Battlefield 6 won't have ray tracing, as the team instead is focusing on performance and optimization, according to the game's technical director.

In an interview with ComicBook, Ripple Effect (one of the studios that comprises Battlefield Studios) technical director Christian Buhl said it doesn't have plans for ray tracing at launch or in the near future.

"That was because we wanted to focus on performance," Buhl said. "We wanted to make sure that all of our effort was focused on making the game as [optimized] as possible for the default settings and default users."

If you rolled credits on Donkey Kong Bananza, chances are you got through it with little frustration and extraneous effort. By many accounts, bosses take seconds to plow through, mining gold is seemingly unlimited, and overall the game is "too easy." But the phrasing is somewhat reductive, not just in relation to Bananza, but when discussing difficulty in games as a whole.

The stigma of "too easy" might indicate that a game is hand-holdy, not trusting players to act or think for themselves. Or, it's boring and monotonous, lacking in mechanical complexity and resulting in little satisfaction from overcoming obstacles.

Loosely characterizing Donkey Kong Bananza in this manner misses the point of what makes the game so enjoyable to play. Bananza is a breeze for players because it's built on a framework that is versatile and complex yet accessible and intuitive. By giving you all the tools you need to succeed in Bananza's vast sandbox, Nintendo made a game that feels effortless to punch your way through. If you think the game is easy, then it's doing its job correctly--Nintendo wants it to feel easy.

World of Warcraft developer Blizzard has taken aim at one of the biggest WoW private servers, suing its creators for alleged copyright infringement and citing recent efforts to "cannibalize and disrupt Blizzard's WoW player community."

The server in question is Turtle WoW, an ambitious private-server version of 2006-era WoW that has been active since 2018 and features fan-made expansions, additional playable races and classes, and new zones. Turtle WoW's creators recently made waves when it announced Turtle WoW 2.0, which aims to remake its version of the original, "vanilla" WoW in Unreal Engine 5. According to a Turtle WoW social media post, one of its most recent server launches hit 13,000 concurrent players.

Blizzard's lawsuit, filed in California on August 29, alleges the creators of Turtle WoW have created "an entire business on large-scale, egregious, and ongoing infringement of Blizzard's intellectual property." While Turtle WoW is technically free, it does feature an in-game shop where players can donate to the developers in exchange for premium currency.