Valve has responded to the New York Attorney General's lawsuit, stating it has "serious concerns with the alterations the NYAG claims are necessary to make to our games."

The attorney general of New York, Letitia James, announced her office was suing Valve at the end of February, alleging the platform illegally promotes gambling to children. Following an investigation, the office of the attorney general "found that Valve’s video games, including Counter-Strike 2, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2, enable gambling by enticing users to pay for the chance to win a rare virtual item of significant monetary value."

"In Valve’s most popular game [Counter-Strike 2], the process resembles a slot machine, with an animated spinning wheel that eventually rests on a selected item. The randomly selected virtual items have no in-game functionality but can be sold online for money, with one item reportedly being sold for more than $1 million. The lawsuit alleges that Valve has made billions of dollars luring its users, many of whom are teenagers or younger, to engage in gambling in the hopes of winning expensive virtual items that they can cash in on. With this lawsuit, Attorney General James seeks to permanently stop Valve from continuing to promote illegal gambling in its games and to pay disgorgement and fines."

Unusually for Valve, the company has shared its response publicly, claiming it has been working with the AG since early 2023 to "educate" them on how virtual items are won and shared in its games.

"We shared with the NYAG that these types of boxes in our games are widely used, not just in video games but in the tangible world as well, where generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and blind boxes and bags, and then trading and selling the items they receive," Valve wrote. "On the physical side, popular products used in this way include baseball cards, Pokémon, Magic the Gathering, and Labubu. In the game space, digital packs similar to our boxes date back to 2004 and are in widespread use. Players don't have to open mystery boxes to play Valve games. In fact, most of you don't open any boxes at all and just play the games — because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money."

Valve added that it has shared its efforts to shut down accounts found to be using its game items on gambling sites in violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement, its efforts to combat fraud and theft of users’ items, and "our extraordinary measures to stop gambling sites from taking advantage of Steam accounts and Valve game items."

"Valve does not cooperate with gambling sites. To date, we've locked over one million Steam accounts that were being misused by third parties in connection with gambling, fraud, and theft. We’ve also shipped features (like trade reversal and trade cooldown) to discourage gambling sites’ ability to operate and protect Steam users from fraud. And we forbid any gambling-related business to participate in or sponsor tournaments for our games," the company stressed.

Valve also shared candid observations about the lawsuit, writing: "We have serious concerns with many of the alterations the NYAG claims are necessary to make to our games.

"First, the NYAG seems to believe boxes and their contents should not be transferable. They appear to assume digital mystery boxes and items in our games are different from tangible items like baseball card packs (which contain random cards), and to take issue with the fact that users have the ability to transfer the items they receive through Steam Trading or user-to-user sales on the Community Market. We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers — it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokemon or baseball card. NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that."

It also claims that the NYAG wants to gather further personal data from Valve's players — "beyond what we normally collect in the course of processing payments" — including "evasive technologies for every user worldwide." The office is also demanding additional age verification, even though Valve stresses that most payment methods used by Steam users in New York already have age verification built-in. "Valve knows our users care about the security of their personal information, and we believe it’s in our and their interest to only collect the information necessary to operate the business and comply with law," it added.

It also took issue with NYAG's comments about the link between games and real-world violence, which Valve dismisses as "a distraction and a mischaracterization we've all heard before."

Valve closed by writing: "We respect New York's right to determine the laws governing behavior in the state. We will of course comply if the New York legislature passes laws governing mystery boxes — something it has not done despite considering the issue a few times. Such laws would be the result of a public process, presumably with input from the industry and New York gamers." However, it claims the commitments demanded by the "went far beyond what existing New York law requires and even beyond New York itself," and while it "may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal with the NYAG, we believed the type of deal that would satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design.

"Ultimately, a court will decide whose position — ours or NYAG's — is correct. In the meantime, we wanted to make sure you were aware of the potential impact to users in New York and elsewhere."

Vikki Blake is a reporter for IGN, as well as a critic, columnist, and consultant with 15+ years experience working with some of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's also a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her at BlueSky.

Jeff Kaplan, the former boss of the Overwatch team, has finally revealed why he left Blizzard after nearly 20 years with the company, pinning the blame on extreme financial pressures on the game to deliver for Activision Blizzard.

Kaplan announced his departure from Blizzard in August 2021, with the controversial Overwatch 2 still in development. Kaplan joined Blizzard in 2002 where he started as a designer on World of Warcraft, developing quests for the then upcoming MMORPG. He eventually was credited as a game director on WoW. In 2009, Kaplan spearheaded an unannounced project at Blizzard called Titan, an ambitious new MMO that was eventually canceled in 2014 after tens of millions of dollars was spent on its development.

Kaplan and members of the Titan team took ideas from the game and redesigned them into the team-based hero shooter now known as Overwatch, which went on to become incredibly successful. Now, five years after he left, Kaplan has returned to the public eye to announce his new game, The Legend of California, and to tell his side of the story. In a sweeping interview with Lex Fridman, Kaplan discussed his career so far, and as part of that opened up on why he left Blizzard.

Here's my conversation with Jeff Kaplan, a legendary Blizzard game designer of World of Warcraft and Overwatch, which are two of the biggest, most influential games ever made. Jeff is one of the most genuine & awesome human beings I've ever met: kind, thoughtful, hilarious, and… pic.twitter.com/kw14nET8SQ

— Lex Fridman (@lexfridman) March 11, 2026

He pointed to the Overwatch League, Overwatch’s dedicated esports series that revolved around city-based teams mirroring traditional sports leagues, as being “the major derail.” According to Kaplan, who believed in Overwatch League and helped pitch it, it was oversold to partners who then applied an increased pressure on the Overwatch team to deliver not just in-game support for the League in terms of team skins, esports spectator camera control, and Twitch integration, but pressure to generate more revenue.

