Diablo 4 is celebrating three years of demon slaying with increased XP rewards, the return of the game's March of the Goblins event, and daily free cosmetics, but players won't have long to take advantage of them.

From June 2-9, players will enjoy the Mother's Blessing XP buff, granting increased multiplicative XP in both the game's seasonal and Eternal realms. That will also be the same day the game's March of the Goblins event returns, heralding increased treasure goblin sightings and a reputation board that can be progressed by slaying them for even more rewards.

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It's a nice way to supercharge the back half of Diablo 4's current season, as players need increasingly more gold and XP to max out their characters in the endgame. But developer Blizzard is sweetening the deal even further with five days of free premium cosmetics that can be claimed from the Diablo 4 in-game shop. Below is the full schedule. 

• June 1: Blood Raven's Talon (One-handed Sword)
• June 2: King Kanai's Last Stand (Shield)
• June 3: Nangari Wounder (Dagger)
• June 4: Overlord's Odium (Two-handed Axe)
• June 5: Flamefinger's Claws (Glaive)

Diablo 4's second expansion, Lord of Hatred, released in April, making it the first game in Blizzard's long-running ARPG franchise to receive more than a single expansion. Lord of Hatred brought major changes to Diablo 4's endgame with the addition of War Plans, reimagined itemization with the addition of the Horadric Cube, overhauled class skill trees, a revamped difficulty system, and two new classes, the Paladin and Warlock. 

The result is an expansion that in many ways makes Diablo 4 feel like an entirely new game, even if Blizzard has admitted its constant changes make the game "hard for players to keep up with."

The meta of Diablo 4 continues to shift in the weeks following Lord of Hatred's launch, with a seemingly inconspicuous bug fix resulting in a new way to make players basically immortal. Meanwhile, the discovery of Mythic Unique Charms has upended what a "perfect" build looks like for those lucky enough to be able to find one.

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This week marks the 49th anniversary of the original Star Wars movie, and Hello Games appears to be paying homage to the seminal flick with its “mysterious Death Star-like construct” that will debut in No Man’s Sky’s latest update, The Swarm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NomizORoqU

Per the patch notes, The Swarm is set to begin soon and it will run for around eight weeks. This expedition will introduce a new threat to every living being in the galaxy, as the Swarm targets any travelers that get in its way. To end the Swarm and its massive weapon, travelers will be split into three teams--the royal, the sage, and the weaver--all of whom will have to work together to unlock a final confrontation. At the end of the campaign, the team that contributed the most to the war effort will be given their due in the Space Anomaly.

Hello Games’ Sean Murray promised that The Swarm will have the “biggest and most epic space battles to date,” before adding that “The Hive of Glass protects itself by releasing swarms of robotic drones, creating an awesome spectacle of battles with hundreds of ships. The Hive itself is a weapon too, with the iris opening to release the largest weapon we’ve ever seen in No Man’s Sky. A laser capable of destroying freighter fleets and perhaps even something as large as a space station.”

While Murray stopped short of calling the Hive a planet killer, the worlds of No Man’s Sky can be contaminated by the Swarm. Players can go through the effort of healing these broken worlds while investigating the wreckage of Swarm ships for clues about their past and potential ways to defeat them. However, salvage missions of this type pose new dangers to travelers as the Swarm can defend itself even when its ships are destroyed. 

The most recent No Man’s Sky update added Pokemon-like battles to the game. Players also gained Gravity Guns earlier this year, and that’s a weapon that may come in handy as The Swarm campaign unfolds. The complete patch notes for The Swarm are included below.

No Man's Sky The Swarm Update Update 6.4 patch notes:

The Swarm Expedition

• Expedition Twenty-Two, The Swarm, will begin shortly and run for approximately eight weeks.
• Players on the expedition will be assigned into one of three teams of Travellers, and allocated a ship and uniform in their team colours.
• All teams must work together to unlock the final battle. Progress is represented by the construction of the Prismatic Core in the Space Anomaly, as well as displayed in the Mission Log and on the Galactic Atlas website.
• Construction of the Prismatic Core is driven by completing three categories of missions to counteract the Swarm - Purge, Restoration, and Sabotage. Each category has a different impact on the rate and balance of construction.
• The most valuable team will be glorified in the Space Anomaly for all time.
• Rewards include new posters, decals and titles; flags representing your assigned soul fragment; the Direwasp rifle Multi-Tool; the Direwasp Flightpack; and the six-piece Direwasp customisation set.

Swarmer Enemies

• During the expedition, players will encounter two new enemy types: small, agile swarmer ships, and the huge, formidable Hive of Glass boss.
• In all game modes, crashed swarmer ships can now be found on dissonant planets. Crash sites are defended by small but deadly planetary swarmers.
• Buried debris from crashed swarmer ships can now be found on worlds which are both dissonant and contain salvageable scrap.

