Ubisoft has confirmed it no longer plans to launch a second major Assassin's Creed Shadows expansion, something that previously would have formed part of the game's now-abandoned season pass.
Shadows' first — and now, it seems, only — major expansion launched in September. The 10-hour Claws of Awaji had previously been described as the "first expansion" included in Shadows' season pass, an offer that was formally scrapped a year ago when Ubisoft delayed the game's launch from November 2024 to February 2025.
As an apology to fans for the game's delay, Ubisoft said it instead would gift Claws of Awaji for free to all pre-order customers. But fans still assumed a second expansion would follow at some point, as has become custom for every other major Assassin's Creed title over the past decade.
"As of now, at this moment for Year Two, there is no expansion on the size of Awaji that is planned," associate game director Simon Lemay-Comtois said in an interview with JorRaptor.
Lemay-Comtois caveated his answer by noting some exceptional examples in the past where Ubisoft had changed its plans to make more add-on content than it had originally envisioned (such as with the recent Saudi-funded DLC that arrived two years post-launch for Assassin's Creed Mirage). But, currently, it seems clear that no second expansion is on the cards, and there's no suggestion that Shadows' post-launch plans will extend into a Year Three.
It's an extremely surprising decision by Ubisoft, which followed up the launch of 2017's Assassin's Creed Origins with two expansions (The Hidden Ones and The Curse of the Pharaohs), 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey with two expansions (Legacy of the First Blade and The Fate of Atlantis), and 2020's Assassin's Creed Odyssey with three expansions (Wrath of the Druids, The Siege of Paris, Dawn of Ragnarök) alongside numerous other smaller DLC drops. 2023's smaller-scale Assassin's Creed Mirage was itself originally planned as yet another Valhalla expansion, before it was ultimately released as a standalone game.
"We're still working on content for post-launch and supporting it, but it's not a full-on DLC the way a season pass would have had in the previous years," Lemay-Comtois said, confirming at least that Ubisoft still had plans for smaller additions to Shadows within 2026.
"We're trying to re-adjust for Year Two a little bit," he continued. "There's learning from Year One we can apply to Year Two. Any content we want to do in Year Two will probably be more sparse, not a drip-feed... but chunkier updates that shake things up a little more. I'm not announcing anything at this point but our strategy for Year One was to be quick and reactive, so it means smaller drops often, but for Year Two we don't need to put fires out or anything, so it's more what good, chunky little piece of meat... we can drop and have people come back and enjoy it."
Digging into Lemay-Comtois' comment, the suggestion here is that Ubisoft's decision to change course on Shadows following its pre-release reception impacted the company's plans for post-launch support, with priority placed on fighting immediate "fires." And indeed, Shadows has enjoyed a series of recent patches that have added numerous fan-requested features, in a clear bid to turn sentiment around. Going into further detail, Lemay-Comtois also suggested Shadows had been a tougher game to develop technologically, further complicating plans to get post-launch content ready.
"I think with Shadows, we had a big jump in generations," he continued. "The engine work that we had to do on Shadows took a lot of time and a lot of our resources. So the planning for the post launch was not really clear as soon as it would have been on another [game] where the technology was more stable and well known.
"We started fairly late on Shadows... because I remember during pre-launch we had the Season Pass," he admitted. "And the situation changed when we pushed back on the release date. That plan changed quite a bit and then we had to kind of adapt to the situation. So because of the new tech, because of the new generation, because of the pushes we had in production, we chose an approach that was way more, let's put our ear to the ground when the game launches... and react."
"And whether or not this is the right way to go, or a good learning, I think it's more of an experience we're trying with Shadows, to keep things small and reactive and see how the community feels about it and reacts to it," he concluded. "And the learnings that come out of that will be applied to whatever other projects we do next."
And then there's what else fans expect is coming: a remake of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag reportedly waiting in the wings, as well as numerous other Assassin's Creed projects that Ubisoft has already confirmed, including a multiplayer spin-off and the witchcraft-themed Assassin's Creed: Hexe. Amongst all that, and coupled with Shadows' delay drama, Ubisoft seems to have simply decided a second Shadows expansion isn't necessary.
If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Black Friday has been filled with tons of great PS5 video game deals so far, and if you've been scooping them all up while they're on sale, you'll want to make sure you have enough space on your PlayStation to download or install them all. Thankfully, Amazon's here to save the day with a sweet 30% Black Friday discount on the 4TB Samsung 9100 Pro SSD with a heatsink, bringing it below $400 and giving you plenty of extra storage to hold all of your new games.
Black Friday Deal: Save on Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB SSD With Heatsink at Amazon
We consider this SSD to be among our picks of the best PS5 SSDs you can buy in 2025, though it's worth keeping in mind this is one of the fastest, most advanced M.2 drives you can buy, so much so the PS5 can't make full use of it. IGN's Jacqueline Thomas notes in our roundup that "the PS5 only rated it for 6,335MB/s" when it was formatted for her console – well shy of the up to 14,800 and 13,400MB/s sequential read and write speeds Samsung advertises. That's not to say you shouldn't consider it, though. Why? The future.
