The latest Pokemon TCG Pocket set, The Wisdom of Sea and Sky, arrived today, bringing with it a bunch of cards based on Pokemon Gold and Silver. That included a pair of Ho-Oh and Luiga immersive art cards, except it appears that the art for the Ho-Oh card may have actually traced over some commissioned fan art from 2021.

The artist behind the fan art Lanjiujiu shared a comparison between their art and the Pokemon TCG Pocket card, with the Ho-Oh looking nearly identical between them. In turn, The Pokemon Company has released a statement acknowledging the issue.

"It has come to our attention that there was a production issue regarding the illustration of Ho-Oh featured in the immersive card artwork for Ho-Oh EX (3-Star) and Lugia EX (3-Star)," the statement explains. "After internal review, we discovered that the card production team provided incorrect materials as official documents to the illustrator commissioned to create these cards. As a result, both cards have been replaced with a temporary placeholder that the team is actively working to replace with new artwork as soon as it's ready."

This year's Halloween Horror Nights at Universal are getting a little creepier. Universal has dropped the first teaser for Five Nights at Freddy's, which will be joining this year's Halloween Horror Nights at both Universal Studios in California and Universal Orlando in Florida. The teaser was accompanied by a brief video featuring Freddy Fazbear and his animatronic pals from the franchise.

Universal Orlando will kick off the Halloween festivities with Five Nights At Freddy's on August 29, while Universal Studios will wait a little longer and start the FNAF event on September 4. Halloween Horror Nights on both coasts will run until November 2.

The exact details for the temporary Five Nights At Freddy's attraction are scarce, but it will apparently be a recreation of Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria from the first game and the feature film of the same name. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy will haunt visitors as they attempt to make their way "through creepy abandoned hallways." The description also notes that fans will "encounter ghosts in the machines."

Elden Ring Nightreign's highly anticipated Patch 1.02 has been slightly delayed, following tsunami warnings in Japan. Originally scheduled to go live starting July 30, Bandai Namco has moved the date to July 31 at 1 AM PT / 4 AM ET.

This is in light of a massive earthquake occurring near Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, which in turn led to an evacuation order for 1.9 million people situated around Japan's east coast. The country's weather agency has reported that a tsunami wave of 4.3 feet has already reached the northern Iwate prefecture, according to the BBC.

Due to the tsunami warning following the earthquake near the Kamchatka Peninsula, we have decided to postpone the distribution of the 'ELDEN RING NIGHTREIGN' Patch 1.02, which was scheduled for today to tomorrow, July 31 (Thursday) after 10:00CEST | 1:00 PDT.

When the patch does go live, it'll introduce a new two-player mode Duos mode to Elden Ring Nightreign, allowing pairs of players to take on the game's challenges without needing to recruit a third person. Elden Ring Nightreign was designed for teams of three, but on PC, an unofficial duos mod proved to be surprisingly popular with players.

With Battlefield 6's big multiplayer reveal set for July 31 and preorders rumored to open the same day, many are wondering if EA will charge $80 for the game's standard edition. That remains to be seen, but new commentary from EA CEO Andrew Wilson suggests it may not happen.

"We're not looking to make any changes on pricing at this stage," Wilson said during an earnings call, as reported by IGN. The executive added that EA already offers a "fairly broad pricing scheme" across its many releases, including free-to-play, paid, and deluxe editions.

"Our orientation is always to capture the full spectrum of pricing so that we can serve players in the best way possible and offer them the greatest value," he said. "We'll continue to look at opportunities to deliver great value to our players through various pricing schemes over the course of time, but no dramatic changes planned yet."

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) has released a statement condemning the recent crackdown on games featuring adult themes on PC storefronts, calling for "greater transparency and fairness" in the moderation of adult games. The statement comes after both Steam and Itch.io caved to pressure from payment processors--themselves targeted by anti-porn lobby group Collective Shout--and abruptly delisted or deindexed a number of games with adult themes.

While IGDA stresses that it is not defending the circulation of harmful material--which many of the delisted games would certainly qualify as--it says that the current enforcement of these policies is vague and lacks transparency, leading to "delisting and deplatforming legal, consensual, and ethically developed games, especially from LGBTQ+ and marginalized creators."

"Developers report games being delisted or hidden despite prior approval or longstanding presence on these platforms," the statement says. "The lack of transparency around enforcement criteria, sudden shifts in policy, and an absence of appeal pathways leave creators with no clear path to compliance or recourse."

A big new update for Mario Kart World is here, bringing with it several smaller but likely welcome tweaks, alongside a change sought after by many. In the patch notes for version 1.2.0 of the game, which is available to download now, Nintendo noted that it has "increased the frequency of lap-type courses appearing in the selection when choosing the next course in 'VS Race' and wireless races." This has been a point of frustration for players, as many prefer to do a standard three-lap race as opposed to the new game's intermission races.

An update last month even made it harder to do three-lap races, so this tweak to make them more common again will probably go down well (as long as the likelihood of getting three-lap races has received a significant boost, anyway). In terms of other notable changes, while playing in free roam, when you manage to get all of the P Switches, ? Panels, and Peach Medallions, the "colors of the various numbers will now change." NPCs are also weaker in every mode apart from Battle, and those of you who rely on Triple Dash Mushrooms in a low position will be disappointed to know that the chance of getting that item has been decreased.

There's some other quality-of-life improvements too, like being able to choose who you want to watch when spectating in Knockout Tour, Balloon Battle, Online, Wireless, and LAN play. When playing in the Online, Wireless, or LAN modes, you'll also now be able to see the waiting time until the next race or battle starts. And you can also choose no computer players in the COM rules for VS Race and Single Player.