"Where it got away from us was, there was a lot of excitement about Overwatch League, like too much so," Kaplan said. "And then it got overmarketed to the people buying the teams. They went on this roadshow where they had a deck — and you can put anything in a deck and sell anything — and they were pretty much selling the Brooklyn Bridge, that Overwatch League was going to be more popular than the NFL. We got a bunch of billionaire investors in these teams.”

Commitments made for Overwatch League pulled resources away from what Kaplan actually wanted to do with Overwatch, which was to build on the game itself with new events and heroes.

"And so all of your plans at that point kinda go out the window," Kaplan explained. "You're not going to work on new world events, you're not really even focused on Overwatch 2, you're just treading water. There was a lot of talk of like, ‘Oh god, the deal didn’t go well and we’ve got to do ‘make goods’ to make the deal better for them.’ I’m like, ‘Just give them some money back.’ If the deal isn’t what people wanted, putting it on us, the Overwatch team, to support this beast…

“It was a great idea that the wrong instincts and… I don't know how to phrase this in a way that's not damning, but there was too much focus on, 'Let's make lots of money really fast.' And a lot of people got dragged into it.”

The financial reality then kicked in, Kaplan said. “Now we didn’t just have executives at Activision and Blizzard who cared about the bottom line of Overwatch. We had all these people who basically invested in the game, and then they started to express their opinions.”

After it became clear Overwatch League wasn’t going to deliver NFL money, “Everybody quickly defaulted back to, ‘Hey, didn’t Overwatch make like $500 million just in the live game last year? What can we sell and what can you give us?’ That pressure comes onto the team. And then the pressure to ship Overwatch 2, and all care and love that we had for the live game, let’s just make events and new heroes and new maps, we’re losing all these resources.”

A secret website address hidden within Resident Evil Requiem looks to have been snatched up first by a fan of Valve founder Gabe Newell.

Peer closely into the screens of Leon's Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance computers and you'll see the following URL listed amid a string of code: NEWDAWN-capcom.com. But rather than an official website owned by Resident Evil's publisher, the website now redirects to a holding page owned by Gabe Follower, a content creator and fan of Valve.

According to domain ownership data seen by IGN, the website address was only claimed and registered this week, on March 9. Ownership has been secured for one year, meaning that any plans Capcom had for the site may need to wait, or be changed.

Among the gibberish words on the BSAA's computer in RE9, there's a domain called “NEWDAWN-capcom . com” i tried searching it, but nothing came up. The only relation to “NEWDAWN” i could think of are “Through the Darkness” lyrics & Wesker's quotes in RE4R/RE5. #REBHFun pic.twitter.com/SRdn9rKZZn

— Resident Leo. (@RacconSurvivor) March 9, 2026

Interestingly, March 9 is the same date that the website address was spotted and shared on social media by RacconSurvivor, a fan who cleverly used a weapon scope to peer closer at the BSAA computer screen and sift through its gibberish code.

Did Gabe Follower see this tweet and promptly snap up the domain? We've asked what happened here — and contacted Capcom to see what its own plans are now.

Of course, the existence of a website address with "Capcom" in the name appears to be a deliberate tease within Requiem for something promotional (or, alternatively, Capcom is now canon within the Resident Evil universe). Was the publisher planning to use it for its upcoming Resident Evil Requiem DLC? We may now never know. Capcom could now choose to edit the website address in-game, or ultimately pretend the whole thing never existed.

In the meantime, fans are trying to work out what "New Dawn" might refer to. As Automaton notes, the initials "ND" are featured on Leon's car, which features the licence plate "ND=9642." And yes, those are the numbers for the Resident Evil games that Leon S. Kennedy has appeared in — Resident Evil 9 (Requiem), 6 (as one of a few playable protagonists), 4 and 2. Mysterious.

For now, if you're still playing, IGN's Resident Evil: Requiem guide will help you every step of the way through RE9. Take note of these key tips and tricks before you get started, and focus on finding these important items early. Plus, our comprehensive walkthrough will make sure you don't miss a single Bobblehead or file as you try to survive from the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center all the way to Raccoon City.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Magic: The Gathering’s second set of the year gives us cardboard versions of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, their allies, and their foes, and the Collector Boosters are still in stock at Amazon - and at a discount no less.

After dropping to just over $400 a week or two ago, they're now down to $394. That's a 14% drop from the MSRP of $455, and it's by far the best way to try your arm at picking up some of the set's most desirable (and valuable) cards.

Pokémon Pokopia has launched big on Nintendo Switch 2, and sold 2.2 million copies over its release weekend.

Across four days, the new Pokémon life simulation game shifted 1 million copies in Japan alone, despite supply constraints for its physical version being reported in several countries.

Indeed, such has been the game's popularity that Amazon recently raised the price of its boxed copy by $10, up to $80. Nintendo shareholders have also reacted positively to the game's performance, sending the company's stock price shooting upwards.

While 2.2 million copies is less than the 5 million already sold by Resident Evil Requiem, it's important to remember that this game is an exclusive for Switch 2 — a console which still has a relatively modest userbase.

Just over 17 million Switch 2 consoles have been sold so far, meaning just shy of one in every eight owners also now has a copy of Pokémon Pokopia. The game has already beaten the sales to date of Kirby Air Riders (1.76 million) and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (less than 1 million on Switch 2).

The sales even compare quite favourably with those for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the highly-anticipated franchise title which introduced a new menagerie of Mega Pokémon. That has sold 3.89 million copies to date on Switch 2 since its launch last year (though was also available on Switch)

With a big launch and a very positive reception from both players and critics alike, Pokopia looks like a new evergreen hit for Nintendo as more players take the leap to Switch 2. Could it eventually become the best-selling Pokémon spinoff of all time? It seems possible. N64 classic Pokémon Stadium currently holds that title with 5.4 million sales, though the combined sales of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Red and Blue are slightly higher, at 5.8 million.

Looking to join in the fun for yourself? IGN's Pokémon Pokopia review returned a 9/10 score, and dubbed the game as "an enjoyable building and town simulator that capitalizes on the charming personalities of its monsters in a way that appeals to both the creative and collector alike."

