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Forbes
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
All Of ‘Destiny 2' Is Free Before ‘The Edge Of Fate,' And Loot Is Permanent
Destiny 2 I wrote up yesterday how Bungie is attempting to draw in new players to Destiny 2 with its new Frontiers era, which begins with its Edge of Fate expansion on July 15. Now, Bungie has pulled the ripcord and made quite literally everything you can currently play in Destiny 2 free for a limited time. The list? I've seen some misreporting about how they've just made five expansions free, which is technically true, but Shadowfall and Beyond Light's campaigns were made free some time ago. The expansions will be free until after The Edge of Fate launches, until July 22. The episodes, the three super-seasons that have been live since The Final Shape, are only up for a week and will be removed on July 15 when The Edge of Fate is released. I mean literally removed; they will be taken out of the game, as is the case with seasonal content when a new expansion launches. The good news here is that anything you earn during this time, armor, guns, exotics, currency, even titles. All of that will carry over once everything stops being free. The exception here, I believe, would be the Strand subclass from Lightfall. Lightfall While this is meant to attract new players, absolutely dumping content on them like this is bound to be confusing. I'm going to tell you right now that a week to play all the episodes and two weeks to play all the expansions is really not going to be possible for most players. My advice is that if you want to connect with the best story and campaign content of the game, play Witch Queen and The Final Shape (Lightfall is bad and a thrown-together expansion that was never supposed to exist. Strand is fun though). FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder But if you want the best loot in the game, you might want to play the episodes as much as possible, as those have introduced some great gear that will go above and beyond most of what you can earn in past expansions (minus raid loot, perhaps, but I wish you luck trying to burn through raids as a completely new player in two weeks. Lapsed players? Maybe so). Destiny 2 I do find this somewhat ironic, that players can keep all their weapons and armor, as the game is quite literally revamping all weapons and armor into an entirely different system with the launch of The Edge of Fate, so things will change immediately, or even midway through this free period for expansions. I mean, go for it. I love Destiny. It has wild ups and downs, and it will never be what it once was, but so much of this content is great, and gunplay is best-in-industry. Have fun. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram. Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy
Washington Post
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Video game performers vote on contract that could end nearly three-year-long battle over AI
LOS ANGELES — Results from a union member vote on a tentative contract between video game performers and their employers are expected Wednesday evening. If ratified, the contract would formally end a nearly three-year-long effort from Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists negotiators to obtain a new contract for video game performers. The process, which included an 11-month strike against several major game makers, hinged on how artificial intelligence would affect performers in the industry.
Motor 1
04-07-2025
- Automotive
- Motor 1
Forza Motorsport Could Be in Trouble Following Microsoft Layoffs
It might be the end of an era for racing fans. Microsoft has allegedly slashed the staff at Turn 10 Studios, the developer behind the Forza Motorsport video game franchise. It's unclear how many people the studio laid off, but reports indicate that nearly half the staff has been let go. The Verge is reporting that around 70 people were fired, and it's unclear how this will affect future installments of the Forza Motorsport franchise. The studio launched the franchise's latest installment in 2023, simply named Forza Motorsport , for the Xbox Series X/S and PC. It garnered tepid reviews , with some disliking parts of the game's newer elements, like the RPG-style progression system, which the studio attempted to address. Photo by: Turn 10 Studios However, gamers have generally enjoyed the Motorsport franchise. Early examples of the game earned Metacritic scores in the low 90s; however, the scores began to falter with the release of Forza Motorsport 5 . Forza Motorsport (2023) was the eighth installment in the series. The franchise launched in 2005 as Xbox's response to PlayStation's Gran Turismo . Microsoft would expand the Forza franchise with the launch of Forza Horizon , an arcade-style open-world alternative that emphasized the motoring lifestyle more than perfect lap times at iconic tracks. The layoffs at Turn 10 were part of a larger culling throughout Microsoft's various divisions. There are no reports that the tech giant laid off anyone at the studio behind the Horizon franchise, England's Playground Games, which is also available on the PlayStation. We're All Waiting For This, Anyway: A New Grand Theft Auto VI Trailer Just Dropped. It Looks Insane Wasted: Grand Theft Auto VI Is Delayed Until 2026 Get the best news, reviews, columns, and more delivered straight to your inbox, daily. back Sign up For more information, read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use . Photo by: Turn 10 Studios Sources: The Verge , Insider Gaming Share this Story Facebook X LinkedIn Flipboard Reddit WhatsApp E-Mail Got a tip for us? Email: tips@ Join the conversation ( )
Fast Company
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
How Roblox handles millions of players on viral games like ‘Grow a Garden'
