Polygon

Season 2, the second major content update for Marvel Rivals, is based on the Hellfire Gala, a red carpet event from the X-Men series.

Season 2 will add two new characters to the game: Emma Frost, a vanguard, and Ultron, whose class type hasn’t been revealed yet. There’s also the new Krakoa map. As with season 1, season 2 will be split into two halves. Emma Frost and the Krakoa map will come with the launch and Ultron coming in the mid-season patch.

In this Marvel Rivals guide, we’ll cover when season 2 releases in your time zone and what you can expect from the season.

Marvel Rivals season 2 release time on PC, PS5, and Xbox

The first half of Marvel Rivals season 2 will launch at 4 a.m. EDT on Friday, April 11. Here’s when that is in your time zone:

1 a.m. PDT on April 11 for the West Coast of North America4 a.m. EDT on April 11 for the East Coast of North America9 a.m. BST on April 11for the U.K.10 a.m. CEST on April 11 for Western Europe/Paris5 p.m. JST on April 11for Tokyo

The launch of season 2 will be global across PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. NetEase Games has yet to reveal the official date for the second half of season 2, but it’s expected to last for about six weeks, so until late May or early June 2025.

What to expect from Marvel Rivals season 2

The big feature in the first half of season 2 is Emma Frost, the new vanguard character. She’s able to use her psychic powers and diamond skin to project shields, mitigate damage, choke-slam enemies, and force foes to walk toward her against their will.

There is also the new Hellfire Gala map, which takes place on the island of Krakoa, adding a new region type to the game. With the addition of Hellfire Gala, NetEase games will be rotating some older maps out of the competitive playlist. All maps will still be playable in-game, just not while on the ranked grind.

Speaking of ranked, the second season will come with another reset for players, and will also see the introduction of the pick/ban phase for players in the gold rank.

NetEase Games has also implement a balance pass on the over-performing and underperforming heroes from season 1. This comes alongside an evolution of the Team-Up system, where some characters will lose their Team-Up abilities in favor of new ones.

For more Marvel Rivals guides, here’s a list of all known codes and a look at the game’s roadmap.

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After a three-year break, Netflix’s adult animated sci-fi anthology series, Love, Death & Robots, returns! A first, very M-rated trailer shows off some of the new shorts, which include dinosaurs, incredibly fluffy cats, giant babies, flashers at a concert, and a whole lot of explosions. All very intriguing concepts, but we’re specifically on the look out for the promised love, death, and robots.

For the past three seasons of the anthology, I’ve measured each short by how much they lean into those motifs — love, death, and robots — (while also evaluating how they work as shorts). Usually, the seasons score pretty high on the death meter, middling on the robot levels, and very low on the love. But hey! Maybe season 4 will finally even out the score. There is a googly-eyed dildo featured in the trailer.

Love, Death & Robots is the brainchild of Tim Miller (Deadpool) and David Fincher (Fight Club). The first season debuted on Netflix in 2019. Each season contains a number of self-contained, animated shorts, all produced by a different studio, in a different style.

The fourth season arrives on Netflix on May 12.

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As if Canada didn’t have enough reasons to hate Donald Trump, the reality-TV-star-turned-politician’s excessive tariffs will delay Switch 2 pre-orders not only in the United States but in the Great White North as well.

Statement from Nintendo of Canada:Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in Canada will not start on April 9, 2025 in order to align with the timing of pre-orders to be determined in the U.S. Nintendo will provide updated information at a later date. The launch date of June 5, 2025 is unchanged.

— Jonathan Ore (@jonore.bsky.social) 2025-04-08T15:05:37.051Z

CBC Radio senior writer Jonathan Ore was told by Nintendo of Canada on Tuesday that Canadians will also have to sit out tomorrow’s global pre-order extravaganza. The upcoming console’s planned June 5 release date still hasn’t changed. Polygon reached out for confirmation and received the same statement.

Trump recently declared a trade war against the entire world, including islands inhabited solely by penguins, by levying tariffs on just about everything coming into the US. The stock market immediately crumbled and many economic experts warn of a possible recession.

Nintendo spent much of last week revealing everything there is to know about the Switch 2. It costs $449.99 USD (for now). Mario Kart World will be part of its launch lineup. The mysterious C button is for accessing the new GameChat feature. Switch games will receive paid upgrades on the Switch 2. Nintendo Switch Online is getting GameCube games. The new Joy-Con 2 can act like a mouse (kinda). Donkey Kong wears pants now. Let’s just hope the tariffs don’t force us to shell out over $500 for the privilege of owning one.

Sorry, Canada. Signed, one very embarrassed American.

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At least one analyst expects the price of Nintendo Switch 2 to increase in response to President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs. Research firm DFC Intelligence said Monday that it’s “modeling a 20% price increase over the next two years” for Switch 2, which could put the base price of the next-gen console as high as $540.

Nintendo announced the launch price of Switch 2 at $449.99 last Wednesday, but that was before Trump outlined “reciprocal tariffs” on dozens of countries, including territories where Nintendo manufactures its hardware. Trump hit China with an additional 34% duty on Wednesday, and Vietnam, where Nintendo has moved some of its production, with a 46% tariff. Trump also hit Japan, where Nintendo is headquartered, with a 24% tariff on Japanese goods.

Trump’s move pushed Nintendo pause Switch 2 pre-orders in the U.S., which were planned to open on April 9, while it “assess[ed] the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions.”

DFC Intelligence’s report does not specifically say that the launch price of Switch 2 could creep beyond the previously announced $449.99 asking price, but that prices could go up depending on costs associated with tariffs. While game consoles have traditionally gone down in price, the most recent console generation bucked that trend; Nintendo still sells the Switch at its original launch price of $299.99. Rivals Sony and Microsoft have both raised prices on their current-gen consoles in certain territories.

“Additional clarity is expected when Nintendo releases its earnings in May,” analysts said in the report.

According to DFC Intelligence’s report, tariffs and uncertain pricing may push Nintendo to scale back its manufacturing, and the research firm lowered its sales forecast for the Switch 2, from 17 million to 15 million units in 2025. But DFC Intelligence still expects Switch 2 to be “the fastest-selling console system ever.”

Even with a possible price increase in the U.S., the firm is bullish on Nintendo’s prospects. Switch 2, DFC Intelligence says, “will continue to grow Nintendo’s growth among PC gamers and the core adult market,” and “has the potential to reshape the video game market.”

Nintendo Switch 2 is slated to be released on June 5 alongside Mario Kart World, Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour, and a long list of third-party and Switch 2 Edition upgraded versions of original Switch games.

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The C button is one of the Switch 2’s most talked-about features. First, it was because of the secrecy about what it does. Then, after the tell-all Direct showcase, where some of us were slightly deflated to learn its actual purpose (which is to initiate GameChat in any game, and GameShare with select titles), the discourse then shifted from curiosity to concern. It’s going to be a subscription-gated button after March 31, 2026, when free access to GameChat will go away, and the feature will slip behind the Nintendo Switch Online paywall.

I can wrap my head around this decision conceptually, and I think I’d probably get over it eventually if not for the glaring fact that the C button is so close to the Home button — a button that I intend to use at least 100 times more often.

I haven’t tried the Switch 2 yet, but I imagine the last thing that I, as well as many others, will want is to hit the GameChat button by accident instead of going to the Switch 2’s home screen, or pressing Home to suspend a game. I think this will happen a lot. Do I think it’s malicious of Nintendo to deliberately put the C button next to a high-traffic button — arguably the most important button on the console? I’m of two minds. Either way, someone should do something about this. That someone could be third-party accessory manufacturers.