If you're already playing, be sure to check out our list of all the Pokémon in Pokopia, and take a look at our Things to Do First in Pokopia guide to make the most of your first few days. To help you get started, we've also got a list of 17 things that Pokopia doesn't tell you, plus How to Raise the Environment Level and How to Raise Pokémon Comfort Level.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

The National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) of Australia has today announced it has acquired five rare, Australian-designed pinball machines, one of which is the first licensed Star Wars pinball machine in the world.

The machines were produced by Newcastle, New South Wales-based amusement company A. Hankin & Company between 1978 and 1980, and are reportedly the only Australian-designed machines from the golden age of pinball.

While the majority of the machines are inspired by distinctly Australian topics (ranging from the FJ Holden, cricketing icon Dennis Lillee, and surfing through a shiver of great white sharks), Hankin’s The Empire Strikes Back is notable for its status as the world’s first licensed Star Wars machine.

“The concept of making a pinball machine like The Empire Strikes Back was not common at that stage,” explained A. Hankin & Company manager David Hankin in the NFSA’s mini-documentary outlining the story behind the addition of these pinball machines to its collection.

The company approached George Lucas, asking if he would be interested in allowing the company to build a Star Wars-themed machine.

“And the answer, surprisingly, was yes,” continued Hankin.

Looking for a Nintendo Switch 2 gamepad that has the same functionality as the Switch 2 Pro controller but at a more palatable price? Then you'll want to check out the EasySMX S10 Switch 2 wireless controller, which is on sale for just $40.40 after you apply $4 off coupon code "4USAFFS" at the official EasySMX store on AliExpress. You may need to be logged into your account to see this discounted price. The S10 features TMR Hall Effect joysticks, supports HD rumble, reads amiibo, and can even wake the Switch 2 remotely.

Your order ships free locally from the United States, which means you do not have to worry about tariffs or egregiously long shipping times. Alternatively, you can pick one up on Amazon for $5 more.

EasySMX S10 Switch 2 Controller for $40.40

Note: Make sure you log into your AliExpress account to see this price

While we continue to wait for Valve to launch the Steam Machine amidst painful hardware shortages at the hands of AI hyperscalers, the company has released some details on its verification program at GDC 2026.

Much like the Steam Deck, one of the big selling points for the Steam Machine is going to be the "Steam Machine Verified" program that'll let you know at a glance whether or not a game will run well on the Steam Machine. We've known that this program was a thing since Valve announced its mini gaming PC back in November, but at GDC 2026, Valve laid out the actual requirements.

The biggest difference from the Steam Deck's verified program is that for a game to be verified on Steam Machine, it needs to run at 1080p with 30fps. Beyond that, any game that's verified on Steam Deck already will automatically be verified on Steam Machine. Valve can carry over that verification because, like with the Steam Deck, a game needs to be able to use a controller 100% of the time to earn that green checkmark.

Valve is also working on making more games playable on SteamOS as a whole. In the same presentation, the company claims that it's working on improving SteamOS's anti-cheat support. Developers should be able to opt in to bring their anti-cheat programs over to SteamOS, which should allow more competitive games to run on the Steam Machine, the Deck, or whatever other hardware people choose to install SteamOS onto.

This sounds like a good move to bring more multiplayer games to SteamOS, but Valve acklowledged that there are still issues with Kernel-level anti-cheat and Secure Boot.

What Happened to 4K60?

When Valve first showed off the Steam Machine, it made a big deal out of it being able to play most games at 4K with 60fps, as long as FSR is enabled. While it seems like that target is incompatible with the verified program only requiring 1080p at 30fps, it actually makes a lot of sense. After all, if you turn FSR to Performance Mode on a 4K display, the game is going to be rendering at 1080p anyways.

It might have been nice to see Valve stick to its marketing and say that the Steam Machine is a 4K60 machine, but with the GPU being the equivalent of a Radeon RX 7600M, 1080p at 30fps is a much easier bar to clear.

The Steam Machine will probably lose some of that performance upscaling to 4K with FSR, but as long as a game has some breathing room over that 1080p, 30fps minimum, it should have no problem being playable at that higher resolution, even if it isn't the native 4K gameplay that we'd all like to see from a new gaming device in 2026.

Either way, unless a game doesn't run on SteamOS or support controllers, these requirements should mean that most PC games should have no problem earning a Steam Machine Verified badge. But we'll have to wait for the Steam Machine to actually get here to know for sure.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. You can follow her @Jackiecobra

Nintendo says it believes in the idea that “it is more fun to destroy that which is beautiful,” which is why it stuffed hundreds of millions of voxels into at least one of the layers in Donkey Kong Bananza.

Nintendo producer Kenta Motokura and programmer Tatsuya Kurihara peeled back the layers of last year’s Nintendo Switch 2 Donkey Kong game during a GDC panel attended by IGN earlier today. The hour-long session offered a deep dive into the crust of what made the game special, including information about its ties to Super Mario Odyssey and, of course, its destruction mechanics.

As someone who primarily reads fantasy books, I was pleasantly surprised how much I loved Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. It's the perfect mix of science and humor with an engaging plot that draws you in right from the start. And while I haven't read that many sci-fi novels, this one is definitely in contention for one of my all-time favorites.

With the movie adaptation coming to theaters next week, I highly suggest you check out Weir's original version before you watch the film. From my own experience, the book is almost always better than the movie and is absolutely worth experiencing first.

If you prefer to listen to stories rather than read them, I recommend checking out the Audible version. It's a great way to enjoy the book on the go and the narrator does an incredible job at bringing the story to life.

Update: The price has gone up to $245.61 (still a good deal).

