Month: March 2020

Red Dead Redemption 2 has outlined the bonuses and discounts for Red Dead Online this week, and anyone looking to tackle the Moonshiner missions will be rewarded handsomely. Rockstar has announced that from March 24 to 30 players will receive a 50% Role XP Boost on every Moonshiner activity, including sell, bootlegger, and story missions.

You’ll need to be Trader Rank 5 or have completed a Trader sell mission before jumping into the Moonshiner specialist role, but if you’ve done that you’re good to go. You’ll also receive a 10 gold bar discount on all Moonshine shacks this week, so it’s a great time to make some headway on the Moonshiner role.

On top of this, there’s a 40% discount available on all roadster horses and the same discount for band expansions. Furthermore, players who manage to fill all seven Outfit Slots this week will get a free off-hand holster, and they’ll be able to choose from any below rank 70. You can also get a bonus of RDO$100 by completing three role challenges for any role.

The Last Stand Showdown series will also run during this time. It’s a new variant on Last Stand, where players spawn next to a random weapon and then fight to be the last player still alive. The maps for this series are Annesburg Mine, Armadillo, and Cemetery.

Finally, various rank rewards are active from now until June 1. Every ten levels up to Rank 60 you’ll earn new bonuses, including discounts and new items. Twitch Prime users can also get a Collector’s Bag, a Polished Copper Moonshine Still Upgrade, and 5 Moonshiner Role Ranks, while PlayStation Plus subscribers will be given three free Ability Cards.

Rockstar has promised that online events in both Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V will continue amid the COVID-19 pandemic, even though the teams at Rockstar are now working remotely.

Tripwire Interactive has released a new update for Killing Floor 2 called Neon Nightmares The free update includes a new map and two new weapons to use.

The new map, Biolapse, takes you deep into an abandoned laboratory filled with zombies, where players will have to take advantage of traps to survive against the horde of undead. Biolapse is playable in both Survival and the weekly game modes.

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Steve Carell’s Michael Scott character was the foundation of The Office. So when it was confirmed that he would be leaving the show, it was huge news. The show was never the same without him. But why, exactly, did Carell leave the show? New details on this controversial topic have now come to light.

Collider reports that interviews in Andy Greene’s new book, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, seem to suggest that NBC’s ambivalence around picking up Carell’s contract is the reason. But it’s more complicated and nuanced than that.

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Tom Cruise is known for doing a lot of his own stunts. He even flew a helicopter in Mission: Impossible: Fallout. For his next movie, Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise wanted to fly an actual F-18 jet, but the Navy said no.

“The Navy wouldn’t let him fly an F-18,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer told Empire magazine (via USA Today).

Cruise wasn’t totally shut out of flying aircraft, however, as he actually flew a P-51 plane and helicopters for stunt sequences. “He can do just about anything in an airplane,” Bruckheimer said.

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Doom Eternal intensifies the battles with Hell’s hordes by requiring you to constantly calculate the best ways to rip, tear, and stay alive.

For many, the deciding factor when buying a game is whether they can play it with their friends. There’s certainly a lot of fun to be had when diving into a thriving online community, where you can jump into matches against opponents or go on fun quests with allies, and more games have begun to place a larger focus on making online play engaging and fun to invest time in. However, a common hindrance to enjoying these online-centric games can be boiled down to whether or not you’re playing on the right platform. Whether it’s low player populations, or if your friends are all on a different system, these things can put a divide between periods of frustration and having a good time.

In recent years, cross-play has become more common with online games, allowing people to play with or against others on different platforms. The inclusion of cross-platform play has not only given fading games a second chance, but it’s also unified online communities, removing the barriers placed by platform ecosystems. Microsoft has been leading the way with cross-play for Windows 10 and Xbox One, while Sony has steadily loosened up its attitudes on cross-play due to the success of games like Fortnite and PUBG.

So with that, we’ve compiled a list of the most interesting and exciting games that offer cross-play between platforms. Games with crossplay can be a great way to keep up with friends on different platforms and stay social during our present times, even while you’re engaging in fast-paced fights or having some ridiculous fun in an open world. In addition to cross-play trailblazers games like Rocket League and Hearthstone, we’ve also included more recent picks such as Borderlands 3, which brought together player bases from Steam and the Epic Games Store. For more on new games that will have cross-play, along with next-gen updates for PS5 and Xbox Series X, be sure to check back with GameSpot.

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YouTube will default videos to standard definition starting today, Google confirmed to IGN in a statement. The effort is meant to help governments and networks minimize stress on their systems as more and more people are social distancing at home.

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Last week, Google announced that it would be temporarily defaulting all videos on YouTube to standard definition in the EU. Today, that decision has been expanded worldwide.

“We continue to work closely with governments and network operators around the globe to do our part to minimize stress on the system during this unprecedented situation,” a Google spokesperson told IGN.

“Last week, we announced that we were temporarily defaulting all videos on YouTube to standard definition in the EU. Given the global nature of this crisis, we will expand that change globally starting today.”

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According to YouTube, the SD default change will last approximately 30 days and users can still manually adjust the video quality.

YouTube isn’t the only company trying to decrease the strain on internet networks. PlayStation announced that it will slow game downloads in Europe to decrease bandwidth strain according to a new company blog post.

Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook also made similar promises to comply with governments requesting reduced bitrates for videos as more countries put citizens in quarantine from the coronavirus.

For recommendations on how to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic, read our resource guide.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.