Thomas explains that "While Sony is nowhere near announcing the PlayStation 6, there's a good chance that if the console does support user-upgradable storage, like the current-generation version, it'd use the PCIe 5 interface." So while this drive will work completely fine in a current PS5, it's ready to have its full potential unlocked by any future tech that supports it. Or, if you decide to switch to PC gaming, this would make a fantastic boot drive.
There is increasing concern that skyrocketing RAM prices will impact high-end gaming not just in the short term, but the long term.
With the explosive growth of generative AI, AI data centers are hoovering up the world's memory and storage supply, sparking price hikes that some experts fear could last for decades. Cheap SSDs, DRAM, and HDDs are pretty much a thing of the past, with prices rising as AI demand outstrips supply.
This has already caused price rises, with PC retailer CyberPowerPC announcing a hike for memory modules across the U.S. and the UK “due to market conditions.”
“Recently, global memory (RAM) prices have surged by 500% and SSD prices have risen by 100%,” CyberPowerPC said. “This has had a direct impact on the cost of building gaming PCs since 10/1/25.” Price rises thus kick in on December 7.
The impact on PC gaming could be significant and long-lasting, Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney tweeted. “RAM price increases will be a real problem for high-end gaming for several years,” he said. “Factories are diverting leading edge DRAM capacity to meet AI needs where data centers are bidding far higher than consumer device makers.”
The situation has become so out of control that, as PCWorld reports, stores are beginning to sell RAM at 'catch-of-the-day' market prices. As CyberPowerPC pointed out, these price rises come with the holidays right around the corner, which is less than ideal.
Just checked the price of the RAM that is currently installed in my gaming PC; the AI bubble cannot implode fast enough. pic.twitter.com/G7N5lthE9O
But the issue may stretch out for years to come. “The AI build-out is absolutely eating up a lot of the available chip supply, and 2026 looks to be far bigger than this year in terms of overall demand,” Dan Nystedt, vice president of research at TriOrient, told CNBC.
As CNBC points out, AI servers primarily run on processors from chip designers like Nvidia. These AI processors heavily rely on High-Bandwidth Memory or HBM. Nystedt said AI server companies are willing to pay top dollar for premium chips. “It could be very bad for PCs, laptops, consumer electronics and automotive, which depend on cheap memory chips,” he added.
And there is concern for the price of video game consoles, too. There are online rumors that Microsoft may soon be forced to up the price of Xbox consoles again in reaction to the RAM crunch. Valve has yet to announce a price for its next-gen Steam Machine, and fluctuating RAM prices may have something to do with it.
If you're hunting for the best offers this week, we're actively rounding up the strongest Black Friday deals on video games, tech, and more. You can find all our top picks and price drops in our full Black Friday hub, or check out our relevant pages for PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox deals.
Photo by Mohamad Salaheldin Abdelg Alsayed/Anadolu 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.
Spoilers follow for the first four episodes of Stranger Things Season 5, “Chapter One: The Crawl,” “Chapter Two: The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler,” “Chapter Three: The Turnbow Trap,” and “Chapter Four: Sorcerer.”
By the end of Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1, the Hawkins campaign against Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is most certainly game on. Will Byer’s (Noah Schnapp) throwdown of Vecna’s Demogorgons seemingly positions him as the Dungeon Master extraordinaire. But there’s still so much that the Hawkins party doesn’t know about their adversary’s endgame, including everything at his disposal to ensure he achieves the horrific vision of Hawkins that he shared with Nancy (Natalia Dyer) in Season 4.
As always, every new batch of Stranger Things episodes opens the door for new questions, and that’s certainly the case again at the conclusion of the first four episodes of Season 5. As we’re still processing the insanity of that cliffhanger, here are a few burning questions we’ll be pondering until the next three episodes arrive on December 25, 2025.
What Is Dr. Kay’s Overall Mission?
The Duffers love their ’80s-era iconic actors. They’ve cast quite a few in some juicy parts across the seasons, including Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner, Sean Astin as Bob Newby, Paul Reiser as Sam Owens, Cary Elwes as Larry Kline and Robert Englund as Victor Creel. In Season 5, Linda Hamilton joins their esteemed, nostalgic company as the enigmatic Dr. Kay.
In the first four episodes, all we know about Kay is that she has her own well-funded and well-protected lab in the Upside Down. She’s not exactly warm with her subordinates, and is more in keeping with the behavior of Bishop the android (Lance Henriksen) from Aliens when it comes to their shared intensity regarding alien creature vivisection. But her acquired knowledge seems to have given her control of some of the critters, like the one that chokes out Hopper.
By the end of Chapter 4, we do know that she’s somehow found and forcibly taken Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) fellow lab sister Eight, a.k.a. Kali (Linnea Berthelsen). We can assume that the same sound device Kay uses to immobilize Eleven also works, or worked, on Eight. Now she’s harnessing Eight’s powers in some kind of machine, but how? As a reminder, Eight can manipulate and project illusions into the minds of those around her, which begs the question: Is what Eleven and Hopper see in the lab real, or is Kali projecting whatever Kay tells her to? It’s too early to tell if Kay is a nefarious player in the military’s research or a sympathetic scientist when it comes to all things in the Upside Down.