There's no need to pay $430 for the Bowflex SelectTech adjustable dumbbells when there are equally well-built options at a much lower price point. FED Fitness on AliExpress is offering a pair of Feierdun DB1 Adjustable Dumbbells for just $207.61 with free delivery from a local US warehouse. Each dumbbell weighs 52.5 pounds for a total of 105 pounds. Currently these same dumbbells sell for $330 on FED's own storefront and $370 on Amazon. Since they've already been shipped from overseas, any tariffs have already been paid for and you also don't need to worry about egregiously long shipping times.

Note: Sign into your account and then refresh the page to see the shipping options.

FED Fitness DB1 Adjustable Dumbbells (up to 52.5lbs each)

Roger Jackson — best known for being the voice of one of the genre’s most iconic villains, Scream’s Ghostface — will be taking on the role of Rabbit in the upcoming Twisted Childhood Universe sequel Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 3.

Jackson, who has voiced Ghostface since all the way back in 1996 with the very first Scream film, will voice the character, with Josephine Blazier in the lead role of MoMo and George Drogo as Winnie the Pooh himself, Dread Central reported. Returning actors include Lewis Santer as Tigger, Eddy MacKenzie as Piglet, and Marcus Massey as Owl.

Production on the film is set to start next month, with Scott Chambers, producer of the first two Blood and Honey films, taking the helm as director for this installment. Richard Stanley, who wrote the script for the 2019 Nicolas Cage body horror film Color Out of Space, is writing the script — which could mean great things for this new film.

Rhys Frake-Waterfield, who created the TCU and directed the first two films, will produce the upcoming reimagining of the Hundred Acre Wood.

According to Dread Central, things are getting intense in Blood and Honey 3. “The tone of the new film is said to be darker, heightened, and more serious than the previous entries,” the outlet revealed alongside the news of Jackson’s casting.

Jackson is a seasoned voice actor, even outside of his work in one of the most well-known horror franchises of all time. You can hear his voice as one of the best characters in The Powerpuff Girls, none other than Mojo Jojo, as well as in various other projects like Robot Chicken, The Wild Thornberrys Movie, and Devil May Cry.

The TCU is the brainchild of Jagged Edge Productions and ITN Studios, and aims to reinvent our favorite childhood classics, turning the lovable stars of those stories into brutal killing machines. Seems like they’re doing a decent job of it at this point.

No word yet on when Blood and Honey 3 will be released, but not gonna lie, we’re a little hungry for the sweet taste of death.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.

Update: This deal is now expired.

A jump starter is an essential part of car's emergency kit, but you don't need to pay a premium for a cordless model that gets the job done reliably. Cordless jump starters on Amazon that cost under $50 are all roughly the same quality, so you basically want one that offers the best features for the lowest price. Amazon is currently offering the Acmount P100 12V 5,000A cordless car jump starter for just $29.99 after applying coupon code "JL8WVJU3". You do not need to be an Amazon Prime member. It even performs double duty as a 20,000mAh power bank.

Acmount P100 5,000A 12V Car Jump Starter for $29.99

Also doubles as a 20,000mAh power bank

Microsoft has revealed early features of Project Helix, its next-gen Xbox, while confirming plans to send alpha versions of the hardware to developers in 2027.

At a 30-minute GDC 2026 keynote attended by IGN (check out our live report here to find out more on what was said), Jason Ronald, VP, Next Generation, Microsoft, reiterated that Project Helix will play Xbox console games and PC games. We then got confirmation of early features and targets, and the promise of "an order of magnitude improvement" on ray tracing performance.

"The entire design of the console is to usher in the next generation of console gaming by advancing the state of the art, and really breaking a lot of these barriers down," Ronald said. "Project Helix is designed to play your Xbox console and PC games, delivering high performance and providing the ultimate player-first experience. We're partnering closely with AMD to define the next generation of rendering and simulation. Project Helix is powered by a custom AMD-based SOC, and it's co-designed for the next generation of DirectX. Project Helix brings intelligence directly into the graphics and compute pipeline, delivering step-change functions and gains in efficiency, scale, and visual ambitions."

"Beyond the SOC, it also includes an order of magnitude increase in ray tracing performance and capability, beyond what's currently possible with the Xbox Series X and S," Ronald continued. "It also unlocks GPU-directed work graph execution, eliminating CPU bottlenecks, meaning that the GPU can actually generate its own workload in real-time, delivering a massive uplift in performance and enabling massive real-time simulation and large complex worlds using runtime-generated geometry and large-scale interactive worlds that players actually want to engage with."

Ronald added that Project Helix "is really designed for the next generation of neural assisted rendering." "We've reached some of the limitations of what's possible with traditional rendering techniques, and if we want to continue to advance the state of the art, we have to invent brand new technology," he explained.

"And the key part of that is how we're integrating the next version of AMD FSR into Project Helix and into the Xbox Game Development kit. And this is really designed for that next generation of neural rendering techniques, whether that's neural materials, whether that's generated images, or even if you think about things like the latest ML-based upscaling techniques or super resolution techniques. You think about brand new ML-based multiframe generation. And there's even new capabilities such as a brand new ray regeneration technique that's really designed to deliver high performance ray tracing for both real-time ray tracing and path tracing."

Ronald went on to talk about deep texture compression as it relates to Project Helix. "I think if you look across the industry right now and you can look at the massive increases in storage prices and memory prices, if we want to continue to push the boundaries, we also need to invent brand new techniques that allows us to leverage our software in much more efficient ways while still making gaming accessible," he said. "And I think this is a responsibility and really a call to action across the entire industry. There's a ton of work that we can do on the hardware side. There's a ton of work that we can do on the software side, but it's also about how you take advantage of this as developers."

