Back 4 Blood Will Not Have Versus Campaign Or Equivalent

Back 4 Blood will launch later this year, and is in the midst of a beta, which you can read more about through here. Various impressions have come out, and people are getting a good feel for the game, one way or another. As most people probably know, the game itself was developed and is being billed as a spiritual follow-up to Left 4 Dead, but it seems it will lack a fan favorite mode.

As detail by Reddit user RadiumPwd, they went to the game's official Discord to ask if the game would get a Versus Campaign or something similar. While that question went unanswered for a bit, the game's Design Director, Chris Ashton, answered that there were no plans in place for Back 4 Blood's own version of Versus Campaign and elaborated to say, ""We have a lot of defensive equipment and our specials are good at ambushing. Defending worked far better for our game than running from A-B."

It probably isn't too surprising since nothing had been said about that mode to this point, but Left 4 Dead fans will no doubt be disappointed. The mode in those games saw two team, one as the survivors and one as special Infected, battle over 3 rounds. It was a largely popular mode, so hopefully at least something similar down the road.

Back 4 Blood is set to release October 12th for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and PC. The game will also come to Xbox Game Pass day 1 of release.

Diablo 4 Is Planned To "Drive Engagement" For Years To Come

Later this year, we will revisit Diablo 2 with a new remaster that is looking to be quite the faithful recreation of the action RPG classic. But further down the road, a new entry in the series is being cooked up with Diablo 4. We don't know when we'll see that game, but we've been getting updates about it pretty consistently. While there isn't any new information, and the current state of Blizzard and Activision is one of a PR fire tornado, we do have an idea of what the parent company is hoping to achieve.

In the publisher's most recent quarterly earnings call, as documented by the folks at MP1st, Activision COO and President Daniel Alegre spoke briefly on the game. He said its development is going nicely and that significant resources are going toward the project. He also said the company looks for the game to drive engagement for the long haul, saying, "Blizzard continues to make strong progress on Diablo 4, the game is shaping up incredibly well and the team is allocating substantial resources to creating exciting content to drive engagement over multiple years."

This comes as little surprise as all the games, specifically Diablo 2 and 3 were updated and had expansions. We'll let you know when more details about Diablo 4 is released. For now, we know the game is in developer for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, though no release date or timeframe is set.

Psychonauts 2 Has Gone Gold

Very few games embody the "cult hit" spirit as well as Psychonauts does, so it follows that fans of Double Fine Productions' beloved and trippy platformer have been waiting for its sequel for a long, long time. And now, after several years in development, the wait is almost over.

Double Fine recently took to Twitter to confirm that ahead of Psychonauts 2's launch later this month, the game has wrapped up development. This means principle development is complete, with the game ready to be shipped out, and any and all improvements and polishing done now will come in the form of updates on the day of launch (or afterwards). It can be pre-ordered and pre-installed across all platforms.

Psychonauts 2 launches on August 25 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, and PC. It will be available on Xbox Game Pass on PC and Xbox on the day of its release. You can get more details on what frame rates and resolutions it will target on the platforms it's releasing for through here.

Xbox Confirms ID@Xbox Twitch Showcase For August 10

In a recent Xbox Wire blog post, the Redmond-based giant has confirmed that it would be holding its second ID@Xbox Twitch showcase later this month. The showcase starts on Tuesday, August 10th at 9:00 AM PT and will showcase a number of Indie games slated to release in the future for Xbox.

The blog post mentions a few developers such as Rebellion and Chump Squad. It will also feature updates on games such as The Artful Escape, OlliOlli World and a few others. The last ID@Xbox showcase showed off over 100 different indie games, so it's reasonable to think that the showcase will be packed with announcements and reveals.

Microsoft's encouragement of indie developers for its platform is in stark contrast with Sony, who recently got under fire for charging extraneous amounts of money from developers for putting games on the platform's storefront. Anyways, it's great to see indies getting the love they deserve.

Epic Doesn't Expect EGS To Make A Profit From Until At Least 2027

A number of documents pertaining to the Epic-Apple lawsuit have been recently unearthed, and it has now come to light that Epic has spent over $500 million on it's storefront. Epic's lawyers mentioned during the proceedings of the court that it's not yet profitable, and the company doesn't expect to make any profit until at least 2027 – as reported by PC Gamer.

Of course, it's not that big of a surprise either – the Epic Games Store is known for spending extraneous amounts of money for exclusives, promising Sony millions of dollars for PC ports. Furthermore, it gives out 2 free games every week – which also costs money. Add in a number of exclusivity deals, and the number seems understandable.

"Epic lost around $181 million on EGS in 2019. Epic projected to lose around $273 million on EGS in 2020. Indeed, Epic committed $444 million in minimum guarantees for 2020 alone, while projecting, even with 'significant' growth, only $401 million in revenue for that year. Epic acknowledges that trend will continue in the immediate future: Epic projects to lose around $139 million in 2021."

"If we take the lower figures, that adds up to an investment on Epic's part of $493 million since 2019, and Epic itself has acknowledged that "unrecouped costs" will amount to at least $330 million. "At best, Epic does not expect EGS to have a cumulative gross profit before 2027."

