Ubisoft is hacking its way into film once again, as its Watch Dogs movie has started shooting.

The gaming publisher shared the news with a behind-the-scenes picture on X/Twitter. It’s a mysterious image that only reveals a clapperboard and an individual who is, appropriately, sitting at a computer. It’s set to be directed by The Deep Dark and Meander’s Mathieu Turi. Story details are being kept secret for now.

Lights_Camera_Action.exe#WatchDogsMovie // @NewRegency pic.twitter.com/6z7uUibmOJ

— Ubisoft (@Ubisoft) July 3, 2024

Though no plot information about Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs movie has been revealed, we’re not completely in the dark on how the film will come together. In June, Deadline reported that the project had picked up two of 2023’s biggest breakout stars, Tom Blyth and Sophie Wilde. The former is best known for his portrayal in Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, though he’s also appeared in shows like Billy the Kid and The Gilded Age. Wilde terrified audiences with last year’s Talk to Me but has showed up in projects like Boy Swallows Universe and Everything Now, too.

Details on Blyth and Wilde’s roles in the Watch Dogs movie are unclear. The script’s original draft was handled by Christie LeBlanc, with new revisions overseen by Victoria Bata. New Regency CEO Yariv Milchan and company president of motion pictures and television Natalie Lehmann are attached as producers alongside Ubisoft head of content Margaret Boykin.

Watch Dogs exploded onto into gaming with the original Watch Dogs in 2014. The first installment in Ubisoft’s tech-centered told the story of Aiden Pearce, a hacker with the ability to manipulate technology in the environment around him. A sequel located in San Francisco was released in 2016, but the franchise most recently delivered a London-set entry with 2020’s Watch Dogs: Legion.

Ubisoft has been trying its best to get a Watch Dogs movie off the ground for more than a decade. While the project has finally found its footing, we’re still waiting to hear a release date. In the meantime, you can read about the latest news on the Assassin’s Creed series and the publisher’s The Division movie.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.

Battlefield 2042 is keeping its post-launch content rolling with a surprise Dead Space crossover event.

The limited-time event, which has been given the name Outbreak, brings more than just an Isaac Clarke-like engineer skin for players to enjoy. EA and Dice say the mode will see squads “tested by their human resilience and resourcefulness against a new and relentless enemy all while trying to escape the Boreas laboratory.”

Its first trailer shows enemies that cross between Necromorphs and standard zombies rushing players as they use non-Plasma Cutter weaponry to cut them down. The Battlefield 2042 Dead Space crossover event runs from July 9 through July 16, and you can see its trailer below.

Your squad is about to become humanity’s last defense.#Battlefield 2042 | @DeadSpace 📅 July 9 - 16 pic.twitter.com/2OsJIwbbur

— Battlefield (@Battlefield) July 3, 2024

With Outbreak comes a selection of free and purchasable goodies to walk away with. Free rewards include a new weapon charm and skin in addition to a player card background and tag. There’s also a Dead Space-themed bundle, which comes with a legendary specialist outfit called Marked Man, three legendary weapon skins, and more, that can be bought for 2200 BFC.

The Dead Space Outbreak event is part of Season 7: Turning Point, Battlefield 2042 final seasonal content update. EA announced that the current season will be its last in April, promising that the end of this entry’s content means the team can shift its focus to the future of the franchise.

“We know this news may be disappointing,” Battlefield general manager Byron Beede said at the time. “However, as we looked at what the future of the series required, it became clear it was time for us to shift our resources and focus to be fully dedicated to what comes next.”

Warning: The below story spoils a possible cameo in James Gunn's Superman. Click away if you want to be surprised!

James Gunn’s Superman promises a new take on DC’s Man of Steel, but it’ll also pay homage to the person who first brought the character to the big screen: Christopher Reeve.

As reported by Cleveland.com, the late actor’s son and real-life journalist, Will Reeve, was spotted on set during filming in Cleveland, Ohio (via Variety). It’s said he’ll appear in a fitting role where he plays a reporter. Christopher Reeve played Clark Kent/Superman in the 1978 live-action film as well as its three sequels before passing away in 2004. It’s unclear how big Reeve’s role in Gunn’s Superman is or how often he’ll appear.

IGN has reached out to DC for comment.

Update: Xbox Live services are available once again. Xbox has not commented on the cause of the outage but has since confirmed the users should be able to use the service again.

Users should no longer be encountering issues signing in to Xbox Live and services. Thank you for your patience, game on! https://t.co/jw7EOmyyoL

— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) July 3, 2024

Xbox Live was unavailable for approximately seven hours.

Xbox Live is currently down, affecting thousands of gaming fans.

