It: Chapter Two and The Wire star James Ransone has died aged 46.

According to The Guardian, the Los Angeles medical examiner indicated Ransone died on Friday from suicide. The New York Post reported that official records show the cause of death was listed as “hanging,” while his place of death was listed as “shed.”

The American actor is best-known for playing Chester ‘Ziggy’ Sobotka in 12 episodes of the second season of David Simon’s critically acclaimed Baltimore crime drama, The Wire. More recently, he played adult Eddie Kaspbrak in It: Chapter Two. Ransone also played the Deputy in Blumhouse's supernatural horror films Sinister 1 (2012) and 2 (2015), and Max in 2021's The Black Phone. In 2008 HBO war drama mini-series Generation Kill, Ransone played real life marine Cpl. Josh Ray Person opposite Alexander Skarsgård.

Ransone’s wife, Jamie McPhee, took to social media to pay tribute. "I told you I have loved you 1,000 times before and I know I will love you again," she wrote. "You told me - I need to be more like you and you need to be more like me - and you were so right. Thank you for giving me the greatest gifts - you, Jack [their 6-year-old son] and Violet [their 4-year-old daughter]. We are forever."

In 2021, the Baltimore Sun reported that Ransone said he was sexually abused by a former tutor who worked in Maryland public schools. He wrote on Instagram that the abuse was a factor in his alcohol and heroin addictions. Ransone later said he had reported the allegations to Baltimore County police in March 2020, but was told by a detective that prosecutors had no interest in pursuing the matter further.

Tributes were paid online by former and current colleagues, as well as HBO and Blumhouse. “Rest In Peace To My Dear Brother, Mr. James Ransone. We Rocked Together On Red Hook Summer And Inside Man,” director Spike Lee posted on Instagram.

In loving memory of James Ransone. pic.twitter.com/7CKjnAnrCD

— HBO (@HBO) December 21, 2025

We are saddened by the passing of James Ransone. We are grateful to have worked with him on The Black Phone and Sinister movies.
Our thoughts are with his loved ones. pic.twitter.com/zUvPTcLJqe

— Blumhouse (@blumhouse) December 21, 2025

Oscar-winning filmmaker Sean Baker, who worked with Ransone on Tangerine and Starlet, wrote: “I’ll miss you dearly, my friend.” “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you, brother. Rest in Peace James Ransone,” Ransone’s The Wire co-star, Wendell Pierce, said.

In 2016, Ransone told Interview magazine he would “wrestle with the catharsis of acting." "I don’t end up playing a lot of likable characters, so I find myself living in a lot of unlikable skin," he said. "As a result of that I don’t always feel good."

If you are having suicidal thoughts, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline in the U.S. is available 24 hours a day at 1-800-273-8255. A list of international suicide hotlines can be found here.

Photo by Gary Gershoff/WireImage.

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.

Fresh from receiving the Game of the Year award at The Game Awards 2025, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been stripped of two awards from the Indie Game Awards after its use of generative AI hit the headlines.

Sandfall Interactive’s record-breaking role-playing game launched with some placeholder textures built with generative AI. The developer patched them out five days after release, insisting they made the cut by mistake. This went under the radar until recently, when comments from Sandfall co-founder and producer François Meurisse reemerged.

Speaking to El País for an article published in July, Meurisse said: “We use some AI, but not much. The key is that we were very clear about what we wanted to do and what to invest in. And, of course, technology has allowed us to do things that were unthinkable a short time ago. Unreal Engine 5’s tools and assets have been very important in improving the graphics, gameplay, and cinematics.”

Meurisse’s comment resurfaced amid a backlash to comments from Larian boss Swen Vincke in the wake of the developer’s high-profile announcement of Divinity at The Game Awards. The original news came from a Bloomberg interview in which Vincke said that Larian was "pushing hard" [Bloomberg's phrasing] on generative AI, even though it hasn't led to big gains in efficiency. Specifically, the studio was said to be using the technology to "explore ideas, flesh out PowerPoint presentations, develop concept art and write placeholder text." [again, Bloomberg's phrasing].