I’m calling on Switch 2 accessory makers to craft a Joy-Con 2 shell that covers up the C button. I know many of you are cranking away on readying accessories for the June 5 launch day, so I hope at least one of you includes in your plans the option to essentially remove the C button, or somehow make it much more difficult to press by accident. I’m not sure how you’ll do that, but I have faith that there’s a brilliant person out there who can figure something out.

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Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt — its first major update since it launched in early access last year — has been a disaster. When players logged in last Friday to try it out, they immediately realized the game had become almost comically difficult. Killing weak monsters in the opening hours of the campaign took ages, and the new Huntress class felt limp. Reddit exploded with posts titled things like “This game feels like a massive waste of time” and “Game feels miserable”. Popular streamers rage-quit the game.

In response, developer Grinding Gear Games issued several small patches to give players a fighting chance. Monsters lost some of their life, and some underperforming skills, like skeletal minions, were beefed up. But many players still don’t think it’s enough to fix the feeling that the game is unrewarding.

Grinding Gear Games put up a post addressing the broader concerns with patch and what it plans on changing in the coming weeks, most notably the sluggish pacing of its campaign, which you’re required to replay every time a new season drops. While some of the changes have already gone through, players are still struggling to find the patience to play the game long enough to reach its endgame dungeons.

“I can absolutely tell you that our goal here was to nerf the things that were trivializing the endgame before you’ve even managed to get your items and stuff like that,” game director Jonathan Rogers said in an interview with streamer Zizaran on Tuesday.

“There were some blatant fuck-ups, speaking bluntly,” game director Mark Roberts added, specifically calling out the underpowered skills that were quickly hotfixed. “We’re firing from the hip a lot here and stuff like that we’re like, ‘Let’s just get it in there, let’s try it out, and see how people think and if it’s bad we’ll just undo it.‘”

“I think a running theme with PoE 2 in general is that the target to hit is smaller [compared to PoE 1] because if we want the combat to be more engaging then that means there’s a smaller target; it puts more pressure on the balance to be right,” Rogers said.

Rogers explained how he feels PoE 1 rewards players who have spent thousands of hours mastering its systems and that PoE 2 was designed to avoid that problem — it’s just really hard to get right. At the same time, the game is meant to have the kind of deliberate, dodge-roll-heavy combat you’d expect from a Soulslike. It’s supposed to be hard.

Both developers say the team is looking into a number of things to alleviate, but they want to be careful about pushing it too far into the other direction where players start flying through dungeons in just a few hours.

“If we get to the point where a good player never has to face a single challenge ever then I don’t think that’s going to be a game that will be ultimately fun in the long term,” he said.

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New games for the Nintendo Switch 2 can cost as much as $79.99, but Newegg is currently offering a deal that’ll save you some money at the Nintendo eShop. For today only, you can save $5 on every $50 gift card purchase for the Nintendo eShop. This promotion is valid for today only and is limited to purchases of $250 or less, but is an easy way to get a little extra bang for your buck. Just use the promo code SSER742 at checkout to knock $5 off every $50 gift card purchase.

While you can always spend your new balance on games, funds for the Nintendo eShop can also be applied to Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers. These $99.98 coupons can be redeemed for two eligible first-party Nintendo titles, which typically cost $59.99 each, saving you a cool $20 if you play your cards right. Unfortunately, this won’t include new titles for the Nintendo Switch 2, like Mario Kart World or Donkey Kong Bananza.

Nintendo eShop funds can also be used to purchase Nintendo Switch Online or Expansion Pass subscription, which not only allows you to save your Switch data in cloud, you’ll also get access to a growing library of classic Nintendo titles for the NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance. Nintendo also recently announced that it will be adding a collection of classic games from the Nintendo GameCube to the Expansion Pass library, which will be playable exclusively on the Switch 2.

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Say “Predator period piece” three times fast — or say it slow, because that’s what Predator: Killer of Killers is. A three-episode animated miniseries from the director of Prey, featuring Predator attacks in three different periods of humanity’s past. A newly released trailer for the show has all the gore, ominous de-cloaking, and weird clicking sounds you could want from the franchise.

The series — which takes place in historical Japan, in Scandinavia, and during aerial combat of World War II — was written and co-directed by Dan Trachtenberg while he wasconcurrently in production on his Prey sequel, Predator: Badlands. Trachtenberg teased that he was working on a non-live-action Predator project in October of 2024, but at the time it was assumed to be a movie — not an anthology.

But while Badlands takes the franchise into the future, set on a remote planet and following a young woman (Elle Fanning) finding an unlikely ally in an outcast Predator alien, Killer of Killers has Trachtenberg exercising the same compelling hook that he delivered on so skillfully in Prey: the universe’s ultimate alien hunters going blade to blade with historic human warriors.

Predator: Killer of Killers will premiere on Hulu on June 6. Predator: Badlands will hit theaters on Nov. 7.

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Assassin’s Creed Shadows players will spend dozens of hours traversing the sprawling provinces of central Japan, and now they’ll be able to turn off their brain just a little bit during those long treks through the rolling hills of the countryside, thanks to a feature introduced — or should we say, reintroduced to the franchise — in the first proper patch for the game.

Released Tuesday morning on all platforms, the version 1.0.2 update for Assassin’s Creed Shadows tweaks the “pathfinder” feature for the player character’s mount. Now, the horse will automatically follow roads as it uses the game’s turn-by-turn directions to ferry Naoe or Yasuke to their next waypoint. This feature existed in previous Assassin’s Creed games, including Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla, so its omission at Shadows’ launch was strange. (While auto-follow now appears to be the default behavior, you can still cancel it if you’d prefer to continue steering your steed manually.)

The other piece of the pathfinder feature — the GPS line that it draws on roads — will no longer appear when you’re taking screenshots in the game’s stunning photo mode, thanks to the patch. And in addition to adding the auto-follow feature, the update increases horse speeds in cities.

Another quality-of-life improvement in Tuesday’s patch that Assassin’s Creed Shadows players are sure to appreciate is the ability to sell or dismantle loot in batches. Now you can select multiple items in the shop/Forge screen before getting rid of it all in one go. Stepping out of the Forge, you’ll notice that Ubisoft Québec has removed the frame rate cap in the Hideout, allowing the game to run above 30 frames per second there. And continuing along the graphics front, the patch adds support for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, Sony’s image upscaling technique, for people playing on a PlayStation 5 Pro.

Other key elements of the patch include the ability to reset individual Mastery nodes in Naoe’s and Yasuke’s skill trees. (The game already allowed you to respec an entire tree, such as Tools or Shinobi, but now you can do it on a node-by-node basis.) Speaking of the menus, there’s a new shortcut, too: You can now hold the Options/Menu button to go straight to the game’s elegantly designed objective board.

Notably, the v1.0.2 update does not patch out the arguably overpowered legendary tanto known as the Igan Sunset or adjust its god-tier perk, which — in conjunction with a few unlocked skills — allows Naoe to “freely ping-pong between enemies until they’re dead,” according to our own Tyler Colp.

You can see the full list of patch notes, which also include numerous bug fixes, on Ubisoft’s website.

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For the first time since Diablo 4 was released, Blizzard is giving us a look at what’s going on with it months in advance. Not only has it detailed the permanent additions to the game coming this year, it also has revealed the season themes leading up to the launch of its second expansion in 2026.

