Tencent has used model Mei Yan's likeness in its battle royale game Ring of Elysium without her permission, Yan says. 

Yan, a Chinese-American model who also runs a YouTube channel with more than 400,000 subscribers, said on Twitter that the company "stole an image of [her] from several years ago, photoshopped it and used it in their game for their character Lynn". She posted screenshots of a trailer for Ring of Elysium's paid-for Adventurer Pass, which appears to have photoshopped different outfits onto Yan's original picture. 

You can see a comparison shot below—the original is on the right, with the image used for Lynn on the left. The original was a professional photo taken while Yan was working with the brand Omocat.

An edited headshot of Yan also appeared as an icon in the Adventurer Pass. All uses of the image, including the trailer, have now been deleted. 

"I had no idea this was even happening," Yan said in an Instagram post. "Yeah it’s pretty flattering and cool ngl but at the same time it’s such a shady trick to pull and it’s ridiculous that it’s gone this far."

She told Kotaku that she's not sure how she'd like the issue to be resolved. "My original goal was to just bring some awareness. If more people can know about this, I guess that’s all I can really ask for in this situation,” Yan said. “People have been paying for this Adventurer Pass, and are therefore paying to have access to this skin. I feel like, in a way, people have been deceived, and that’s really, really not okay.”

A moderator on the Ring of Elysium subreddit claimed they were told by the developers that an "official investigation was conducted immediately" and that the dev team would release an official statement "once things are clarified".

I've reached out the Ring of Elysium team and will update this story if I hear back.

Ring of Elysium, a recent free-to-play addition to the increasingly crowded battle royale genre, straddles the unique overlap between extreme sports and to-the-death combat. While players have thus far been limited to slinging guns on snowboards and snowmobiles across a single snow-covered map, "season two"—which launches January 16—moves the action to warmer climes.

Europa, one of the maps included in the original Asian release of Ring of Elysium, combines Mediterranean-style greenery with active volcano jeopardy. BMX bikes, hand gliding and a grappling hook round out the new abilities included with the map, the latter of which makes for some entertaining acrobatics.

New weapons include the MG4 and PKM machine guns, while an improved dynamic weather system flits between sunny days, heavy rain, thunderstorms, typhoons and everything in-between. There's even underwater travel, complete with all manner of marine creatures to study, thanks to the addition of a cross-harbor tunnel submersible.

Where rivals expound increasingly larger maps and player counts, Ring of Elysium remains a focused affair. Each game is limited to 60 players, while the inclusion of a rescue chopper that carries up to four people to safety lends an air of cooperation to combat, even if human nature means it inevitably descends into chaos.

To celebrate the release of Ring of Elysium: Season Two, developer Aurora Studios has also updated its corporate logo. According to Aurora Studios the "'A' represents the first letter of Aurora, which can be considered as a symbol of inheritance" while "the shape is similar to a mountain that represents climbing to the peak."

Ring of Elysium is available now as a free download through Steam Early Access. Season Two—which includes Europa Island, as well as three new characters named Alfonso, Bradley and Sylvia—launches January 16. 

Wintry, free-to-play battle royale Ring of Elysium has a new survival-themed game mode in which you compete with other players for food and fuel, and you have to cower indoors when the storm, called Ymir, surges.

In the new mode, called From Dusk Till Dawn, you win by surviving until first light, which will take around 20 in-game minutes. You'll battle other players to get your hands on equipment, weapons and fuel. When Ymir surges, you have to craft an indoor campfire to maintain your body temperature, and you'll need fuel to keep it running. You can also eat food to boost your health. 

All resources will be displayed on the map, and at certain times the location of all players will be shown, too, which means firefights will be hard to avoid. 

It sounds like fun and, as a big fan of Ring of Elysium (it's my battle royale of choice at the moment), I might check it out. For now, it's only available at certain times of day so that developer Tencent can ensure it remains stable—you can play it between 4 and 6am PST, 12 and 2pm PST, and 8 and 10pm PST. They're well spread out, so at least one should suit your time zone.

You can grab Ring of Elysium on Steam here.

Snowy free-to-play battle royale shooter Ring of Elysium, described by Chris as "SSX Tricky meets PUBG", has finally turned on its European servers. 