Vincke later addressed the backlash, and has promised an AMA to answer questions from fans. All the while, a light has been shone on Clair Obscur, which leads us to the Indie Game Awards.

Clair Obscur had won Game of the Year and Debut Game from the Indie Game Awards, but both awards are now retracted. Explaining the decision, the Indie Game Awards said:

The Indie Game Awards have a hard stance on the use of gen AI throughout the nomination process and during the ceremony itself. When it was submitted for consideration, a representative of Sandfall Interactive agreed that no gen AI was used in the development of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination. While the assets in question were patched out and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place. As a result, the IGAs nomination committee has agreed to officially retract both the Debut Game and Game of the Year awards.

Each award went to the next highest-ranked game in its respective category; Sorry We’re Closed now has Debut Game, and Blue Prince now has Game of the Year.

Meanwhile, El País has updated its original article to include a statement from Sandfall clarifying its use of generative AI in the making of Clair Obscur:

The studio states that it was in contact with El País on April 25 — three months prior to this publication. During these exchanges, Sandfall Interactive indicated that it had used a limited number of pre-existing assets, notably 3D assets sourced from the Unreal Engine Marketplace. None of these assets were created using artificial intelligence.

Sandfall Interactive further clarifies that there are no generative Al-created assets in the game. When the first Al tools became available in 2022, some members of the team briefly experimented with them to generate temporary placeholder textures. Upon release, instances of a placeholder texture were removed within five days to be replaced with the correct textures that had always been intended for release, but were missed during the Quality Assurance process.

And here’s Vincke's latest statement in full:

It’s been a week since we announced Divinity, our next RPG, and a lot has become lost in translation.

Larian’s DNA is agency. Everything we work towards is to the benefit of our teams, games, and players. A better work day, and a better game. Our successes come from empowering people to work in their own way and bring the best out of their skill & craft, so that we can make the best RPGs we can possibly make.

In that context, it would be irresponsible for us not to evaluate new technologies. However, our processes are always evolving, and where they are not efficient or fail to align with who we are, we will make changes.

To give you more insight, we’ll do an AMA featuring our different departments after the holiday break, in which you’ll get the opportunity to ask us any questions you have about Divinity and our dev process directly.

We’ll announce the date in the new year. In the meantime, I wish you all happy holidays!

Excellent, the AI generated textures in Clair Obscur were indeed placeholders and were replaced with custom assets. The other AI generated poster that was present in the starting area (don't have a screenshot of it now) was also removed. https://t.co/UQbfLuyj8e pic.twitter.com/5xgqsCmZpC

— Nyanomancer (@nyanomancer) April 30, 2025

The use of generative AI in video game development is one of the hottest topics in the industry. Last month, we reported that Assassin's Creed publisher Ubisoft was forced to remove an image found within Anno 117: Pax Romana that contained AI-generated elements after fans complained, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 players took to social media to complain about AI-generated images they had found across the game, following a trend of AI-Ghibli images from earlier this year.

The Alters developer, 11 Bit Studios, and Jurassic World Evolution 3 developer, Frontier Developments, meanwhile, similarly faced fan backlash when they were caught using undisclosed AI images. EA CEO Andrew Wilson has said AI is "the very core of our business," and Square Enix recently implemented mass layoffs and reorganized, saying it needed to be "aggressive in applying AI." Dead Space creator Glen Schofield also recently detailed his plans to “fix” the industry in part via the use of generative AI in game development, and former God of War dev Meghan Morgan Juinio has said: "... if we don’t embrace [AI], I think we’re selling ourselves short.”

As the debate around the use of generative AI to build video games rages on, Tim Sweeney, boss of Fortnite developer Epic Games, has waded in to call on Valve to ditch its AI Generated Content Disclosure for Steam games.