Project Helix features and targets:

Plays Your Xbox Console & PC Games

Powered By Custom AMD SOC

• Codesigned for Next Generation of DirectX
• Next Gen Raytracing Performance & capabilities
• GPU Directed Work Graph Execution

AMD FSR Next + Project Helix

• Built for Next Generation of Neural Rendering
• Next Generation ML Upscaling
• New ML Multiframe Generation
• Next Gen Ray Regeneration for RT and Path Tracing

Deep Texture Compression

• Neural Texture Compression
• DirectStorage + Zstd

If you're planning out a PC build and have been hoping to get one of the new Nvidia Blackwell graphics cards at a reasonable price, this might be the best opportunity you'll get in the near future. Walmart is offering a retail boxed PNY GeForce RTX 5070 12GB graphics card for just $599 shipped. Mind you this is still $50 over MSRP, but it's the best price I can find right now for a standalone 5070 GPU and the first time I've seen this card drop below $600 this year.

For a limited time, purchase an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card and get a free digital download code of Resident Evil Requiem Standard Edition on Steam while supplies last. The promotion ends on March 16 and the redemption deadline is April 16. Full details on Nvidia's official website here.

PNY GeForce RTX 5070 12GB OC Graphics Card for $599

Finding a live TV streaming service that meets all your needs can be a challenge, as each one offers something a little different to stand out from the competition. Whether you're into live sports, keeping up with your favorite weekly TV shows, or a mix of everything, there's almost certainly a streaming service out there that fits your viewing habits. But with so many options, it can be tough to know which one is right for you.

We’ve rounded up the best live TV streaming services that offer free trials in 2026, so you can test them out before committing to a subscription.

Hulu + Live TV (3-Day Free Trial)

We're just a few days away from the 98th Academy Awards. Ahead of this year's Oscars celebrating 2025 in film, we're here to share how you can watch, plus break down the nominees, host, presenters and performers, and what's new for the 2026 ceremony.

Going into the show, Sinners leads the way with a record-breaking 16 nominations, beating the previously held 14-nomination record tie between All About Eve, Titanic, and La La Land. One Battle After Another takes second place with 13 nominations.

Read on below for everything else you need to know about the Oscars.

When are the Oscars?

The Oscars will take place on March 15, 2026, from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles at the new time of 7pm ET/4pm PT/11pm GMT. The broadcast is expected to run for three hours, but you can almost certainly count on it going long.

How can I watch the Oscars?

The Oscars will be be televised on your local ABC station. It will also be streaming live on Hulu. (We're still a few years out from the Oscars on YouTube.) If you're interested in the pre-show arrivals and red carpet interviews, ABC's coverage will begin at 3:30pm ET/12:30pm PT and E!'s will kick off at 4pm ET/1pm PT.

Who is hosting the Oscars?

Conan O'Brien – who also starred in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You alongside Best Actress nominee Rose Byrne – is hosting the Oscars for the second year in a row. O'Brien was announced as the 2026 host two weeks after the 2025 Oscars, saying in a statement, "The only reason I’m hosting the Oscars next year is that I want to hear Adrien Brody finish his speech.” To refresh your memory, Brody dragged on for nearly six minutes accepting the award for Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist.

"There'll be some explosions, CGI will be used," O'Brien told ABC News about Round 2. "I see this second Oscars as an opportunity to take things up a notch," especially now that he's well-informed on crucial standards and practices, like always keeping an Oscar statuette upright.

What's new at the Oscars this year?

The Academy Awards are rolling out a new category for the first time since 2001's addition of Best Animated Feature Film: Achievement in Casting will get its debut after being announced in 2024. The award will go to a casting director, but the criteria for winning sounds unexpectedly more complicated than someone who can put together a list of top-notch actors. The first-ever nominees are:

• Nina Gold, Hamnet
• Jennifer Venditti, Marty Supreme
• Cassandra Kulukundis, One Battle after Another
• Gabriel Domingues, The Secret Agent
• Francine Maisler, Sinners

Unlike all the other awards, which will have clips shown, the casting directors will get a "Fab Five"-style presenting panel, where someone with a personal connection to the nominee will speak to the job itself.

“We thought we really needed to tell a story,” showrunner Raj Kapoor said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Casting is so multifaceted and complex. We need to make people understand the importance of casting directors’ contributions to film.”

The next new category will come at the 2028 Oscars, when the Academy finally acknowledges stunts as the bone-breaking art form it is.

Who is presenting at the 2026 Oscars?

The official voice of the 2026 will be none other than Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows), who was apparently pitched by Team Coco. "My team and I are massive Matt Berry fans, and have been for quite a while," O'Brien said during a press conference Wednesday morning. "I think he’s one of the funniest people alive, and I’m a regular consumer of his internet madness, his social media madness and the different shows that he’s worked on, and I just think he’s a delight. So we had the idea, could we have Matt participate?"

In the same press conference, the producers confirmed a Bridesmaids reunion with Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, and this year's nominee Rose Byrne, and teased a Marvel reunion. "We’re gonna have superstar superheroes, and there is also going to be an extraterrestrial on the stage," executive producer Katy Mullan said. "So you can figure that one out.”

Nicole Kidman, Jimmy Kimmel, Delroy Lindo (a Supporting Actor nominee), Ewan McGregor, Wagner Moura (a Best Actor nominee), Pedro Pascal, Bill Pullman, Lewis Pullman, Channing Tatum, and Sigourney Weaver were also confirmed on Wednesday.

Previously announced presenters include: Will Arnett, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway, Paul Mescal, Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Evans, and Kumail Nanjiani. Last year's winners Adrien Brody, Kieran Culkin, Mikey Madison, and Zoe Saldaña, as well as 2025 nominee Demi Moore, are also among the group of presenters. Javier Bardem and Chase Infiniti, who starred respectively in F1 and One Battle After Another but did not receive individual nominations, will also present. (Infiniti's omission in the Supporting Actress race is considered one of the big snubs of this year's awards.)

Who is performing at the Oscars?

The telecast will include two major "moments" that the show producers are calling "more than just performances — they expand into cinematic tributes that celebrate the relationship between music and storytelling and why these films resonated so deeply with audiences around the world." These are "Golden" from KPop Demon Hunters and "I Lied to You" from Sinners, both nominated for Best Original Song this year. (The other nominated tracks — "Train Dreams” from Best Picture nominee Train Dreams, “Dear Me” from the documentary Diane Warren: Restless, and “Sweet Dreams of Joy” from the documentary Viva Verdi! — will not be performed live.)

