportedly also provided to Gore Oil, the company that appears to own Sharif and Moore's $4.9 million San Diego mansion, which they bought in 2020. How did we get here? Well, back in February, Valve quietly withdrew Ashes of Creation from ***** after its director and leadership team quit just weeks after it launched as a $50 Early Access game on Steam. At the time, Sharif said "much of" the senior dev team had quit "in protest," claiming the management board had asked him to do things he "could not ethically support." We then learned the "entire" development team was laid off without notice or their January paychecks, and, last month, a court in San Diego issued a temporary restraining order in Sharif's favor against Intrepid's Board of Directors, led by Chair Rob Dawson, and their affiliated entity, TFE Games Holdings LLC. Since then, however, the court found no cause for a preliminary injunction, and the temporary restraining order expired, given "the trade secrets are returned to Intrepid and there [were] no longer serious questions going to the merits on the appropriation of trade secrets claims." Now, in a statement and an 11-page document posted to Discord, Sharif blasted the "flood of speculation, misinformation, and coordinated attacks surrounding me, Intrepid Studios, and Ashes of Creation," and called for fans to dismiss "these lies" that he insisted were "completely false and already faltering under judicial review." "I know the public discourse around me, Intrepid, and Ashes of Creation has been flooded with knives-out narratives driven by a coordinated defamation campaign orchestrated by the opposing parties in my lawsuit," Sharif wrote. "That campaign has been amplified through content creators, including those serving as a mouthpiece for [one of the game's investors], a known violent individual with multiple prior arrests. "Do not mistake noise for truth. If you genuinely care about what happened to Ashes of Creation and Intrepid Studios, and this is not directed at the casual observer, I ask that you take a moment to read today’s court filings. In them, I have included more than 45 exhibits consisting of texts, emails, internal communications, and witness testimony from six individuals with firsthand knowledge of the events as they unfolded. I understand that creators can be easier to consume and more entertaining to watch, but some are chasing headlines and clicks, not accuracy, context, or the truth which can only be found reliably in court." In the 11-page report, Sharif appended snippets of filings, exhibits, and witness statements, writing "they will shock you, but they are a true and accurate record of what occurred to Intrepid and why." "As alleged in our federal complaint, and further supported by the sworn declarations and documentary evidence now filed with the Court, the Board defendants, led by Chairman Rob Dawson, engineered a plan to seize control of Intrepid’s assets for their own benefit through threats, coercion, deception, and unlawful self-dealing with zero regard for the company they destroyed and the human lives damaged by their ******** conduct," Sharif alleged. "That plan involved starving a viable company of cash to manufacture a default, using fear and leverage to force signatures and concessions, terminating more than 200 people while stripping them of wages, benefits, and accrued obligations, leaving vendors and creditors high and dry, and then using the crisis they created to justify a foreclosure designed to transfer Intrepid’s assets and intellectual property into an entity controlled by Robert Dawson." Sharif claimed that the only reason the injunction relief was not granted was because "the defendants abruptly reversed course and attempted to undo their own foreclosure." "They tried to put the assets back after the theft was exposed," he alleged. "I have the receipts. I have the texts. I have the emails. I have the internal documents," he added. "And the people who were present and aware of exactly what these individuals were doing while they lied publicly about it, just spoke up in today’s filings." Sharif said he "tried to keep the peace" for the sake of his team and their families, and "for the millions of players waiting for Ashes." "I did so at the expense of my own health, my own safety, and my own peace of mind. But there is a line. And that line was crossed when their conduct showed complete disregard for the human beings under my leadership." "As founder of Intrepid, and the original creator of Ashes of Creation, I also personally want to say that I am sorry," he added. "I took on people who represented that they wanted to help build Ashes and support its future. I did not know they would ultimately try to destroy it and seize it for themselves. But hear me clearly: I will not let that be the ending of this story." He closed by appending a Q&A document, answering questions such as, "For the last 10 years, you claimed there was no board to answer to. When did that change? Was there always a board? Were you lying?" ("No"), "Why didn't you inform the community when that change happened," (because doing so "would have triggered immediate consequences"), and, "Why did you approve the Steam early access launch, and why did you say the company wasn't out of money?" (Because "based on the information I was given at the time, the company was not out of money.") Sharif closed his statement with: "They did not expect that I would challenge their actions as aggressively, and successfully, as I have. They were wrong. I hope this post and the documents below help to provide some answers for those interested in knowing and seeing the truth." Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky. View the full article

This weekend, the world of professional wrestling sets its sights on Las Vegas, Nevada, for the 42nd edition of WrestleMania. One man who will be in the center of the action is Wade Barrett, a former 5-time WWE Intercontinental Champion, and now a full-time commentator. Barrett is a master of both sides of the game, having wrestled for two decades before taking a step back from in-ring competition. Ahead of the event, VGC sat down with Barrett to chat about what it’s like to be a commentator in WWE 2K26, and how he translates the emotion of calling a live match to the recording booth. Barrett also chats about his love for The British Bulldog Davey Boy Smith, and his early years as a wrestling fan. Read More... View the full article