Up to now, European players have had to play on North American servers and simply deal with the inevitable lag. In mid-September, developer Tencent said European servers would go live within a month, but that was later pushed back, and they were booted up on Friday.

Some European players are still having problems with lag, though: in a Steam post today, Tencent said it had received reports of "high latency issues with EU servers, and even the problem of [being] unable to connect to lobbies from a small group of players". It's talking to its server providers to fix it.

The game, which is still in Early Access, sounds promising, and has mostly positive reviews on Steam. It has a few features that set it apart from other battle royales: you can choose your spawn point, you can pick between loadouts that all start with a weapon and a unique movement ability, and up to four players can survive each round by climbing into an extractor chopper.

Its calling cards are the movement abilities each class has. One can snowboard down mountains, one can climb up steep slopes, and one can hang glide. Chris enjoyed them, and called Ring of Elysium a "smooth and fun experience". 

There are four empty seats on the rescue chopper, and four players left alive. But this is battle royale, so the fighting doesn't stop. Even though four players can safely win the round and all get out alive, the killing continues until there's only one left. I guess old habits die hard.

Tencent's battle royale game Ring of Elysium is now available on Steam (in certain parts of the world). Being as it's both free and puts a couple twists on the standard battle royale experience, you should definitely give it a try. There's snowboards in it. You can snowboard and shoot people. It's SSX Tricky meets PUBG.

There are a few differences in RoE from what we see as boilerplate BR at this point. Beginning a match, you're presented with a map of the area, and you simply click on the grid you'd like to start in, while also seeing which spot everyone else in the match has chosen. There's no pointless running around in a lobby punching people first, and no plane ride to sit through: you just spawn in the area you picked. You also choose from one of three loadouts, which all begin with a weapon (pistol or shotgun), some ammo, first-aid, and the special movement ability you want.

There are three of those movement abilities, including a snowboard (you toggle it with T), a hang glider (toggled with F when you've jumped off something tall), or climbing gear, which allows you to scale certain cliffs (they'll be marked on your minimap).

I didn't find climbing to be particularly useful, but snowboarding is fun and even a bit strategic, since it's a nice quiet option to get somewhere quickly (if it's downhill from you). A good alternative to a noisy vehicle that people can hear coming. Hang gliding is fun and silent as well, though you'll need to find something to fling yourself off.

A winter storm acts like a circle of death without being an actual circle, herding players together into a final safe zone. At that point a rescue chopper flies in to a designated zone marked on the map, and after a couple more minutes the storm will completely fill the final zone, causing damage to anyone left. There are four seats on the chopper, so even in solo play four strangers can make it out, though after a few matches I've discovered that players will still try to become the only player remaining. If you climb that ladder to the chopper, anyone left on the ground will still absolutely try to kill you, even if there are enough seats available for them to climb up after you.

I did the same. Look, we're battle royale players. We just don't like to share.

Ring of Elysium is a smooth and fun experience that makes enough changes to what I expect from battle royale to feel a bit fresh. It had over 45,000 concurrent players on Steam today, so matches fill up almost instantly. The best reason to give it a shot is that it's free, so what are you waiting for? Hop on your snowboard and give it a try.

In Ring of Elysium you're a tourist—one of a hundred—at a mountain resort when a terrible winter storm rolls in. There's only one rescue chopper left and it can only carry four people as the storm's freezing circle closes around you. You know what that means: battle royale. The game from Tencent (previously called Europa) is free-to-play, and arrives on Steam September 19—though the store page currently appear to be restricted in Europe and parts of Asia.

The trailer above (if you can see it) shows the snowy, mountainous region and how you'll get around in it using hang gliders, ziplines, off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, and snowboards. Hypothermia is a threat, and apparently avalanches are too. "The game world will change dynamically as the disaster progress," claims the store page.

The scenario ultimately feels a bit more grim, somehow, than the standard post-apocalyptic competition that usually accompanies a battle royale game. Maybe it's just the idea of a bunch of vacationing snowboarders instantly turning on one another with sniper rifles and machineguns to gain a seat on that last chopper. Couldn't they just huddle together for warmth instead?