Later this month, Diablo 4 Belial’s Return — the title of season 8 — will significantly increase the game’s difficulty with harder monsters and new bosses to fight. Players were zooming through the game a little too fast, so Blizzard has tried to make the experience of leveling up slower and more meaningful. You’ll get new seasonal powers to help you out, but the difficulty changes will stick around after season 8 ends in July.

Also coming with season 8 is a major rework to Diablo 4’s battle pass. Diablo General Manager Rod Fergusson recently hinted at this in an interview with Game File where he called battle passes an “antiquated system now.” He praised Call of Duty’s open-ended battle pass system where you choose what order you want the rewards, suggesting we might see a similar thing in Diablo 4.

The season starting in July is called Sins of the Horadrim, which Diablo lore heads will know is a pretty big deal as far as season themes go. Diablo’s story has always revolved around the Horadrim, powerful mages that go all the way back to the original game when Deckard Cain asks the player to stay a while and listen. According to the roadmap graphic provided by Blizzard, it will come alongside permanent new Nightmare Dungeon activities, keyboard and mouse support for consoles, and more. And just like other seasons, it will have unique powers and a seasonal mechanic known as “dungeon escalation.” We’ll probably have to wait until closer to the season start date to understand what that is though.

In September, season 9, Infernal Chaos, will launch with a similar setup of seasonal powers, quests, and rewards. It will also include a major update to Diablo 4’s roguelike Infernal Hordes dungeons.

The next section on the roadmap is for 2026. Apart from listing the release of the second expansion — which was originally slated to be out this year — is the long-awaited introduction of leaderboards. Players have been asking for a way to measure their power against others from the beginning and it looks like it’s finally coming next year. Community-run leaderboards already track how fast players from around the world can complete the game’s hardest dungeons, but an official one will hopefully be viewable in-game and might have rewards associated with it.

Diablo 4’s next season, Belial’s Return, will start on April 29.

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The art of the quick catch (or fast catch) in Pokémon Go is a sacred and important one if you’re looking to truly maximize your gains. For events like Community Days and Spotlight Hours, you may be trying to rake in the Pokémon due to Stardust bonuses, or maybe you just love Bulbasaur and you want to catch every single one you see.

Quick catching will help you do so, allowing you to skip the catch animation and rewards screen, so you can just get back to catching more stuff right after you throw that ball.

Below, we explain how quick catching works and how to master the quick catch in Pokémon Go.

How does quick catching work in Pokémon Go?

The TL;DR is that you utilize the item menus on the screen to bypass the catch animation and reward screen, allowing you to “flee” from the encounter while the ball still tries to catch the Pokémon.

Quick catching adds a layer of speed to your catching progress, but it does not guarantee catches or increase catch rate. It’s entirely possible that the ball you throw at the Pokémon will not catch it, and you’ll have to repeat the process. Even so, it’s still much faster than waiting around for that animation.

You should not quick catch things that may need more attention, like a Galarian bird or a shiny.

How to quick catch in Pokémon Go

Here’s how to quick catch in Pokémon Go:

1. Use your non-dominant hand to touch and hold the berry or ball item menu in the corner.

2. Drag the menu button out to the opposite side by swiping your finger to the other side of the screen (so you’re dragging your finger to the right if you are using the berry menu and to the left if you’re using the ball menu). The menu icon (and your finger) should be about here, if you’re using the Poké Ball menu:

3. Keep your finger on the screen and use your dominant (or other) hand to throw the Poké Ball at the encounter. (You can add a spin or wait for the circle to close in more, if you want.) Remember to not lift your non-dominant finger off the screen until after you throw the ball.

4. Once you throw the ball, release your non-dominant finger, which should open the ball or berry menu, depending on which side you picked. The “run away” button should appear in the top left corner, along with shop button on the top right corner.

5. Tap the “run away” button.

That’s all there is to it! You can check your Pokémon inventory (sorted by recent) to see if you caught the critter. The Pokémon may still appear on the map, but if you caught it, it will disappear either upon tapping or on its own shortly after. Otherwise, tapping it again will give you another opportunity to catch it.

Here’s a gif of it all happening in action, to give you an idea of what you should see (though we ended the gif before we “ran away” for privacy reasons):

It also may take a few tries to get the cadence down just right. This method does require using both hands, so it’s definitely a more “locked in” strategy that you probably won’t want to do on your daily stroll with iced coffee in hand.

Note that there are some finicky interactions when it comes to using the quick catch method. We noticed that if you try to quick catch Pokémon lured in by an item (Incense, Lure Modules, and even things like the Meltan Box and Coin Bag), it won’t display correctly after quick catching. Even if you catch the Pokémon, the encounter will stay there on the map, instead of disappearing after a tap or a few seconds. You may want to catch these types of encounters manually to avoid confusion.

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BDS, a pro-Palestinian human rights movement focused on pressuring Israel to comply with international law by promoting boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the country and its economic partners, added Microsoft and Xbox to its list of targets on April 7.

“Microsoft partners with the apartheid regime of Israel and its prison system,” the Palestinian BDS National Committee’s official statement explains. “It provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are central to accelerating Israel’s genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip. After 34 years of deep complicity with Israel’s military, the Israeli army relies heavily on Microsoft to meet technological requirements of its genocide and apartheid regime.”

Microsoft employees Ibtihal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration on April 4, confronting executives and denouncing what they see as Microsoft’s complicity in Israel’s brutal retaliation against the Palestinian people following the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Both have since been fired.

“You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military,” Aboussad is reported to have shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during her protest. “Fifty-thousand people have died and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”

The movement is calling on the public “to pressure Microsoft with divestment and exclusion from contracts, whenever feasible” as well as boycott Xbox products, providing the following options as tiers of engagement:

Cancel your Xbox Game Pass subscription.Boycott Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty – flagship videogame franchises owned by Microsoft.Boycott all Microsoft Gaming products, including Xbox-branded consoles, headsets, accessories and all games published by Microsoft-owned publishing labels (such as Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Bethesda, and Blizzard).

BDS was inspired by South African anti-apartheid and launched in 2005 by a group comprised of 170 unions, women’s organizations, professional associations, popular resistance committees, and other Palestinian civil society bodies. Since then, it has launched several successful campaigns against Woolworths, Hewlett-Packard, and Eurovision. Other current targets include Reebok, Chevron, and Cisco.

“By boycotting the Xbox brand, we’re pressuring Microsoft to end its complicity in Israel’s genocide, occupation and apartheid against Palestinians,” the BDS movement’s statement concludes. “Palestinians call on everyone to boycott Microsoft’s Xbox and Microsoft gaming products since viable gaming alternatives exist. Genocide is not a game.”

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Disney Lorcana, the charming trading card game, has banned its first cards from competitive play. Sapphire decks will be a little less powerful without Hiram Flaversham, Toymaker and the item Fortisphere, which are no longer legal to play in core constructed formats. They will, of course, remain available for other formats and in casual play. The announcement was made Tuesday in a post on the game’s official website. Polygon sat down with game design manager and lead game designer Steve Warner last week for a briefing on the change.

Warner stressed that bans like this are a sign of Lorcana’s maturation. With some 1,400 cards released for the game since its launch in 2022, some less than desirable interactions are to be expected. In Hiram’s case, he simply enabled players to draw too many cards to their hand before being removed. The win rate on decks that utilized that strategy best were simply too high — especially when used in combination with the Fortisphere.

“It’s important to us that we make exciting cards,” Warner said. “Occasionally we may have issues where some cards crop up and are a little too powerful, but it’s far better than ‘everything is way too safe and unfun.’ So there’s a steady balance that we have to maintain.”

