The day has finally arrived--after months and months of leaks and rumors, Fortnite's Simpsons season launches today. Just not quite yet, because Fortnite is offline for maintenance following the "Welcome, Our Alien Overlords" event, during which players were treated to a Simpsons short film that explained how they ended up being a part of the Fortnite omniverse.

As is standard operating procedure for Epic, Fortnite goes offline when it's time for a major update. While this usually happens during the middle of the night on a weekday, this season launch is a special event, and as such, it'll kick off on a Saturday evening. That's why it's offline for maintenance now--Epic wants the launch of Fortnite x Simpsons to arrive during primetime on a Saturday night.

When is Fortnite Simpsons season expected to launch?

Epic is planning to bring Fortnite back online for The Simpsons season at 2 PM PT / 5 PM ET, though that time is an estimate and not set in stone. In reality, Fortnite maintenance rarely ends on schedule, as it's simply done when it's done--which actually often means sooner than expected. Fortnite maintenance usually lasts between four and seven hours, and the planned start time here splits the difference exactly at 5.5 hours of downtime. So don't be surprised if the season starts a little before or a little after that time.

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Truth or Trap is a fast and fur-ious quiz game full of surprising facts, sneaky traps, and a touch of feline mischief. Each round, one player becomes The Big Meow and challenges the others with two items from a quirky category – maybe both are true, maybe one’s a trap - maybe it’s all a lie! Can you tell which is which? Everyone secretly bets paw tokens on their guesses, and you only win if you get both right! Get it wrong, and you’ll lose your bet and one of the shared nine lives. When all lives are gone, the round ends and the cat with the most paws wins a Golden Sardine! Collect two and you’re crowned the cleverest cat! Expect bluffing and laughter in this quiz game of knowledge, guess work and some pure feline instinct!

In a world filled with strange machines and creatures, battle flying swarms and shielded worms and if you survive long enough, you might even meet the Mother Of Swarm. Flesh & Bone is an epic survival game where you chose your strategy: hand of bone for necro magic and hijacking the brain of your enemy, hand of flesh for epic melee combat and turret defense technology, or combine both. Upgrade until you leap high up above the battlefield, run faster than the enemy and impose decisive pacification.

Pokemon Go's Tales of Transformation season continues in October with a variety of different events happening over the next few weeks. In addition to new Spotlight Hours and raid bosses, the game will host a few autumn-themed activities this month like the Harvest Festival, which will introduce two new evolved forms of Applin.

On top of that, there's also Mega Rayquaza Raid Day to look forward to, as well as an event to celebrate the launch of the Pokemon series' latest title, Pokemon Legends: Z-A. And of course, October wouldn't be complete without the annual Halloween event, which will be split up into two parts this year and add a few new ghost and costumed Pokemon to catch.

You can read more about all of the biggest events happening in Pokemon Go for October 2025 below.

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Grand Theft Auto 6 is just over six months away, but there's something brewing at the game's developer, Rockstar Games. The studio fired between 30 and 40 staff members from offices in the United Kingdom and Canada earlier this week. The terminated employees were reportedly attempting to unionize when they were let go.

Bloomberg broke the story, and added that all of the fired employees were part of a private trade union chat group on Discord. According to a spokesperson for the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain, the group was a mix of members who had already joined the union and others who were trying to organize a union at Rockstar.

"Rockstar has just carried out one of the most blatant and ruthless acts of union busting in the history of the games industry," said IWGB president Alex Marshall in a statement. "This flagrant contempt for the law and for the lives of the workers who bring in their billions is an insult to their fans and the global industry."

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Xbox Elite Series 2 Controller

$140 (was $200)

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Microsoft's Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller is discounted to $140 (was $200) at Amazon and Walmart. The $60 price cut is the best we've seen in 2025. If Amazon and Walmart sell out--and we wouldn't be surprised if that happened--the Elite Series 2 is available for $145 at Target and $150 at Best Buy.

The Elite Series 2 has numerous customizable features and swappable magnetic components not found on the standard Xbox Wireless Controller. Here's a quick look at the controller's key extra features and accessories:

• Four removable back paddles
• Metal analog sticks with adjustable tension
• Six swappable stick caps
  • standard (x2), classic (x2), wide dome, tall
• Two D-pads: Circular 8-way & standard 4-way
• Built-in trigger locks with three stopping points
• Three custom control profiles
• Charging dock
• Braided USB-C cable
• Hardshell case with accessory slots

Standard Xbox Wireless Controllers are also steeply discounted at multiple major retailers. Carbon Black and Robot White editions are on sale for only $40, and the recently released Breaker Special Editions are down to $60 (was $80). We included a full list of deals at the bottom of this story.