The singing voices behind Huntr/x — Ejae, Audrey Nuna, and Rei Ami — will perform "Golden," accompanied by "a fusion of traditional Korean instrumentalists and dance, celebrating the folklore and cultural inspiration that anchors the story behind this animated blockbuster."

Sinners' breakout star Miles Caton and singer-songwriter Raphael Saadiq will perform "I Lied To You," officially described as exploring the "role music plays in the film’s storytelling for a cinematic live moment." (Hopefully that means it attempts to replicate the electric, glorious fever dream of the film's scene the song comes from.) Blues musicians Buddy Guy and Bobby Rush, rapper Shaboozey, ballet dancer Misty Copeland, and actresses Li Jun Li and Jayme Lawson will join, along with musicians Brittany Howard of the Alabama Shakes, Eric Gales, Alice Smith, and Christone “Kingfish” Ingram.

Josh Groban and the Los Angeles Master Chorale will also perform.

What's happening with the In Memoriam segment?

With an especially sad year of losses in Hollywood over the past year, the Oscars are extending the In Memormiam segment. "We’ve had an incredibly tough year of losses,” Katy Mullan said at the Wednesday press conference. “So many cinema titans have passed away, and there are so many people who care so deeply for a lot of the people we’ll be tributing and honoring. That has taken a lot of conversation, a lot of thought, and will continue right up into the show.

"It’s a chance for people to say goodbye. It’s a chance for them to see some of their favorite people one more time, and it’s a memory. We don’t take it lightly.”

What are this year's Oscars nominees?

Read on for the nominees in some of the top categories, but you can check out the full list of nominees here.

Best Picture:

• Bugonia
• F1
• Frankenstein
• Hamnet
• Marty Supreme
• One Battle after Another
• The Secret Agent
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners
• Train Dreams

Best Actor:

• Timothée Chalamet, Marty Supreme
• Leonardo DiCaprio, One Battle after Another
• Ethan Hawke, Blue Moon
• Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
• Wagner Moura, The Secret Agent

Best Actress:

• Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
• Rose Byrne, If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
• Kate Hudson, Song Sung Blue
• Renate Reinsve, Sentimental Value
• Emma Stone, Bugonia

Best Director:

• Chloé Zhao, Hamnet
• Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme
• Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle after Another
• Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
• Ryan Coogler, Sinners

Which nominees are expected to win?

Though the ballot is a lot of the same movies being celebrated in many categories, a clear winner hasn't pulled ahead in many of the key races, with a few exceptions. KPop Demon Hunters definitely has Best Animated Feature Film in the bag. Best Actress will probably go to Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare's grieving wife Agnes in Hamnet, despite the earned fervor around Rose Byrne's performance in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You. The screenplay awards will repesctively go to Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson for Best Original and Best Adapted. Outside of that, other categories are a coin toss, usually between One Battle After Another and Sinners.

Though Timothée Chalamet was practically the presumptive winner in Best Actor as a ping pong hustler in Marty Supreme a few months ago, taking the early win at the Golden Globes, that stance has position has cooled; the SAG Award went to Michael B. Jordan for his twin brothers, Stack and Smoke, from Sinners. Another key win from the Actor Awards was Amy Madigan taking the trophy for Supporting Actress as Aunt Gladys in Weapons, which people have taken as an indicator of an impending Oscars win over Teyana Taylor's revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills in One Battle After Another.

What's the controversy this year?

There are two, kind of. First of all, this is the first year where AMPAS voters must attest to having actually seen all of the films they're voting on, a new rule imposed for the first time (!!) a few months after last year's awards. (Voters can log this after watching films through the Academy screening app, which would automatically track whether or not something has been played, or click a box that pledges they've seen it in a theater or by other means.)

The other one, closest to the ceremony and therefore the one that will live on in the Discourse up until the event, is the fact that Timothée Chalamet dissed opera and ballet, in the context of concern about the state of movie theaters.

"I admire people — and I've done it myself — who go on a talk show and say, ‘Hey, we've got to keep movie theaters alive, y'know, we've gotta keep this genre alive," he said during a Variety and CNN town Hall with his Interstellar co-star Matthew McConaughey. "And another part of me feels like if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer, they're going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it. I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it’s like, ‘Hey! Keep this thing alive,’ even though no one cares about this anymore. All respect to the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”

"That's not a shot, I hear what you're saying," McConaughey responded.

The video clip started going viral late last week, nearly two weeks after it was originally posted — after the window for Oscars voting had closed on March 5. It won't directly impact his chances, but it's enough to rile patrons and providers of the fine arts: Many institutions, including the Metropolitan Opera, the English National Opera, and the Royal Ballet and Opera, posted rebuttals on social media praising their artisans or making a case for him to come to a show. Plenty more have fired back, calling his take shades of "disrespectul". The comments made their way to The View and Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update, where Colin Jost quipped that Chalamet “made the comment on a press tour for his movie about... ping-pong.”

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

Leanne Butkovic is an Editorial Project Manager at IGN, where they've also written about movies, TV, and games.

Titanic star Kate Winslet will play a major character in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.

A report published today by Deadline described Winslet's unannounced character as the film's female lead, though exactly who she's playing remains under wraps.

Winslet was apparently wooed into taking the role over the past year by The Hunt for Gollum director and star Andy Serkis, as well as The Lord of the Rings trilogy director Peter Jackson, who is serving as a producer this time around.

It's no stretch to say that one of the reasons DC's Absolute Universe line has resonated with such a wide audience is that these books draw a lot of inspiration from the world of manga. That's especially true for Absolute Batman, a series that reimagines Bruce Wayne as a hulking terrorist in a Gotham City ruled by wealthy elite like the Joker. Never has that manga influence been more apparent than in Absolute Batman #18, a book that pays direct homage to Tatsuki Fujimoto's Chainsaw Man.