The health of Disney Lorcana’s metagame has always been top of mind for Warner and his team at Ravensburger, and while Hiram has been out in the wild for a good long while it was only with the release of the most recent set, Arcazia’s Island, where things began to get a little unbalanced. Warner said that his team, much like Roz from Monsters, Inc., is always watching. The goal, therefore, is to be precise when making decisions like this, not reactionary.

“We look at the tournament reports; we look at the data from events; from players; we talk to stores; we have competitive players [that we work with]; we have social players that all have friends and are part of the community,” Warner said. “That gives us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, what’s really bothering players, and what’s causing some strife. […] We watch and we talk and we consider and we want to be very deliberate about our choices.”

Meanwhile, dedicated players may also be wondering why Pawpsicle, another card that has become a mainstay in powerful Sapphire decks, was spared the ban hammer this time around. Warner said that the team things removing Hiram and Fortisphere should take the edge off those powerful decks, while allowing Pawpsicle to be used by both Sapphire, other color combinations, and other gameplay strategies.

“Especially in Arcazia’s Island,” Warner said, “it’s Sapphire Ruby that really wants those item cards. So we feel like leaving Pawpsicle around allows that to still happen a little bit more organically.”

Disney Lorcana’s next set of cards, Reign of Jafar, comes out on June 6.

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Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is suing a former employee, Leroy Nabors, for misappropriation of trade secrets and breach of contract, according to a lawsuit filed April 4 in a North Carolina court. Among the allegations in the complaint, which Polygon has reviewed, Donaldson’s lawyers claim Nabors also installed hidden cameras “throughout Beast’s offices.”

Though Donaldson as MrBeast is the face of the brand, his company is expansive; he employs “roughly 350 people,” per the complaint. His immense popularity in creating viral YouTube videos has grown into a successful (and controversial) empire; he has a snack brand, a failed burger chain, and a reality TV show called Beast Games. Donaldson’s company made $473 million in revenue last year, according to Business Insider.

Nabors was one of those 350 employees, hired in 2023 as an IT contractor who “initially was responsible for working on Beast’s IT network, including working with the servers that housed post-production Beast content.” Nabors subcontracted his daughter’s company Vine Networks to help manage the IT network, according to the lawsuit. Later, in late 2023, lawyers say Nabors was moved to a “special projects” team in the company’s development department, which handles “content production,” “fundraising,” and “political advocacy.” He worked there, outside of IT, until he was fired on Oct. 1, 2024.

Due to the sensitive nature of his role — access to so much Beast Industries information in an IT role — Nabors was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which lawyers say he broke by downloading loads of company data in the time leading up to his firing. In a review of Nabors’ activity on company devices, Beast Industries says it found Nabors “downloaded more than one thousand Beast confidential files” — stuff like “highly confidential information about business strategy, financial information, capitalization tables, financing documents, individual employee personal information, and other MrBeast intellectual property,” per the complaint.

Lawyers suggest Nabors knew his termination was coming, and prepared as such. The company says that, when confronted, he denied intentionally downloading secret data, calling it a routine backup. He also had been syncing files to a personal DropBox account, according to the lawsuit, and still has access to “thousands of Beast’s most confidential files” via that account.

In the internal investigation after Nabors’ firing, “multiple hidden cameras” were found in the Beast Industries offices, according to the lawsuit. “No Beast employee recalls installing those cameras,” lawyers write. “Nabors, conversely, was well known among colleagues to surreptitiously record meetings.” The company’s representatives say they believe Nabors and his daughter’s company controlled access to the cameras.

Naturally, Donaldson and MrBeast Industries want to see and delete the information Nabors still has; the release of that information would reveal sensitive information about the million-dollar business and its employees. He’s looking for damages and for a permanent injunctive “ordering the return of all Beast information improperly in his possession.”

Polygon has reached out to Donaldson through his lawyer and has attempted to reach Nabors through a company in which he’s listed as an owner. Neither responded by the time publication.

Both sides of the case have a history with lawsuits; Nabors was sued in 2022 by Edu-Net, an IT contracting company that he’d founded, after he founded a competing company that “diverted millions of dollars in revenue and profits from Edu-Net.” Donaldson, too, has been sued before: In September 2023, five contestants from the Beast Games reality TV show filed a lawsuit citing “dangerous circumstances and conditions.” Several other lawsuits have been filed over the years in relation to his businesses, like Donaldson’s 2023 lawsuit against Virtual Dining Concepts in which he attempted to get out of a brand deal in which “disgusting,” “revolting,” and “inedible” hamburgers were sold under the MrBeast name.

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At first, the Steam page for REPO was an off-putting sight; the game’s key art has only just recently been updated to move away from a macabre-looking emoji leering at the viewer with gnarled teeth and hollowed-out eyes leaking tears. But it only takes a couple of rounds to understand why this game has taken off with streamers and multiplayer groups. REPO snatches the core concept of Lethal Company, the viral 2024 co-op hit, and then adds a few fun complications. While much of REPO feels familiar, the game feels like proof that even just a few small changes to a great formula can radically change the player experience and create something fun and novel.

Developer Semiwork is a small studio based in Sweden, and the most immediately obvious change was the swap of the iconic workers of Lethal Company with little bean robot guys. This is a massive change to the experience, and it’s hard to explain just how funny it is to perish to some terrible fate, switch into the game’s observer mode, and watch your buddies wobble around with their big googly eyes.

REPO is the Retrieve, Extract, and Profit Operation: A squad of up to six enter a scary location like an abandoned facility or whimsical school for wizards, loot everything they can, and escape with every robot intact. (Death can be reset if a teammate finds your robot’s head and brings it back to an extraction point, which is another nice change.)

As soon as you start a clip compilation or watch a stream of REPO, the appeal of the robots is immediately obvious. Not only are they silly-looking, but they can shrink their chassis down in a comical way to look like a little baby bean.

The gameplay inevitably leads to clips and memes, which inspire original fan-made animations and artwork starring the beloved beans in question.

There are, of course, evil monsters, like Silent Hill-style mannequins who stumble around on spindly, lethal limbs; a horde of giggling gnomes; and a blind man with a shotgun and an itchy trigger finger. But the real threat is my teammates, especially when they’re combined with the game’s physics system. Some loot is small and easy to handle; I toss it in the profit cart and move on. Other pieces are fragile, and even an accidental fumble is enough to shatter it into worthless fragments. Large pieces are the worst, especially in narrow corridors. Every time you bump a grandfather clock or grand piano against a wall, another player, or step, you can see the profit degrade with big numbers on the screen.

This introduces a hilarious tension; some of my favorite moments in the game don’t come from the map’s scary monsters, but the process of getting super-valuable loot back to the extraction zone. I like to sit and watch my teammates slowly try and rotate a bulky instrument, snapping at each other every time it slips into a door frame, everyone doing their best to work in a methodical fashion. Then, the aforementioned gnomes make their way into the loot cart and start smashing things, or a giant, monstrous beast lurches down the hall, and everything descends into chaos.

The monsters in REPO aren’t as immediately lethal as their contemporaries in the genre, but they provide constant pressure and interesting complications. A run could be going great, until a teammate succumbs to a Spewer. These nasty little guys attach themselves to a player’s face, distorting their voice. What’s worse is that they can cause the player to shoot acid streams of vomit. This excretion can be used offensively against other monsters, or it can land on the loot cart, decaying everything within and causing thousands of dollars of property damage. This is pretty bad, especially because the team can’t get back on the ship until they meet their quota.REPO launched at the end of February, and the game has enjoyed an “overwhelmingly positive” score on Steam, with over 80,000 reviews on record. The game’s top clips on Twitch include streams in many different languages. REPO is still in early access, but Semiwork has shared it’s working on the game’s first content update, and fans are experimenting with mods in the meantime, like a higher player count in lobbies or a selection of funny hats. REPO puts a few delightful spins on a familiar formula, and that has led to it blowing up on streaming platforms and social media this spring.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The Mask Workshop is a secret hideout located underneath Masked Meadows in Fortnite.