How Did Kali/Eight Wind Up in the Upside Down?
As alluded to above, Kali Prasad/Eight was one of Dr. Brenner’s lab children that he conducted experiments on starting in 1979. Prior to One/Henry Creel/Vecna killing all of the children in the lab except Eleven, Eight had escaped the lab and collected her own family of misfit runaways in Chicago. In Season 2, Eleven seeks out the girl who escaped and they bond over their shared experiences and special powers. They part ways that same season and haven’t reconnected until Eleven finds Eight in Dr. Kay’s Upside Down lab machine. We have to imagine that she was never really as off the grid as she imagined, between Brenner’s files and perhaps even the tracking of Eight after her escape. And when Kay needed to bring Eleven into her Upside Down lab, the best bait would be Eight.
Will the Wheelers Survive?
Karen Wheeler (Cara Buono) and Ted Wheeler (Joe Chrest) got shredded as they attempted to protect their youngest, Holly (Nell Fisher), from that rampaging Demogorgon in their house. They were both slashed up so brutally that we actually felt a teensy bit bad for Ted, who has been consistently inert as a father and partner across all five seasons. The pair were both alive when they arrived at the local hospital, and Karen even was conscious enough to identify Holly’s “imaginary friend” as Henry. That said, we wouldn’t be surprised if one, or both, were sacrificed to the stakes of this finale season. On the other hand, we also wouldn’t complain if Karen survives and gets to escape the purgatory that is Hawkins suburbia.
When Is Steve Going to Call Dustin on His Shit?
As Steven Harrington (Joe Keery) has evolved from lunkhead high school jock to emotionally perceptive adopted dad of the Hawkins misfits, the writers have recognized that he’s their secret weapon for great character moments. He gets to land some truth bombs on Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) in this block of episodes, but we’re really waiting for an overdue thrown down between him and bestie Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo). The typically enthusiastic science nerd hasn’t processed Eddie Munson’s (Joseph Quinn) death from last season at all, and it’s turned Steve’s little bro into an angry, bitter shadow of his former self. In turn, their bromance plays out more like a troubled marriage in these first episodes as they snipe and bicker at one another. We know it’s just a matter of time before Steve gets to the bottom of what’s going on with Dustin and when it happens, we don’t expect to survive it without some ugly sobbing.
Is the Organic Wall Connected to Vecna’s Evolved Look?
The organic matter that energizes Vecna in the attic of the Creel home has been an evolving organism ever since we first got a good look at it in the Upside Down in Season 1. We’ve seen those tendrils attach to Vecna and replenish him during his regeneration time. And then he seemed to use them to bind and contain his victims in the Upside Down version of the Creel house. But what they are and if they’re autonomous from Vecna remains a mystery.
In Season 5, the massive organic wall discovered by Hopper and Eleven in the Upside Down is reminiscent of the wall that Vecna attaches Will to in the season’s first episode, just writ large. Is the size of it now indicative of Vecna’s power? When he appears through the portal into Hawkins in "Chapter Four: Sorcerer,” Vecna looks different. His once humanoid-looking right arm is no more and matches his entire body in appearing more thorny, with active movement slithering across his form. He’s jacked too now, so maybe the size of that wall is directly connected to this more ‘roidy-looking Vecna. Is there a way to damage what the wall parallels in the Rightside Up in order to weaken the demon?
If Max Is Revived From Her Coma, Will She Be Changed Irrevocably?
For 584 days, Max (Sadie Sink) has been roaming inside Henry Creel's memories. Even though she’s found a safe space inside the rock cave — a place Henry won’t enter — the question remains: What will the cost be for Max to spend so much time trapped inside that monster’s head? Even if Holly is the key to Max’s escape from the cave and the coma, will she be irrevocably changed for the worse? The best case scenario is that her time in Henry’s head will help the gang figure out how to take the villain down. Maybe she can look to Will’s burst of power to figure how to harness what she’s learned from Henry’s memories to use them against him?
How Does Will Pull Off an Eleven Power Move — Bloody Nose and All — at the End of Episode 4?
The prologue of "Chapter One: The Crawl" makes it very clear that from the moment Will Byers was yoinked into the Upside Down, his connection with Vecna has been physical, intentional and part of a long game. It was wild to see tiny, vulnerable Will encased in organic matter and forcibly face-hugged by Vecna as he did who knows what to the kid. But it certainly confirms that every Will neck tingle, every phantom feeling, every barfed-up slug has been strengthening whatever Vecna initiated between them. What we don’t know is if Will’s Eleven-style power move at the end of "Chapter Four: Sorcerer" was always part of Vecna’s plan, or if Will’s increasing confidence paired with his love for his family and friends manifested in his siphoning of Vecna’s power, which facilitated that Demogorgon massacre? Either is interesting, but the latter is a twist that could finally tilt the power tables against Vecna.
What were your biggest questions about the first four episodes of Stranger Things Volume 1? Let’s discuss in the comments!
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