For proof, look no further than artists Clay and Seth Mann's wraparound cover to Absolute Batman #18:

In other Absolute Universe news, Absolute Wonder Woman was recently chosen as IGN's best comic book series of 2025.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

Mega Man fans need to jump on this incredible Humble Bundle that includes every Mega Man legacy collection and two additional games. That’s not all, as the Mario Day deals continue today for massive savings on tons of Mario Switch games and a Switch 2 microSD Express card. Plus, save on cable clips to keep organized, a 100W wall charger, Monster Hunter Wilds and Astro Bot for PS5, and more.

TL;DR - The Best Deals for March 11

Epic Mega Man: Charged Up Collection Deal at Humble

TMNT: The Last Ronin Box Set Hits New Low

$20 for Monster Hunter Wilds for PS5

$20.99 Off a 256GB Samsung MicroSD Express Card for Switch 2

Mario Day Switch Game Deals

Astro Bot Is Back In Stock at Amazon and Still Just $32.99

6-pack of Rotating Cable Clips for $6.29

2025 77" Panasonic Z85BA 4K OLED Fire TV for $1399.99

Save $30 on a 100W Baseus Wall Charger

Save $700 on the Lenovo Legion Tower 5 RTX 5070 Ti

MTG: Lorwyn Eclipsed Play Booster Box Hits New Low Price

Disney+ and Hulu for $4.99/Month

Spend $50 on Board Games and Toys, Get a $10 Amazon Credit

MTG x Spider-Man Gift Bundle Back Down To Lowest Price Ever

Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Hits New Low On Amazon

26K, 300W Anker Power Bank Up to 46% Off

IGN’s only been around for 30 years, but movies have been going for much, much longer than that. And the thing is, so many of them have never been reviewed by us. But that’s where IGN’s Flashback Reviews come in, so today we’re jumping almost 90 years back in time to talk about one of the greatest horror movies ever made… if you can even call it a horror movie, that is: Bride of Frankenstein!

Elsa Lanchester’s Bride of Frankenstein is an icon, even if most people have never actually seen the only film in which the character appeared. Her image is instantly recognizable – the lightning-striped, shocked bouffant, the bandaged arms and sweeping gown, the impeccably scarred yet beautiful face. Oh, and the hiss – don’t forget the hiss! And this despite the poor creature only getting about four minutes of screentime in total. Again, 90 years ago.

But the birth of the Bride also came at a critical moment for the horror genre, as the looming dangers of censorship would soon drain much of the life out of the creative boom that had led to the film in the first place.

When director James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein was released in 1935, the horror genre was at the peak of a vast surge in popularity. The huge success in 1931 of the Bride’s Universal Monsters predecessor Dracula, and her would-be-paramour, Frankenstein’s Monster, meant that every mummy, invisible man, black cat, raven, and werewolf in town was about to get their own picture. Meanwhile, Fredric March had won the Oscar in 1932 for playing not just Dr. Jekyll, but also that awful Mr. Hyde (tying with Wallace Beery for the boxing flick The Champ, by the way). Horror was big, and monsters were where horror was at.

The funny thing is, James Whale didn’t actually want to make a sequel to his original Frankenstein, despite its success. You can't blame him, having helmed three horror films in the previous four years with Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Invisible Man. But the director’s mischievous leanings that were already popping up in those pictures would become the lifeblood of Bride, a film that is as much a great comedy as it is a monster movie.

Right off the bat, the film feels bigger than its predecessor, as the title credits reveal Franz Waxman’s foreboding score, before segueing into the melodious Bride’s theme. The first Frankenstein film, having been produced at the cusp of the advent of sound, featured minimal music, instead leaning into frequent spans of crackling silence. But Bride’s new scope, hinted at in this music, is immediately confirmed as Whale’s opening scene takes us for a humorous if unexpected visit to Frankenstein’s very creator, Mary Shelley, along with Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, as the three chatter about ghost stories on a stormy night.

As such, Bride of Frankenstein begins in an elegant drawing room of the Romantic Era, where the Rs roll with aplomb and audiences – still in the midst of the Great Depression – surely could only look on in wonder. Played by the uniquely off-kilter Elsa Lanchester – who of course would also play the Bride at the end of the film – Mary seems to speak directly of the viewer, and to the viewer, at one point: “Such an audience needs something stronger than a pretty little love story. So why shouldn't I write of monsters?” No doubt this well-placed bit of dialogue by Whale and his writers is also a jab at the recently implemented self-censoring Hays Code, which would soon hobble many a horror movie in Hollywood.

Why was horror so popular during those dark days of the Depression? Much has been written on the topic, and it seems safe to say that in 1935 audiences were seeking some kind of escapism in the dark safety of the movie house. But there’s also the more lurid, violent, and sexual aspects of these films, elements which folks obviously wanted to indulge in, and ironically the very same aspects that the Hays Code would soon crack down on, taking away much of the spark that had fueled the genre. Viewers wouldn’t have known it at the time, but when the Bride is electrified to life, those four brief minutes of agony and ecstasy were sort of the climax for this heyday of horror.

So who are the monsters that Shelley is talking about in the prologue? Certainly not Boris Karloff’s sad-sack creature, who in a feat that would be replicated by every Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers who followed, managed to survive the unsurvivable climax of the previous film. Sure, he kills some people here or there, basically to keep the cheap seats happy, but that’s not what interests Whale in the character. While Karloff would later say that he wasn’t particularly fond of the development, the typically mute Monster famously acquires the power of speech in this picture. This leads to some humorous moments – you’ll never forget seeing Karloff half-choking on a cigar – as well as some dark ones, as when the Monster proclaims that he “loves dead… hates living.” The actor can still be scary as the towering Monster, of course, but it’s his moments of pathos and humanity – there, I said it – that work best in Bride.