The Mask Workshop, previously named Daigo’s Underground Hidden Workshop in Chapter 6 Season 1, is a location that appears frequently in story and found quests across Chapter 6. Getting there can be a little tricky because, well, it’s a secret hideout and an easy-to-spot hideout wouldn’t be a hideout, right?

Here’s how to get to the Mask Workshop in Fortnite.

Mask Workshop location in Fortnite

The Mask Workshop can be found in the sewer system under Masked Meadows in Fortnite Chapter 6.

To reach the workshop, approach Masked Meadows from the north to spot a hallway just underneath the Mask Shop. Head inside and go down the staircase on your left to enter the sewers. Drop down to the lowest point to find another sewer tunnel, and follow this path to enter the hidden Mask Workshop.

Inside, you’ll be able to find and complete quest objectives for the found quests “Investigate the Mask Shop,” “Eavesdrop on Kane,” and “Steal a Copy of the Mask-Making Book from the Mask Maker’s Hideout.”

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Not all art books are created equal. While some function as merely a rough compendium of sketches and concept art collected throughout the production of a game, movie, or television series, others rise to the height of being wholesale works of art — labors of love packed to the brim with creative insights and carefully constructed secrets, if not entire worlds unto themselves. The art book for South of Midnight, Compulsion Games’ latest action-adventure that’s set in a mythical take on the American Deep South, is one such example.

Published by Compulsion Games and Dutch art gallery Cook and Becker, The Art and Music of South of Midnight looks like a Southern gothic storybook pulled straight from its namesake’s universe. The physical edition of the 160-page art book, with its lovingly worn cover illustration and gold foil paper edges, comes with a double-LP vinyl set of the game’s soundtrack, an in-universe comic illustrated by artist Rob Guillory, and other assorted ephemera inspired by characters and locations seen throughout the game. Taken together, the art book is as much a love letter to South of Midnight’s production as it is a tangible product of it.

While art books are a modern staple of publishing, the process through which these books come about is often left unexplored and unexplained. To coincide with the official launch of South of Midnight, Polygon reached out to Whitney Clayton, art director at Compulsion Games, and Maarten Brands, CEO of Cook and Becker, to talk about how their collaboration first came about and what separates a good art book from a fantastic art book.

“We had been looking for a publisher to make a South of Midnight Art Book, and when Cook & Becker agreed we couldn’t have been more thrilled,” Clayton told Polygon in an email interview. “We love their work and the artistry they put into their books. The art and music for the game had been in progress since the start of production, so we had been working on it for a while.”

When it came to detailing the process behind the making of The Art and Music of South of Midnight, Clayton offered an extensive breakdown of what went into the making of the book behind the scenes. “We liked the idea that you’re taking a chronological journey through the world of South of Midnight, going in depth with the designs and processes behind the characters and environments you encounter on your journey, with a few pages dedicated to artistic disciplines outside of environments and characters such as UI art, our stop motion intro short, a South of Midnight comic, and some broader pages covering the higher level art direction. We really wanted the art book to feel like the folktale book present in South of Midnight, from the cover of the book to the journey inside.”

After a series of preliminary meetings, the team at Compulsion Games created a multitude of folders organizing all of the art pieces that coincided with the structure of the book’s concept, with complementary spreadsheets to track which art was needed for each section. Cook and Becker then took those assets and constructed a rough outline of the book’s layout and image spreads using PowerPoint. “From there, the artists on the Cook & Becker side arranged, cropped, [and] designed each page,” Clayton said, “incorporating the right images [while designing] the graphic treatment.”

While Cook and Becker worked on the book’s visual presentation, including creating custom small illustrations based on South of Midnight’s artwork, the team at Compulsion Games worked on the text for the book in-house. All in all, it took six months to produce the art book for South of Midnight from initial concept to final product.

The cover art for The Art and Music of South of Midnight, based on the storybook found within the game itself, was designed by Room 8 Studio, a Cyprus-based art studio with a track record of providing assets for other high-profile games, including Alan Wake 2, Dead Space, and Diablo 4. “South Of Midnight is a framed narrative told as a folktale and this storybook is represented inside the game,” Clayton told Polygon. “The fish scales are also from one of our concept artists. However, the physical way it’s presented, the materials; that’s all Cook & Becker. They had many very cool and creative ideas for this.”

One of those ideas that Brands is particularly proud of is the aforementioned gold detailing on the book’s cover and edging. “I love the whole package that we made, the art book with the gift box and vinyl LP that our friends at Lost In Cult designed,” Brands told Polygon. “I’m really proud of the work we delivered here.”

“Ultimately, the book is a major celebration of our team’s hard work, dedication and talent,” Clayton said. “I also think that those who appreciate art books will really love the stunning and thoughtful artistry by Cook & Becker and the way they designed this visual behind-the-scenes journey.”

The Art and Music of South of Midnight is available to purchase on Cook and Becker’s website.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The Pokémon TCG Pocket meta must’ve recently turned 30 — because it’s finally settling down!

Released in late 2024, Pokémon TCG Pocket is a card-collecting game with a competitive streak — a streamlined iteration on the classic Pokémon trading card game. There’s incentive to play battles, as winning earns you XP, which helps you level up, which helps you open more booster packs, which helps you build better decks to win more battles. Ah, the great mobile game feedback loop.

What follows is a summary of the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta as of April 2025, including the best decks and the best cards in the wake of the Space-Time Smackdown expansion and Triumphant Light and Shining Revelry booster pack.

Update (April 8): Explained the state of the meta in light of Shining Revelry’s arrival, which has added new ‘best cards’ to consider for any deck.

What is the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta right now?

Once upon a time, if you didn’t have the card(s) of the moment, you were done for. That is no longer the case. With eight expansion packs to choose from — the three Genetic Apex launch packs, two Space-Time Smackdown packs, and the singular Mythical Island, Triumphant Light, and Shining Revelry boosters — there’s a wealth of options to build your decks.

The Pokémon TCG Pocket meta has evolved to a point where it’s less about the flavor of month, and more about a series of stalwart archetypes that can be customized based on the cards in your collection. The most recent expansions, Triumphant Light and Shining Revelry, didn’t upend the meta so much as introduce a handful of versatile cards.

For instance, Arceus ex from Triumphant Light is a popular one, not just because of its sheer damage output (up to 130!) but also because it fits into many decks. Shining Revelry, meanwhile, added an alternate version of Charizard ex, but it doesn’t appear to be much more popular than the original. Meanwhile, it’s the trainer cards from Shining Revelry that have really made the biggest impact (which we also get into below).

In other words, for the most part, the decks that have been popular this year attained that popularity for a reason: They’re really good, and continue to be really good to this day. Expect to see a bunch of these while climbing the Ranked mode ladder. Read on for details.

Pokémon TCG Pocket best decks

Knowing the best cards of the moment is one thing, but getting those cards is another matter. Right now, the Pokémon TCG Pocket meta is largely defined by ex cards — high-power cards that are also extremely rare — but a number of a cards that can increase your energy production are also quite popular.

