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The 2020 Pokemon World Championships may have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, but that didn’t stop a group of dedicated trading card game fans from throwing their own version of the event. Sponsored by Atlas Collectables, the Pokemon Online Global Championship, or POG for short, saw 1235 players of all ages from around the world compete to decide who was the very best like no one ever was.

Traditionally, players must earn enough Championship Points by playing in sanctioned tournaments to qualify for an invitation to play in the official Pokemon World Championships, but the POG Championship was made open to all players.

The free-to-enter event was spearheaded by Pokemon community organizers Neil Pie and Draydon Davis, who started an Indie GoGo campaign to raise funds that would be used to give prizes to the top finishers. The initial goal of $1000 was surpassed, eventually reaching a total of $4216, unlocking stretch goals that upped the number of players who would receive prize money, added in side events, and made it so the top eight finishers received POG playmats and the winner was awarded a championship trophy.

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Players competed using the Pokemon Trading Card Game Online game client. While the Pokemon World Championships also feature competitions for the core video game (this year it would have been Pokemon Sword & Shield) and Pokken Tournament DX, the Pokemon TCG regularly draws the highest number of competitors and offers the largest first place prize — a cool $25,000 — making it the premiere contest of the event.

Despite not having the resources of The Pokemon Company, the POG Championship went full steam ahead as players competed in numerous rounds over two days, August 23 to 24, until a winner was crowned. In the end, the title of POG Champion (and a $500 prize) went to Isaiah Bradner from the United States, who played a Lightning deck focused around Pikachu & Zekrom-GX and the new Item-locking Vikavolt V. After achieving several high finishes in various regional tournaments throughout the 2019-2020 season, Bradner is now considered to be the “Unofficial 2020 Pokemon World Champion.”

“While this tournament couldn’t compare to the experience of an in-person World’s event — nothing can — it was great to have something that got me hyped and wanting to play Pokémon again,” Bradner told IGN. This was Bradner’s first season playing in the adult age group known as the Masters Division (kids play in a separate Juniors Division and young teens play in Seniors), so it means something special for his first big career win as a Master to be an event on par with the World Championship, whether it’s official or not.

The Pokemon World Championships are known for bringing together players of all kinds from all over the world, and that’s something the POG Championship managed to achieve, as well. According to POG’s Neil Pie, players from 58 different countries were represented, the youngest player was 7 and the oldest was 57, and over 6000 games of Pokemon were played throughout the weekend.

The POG tournament allowed players to use cards from the Standard Format, but whereas several sets likely would have been rotated out for this year’s Worlds given that’s what happened last year, the POG organizers chose to include all sets from 2018’s Sun & Moon: Ultra Prism to 2020’s Sword & Shield: Darkness Ablaze in order to give players a larger and more diverse card pool to work with.

Making it to the final playoff rounds of the tournament were three players from the United States and one from Mexico, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, and the Netherlands, respectively. Check out which decks they piloted by clicking through the slideshow gallery below, and head on over to Pokemon TCG expert OmniPoke for an in-depth analysis on how they work.

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Another fan-run Pokemon TCG tournament called the Limitless Online Series ran from April to June. The Pokemon Company is hosting its own online international tournament called the Players Cup, which is currently ongoing. And there are numerous unofficial online tournaments that are held on a daily basis by individual organizers. Though it’s tough to replicate the experience of people from around the globe gathering in a convention hall to compete in a game they love, the Pokemon community is doing what they can to recreate that magic online.

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Joshua is Senior Editor and Producer at IGN. Give him a follow on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.

Epic Games’ battle with Apple and Google has spawned a spoof 1984 commercial, a hashtag, and even a surprising market for overpriced second-hand iPhones, all because of the 30% platform fee charged to developers hosting a game on Google Play or the App Store. A Bloomberg feature has charted the origins of that 30% fee all the way back to the Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 80s.

The NES became the first video game console to host third-party games, after Pac-Man‘s Namco Ltd. and Bomberman developer Hudson Soft Co approached Nintendo about distributing their games on its new platform.