Valve’s rules mean developers must disclose their use of AI-generated content on a game’s Steam store page. For example, the Steam page for Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders includes a note from the developer on how the game uses AI-generated content: “during the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.”

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.

Avatar: Fire and Ash has launched to a huge $345 million at the global box office, which is enough to secure the second largest opening weekend of 2025 so far. But it’s down significantly on its predecessor Avatar: The Way of Water, and now there are questions over whether James Cameron will get to realize his vision and make Avatar 4 and 5.

Disney’s Avatar: Fire and Ash opened to $88 million in North American theaters, but as with previous Avatar movies, the big money came internationally, with $257 million. In total, Avatar: Fire and Ash is behind only Disney’s own Zootopia 2, which earned just shy of half a billion dollars over the same launch period.

Avatar: Fire and Ash’s opening is down significantly on that of its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water, which saw a huge $435 million during its launch weekend in 2022. But an encouraging sign came from China, where $57.6 million came in for Fire and Ash, ever so slightly above The Way of Water’s opening haul three years ago.

The question now is whether Avatar: Fire and Ash will enjoy the staying power at theaters its predecessors did. The Avatar films tend to start strong but then pick up steam over the holidays, pulling in hundreds of millions week on week. Will Avatar: Fire and Ash do the same?

The special effects-heavy Avatar films cost a huge amount of money to produce, but they have historically made billions of dollars at the box office. Avatar remains the highest-grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation), and has earned a staggering $2.9 billion across several theatrical runs. (Avengers: Endgame overtook Avatar for a brief period, before Avatar then stole its crown back via a fresh re-release.) Avatar: The Way of Water earned $2.3 billion, meanwhile, cementing it as the third-highest grossing film of all time — just ahead of Cameron's own Titanic, which floats on $2.2 billion.

The pressure is on Avatar 3 to deliver for Disney so creator James Cameron can release Avatar 4 and 5 over the next six years. Avatar 4 is down for release on December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 due out December 19, 2031. Cameron, now 71, would be close to 80 years old by the time it all wraps up.

But Cameron has sounded words of caution recently. Speaking on The Town with Matthew Belloni podcast, Cameron admitted he was feeling nervous about Avatar: Fire and Ash’s box office performance, and was mindful of the “forces” working against theatrical releases in 2025. There’s the potential for “sequelitis,” Cameron noted. "People tend to dismiss sequels unless it’s the third Lord of the Rings film and you want to see what happens to everybody, which in my mind this is — this is the culmination of a story arc, but that may not be how the public sees it.” And there’s the “one-two punch” of streaming and Covid, which means fewer people are going to the movies — 75% of the number in 2019, Cameron suggested.

When pressed on how much Avatar: Fire and Ash cost to make, Cameron wouldn’t be drawn into divulging a figure, only suggesting it was a lot of money, and so the movie will have to make a lot of money to turn a profit.

“It is one metric f**k ton of money, which means we have to make two metric f**k tons of money to make a profit,” he said. “I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will make money. The question is, does it make enough money to justify doing it again?”

I sat down to sanity check a few discounts and somehow resurfaced hours later with a fuller wishlist and a lighter wallet. On Switch, Hades and Ori still feel like magic tricks disguised as games. Over on Xbox Series X, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds are absurd value for experiences that can eat entire weekends. PS5 is stacked with personality this week thanks to Astro Bot and Lies of P, while PC quietly delivers some of the strongest long form RPG and action value going around. Go get amongst it.

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This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, it's been 26 years since I unpeeled adventure in Donkey Kong 64, a game some called the top banana of Rare 3D platforming (I still prefer Banjo Kazooie). At the time, it looked gorgeous, sounded amazing (hello, DK Rap), and was overladen with crap to collect and unique ability Kongs to switch between. Kong made a comeback quite recently in Donkey Kong Bananza, too. I dug it.

The holidays are almost here, and we've rounded up the best deals for Sunday, December 21, below. Don't miss your chance to save on these last-minute gifts!

Save on Assassin's Creed Shadows for Nintendo Switch 2