Pretty much every deck that has been dominant to date is still powerful, though you don’t see them around as frequently with the arrival of Space-Time Smackdown. To be clear, they’re no less effective — just a bit passé. With that in mind, we’re keeping them on this list of the best decks, and are adding the three newest additions to the top — meaning the eight best decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket as of April 2025 are:

Darkrai ex (darkness-type)Dialga ex (metal-type)Lucario (fighting-type)Celebi ex (grass-type)Charizard ex and Moltres ex (fire-type)Articuno ex and Lapras ex (water-type)Pikachu ex (electric-type)Mewtwo ex and Gardevoir (psychic-type)

You’ll see that the best decks are still built around a single energy type, to minimize yet another coin flip in battles. We’ll get into detail about why these decks are so successful below. And if you’re on a bad luck streak with opening booster packs, you can also use pack points or trading the get the exact card(s) you’re looking for.

Here are the best decks in Pokémon TCG Pocket, with the key cards for each deck highlighted in bold.

Darkrai ex deck

Darkrai ex is the stuff of nightmares. As an ex card, its stat line (140 HP and an attack that costs three energy and deals 80 damage) isn’t particularly amazing. But its ability, Nightmare Aura, makes up for the deficit. Every time you attach a darkness energy to Darkrai ex, you’ll automatically deal 20 damage to your opponent’s active Pokémon.

That extra 20 damage is often enough to eliminate an opponent’s active Pokémon when combined with an attack from yours. And if you’re worried about Darkrai ex hogging energy from the rest of your team, you can use the Dawn trainer card, which allows you to move energy from a benched Pokémon to your active Pokémon.

While Darkrai ex has synergy with most popular darkness-type Pokémon (like Weezing, Toxicroak, Arbok, or the Nido evolution chains), the hack here is unconventional: Magnezone, with its powerful 110-damage attack, Thunder Blast. Its earlier-stage evolution, Magneton, has an ability that allows you to add one lightning-type energy to it per turn — regardless of what energy type you’ve set for your deck. The result is one Pokémon that accrues energy all by itself and another Pokémon that consistently deals damage simply by existing.

Dialga ex deck

The addition of Dialga ex to TCG Pocket has singlehandedly turned metal-type decks from laughable to competitive. It has 150 HP. One of its attacks deals 100 damage (albeit at the cost of four energy). But the secret weapon is its Metallic Turbo attack, which only deals 30 damage but allows you to attach two metal-type energy to any Pokémon on your bench.

This immediately lowers the previously prohibitively high energy cost for powerful metal-type cards like Melmetal. But because colorless-type Pokémon can use any type of energy, it’s also helpful. As a result, Dialga ex pairs just as well with Pokémon like Regigigas (whose damage-scaling Raging Hammer attack requires four energy), Wigglytuff ex (whose Sleep Song attack puts active Pokémon to sleep), and Pidgeot ex (whose Scattering Cyclone attack deals more damage based on how full your opponent’s bench is).

Lucario deck

With the prevalence of dark-type decks these days, fighting-type decks have emerged as a natural counter. And Lucario is an essential inclusion for fighting-type decks.

Lucario isn’t exactly great on its own merits. It only has 100 HP and its attack, Submarine Blow, only deals 40 damage. But its ability, Fighting Coach, is arguably the strongest support ability in the game right now. When in play, Lucario increases the damage output of your fighting-type cards by 20 — and it stacks, too! If the luck of the draw lands such that you can get two copies of Lucario on your bench, all of your fighting-type cards will deal an additional 40 damage per attack.

So while Lucario isn’t worth building a deck around, it’s absolutely worth slotting into any of your existing fighting-type decks. Machamp ex, for instance, could deal up to 160 damage per attack. Kabutops becomes nigh unstoppable with a 90-damage attack (that also heals 90 HP). Golem, already pretty evil when paired with Brock’s energy-ramping tricks, turns into one of the toughest non-ex cards in the game.

Celebi ex deck

Celebi ex has held fast as the strongest grass-type deck in the game. Celebi ex’s attack, Powerful Bloom, costs two energy. For every energy attached to Celebi ex, you flip coin — and for every heads you get, you deal 50 damage. Stack enough energy on Celebi ex and you won’t even need luck on your side to take out literally any Pokémon in the game with a single hit.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

Nintendo’s Switch 2 has exactly one weird and exciting new feature: The Joy-Con 2 can be used like a mouse. And it works well — even on pants! But only a few titles so far have confirmed support for the new hardware, including Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and a new game announced Monday: Mouse Work.

Mouse Work is a party game for 1-4 players who can use the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls to play minigames as, well, mice. It’s a mouse on a mouse, really: You use the Joy-Con 2’s mouse mode to play as a cartoon mouse-shaped cursor. You might have to shoot your opponent with a laser gun, work with your teammates to make it through a maze, or quickly close out pop-up spam (like in the indie demo Mindwave we covered during Steam Next Fest).

Of course, the team at studio Nitrome — who also made mobile game spinoff Shovel Knight Dig — couldn’t make its trailer using the Switch 2, which hasn’t been released yet and is due out June 5. It used a PC to capture the colorful footage shown in the trailer — but as long as the Joy-Con 2 mouse setting works as well as Nintendo has suggested it does, this game looks like a winner for the couch co-op fanatics out there.

No release date has yet been announced for Mouse Work, but the developer says, “[it] will release hot on the tail of the Nintendo Switch 2.”

From Polygon via this RSS feed

“I don’t think that Game Changer gets meaningfully more ambitious than this season without me getting arrested,” Sam Reich — CEO of Dropout but, more pertinently, host of its flagship competition series, Game Changer — tells Polygon.

Seven seasons in, Game Changer has hosted miniature versions of half a dozen reality shows, pulled off even more unique feats of intricately constructed mindfuckery, and variously terrorized, rewarded, thwarted, and bamboozled Dropout’s expansive cast of comedians, writers, and online personalities for half a decade.

So when Polygon sat down with Reich on the occasion of this Monday’s season premiere, we naturally asked how he handles the expectation of ever-escalating surprises the show has created for itself. But Reich isn’t sweating.

“I will say this is the first season we’ve ever done where we’ve ended the season and I’ve been like, You know what? We could probably rest here,” he said, laughing.

Which may only make a lot of fans all the more curious about what Reich has up his sleeve (metaphorically, anyway). For more on what he’s learned from Dropout’s growth in the two years since it dropped the CollegeHumor brand, how we’re probably reading too much into teaser trailers, and what his personal favorite moments of Game Changer’s already ambitious season premiere were, read on.

[Ed. note: This interview has been edited for structure and clarity.]

Polygon: Living up to Game Changer seasons past aside, is it stressful when fans put their detective hats on and try to sift truth from the vapor of nuance, en masse?

Sam Reich: God, what a fantastic question. Look, I love the detail-orientedness of our fans. I just sometimes wish they understood how panicked and last minute a lot of our decision making is [laughs], and when they really get into the weeds, I start to go, Oh, if only you knew how much you were giving us too much credit.

Independent of fan reaction, how much do you stress about the thought “How are we going to top this next season?”

I think a few seasons ago I did stress out about it quite a bit and I can safely say… So, I’m now on the set of Make Some Noise; we’re about to shoot a season of Make Some Noise. And after that we’ll turn around and we’ll open up the Game Changer writers’ room again. And I can safely say that I have zero idea what we’re going to do in season 8, like, not the faintest. And at this point I’ve been around the sun enough with this show that that doesn’t stress me out at all.

This is a question purely out of my own edification: When you let Caldwell Tanner, Kiana Mai, and Nathan Yaffe draw dicks all over the set last season, was that because you knew you were going to tear it down and rebuild?