The three companies agreed on a 10% licensing fee for appearing on Nintendo’s proprietary platform, but with Hudson Soft unable to manufacture its own cartridges, it paid Nintendo an additional 20% to manufacture the cartridges for its games as well.

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Diablo II is remembered very fondly as one of the best games of the year 2000, and 20 years on it’s still regarded as one of Blizzard’s best games. Now, reflecting back on the game, former Blizzard North president David Brevik has talked about the creation of the game–and the terrible period of crunch the team undertook to release it when they did.

Speaking at Devcom Digital, as reported by Gamesindustry.biz, Brevik opened up about the game’s development process, recalling how for the original Diablo the team crunched for “three or four months” to get it done. Following this, it took “a couple of months” for the developers to want to think about making a sequel.

For the sequel, the team wanted to implement improved online multiplayer, a version where there was “a real economy and you can trade items and it means something,” Brevik says. “That was one of the biggest motivations; seeing how people loved Diablo, but being very critical–and rightly so–about how things had been going with the online part of the game.”

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Apple has taken an early victory in its legal battle with Epic Games, as the court ruled it doesn’t have to “immediately reinstate” Fortnite on its App Store.

As reported by Bloomberg, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers made the ruling late Monday night, but it wasn’t a total loss for Epic Games as she also granted Epic’s request for “a temporary order blocking Apple from limiting the game developer’s ability to provide Unreal Engine, key graphics technology, for other apps.”

Rogers was very clear in saying that the case isn’t a “slam dunk” for either Apple or Epic Games, and that these temporary ruling will not “dictate the final outcome of the litigation.” There will be another hearing on September 28 to discuss a “longer-term solution.”

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This legal battle between Apple and Epic Games began when Epic altered the price of Fortnite V-Bucks and implemented a new direct payment system that would get around Apple and Google’s “exorbitant” app store fees.

Shortly after, Fortnite was removed from both the Apple App Store and Google Play store, and Epic followed those moves by filing a complaint against both companies.

Microsoft filed a statement in support of Epic, saying that “ensuring that Epic has access to the latest Apple technology is the right thing for gamer developers & gamers,” as the Unreal Engine is used by many developers, Microsoft included.

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This decision by the courts is an unfortunate one for Fortnite players on iOS devices, as Fortnite’s Chapter 2, Season 4 will launch on August 27 and will lock out those iPhone and iPad players who won’t be able to update the game.

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Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Microsoft has tapped top talent from Bungie and Crystal Dynamics to join its mysterious ‘AAAA’ studio, The Initiative.

Among the 16 new hires revealed on LinkedIn by studio head Darrell Gallagher, we can see that Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Avengers director Remi Lacoste has made the jump to The Initiative to work as an Experiental Director. Destiny 2 narrative lead Christine Thompson has also joined the studio in a lead writer position.

We’re yet to learn what the studio is working on, with our latest clue arriving from Xbox head Phil Spencer, who revealed The Initiative is “challenging themselves to do new things (and old things) in new ways,”, whatever that means.

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Microsoft revealed it had founded The Initiative in Santa Monica as part of its E3 2018 conference, where it announced a slew of acquisitions. The studio is being led by Darrell Gallagher, who previously worked at Rockstar Games, Crystal Dynamics and later Activision, overseeing the development of games like GTA IV, Tomb Raider and Destiny 2. At the time, Spencer touted Gallagher’s abilities, calling him a “visionary storyteller.”

According to Santa Monica job listings found on the Microsoft website later that year, the studio was calling for experience in “shipping high quality titles at AAAA standards” and a “knowledge and understanding of the process of building new IP.” The studio went on to hire God of War lead producer Brian Westergaard and Christian Cantamessa, who was the lead writer on Red Dead Redemption. The ‘AAAA’ studio then picked up Sunset Overdrive director Drew Murray.

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Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

It’s rock versus EDM in a bid to bring equality and electricity to all the people in Vinyl City and yes–it’s exactly as ridiculous as that sounds. No Straight Roads is an action game that is pure punk rock down to its soul and DNA. Much like punk, it’s kind of a mess at times, and not always in a way that works in the game’s favour. It reminds me of a talented and good-natured garage band who really believe they can make it but need a bit of support to reach the top. That’s part of the charm, though, and No Straight Roads features a lot of really good concepts and some absolutely excellent music to back them all up.