Stability and Optimization

• Fixed a rare softlock where the Connecting banner could display indefinitely when viewing the initial frontend screens.
• Fixed a crash related to rendering thumbnails for multiple complex corvette-class starships.
• Implemented a number of memory and performance optimisations related to ship trails and speedlines.
• Improved performance when piloting wheeled Exocraft on Switch, Xbox One, and PS4.
• Implemented a significant optimisation in freighter battles.
• Improved performance of certain lighting calculations on CPU.
• Significantly improved performance when handling object visibility in complex scenes.
• Optimised memory usage when rendering UI in sub-4K resolutions on PS4 Pro.
• Fixed an issue that could cause a crash when playing in 4K on PS4 Pro.
• Fixed a number of rare crashes.

Space Combat

• Improved the visibility of targeted enemy ships in third person space combat.
• Improved weapon aiming of the starship in third person space combat.
• Improved the navigation of the starship when using auto-follow in space combat, and allowed auto-follow to boost the ship.
• Improved the navigation and flight patterns of enemy ships in space combat.
• In space combat, when battling enemies with weak points, hitting the weak point will now always crit, and hitting other areas of the enemy will never crit.
• Improved the appearance of speedlines in the starship.
• Fixed an issue that caused mission notifications counting the number of nearby enemy ships to delay updating until a destroyed enemy ship completed its death spin.
• Improved controls for the player ship while in space combat.
• Fixed an issue that could allow Sentinel interceptors to spawn when space combat was disabled in the difficulty settings.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Sentinel interceptors from detecting criminal activity in space if ground combat was disabled in the difficulty settings.
• Fixed an issue that could allow the countdown notification for the pulse engine enabling after combat to display a negative time.
• Improved the notifications for re-enabling the pulse engine after combat to display the correct pulse technology name for the current ship.

QOL and Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue that caused teleporter endpoints from previous galaxies to be removed when progressing to the next galaxy through the galactic core.
• Fixed an issue that prevented teleporter endpoints from being added in galaxies outside the player's "home" galaxy.
• Fixed an issue that caused In Stellar Multitudes to direct the player to the galaxy map when their first purple star system was actually in a different galaxy.
• Fixed an issue that prevented corvettes from landing in the Space Station and the Anomaly.
• Fixed an issue that caused the player's backpack to disappear from the inventory screen when piloting a corvette after being in third person.
• When viewing a corvette through the Analysis Visor, the name of the specific module is now displayed on the HUD.
• Fixed an issue which caused the Analysis Visor to close when attempting to tag a marker whilst facing an interactable object.
• Fixed an issue that could cause markers to be displayed for non-existent resource deposits.
• Fixed an issue that prevented transferring inventory items when purchasing a ship.
• Fixed an issue that prevented inventory items from being deletable when transferring into a storage container.
• Fixed an issue that caused the camera to spin if the player quickly exited the ship after answering the ship communicator.
• Fixed a camera judder when first entering a ship after repairing it.
• Fixed an issue that could cause Corrupted Sentinels to flicker rapidly on Nintendo Switch 1 & 2.
• Fixed an issue that allowed retroviral pellets to be duplicated.
• Arena League Challenger's Invitations are more likely to encourage you to battle on multiple planets before offering a Champion's Invitation.
• Arena League Challenger's Invitations are more likely to pick Holo-Arenas you have not previously visited.
• Arena League Champion's Invitations will now function correctly when used in Outlaw systems.
• Improved the balance of experience awarded to companions when battling in the Holo-Arena against opponents of a much higher level.
• Fixed an issue that could cause the prompt to claim Twitch rewards to persist when all rewards had been claimed.
• Added support for viewing the Gamercards of each Xbox player in the host's session when on the Join Game screen.
• Hid the Quick Menu keyboard hotkey prompts on PC and handheld devices when playing without mouse and keyboard.
• Fixed an issue that caused armour on display near the Exosuit Research merchant in the Space Station to disappear as you got closer.
• Hid the holographic representation of community mission progress above the Quicksilver Synthesis Bot when no blueprints are currently being generated.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the use of touch controls to claim expedition rewards.
• Fixed an issue that would prevent saving of gyro settings when applying changes from the front end menu.

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Looking sharp is an important part of being a super-spy, and developer IO Interactive is giving players a free way to unlock some killer looks in 007 First Light with its now-live Twitch Drop campaign.

Three free 007 First Light outfits are up for grabs, and they couldn't be much easier to earn. The three outfits are the Purple Suit, Silent Line, and Resplendent Death. To unlock all three, players will just need to watch a total of two hours of 007 First Light on Twitch. Below is the exact breakdown. To make progress, you'll need Twitch open in an active window.