Just this past weekend, social and gaming platform Roblox saw a peak of 30.6 million concurrently active players, the company announced Tuesday. One game in particular—the record-breaking viral gardening sim Grow a Garden —drew a peak of 21.6 million concurrent players. While previous blockbuster games from Fortnite to World of Warcraft primarily run on servers managed by their own developers and publishers, Roblox is distinctive in that its games and experiences are created by third-party developers. And those developers are free to update and tweak their game code at any time—with Roblox's servers expected to manage the traffic load, even seamlessly updating the experience for players already logged in. 'Most of us computer scientists were taught that you'd never publish your entire code in one go, and you do it when your traffic is low,' says Anupam Singh, senior vice president of engineering at Roblox. 'In our case, it's almost the opposite.' That's because preannounced updates to big-name games naturally draw crowds of players, and no gamer wants to be stuck on an old version of the software in an era when screenshots rapidly circulate via group chat and social media. And since Roblox tries to avoid restricting how experienced creators run their games and when they can deploy them, game code, images, and other assets need to be sent quickly and simultaneously to Roblox's content distribution network and edge servers as soon as they're ready to go and certified to meet Roblox content standards. It's one of several challenges that have led Roblox's engineering team to develop a sophisticated system of capacity and resilience planning, rigorous testing, and on-call engineering staffing for weekends, when players flock to the platform in droves. The company has a network of 24 edge data centers around the world, handling much of the game experience. When players click a play button to launch a specific game, they're connected to the most appropriate data center by an algorithm that can take into effect factors like which server their friends are playing on, their geographic location relative to the servers, and connection speed between the player's device and each server. The system as a whole sometimes considers up to 4 billion combinations of players and servers per second, and the company has for years been optimizing the process with an ultimate goal of being able to handle 10 million players joining games in a period of just 10 seconds. After all, today's internet users are no longer used to loading delays in launching new content, especially not the younger users who make up many of Roblox's core audience. 'We all remember the time when you just assumed that a little buffering is okay,' Singh says. 'But there's an entire generation of users who don't think buffering happens on the internet.' Those edge servers, plus additional cloud computing capacity that can be spun up to meet weekend demand, are connected to a pair of core data centers that manage services like the Roblox website, content filtering and recommendation algorithms, as well as the game publishing system. The edge servers connect to those core servers via a global private network, with redundant bandwidth available in case it's necessary. 'I've learned in this job that cable being cut is a very regular occurrence,' Singh says. During those busy weekends, there's a rotating schedule of on-call engineers ready to respond to any incidents. Even C-suite executives participate, Singh says, with on-call workers expected to have a Roblox-approved computer and a good internet connection during those shifts. When the unexpected occurs, an incident manager leads the response, able to command everyone (including executives); infrastructure like AI transcription is in place for any necessary calls. The company strives to avoid casting blame to get incidents resolved properly and quickly, with incident managers empowered to approve resources as necessary to get the job done. 'The on-call has the ability to say, 'Okay, give them 2,000 more servers, if that's what's needed right now,'' Singh says. If a problem does pop up that limits capacity, the company has systems in place to gracefully scale services down, though it tries to avoid impacting players who are already engaged in a game, and won't operate without some necessary features, like text content filtering. On Monday, engineers with responsibility for code relating to any weekend incidents meet to discuss what happened, and on Tuesday, the company begins capacity planning for the weekend ahead. It's also when Roblox observes TACO Tuesday, an acronym for 'test actual capacity on Tuesday,' meaning engineers run tests constraining the resources available to code to ensure it runs properly under high traffic. Starting this year, Roblox has also rolled out a 'chaos-testing' system, which deliberately injects errors, capacity constraints, and process restarts into the system to make sure it functions under stress. Like Roblox game creators, engineers are also empowered to make updates to their code at any time, with hundreds of deployments possible during a weekday. And by Friday, the team is ready to roll out and test any needed extra cloud capacity based on demand projections for that weekend. Making weekly decisions about capacity is essential in a world where games can go viral in a short amount of time. 'Every three or four weeks, there's a new big hit, so we've changed our capacity planning to be weekly,' Singh says. 'And honestly, we would love for it to go to almost daily, where if there's a hit within a day, we should still be able to find capacity.'
The Verge
17-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Bungie delays Marathon after alpha test feedback
Bungie announced Tuesday that it's delaying Marathon, its new extraction shooter that had been set for a September 23rd release date. The studio isn't providing a new release date just yet, though has promised to share it sometime this fall. The studio outlined a few 'immediate focus areas' for the game. It plans to make AI encounters 'more challenging and engaging' and make combat 'more tense and strategic.' It's 'doubling down on the Marathon Universe' by increasing 'visual fidelity,' including 'more narrative and environmental storytelling,' and will introduce a 'darker tone that delivers on the themes of the original trilogy.' (Bungie may also be making these visual changes after an artist said the company lifted her artwork without permission.) And it plans to add 'more social experiences,' including proximity chat and improving things for solo and duo players. 'We're using this time to empower the team to create the intense, high-stakes experience that a title like Marathon is built around,' according to the post. 'This means deepening the relationship between the developers and the game's most important voices: our players.'