Players who attempted to log into their accounts this afternoon found they were unable to sign in and play games as usual. Microsoft describes the incident as a “major outage” on its official Xbox Live status page. The company says troubles with its service began just after 2 p.m. ET, with the website Downdetector reporting a peak of more than 38,000 individual outage reports around 3 p.m. ET.

Dragon Age: The Veilguard will have a number of difficulty options that allow players to tweak the experience to their liking.

Developer BioWare revealed more about the latest installment in its fantasy franchise as part of this month’s Game Informer cover story. Features like the hundreds of character customization sliders and pronoun options separate from your character’s gender live up to game director Corinne Busche’s promise that Dragon Age: The Veilguard was created with inclusivity in mind. This desire was carried over into the difficulty options too, which include standard choices like the story-focused Storyteller path, a balanced Adventurer mode, or the more crushing Nightmare mode, which can’t be changed once a playthrough is started.

Paramount is reportedly working on a potential merger between Paramount+ and other existing streaming services.

First details on what could be a major shift in the home entertainment landscape come from CNBC. Its sources say Paramount is having “active discussions with other media and tech companies” about the possibility of co-ownership over Paramount+.

Interestingly, per the report, Warner Bros. Discovery has indicated interest in a merger of its own streaming service, Max, and Paramount+. It’s unclear what a joint Max and Paramount+ streaming service would look like, and a lot still needs to come together before such a deal could happen. Another option could see Paramount working with another technology platform.

The Bear Season 3 dropped last week, so someone decided to turn it into a video game… sort of.

Created by Michael Kandel and Joe Miciak under their Hotel Art Thief banner, the animated video, which you can view below, encapsulates plenty that viewers have loved about The Bear so far — while also turning it into something you might see in a nightmare. While the FX/Hulu show sees chefs like Carmy and Syndey rallying to cook and serve some of Chicago’s tastiest dishes, The Bear "video game" features blurry floating heads, stellar voice acting, smoking and feeding mini-games, and a section where you run away from your hungry mom.

“Dinner for mother,” Jamie Lee Curtis’ disembodied head says as she moves closer to the camera.

It’s… a lot, but if you’re a fan of The Bear, then just about every second of the The Bear The Game video has something to laugh at. There’s even a cover of Radiohead’s Let Down that plays while you fend off Chicago dogs in your restaurant. You can see what it’s like to feed Richie on “No Rush” difficulty mode in the video below.

the bear video game actually looks pretty cool pic.twitter.com/pijrftMFDr

— Michael Kandel (@K_A_N_D_E_L) June 28, 2024

Speaking with IGN, Miciak says the idea for The Bear The Game didn't originally spawn from the Jeremy Allen White-led dramedy. He says he simply "loved the idea of a super stressful video game where you’re running a restaurant like Cooking Mama, or Overcooked, but you’re actually allowed to just take it easy." It was Kandel's idea to tie in The Bear with the "eerily soothing" style they've used in past projects like their user:brian(box) sketch.

"We’re both big fans of the show, and it’s so popular online we figured it would be perfect to try to get it done in time for Season 3," Miciak says. "There’s something about the show that feels like if it were released in the 2000s, there would be a PS2 game for it."

The Hotel Art Thief duo says it took a weekend to edit the first draft, a few days to make those floating heads, and just less than three weeks to record, animate in Blender, and bring everything together for the final package you see before you. It was tireless work to put this fever-dream-like spin on The Bear into a video, so don't expect to actually saute onions and smoke with Syndey in a playable version of a The Bear video game anytime soon.

"Mike and I do want to try to figure out how to add video game storytelling to our live sketches we do as Hotel Art Thief, with audiences participating in a choose-your-own-adventure type group game," Miciak said. "So maybe it will continue to live in on in spirt on stage at some point."

user:Brian(box) pic.twitter.com/M6qP9BLbZu

— Michael Kandel (@K_A_N_D_E_L) August 4, 2023

Miciak and Kandel aren't ruling out a sequel to their The Bear sketch, but they'd like to at least watch Season 3 before even attempting to make a follow-up.

"But we usually like to always keep people guessing. I’m sure we’ll at least do a spiritual sequel," Miciak added. "Mike and I are always talking about people we’d like to see as 3D floating heads in our cinematic universe."

The Bear The Game is, unfortunately, not playable. On the bright side, The Bear Season 3 is now available in full on Hulu. We gave the stressful cooking series’ latest batch of episodes a 7/10 in our review. We said, “The Bear still swings for the fences when it comes to innovative storytelling, but Carmy going deeply interior this season throws the show’s balance and forward momentum out of whack.”

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He started writing in the industry in 2017 and is best known for his work at outlets such as The Pitch, The Escapist, OnlySP, and Gameranx.

Be sure to give him a follow on Twitter @MikeCripe.