Certainly the brief time he spends living happily with the blind old man who he encounters in the forest can only end in heartbreaking fashion – even if the whole set-up has become a well-trodden trope by today’s standards. As the old man attempts to teach the Monster about the difference between good and bad, one can’t help but peer past the script and see a meditation on the world in which Whale and his audience were living, survivors of a World War now living through another unimaginably difficult time.

Nor is Colin Clive’s Dr. Henry Frankenstein a villain. Indeed, while Henry was a crackpot who caused a ton of problems for everyone in the first film, in Bride he becomes more of an unwilling participant in the bigger action – almost a bystander. Sure, he’s one of the two creators of the Bride, but he does so under duress. Poor Clive, meanwhile, seems aged and stricken here, a not surprising result, perhaps, of what the character has been through, but one tempered by the knowledge that in reality the actor was reportedly suffering from alcoholism and would die just two years after the film’s release.

Whether you love them, hate them, or just get enraged waiting in the queue to try and get them, there’s little doubt that Secret Lair has proven itself to be a goldmine for the folks at Wizards of the Coast.

These special drops highlight different properties that a player, even five years ago, would scoff at as being impossible inclusions, bringing new eyes to the long-running card game.

As the releases are limited, some of the cards included in these Secret Lair drops are highly sought after, whether it is from a collector standpoint or just because folks love the art.

#10 Armiger Unleashed (Forge Anew - Rainbow Foil)

Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi’s new game is now in doubt after investor NetEase warned his studio that it plans to cut off funding.

Gang of Dragon was meant to be the debut game from Nagoshi Studio, the developer formed by Nagoshi in 2022 under NetEase after he departed Ryu Ga Gotoku a year earlier. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it looks an awful lot like Yakuza.

Bloomberg reported that Chinese megacorp NetEase told Nagoshi Studio employees that it will stop financing the studio from May, which in turn will likely mean Nagoshi’s studio will have to shut down. NetEase is currently in the process of cutting its video game investments, which have already led to studio closures and layoffs.

According to Bloomberg, NetEase made the decision to cut Nagoshi’s funding after it learned Gang of Dragon needed at least another ¥7 billion (approx. $44.4 million) to be completed. Nagoshi is apparently trying to find new investors to help buy the studio out, without much luck.

The news comes just a few months after Gang of Dragon enjoyed a flashy reveal at The Game Awards in December. Now, it looks like it may never see the light of day.

Photo by Daniel Pearce/Edge Magazine/Future via Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Bungie has revealed plans to change Marathon in some key ways just a few days after launch, outlining early patch notes for an update due out next week.

In a tweet, the developer said that “in the near future” it will adjust the amount of Lux, Marathon’s in-game currency, you get for the $10 bundle so that it grants 1,120 Lux, up from 1,100.

This is important because currently a runner skin costs 1,120 Lux, but you can’t buy 1,120 Lux exactly from the store. Instead, you have to spend $10 to get 1,100 Lux (just 20 Lux shy of what you need), and then another $5 to get 500 Lux on top, which in total dollar terms matches the price of the $15 bundle available from the store.

As IGN has reported, this had caused a stink within Marathon’s burgeoning community, with some players accusing Bungie of resorting to “scummy tactics” for the extraction shooter’s monetization. As a part of the change, Bungie will credit 20 Lux to players for each $10 Lux bundle they purchased before this tweak occurred.

But the virtual currency denominations aren’t the only point of contention. Marathon’s $10 Battle Pass has also been roundly criticized for not offering enough value (poor quality items, no premium currency back). And the limited supply stickers, which you can place on your weapons, can’t be applied to all your weapons.

Without going into specifics, Bungie said it was aware of the feedback on Marathon’s cosmetics. “We want to ensure that when you spend in Marathon you feel like you are getting great value and discussing ways to improve this experience,” it said.

Meanwhile, Bungie outlined early patch notes for Marathon’s first update, due out next week. All the changes seem designed to make the extraction shooter an easier experience. The highlight for me is the increased number of Med Cabinets and Munitions Crates that can spawn on the Perimeter map, and the increased amount of starting ammo in the free Sponsored Kits.

Marathon is a very difficult game in which it’s easy to run out of ammo. The enemy AI feels particularly powerful, too, so one wrong turn can end your run in the blink of an eye, especially if you don’t have the ammo to fight back.

Marathon first update early patch notes:

• Increased the distance objective nav points appear from 10m to 20m.
• Increased the number of Med Cabinets and Munitions Crates that can spawn on Perimeter.
• Increased the amount of starting ammo in MIDA, CyberAcme, and Arachne free Sponsored Kits.

I've seen plenty of debate about these balance changes, with some saying they're much needed, others expressing concern that what's important about the Marathon experience - this ultra challenging extraction loop and the slow but rewarding power climb - is diminished by what they believe is an effort to make the game more palatable to casual players.

As I've mentioned in previous reporting, part of the challenge comes from the very nature of Marathon as an extraction shooter. If you die, you lose all your gear. And not just what you looted while out on the battlefield, but what you brought in. And given how easy it is to die in Marathon, it can feel like a brutally punishing video game.

Are people bouncing off Marathon because of this? Are some put off by its steep learning curve? In the two days Marathon has been live, it hit a peak Steam concurrent player count of 88,337. While that's an impressive start for most video games (and let's not forget Marathon is also out on consoles), is it enough for Bungie, which is under pressure to deliver for its owner Sony after recent financial failings?

We’ve got plenty more on Marathon, including one Bungie developer’s commitment to “fontslop,” and Bungie’s words of reassurance on Marathon’s difficulty curve. Check out IGN's Marathon review so far to find out what we think.

If you're jumping into Marathon, check out IGN's Beginner's Guide and Tips guide to familiarize yourself with how the game works (and don't forget to check out the Things to Do First!). You'll likely find yourself running out of inventory space pretty fast, so find out how to get more in our How to Unlock More Backpack Slots guide, and if you're playing with a controller, make sure you're applying the Best Controller Settings.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.