However, Epic's biggest ace is Fortnite  – which has transcended from a battle royale to a pop-culture icon. That does cover Epic's back to some extent of course, and these continued investements will probably bear a lot of fruit in the future.

Cyberpunk 2077's Latest Update Still Giving Performance Issues On Xbox Series X – Report

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 has been a disaster on consoles, with the launch version plagued with unoptimized code causing a plethora of glitches and bugs. Seven months later down the line, it still seems that there's still a lot to be desired and even next-gen consoles are struggling to remain locked to their performance targets. This is according to a recent Digital Foundry analysis, and you can check out the video below.

The Xbox Series X version when running in performance mode struggles to stay locked at a steady 60 fps, dropping below by quite a lot in demanding sequences. PS5 seems to fare better in this regard, staying locked at 60 fps for the particular scene. A point worth mentioning is that both are upgraded versions of last-gen consoles, and dedicated next-gen versions are yet to drop sometime later.

Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PS4, PS5, and Stadia.

The Ascent Players Raising Concerns Over Accessibility Issues With The Game

Neon Giant's latest The Ascent has been met with mostly positive critical reception, but some fans seem to be disappointed with the lack of accessibility options within the game. Many recently took to Twitter to report this problem, but Neon Giant is yet to respond to any of the comments.

Fans seem to be quite irritated with the game's text size, citing that it's just to small to read. In addition to this, reports surrounding excessive screen clutter and UI issues have also been raised by fans.

Accessibility is an important part of any modern game, as it promotes inclusivity for gamers with physical or cognitive disabilities. Many developers have started taking this element of game design very seriously – with most of Ubisoft's recent catalogue being great examples of this. Naughty Dog's The Last of Us Part 2 also had a load of accessibility options, and the game won a number of awards for this very thing.

Godfall: Fire and Darkness Enemies Revealed, Lightbringer Mode Detailed

Counterplay Games has shared some new details for its action RPG Godfall which will receive its first paid expansion Fire and Darkness next week. Players will essentially venture to the Fire Realm and contend with the Flameblood Tribe who are "some of the most formidable enemies in all of Aperion" (including winged foes). There's also the free Lightbringer Update that adds Cursed Loot, over 50 new Valorplate skins and a new mode called Lightbringer.

Available to players who have reached level 50, it sees you and up to two other players venturing into a realm shrouded in darkness. In order to bring the Light of the Seventh Sanctum back, one needs to seal Dark Tears before the clock runs out. Matchmaking will be available when the update goes live so you won't have to go it alone.

Cursed Items are the newest loot tier and can provide powerful benefits if one can lift the Curse on them. To do this, you must venture into the Dreamstones and clear the Ascended Tower of Trials. Fire and Darkness goes live on August 10th along with the Lightbringer update for PS5 and PS4. Stay tuned for dedicated patch notes and details in the coming days.

Samurai Warriors Series Has Sold Over 8 Million Units

Koei Tecmo and Omega Force recently launched Samurai Warriors 5, and prior to its Western release just a little over a week ago, the game had already sold over 280,000 units in Asia, where it had already been available for some time. Now, the publisher has announced that the series as a whole has also hit a notable sales milestone.

Koei Tecmo recently took to Twitter to announce that the Samurai Warriors series has sold over 8 million copies. The recent launch and sales of Samurai Warriors 5 will have obviously helped the series' overall sales, and it's a pretty impressive figure, all things considered.

Samurai Warriors 5 is available on PS5, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. A demo of the game is also available on all platforms. You can read our review of the musou action title through here– we quite liked it, in spite of a few issues.

Back 4 Blood's Game Pass Launch Will Enable a "Mind Blowing" Pool of Day 1 Players, Dev Says

Xbox Game Pass has been nabbing some pretty big third party multiplatform day one launches of late, from Outriders to MLB The Show 21, and that's bound to continue in the months ahead. At E3, it was confirmed that Turtle Rock Studios' Left 4 Dead-inspired co-op zombie shooter Back 4 Blood would also launch for the service on day one, and in a recent interview with GamesRadar, the game's executive producer Matt O'Driscoll talked about how that's going to benefit the game.

Being a multiplayer-centric game, it goes without saying that the thing that Back 4 Blood is going to need the most right from the get go is a wide pool of players, and as O'Driscoll puts it, thanks to the game's Xbox Game Pass launch, it is assured of a massive pool of players pretty much the day it launches- which, according to him, is "mind blowing."

"Yeah… day one, launching on Game Pass. That's going to be kind of crazy, right?" O'Driscoll said. "We need a player pool, so that we've got matches going all the time. I think we've got that player pool from day one. I forget what the numbers are for Game Pass, but I think it's 20 million-plus users, right? They will have access to our game from day one, which is kind of mind blowing. I've never launched a game that's had that kind of accessibility from day one."

O'Driscoll also added that the development team didn't really have to make any changes to the game with its Xbox Game Pass launch in mind. According to him, signing the deal was a pretty straightforward process.

"We didn't really," he said. "So it was kind of super cool for us, that we didn't have to pivot too much at all. There was no, 'oh hey, we're going on Game Pass but we've got to support this or we've got to do this'. It was like, the deal was struck, they [Microsoft] wanted the game on Game Pass – but they wanted the game we were making."

Back 4 Blood is out on October 12 for Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, and PC. An open beta of the game is live right now.