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Keyboards have more than 100 keys, but there are four that are most important to people who play video games: W, A, S, and D. There are games that use more than these keys, yes--StarCraft, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft use all sorts of combinations--but the majority of games rely on a small sampling of numbers and letters on the keyboard. There are practical reasons for this, to be sure: Computer games often require one hand on a mouse, the other on a keyboard. There are a ton of keys that are simply out of reach. If you've got two hands on the keyboard, you're probably not playing a video game. But you could be.

Typing games have existed for decades, once largely considered educational tools designed to help kids learn to use a keyboard. Millennials played games like Typer Shark and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing in their computer lab classrooms, before computers were commonplace in home offices. As computers, namely laptops, started to proliferate, computer labs started to disappear--and so did the need for educational typing games. But from the ashes of the computer lab, typing games have reemerged, pulling from the educational genres toolbox while putting a new spin on the niche genre.

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, released in 1987 and developed by Software Toolworks, is the quintessential typing game. It wasn't the first typing game, but it was among the first. Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing is certainly the most prominent; Mavis herself is the face of the typing genre, even today.

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Last month, Supergiant Games officially launched Hades 2 out of early access, and sent the princess of the underworld, Melinoe, on a quest to defeat the titan Chronos. The original ending of the game wasn't very well-received. But in Hades 2' first post-launch patch, the true ending may give fans a better conclusion than the previous finale.

There have been some sizable additions to build up to the true ending, including new events and voiceovers, as well as changes to the fated prophecy adjustments, and the ability to use a cauldron incarnation to take you back to an earlier point in the game. However, the true ending will require a higher number of Underworld clears than before. The game's epilogue isn't being changed.

The specific changes involving the special encounters have been marked as spoilers by Supergiant. Without giving any story points away, one character may appear less frequently, and one will appear more often.

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Lenovo LOQ 15.6" Gaming Laptop

$650 (was $1,100)

See at Best Buy

If you're in the market for a budget-friendly gaming laptop this holiday season, Best Buy's early Black Friday sale includes an awesome deal on a recently released model from Lenovo. The Lenovo LOQ 15.6-inch Gaming Laptop is discounted to only $650 (was $1,100). It's the only gaming laptop in Best Buy's sale catalog so far, but there are a bunch of gaming desktop deals.

The $450 price cut on the Lenovo LOQ isn't categorized as a Doorbuster, so it's possible the deal will stick around beyond Sunday, November 2, but it's not guaranteed. Best Buy's "DoorBOOsters" are only available this weekend and include the Lenovo IdeaPad 1i for $300 (was $600).

See all deals at Best Buy Lenovo LOQ 15.6" Gaming Laptop $650 (was $1,100)

Specs:

• Display: 15.6" Full HD IPS LCD
• Refresh Rate: 144Hz
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050
• CPU: Intel Core i5-13450HX
• RAM: 16GB DDR5 (Expandable)
• Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD
• Ports: USB-C 3.2, USB-A 3.2 (x3), HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm

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The Lenovo LOQ has a pretty solid display for a $1,100 gaming laptop and a very solid display for a $650 gaming laptop. The 15.6-inch LCD screen has a 144Hz refresh rate and Nvidia's G-Sync adaptive frame rate tech. It has a full 100% standard RGB color gamut, which often isn't the case with gaming laptops in this price range. It offers 300 nits brightness and has an anti-glare coating.

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Embark Studios is clearly keen to keep building on the success of its latest game, Arc Raiders. The extraction shooter, which just launched to the biggest player numbers on Steam for the niche genre, is already growing and now there's a roadmap outlining its trajectory.

Arc Raiders' roadmap provides a glimpse at the months ahead for the fresh third-person shooter on the market. As is typically the case, the live-service game will be receiving frequent updates fine-tuning the experience, ironing out any kinks, and steadily rolling out new cosmetics, feats and trials, as well as map conditions that should liven the playing field.

Arc Raiders roadmap for the next several months.

The most exciting news though has to do with two updates coming in November and December, respectively. The first is dubbed North Line, and it will feature an entirely new map called Stella Montis, bringing Arc Raiders' map count to five. North Line will also introduce a new community unlock event--these are typically goals and challenges for the entire game's community to work towards in order to unlock a reward--as well as equipment and quests. There will even be two new Arcs, the game's robotic enemies which tower over players, called the Matriarch and Shredder.

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