We did repaint the flats, and they are in this new season. We were looking through the lens, I think it was day one or day two, at one of those filters that will show you where the light changes, even subtly. And we suddenly saw dicks that were not visible to the human eye. So they are still there, but you just need a little bit of infrared in order to see them.

That’s a great Easter egg for the fans, I’m sure. The last time we chatted was for Dropout’s fifth anniversary, and the company and the show lineup has grown so hugely since then. What do you feel like you’ve learned about how to grow the creative project of Dropout without it getting bigger than it’s possible to get your arms around?

I think we’re still learning that, to be honest with you. There’s a few different components of that. There’s new opportunities being presented to us. [The Gauntlet in the Garden] is one of those opportunities where we feel like we should seize upon these even though it does feel like a lot to chew on. And then there’s all of this new programming, which we’ve only really even just figured out the better means of supporting creatively. I’m really proud of the work that we’ve done, but I think it’ll get better all the time by virtue of us being able to wrap our heads and our arms around it even a little bit better.

If I could slap one big label across the forehead of this company, it would be “work in progress.” We have been talking a lot recently about how we can’t be perfectionists, that we should strive for “A minus,” otherwise we’re just never going to be able to get the job done. [laughs]

What do you think the percentage is — and maybe it’s a 100% and 0% — between stuff that comes from you and the Dropout producers room going to performers and going, Hey, we have this idea, we think you would be great for it, would you do it with us? Or Dropout folks coming to you and saying, I have this idea. Is it something you’d be interested in?

I’ll give you an honest answer to that, which is that up until incredibly recently, there are almost no examples of a Dropout cast member coming to us with an idea. All of our stuff, all of our ideas were hatched internally by a combination of, like, myself, Paul Robalino, David Kerns, and select other people in our development committee. That is beginning to change pretty quickly, which is to say — we are not taking outside pitches. God forbid you should publish that [laughs]. God forbid.

But we are beginning to collaborate more in-depthly with people that we’re enthused about. To say, “What is your show?” And that is kind of a little bit more like us singling out creatives that we’re excited about.

You’ve talked before about how you’ve considered home video releases for Dropout content. I figure if you’d figured that out you would either have announced it already, or would be staying mum in preparation for an announcement, but nevertheless, should fans expect that any time soon?

Still haven’t figured it out. Part of the problem is just the limits of these media in terms of how much data they contain. We learned that doing just season 1 of Fantasy High would be like 10 DVDs. So it’s just complicated from a sheer nuts and bolts standpoint.

We’ve taken it back to the ’90s era, where one VHS tape could hold two episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation**.**

Exactly! Exactly.

Coming back around to Game Changer season 7, which responses to the prompts in “One Year Later” were you most impressed by?

[Ed. note: The rest of this piece contains spoilers for the premiere of Game Changer season 7.]

If I’m going to single anything out, it’s probably going to be Lou’s band. The reason why, is because Lou, dangerously, did one of the most public things, out in front of the audience. Like, launching [the band] Paraloubis, launching music, putting on events? There were remarkably few people — some people, but few people — who guessed that it was anything to do with Game Changer. Which I was really concerned about!

The fact that he pulled that off and made it seem so, just, organic to him, I think people will be really surprised to learn. To me, that’s one of the real payoffs of this episode. If you’re following these folks, you will have seen trappings of this that you’re now learning are actually a part of Game Changer, when you didn’t realize it.

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A post shared by PARALOUBIS (@paraloubis)

I mean, Vic impressed me through and through with some of their responses, which I happily deducted points from them for, because they were so funny and yet completely irrelevant to what I asked for. Investment Account, Inc. made me laugh so much. Vic’s musical! The entirety of [The Voicemail the Musical] is coming out as a part of the BTS video. I didn’t see it on stage. And if I had seen that whole musical, I probably would’ve awarded them the three points, because it is a masterpiece.

And then, Jacob’s magic trick, which, frustratingly, he still won’t tell me how he did it.

To close out I want to get back to fans putting on their detective hats. Am I reading too much into the themed exit sign and the “far away” lines in your teaser? Because you’ve talked before about taking the show to splashy other locations.

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From Polygon via this RSS feed

While massive demonstrations in opposition of the Trump regime raged across the globe this weekend, a very different type of protest was taking place in Path of Exile 2 against its most infamous “player,” billionaire Elon Musk.

Musk went live on X (formerly Twitter) the afternoon of April 5 with an “airborne continuity test” of his satellite internet service Starlink, also known as playing Path of Exile 2 poorly on a private jet. Shortly after his broadcast started, the CEO and prominent political advisor began receiving private messages from other players, many of which were incredibly cutting and therefore quite hilarious.

One might assume someone like Musk who presents himself as epic gamer would know how to turn off the chat, and thus prevent these insults from interrupting his vanity project. But alas, it seems like he was okay with just ignoring folks hating on him one at a time. Some examples include:

• Multiple players asking Musk if he needs help boosting his account
• “YOU HAVE NO FRIENDS AND YOU WILL DIE ALONE,” from a player named ELON_IS_A_PEEDOPHILE
• Supporters begging Musk to turn on “Do Not Disturb” mode to prevent the hate spam
• “put on some grimes,” which, as the most divorced man alive, you know he did
• People citing Musk’s own bizarre criticism of chess for being too “simple” and having no fog of war or technology trees
• “YOU WILL ALWAYS FEEL INSECURE AND IT WILL NEVER GO AWAY,” from a player named ELON_MUSK_IS_PATHETIC
• Someone pretending to be Ashley St. Clair, a conservative influencer who says she is the mother of Musk’s latest child, begging him to pay child support
• “your daughter was right,” likely referencing Musk’s estranged daughter Vivian Wilson’s recent conversation with Twitch streamer Hasan Piker
• Multiple insults about how Musk plays the game
• “ELON HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO LOOK THIS DUMB AND UGLY WHY IS UR TESLA COMPANY FALLING APART”

The weirdest part of the stream, however, was Musk’s wordless, dead-eyed stare through the whole broadcast. I’ve had the archive playing in the background while writing this story, and Musk hasn’t mumbled more than a few words at a time for the last half hour. I keep flipping back to the video, thinking he must be doing something other than wordlessly clicking through a computer game on a luxury aircraft (maybe he’s too busy daydreaming of destroying Social Security?) — but nope, there’s his face, staring blankly at the screen as other players’ contempt fills his in-game whispers.

As for what Musk did in Path of Exile 2 , he lost several hardcore characters, then quit when the connection got bad and he died to a tutorial boss.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Nintendo has made its own Discord-like chat app for the Switch 2, and it’s going to charge you for it. Once the free period is over on March 31, 2026, GameChat, and the C button that activates it, will require a Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) membership.

So what happens if you aren’t a subscriber and press the C button? Not much, vice president of player and product experience Bill Trinen told Polygon in a recent interview.

“You would be able to find out about the NSO subscription there and get a sense of some of the functionality,” he said.

Presumably, this is how you’d learn that GameChat works a lot like Discord video chat works on PC. You can talk with your friends in handheld or docked mode via a built-in microphone and stream your gameplay to each other. There’s even a camera you can buy to overlay onto your stream, or just to chat face-to-face.

But unless you have an active NSO membership, you’ll have a whole button dedicated to nothing on your Switch 2. It doesn’t even sound like you can remap it to something else. It will just be a reminder of the $19.99 you may or may not be handing to Nintendo every year.