In No Straight Roads, you play as the rock duo Bunk Bed Junction. The band is made up of the hyperactive lead guitarist Mayday and chill technical drum wizard Zuke, who live in the sewers of the futuristic Vinyl City where electricity is powered by music. No Straight Roads (NSR) is the name of the governing company which controls this power, and thus also music, and it’s decided that EDM is king. May and Zuke want to bring rock music back to the city, but when they’re unjustly booted from a competition that might have seen them join NSR, they start to talk about revolution instead. The deal is sealed upon witnessing yet another blackout in the city where only NSR bigwigs have access to emergency power; all they do with it is throw sick EDM concerts. Thus Bunk Bed Junction decides to take out the top five NSR artists in music battles to rise to the top and bring electricity and musical equality back to the masses.

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Microsoft’s newest in-house studio The Initiative still has yet to announce or even tease its first game, but it’s already building up hype by building a talented and well-regarded team. Studio head Darrell Gallagher just announced a slew of new hires on LinkedIn, joining a team that already has some very big names on it.

The announcement included 16 new names working across various departments, including developers from Respawn Entertainment, Crystal Dynamics, Naughty Dog, Bungie, as well as talent making the switch from other areas of the entertainment industry.

The new hires have an impressive list of shipped games between them, and include Crystal Dynamics’ Remi Lacoste, game director on Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Marvel’s Avengers and lead on many of its earlier games, as well as Christine Thompson, a lead writer on Destiny 2 and Star Trek Online.

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If you’re getting caught up in Fall Guys mania but want to bring it into a game that’s a little easier to win, this Skyrim mod is for you. As picked up by PC Gamer, the Fall Guys Followers mod adds a bunch of the game’s little jelly bean characters (and one really big one) to follow your dragonborn around and help them in battle.

As you can see in the mod’s trailer, the Fall Guys seem pretty good in battle, plus you can craft little sweet roll hats or guards helmets for them. The mod’s creator built the assets from scratch rather than using official Fall Guys materials, and it looks like they did a pretty good job of it.

The Skyrim Special Edition mod can be found at Nexus Mods or for Xbox One, and requires the Dragonborn DLC to run–once you have it installed, you just have to go and pick up these little fellas at Whitewatch Tower so they can join your party.

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Mediatonic’s whimsical battle royale game Fall Guys is one of 2020’s breakout success stories in games. It’s sold millions of copies and has inspired some of the biggest brands on Earth to get involved in the discussion. The game’s success has “absolutely obliterated” the developer’s expectations, lead designer Joe Walsh told Kotaku Australia.

“Our highest estimates have been absolutely obliterated by the actual response … you can’t plan those things. You can’t predict it. Sometimes, it’s just right place, right time,” he said.

Walsh said the concept for Fall Guys “always felt like a good idea,” but the studio did not imagine just how much of a success the title would become. “As soon as you start thinking about your game being a success you feel like you’re going to jinx it,” Walsh said.

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The Apple/Epic legal case over Fortnite continues, with a new ruling from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the case denying part of Epic’s appeal for a temporary restraining order–but also granting another part. As reported by The Verge, Judge Rogers has denied Epic Games the rights to temporarily return Fortnite to the App Store, but has also prevented Apple from cutting off developer’s Unreal Engine accounts.

Apple has been seeking to prevent Epic from returning Fortnite to the App Store, and has made movements to cut off access to Epic development tools–which would have a major impact on developers outside of Epic. However, at least for the time being, this will not be happening.

The full court order outlines the part of Epic’s appeal that has been granted: “Apple and all persons in active concert or participation with Apple, are temporarily restrained from taking adverse action against Epic Games with respect to restricting, suspending or terminating any affiliate of Epic Games, such as Epic International, from Apple’s Developer Program, including as to Unreal Engine, on the basis that Epic Games enabled in-app payment processing in Fortnite through means other than IAP or on the basis of the steps Epic took to do so.”

Blocking these developer tools would have had wider implications, negatively impacting not just Epic, but also developers who use their tools for mobile development.

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