• Purple Suit Outfit: Watch one hour of 007 First Light
• Silent Line Outfit: Watch two hours of 007 First Light 
• Resplendent Death Outfit: Watch official IOI creators play 007 First Light for one hour

Twitch streamers like Lirik, Abbycakes, Ainrun, and others can be watched to earn the Resplendent Death outfit. To see what creators are official partners, you can search IOICreator in Twitch's search bar. 

To claim the rewards, players will need to link their IOI account with their Twitch account. Drops can be claimed from now until June 23. 

These three outfits are easy to earn, but 007 First Light does have plenty of other outfits that can be earned both in and out of game. Completing various in-game challenges will unlock new looks, but there are also other sources of both free and paid cosmetics that can be redeemed from places like Nvidia GeForce, watching creators on TikTok, buying Coca-Cola, and upgrading to one of the game's special editions.

In GameSpot's 007 First Light review, writer Mark Delaney was surprised by how much IO's take on James Bond leaned on what the developer had learned from years working on the Hitman franchise, giving the game an 8/10. He noted it "wisely repurposes what works in both universes" and isn't afraid to ditch or reimagine parts that don't. 

"As Hollywood seems uncertain about where to take Bond next, IO Interactive's debut effort is supremely confident," Delaney said.

007 First Light ends with a tease for a sequel, something IO hasn't been shy about wanting to make a reality. The developer previously said it wants to make a Bond game trilogy.

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Rayman Legends wasn't exactly the smash-hit blockbuster Ubisoft was hoping for when it launched back in 2013, but commercial success be damned--it was one of the best platformers ever made. Now, it appears everyone's favorite limbless adventurer is getting another shot at the spotlight, with a Rayman Legends remake reportedly releasing later this year.

As reported by Insider Gaming, who said the former Prince of Persia team is involved in its creation, the remade game is apparently called Rayman Legends Retold, and is planned for an October release. The game appears to have been in the works for the last few years, though we've gotten no official confirmation of it thus far.

On the forum ResetEra, prominent industry leaker NateTheHate claimed the game will be "2.5D with some 3D sections." That would be a marked change from the 2013 game, a sequel to Rayman Origins, which was entirely 2.5D.

What we are praying remains the same, however, are the musical levels. Rayman Legends caps off many of its chapters with incredible musically synced platforming challenges set to popular songs like "Eye of the Tiger" and "Black Betty." They make for some of the most satisfying moments you're likely to experience in a platformer.

Should you want to play the original Rayman Legends as we wait for confirmation on the remake, it's available for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and even Vita.

The Lord of the Rings is one of the biggest and best-known entertainment franchises, but recent entries in the game series have left much to be desired. The series is continuing with at least one new game, an untitled open-world Middle-earth RPG from the developers of the popular Kingdom Come series. In this post, we're rounding up everything we know about the game. 

This post will be updated over time as more details come to light about the new Lord of the Rings game.

In This Article

• What is the new Lord of the Rings game?
• "Deeply immersive"
• When will the Lord of the Rings game be released?
• Fellowship Entertainment
• Recent struggles
• Renaissance for LOTR games
• What about the next LOTR movies?

What is the new Lord of the Rings game?

In May 2026, Warhorse Studios announced it was making a "Middle-earth RPG" that would be an open-world game (the company also announced a new Kingdom Come game at the same time). The developer did not use "The Lord of the Rings" branding, but Middle-earth and The Lord of the Rings are synonymous to many. 

The stories that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, including his iconic The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit, exist within Middle-earth. This is the word for the whole world that Tolkien created. It's a vast mythology with numerous different locations to explore and characters to meet, not to mention the various different Ages of Middle-earth, so it will be intriguing to see where Warhorse's story takes place and if any familiar characters show up. 

The announcement was very light on details, while no imagery whatsoever was released, not even concept art or a mood piece. It's possible the game was revealed for the purposes of helping ramp up hiring, or to signal to Embracer's investors that more big games are coming to help improve confidence in the company and the stock.

"Deeply immersive"

During a community broadcast following the game's unveiling, Warhorse communications director Tobias Stolz-Zwilling said Warhorse has assembled a "mind-blowing team" to make the game, and that the game is aiming to be "deeply immersive." 

He also said the game will feature a "living world" populated by "interesting characters, memorable places, and of course a strong narrative focus." This does not tell us much of anything about the game, but it's a starting point to help understand where the game may be headed. We also know that Deliverance 2 design director Viktor Bocan is leading the development of the untitled Lord of the Rings game.

When will the Lord of the Rings game be released?