Trinen says the C button has a price tag because GameChat is “part of the overall platform experience” and that “NSO really is a critical piece of the Nintendo Switch 2 experience.” He listed off some of the new Switch 2-exclusive benefits, like access to old GameCube games and free upgrades to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

That subscription fee will be on top of a console that’s already going to cost you $449.99 — or possibly more if U.S. President’s Trump’s tariffs prompt Nintendo to increase it. We won’t know if GameChat will prove to be worth it until the Switch 2 releases in June.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

We’re less than two months away from the grand opening of Epic Universe, the brand-new park at the Universal Orlando Resort. Originally announced in 2019, the park, which joins the existing Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, and Volcano Bay and is estimated to have cost over $7 billion, has been highly anticipated by theme park nerds like myself. And, as it turns out, the name is incredibly fitting. During a media preview of the park, I experienced the new attractions, and the sights were truly epic.

Epic Universe is constructed as a series of hubs, connected by Celestial Park, a fantastical nexus. Branching off are the Isle of Berk from How to Train Your Dragon, a magical version of 1920s Paris inspired by Harry Potter, a horror-filled Darkmoor Village inspired by the Universal Monsters, and the world’s largest iteration of the now-infamous Super Nintendo World. Each world is accessed through a portal, all of which have unique special effects that transport travelers from Celestial Park to a completely new realm.

Here’s a peek at some of the standout experiences from each world (click to expand images):

Celestial Park

The day started at The Chronos, the park’s imposing front gate that leads to Celestial Park, the central hub of Epic Universe. The area is a calming, lush landscape of gardens and fountains that acts as a nice palate cleanser when moving between the park’s four other elaborately themed worlds.

The marquee attraction of this area is Stardust Racers, a pair of intense dueling roller coasters that act as a spiritual successor to Islands of Adventure’s old Dueling Dragons coasters.

The two sides of Stardust Racers are color coded, yellow and green, and have unique layouts that flip, dive, and dodge one another endlessly.

As someone who can’t get enough of Islands of Adventure’s VelociCoaster, I personally enjoyed Stardust Racers even more.

Isle of Berk (How to Train Your Dragon land)

The Isle of Berk is the park’s largest area and may be the most elaborately themed, all the way down to its unique benches carved like dragons and lampposts lit by piles of smoldering tinder.

Hiccup’s Wing Gliders, a family coaster that launches riders at a smooth 45 mph, gives the area a kinetic energy as it twists and turns throughout.

There’s also Fyre Drill, a wet and wild battle through the area’s lagoon where you’re absolutely guaranteed to get wet.

Elsewhere in Epic Universe’s Berk is The Untrainable Dragon, a stage show where Hiccup and Toothless fly over the crowd in their attempt to save Berk once more. It reminded me of a Broadway-style musical crammed into a tight 20-minute run time, complete with live Viking drummers, impeccable vocalists, and imposing, life-size dragons controlled by hidden puppeteers. Puppetry is all over the land, which is filled with character actors and large-size dragons with a similar vibe to Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge.

My favorite ride in the land was the high-flying Dragon Racer’s Rally, where the intensity of the ride is completely up to each individual rider. Each vehicle sits a single person and can tip side to side freely, even rotating upside down. It’s completely up to you if you’d like a relaxing flight through the sky or a wild ride of endless barrel rolls. (And rest assured, tipping yourself upside down is not easy — I tried my hardest and only managed to do it once!)

The Ministry of Magic (the new Harry Potter land)

Upon stepping through the Harry Potter-themed portal, I was transported to 1920s Paris with magical moments lurking behind every corner. In this world, inspired by the Fantastic Beasts and core Harry Potter films, visitors can browse a brand-new wand shop, eat at one of several magical eateries, and even catch a show at Le Cirque Arcanus, a magical circus that slowly devolves into a battle between its ringmaster and Newt Scamander’s beasts.

The centerpiece attraction of Epic Universe’s new Wizarding World is Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry, hiding in an entrance to the Parisian Metro.

Getting to the ride is an experience in and of itself. After traveling through the magical Metrofloo system in a burst of green flames, I walked my way through a jaw-dropping, four-story atrium with views into various offices throughout the ministry.

After passing by several rooms of talking portraits and hearing a warning from Umbridge’s elf Higgledy, I was led onto the ride vehicle: a 14-seat elevator that resembles Disney’s Tower of Terror.

The difference here is that this elevator does not drop, it moves sideways. The ride utilizes special effects to simulate a magical elevator ride caught in the middle of a battle to capture Umbridge and bring her to justice. No pics from inside just yet, as Universal is trying to keep a few surprises for the public.

Dark Universe (the Universal Monsters land)

Dark Universe is a smoldering, brooding world tucked away in the back of the park. After passing through the foreboding portal, I entered Darkmoor Village, a gothic land where monsters roam the streets. Immediately upon entering I had a close call with the Invisible Man, wrapped in his bandages, as he slowly stalked innocent bystanders throughout the area.

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A long-hidden piece of film history trivia has finally been uncovered. On April 5, New York Times visual investigator Aric Toler announced on Bluesky that he and British academic Alasdair Spark found the original photo that was doctored for the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining.

Despite the fact that this photo is one of the most famous images from any horror movie, its actual origins, and the real-world location where it was taken, were technically unknown for years, which made tracking it down a particularly intriguing project.

As Toler explained on Bluesky, the earliest success the pair of investigators found was a suggestion that the original photo, before Jack Nicholson’s head was pasted onto it, was thought to come from the Warner Brothers archives. The only problem is, that archive doesn’t actually exist. This led them (and several Reddit users) to start digging through other archives instead. According to a quote from Toler posted on the Getty Archive Instagram account, facial recognition software was used at some point in the process to identify UK dance instructor Santos Casani in the photograph, which helped the team narrow their search down to photo archives in London specifically.

Eventually, their quest led them to the BBC Hulton Archive, now owned by Getty Images, thanks to the advice of Murray Close, a photographer who actually worked on The Shining. After a long search, Toler says that the Vice President of the London archive, Matt Butson, finally located the photo and discovered it was taken at The Empress Ballroom in the Royal Palace Hotel in London, during a Valentine’s Day dance held on Feb. 15, 1921.

While Toler’s thread does an excellent job giving a brief overview of the project, he suggests that anyone who’s interested should check out Spark’s recounting of the journey through his Reddit posts as well. Of course, this being The Shining , there’s always another mystery to be uncovered. In this case, Toler asked his Bluesky followers to let him know if anyone can find any other photos of the Royal Palace Hotel’s Empress Ballroom at the time — which it turns out are pretty hard to come by.

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You’ll need to “hire a supply or medic specialist” as part of Fortnite Chapter 6 Season 2’s Week 7 weekly quests. Doing so will reward you with a whopping 30,000 XP, so you might as well pick up one of these NPCs if you’re nearby to get that.

Below, we explain where to find supply and medic specialist NPCs for hire in Fortnite.

Where to find a supply or medic specialist in Fortnite

You can find two NPCs that fulfill these requirements in the locations below:

Black Rose is a supply specialist and Jade is a medic specialist. If you head to these locations, you should be able to see the black and white speech bubble pop up as you get closer to them, pointing out exactly where they are.

As usual with these types of assisting NPCs, it’ll cost 500 bars to hire them. Once you do, they’ll follow you around, providing backup fire for you and giving you supplies.

If you arrive to these locations and notice that the NPCs are nowhere to be found, it’s possible that they’ve been snapped up by other players already. (Since it’s a weekly quest, other people are trying to complete it, after all.) If you are explicitly trying to finish this weekly quest, we recommend dropping at these exact locations, grabbing whatever weapons are nearby, and snapping up the NPC before somebody else does.

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