The game was only just revealed, but already we have an indication as to when the Lord of the Rings game may be released. Warhorse said its next Kingdom Come game is targeting a release during Embracer's next fiscal year (April 2027-March 2028), with The Lord of the Rings game following after. In short, it's what you probably already guessed: the game is not releasing soon. 

Fellowship Entertainment

As part of the announcement of the new Lord of the Rings game, Embracer confirmed that it will spin off a second unit, Fellowship Entertainment, which is described as an "IP-led entertainment company" focused on The Lord of the Rings, as well as Tomb Raider and "many other" owned IPs. Embracer said that creating Fellowship Entertainment and spinning it off will allow the standalone company to have a "better structure" to maximize its potential. 

To be sure, Fellowship Entertainment may carry a Middle-earth-inspired name, but it's much bigger than that. Companies under the Fellowship Entertainment banner include Middle-earth Enterprises, but also many of its subsidiaries, including 4A Games, Crystal Dynamics, Eidos-Montreal, Gunfire Games, and Warhorse itself. 

Recent struggles

The Lord of the Rings video games have not been very well received lately. 2023's The Lord of the Rings: Gollum was so poorly received that its developer canceled its next game and stopped making games entirely. 2025 saw the release of the cozy-looking Hobbit life-sim Tales of the Shire, but it was a critical miss as well. The game was delayed multiple times before launch, and Netflix backed out of a publishing deal for it. 

These misfires came after better-received games came from Monlolith Productions, including 2014's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and 2017's Middle-earth. Shadow of Mordor was GameSpot's Game of the Year in 2014, and many other people and publications loved it.

Renaissance for LOTR games

After Embracer acquired Middle-earth Enterprises, the company said it was prototyping multiple new Lord of the Rings games, so the announcement of a game from an Embracer subsidiary, Warhorse, was not a complete shock. If Crystal Dynamics is making another Lord of the Rings game, that would track as well, given Embracer owns that studio and would have more favorable financial terms than working with an outside team. 

Before Embracer's comment about prototyping new Lord of the Rings game, the company's top Lord of the Rings boss, Lee Guinchard, said he wanted there to be a renaissance for Lord of the Rings games. After all, many may recall the heyday of licensed games in the early 2000s when there were games based on Peter Jackson's movie series and the Battle for Middle-earth franchise There were also Lego Lord of the Rings and Hobbit games that fans may fondly remember. 

What about the next LOTR movies?

Beyond Warhorse's new Lord of the Rings game, multiple new movies based on the series are in the works. The first to come is 2027's The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, which brings back Elijah Wood as Frodo, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Andy Serkis as Gollum, and Lee Pace as Thranduil. Jamie Dornan steps into the role of Aragorn, while Oscar-winner Kate Winslet will play Marigol in the film that Serkis is directing. After this movie will come the tentatively titled Shadow of the Past, featuring a script written by super-fan Stephen Colbert, and this movie will finally bring Tom Bombadil to the big screen. 

Valve's Steam Controller presents itself as one of the best options for playing games on PC, specifically (but not limited to) games on Steam and through Steam Input. With tight integration into the platform, tons of customization options, and the ability to easily play controller and traditional keyboard- and- mouse titles alike, there's little to suggest that this isn't the one controller that does it all. Except that, currently, some firmware quirks are severely holding it back.

One of the most prevalent involves the controller's rumble, which exhibits some unpredictable and, in many cases, completely broken behavior, depending on the game you're playing. I've had a mostly great time with the Steam Controller, but recently some newer (and older) games have exposed the issue. With 007 First Light, the Steam Controller consistently (and powerfully) pulses, almost as if it's mimicking an in-game heartbeat, irrespective of what I'm doing. It's the same in Forza Horizon 6, albeit with far less force, but with the same rhythmic vibration that doesn't stop. Swapping to an Xbox controller in both cases resolves the issue entirely, laying blame squarely on Valve's controller.

But with Hollow Knight: Silksong, however, everything works as expected. That's the same for an older game like Metro Exodus, making the matter more confusing. This isn't isolated either. The Steam Controller subreddit is starting to become filled with similar posts regarding strange rumble behavior recently, perhaps due to a new firmware version potentially breaking something for those who have downloaded it. 

Some users have mentioned sending in the controller for a replacement, only for that to exhibit the same issue. Other users report not experiencing the issue at all. Steam Support, as reported by others, lays the blame squarely on developer support, and the absence of an official Steam Controller profile. That might be the case, but, as some users have noted, that shouldn't make the controller completely unusable. We've contacted Valve directly, and will update this story with any reply we receive in the future.

It's a disappointing reality for a controller that is already very expensive, despite all of its distinct features that are meant to set it apart from the plethora of third-party controllers. But if game support is going to be this spotty, and especially so in instances where the Steam Controller is the only one at fault, it does make that asking price seem a little steeper.